Our financial situation was becoming increasingly difficult. It was a stretch to make even the bare minimum payments on our credit card bills. My continued use of new, low interest credit accounts, allowed me to pay down balances on old accounts. I was managing month by month, not wanting to look at the big picture, but I knew it was a juggling act that was not sustainable. Sometime soon, one of the juggled balls was bound to drop.
Sharon and Doug, aware of my situation, suggested we meet with their accountant to get his advice. Laying it all out before him, seeing it through another’s eyes, confirmed what I already knew but had been somehow been keeping at arm’s length. We were in dire straits. There was talk of bankruptcy. There was talk of “walking away” from the house. There was talk of protecting retirement fund assets. I had never once in my whole life not paid a debt. The idea of walking away from the house was repugnant to me. Bankruptcy was repugnant. I was 74. I’d worked hard all of my life. We’d set money aside for the nest egg that, over the course of the past year, I’d watched shrink from turkey-sized to hen-sized. My head was spinning.
In the meantime, I was pulling soaking wet towels from the linen closet and putting them back in the dryer. Hiding laundry soap in an attempt to keep Mike from doing a whole load with only one or two pieces in it. He’d always done more than his share of the laundry, and of the two of us he was the neatest when it came to folding things and putting them away. I didn’t want him to be at a loss for any of his usual routines, but I was on constant damage control duty.
I was also on constant damage control duty with our finances. Which card could I draw money from to make the payments for whatever month’s bills I was looking at? Would I have to pull money from an IRA account to make ends meet? Even with the bursting of the real estate bubble, we still had some equity in our house. In the past, home equity had provided a sense of security, but the recent bursting of the real estate bubble changed things. How much? I wondered. I set up an appointment with Joanie B., the real estate agent who had handled the sale of our first Gold River home and the purchase of the home we were now in. Next I arranged for a friend to take Mike to a movie on the afternoon of Joanie’s visit.
We sat sipping tea in the living room while I told her of my dilemma, and she told me of hers. She’d heard from a neighbor that Mike was having cognitive difficulties, but hadn’t known to what extent. I’d heard of the real estate crash, but hadn’t known to what extent.
“The market’s totally tanked,” she said. “I haven’t sold a house in two months. No one in our office has. Luckily Jim’s job seems fairly secure, but I don’t know what we’d do without his paycheck.”
As with others of my generation, I grew up with the mostly unspoken but powerful taboo against talking about sex or money. I took a deep breath and plunged rapid-fire into the forbidden territory of money.
“We’re in a mess. Mike can’t function either as a choir director or as a professional singer. My once healthy book sales are practically nil. School budgets have been slashed. Teachers and librarians have no money for supplemental reading material. There’s no education money available for staff development workshops or author visits to schools, so no more of that. I’m nearly as unemployable as Mike is. Really, we should be able to live on our teachers’ retirement funds, but our expenses are over the top. In 2007 our combined musician/writer income, beyond our retirement income, was around $30,000. This year we’ll be lucky to hit $1,000. I’ve always thought that if things got too tight, we could sell the house … ”
“How much do you owe?”
“Around $230,000.”
“Even if you could sell this house, which I doubt, you wouldn’t clear enough to cover costs. Seller fees, repairs—you’d probably have to replace the fence. All of the fences in here have passed their use-by date. I haven’t seen one recently that’s not full of dry rot. It would end up costing you money to sell,” Joanie said.
I sat stunned for a moment. It was bad news that we would get nothing from the sale of our house. Worse news that it would actually cost us money to sell it. But I trusted Joanie’s real estate smarts.
“I can’t stay here,” I told her. “I can’t manage the maintenance on my own. Mike goes from room to room looking for things, moving things around. I just get one room put back together and he’s been through two more. Plus I can’t really afford the monthly payments or the HOA fees.”
Joanie gave me a long, slow look. Speaking in a near whisper, she said, “You didn’t hear this from me. Understand? What I’m about to say, I didn’t say.”
I nodded in puzzled agreement.
“What some people might do, have done in similar situations, is stop making their house payments. That frees up money for other bills. It’s taking banks up to a year to actually foreclose. Longer sometimes. Free rent for a year.”
I gazed out the sliding glass doors that led to the patio. I watched the water in the fountain of Mike’s handiwork steadily bubbling.
“I don’t think I can bring myself to do that.”
“You might be surprised. I’m just sayin’…. Remember how we celebrated when we closed the deal on this house? It’s a great house,” Joanie said, looking around the living room and out onto the patio. “Great floor plan. I sort of wanted it myself.”
“It could still be yours,” I told her.
She laughed—not that full-out kind of laugh that erupts when something’s funny. More the subdued half-laugh that recognizes irony, or futility, or the general trials of life.
