Things Unsaid: A Novel (19 page)

Jules remembered how the multicolored, glossy college brochures and admission forms had looked like some kind of messy buffet on their dining room table when Zoë had spread them out. Always a hard worker, she had spent four summers at Double Rainbow, scooping ice cream for young families with kids and swarms of teenagers in order to help with college expenses. Jules had waited every day for her daughter to return from work. Waited for that sweet, sticky kiss to be planted on her cheek.

“I got into Stanford, Mom. I know it’ll be tough there. But I just have a feeling I can do it. I’m not too worried,” Zoë said.

“That’s not it, cutie-pie,” Jules said. “I know you’re smart enough. I just don’t think it’s going to be possible now. Financially. But I’m working on it for later.”

“What? I just don’t understand! Is it that you just don’t want me to go there because they screwed you over? That’s it, isn’t it?”

Jules sucked in oxygen, preparing to inform Zoë about their financial situation, about putting her dreams on hold.

“No, sweetie, that’s just not true. Your life—present and future—is your own. Whatever you want it to be. We want you to go wherever you want to go. And we know you have your heart set on Stanford. We’ll try
to make it happen down the line. Perhaps with some student loans and your earnings from your summer jobs, we can eventually swing it. But we can’t make it happen yet—not now. I have an obligation to help your grandparents, and—”

“I’m so sick of hearing about duty, duty, duty,” Zoë cut in. “Obligation this. Obligation that. It’s just insane. You’re ridiculous.”

Her daughter was right. What had she done? All this time she had wanted to help her parents and sister, but she hadn’t realized it came at such a great cost. Now she wanted to take away all the wrong choices she’d made so her family could start living again.

Still … there were so many excellent universities in the state. Why was Zoë being so single minded? So one sided? All these months they had talked about other potential colleges—Berkeley, other UCs, places where Zoë could get in-state tuition. And she had such good grades. Her daughter certainly knew she had other options and could go somewhere else. Just until they were back on their feet. Then she could transfer to Stanford.

“Don’t you see, Zoë?” she tried. “You’re so smart—you could even take a break for a year or two and earn some money before going to college. Get some work experience. Maybe take a few classes at a community college, if you want to. Then we can figure out financial aid and you can reapply.”

God, she hoped Zoë would understand. In the Whitman family, Uncle Wilson had always bailed out everyone—even his parents’ friends. It was a question of honor and of pride. And he’d been able to do it because there was never any doubt—ever—that those friends and family would pay him back. All except her father. But his debts, like all the others, would be repaid. Maybe not right away, but eventually. Even if it took generations.

Jules could hear the tears in her daughter’s breathing.

“This is the worst day of my life. I can’t believe you’re my mother! You’ve screwed me over,” Zoë sobbed.

The phone went dead.

Tears rolled down Jules’s cheeks. The tears came and came, and wouldn’t stop, like nothing she had experienced ever before. She never cried. How could she have thought she was doing the right thing?

For the next week, Jules tried almost every day to reach her daughter—calling, texting, and then, when that failed, calling Zoë’s friends. They told her not to worry—if they said anything at all to her—but all they would say was that Zoë was in Palo Alto, taking classes. Mike seemed to know where their daughter was, but his texts were vague. He was staying with a friend in Palo Alto, and said they spoke by phone occasionally. That he’d seen her once in the past couple of weeks.

Jules was beside herself. What if something awful were to happen to their daughter? What if something awful had already happened?

“J
ules is the one who has to support us. That’s all there is to it. They have Uncle Wilson’s inheritance—and you have to provide for your own sons, don’t you, honey? You have professional goals of your own. Dreams, too.”

Andrew knew his mother was livid over Uncle Wilson’s snub to their father. Who cared? He didn’t. You should be able to do what you want with your money. But he bet Jules was beside herself that Zoë had let word out about the inheritance. Now all of it spent to recover from their father’s stock speculation. How could they have such enormous debts, anyway?

“You have so much on your mind,” his mother went on. “We understand the pressures you must be facing.”

Andrew loved having an older sister at times like these. Still, even if she was mommy’s little helper with a neurotic sense of obligation, she should cut her losses. He certainly wasn’t going to get sucked in. Jules kept calling him, leaving messages, and he knew why. He wasn’t going to call her back. Pressures were there only if you felt them. And his sister felt both Catholic guilt and Buddhist karma. A double whammy.

The moment passed in silence. Andrew exhaled. His mother didn’t understand any of them. Only her own needs. It had always been like that.

“Well, this phone call does have an ulterior motive,” his mother said. “Not like our other weekly calls. Which’re all just pure fun for all of us, aren’t they? About good times. Family memories. Togetherness.” She
paused. “Go on, Bob. Have the guts, for once in your life, to tell our son what’s going on.” Her voice sounded stone cold now.

His father’s voice had trailed off, sounding like a whimper. “Dad, I can’t hear what you’re trying to say.”

“I said our portfolio has tanked,” his father said, sounding angry. “Credit cards, line of credit, Social Security checks. All gone. Things got so much worse, instead of better.”

Andrew felt endangered. How high was their debt now, anyway? Their expenses should have been cut by more than half with their move to the one-room efficiency. And between Jules’s second mortgage, Joanne’s loan, and his own admittedly token check for them, they should be doing fine.

“It’s just not what I expected when …” His father’s voice trailed off again. Was he just distracted? Or was he disconnected? Was this dementia?

“Dad, I do have to think of my own kids, you know that. I suppose Jules and Joanne do, too. I wish I could be of more help.” Andrew tried to think of something else to say but nothing came. His own family had to come first.

