Love isn’t enough.Kristie didn’t heed these words in time to avoid leaving Altoona without a backward glance when she was eighteen, nor her lost years in Miami Beach, nor her unhealthy relationship with Jesse. Restaurant to restaurant, bar to bar, flitting here and there like a sparrow, floating on the current of her life rather than doing the strong backstroke or butterfly—that was Kristie. No post–high school education. No real skills.
Love isn’t enough.
Before the rest of it, before the handing over of the letter andthe clawing at the air and the dying and the leaving of Kristie with $27,000 in debt, Sheila finally met the love of her life, the owner of a local HVAC company named Glenn. They’d met when the water heater blew in the basement on West Chestnut. It was nine o’clock on a Sunday night, and Glenn had stayed until nearly midnight, helping Sheila mop up the mess.
Three years after Sheila met Glenn he started getting dizzy spells. Night sweats followed. He was so tired he couldn’t get out of bed, and then he, a man who had always walked the line between “strong” and “beefy,” dropped twenty pounds like they were nothing. It came out that for part of Glenn’s life his father had been leasing his farmland to a fracking company. Four months later Glenn was dead from lymphoma. Then, because one tragedy doesn’t produce antibodies that protect you from the next tragedy, Sheila got her own kind of cancer, and eight months later she was pulling an imaginary rope above her hospital bed.
Kristie doesn’t tell Sierra all of this, of course—but she gives her the broad brushstrokes, an outline, enough so that Sierra is momentarily quiet. “Do you want to hear something else about my mom?” says Kristie, into the silence that she herself has created.
“Um,” says Sierra. “Sure?”
“We had bad schools in Philadelphia, where I was born, okay? So my mom—my single mom, worked as a legal assistant, my smart and beautiful mom, who should have gone to law school but never got the chance even to get her bachelor’s—moved us to Altoona, because she saw it on a list of safe places to raise a family. And you know what she got in return for that? I left her as soon as I could, because I thought Altoona was too small-town for me, and I thought I was meant for better things.”
“I bet youweremeant for better things,” says Sierra. She’s definitely going off script now.
“I appreciate your saying that. But my mom was meant forbetter things too. And she had shitty luck. Some people just have shitty luck, right, Sierra? My mom was one of those people.”
“Can we talk about a payment plan?” says Sierra. She’s trying to claw her way back. Line, please, stage manager. “I’m sure we can figure out an option that would work foryou,Kristie.”
“We can talk all you want,” says Kristie. “I still don’t have any money. And can I tell you one more thing, Sierra?”
Sierra’s sigh travels from her phone, pings a cell tower somewhere in the vicinity, and lands in Kristie’s ear. “What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“Um,” says Sierra. “Congratulations?”
“You’re the first person who knows that, except maybe the lady who was working the checkout when I bought the pregnancy test at Walgreens.”
“Is this—good news for you?”
“The jury is still out on that, Sierra. The jury is most definitely still out.” Silence. Kristie waits two beats, then says, “Is there anythingyouwant to tellme,Sierra?”
“Actually—no, wait. I can’t.”
“Go ahead. You can tell me. I’m a vault.”
“Okay.” A pause ensues. “I hate my job,” says Sierra. “I really hate it. Ihatehearing people’s sad stories and knowing that I’m supposed to get money out of them. I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”
“You seem really nice, Sierra.”
“Thank you.” Sierra’s voice has lowered to a whisper.
“And I think you’re right—you’renotcut out for it. You’re too kind. You have a good heart.”
“Thank you for saying that. Idohave a good heart.”
“You seem like a really smart young woman. Let me guess—what are you? About twenty-two?”
“Twenty-three.”
“I bet you could find another job.”
“This job pays pretty well though. And I have school loans myself.” She sighs. “So I know how it feels. Which should make it easier, but actually it doesn’t. Actually, it makes it a lot harder.”
“I bet. But I’m sure you could find something better.”
“You think so?”