Joanie stood to leave. I walked with her to the door. Before she stepped outside she turned to face me. “Think about what I didn’t say. Think about what you didn’t hear from me. Everybody’s in a mess. You’re not the only one.”
We hugged goodbye and I watched as she walked down the pathway to her car. We would not be celebrating.
September 13, 2016
Dear Mike,
You would want to know that I’m okay. I am okay. Really, I’m better than okay. I’m writing this to you today, from Martha’s Vineyard, on my 81st birthday. Here for two weeks on a writing workshop/retreat at the Noepe Center for Literary Arts, I am breathing the crisp, pure air of the island, writing from morning into the early afternoon, walking the town, the cemetery, the beach, sharing meals and conversation with my fellow writers. My hope is to soon finish this account of our difficult FTD years and get back to fiction. Fiction will be more fun, but I’m dedicated to first getting this story out into the world.
When I leave here, I’ll go home to a little duplex in River Park, on a corner lot with a big, wide lawn and four huge elm-like shade trees. Zelkovas, they’re called. From the time I first noticed the “For Rent” sign on this duplex, I lusted after the trees. Then when I met the landlord there for an inside look, I lusted after the whole place. I’d been living in an okay duplex just a few blocks over, but it was a bit dark. To get to the backyard I had to walk down three treacherous, not-to-code steps and through the garage. It was okay for me—there was a grab bar, and I was used to maneuvering the steps. I sometimes found myself holding my breath, though, as one of my contemporaries made her way down the steps and out to the patio. The laundry was in the garage. The carpeting was less than pristine. Still it was a definite step up from my nomading days, and, unlike that first apartment, it had a spacious yard for Sunny.
Because money had been so tight, I spent a sleepless night stewing over whether or not I could afford to move. If I did, I would be leaving the first place a month before my lease was up. Plus, the corner place was $200 more a month than I’d been paying.
In the morning I crunched numbers. It was a stretch, and nothing a wise financial adviser would have encouraged. But no place had felt like home since we’d left Gold River. This place, with its gleaming hardwood floors, a large living room window and back door slider that provided dawn to dusk natural light, a freshly updated kitchen, a small but nicely landscaped patio—this place could feel like home. I took the leap and emailed my application to the owner first thing that morning. He—we’ll call him Frank—had several applications. Although I still had the black mark of bankruptcy on my credit report, I also had three recent years of consistent, on time, rent payment records.
After the application, I emailed a letter to Frank, telling him I was the very best choice of a tenant he could ever have. Nearly all of my life I’d lived in houses I’d owned. I still treated a house as if it were my own. I was old and single. No raucous parties for me. I had no pets. I don’t remember what else I said, but I won the toss.
It’s a pretty little two-bedroom place, or in my case, one-bedroom, one-office place. The patio outside the kitchen sliders has no treacherous steps to maneuver to get there. A number of plants in large, colorful pots add color to the outdoor space. A table for six, sometimes pushed to seat eight, is a nice gathering place on a Delta breeze-infused, cool Sacramento evening. In the living room is a fireplace with a mantel; there’s a convenient breakfast bar in the kitchen, and plenty of natural light. As my heart knew the first time I stepped inside, it feels like home.
Ten years ago, before FTD hit, before the recession hit, sitting at my home office writing desk, the 5-by-4-foot teak desk, three walls lined, floor to ceiling, with oak bookshelves, gazing out the window onto the redwood lined pathway that wound throughout the so-called village, the path that we so often followed, grandkids running in front of us to get to the pool and an afternoon of swimming, or that we followed in the other direction to parties at the Taylors’, or the Richmonds’—from that vantage point I could not have foretold life as I now live it.
These days, when I pause in whatever it is I’m doing, working on some writing project, say this one, or checking email, or Facebook, or spiraling along on one of those one-thing-leads-to-another wild goose Google chases, I gaze through my office corner windows onto a different walkway, one that leads directly to a sidewalk where I might see the 3- and 5-year-old neighbor kids zipping along on their twin scooters. Or any manner of dogs out walking their owners. Rarely, an owner may be walking a dog, but it’s usually the other way around, the way Sunny used to walk us.
I’m doing a bit of part-time teaching at the county Youth Detention Facility. The schedule is easy and the work, though challenging, is, I feel, important. The paycheck is welcome.
I recently led a staff development workshop in New Mexico, and a few months back I did an author visit to a school in Fresno. That business may be picking up now that the worst of the recession is over. A little more earned income, coupled with much lower expenses now that there’s only one of me to support, means the financial strain has somewhat eased. I still have to watch my dollars, but I no longer have to count each penny.
Mornings when I wake up in what is now my home, the first thing I do (well … the second thing I do) is open the blinds and curtains and greet the day. Sometimes I go for a morning walk or go to the gym. Too often I go right to my computer and sit too long.
