The Virtues of Oxygen (18 page)

“Well, if you’re going to see that Racine, you came to the right place. I’m gonna make you look like a mo
vie star.”

Ten minutes later Holly walked out of the pharmacy wearing a new shade of rose-colored lipstick, light brown eye shadow, and some blush, and thinking about what Darla had said: “We all do what we have to do to keep body and soul together.” She wasn’t sure that her body and her soul were even compatible anymore. The latter seemed like a luxury she could no long
er afford.

A few customers were sitting at the back of the gold store having their offerings evaluated when Holly walked in, but she didn’t see Racine right away. As she looked at the glass cases full of old jewelry, watches, and silver-plated brush sets, he emerged from the
back room.

“Holly!” he said. “I was literally just dialing you
r number.”

“You’re making that up,” Holly said, until Racine thrust his cell phone in front of her and she saw the first eight digits of her cell phone number. Racine came around to the front of the counter and put a hand lightly on her shoulder. He had a physical sureness that she envied an
d admired.

“I enjoyed our date,” he said, now touching the top of his head. He touched it so often that she wondered if he was afraid of losing his hair. “I was hoping we could go o
ut again.”

Holly felt certain that he was just trying to be nice. What could he have enjoyed about paying for an expensive meal, then leaving before dessert because his date thought she might throw up? But she had to give him credit f
or trying.

“Sure, that would be great,” she said slowly. “But I really came down here to get some numbers for Vivian. She wants a report on your expenses and projected
revenues.”

“Of course, of course. I’ll get all that together and send her a
n e-mail.”

“Soon, okay?” Holly said. “She’s a little anxious
about it.”

“Nothing to worry about. Business is good, especially with the holidays coming. Everyone needs that ex
tra cash.”

Holly thought about the wedding ring again, wondering how many presents she could buy if she sold it. Somehow, knowing it was there in her jewelry box made her feel less poor, so she mentally pu
t it back.

“So when can we get together?” he said. “Is there a good day t
his week?”

Holly felt another lurch in her stomach, knowing that she wouldn’t fall gently if Racine kept pursuing her. It would be more like a cliff dive into rock-strewn waters, and then how would she get out of it intact once he was ready to
move on?

“The boys are busy on Wednesday night with a band fund-raiser, so that mi
ght work.”

“Wednesday night then,” he said. “I’ll come to your house arou
nd seven.”

Leaving the gold store, Holly felt somehow as if she were walking on marshmallows, uncertain of how to step and overpowered by a sweet and expecta
nt scent.

CHAPTER 19

Vivian’s Unaired
Podcast #7

I
took Lance’s advice and found a reason to open my eyes every day: investing in the stock market. I had received a small settlement as part of a medical malpractice lawsuit involving faulty catheters, so I had a small nest egg that wasn’t earmarked for my med
ical care.

At first it was a game to me—could I beat the market? But then I realized that earning money meant that I could buy my parents some relief, and they needed it. My father’s health was failing—all the years of hard labor had settled into his joints with a vengeance—which meant that my mother had to look after b
oth of us.

It was around this time that technology began to broaden what I could do for myself. My mother found me a headset so that I could be on the phone without someone holding the receiver up to my ear. She still had to act as my operator at the beginning and end of the call, but I could talk to my stockbroker every day. I read all the stock market periodicals I could find and began investing in penny stocks (notoriously difficult, but I had a knack for it) until I had amassed a decent enough portfolio to buy blue chips. I did so well that I sent my parents to Virginia Beach—where they had gone for their honeymoon—on their first trip since polio killed Darlene and paralyzed me. Before they would agree to leave, I put an ad in the newspaper asking for volunteers to take some two-hour shifts with me—and luckily there were enough curiosity seekers in town that I ended up with a waiting list. I paid for nurses to take the overnight hours. Our roles quietly shifted: at forty, I became the breadwinner, and my parents allowed me to, at least occasionally, soften th
eir lives.

One of my first volunteers was Marveen, who was just a young thing at the time, newly married to a somewhat older man, bored, and looking for a project. She found it right there on the top o
f my head.

“So nice to meet you, Vivian,” she said after responding to my ad. Then she skipped all the phony chitchat and skipped right to what she couldn’t possib
ly ignore.

“If I may ask a personal question, who does y
our hair?”

“My mother’s used the same hairdresser for years—Sam Reynolds. He stops by every six weeks or so on his way home from work to give my mother a permanent, and he trims my mop when it gets
too long.”

“Now, I wouldn’t use the term ‘mop’ exactly, but Viv, some shaping and a few highlights would change your life,” Marv
een said.

