Ark (8 page)

“I'm aware,” she said. “I'll have you know I paid back every penny.”

Oliver congratulated his sister. Although he didn't believe it was true. Even if she'd had the money, she wouldn't reimburse their mother and father. Doris had always taken as much as she could from their parents. Jewelry, for instance, and cash. She found opportunities to collect her inheritance in advance. She was slick about it. Oliver asked her, “Do you think about what would happen if you ever needed more capital?”

“No.”

“Because Mom and Dad wouldn't have it.”

“I know they wouldn't, Oliver.”

“Maybe you'd just ask Sondra. After all, she's loaded.”

And then, once again, the siblings were laughing. Doris got to her feet, went into the kitchen, and poured two vodka sodas. She handed her brother the drink, and they toasted to their eldest sister. What a worthless person. What a shit. But could Oliver imagine what Sondra would say if Doris asked her for money? She would probably sue her. For what?

“For making her feel bad!”

“No. No. The request afflicted her nerves. ‘Oh, Your Honor, I can't work. I can't sleep. I'm sure I have one of those stress disorders.'”

“Can we kill her?”

“We could,” Oliver said. “But we won't. Besides, she's already dead in my book.”

Oliver flew home to California. His wife, Sheila, put him right to work in the boutiques. Indeed, it was a lot for Sheila to do the inventory, advertise sales, keep an eye on the employees, make sure their books were current, and attend to payroll. Oliver told Sheila he was glad to help, even if it did mean waking up hours before he normally would and rushing off to the store on Third Street in Santa Monica to stand around and wonder what had happened to his life. The day after landing, while sorting through merchandise and making sure, as Sheila put it, the incompetence of their employees didn't reflect on the price tags of any item, Oliver began to think about what his accountant had told him. After taxes, roughly six hundred thousand would remain of the nine hundred and ten thousand.

But if I lend Dad half a million, and keep a hundred thousand for myself, and it takes more than a year for him to return the money, how will I support myself?
A powerfully distracting subject—later that day, Sheila was going back through Oliver's work and found three mispriced items.

“I'm sorry, Sheila.”

“I hire people to do this job, but you can't pay them enough to care. You, I expect to get things right. These are your stores, too.”

“I know. I know. I'm just jet lagged. I need a couple of days to readjust.”

“Well, two people called in sick!”

“I'm not complaining, Sheila.”

“And I can't be at both stores at once!”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

Sheila began inspecting the display case at the front, making sure everything was in its right place. She touched the stapler next to the register, inspected the mannequins in the window. Oliver had put them in their white tennis dresses first thing after opening this morning. How moronic he'd felt, suiting up those lifeless human parts while people cruised the mall and stared at him. Sheila was wearing one of the all-denim outfits that was typical of her, with the jean shorts and jean jacket, white high-tops, a red sweatband around the forehead, and black rubber bracelets on her arms. Her light eyes had a thrilled but deranged look. The blond, shoulder-length hair was fried from too many dye jobs. The boutique, like its sister-boutique in Manhattan Beach, was the size and design of a racquetball court. Racquetball was her sport. It suited her high-strung personality. She played every day. She picked up a racquet now, spinning it in her hand. She said, “Are you happy to be back?”

“I am. It was difficult being home. Selling the apartment was very emotional. I spent so many years there.”

“It isn't easy getting out of an old place.”

“The packing up.”

“Yes, it is hard. What did you do with your things?”

Oliver pointed across the store at his wife, nodding. He was about to tell her he had given it all away. But then he thought better of it. He said, “I sold most of it to a doorman.”

“That's good,” Sheila said.

“The rest I gave to charity.”

“Did you keep the receipt for a tax write-off?”

“Yes. I've got it somewhere,” Oliver said.

“I want to have a sale next week. How's our music section coming along?”

Sheila had asked Oliver to develop one. She would section off one-fifth of the store. He would sell records, posters, T-shirts. Had he put any thought into it?

“I've had my mind on other things.”

