The Ring

by Florence Osmund

  “No idea.”

  Her mother picked at an imperceptible fleck of something on the lapel of her suit. “Probably just some mistake on her part,” she said.

  But the incident bothered Paige, especially given the earlier mishap that had taken place inside the chapel. “Wait here a minute,” she said. She walked out the door in time to see the woman in question driving rather erratically through the parking lot toward her. Paige waved her down.

  The woman rolled down her window.

  “Something seemed to surprise you back there. I’m curious what it was.”

  “Nothing. I just thought I’d find my sister here, at Wayne’s memorial service. That’s all.”

  “Wayne?”

  “Did I say Wayne? Sorry, I meant Ryan.”

  “I see. Well, I’m sorry you—”

  Before she could finish the sentence, the woman drove off.

  Paige went back inside and repeated the conversation to her mother. “Does that name mean anything to you? Wayne?”

  “Not a thing. Let’s go home.”

  Paige drove to her mother’s historic brownstone home in Lake View, an upscale neighborhood of Chicago where Paige had done most of her growing up. Paige led the way, opened the front door, and made sure everything was intact before summoning her mother to come inside.

  “We shouldn’t have to do this,” her mother said.

  “I know.”

  The police had convinced Paige the break-in had been an isolated incident, but that didn’t keep her from worrying about her mother living alone. The list of missing items her mother had given to police was relatively short—two small flat-screen TVs, a hundred dollars cash, a bottle of Glenlivet scotch, and her father’s diamond ring. The missing ring was particularly upsetting—he had worn it every day for as long as Paige could remember. She chuckled to herself while thinking about how she had been so impressed with the ring when she was a child. Not until adulthood had she realized how modest its carrot weight actually was. Still, the ring held sentimental value, and she was unnerved over its disappearance.

  They talked about the memorial service over a glass of wine. After an hour, Paige got up to leave.

  “Do you have to leave so soon?” her mother asked.

  Paige knew that was coming.

  “I have a company to run, Mom. I’ve got two big deals going on that could change things dramatically for my business.”

  Paige owned Castle Realtors, a successful real estate brokerage firm that she had bought after ten years of selling for them as an independent agent. The firm specialized in retail transactions but also handled commercial, industrial, and residential properties. She had grown the firm substantially since she had purchased it, primarily by having a keen sense of the ever-changing real estate market and the ability and forethought to tweak business strategies accordingly. The previous year, Castle Realtors had been recognized as the largest female-owned real estate brokerage firm in Chicago, a personal goal she had achieved a year ahead of her five-year plan.

  “But you have staff to do everything, right?”

  She had indeed an ample, capable staff, but that didn’t keep her from being involved in the daily grind. “Yes, of course, but not—”

  “How many satellite offices do you have now? Fifteen? Twenty?”

  “Twelve.” The offices were small with most of her agents working remotely.

  “Enough to have the staff do the work.”

  “I’d like to think I play some role in the success of my company…”

  “Why don’t you stay a few days with me. I don’t get to see you that often anymore.”

  Paige owned a home in Winnetka, a posh suburb less than a half hour north of her mother’s home. She typically visited her parents—now just her mother—once a week.

  She stared down at her shoes, a pair of black Louis Vuitton slingbacks she had just purchased. “I’ll come back one day during the week, Wednesday maybe.”

  “You need to take off more time for yourself. You work too hard,” her mother said, the words carrying more than just a whiff of disapproval.

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “And you need to relax more. You remember what your father used to say. ‘Slow down and enjoy life.’”

  “Dad never said that, nor did he do that himself. What he used to say was ‘Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.’”

  A work schedule that often took up more than sixty hours a week bordered on insanity, she knew, but the work was something Paige excelled in, loved, and found necessary to maintain her status in the industry—and, to her thinking, be happy. Whether she was single because she was so immersed into building a successful company in a male-dominated industry or so into her career because she was single was a debate she had often had with “the girls” over a glass of wine or three.

  “You work too hard. When are you going to slow down?”

  “Never, I hope.”

  “Is that what you really want out of life?”

  “Yes. That’s what I really want.”

  “Whatever. Do you see my purse anywhere?” her mother asked.

  “You didn’t bring it with you this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Where did you leave it?”

  “Right here, where I always keep it, on this dining room chair…or so I thought.”

  “Maybe Natalie came after all.”

  Paige’s younger sister had a history of stealing.

  “Paige!” The tightness in her mother’s expression told Paige she shouldn’t have said it.

  “Well, she’s done it before. And she knows where the spare key is.”

  “After the funeral incident, I hid the key in a new place. And she wouldn’t do that anyway.”

  “Did she not steal your wedding ring and pawn it?”

  “We have no proof of that.”

  “C’mon, Mom, we both know she did.”

  At times, Paige agreed with her mother and stood behind Natalie, even when they knew she’d done wrong. Other times, she wasn’t so forgiving.

  “Call her then,” her mother said. “Ask her about it.”

  “Like she’s going to admit it.”

