“Mommy, can you make me pancakes?” Sam stood in the kitchen doorway in his pajamas, his eyes puffy from sleep.
Meg put the pad facedown on the desk. She would give the children as long as possible to enjoy the life they knew before she yanked it out from under them. “Plain or blueberry, sweetie?”
As the day passed, Meg realized that James was avoiding her. Annoyed, she finally went to seek him out. She found him stretched out in the club chair in his office. He sat immobile, his head resting on the back of the chair, his eyes closed. “I’m awake,” he said without moving.
The sight only irritated her more. “What are you doing, holed up in here?” She stood in front of him. “We have about a thousand things that need to be dealt with, and I can’t do it all by myself.”
He opened his eyes. “What needs to be done?” he asked in a listless tone.
“Well, I made some notes and went over …” Meg trailed off as she saw that James was gazing somewhere over her shoulder, clearly not listening. “Is this how it’s going to be? I do absolutely everything to clean up this mess? No, James. No.” She crossed her arms. “Yes, I see you’re sad, you’re depressed, your heart is broken. But you and I don’t have the luxury of those feelings. We have three children to take care of.”
“Kids are resilient. They’ll be okay.”
Her voice rose. “Whether they’ll be okay is another matter, but before that, they have to be told. Have you considered how to break this news to them?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “What do you think?”
When had her husband become like this? Meg wondered. He had always been so strong emotionally. Now he seemed incapable of handling any part of the crisis he himself had brought upon them.
She took a breath. “I think we have to tell them the truth. Unfortunately, today. They need to know they can’t spend any more money on anything. More important, they need to be told what’s coming down the road. What happens to their everyday lives? To their activities, to their friends?”
“Simple enough,” James replied. He snapped his fingers. “Poof. All gone.” He abruptly leaned forward, grabbing the chair arms angrily. “You want me to be helpful, Meg? Fine! I will take the blame and tell them Daddy wrecked their lives. Will that be sufficient?”
Meg was unmoved by his words. “You have wrecked their lives. And yes, that will be sufficient for now. You do all the talking, and I’ll be beside you like some philandering politician’s wife. We’ll present a united front. I’ll keep up my end. Just be sure you keep up yours and tell them the truth.”
It was nearly five in the afternoon when, seated side by side on the sofa, they called the children to the family room. Sam responded first, plopping down cross-legged on the floor. Lizzie and Will required another few shouts to get them to appear, then they slouched in armchairs, both looking somewhat put upon.
“Why the summit meeting?” Lizzie asked.
“We have some important things to tell you,” Meg said. “So please, just listen to Dad until he’s done.”
She struggled to keep her face neutral as she listened to James lay out the situation. He omitted altogether the part about pretending to go to work for the past four months. His explanation relied on a bad economy and unlucky investments in a way that absolved him from any real responsibility. The children clearly didn’t grasp the significance of what he was saying until he started explaining the immediate and painful consequences of not having any money at all. Tense, she watched her two older children’s expressions shift from barely attentive to stunned to horrified. Sam’s face remained impassive, but the growing intensity of his nail-biting said more than enough.
“Please tell me you’re kidding, please, please, please!” Lizzie was perched on the edge of her chair, leaning forward, her hands gripping the chair arms. “You have to be!”
“Yeah, this is a joke, right?” Will’s voice held anger and fear in equal measure.
By this point, Meg’s stomach was clenched so tight, she was almost bent in half, her arms crossed over her abdomen. “No,” she practically whispered. “No, it’s not a joke.”
Lizzie sounded frantic. “I don’t understand. We don’t have any money? None?”
James spoke firmly. “That’s right. So there will not be one dime going out of this house from now on.”
“But I need to pay Megan back for Ali’s birthday present, and—”
“Lizzie, listen to me!” James said. “Not one dime. No paying back. No movies, no shopping, no nothing.”
“We’ll still have our cell phones and laptops, right?”
James shook his head. “Not after tomorrow.”
Lizzie was wild-eyed. “You can’t do this to us!”
“It’ll be all right, honey,” Meg soothed.
Her daughter turned to her in fury. “It will not! This is the worst thing that ever happened!”
“How are we going to live?” Will asked. “Will we be able to eat?”
“Your mother and I are taking care of all the details. Don’t worry, you won’t starve. But we’ll be leaving the house in about two weeks, so you’ll need to start getting ready. We’ll only have my car, the Mustang. We can take just what we can fit into it and not one thing more.”
“Are you crazy?” Lizzie shrieked. “That’s impossible! We can’t live like that!”
“Leaving the house for how long?” Will’s face was white.
James paused. “For good. We’re not coming back.”
Meg tried to soften the blow of his reply. “We’re not sure where we’re going yet, but it’ll be okay. It just won’t be in Charlotte. But you have another couple of weeks in school here, which means you’ll make it almost to the end of the term. I’m sure we can make arrangements with the school so you can finish your work and get final grades for the semester.”
The children sat stock-still, trying to absorb what they were hearing.
