Mrs. Everything (43 page)

“It’s going to be fine,” Dave said, with an expression suggesting that he didn’t quite believe it. “It’s just that we’re going to
have to file for bankruptcy, to restructure the debt, and set up a schedule so we can—”

“Wait.” Jo held up one hand like a traffic cop, hearing an echo of her mother in the sharpness of her voice. “Wait. Back up. Go back to the part about bankruptcy.”

“It’s just a word.”
At least
, Jo thought, feeling dizzy and sick,
he had the good grace to look sheepish.
“I know it sounds scary, but really, it’s just a way of putting all our debt in one bucket, and then setting up a schedule so we can pay it off.”

“Our debt?” Jo asked.

“The debt from the businesses,” said Dave.

“How is that our debt?” Jo asked. “How is that personal? I haven’t taken out any loans.” But even as she spoke, she was thinking about those papers, how one of them had gotten splashed with coffee on top.
Look in the hall closet
, she’d been saying to Missy, trying to remember where she’d seen the shin guards, and whether Kim would be embarrassed if her snack wasn’t homemade.

“I should have explained it better. I should have told you what you were signing. And, really, I know it sounds like the end of the world, but it isn’t.” He kept talking, but Jo knew that she’d already gotten the salient piece of information. Dave had bankrupted them. Not only was there no money, but there probably wasn’t even credit that Jo could use to start a new life.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she said, interrupting Dave, who was saying something about nonexempt assets and five-year repayment plans. She walked past him, catching a whiff of beer and the concentrated essence of unbathed Dave. He reached for her hand.

“Jo.” He grabbed her arm before she could pass. When he looked at her, she felt like he could see everything she’d thought about, everything she’d hoped for. “Hey. Are you . . . Did something . . .”

Happen
, she thought, filling in the blank. He’s going to ask if something happened when I was away, and I will have to decide
if I should tell him.

But Dave didn’t finish the question. He looked at her, and she looked back, feeling something inside of her crack open and spill, something dark as ink and toxic as venom.
Resignation
, Jo thought. That was what it was, the feeling of knowing that this was it for her—this house, this man, this life. There would be no escape, no second act. Just this. “We’ll get through this,” he said after a long moment. Jo knew that he meant more than their financial woes, more than this crisis. He knew that something had happened—not what, but something—and he wasn’t going to ask. And, in return, she was going to stay. It was a push. Dave, who’d spent a lot of time in Canadian casinos during college, who’d run a poker game in summer camp and who’d managed to find a game in every town in which they’d ever lived, knew all about gambling, and he’d explained it to her once. A push was a tie between the bettor and the bookmaker, a game that concludes precisely on the point spread or in a draw. A game where nobody wins, but no one loses, either.

Push
, Jo thought that night when they were in bed. Dave’s whiskers scraped at the side of her face as he sent his palms gliding over her skin, skimming along her thighs, her hips, along the dip of her waist, then up and over her breasts. Over and over, slowly and deliberately, until she felt a heaviness gather between her legs and heard her breath come faster. When he touched her, she was wet, and when he entered her, she sighed, feeling pleasure, dim but palpable, and—she had to be honest—familiarity and comfort. When he buried his face between her neck and her left shoulder, she let the tears spill down her cheeks. Down the hall, she could hear Missy tossing in her fevered sleep. At the moment of his climax, Dave gasped out Jo’s name.
You don’t love him
, Jo heard her sister say . . . but she did. After a fashion. At least a little. Besides, she was old enough to know that love wasn’t all that mattered. There were other things. Habit and routine. Comingled finances. Children. Letting someone else keep your
secrets.

That was the night that their third daughter was conceived. Dave wanted to name her Dora, after Doris, his mother, but Jo insisted, telling him that there was a name she’d always loved, with maybe some small part of her realizing that a girl named Lila would end up with a nickname that sounded like
lie
.

Bethie

O
n a sunny June morning, Bethie put on a dress and one of the three pairs of pumps that the women of Blue Hill Farm traded back and forth, and arranged a pair of tortoiseshell combs in her hair. She’d taken the shoes and the combs with her when she’d left Blue Hill Farm and moved into her own place, the apartment above the shop on Peachtree Road. Rose of Sharon was supposed to meet with the bankers, but she’d gotten bronchitis, and so Bethie went to the ten o’clock appointment at the First Bank of the South all by herself, to see if the members of the Blue Hill Farm Collective could secure a line of credit, just in case the month ever came when they couldn’t cover the rent or the payroll.

The fight that had brought her to this point had been terrible. “I refuse to be a cog in the capitalist war machine,” Wren had said at the collective’s monthly meeting. “Why are we even selling anything? Shouldn’t we just barter?”

“Believe me, if I could trade jam for two-ply toilet paper, I’d do it,” Bethie said.

“I don’t see what the big deal is about toilet paper,” said Phil, tugging at his beard, and Bethie said, “Of course you don’t, you’re not the one wiping with it.”

