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No, that money was sacrosanct. It was for Ajax’s education, and she couldn’t consider it for anything else. That way, no matter what, if Eight bailed, or if they stayed together and something else happened to crimp his finances—like, say, prison, or something worse—Ajax’s college was secure.
She shoved that question off her mind’s table and tried to focus on the topic of the moment. The video. Dash had called her out. Honestly, she had no interest in this fucking argument.
But there was no way she’d defer when put on the spot like Dash just had, so she took a breath and said her piece. “Listen. I hate this script, too, and not just because I have no great desire to be half-naked on camera making out with Dash like we’re doing one of those old Cinemax After Dark shows. I hate it because it fucking misses the point of the song. I also completely understand Kenny’s point. It sucks that we can’t showcase the whole band. But I do want to be successful. I want more than grinding out every weekend in some hole-in-the-wall club, or doing all those miles in the fucking van when we go on the road. I hate that we can’t make a real, quality video the way we want to because we can’t fucking afford it. Maybe this is the price we pay to go up a level or two. Maybe we do this video, make Wes Brown happy, get him to turn people onto us. And then we have some coin and some pull and do the next one the way we want.”
“Let’s just fucking vote on it,” Wade grumbled. “Majority wins.”
The vote was five to one. Everybody but Kenny understood that the money mattered, and they needed Wes Brown.
So Marcella was going to be making out with Dash on camera. Not just singing sexy, but actually simulating sex. How, she wondered, would Eight deal with that?
No doubt it was going to be a fight.
~oOo~
Marcella sat at a table in Ajax’s classroom and studied a folder of his work. Like his classmates, he’d decorated the folder for Parent-Teacher Conference evening and selected the pieces to put in it. Unlike his classmates, Ajax had done a whole art piece, using the folder as a canvas, given the piece, and thus the folder, a title, and selected its contents according to that theme, which was ‘Dreaming Big.’
The pieces inside, from math work to book reports, all had to do with the things Ajax wanted to be and have when he grew up. Her son wanted to be and have basically everything. Except money. He’d never expressed any wish to be rich or have expensive things. The things he wanted were adventures.
Those were expensive, too, of course, but he wasn’t quite old enough to realize that.
She liked very much that Ajax didn’t think about money. Not only did it suggest, in her mind, a healthy worldview, it also suggested that she was doing okay keeping money worries from him.
They’d never been badly cash-strapped; she made enough to afford everything they needed and a few wants as well. But bill-paying days were stressful, for sure, and they were one big unexpected expense from cash-strapped. If the Honda, for instance, finally gave up the ghost, that would be hard. Or if Marcella got sick or hurt.
Ajax had health insurance; the school had a fairly reasonable plan for its students. It didn’t extend to parents, however, so Marcella was on her own. She couldn’t afford even the coverage the ACA made available.
Marcella’s second biggest expense was the tuition for this school. Even with the help of a scholarship and a ‘diversity’ grant, the monthly payments were almost as much as her rent. But this was the best school, hands down, in the Greater Tulsa Area. It went from Pre-K through high school, but Ajax hadn’t been accepted until first grade. He was one of the few kids of color in the school, and also one of the poorest, but that hadn’t seemed to slow him down.
It was her mission in life to make sure it never did. She wanted him to have every possible opportunity to be anything he wanted.
That sack of money changed everything, took her dream for her son to reach his dreams from fantasy to possibility.
As days passed and Marcella became more accustomed to first, having more than a hundred grand saved, stowed, and stashed in various places, and second, being in a relationship with Eight, the man who’d dropped that money on her in a cash-stuffed sack because it was how most of his money existed, she’d begun to really lean in to that money’s power—and to understand and value what it meant that Eight had given it to her.
Not that he was trying to buy her. Not even that he was settling a debt.
He was trying to provide for his family.
Understanding that had eased a whole load of her worries about their relationship. The decent man Eight was down deep was pushing his way through the cracking concrete that was the man Eight had always shown the world.
Finished perusing Ajax’s folder, Marcella looked up and smiled at Mrs. Hewson, his fifth-grade teacher. “Well, I like to see all those As and smiley faces.”
“Yes, he’s doing very well—as he always has done. In my experience, few students enjoy school as much as Jax does.”
It bugged Marcella that he went by Jax here, and increasingly everywhere. She hoped it had been his choice. Then again, she’d been Marcie for three years when she started school, because her kindergarten teacher had simply started calling her that without asking, and she hadn’t known she could protest. Not until third grade, when a new teacher had asked her what name she’d preferred, had she been able to turn that around, and not until middle school, after her parents’ divorce and a school change, had she put it fully behind her. She liked her full name. And her son’s full name, too.
Funny, then, that she didn’t mind Eight calling her Marce.
Pushing thoughts of Eight to the side, Marcella focused again on Ajax’s teacher. “Yeah, he’s always loved learning.”
“The one concern I have—and it’s a minor one at this stage, but worth thinking about—is that he doesn’t seem to have a particular interest.”
Marcella’s back went up at the mere hint of criticism, but she recognized that as a mama-bear instinct and simply asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve been teaching a long time, and a sign of growth, of maturity, at this stage, is identifying a … a passion, for want of a better word. One thing they’re especially excited by, be it a sport, or dinosaurs, or music, even video games. Ajax seems to like everything. Even his portfolio”—Mrs. Hewson tapped the beautiful folder under Marcella’s laced hands—"with its theme of ‘dreaming big,’ is scattershot. He wants to be an archeologist, and a doctor, and a rocket scientist, and a professional athlete, and a guitar player, and an artist. Of course he can’t be all those things, and by now, most children are beginning to realize that and honing their interests to suit their skills.”
“But those interests all suit his skills. He’s great at science, and sports, and music, and art.”