I miss you in the mornings, shared coffee and newspaper, your intermittent questions of “what’s a five-letter word for …?” Our sharing of expectations for the day. Or maybe there was talk of whatever book we were reading, or what movies we wanted to see, or talk of our kids, our grandkids, conversations that don’t really work with anyone else. So, yes, I still miss you.
Unlike what I hear from my newly single contemporaries, our old friends, couples, often include me in dinners, out or in, and still seem happy to do things with me. I’m aware it’s mostly a couples’ world, especially for our generation. And I also suspect that I’m not as interesting in a group, alone, as I was with you.
A year or so back I was at a brunch, three married couples and me. The couples were telling stories of each other’s foibles, not in that nasty “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” way, but with a light-heartedness, a generosity of spirit that seemed to preclude any hurt or embarrassment that can sometimes come with such tales.
The youngest couple’s wife joked about how she was always trying to get Jerry out for walks. He would reluctantly agree to a walk but then would drag his feet to the extent that his heart rate might be even slower than when he was on the couch watching TV. But when they finally turned to go home, he picked up his pace, like an old nag headed back to the stables.
“Because I’m walking behind you and watching your butt. Because I have hopes for when we get home,” Jerry explained.
The husband of one of the more mature couples told of snorkeling in Hawaii and after 15 minutes or so of being stunned by the beauty of the underwater scene, he saw floating, just off to his left, a $100 bill. He grabbed it and sure enough it was the real thing. Then he noticed another and another. Maybe they would go to that highly touted, expensive restaurant for dinner that night after all. He collected five $100 bills until they stopped coming. He hurried up to the beach where his wife was sitting.
“Look! Look what I just found floating in the water! Five $100 bills!”
He said she gave him a long look, the kind she often gives when he’s done something ridiculously stupid.
“What?” he said.
“How much money did you have in the pocket of your trunks?”
He reached into his pocket, only to find emptiness where, before they left the condominium, he had placed five $100 bills.
I mentioned this to Donna and Dennis when we met for the once-a-year dinner we share when they drive up from San Gabriel to spend a week or two with their daughter in Vallejo. I mentioned that I may not be nearly as much fun without you than I was with you.
“Well …,” Donna said, “we did love the Mike and Marilyn show.” They went on to assure me that I was still absolutely fascinating, but I thought they were at least half lying.
On the way back from that dinner, where Donna and Dennis had shared a few of their own amusing couples stories, I considered my dilemma. I didn’t really want to couple up with anyone, not that eligible couplers have been beating down my door. I’ve been on a total of three dates in the past three years, and although the men were all nice people, I was bored. You were, when you were you, never boring. I didn’t want to go out for another of those dinners, and I certainly wasn’t interested in crawling into bed with any of them. That part of me may be closed for the duration. I’m not sure. That remains to be seen.
In answer to my solo dullness, I conjured an imaginary lover. His name is Mario McCarthy—some Latin passion coupled with Irish humor. He’s a good choice. Sometimes I take him to dinner with me. I tell stories about him, about his foibles and our escapades. I don’t introduce him to everyone. Some people are still offended by mixed marriages. You know, one of us is real, the other is not.
We’ve chosen not to live together. I don’t want to have to argue with him over home decor and I’m afraid his taste might be similar to yours. Anyway, Mario is part of my okayness.
I’m in good health as are all of our kids and grandkids. I have meaningful work, good friends, and am, finally, financially stable again. I’m more and more aware that each day brings me closer to the end. That’s always been the case, for all of us, but at 81, the balance has shifted. The days have become more precious. Although I wish we were sharing them, I wake up every morning, grateful for the gift of the day ahead of me.
I’m now more of a regular, productive member of UUSS than I have been for some time. I appreciate the structure that offers opportunities to take some positive action in the world—welcoming refugees, fighting racism, offering support for homeless families…. I also appreciate the Sunday services that pull me out of my little life and into a broader world view. I don’t do nearly as much as I might, but I do more than I would if I were not a part of that organization.
My books, the ones in the Hamilton High Series, have a new publisher, New Wind Publishing. It was one of those serendipitous meetings in which things come together in an almost magical way. I’m so glad the books are still in print. In their own small way, they sometimes do some good in the world. So that, too, is part of my okayness.
What else would you want to be reassured of? I may not be dressing according to your tastes, but that’s no surprise, is it? I don’t see Ashley or Kerry as often as we once did, but that’s just the nature of things. What else?
If you were sitting across from me now, over a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine, I think your mind would be put to rest that I am doing fine. There will be at least one more hard time to come. I know that. But for now, the hardest of the hard times are over and life, for me, is good.
Marilyn