Chapter Six #2
Sylvia looked around one last time and noticed a slim drawer under his desk with a lock, but when she pulled it, it slid right open.
There was a pen, a cigar, and a glass bottle of pills lying on its side.
Printed on the label was Walter’s name, a doctor’s name she’d never heard of, and in bold letters: HEXAMETHONIUM.
TAKE ONE PILL A DAY. She opened the bottle and smelled the pills, as if that might give her some insight into what they might cure.
She looked around for an accompanying note, but there was none.
My God, was he sick? She knew she shouldn’t take them with her—he’d know she’d been looking through his things, and he might need them—but she needed to know what was going on with him once and for all. She put them in her bag and left.
Marrying and having a child with a man who was fifteen years her senior meant that she had considered his death before, but in her mind she had only pictured losing him when he was old, and she’d imagined being an old woman herself, sixty perhaps, and having to go on and live another fifteen or so years without him.
Never before had she considered the possibility of losing the love of her life now, when he was only in his late forties.
He was still relatively young by many measures, and the very thought of him being ill and not feeling that he could confide in her about it gave her a chill.
It must be serious; that was the only reason he would be acting like this and keeping it a secret.
He wouldn’t want Judith and Sylvia to worry.
Oh God, maybe the illness had caused him to fall and injure himself and that’s why he hadn’t wanted to tell her. A sudden dread set in.
Back home, a car was parked outside her house, so she let herself in quietly. The door to Walter’s study was closed, but she could hear mumbling voices inside. She tiptoed closer and put her ear to the door.
“Well, I’m sorry, Walt. I really am.” It was a man’s voice, and it amplified a little as if he’d paced over to the door.
“But it’s not getting any better; it’s only going to get worse with time.
One of them has got to go, and fast. I’ll check back in a few days.
” The door opened abruptly and Sylvia stood upright, stepping back so fast she almost lost her balance.
“Oh,” was all she could manage. It was Hank Harris, Walter’s accountant.
“Good morning, Mrs. Johnson,” he said, looking sheepish and brushing past her as he let himself out.
She felt foolish for getting caught listening in on a private conversation, but she tried not to let it show. Her mind raced with the thought of wills and trusts and planning for an uncertain future, and she hated the fact that he was discussing such things without even letting her in on the truth.
“Walter,” she said as soon as she heard the front door close. “What does he mean, ‘it’s not getting any better’?”
Walter glared at her.
“You can’t keep these things from me, Walter. Faye said you’ve been talking to Teddy about the house. What’s going on? I’m worried and I want to help.” He turned away and looked out the window, and Sylvia tried to steady herself for the news.
After a moment he pulled out his desk chair and sat, dropping his head into his hands. “I’m sorry, Sylvia. I’m so, so sorry.” He rubbed at his temples and wiped a tear away.
Sylvia was at a sudden loss for words. She’d only seen him cry once before, and those were tears of joy, the first time he held Judith as a baby. This was something entirely different and he was scaring her. She braced herself.
“I’ve been worried about our finances. The club has put us in a hole, so many bills, the loan, the mortgage, salaries, taxes. We should be doing better by now.” He wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. “I panicked.”
“What are you talking about? What do you mean you panicked?” she said, so confused about where this conversation was going.
“I tried to get ahead, to come out on top.” He pressed his hands against the side of his head, then he looked up at her, his eyes desperate. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“For what, Walter?” she was impatient now.
He looked at her again, as if he were willing to do anything not to speak the words. “I lost a lot of money to the wrong guys.”
“No, Walter. Not gambling? Again? You promised me.”
“I thought I could win big, give us the boost we needed.”
Sylvia stood behind the chair opposite, trying to understand.
“How long has this been going on?” she asked.
“Last week was the first time in years, and I got hit hard.”
“How hard?”
“Thirty,” he said in a whisper.
“Thirty?” she repeated. “You’ve done much worse.”
“Thirty thousand.”
Sylvia grabbed the back of the chair for support, feeling as if her knees might buckle under her.
“I went back last Thursday. I was desperate, I didn’t know what to do; I didn’t want to worry you. I tried to win it back.”
