Chapter 45
— Chapter 45 —
By August I’ve saved enough to put a new roof on the house. Eddie works out what I need to buy, and I go to a building supply place in Danbury to order everything. Gus gave me his buddy’s contractor license number to use for the discount, and the guys at the store helped me find enough boxes of odd-lot, clearance-priced shingles in roughly the same color. Even with that, I still have to fork over almost three thousand dollars, so now I’m cleaned out all over again.
“But then we’ll have a new roof,” I repeat to myself as I drive away from the warehouse. I am trying very hard to take stock of the ground I gain. Eddie says we can probably do the whole thing in a couple of weekends and I won’t have to worry about the roof again until Aubrey is thirty.
I check the mail when I get home. It’s mostly catalogs addressed to my mother, because I’m not really part of the world at large. But as I’m flipping catalogs into the trash, an envelope falls from the pile and slides across the floor. The return address has a picture of the town seal—Old Bet on her pedestal next to the hotel—with Assessor’s Office printed underneath in bold block letters. I forgot about the property tax bill, and I can’t remember if Hans said that it was a thousand dollars paid out in two installments or two thousand dollars total. I rip open the envelope, praying I don’t have to come up with a thousand dollars right after dumping money into shingles. My hands are shaking so badly I have a hard time unfolding the bill to see the total.
And then it is so much worse than I thought. The amount due doesn’t seem real or possible.
I call Hans on his cell phone. He’s always told me to call him if I need anything, but I’ve never known what I might need.
Except for this.
I need him to tell me this is wrong.
“Ah! Freya of the Fólk—”
“Hans! It’s twelve thousand dollars,” I say, gasping for air. I think about salmon, their gaping oval mouths. How do we all remember how to breathe?
“What’s twelve thousand dollars?” Hans says, his voice almost amused.
“The tax bill. It’s twelve thousand three hundred and sixteen dollars.”
“Yes,” Hans says.
“What do you mean, yes ?” I say. I’m yelling and I know I shouldn’t be. I cannot afford to anger a source of income. But I don’t understand how he could have been so wrong.
“That’s pretty close to my estimate.”
“You told me it was a thousand.”
“Oh dear,” he says. “I’m sorry. A thousand a month.”
I feel like I’m going to throw up and pass out at the same time. It costs more to live in a house in Somers with a totally paid-off mortgage than it did to live in my rental apartment in Maine that had heat and hot water included.
“Remember, though,” he says, as if he’s just thought of a delightful detail that makes everything better “You only have to pay half now. And then half in January.”
I’m sure in his life twelve thousand and six thousand are very different numbers, but for me, it’s all too much.
I drive back to the building supply place and plead with the owner until he agrees to cancel my order, even though I bought the shingles on clearance and paid in cash.
When I get home from the warehouse, I sit on the patio out back and kick at a broken piece of flagstone with the toe of my rapidly disintegrating sneaker. And I know it’s stupid, because I can’t afford new shoes and I need to make the house better, not worse, but I can’t stop myself. I want to hurt this house. It’s failing me. I’m failing it. I will never catch up.
I am doubled over, breathing hard, trying to stop the racing feeling in my chest, when I hear Aubrey come through the house and open the door to outside. She doesn’t say anything, sits next to me. Closer than usual. I hear her take a breath like she’s going to speak several times before she actually does.
“You’re not bleeding from your guts again, are you?” she asks. And it’s sarcastic, the way she says it, but it’s also hopeful, a little worried.
I shake my head. I can’t even look at her.
She rustles through her bag. “Here,” she says.
When I look up, she rests a gummy bear on my knee. An orange one. I laugh, because it seems so ridiculous that she thinks she can make me happy by sharing her candy. It reminds me of her three-year-old self, with crooked bangs, mouth stained red, trying to share her popsicle with me.
“Thanks,” I say, popping the gummy bear in my mouth, even though who knows how long it’s been in her bag.
“You’re having a panic attack,” she says, and I don’t know how she knows. But that’s when I realize the gummy bear tastes like grass clippings.
She bites the head off a green one.
“Am I supposed to yell at you for that?”
“Would you yell at me for taking Prozac?”
I shake my head.
We stay on the step, side by side, and I don’t feel anything, but it’s good to know relief is coming. It’s nice being there with Aubrey, being quiet together, and I love that she’s a grown-sized person who still carries that three-year-old popsicle-mouthed kid in her soul.
“Shit,” she says finally, shivering. “It’s dark.” She stands and dusts off her backside. Then she offers me a hand. “I should have just had an ear. I have homework.”
So, I don’t tell her about the tax bill. About my panic. I want her to do her homework. I stand on my feet on the slate on the ground. My legs feel like noodles. “I’ll make dinner,” I say, words slurred like syrup and butter on a plate.