“Hey! I wipe!” Phil said, and Bethie said, “Not like we do.”

Wren stood up and said that she’d come to Blue Hill Farm to escape the hierarchies of capitalism, a world that arbitrarily assigned value to things and to people, and Bethie said, “So should we just give our jam away at the farmers’ market?”

“Maybe,” Wren said, her voice serene. Her straight brown hair fell down to her shoulders; her gauzy Indian-print skirt had bells sewn to its hem and jingled when she moved. “Why do we have to have more money? Don’t we have everything we need right here?”

Bethie had to struggle not to shout. “Look,” she said. “Every Sunday, we sell out at the farmers’ market. Every week, we sell out at the shop. I’ve had three different restaurant owners ask if we can be their condiment supplier. There’s a demand, but we don’t have a supply. We need more people, and probably a commercial kitchen . . .”

Jodi’s voice was low and clear. “This place is meant to be a refuge from that world, of commerce and value and buying and selling. And you want to drag us all right back into it.” She put down the pile of angora yarn in her lap, stood, and pointed her finger at Bethie. “You’re a sellout. A bougie sellout.”

Bethie’s face burned. “I am not a sellout! Look around you. This place is a mess! The wiring’s old, and the bathroom’s practically falling off the side of the house. The furnace needs to be replaced, and the kitchen sink leaks.”

Bethie could have gone on, but Ronnie, her old friend, Ronnie who’d brought her to Blue Hill Farm, Ronnie who’d saved her, raised her hand. The room got quiet. Blue Hill Farm had no official leader, no hierarchies, but Ronnie was the one who’d found the farm and brought them all together. When she talked, the collective listened. Bethie held her breath, waiting for Ronnie to speak up and save her again. She watched as Ronnie, whose face
was wrinkled and whose brown hair was mostly gray, got to her feet and said, “The only constant in the world is change.” She put her hands on Bethie’s shoulders. “Maybe Blue Hill Farm isn’t your place anymore.”

“What do you mean, this isn’t my place?” But, even as she was asking, Bethie knew the answer. She could feel the truth, in Ronnie’s hands, in Jodi’s pointed finger, and in Philip’s sullen stare. Maybe the status quo was okay for the rest of them, but she was tired of living in a house where the hot water ran out after the third person’s shower; tired of the old-fashioned kitchen with its tilted floors and tiny sink and its temperamental oven. She was tired of every decision having to be made by consensus, tired of lentils, tired of tofu, and, yes, tired of wiping herself with cheap, scratchy toilet tissue. She’d been reborn here, she’d thrived here, she’d made peace with her own flaws and failings here; she’d found work, direction, meaning. Now, maybe Ronnie was right. She could hardly believe that she was even thinking it, but maybe it was time to go.

She’d left a week later, with permission to use the Blue Hill Farm name and recipes, and with Rose of Sharon, who’d decided that she’d also had enough. Rose of Sharon subletted a friend’s apartment in Five Points, and Bethie moved into the rooms above the shop. In sixth months’ time, they’d gotten more customers, hired two clerks, leased a larger kitchen. Now it was time for the next step, trying to secure a small-business loan. Phil had told Bethie he’d meet her there, but by ten-fifteen, Phil hadn’t shown, and the secretary outside the bank’s vice president’s office was giving her the stink-eye, so Bethie rose to her feet.

“I’m ready, if Mr. Jefferson can see me now,” she said. The woman outside of Mr. Jefferson’s door looked at Bethie’s dress and hair and sandals, gave a brief, displeased nod, and led Bethie into a plushly carpeted office, fitted with bookcases and an imposing desk. Behind the desk, in a suit and tie, with his close-cropped hair starting to gray at the temples but his uptilted eyes,
and his smile just the same, sat not just any Mr. Jefferson, but Harold Jefferson, late of Ann Arbor and Detroit.

“Why, Harold!”

He smiled at Bethie, the grin that promised fun and trouble and put his white teeth on display. Bethie’s heart leapt. “Well, well, well,” said Harold. “I saw the name Elizabeth Kaufman on my schedule, but I wasn’t sure it would be you.”

“Where have you . . .” Bethie felt breathless, flushed and light-headed, like she’d been lifted by a hurricane, spun all around, and dropped into Oz. “You’re a banker?”

“I am. Now. I was in the army after college.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t known that Harold had been in the army. “I should have known that. I could have written.”

“I wouldn’t have said no to letters.” Harold’s smile faded, and Bethie bowed her head, feeling her eyes fill with tears. “Aw, c’mon, I’m not that bad, am I?”

Bethie gave a kind of gasping combined sob and giggle.

“No,” she said, and shook her head. “You’re not bad at all.”

“So what can First Bank of the South do for you today?” Harold asked. Twenty minutes later, their line of credit secured and their business concluded, Harold offered her his arm and walked her to the bus stop and asked if he could see her Saturday night.

*  *  *

“So,” Bethie began. “Tell me everything.”