“Thanksgiving is coming,” she said. “You've got to have it up and running by the day after.”

Oliver said that he couldn't put time into it now. He had other pressing demands. “And, you know,” he said, suddenly, “my father needs money from the sale of the apartment. And…and…and here you are, going on about a music section.”

“What are you talking about?”

Oliver's face suddenly looked crushed. Tall yet stooped, with his arms held out to his wife, he said, “My father…he has a colossal debt from the lawsuit with Sondra. Almost a million dollars.”

“And he wants you to pay if off?”

“He says he's out of money.”

“What about the loft?”

“He won't sell it. It's where he works.”

“Where he works?”

“Yes!” Oliver snapped.

“We were going to use that money to pay off the debt from the stores.”

“I know.”

“It's what we talked about, Oliver.”

“I know we did.”

“You promised me.”

“I'm sorry, Sheila.”

Her blue eyes stormy, she said, “So how much?”

“How much what?”

“How much are you going to give him?”

“I think about a…about half a million.”

“Half a million!”

“And the rest we'll use to cut our debt.”

“What rest? There is no rest! We'd lose the stores.”

Instead of pointing out the pleasure this would give him, Oliver said, “Sheila, my parents are more important than these stores. I'm their son. I have to do this for them. After everything they've given me, they deserve this. It's just what any person who loves his parents would do. And their other children have been so absorbed in their own lives. Doris with her new company. And then Sondra with her lawsuits. I'm all they've got. And I'm not even in New York. Well, no, no, I have to do this, Sheila. I just do.”

Sheila shook her head, the expression of devastation strong through her face. She had thought that she would finally get above financial insecurity and start breathing normally again. And now? She would have to continue with that fight? Sheila smacked the head of the racquet into the floor. “I can't believe you're doing this to me!”

On the way home that evening, Oliver and Sheila stopped at the Ralph's for groceries. Sheila ushered the rickety metal cart through the aisles, propelled by debt stress, cynicism, temper. Oliver reminded his wife of her heart condition. She shouldn't get so upset. It was dangerous. The doctors had said so. Besides, couldn't they discuss something else for one minute? They'd been talking about the money all day.

“And you can't eat that,” Oliver said, returning a pack of bacon to the shelf. “Or that!”

Sheila had her hand on a tube of breakfast sausage. She said, “Don't tell me what to do,” and she threw it in the cart.

Oliver snatched up the meat. “You want to kill yourself?” Oliver, as awake as he'd been all day, said, “I can't be on you every minute. You have to take care of yourself.”

“If my heart needs anything right now, it's half a million dollars.”

“Oh, give me a break, Sheila.”

“I lie awake every night thinking about that debt. I have no peace from it.”

Oliver felt heat spreading through his face. He said, “We'll have to figure out another way to pay it off. That's all there is to it.”

Thirty minutes later, they arrived home. Oliver said he would make dinner, that Sheila should sit outside, watch the ocean, the surfers, the clouds, the seagulls. In the kitchen, he chopped vegetables, steamed broccoli, and prepared a whole wheat rigatoni. He brought the food out to the picnic table. Sheila was lying in the hammock. Her eyes were closed. Oliver said, “Dinner's ready, sweetheart.”

Sheila leaned forward and swung her feet down to the ground. She said, “We'll have to sell the house.”

Though he'd yet to sit, Oliver already had his mouth full of rigatoni and he couldn't speak. Olive oil formed a shiny ring around his lips, and parmesan cheese was caught in his stubble. He swallowed then, and said, “Oh, shut up, please!”

“I'm just telling you the truth. We'll have to sell it. How else am I going to pay back the banks?”

“We'll find a way.”

“I don't know if we will, Oliver.”

“Just eat your dinner. It's getting cold.”

“I have no appetite.”

“I cooked for you!”

“And I'm not hungry!”

