CHAPTER 3
My mother answers without saying hello. “They’ve sent a past due notice.”
I hear paper crumpling, like she’s holding it close to the phone, clenched in her fist.
“There are late fees. I can’t pay this, Jennifer.” All the words are sharp, but my name is the sharpest.
“Maybe you should have thought about that before taking out the loan.” I shouldn’t have said it, but I’m glad that I sound tired, not bitter.
She draws in a breath like I’ve slapped her.
“Have you found a job?” I ask before she can say anything else.
“No one wants to hire an old woman. And I can’t keep up with these changes.” She mutters something about technology being designed specifically to confuse her. “Besides, you know how hard it is for me to ride the subway.”
“Then have Jeremy drive you if he doesn’t have a job. You bought him a car, it’s the least he can do.”
There’s a pause. “He got in an accident.”
She would have told me immediately if he was hurt… there would have been hospital bills too.
“Was he insured?” I already know the answer.
“It was the other person’s fault.” Always so quick to defend him. “You can’t just walk into the road like that.”
Wait… “He hit a pedestrian?”
“It doesn’t matter. He can’t drive me. We don’t need to talk about that anymore.”
Taking the phone away from my ear and exhaling heavily, I take three more deep breaths as she goes on a tirade I don’t want to hear. Then, I ask, “What, exactly, do you want me to do?”
“Pay the bills like you always have.”
“And after I pay off this loan, are you going to take out another one and keep making me pay? At what point have I made up for the fact that I couldn’t take dad to the Olympics?”
“Don’t you dare blame him for any of this. He worked himself into the grave for you.”
I should have known better than to bring him up. He was a saint. He never did anything wrong.
Pinching the bridge of my nose I keep my mouth shut. She knows exactly what killed him and it wasn’t work, or me, so…
She exhales sharply, “Did you tell your sister to stop talking to me?”
The subject change is so sharp I jerk away from the phone. “Why would I do that?”
“Well, she’s mad and she’s directing it at me, when this is all your fault.”
I remind myself that she’s never had to deal with the bills on her own. Dad did and then I did. Dropping them all on her was mean, even if it was necessary.
Before I can think of some way to shift the conversation, she says, “If you do not pay this, your sister will have to drop out of school. Do you want that?”
Using Anne was a misstep. She can guilt me about a lot of things, but not them. I am not my siblings’ parent.
“Of course I don’t want her to drop out of school. But your inability to pay a loan you took out, knowing you didn’t have a job to repay it, is not my fault.”
She starts crying and I take another deep breath.
That used to work on me. It tugs at my stomach now, but I can’t keep paying her bills.
“I have to get back to work,” I lie.
“So you can spend all your money on yourself while we starve?”
She’s lashing out and I can’t react.
“Goodbye, Mom, keep looking for a job.”
I hang up and turn the phone off completely.
I need to decompress. I need…
I need a distraction, and orgasms, and to forget about Earth for a while.
Taking a deep, deep breath, I stand up straight until my back pops twice and then I walk straight through the corridors to Phantom’s.