“Everything,” Harold repeated, and gave her a wary smile. He’d arrived at her place in a blue-and-yellow plaid sports coat, a white shirt, a dark-blue tie, and polished loafers, carrying a bouquet of yellow roses, and Rose of Sharon, who’d come over to do Bethie’s nails, had stared at him as if he’d just stepped off a spaceship. “This is Harold,” she said. “We went to high school together. He’s an old friend.” Harold drove a Chevrolet, and he’d taken Bethie to an Italian restaurant called Nino’s for dinner. Bethie had worn her best dress, light-blue silk with short sleeves and a long skirt, and a draped neckline that showed the very tops of her breasts. She felt,
or imagined that she could feel, other diners looking at them as Harold held out her chair, before taking his own. Harold was still solidly built, wide shouldered and broad chested. His uptilted eyes still looked like he’d just finished laughing, his reddish-brown skin was still smooth—“Black don’t crack,” she remembered Harold saying—and he still had that familiar smell, of spice and soap. What she noticed most was how his posture had changed. He’d been graceful back in high school, with an athlete’s command of his body, and even though he’d claimed to hate “prancing around in public,” he’d been a good dancer. Now, he stood like she imagined a soldier would, his spine stiff, almost rigid, and he favored his right leg when he walked.

For dinner, they had split a chopped salad and garlic bread. Harold tried her ravioli, she sampled his shrimp, and they shared a bottle of Chianti. They talked about Atlanta, and how it was different from Detroit, and about Detroit’s radical mayor, Coleman Young. Bethie filled Harold in on her sister, and Harold told her that he, too, had a sibling who’d gone East, that his oldest brother, James, had become a preacher and had gotten a pulpit at Mother Bethel A.M.E. in Philadelphia, the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in America. Finally, with most of the pasta eaten, Bethie had asked what she’d really wanted to know—what had brought Harold to Atlanta and what he’d been doing since their last encounter.

“Well.” His nostrils flared as he inhaled. “You know I was doing civil rights work, back in Ann Arbor. I helped organize the student strikes.”

Bethie nodded, feeling ashamed that she didn’t know more. She remembered her sister telling her that Harold had been in SDS; and she had vague memories of seeing him at campus protests, but during her time in Ann Arbor, the only things she’d cared about were her theater friends, Devon Brady, and LSD.

“After I graduated in 1965 I went back home to organize. I could see how the deck had been stacked against African
Americans. All of the inequities that were built into the system. I wanted to change things.”

Bethie nodded, remembering Jo’s fights with her mother about the Civil Rights Act, about African American families moving into their neighborhood, and what it was doing to property values.
Do you think you can win a marathon if someone moves your starting line five miles back?
Jo would ask, and Sarah would stick out her chin and say,
Life isn’t fair
.

“I painted houses for money, but my real work was in the community. Trying to educate people. Trying to show them a way out, to get them to vote, to come to city council meetings, advocate for themselves. My parents thought I was crazy.” Harold made his voice low and gruff, adjusting his posture the way he had when he’d imitated his father, back at rehearsals in high school. “ ‘Hard work, that’s the only way up,’ my pops used to tell me. ‘Nobody handed me a damn thing. I worked for what I have. Any man can do the same.’ ” Harold shook his head, and Bethie thought about how much Harold’s father sounded like her mother. “I’d ask him, ‘How much more do you think you’d have if you’d been born with white skin?’ Or ‘How are folks supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they don’t have any boots?’ ” Harold smiled a little at the memory. “Oh, we had some terrible fights. Then the riots happened.” Harold’s voice trailed off, and his gaze slid away from hers. Bethie nodded. She knew, of course, what had happened in Detroit in 1967, how the police had raided an after-hours bar, which had started a fight, and the city had burned for five days. Buildings, businesses, houses had all been destroyed. There’d been lootings, and beatings, more than forty arrests and over a thousand injuries. Eventually, the governor had called in the National Guard.
It is a Shame to see them burning their Own houses, destroying their Own businesses
, Sarah had written to Bethie.
I will never Understand.
But Bethie, who’d attended a few teach-ins by then, thought she could.
Imagine every single day you walk past a store full of things you can’t have, can’t buy
, Jodi had said. Jodi had been sitting at first, cross-legged by the fire,
but as she’d spoken she’d gotten to her feet, a short, solidly built woman in bell-bottoms and a T-shirt with a Black Power logo. The firelight had shone on the braids that fell around her face and had made her dark skin gleam. Imagine knowing that if you walk in that store, you’re going to be followed and watched and treated like a thief. Imagine seeing your father and your brothers getting pulled over, getting arrested, getting locked up for nothing, trying to find jobs, trying to hold jobs, with everyone assuming they are criminals. Imagine every day you go to a school where the building’s run-down and the textbooks are outdated and there’s forty kids in every class, and you put your hand over your heart for the pledge—one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all—but you know it’s a lie, and there’s no liberty for you, no justice for you. She’d widened her eyes, looking at the women and men who sat in a circle around her. Wouldn’t you feel like burning something, too?