  “When something goes missing, you can’t automatically assume Natalie had something to do with it.”

  Paige had initially assumed her sister had burglarized their mother’s home the previous month. She thought differently only after Natalie’s name was cleared by the police.

  “Right. I’ll keep that in mind,” Paige said with an eye roll. “And chocolate milk comes from brown cows.”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “It’s unfair to Nat.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  Her mother let out a shallow sigh. “I remember a time when you two were so close.”

  “That was before she became an addict.”

  “She needs medication because of the accident.”

  “I agreed with that...at first.”

  “And now she needs us, more than ever before.”

  “She needs money to buy alcohol and drugs more than ever before. And don’t you give her any more. You’re enabling her.”

  “She uses it for food and gas and other things.”

  “More chocolate milk ideology. She’s a master at manipulation, and you know it.” Something small and black sitting next to her mother’s favorite living room chair caught Paige’s eye. “Is that your purse, Mother?”

  She glanced in the direction of Paige’s pointing finger. “Oh, dear. I must have put it there and forgot,” she said in a thin, transparent voice. “You’ll come by Wednesday then?”

  “Yes, I’ll be here.”

  Paige drove home thinking about her sister. She felt bad for her—it had all started with a serious accident many years earlier when a car carrying a mother and her ten-year-old son ran a stop sign and t-boned Natalie, who had just left a bar after having had several drinks. Natalie had suffered
severe spinal disc damage and subsequent unbearable pain. The oxycodone prescribed afterward, in Paige’s opinion, not only numbed her physical pain but got her through the emotional pain as well—the little boy hadn’t survived the collision. And while the accident was not deemed to be Natalie’s fault, she had never gotten over the trauma of the boy’s death and wondered if she hadn’t been drinking that maybe the outcome would have been different. In time, she became addicted to the pain pills. Adding to the problem was her habit of drinking to excess. The combination created a vicious cycle of abuse.

  Her mother had been right about happier times with Natalie. Less than three years apart in age, they had been close growing up, and Paige had enjoyed being Natalie’s big sister. But those days had ended a long time ago.

  Paige entered the Georgian-style home she had purchased five years earlier. The 3,000-square-foot house—complete with all the traditional architectural trims and arches, two fireplaces, and an indoor atrium—was too big for one person, but she had been drawn in by the coziness of it, lush gardens, and expansive patios. She had justified the extravagance by thinking of the resale value, if nothing else.

  The first thing she did was check her voice-mail messages. There was just one.

  “How dare you accuse me of stealing Mom’s purse. Go to hell!”

  Chapter 4

  “We have to be out by the end of the month,” Jessivel’s mother told her a few days after informing her so casually of her father’s death.

  “Says who?” she asked.

  “Says me. I can’t pay the rent. I lost three customers this month, and money is really tight right now.”

  “Well, they’re going to have to kick me out. I’m staying.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Jess. You know you can’t stay here. Don’t wait to be evicted.”

  “Dad had to have stashed money somewhere. C’mon, Mom. He always had money to buy stuff,” Jessivel said. “And what about life insurance?”

  “Accept it, Jess. He’s gone, and we have nothing.”

  “So where are you going?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet. All I know is I can’t—”

  “I know. I know. You can’t be there for me. You’ve said it enough times. Neither could Jason. Dad was the only one who was ever there for me.” She turned her back on her mother. “And now even he bailed.”

  Two weeks later, Jessivel’s mother informed her that she had landed a job as a live-in maid for the Perlmans, an older, presumably rich couple on the south side of Chicago. She told Jessivel that she planned to stay there until she could figure something else out.

  Believing her mother would soon wake up and realize she needed to include her and Kayla in her plans—maybe when she discovered her father had left them something after all—Jessivel stayed in their home. When that didn’t happen days later, she spent the better part of her time blaming her mother for abandoning her and breaking up their family.

  Almost thirty years old and never having lived by herself, Jessivel wondered how anyone could expect her to make it on her own. She had come close to leaving home at sixteen when she had become pregnant and counted on her boyfriend Jason to take care of them. When that premise failed, she had reached out to his parents, but they were unsympathetic and unwilling to help, telling Jessivel that their son told them the child wasn’t even his. Eventually, Jason and his parents moved, never to be heard from again. Jessivel’s father’s indifferent attitude on the matter and her mother’s “you made your bed, now lie in it” philosophy only made matters worse.

  “It’s all your fault,” she had said to her mother. “If you had told me about sex and having babies, this never would have happened.”

  Jessivel’s rude awakening came when the police showed up at her door. They explained that if she didn’t vacate the property, she would be charged with criminal trespass.

  “You can’t do that!” she told them. “Don’t I get some kind of notice?”

  “You’re not on the lease, Miss. The landlord is within his rights. Make it easy on yourself and leave. That’s our advice.”

  “But I have nowhere to go.”

  “Have you got a friend, a relative?”

  “How long do I have?”

  “Forty-eight hours if you don’t want to be charged.”

