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A sip of coffee makes me think about the espresso machine in my office. Just as quick, I push the thought out of my mind. Junior editors do not have an espresso machine in the break room, and I am a junior editor.
There may be perks to being the heir to a publishing empire, but a monkey with plenty of treats in a cage is still just a monkey in a cage.
Ten
ADDISON
“I can’t lend you any.”My words hang in the air like drops of rain clinging to the edge of the roof. Waiting for anything to cause them to fall, crashing through the air. This is what so many phone calls with my mom are like. I don’t know what it’s like for other people, but my mom and I don’t exactly have a typical parent child relationship.
Her sigh makes me grit my teeth. “That’s fine, sweetheart. It’s not like it’ll be the first time I’ve gone without water. I’ll just borrow the neighbor’s water hose to wash the dishes until I get paid.”
I know exactly how many times she’s been without water. There’s no way I could forget them. The times where I couldn’t shower for a week. The times where I had to jump the fence to fill up the water jug in the neighbor’s backyard while he was at work so we had something to drink.
It’s not that Mom is lazy, or even that she couldn’t keep a job. She’s just never understood a slow and steady grind. Instead of keeping the one job and moving up the ranks, she’d hear about a different one, and the grass was always greener there.
Which left us with far too many weeks waiting on the hiring process, and no money.
“What happened this time?” I ask, knowing she’ll have a very reasonable answer. Maybe I should just let her drink from the neighbor’s hose. The internet would tell me that this is a toxic relationship, and I shouldn’t keep enabling her. But how do you do that to your own mother?
She starts into the story. “Well, I had that job at the local feed store, but they never let me have full-time hours. It was always thirty-five hours, and those extra five hours really matter, you know? Well, I just couldn’t afford…”
I stop her. “How long had you been there, Mom?”
There’s a pause. “Almost five months. And I told them I needed full-time when I hired on.”
Almost five months. Right. More like just past three months. I sigh. “How much do you need?” I started this conversation by saying I couldn’t loan her any money, but I love my mom. No matter how many times she puts herself in a bind and needs help, I can’t just ignore her.
“Just like three hundred dollars. I’ll stop by the local food bank, and I get paid in a week. The electric company won’t shut the power off just for being a week late.”
The happiness that had slowly been building inside me drains away. I have enough money to pay her bills, but that’ll leave me with no extra from the money I’d saved my senior year. Money I’d earned when I could have been having fun, when I could have been enjoying the college life.
“Fine. I’ll send you three hundred and fifty. But Mom, I don’t have much left. I can’t keep doing this, so you need to just stop changing jobs. Even if the next one you hear about is the job of your dreams, just ignore it. Please. For my sake.”
I can hear the excitement in her voice. The sincerity. “Thank you, sweetheart. You’re a lifesaver. And I promise that I’m going to stay at Woodson’s for a long time. They’re the best paying place in town, and they even give Christmas bonuses.”
I sigh again, knowing why Woodson’s was hiring. The owner doesn’t put up with any excuses. Plenty of my friends in high school worked there after they graduated, and nearly all of them got fired after only a few months.
But Mom’s always been a hard worker. Maybe she’ll keep up, and it really can be a dream job for her. “Okay Mom, I have to go. I’ll transfer the money in a few minutes. I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetheart,” she says as though there’s not a problem in the world.
The phone goes dead as I hit end call, and I lean back in the cheap build-it-yourself furniture that I picked up on sale. The legs don’t fit together perfectly, and it wobbles, but it’s a chair, and I spent six dollars on it.
My new friends at Loughton House wouldn’t understand the mismatched furniture in my apartment. Or the crocheted laptop bag sitting in my closet. Or the makeup mirror with a crack in the corner that I bought from a garage sale for a few dollars.
See, when you grow up like I did, you learn to spend as little money as possible because there’s always going to be a problem. Whether that’s the ancient heater going out or your mother needing a loan that she’ll never pay back, it’ll always happen. Some people have family or friends they can count on to help them, but not me. I’ve made it through life knowing that there wasn’t anyone to call if I got into a bind. So I save every last penny.
I look around the apartment and sigh again. I won’t be hunting for a bookshelf to hold the boxes of used books sitting in the hallway. No, all of that will have to wait another month or two.
It’s not like being a junior editor pays well. But I don’t have my mother’s problems. I understand the idea of sacrificing now to be stable in the future. I’m not afraid to go without so that I can be free of that constant fear.
At least I hope I can.
Eleven
PHILLIP
My phone alarmgoes off forty-five minutes before I’m supposed to be in my cubicle. I do my best to stretch a little, but the tables I’ve pulled together for a makeshift bed aren’t stable enough to do much moving. This is not what I’d planned on when I made that deal with my father.