I glanced down at the iron lung just long enough for Marveen to get the point that it would take more than a new hairstyle to change my life. And yet I decided to let her try. I thought it might be fun to see a change in my overhead mirror that didn’t involve identifying new
wrinkles.

“Go for it,” I told her. “I’m your gu
inea pig.”

A few days later Marveen came back with a cart on wheels that carried her supplies from the few months she had spent in beauty school before marrying her husband, who had told her she never had to work again, so why bother with all those classes? My hair was difficult to cut because I couldn’t hold my head up from the table for long, but Vivian found a way to prop it up on a foam rubber block just long enough to cut the back—which didn’t matter much anyway since no one could see it. She gave me some long layers around the sides and then put in t
he foils.

“This will be stunning,” she said. “Just wait till you see. You’re going to look just like Kathleen Turner, the
Body Heat
version.”

“I’ll take it. Right now I feel like Ethe
l Merman.”

I had my doubts, but after Marveen finished, I did look a little like Kathleen Turner from the neck up. When my parents came back, my mother gasped when she fir
st saw me.

“Vivian, is
that you?”

“Who’s Vivian?” I said. “And who
are you?”

My mother laughed and looked as rested as I’d ever seen her. In my parents’ brief absence, I had realized that their lives would have been so much better without me. Yes, they would have grieved for both me and Darlene for many years, but they hadn’t been too old to start over and have more children. They could have had perfectly comfortable lives without my medical expenses or the endless hours spent watching after me. They had essentially sacrificed their own interests, their own comfort, and their own health to keep my pitiful brain functioning day after day after day. And I had taken all of it for granted, even sometimes resented them for it. My mission became clear: make as much money as possible so my parents could enjoy whatever time they
had left.

I studied the stock market, assessed the odds, and invested accordingly. According to my broker, I had the Midas touch. In the late 1980s, my parents were able to tour Germany, visit California, and spend winters in Florida, which eased my father’s arthritis. But in 1995 my father developed pneumonia and died in a hospital in Fort Myers. It torments me still that I wasn’t able to see him before he passed away. Just before he left on that trip, he told me how proud he was that I had found m
y calling.

“Who knew that my Vivi would run circles around Wall Street?” he said, gesturing with an arthritis-crippled hand toward my computer screen. “It’s the darnde
st thing.”

“I’m just glad you and Mom can get some time away,” I
told him.

“We only wish you could come with us,” he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “But we’ll be b
ack soon.”

After Daddy’s death, my mother was done with her traveling. She seemed to want to care for me again, since it was the only role she’d had for most of her adult life, and yet I couldn’t let her do it. She had become forgetful and weak sighted, and I had developed such a capable network of volunteers and aides who knew just how to make me comfortable and support my investment work. In the end, the medical staff and the volunteers took care of my mother as much as they took c
are of me.

At least I was able to care for her. That’s what the money did. It softened the harsh corners, eased the aches, made us healthier with better food and medicine, let my mother sleep more comfortably on a softer yet more supportive mattress. Without it, the ticket counters closed, the lights dimmed, the temperature could not be r
egulated.

And
yet . . .

And
yet . . .

I would have given every penny I had ever made to spend a single day outside my
iron lung.

CHAPTER 20

H
olly sat down on one side of the red pleather booth at the diner next door to her mother’s new nursing home in White Plains. Desdemona slid lightly into the bench seat opposite her, and Henderson shoved the table a bit to bump in next to
Desdemona.

Holly picked up the laminated menu, which felt greasy. It had been a long morning of filling out paperwork and listening to Henderson carp about the monthly cost of the home, whose employees would care for their mother’s body until it decided to join the rest of her on the other side of eart
hly cares.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t believe,” Henderson said, “that they’re charging her an activities fee when she can’t even communicate or move around on her own. Do they think she’ll be playing pinochle in the
rec room?”

Desdemona rolled her eyes for Holly to see, then looked down at her own greasy menu. “I’ll just have some hot tea,” she said. “I don’t feel like I could eat
anything.”

“Well, I’m starving,” Henderson said as the waitress approached. He looked up at her and launched in before she could offer her name in that pointlessly intimate ritual of American dining. “I’ll have the chicken club, but with coleslaw instead of the fries. She’ll have some hot te
a. Holly?”

Holly glanced at the menu, a vista of landmines both caloric and financial. She only had six dollars and didn’t want to risk having a credit card turned down in front of her brother and sister. In times past, she and Desdemona would have just assumed that Henderson would pick up the check. She missed t
hose days.

“I’ll have a bowl of the minestrone,” Holly said, though she knew she’d still be hungry when she finished it. Maybe, she thought, Henderson wouldn’t be able to finish his
sandwich.

