He shifted uncomfortably, irritated. “Is this why you’re still single?”
I was enjoying myself too much to feel hurt. “Come on. Fess up.”
I could tell he was genuinely peeved with my persistence, but he indulged me. I promised Earnest then that I’d never tell, so I won’t reveal all the details—and I’m sure he didn’t tell me all the details—but it had to do with a brothel where Earnest did something that got him into trouble with the management. Brassard, also a patron that night, saved his bacon and got his ear sliced almost off for his efforts.
I choked down my laughter and tried to remember whether I’d seen anything strange about Brassard’s ears.
“I was eighteen years old, okay? And a virgin when I first got to Vietnam.”
“Did I say anything? Any comment at all?”
“At that age, a guy—”
“I’m not judging!”
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
I chuckled into a forkful of mashed potatoes, and Earnest went back to eating in a huff.
After a couple of minutes of silence, he added, “And don’t tell Diz about it. And don’t mention it to Jim. Or anybody.”
I swore I wouldn’t, and I never have until now.
He drove me back to the park-and-ride, dropped me off, and I drove back to Brassard’s. My muscles were sore and stiffening, but I felt better. Maybe I’d stay with this project, this choice, a little longer. There were good people here, there was a lot to learn, and it all felt new and refreshing.
Chapter 11
But that was just another zig or zag, dip or bounce, of the cosmic roller coaster. By the next day, I had relapsed into indecision once again, and by sunset had more or less resolved to bail out, despite the forest’s being so very lovely.
In any case, unbeknownst to me, it had become a moot question. The dimensions of the choice changed radically only a week after Cat’s visit.
Brassard and the lawyer and I had all felt safe with my delaying payment of ten thousand dollars until Aunt Theresa’s broker sold some remaining stocks. We had reviewed the papers; we all knew it was just a matter of a few technicalities required to liquidate and release the funds. Brassard had kindly given me ten weeks to hand him the last of what I owed him.
But there was a little glitch in the plan: the great recession, that deep malfunction in the machinery of the American economy. Of course, I knew about the financial markets’ collapse and the bank bailouts and the suddenly obvious divide between Main Street and Wall Street. But it had never occurred to me that it would affect me personally. I’d never had any money to lose, no mortgage to get into over my head.
But those vibrations in the machine, those grinding bearings and blown head gaskets (Earnest’s way of expressing it) affected my inheritance. My aunt’s canny local broker had invested some of her money in funds that paid extraordinary dividends. Turned out they were packages of subprime mortgages or some financial instrument associated with them. That’s why he’d had a hard time liquidating the last of her stock assets.
All this had been metastasizing while I was blissfully and miserably toughing out life on the hill. The end result was that not long after Cat’s visit, six days before my final payment to Brassard was due, the cosmic magician whipped aside his handkerchief to show that—ta-dah!—the ten thousand dollars had all but disappeared. Less than two thousand remained.
By then my own savings had dwindled to about three thousand. I knew I needed some pittance to live on, at least some transition money to move back to Boston.
It appeared that the string of disasters of the past few years had followed me even here. What had I been thinking? That putting some geography between me and the site of my mistakes would put them behind me? I would suddenly get less stupid? My penitential hardships in the woods would atone for past sins? Of course this stuff doesn’t shake off that easily. I was a fuckup, and here was the proof. Again.
All that was hard. But the toughest part was still ahead: telling Brassard. I had gotten the definitive word from my lawyer while sitting unbelieving in my car at the top of the ridge, where my phone could get a signal. No, no, no, I argued, for sure? Yes, sorry, yes, my lawyer said, final word, sorry.
So there it was. Six days. Brassard would need to know as soon as possible, because he’d built his own plans around my payment. It would be unconscionable to delay telling him. The shame I felt is indescribable. Here was another terror: the thought of facing the Brassards. I postponed the moment. Parked my car, walked back up to camp, numb and empty.
Beautiful day. Birds raucous in the trees like a crazy orchestra tuning up. A benevolent wind gently tossing the leaves so that sunlight and leaf shadows swam like fish, light and dark, schooling on the forest floor. My campsite looked lovely and dear. There it was: the sum total of my feeble and misguided attempt at making a home. A little era of my life, for whatever it was worth, past and gone. I cried at the imminent awfulness of telling Brassard. I figured I could give him two thousand and then let him decide whether to take the land back and sell it to someone else, or maybe agree to a new payment schedule despite the fact that I had no income. Or he’d sue me. Or whatever happened in cases like this.
I washed my red face in my bucket and marched down the hill. Cruelly, that magical clarity had returned, and the forest was unbearably beautiful, a rich embroidery in perfect focus. It was surreally divorced from my state of mind.
Down the hill. A new stab of terror as the house came into view. Across the ragged strip of scrub field, across the road. Late morning. Didn’t see anybody,
