The Numbers on the Page
Chapter 08 - The Numbers on the Page
I waited until Daniel was at school to tell Paul what I'd found. I put the valuation request between us on the dining table, alongside a notebook and a pen. I had decided I wasn't going to shout. Shouting would make it easier for him to remember only the shouting.
“Forty-one thousand six hundred dollars,” I said. “Explain it.”
Paul sat opposite me. He looked at the page without touching it.
“It's what the company owes suppliers, the credit union, and a customer whose equipment we haven't been able to install. Some of it is current. A lot of it isn't.”
“How much is past due?”
“Twenty-eight thousand.”
“And Dad's eighteen thousand is separate?”
“Yes.”
I wrote both figures down. They didn't become more bearable when I added them together. They did, however, become real.
“Have you used any of our household savings?”
“About six thousand, over the last year.”
I wrote that down too. “Without asking me.”
“Yes.”
The only sound was the refrigerator cycling on. I'd imagined that if he finally told the whole truth, I would feel something dramatic. Relief, rage, clarity. Instead I felt an old, dull sadness at how many opportunities he'd had to include me and had chosen not to.
“Why the house valuation?”
Paul pushed the sheet back toward me. “I thought if Arthur needed residential care, it would make sense to sell his place. He'd have funds to live on. Maybe he could let me have a few more months on the loan until we got through winter.”
“You knew he didn't want residential care.”
“He said he wanted an apartment. I thought it was unrealistic.”
“Did you ask him what he could manage?”
“No.”
“So you decided he couldn't manage it, because that made your plan more convenient.”
He flinched. I'd wanted those words to hurt. When they did, I didn't feel proud of myself.
I told him about the workshop and Willow Court, the friends Dad had made, the work he was doing. Paul listened with the baffled expression of a man learning that somebody he had eaten breakfast with for a year possessed a life he hadn't been invited to examine.
“I didn't know,” he said.
“Neither did I. That's the problem.”
We spent the rest of the morning going through the business accounts. Paul agreed to call his accountant and the credit union, to stop taking advances without telling me, and to give me full access to our household finances. He was capable of agreeing to everything while terrified. I wanted to see what he would do once the terror wore off.
I asked him whether he wanted his sister to help with the accounts. He told me she had offered months before, and he’d refused because he couldn’t bear her seeing the books. I wondered how many doors pride had shut while the rest of us stood outside believing there was nothing behind them.
At noon I took a suitcase from the closet and packed some of his clothes. He watched from the doorway.
“Are you throwing me out?”
“I'm asking you to stay with your brother for two weeks. I can't think clearly while we're both pretending dinner will make this ordinary.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. “What do I tell Daniel?”
“We tell him the truth he needs. We're having a serious disagreement. It's not his responsibility. We both love him.”
Paul nodded. He picked up his suitcase, then paused beside the old oak table. “Arthur built this for us,” he said. “I suppose I forgot how much of our life he helped make.”
I wanted to say that remembering now was too late. It wasn't, of course. It was late enough to have consequences, which is a different thing.
After he left, I sat at the table for a long while. There were rings in the wood from hot mugs, a scratch where Daniel had practiced writing his name, and a shallow groove where my wedding ring had caught as I polished it. A piece of furniture records a family without ever deciding which member was right.
That evening I explained Paul's absence to Daniel. He listened solemnly, then asked if his father had done something bad.
“He made decisions about money without telling me,” I said. “He has to work on fixing that.”
“Did he take Grandpa's money?”
“He borrowed some. Grandpa agreed, but Dad hasn't paid it all back when he said he would.”
Daniel stared at his shoelaces. “Was it because of my braces?”
The question startled me. Two years earlier we'd paid for dental work in installments, and Daniel had overheard us discussing the bill. The amount had seemed enormous to him.
“No, sweetheart. None of this is because of anything you need.”
“But if I cost less—”
“You are not a bill.” I sat on the floor beside him. “You're our son. The adults handle the money, and when we get it wrong, the adults have to put it right.”
He leaned against me, but his shoulders stayed stiff for a while. I understood then how much he had been collecting in silence, making connections where we left gaps.
On Tuesday, Claire brought Dad to lunch at a café near Willow Court. This time he asked me to come. We sat at a round table and ordered sandwiches. He paid for his own coffee and looked pleased when the waitress asked what kind he wanted instead of asking me.
“I've talked to Susan,” he said. “I want her to put the bungalow on the market when the repairs are done. She thinks it will sell in the spring.”
“Do you want to wait that long for the apartment?”
“No. I've got a little savings left. And Irene's asked me to make two sets of shelves for the workshop. I can earn something while my hands still let me.”
Claire smiled. “There's a phrase he can say every day if no one stops him.”
Dad ignored her. “I want to make the deposit myself, if I can.”
“Can I help as a loan?” I asked. “We can put it in writing. You can pay me back when the house sells.”
He studied me. “And if I decide not to sell?”
“Then we'll make a new plan. You won't owe me obedience.”
He put down his fork. “That's the first offer I've liked in some time.”
We were still talking when Susan Mercer called his phone. He answered and listened while his expression gradually changed. Then he took a pencil from his pocket and wrote an address on the paper placemat.
After the call he said, “Apparently someone has already heard I might sell. They've made an offer before the house is even listed.”
May you like
“Who?” Claire asked.
Dad turned the placemat so we could both see the name. I knew it immediately. The woman who wanted my father's house was someone I had spent fourteen years trying not to remember.