“And?” she asked, knowing the answer. Her life, their life, was flashing before her eyes.
“No,” he said shaking his head. “No, it’s worse. I doubled down. I lost it all. Sixty thousand dollars.”
He was sobbing now, and Sylvia couldn’t console him.
She couldn’t even look at him. They didn’t have that kind of money in the bank; they’d poured their savings into opening the club.
She walked to the other side of the room, her heart pounding in her chest. How could he do this to her, to Judith?
They’d be ruined. They’d never come back from this.
“We’re going to have to sell the house,” he said, as if trying to regain some composure now, to see some path forward. “And the club,” he went on.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sylvia said. She needed to think, to absorb what he was telling her, and she couldn’t do that if he was talking.
“We’ll go to the desert,” he went on, as if she weren’t there and he was just spewing out ideas to himself. “It’s cheaper there.”
“We’re not going to the desert. We’re not selling the house. We’re not selling the club.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “We don’t have a choice. I have to pay them, or—”
“Or what?”
“Or they’re going to break more than my finger,” he said.
Sylvia thought she might be sick, and she realized she was squeezing the glass pill bottle in her hand. “What about these?” she asked accusingly, holding the bottle up to him as if this bit of evidence could somehow change things, as if it could give him some other reasonable explanation.
He looked confused. “Where did you get those? They’re my blood-pressure pills.” Suddenly she couldn’t stay in the same room as him. She threw the pill bottle across the desk to him and walked out of the house, got back in her car, and with shaky hands drove away so she could think.
His father had been a gambler. Walter had told her that when he was a boy, his father used to bring him along to the numerous properties he owned on the island to collect rent from the tenants, and they’d often end up at the Green Dragon on the peninsula.
After a drink or two at the bar, his father would head upstairs for one of his not-so-secret poker games, and Walter would be left at the bar for hours.
He was eleven at the time, but eventually the bartender gave him the job of ice chipper—breaking the slab down with a pick so that the chips would fit into a glass.
He heard a lot while he was chipping away at that slab, and, as he got a few years older, he was allowed to go upstairs and sit in on some of the card games.
Just as he’d taken over his father’s businesses and properties, when his dad passed away, Walter had also stepped right into his father’s seat at the poker table.
It had seemed natural to him: He knew what to do and he knew how to win.
But when Sylvia and Walter married and had Judith, she’d asked him to stop.
She knew too well what it was to be poor and she wanted those days behind her.
There were times over the years when she’d suspected that he had gone back to the table, but as far as she knew, his interest had waned. She now felt like a complete fool.
Without even realizing that she’d driven herself back to the club, she pulled her pink-and-cream Dodge La Femme into the parking lot.
Walter had surprised her with this car for Christmas.
Pink paint job, pink steering wheel and dashboard, it even came with a pink purse, complete with pink cigarette case, lighter, comb, and lipstick holder, which all fit neatly into the back of the seat.
“She’s a beauty for my beautiful wife,” he’d said on Christmas morning as he handed her the keys.
“I wanted you to be one of the first to have a car made especially for a woman.” If they’d really wanted to cater this car to women, she grumbled to herself as she wrangled her pink beast into one of the parking spaces, they should have made it smaller and easier to drive.
She killed the engine and sat there, hands still fixed to the smooth leather steering wheel.
How could he upend their life like this?
Everything had been so perfect. Judith was doing well, the new club was making steady progress, or so she thought, and they were about to gear up for Bal Week, hosting the grand finale, the Bathing Beauty Contest, at the end of the week, just as they always did.
How could they go on now as if nothing had happened?
And their house, their home—where she’d lived since her wedding night, where she’d nursed Judith as a baby, where she’d raised her, hosted birthday parties, hosted every other imaginable soiree—surely he was wrong about the house.
My God, they needed a place to live, didn’t they?
And what would people say if their beautiful bayfront home, that coveted corner lot, was suddenly up for sale?
No one would believe it. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t happen.
She pressed her head to the steering wheel and closed her eyes, willing it to all just be a bad dream.