“Grandma?”
I hear a rustling sound, and I imagine her sitting up in bed, fumbling for her glasses. Over the years, I’ve watched the wrinkles in her forehead grow deeper, memorized the crease between her eyebrows that never disappears, not even when she’s sleeping. She wears her hair short, just below her ears. It’s dark, but not entirely gray. She always said I was lucky I got her hair.
Never dye it,she said.If your mother had just left her hair alone, she’d have looked so much younger.
(In family therapy, a counselor said that was terrible advice, implying as it did that I should adhere to patriarchal standards of beauty.)
“I can’t call the bank.” My grandmother sounds old, tired.
“I’ll call, then. Just give me the account numbers.” Naomi always said she was the only one who could access the trust until I turn thirty. But she also said there were contingencies for my education and medical emergencies.
“I don’t have any account numbers.”
“Okay, whatever you do have. Passwords, trust numbers. I don’t know what you call it. Whatever you’ve used for my treatment in the past.”
I hear my grandmother take a deep breath, followed by a long exhale.
“The money for your treatment didn’t come from a trust.”
“Why not? My dad set it up so we could take what we need.” That’s what she told me.
“He didn’t.”
I feel something shift beneath my feet, so sudden that my stomach lurches.
I thought I didn’t take my privilege for granted, but now the words I said to Dr. Mackenzie echo back to me. I nearly laughed at the notion that I didn’t have enough money for something I wanted.
I’ve never actually seendocumentationfor the trust my father left me, and I never asked to, secure that what I needed would always be there. I try to remember if I ever spoke about it with Georgia, but I only rememberNaomi’s voice, assuring me that my father took care of me, that we could afford whatever I needed—school, doctors, therapists. My father wanted to take care of me, she said.
I never doubted it, because I’d read his suicide note, along with the rest of the world.My daughter will be better off if she doesn’t have to worry about her old man’s broken brain.He thought he was helping me, relieving me of what he saw as a terrible burden—himself.
“How did you pay for boarding school, college, my MFA?” I ask.
All my life,money was no object. I had no reason to wonder whether we could affordthe best care money could buy.
“There was some money,” Naomi says carefully.
I can still see her face when I told her I wanted to come here. I thought she was shocked I’d chosen this place after what happened with Georgia, but now I wonder whether she was doing the math: If I insisted that only this place could help me, she needed to find a way to send me here.
Grandma Naomi: my rock, the one who kept the house neat and clean, who made sure I got to school on time and brushed my hair and teeth each night; the one I could trust. Georgia: the basketcase who lied like she breathed. All my life, that’s what I knew.
“But there wasn’tenoughmoney,” I supply.
Dr. Mackenzie said that Naomi wasn’t a healthy role model for me any more than Georgia was.
“No,” my grandmother says heavily. It’s quiet until she adds, “I mortgaged the house.”
Plenty of people have mortgages. Most people do, if they’re lucky enough to buy a home in the first place. When I get home, I’ll get a job, help with the bills.
Naomi adds, “The bank is talking foreclosure.”
“Foreclosure?” I echo. I glance around the bedroom, at the luxury mattress and expensive furnishings. I wonder if the wordforeclosurehas ever been uttered within these four walls.
“I didn’t want you to worry,” my grandmother says.
“But we might lose the house?”
“Yes.”