When the waitress left, Holly looked at Henderson and noticed for the first time that he looked about five years older than he had at Aunt Muriel’s funeral just a few month
s before.

“Are you okay, Hen?” she said. “You look a litt
le tired.”

Henderson pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Nobody’s hiring. Everything has come to a standstill. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m really not sure what to do next. I spent Thanksgiving Day sending out cover letters and
résumés.”

Desdemona patted Henderson’s arm and told a story about her last dance performance, in which a new dancer high-kicked her legs right out from u
nder her.

“And she’ll be okay just like you’ll be okay, Hen. You’re a survivor. You’ll figur
e it out.”

Henderson’s face darkened. “You both think I’ll figure it out, but you have no idea what I’m up against. You can’t just launch a new business once you’ve declared bankruptcy, and who would hire me? I’ve failed, girls. The condo’s on the market, but I might lose money on it. I’m selling the Audi, and now all this
with Mom.”

“I’m so sorry, Hen,” Holly said. “Is there anything we can do
to help?”

Henderson put his napkin on his lap as the waitress set his chicken club and coleslaw down in front of him. He sighed. “Buy
me lunch?”

Holly looked at Desdemona, who was dunking her tea bag with a spoon. Desdemona gave a tiny shake of her head, which Holly took to mean she had even less than six dollars in h
er wallet.

“I’ll take care of it,” Holly said, hoping that at least one of her credit cards wasn’t completely maxed out. Spending money she didn’t have felt like walking off a cliff and trying to find traction by pedaling in midair, and yet she couldn’t seem to stop. “Listen, we’ll all be okay. We’re in a slump, but we’ll come out of it. Mom would want us to help ea
ch other.”

Both Henderson and Desdemona nodded. After lunch, the waitress had to try three of Holly’s credit cards before one was accepted. Before they left the diner, they all stood in its brochure-lined foyer and agreed that their parents’ money had served its purpose in getting their mother into a good nursing
facility.

“She’s in a good spot,” Henderson said. “We did the rig
ht thing.”

“We did, Hen,” Holly said, hugging him. She imagined their father looking down on them, not ashamed exactly but surprised at how far all three of them had fallen. He had never been a sentimental man, leaving the emotional aspects of child rearing to Celia. But he had brought each of them to the bank to start a savings account, and he had lectured them on the value of setting aside a portion of each gift or each paycheck for the future. Now that the future was the present and the present the past, none of them had any saving
s at all.

The house was quiet when Holly returned from lunch. It took her a few minutes to remember that Marshall was at a Saturday band practice and Connor was at a neighbor’s house to play video games. She noticed that she had a message on her cell phone when she took it out to check
the time.

“Holly, it’s Vince from the bank again. We’ve noticed that you’ve made another partial payment on your mortgage this month, and we’re concerned. You’ll be assessed a late-payment fee, as well as interest on the unpaid balance. Please give me a call to discuss the s
ituation.”

Holly put down the phone and sat on one of the rickety kitchen chairs that surrounded the small table for four in the center of the room. She simply had no way to make up the difference between what the bank charged her to live in the house she called a home and what she could afford to pay. As a good customer of fifteen years, she thought the bank would give her more than two months before it started harassing her at home. On top of that, it was almost Christmas. The boys had always had presents under the tree. When she was low on funds, her mother made sure she had some extra money to buy them gifts, and Celia gave them her own stack of presents as well. There was always some expensive electronic device from Henderson, too. But this year . . . she couldn’t imagine giving them nothing. They weren’t babies, and eventually they would understand, bu
t nothing?

“What can I do?” she said aloud, rubbing her hands on her thighs. She felt a dull pain starting in her chest. Her breath suddenly became shallow, and her heart began to pound almost audibly. She thought momentarily that she was having a heart attack and might pass out. Her breath came in shorter and shorter bursts that reminded her of Vivian’s frightening power outage episode. Just as she grabbed her phone to dial 911, Connor came in the door, and she felt her heart rate slow just enough to stop her from making the call. She didn’t want to
worry him.

“Hi, Mom,” he said, going straight to the refrigerator, opening it and standing in front of its contents as if they might put on a show. “What’s ther
e to eat?”

Holly took a deep breath and braced herself against the table. She knew she would be able to function if she didn’t look a
t her son.

“There’s some leftover pasta in there,” she said slowly. “And I bought some apples the other day. They’re in the vegetabl
e drawer.”

Connor grabbed an apple and shut the refrigerator door. He whistled as he made his way through the liv
ing room.