“Thanks,” she says and disappears into the house.
I stand on the patio for what could be a minute or an hour, and then I’m in the kitchen, holding a spatula, staring into the fridge, and my legs still feel like noodles.
Then Aubrey is back, saying, “We don’t own the damn electric company,” taking the spatula from my hand. She makes us scrambled eggs for dinner.
I wake up drenched in sweat. Can’t move my arms, and when I open my eyes, I see low rafters holding some kind of wood plank above me. For the briefest of moments, I flash through the idea that someone has buried me alive. Or buried me dead and this is what it feels like. But there’s bright light shining from somewhere, and sleep fades from my brain. I spot the crack in Jam’s soundboard. I’m in the sunroom under his piano. I’ve managed to twist myself up in Step’s ultralight sleeping bag, which is obscenely warm for weighing almost nothing. My joints ache from lying on the tile floor. I wish my stoned self had thought to find his inflatable sleeping pad.
Aubrey is toeing around the kitchen in her bare feet.
When I try to free myself, she must hear the rustle of the mummy bag, and she walks into the sunroom laughing.
“That can’t be comfortable,” she says.
“It is not,” I say, laughing too.
She unzips me and I shrug myself out.
My t-shirt and shorts are soaking wet, and my hips are stiff when I stand. I groan like an old man in a cartoon. “Don’t sleep under pianos, kids!” I say, like I’m delivering a public service message.
“You’re a lightweight,” she says, raising an eyebrow, and my brain twists back into place.
“Don’t end up like Jam. Please.”
“I’m joking. I never even eat a whole gummy bear at once. Promise.”
“Your brain is still wiring itself.”
“Those were really old,” she says. “I’ve had them for like a year.”
“You can tell me how much you’re using. I’m not mad. I just want to—help you figure things out.” The reason for my panic slips back into my mind, and I feel ridiculous for offering to help her fix her problems as if I’m not standing at the helm of a sinking ship. I should probably be looking for a life raft for her so she doesn’t have to drown with me.
“Honestly.” Aubrey puts her hand on her heart. “I swear. My mom used to make me take her Xanax when I had panic attacks and I’d feel messed up for days. So I bought a bag of gummy bears from a kid in the stockroom at work. But I haven’t needed them since you came back.”
She goes into the kitchen, brings out two mugs of coffee. When I take mine, she pulls the tax bill from the pocket of her sweatpants.
“Shit,” I say. “I didn’t want you to see that.”
Aubrey glares. She looks like our grandmother when she makes that face. “Don’t keep things from me.”
“I returned the shingles,” I tell her. “Right after I bought them. So I have almost half the first payment, but also a roof that’s about to fall apart.” I take a big gulp from my mug, and it is so hot that I almost have to spit back in the cup. When I swallow, my eyes tear, and I imagine the coffee singeing my esophagus as it travels down.
“You fixed the leak last time,” Aubrey says.
“That was like patching a hole in a dam with a piece of bubble gum.”
“Can’t you just keep gumming it up?”
“It’ll only work for a little while,” I say, but I feel hopeful about it for a minute. Maybe we can get through another winter, plugging up leaks as they come until I can afford to replace the roof. Except there’s another tax payment due in January, and then the insurance bill hits again. And then we’re back to September and January. It’s not money I can ask to borrow from Jam or Bee or Hans or a bank because this house is a relentless pit of need, and I don’t think I can ever catch up.
“We’ll quit smoking,” Aubrey says. “That will save us millions, basically.”
“I bum cigarettes off other people,” I tell her. “I never buy any.”
“Yeah, but I’m one of those people.”
“Which is also a problem, and yes, we should quit smoking. But it’s not going to be nearly enough.”
“I have a little money saved.” She shifts her weight, looks at me, her face hopeful.
“This isn’t yours to pay for.”
“Well, it’s not not mine to pay for.”
“You’re a kid.”
“Yeah, but I’m not your kid. And I work. And I live here rent-free.”
“You’re a kid and you should always have a home and you shouldn’t pay rent.” I am trying hard not to hyperventilate. I sit on Jam’s piano bench. “What about the furniture? We stopped selling the furniture.”
“There’s not much left that’s worth anything,” she says, sitting next to me. “The bookshelves in the den, maybe. But they’re so big. I put off selling them.”
“I think they come apart,” I say. “I think they’re like a top and a bottom.”
Aubrey laughs. “That probably makes them worth less.”
“What about the dining set?”
“It’s pine,” she says, shaking her head. “I asked about it. No one wants seventies colonial pine. That’s why I couldn’t sell their bedroom set. None of it is in good shape and, like, everyone’s grandparents had that furniture.”