Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (32 page)

1)
   
I had no savings
or credit cards
and

2)
  
I was a person with Bad Credit
.
I had as much chance of getting a car loan as
blind old
Mr. Magoo.

This i
s when I made an error (another one, I know
).
I asked my sister’s advice.

“Well, I know that some of my employees have found cars for
$800
.”
Her voice came over
the
phone
.
I had
come to learn
that I would never see
Rachel
in person unless:

1)
   
I was in the hospital

2)
  
I was presumed missing or dead
(this would come later)

3)
  
It was somebody’s Birthday
, Thanksgiving,
or Hanukkah

“Hmmm.”
$800
sounded good.
Especially when
you were dead-ass broke.
Luckily,
Wyrd flew down from Valhalla
in the form of a tax refund
.
After splitting it with Nigel (don’t ask me why – his income
in 2009
had been
about
98¢
) I was left with a whole
$2,500
!
Excited, I scanned Craig
slist, searching for a familiar
make
.
Bingo!
I’d found one.
A 2001 Saturn
, and the best part was:
the seller was the Salvation Army!
I really liked this organization – the
CEO
hadn’t been caught
embezzling
(are you listening, United Way?).
This could
be a classic Win/Win:
one for charity, and one for me!

I went to the local branch and found The Salvation Car Guy.
He guided me to the
treasure
:
a banged-up green SL2, but it ran!
I
ran to Joker
, getting
$1,500
in cash.
It was more than Rachel’s
budget
, but I still thought I’d gotten a deal.
Thrilled, I drove off,
the owner
of a car that
could not
be taken away!

Let me tell yo
u
about my
shmata
-on-wheels
:
one night I was driving on the freeway, and something clattered to the asphalt.
It turned out that I had
literally
thrown
a rod.
The cost
at my mechanic’s, a cool guy in Burbank:
$3,000
for a new
/old
engine.

The week after, I was
on the same stretch of
road
and – crash! –
something else
falls
on the freeway
!
This time, it was the
fan belt, resulting in the
death
of the
water pump.
(Don’t ask me – I don’t know).
Cost:
$600
.

There followed in quick succession:
a new battery, radiator, tires, brakes, electrical system, fan belt (again) and accompanying pulley.
The A/C need
ed
Freon
;
the new
/old
engine
gulped
oil and when the fan belt broke, times two,
every fluid that could
leaked out from under the hood.
Four
thousand, five, six, seven thousand dollars later, I
still spend
quality time with my mechanic and am
seriously
thinking of marrying him.

The moral of the story,
one you never see in Hollywood movies
:
N
ever take advice from a millionaire.
My
sister
has
no
experience of how the rest of us live.
At
least
not
for
15
years, and memory grows
dim
.
What does she know of
a
beater
when she’s driving
a
$40,000
Lexus?
She has no empirical knowledge.
She’s
just recounting
anecdotes
(“I understand you can live in a box
quite
comfortably as long as
you’re not too tall
.”)
You see?

I cannot blame her.
It’s absolutely not her fault.
 
But I wonder what happened to
her
employees with
the $800
dollar cars.
Maybe I’ll see them
in
Burbank, flirting with my mechanic.

Nigel’s battle for Aurora continued
like The Hundred Years War
.
She, knowing
on
which side her bread was buttered,
had switched
her allegiance
back
to him.
He still didn’t get it.
That
Aurora
was the Great Manipulator, more skilled than
Karl Rove.
Whatever she had to do
at any given moment to survive, she would do.
There followed more
“
family
”
therapy –
more interminable
court dates.
I didn’t show for most of
them,
since
I wanted to
“Exit, stage left!”
in fine Snagglepuss
style
.
I finally got my chance in August
‘11
.