Sheila sulked at the picnic table. She asked her husband if he knew what it was like to be beleaguered by debt. The constant tallying up of numbers. Would she have enough to get by this month? Yes, if she sold this much. And then spent less here, and lapsed on a payment there. But what about the month after? She was nearly out of credit. The banks wouldn't offer her more cards, wouldn't extend her limits. She had gone back to them twice in the last six months. They hadn't changed their answer. She had even sought investment from friends. People with big wallets. Nothing. She was stuck with this deficit.

“Just eat your dinner.”

But now Sheila was leaning into her left hand. In a matter of seconds, she had become so sweaty. She didn't like being asked if she was okay. Ever since her heart attack, Oliver had done too much of that in her opinion; she'd told him that he must stop. But he couldn't help himself now.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“Yes,” she answered him, her eyes lost in fear.

“You're sure? Do you need me to call 911?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Are you having a heart attack?”

“No!”

“You look like you might be.”

“I'm not! Just get me a paper bag!”

Oliver ran inside to the kitchen, pulling open the cabinets under the sink, and found a paper bag. He didn't notice the hole in the bottom. And when he brought the bag to his wife, Sheila, from on her knees, said, “This one won't fucking work. It's torn. Is there another?”

“I'm calling 911!”

“No. Just get me a fucking paper bag without a hole in it! Oh, forget it, I'll do it myself.”

Sheila dragged herself inside. She ransacked the cabinet beneath the sink. Ajax, Palmolive, Brillo pads—everything thrown over her shoulder and plunging to the floor. At last, a pristine brown paper bag. Sheila put it to her mouth and began breathing in and out, the bag clenching up and then ballooning from the end of her lips. Oliver stared at his wife. She was stretched across the kitchen floor. Her eyes looked caved in, her blond hair was stuck to her skin, her face drained of color. He got down on the floor beside her. He said, “I'm sorry, Sheila. I'm so sorry.”

“Mmmmm.”

“Are you okay?”

Sheila said she was, then she put her head in Oliver's lap and shut her eyes.

“Do you need anything? Let me get you a cold towel.”

“That's okay. Just don't move,” she said, clutching his leg. “Just stay right there. I'll be fine.”

Despite his wife's panic attack, Oliver had five hundred thousand dollars wired into his father's account the next day. Ben called when the money went through. Oliver expected to hear a quality in his father's voice that would make amends for a lifetime of mistreatment. But Ben didn't mention the money. Eliza had suffered bleeding on the brain while at the house in Southampton the day before. Ben told his son that she had been moved to the hospital. Oliver returned directly to New York. He stayed at the loft on Wooster. He rode the LIRR back and forth through Long Island every day to be with his mother, and he reported to his father about her state. He tried to be hopeful, though the news was not good: Eliza was in a coma. Her Parkinson's was complicating matters further. He tried to keep Ben's faith up. He told him that she would pull through. That she was a fighter, he shouldn't worry, she would make it.

Today, Oliver was with his mother at the hospital, and Doris showed. But it was too painful for Eliza's youngest child to see her mother with tubes down her throat and convulsing on a bed—Doris said she couldn't stay long, fifteen minutes at most. She spent this time on the phone with her sister. She'd called Sondra from Eliza's room. She said, “You've killed your mother, and I hope you're fucking happy.”

“Mommy's dead?” Sondra said.

“Almost, yes.”

“You should know I'm planning an appeal. You're a criminal and deserve to be behind bars, especially after everything I've done for you and
Shout!
”

Doris began to scream, “No, no, no! Sondra, you wasted everyone's time at
Shout!
Mine, yours, everyone's. You were so far outside your element at that company. You had no fucking idea what you were doing. And now your mother is dying, and you're responsible. She's in a hospital in Long Island, and you put her here. You drowned her in grief and poisoned her body. For the rest of your life, when you open your eyes each morning, I hope you think about your mother and why you no longer have one. Go straight to the mirror and take a long look at yourself. ‘I killed my mother,' you should say, ‘with my stupidity, with my heartlessness, with my little insignificant life.' You'll probably end up having to do the same about your father. I doubt he'll be long for this world. He's a wreck. He can't work. All he does is worry about Mom.”