  She replayed the scene repeatedly in her head until reality finally set in. Leave or get arrested. And then what would happen to Kayla? Not much of a choice. Now, being pushed into a situation she didn’t want but was unable to escape, Jessivel couldn’t envision her and Kayla’s future.

  When it came to friends, Jessivel had none. As soon as she had become pregnant and dropped out of school, her friends had dropped out of her life in turn. After Kayla was born, she tried reaching out to them, but without success. Their ambivalence caused her to lash out at them on social media, hindering the possibility of ever restoring the relationships.

  Jessivel called Marcy, the former friend she had antagonized the least and the one she believed to be the most kindhearted. She asked if she and Kayla could hang with her and her family for a while until she could figure things out. Marcy agreed.

  Jessivel sold some items on Craigslist that her mother had left behind and pocketed a few hundred dollars before moving out. She then loaded up her ten-year-old Honda Civic—paid for by her father but in her mother’s name—and headed to the near north side of Chicago where Marcy lived.

  Marcy arranged to have her girls sleep in the same room so Jessivel and Kayla could share a bedroom. Living with a twelve-year-old in a small room filled with all their belongings was worse than Jessivel had imagined. Marcy worked days, and her husband Kerry worked third shift, leaving little time when she and Kayla had the house to themselves. When home, Marcy was too busy with the kids and household chores to spend much time with Jessivel. Worse still, Kerry gave Jessivel a bad vibe, so when he was there, she and Kayla mostly kept to their room.

  After they had been there for a week, Marcy took Jessivel aside.

  “Um…Kerry wants to know how your job search is coming.”

  Jessivel—still holding out for her mother to come to the rescue even though the few conversations she’d had with her hadn’t gone well—admitted that she hadn’t made any attempt to find a job.

  “I guess we figured you’d be working on getting your own place. And since you aren’t looking for a job or anything, well, Kerry—”

  “Wants us to leave?”

  “You understand, with three kids and—”

  “Fine.”

  “Well, don’t be mad at me. We really tried to—”

  “I know.”

  Feeling powerless to do anything else, Jessivel called 3-1-1 for help. Next, she loaded up her car with their belongings for the second time and drove herself and Kayla to a state-run women’s shelter on the outskirts of Chicago where they were each given a bed, two meals a day, and a place to shower. The beds—cots would be a better description—were narrow and hard. Breakfast consisted mostly of Starbucks bakery goods that hadn’t sold the day before. Dinner included items that had been donated by a local food depository.

  Whether she wanted to or not, Jessivel got to know the shelter’s other inhabitants through their public conversations with each other, most of whom weren’t shy about telling their stories to anyone who would listen. She didn’t seem to fit in, as most of the other women appeared to be ex-cons, addicts, abusees, and run-aways. Weekly AA meetings were held in one of the conference rooms, and therapeutic counseling for other issues was provided to those who wanted it. She and Kayla kept to themselves.

  The main room in which everyone stayed was overcrowded and oozed a stench of alcohol that presumedly crept out of the pores of the women with drinking problems. Even though an off-duty policeman worked security there 24/7, Jessivel didn’t feel safe given the amount of shouting and scuffling among the residents. Many spoke a foreign language, and so she didn’t know what the arguments were about some of the time, but she soon lear
ned that the f-bomb was recognizable and conveyed the same hostility regardless of dialect. The police and/or paramedics were frequently called to remove someone who was obviously high or otherwise causing trouble.

  Rarely did Kayla sleep in her own bed, and she would visibly shake when anyone came too near to them. She asked multiple times per day when they were going to leave, a question for which Jessivel had no answer.

  When it got close to the thirty-day limit for her stay at the shelter, Jessivel was told she would have to talk to someone from the Department of Child and Family Services the following week. Instead of waiting around for that discussion, she and Kayla left.

  “Where are we going?” Kayla asked once they were in the car.

  When Jessivel didn’t respond, Kayla raised her voice.

  “Mom, where are we going?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Don’t yell at me. It’s not my fault.”

  “You think it’s mine?” Jessivel snapped back.

  “Well, if—”

  “Look Miss Twelve-year-old-who-thinks-she-knows-everything, we wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for your grandparents. Everything was going just fine until he died, leaving us with nada. No notice, no nothing. And he had money, money we were entitled to. I know he did. And don’t even get me started on Nana.”

  Jessivel had had several phone conversations with her mother while in the shelter, leading her mother to believe she was still living with Marcy. Thinking back, she realized it might have been better to tell her the truth about moving into the shelter—maybe then she would have felt more obligated to help them.

  “Whatever. But I still want to know where we’re going.”

  They continued the drive in silence until Jessivel pulled into the back of an all-night gas station and convenience store where she and Kayla spent the first night of their total independence—in the circumscribed space of Jessivel’s car.

  Well into the night, bone-weary, Jessivel was unable to fall asleep behind the steering wheel. She slouched down in the car seat, staring at a dumpster overflowing with garbage, several gluttonous grey pigeons blending in seamlessly with the asphalt beneath it, cooing to one another as they scrounged the pavement for scraps of food.