“We’re leaving school. We’re not even staying in Charlotte.” Will reviewed what he had just learned in wonderment. “We’re poor, and we’re literally homeless.”
Sam finally spoke, his voice tremulous. “Are we going to die?”
Chapter 5
James sat on the edge of their bed, his head down and his hands clasped between his knees. Meg watched him brace himself for what he was about to do. She almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
She was no happier than he about this decision. There was no place on earth she wanted to go less than her parents’ house in upstate New York. But it was the only solution to their problems that made any real sense. Their first priority was to find a place to stay. Only Meg’s parents had the room to take them all in, and could be prevailed upon to let them stay indefinitely for free.
Of course, “free” was a relative term, Meg reflected. Payment might not be made in the form of money, but it would most definitely be made. And the cost would be extremely high.
She picked up the phone, punching in the numbers to her childhood home before handing it to James.
He took a deep breath, then stood as he brought the phone to his ear and waited for someone to answer. “Hello, Harlan?” James was trying to sound cheerful, Meg knew, but his voice came out sounding more strangled. “It’s James … Hobart.”
Meg turned away, fiddling with something on their dresser so he wouldn’t feel her eyes upon him. She could hear him pace as he talked.
“How are you? Frances doing okay? Good, good.”
The brief pauses required for her father’s replies told Meg that he was being his usual terse self. James made small talk for a little while longer. Meg noted that her father did not inquire about her or the children.
“Harlan, I need to talk to you about something pretty serious.” James was getting down to it but kept his tone casual. “We’ve had some setbacks here, you know, the economy and such. I’m sure you’ve been reading about all this. Well, we haven’t been immune down here in Charlotte.
“So, what
with my firm downsizing and such, turns out we’re going to have to do some downsizing ourselves. We bit off a little more than we could chew, I guess, with the house. Foolish in retrospect.”
With his last comment, James had purposely handed her father the opening to lecture him. The conversation was becoming increasingly painful for her to listen to, and she knew it was about to get worse.
“Yeah, you’re right,” James said contritely. Meg could imagine her father making some self-righteous remark about how this was to be expected when people overreached or didn’t follow the tried and true.
“So, Meg and I have been talking. We think the best thing would be if we came to you and I started doing what I should have been doing all along: learning the business.”
Meg looked up at her husband. Getting that out must have nearly killed him. While she was glad that he was finally dealing with some of the ugliness his mess had created, at the same time, his groveling was making her cringe in sympathy.
“That’s right, Harlan, I am dead serious. It’s time for us to get settled into a solid business that we can depend on. Those are the ones that last, no matter what. Like you always said. Heck, I’m definitely looking forward to doing something real instead of pushing papers all day. But we’d need to lean on your generosity a bit. You know, maybe staying with you until we get our feet on the ground up there.”
James listened as his father-in-law responded.
“Unfortunately, in this market, we won’t get anything out of the house. We put a lot of money into it, and I’m not hopeful we’ll make it back. So, no, we don’t have a whole lot of capital, as they say.”
Meg wasn’t surprised that her husband chose to finesse the issue of their losing the house. She couldn’t really imagine him saying that they would be leaving with only the shirts on their backs. The conversation went on for another minute or so before he brought it to a close.
“Yes, you’re absolutely right. Yes. Well, okay, then, that sounds fine. What time tonight? Good. Send my best to Frances in the meantime.”
James pressed the off button and put down the phone. He turned to Meg. “You have to call back tonight at seven. He said your mother would handle any ‘domestic arrangements,’ as he so quaintly put it. She’s out now.”
“Will he give you a job?”
“Yes. He said it was about time I’d come to my senses.”
“James, I know how hard that—”
“Oh, cut it out.” His face contorted with fury. “You must have really enjoyed that. For the rest of your lives, you and your parents can hold it over my head, how I came crawling to them for help. Begged them to take in my family and give me some crummy job. Happy now?”
Meg took a step back in surprise. “You think that makes me happy?”
“I know it does.” James left the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Whatever sympathy Meg had felt for him vanished. He viewed himself as a victim, she realized, and somehow she was going to be the villain. He was writing his own script about what had happened. Unfortunately, she could see that it wasn’t going to have much to do with the truth.
Meg left the room only to be met by the sound of Lizzie crying. Ever since yesterday, when they told the children the news, Lizzie had been virtually holed up in her bedroom. She hadn’t come down for dinner, and the dirty cereal bowl and spoon in the sink this morning were the only evidence that she had eaten anything between then and now. Periodically, Meg would knock on her daughter’s door, but all she got in the way of a response was “Go away!”
She tried again with a gentle knock. “Lizzie? Please let me talk to you.”
To Meg’s surprise, she received silence in reply. She took that as an invitation and opened the door a few inches. “Can I come in?”
The only answer was Lizzie’s sniffling. Meg entered to find her daughter stretched across the bed on her stomach, her face turned toward the wall.
“Oh, honey, I know this is so, so hard,” Meg said.
