The Millionaires - Brad Meltzer [34]
Weighing in at over a hundred and eighty pounds, my mom’s never been a petite woman… or an insecure one. When her hair went gray, she never dyed it. When it started thinning, she cut it short. After my dad left, the physical nonsense didn’t matter anymore—all she cared about were me and Charlie. So even with the hospital bills, and the credit cards, and the bankruptcy dad left us with… even after losing her job at the secondhand store, and all the seamstress jobs she’s had to do since… she’s always had more than enough love to go around. The least we can do is pay her back.
Heading straight for the kitchen, I reach for the Charlie Brown cookie jar and tug on its ceramic head.
“Ow,” Charlie says, using his favorite joke since fourth grade.
The head pops off, and I pull a small stack of papers from inside.
“Oliver, please don’t do this…” mom says.
“Okay,” I say, ignoring her and carrying the stack to the dining room table.
“I’m serious—it’s not right. You don’t have to pay my bills.”
“Why? You helped me pay for college.”
“You still had a job…”
“… thanks to the guy you were dating. Four years of easy money—that’s the only reason I could afford tuition.”
“I don’t care, Oliver. It’s bad enough you paid for the apartment.”
“I didn’t pay for the apartment—all I did was ask the bank to work out better financing.”
“And you helped with the down payment…”
“Mom, that was just to get you on your feet. You’d been renting this place for twenty-five years. You know how much money you threw away?”
“That’s because your—” She cuts herself off. She doesn’t like blaming my father.
“Ma, you don’t have to worry. This is a pleasure.”
“But you’re my son…”
“And you’re my mom.”
It’s hard to argue with that one. Besides, if she didn’t need the help, the bills wouldn’t be where I could find them, and we’d be eating chicken or steak instead of ziti. Her lips slightly quiver and she bites nervously at the Band-Aids that cover her fingertips. The life of a seamstress—too many pins and too many hems. We’ve always lived paycheck to paycheck, but the lines on her face are starting to show her age. Without a word, she opens the window in the kitchen and leans outside into the cold air.
At first, I assume she must’ve spotted Mrs. Finkelstein—mom’s best friend and our old babysitter—whose window is directly across the alley between our buildings. But when I hear the familiar squeaky churn of the clothesline we share with The Fink, I realize mom’s bringing in the rest of today’s work. That’s where I learned it—how to lose yourself in your job. When she’s done, she turns back to the sink and washes off Charlie’s spoon.
The second it’s clean, Charlie grabs it from her and presses it against his tongue. “Aaaaaaaaaaa,” he hums. My mom fights as hard as she can, but she still laughs. End of argument.
One by one, I flip through the monthly bills, totaling them up and figuring out which ones to pay. Sometimes I just do the credit cards and the hospital… other times, when the heating gets high, I do utilities. Charlie always does insurance. As I said, for him, it’s personal.
“So how was work?” mom asks Charlie.
He ignores the question, and she decides to let it go. She had the same hands-off approach two years ago when Charlie became Buddhist for a month. And then again a year and a half ago when he switched to Hinduism. I swear, sometimes she knows us better than we know ourselves.
Scanning through the credit card bill, my bank instincts kick in. Check the charges; protect the client; make sure nothing’s out of place. Groceries… sewing materials… music store… Vic Winick Dance Studio?
“What’s this Vic Winick place?