“Well, you’re the biggest help of all. Being the best son a mother could ever have,” his mother said, getting back the receiver. “Tell him, for God’s sake, Bob. We can’t move out of SafeHarbour. I just won’t stand for it. No trailer park for me. I’m not moving in with Joanne either. After what I’ve put up with all these years. Not on your last dying breath am I settling for anything less in my goddamn golden years.”

“Mom,” Andrew said, “Mom, please. We’ll figure something out. We can and
will
take care of you. What are we talking about, anyway? A few thousand dollars more, right?”

“We use our credit cards for everything now.” His mother sighed. “Never thought we would be reduced to this. Not in my wildest imagination. We barely can make the interest payments—minimum ones. Collectors are hounding us. The only bills we can pay are the small ones.”

Andrew heard her take a deep breath. Holding the handset farther from his ear so her voice didn’t seem so loud, he inhaled deeply, too.
Jesus, how did they lose so much money?

“Oh, by the way, I am mailing—insured, of course—my topaz ring to Ashley. You know, the one with all the diamonds? She loves that one so much—I see her looking at it on my finger. You need to get off on the right foot with her. It’s time you settled down. Besides, I don’t need it.”

“Didn’t you promise that ring to Joanne?” He felt uncomfortable. After all these years, Joanne must have thought she would get that topaz.
Not my problem
, he reminded himself. He needed to focus on his kids’ future, and his. Just like his dad, he had learned to save. He had to maintain his family values now—that’s why he was keeping his sons in a private Christian school. Tuition was high, but necessary.

“What Joanne doesn’t know won’t hurt her, now will it?” was all his mother said.

Ashley would love the ring, a blatant bribe from his mother. But it was Abigail he was thinking of. His first wife, the mother of his twin sons. Abigail—named after the Foursquare religion’s founder, Aimee Abigail Simple McPherson—had read her Bible between cleaning patients’ teeth. He had fallen in love with her at first sight.

Andrew had never been a religious type of guy, especially after George Washington Military Academy. But at Abigail’s insistence, he’d converted to Foursquare—a form of Christianity that believed in a strict sense of healing sins by prayer and strict abstinence from alcohol and premarital sex—before they had sex. Andrew didn’t buy into all of it, but it seemed to make Abigail happy. His quirky sister a practicing Buddhist and Abigail with her peculiar religion. Go figure.

Andrew had been a newly minted dentist at the time, the only one serving an Indian reservation in the hinterlands of Colorado, almost 1,400 miles from Akron, in what was known as the Four Corners area of the United States. Somehow it all seemed auspicious—Four Corners, Foursquare, that sort of thing. A box—but a box for containing an orderly life, a life that he could control.

The Navajo on the reservation lived in a range of dwellings: poor pit houses, pueblos, some with wooden ladders strapped with rope so the visitor’s feet would be stabilized while moving into the common
room. Originally, the ladders purportedly provided security, an escape route in case of an emergency. Now, only the kids played with them, as if their families lived in playhouses. Because of government financing, most of the dwellings now had steps. And there was funding for health expenses, too, which Andrew loved. No arguments about fees, no competition from other dentists. He could live near that reservation forever. Lead a simple, Christian life.

Life on the reservation had not continued for long, however. Abigail had wanted a family and a reliable, much larger stream of income. After she had accepted Andrew’s proposal for marriage, he noticed a change.

“Hey, what’s up with your reading plan?” he asked her while she sat with a patient’s head in her lap. His favorite position.

“What are you talking about?” Abigail said, the patient jerking his head around while her hand was moving inside his mouth. “What plan?”

“You know, reading the Gospel. You always do that after you’ve stuffed cotton inside the patient’s mouth. Haven’t seen you do that once this week.”

“I’m distracted, that’s why. We’ve got to think of our future. After marriage. Do we want to be in the middle of nowhere for our family? Do you want our kids to be schooled with Navajo kids? To drop out after completing one year of high school—if we’re lucky? Is that what you want?”

So Andrew had started looking for a private practice. Shrewsbury, Vermont—a small nowhere town—had offered him an office and moving expenses. Just like the offer Akron had made to his father. He would be the only dentist in over 150 miles, not much different from the Navajo reservation. At least he would be able to use Novocain—although if he were being honest, he didn’t really care. He had become used to strapping kids down, like the cat corpses he had practiced on in high school biology class.

The addictive beauty of the changing of the leaves hardly compensated for the frigid winters in Vermont. Still, there were financial incentives for raising a family there. That would satisfy Abigail.

After two years of marriage and twin sons, Adam and Jake, Abigail’s devotion to the Foursquare religion had grown stronger. Their twins
were raised in a strict no-alcohol, no-smoking, no-swearing, no-sex, no-drugs environment. By the time they were thirteen, paintball, motorbikes, and hunting had become the boys’ guilty pleasures. Ribbons from competitions and tournaments wallpapered the TV room.

Andrew’s parents had moved to SafeHarbour when his twins were thirteen, just beginning high school, and their new little baby, Ethan, was starting to hold his head up. His dad had finally retired from medical practice, and Andrew was beginning to wonder about his mental health. His mother’s, too, for that matter. Soon after moving, they had come for a visit—they arrived two days before Christmas Eve, in midst of a mild snowstorm (by Vermont standards, at least). Andrew had driven into Manchester to pick them up. They were both too old to drive by then and he felt too guilty to let them take a taxi, a very expensive fare. He also suspected their dementia was worsening and he was afraid they might have trouble even hailing a cab.

“Oh Andrew, honey, why can’t you visit us instead sometimes?” his mother said when he picked them up. “We’re getting older now, you know, and we just can’t handle long flights anymore.”

“My practice just can’t be put on hold,” Andrew said, defensive. “I can only take vacation time on Christmas Day and New Year’s. Why do you have to nag me about this, Mother? How many times do I have to repeat myself? You know kids visit the dentist during school breaks and summertime.”