I showed up for court, which is a very dismal place.
Th
e
Monterey Park facility bore no resemblance to
L.A. Law
.
Client’s names were yelled out by harried public defenders; children
screamed
, unrestrained;
while one lunatic --
usually
a parent --
always made a loud, paranoid scene.
Nigel stayed
at my apartment
to attend
fifteen of these
hearings.
He would
stay
for weeks at a time, and although it was nice not to be alone, he also drove me crazy.
He wouldn't stop
bleating
about Aurora.
I felt I knew her every pore.
He railed against everyone involved, but there was one person who was
spot
less,
pure as
young
St. Agnes
:
himself.

“That Nadine from DCFS is prejudiced!”
Poor Daniel
Gold
had gone
on medical leave.
Maybe Nigel had driven him to it.
“Her supervisor is useless 
–
he views me as a sex offender and I’m
not
one!
”

“My
lawyer is absolute crap!
I want to
have her replaced.”

“She’s a public defender,” I’d say.
“It’s like
firing
a volunteer.”

“Aurora’s therapist
is just following Nadine’s lead!
She won’t ever pick up the phone.”

Well, if you were called
twelve
times a day by
a
maniac
, you probably wouldn't answer either.

“You’re to blame more than anyone!
If
you
hadn’t taken her back, she n
ever would have turned from me! Whenever you get involved, everything goes wrong!”

Aurora, Aurora, Aurora.
In my mind, it
was
not
a rosy
-fingered dawn
.
It was a jack-hammered theme that
bore
through
my skull
like a
diamond drill
through granite
.
If Nigel wasn’t
on the phone talking about her, he was emailing
; and
always always
discoursing.
When he was y
oung, his Mum had offered him
twopence if only he’d
shut up
.
I wish
ed
I had that twopence now.

August, ’11.
I met
my public defender
outside the courtroom.
For some reason, she knelt before me
.
I didn’t feel like a queen.
I was so disengaged
I didn’t bother to learn her first name.

“
What
I’d like to do is relinquish my rights
to reunify
.
I’m done.
Done.”

She nodded sympathetically and presented me with a
form
.
In it, I was accused of something like child abandonment
.
Fine
.
They could call me Charles Manson, and I would still sign the goddamn thing.

Tetelestai.
It is finished.
I saw Aurora in the courtroom,
passing by her wordlessly as she gave
Nigel a hug
.
In my view, after everything she’d done, she didn’t deserve any better.

My
fat
financial
times couldn't last forever.
Came a day
when my
benefits
ran out from Washington, and I was
down
to California.
With my spotty
consulting record
, I qualified for a whopping
$150
a
week!
This would not even allow m
e live with Rachel’s gardeners.
Thankfully,
she
stepped back in, and I could cover my basic bills.

December 6, 2010 was a watershed day for me:
I
finished
my
radiation!
!
I told
Anna
that on that last day, I wanted a party, with funny hats, streamers, and balloons!
She came up with the next best thing:
she baked a delicious flan.
I said goodbye to Dr. Wolinsky, the t
wo girls at the front, and the
patients
I had come to know
.
It would be
so
odd not to
drive
here every weekday;
not
to
slip
on that smock and lose a part of myself.
I
was still dropping with fatigue
, a residue of all the poisons
.
Still
something
had
begun
in October
–
a renewal
–
like s
pring in
Canterbury Tales
:
my hair was growing back!
!
At first, just a few newborn dark strands; then fuzzy islands dotting my scalp.
Over
the next year
, I would
successively
look
like
Ellen
, Angela Davis,
and
a
pudgy
Harpo Marx.

I
gauged
my recovery by the Whole Foods
Litmus
Test.
When
I’d been
sick, I
would meet
my friends
Joe and Cindy
at the
big
store in Pasadena. T
here,
we would have lunch and discuss
the
craziness
of Nigel
.
In
the E
arly Days of C
ancer, I would follow them as they shopped, but could make it for
just
half a floor.
Gradually, I could walk the
whole
upper storey; then, the bottom
one
as well
!
My
scarfed
head and then-thin body
vibrated with
victory
:
I had passed the
famed
Whole Foods Test!
!
I could
walk the entire food court
and
the vitamin aisle!