Lizzie kept her face averted, and her voice was muffled by sobs. “No, you don’t. You don’t know anything. You may have grown up in some stupid little town, but nobody made you leave your house and everything you owned. Nobody destroyed everything you worked so hard to build—friends, your social life—everything.” She turned her face toward Meg. It was red and tear-stained. “How could you do this to me?” Her voice grew louder. “Why did you let this happen? You have three children. Didn’t you think about us at all?”
“Your father and I—”
“I can’t understand how you and Daddy could be so stupid. And selfish. You didn’t save anything or have any kind of plan. Boom, just like that, our lives are gone.”
“There’s a lot you don’t understand about all this.”
Lizzie regarded her mother dully. “I understand that I hate you. You’ve ruined my life, like, literally, ruined it.” She turned her face to the wall again. “I wish I were dead. Leave me alone. I never want to see you again.”
Meg stood there for a moment, trying to imagine what this all felt like to her daughter. Then she left the room.
As she made her way down the hallway, she saw the door to Sam’s room was open. Peering in, she froze. Her nine-year-old sat on the floor in the center of the room, surrounded by a huge array of boxes and bags full of his collections. Meg watched silently as he lovingly examined some tiny rubber action figures.
His stuff. The stuff that made him the quirky, sweet kid he was. She hadn’t thought about how he would have to abandon all the things he had collected. All the things that somehow represented to him security and control in a scary world. How could they ask him to do that? The other two children would have to part with clothes and gadgets and a range of things that were bound to be painful to them. But Sam would have to let go of a part of himself that he wasn’t ready to give up. He shouldn’t have to.
He saw her standing in the doorway and smiled. “Hi, Mom.”
Of the three children, Sam was the only one who hadn’t displayed anger toward Meg or James. After their gathering in the family room, Will had left the house yelling out angrily that he would be at Leo’s as he slammed the door behind him. He wasn’t supposed to leave home without a parental okay, but Leo lived within walking distance, and under the circumstances, no one was about to stop him. This morning he had sullenly allowed Meg to cook him scrambled eggs and toast, retreating with the plate to his room so he wouldn’t have to sit with her in the kitchen. Apparently, he wasn’t speaking to his parents any more than he had to.
Sam had been very quiet, but it was a different kind of quiet. He was clearly afraid, and he seemed to Meg more fragile. He had spent much of the morning in her presence, practically following her from room to room, trying to be helpful in any way he could. It was as if he needed to be with her but was trying not to add to the misery and disruption in the house.
Meg forced a smile to match his. “Hi, pumpkin.”
He got up and went over to his desk, retrieving a crumpled pile of dollar bills there. “I saved this from my allowance and stuff. It’s eighteen dollars. I thought maybe you and Daddy could use it.”
“No, no, Sam.” The words caught in her throat. “That’s very nice. But you keep it.”
She turned away before he could see her face. Hurrying down the stairs, tears burning her eyes, she went out to the backyard and got as far from the house as she could before bursting into long, loud sobs. It was the first time since all this had started, she realized, that she had cried. Now that she had started, she wasn’t sure she would be able to stop. She cried for the children and for her marriage. She cried with fear, having no idea what the next months would bring. She cried at the realization that the security of her life had been such a flimsy illusion.
Much later, when she couldn’t cry another tear, she stood, exhausted, and made some resolutions. She wouldn’t let the children see her get down. No matter how furious she was at James, they would maintain the best possible relatio
ns in front of them. Last, she wouldn’t rely on her husband to get them out of their financial straits because the likelihood that he could tolerate working for her father was pretty much zero.
At exactly seven o’clock that evening, Meg sat down at the kitchen table to call her mother. If Meg’s mother had said to call at seven, she expected to receive the call at seven, not 7:01. Tardiness as a symptom of weak character had been a frequent topic of discussion between her parents during Meg’s childhood. Whatever else tonight’s conversation might bring, she wanted to eliminate that subject as a possibility.
The phone rang and rang. Meg could picture her mother in the kitchen, washing up after supper, unhurriedly drying her hands on a dish towel before reaching for the wall-mounted telephone.
“Hello.” A flat statement without expectation.
That one word was enough to make Meg flinch. “Mother, hi, it’s Meg.”
“Hello, Margaret. Didn’t hear from you yesterday on Thanksgiving, but I understand you’ve gotten yourself in a lot of trouble down there.”
Double points, Meg thought grimly. The reprimand for the missed call and the put-down both in one sentence. The fact that her mother still insisted on calling her by her given—and hated—name of Margaret was just the usual icing on the cake.
“I’m very sorry we have to bother you like this. I really appreciate you and Dad letting us stay with you for a while.”
“I’m hardly surprised it came to this, dear. That big-deal firm James worked for, all those fancy companies, you just knew they were going to come to no good. Dishonest cheats, all of them.”
“I guess” was all Meg could get out.
Her mother’s pinched tone couldn’t disguise her satisfaction. “If you’d listened to your father and me when we told you to come back home after you two married—well, I don’t have to tell you that you wouldn’t be in this predicament now.”
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