A few days before, Holly had posted a short article about fuel assistance and realized—since she had depleted every other resource—that her salary was low enough to qualify for it. She had even driven over to the Town Hall food pantry, but while she was parking, she had seen Marveen unloading donations from the trunk of her car and couldn’t face the shame of walkin
g by her.

Holly put her head down on the table and tried to think of calming thoughts:
It’ll be okay. You’ll come up with something.
She lifted her head, wiping her face on her sleeve, and stood up, realizing she could wait
no longer.

Holly took the stairs two at a time to her bedroom, where she fished around in her jewelry box until she found her wedding band. At the very least she had to see what it would be worth to assess the trade-off: wrapped boxes under the tree versus selling off the one object of value that memorialized her eleven-year
marriage.

She called up to Connor. “I’m running out to do an errand, Con. I’ll be b
ack soon.”

As she backed out of the driveway, she noticed the garish displays of Christmas lights on the homes in the subdivision above her house. Then she saw Marshall coming up the walk with his backpack and his trumpet case. She rolled down t
he window.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said. “How was
practice?”

“Okay,
” he said.

“Anything else on your agen
da today?”

“Job
hunting.”

“What?”

“I know it’s a ‘cash-flow’ situation, but I need some cash to flow into my wallet. I have some presents I nee
d to buy.”

Holly thought he was talking about her and Connor and almost told him they didn’t need anything before she realized he probably meant his g
irlfriend.

“I saw a ‘Help Wanted’ sign at the Dunkin’ Donuts next to the gold store,” she said. “I was heading that way now, if you want to co
me along.”

“That’s okay. I need to put this stuff away and get something to eat. I also want to print out my stellar résumé of lawn-mowing and babysitting jobs. I’ll walk over the
re later.”

She nodded and turned her head before he could see the tears welling in her eyes. The palpitations began in her chest again as she finished backing out of the driveway, but she forced herself to calm down. She couldn’t afford the co-pay in the emerg
ency room.

She drove past the gold store looking for a parking spot when she saw the outline of Racine’s head in the window and realized she couldn’t go in. She couldn’t bear the thought of Racine knowing she was desperate enough to sell her wedding ring, or worse yet, of watching him treat it like any other transaction. Instead, she drove past the illuminated Christmas bells on the streetlamps of Main Street to the section of town where the curbstones and sidewalks gave way to sad little clumps of low-rent commerce: the check-cashing store, the Salvation Army distribution center, and the furniture repair place that always had tarnished brass headboards propped up in fro
nt of it.

She pulled into the parking lot of the pawn shop across a bed of loose gravel. Next door was a liquor store with a grimy plate-glass window that Holly suspected had never been washed by anything but rain. She hurried inside the pawn shop as a man in a trench coat and sneakers—his hairy, bare legs visible between the hem of the former and the laces of the latter—came out of the liquor store clutching a
paper bag.

She had never been inside a pawn shop, but it looked just as she had expected it would. A long glass counter in an L shape took up most of the room. Opposite and behind the counter were shelves crammed with all manner of items conferred in the vain hope that they might be redeemed, among them quite a few guitars and other musical instruments, including a nice-looking trumpet, power tools of all varieties, small framed paintings, heavy glass bowls of the wedding gift variety, silver-plated tea pots and serving trays, and neon signs advertising various types of beer. The items were all coated with a fine laye
r of dust.

Holly touched the wedding ring in the pocket of her cloth coat and was about to turn around when she saw a balding man behind the counter, looki
ng at her.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”
he said.

She walked over, pulled the wedding band out of her pocket, and slapped it down on the glass counter, making a louder noise than she had
intended.

The man looked at the ring. “We’ve seen quite a few of thes
e lately.”

He gestured to a gray cardboard box in the glass case in front of him that appeared to have several hundred gold wedding bands inside it. Most of them looked pretty much like hers. She thought about how each of those rings had entered the market ensconced in velvet inside a hinged box—emblematic of new love and vows and the mingling of possessions and bank accounts—but would exit via cardboard and
high heat.

“We don’t have a huge demand for these,” the balding man said. “So we can only keep them for about three months before we sell them on the gol
d market.”

“I understand,” Holly said. The thought of her wedding band joining the box of regret in the case in front of her made her sick to her stomach. But she had to find out, at least, how much it
was worth.

The balding man took out an eyepiece like the ones used by the appraisers in the back of the gold store. He examined the ring and then placed it on a sm
all scale.

“This is fourteen-karat,” he said. “We have a standard rate that we pay by the gram based on the day’s spot price. Some’ll try to low-ball you—that new place over on Main Street doesn’t pay as much as we do. You’re here on a day when gold is up, so this would get you a hundred and twe
nty-five.”