“How long will you need all those jobs for?” she asks, her eyes holding their size. My stomach churns with nerves as I imagine myself working multiple jobs day and night, just to hand over most of my earnings over to the dark hole of debt.
“As long as it takes,” I say truthfully.
I will pay this debt off, my last way to show respect to my mother.
“How much do you need, seriously Britta?” she scoots to the edge of the couch and leans forward, the ends of her box-dyed hair sweeping over her knees as she does.
“Oh, not much, just a tiny $237,563.20,” I smile, and then laugh, because what twenty-year-old will be able to pay that off within a reasonable time with zero education and no real skills. It is kinda funny. If you’re exhausted and emotionally depleted and you choose to laugh instead of cry.
I won’t cry about this, it’s not good, but still, I know I could have it a lot worse. And crying won’t help. Laughing will, if even for just the moment.
“Down to the cent?” Melody doesn’t see the humor; her voice is tight and strained. “That’s not fair. How can they expect a girl to pay all that back?” She scoffs and I look up in her eyes, which are darting all over the front door, her mind running like a hamster in a wheel.
“I’m an adult. And trust me, there’s no loophole. I have to do this. I told her I’d take care of things after she was gone and I will. And the lawyer at the hospital said I can take as much time as I need.”
It makes me laugh now, thinking of how the stout man wiped his head with an embroidered handkerchief as he graciously allowed me “extra time” to pay a massive amount of debt. Debt incurred by impending and resulting death, no less. How generous and kind the establishment had been to me, us.
“Are you sure?” she asks, and I can see her mind still trying, desperately, to find some dusty, long-undiscovered ‘gotcha’ that just wasn’t there.
“I’m sure, Mel,” I say, resting a hand on her knee. I don’t want this to be her worry, too.
She sinks back into the couch and sighs heavily, a sigh I feel and understand so deeply.
“I know,” I reply, matching her position, settling into the worn leather, the afghan on the back of the couch sliding down over my shoulders.
“What about the house? Please tell me she owned the house.”
I can hear the hope in her voice as she asks, and I turn my head, the afghan weighing me down with warmth, making me suddenly sleepy. I swear I haven’t really slept well in two years.
“Yeah, it’s paid off. Thankfully she always paid the mortgage before she bought her booze,” I said, letting my eyes briefly close. “But it’s not worth much. The lawyer told me they work with a company that will help me sell it, to make it easier on me. I’ll probably call him this week.”
“Hey,” Melody grabs my knee and is leaning forward again, jostling me from my sliver of rest.
“You should come work with me. Seriously, now that I’m thinking about it, it’s almost perfect,” she adds, her head nodding to outwardly match her inner thoughts. “Mavis just put in her notice; they’ll need someone new soon. And if I tell them you’re my cousin, they will definitely hire you. They love me. And you want to sell this place anyway! So you need to move!”
Melody had started cleaning high-end houses of the elite in the rolling New York countryside.
“Why’d Mavis quit?” I’d never met Mavis, but she was described in detail to me by Melody a few years ago, and the image had always stuck. A middle-aged woman with a perfectly twisted white bun and long, boney fingers adorned with gold rings. She sounded eccentric, and kind of cool, honestly. After all, how many truly unique people did you come across these days? However, Melody always found her pretentious and strange.
“She’s going abroad, that’s all she said,” Melody shrugged. “But seriously, you can stay with me and Donny until you find a place. And you can get a really cheap little place downtown and make way more money with just the one job. And you can save and pay back way faster.”
Looking at her as she nodded, her dark hair shiny under the dim living room light, she looked so hopeful and happy. I wanted to be hopeful and happy, too.
“How much do you make? You’re full-time, right?” I knew Melody had been cleaning the homes of the wealthy and elite for a few years but we’d never really gotten into the details.
“Full time, yep. 8am to 5pm. Benefits, too. The pay is really good and the clients usually tip us too,” she smiles, still nodding, edging closer to me, her hands wrapping around mine in my lap.
“Come on, it makes sense. Then you can be near me! And one job is way better than two or three. I mean, it’s cleaning houses. But it’s not like being a hotel maid. Half the time the homes are spotless anyway because most people don’t even live in them. These people are so loaded, Britta. Wait til you see these homes!”
Her coaxing is enough, I need a change and it hits me in that moment that a move and a new job is exactly what I need to repave my road, to make sure going forward I have some slice of happy, not just darkness and debt.
“How much?” I nudge her again.
“You have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and you can’t bring your cell phone inside the house,” she says flatly, “no negotiating.”
“Means nothing to me, I have no one to tell things to besides you, anyway.”
“$100,000,” she whispers.
I nearly leap from my seat. “What?!”
She sticks her hands out and gives me the universal sign for ‘hang on a second’ as my eyes go wide and
