Polyester Lady’s desk had a ring-shaped coffee stain. Allie couldn’t stop staring at it.
First of all, it was a spectacular desk. Because this was a government office at the Department of Social Services, Allie figured the desk was just old and had been sitting in the room for generations. Probably no one had noticed it turning into a valuable antique. But it had, and it was worth caring for.
Second, the stain was right in front of Allie’s chair, on the non-owner side of the desk. Which meant some visitor had carelessly left it.
If this had been Allie’s desk, she could not have forced herself to cede her irritation over that thoughtlessness. She already couldn’t, and she might never sit in this office again.
All of these thoughts provided an effective distraction from the more crucial thoughts. Thoughts like Please let this be Mom I talk to. Not Dad. I’m too mad at Dad and we never talk to each other in a way that means anything anyway.
And, What is she going through where she is?
And, When will I see her again?
“I’ll give you a signal,” Polyester Lady said, holding up three fingers. “I’ll signal you at three minutes left, two minutes left, one minute left. I don’t mean to sound callous, but inmates can only call collect, and somebody has to be picking up the tab here.”
Why don’t I have money? Allie wondered. I always did before. Why wasn’t that on the printed list of things I was supposed to pack before leaving the house?
The phone rang. Allie crystallized into a solid block of fear. She wasn’t sure exactly why. Once upon a time she had talked to her parents every time she turned around. The most recent example of once upon a time had been yesterday.
This should be easy, she thought.
It didn’t make it any easier to think so.
“Yes, I’ll accept the charges,” Polyester Lady said.
She extended the dangerous phone in Allie’s direction.
Allie stared at it for a couple of beats too long. Then she reached out and took it. Swallowing with difficulty, her eyes glued to that maddening coffee stain, she held the phone carefully to her ear.
“Allie?” Her mom. “Honey? Are you there?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
It struck Allie as a ridiculous question and left her literally speechless. Like something from the theater of the absurd. Still, that ring of coffee taunted her. Just use a coaster, you know?
“Honey? Are you there?”
She was. But she had been lost for a moment, drowning in the emotion of a reaction to her mother’s familiar voice.
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“Are you okay? Where do they have you?”
“In a sort of a . . . group home . . . type thing.”
“Is it okay there?”
“Depends on your definition of okay, I guess.”
Much to Allie’s alarm, she could hear her mother dissolve into sobs.
“Honey, I’m so sorry,” her mom said.
But Allie didn’t want to hear that her mom was sorry. She wanted to hear the parts of the situation that didn’t seem to go without saying. Why. How long. The meaty stuff like that.
“I need to know what happened,” she said.
“It was . . . your father and I . . . Well. You know how things were really good with your dad’s business in the last few years . . .”
“Mom. I’m sitting in the office of a social worker who’s going to give me finger signals when I’m running out of phone time. Because a collect call is not within my budget these days. I need the short version. You and Dad were arrested and charged with . . .”
“Tax fraud.”
Allie stared at the ring of stain in silence for a moment and watched it move—float—in a way it should not have. Maybe she was just staring too hard. Or maybe not.
“So . . . ,” Allie said. Then she paused, waiting to see if this was something she could bring herself to say or not. “So . . . when you had the pool installed in the backyard . . . and when Dad bought the boat, you could have just given the money to the IRS instead, and we’d all be at home now, and none of this would be happening?”
Silence on the line, not counting a sob or two.
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty, Allie. It’s easy to go back and see how to do things—”
“No. No, Mom. Don’t even. It’s always easy. When you owe taxes, you pay them. And everybody knows it. Why didn’t you tell me this was about to happen? Give me a chance to be halfway prepared.”
“We didn’t know we’d be arrested, honey.”
“Yes you did! I saw you guys whispering to each other and then shutting up when you saw me coming.”
“We suspected, but we didn’t know for sure.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you’re so . . . well . . . you know how you are.”
“No. How am I?”
“You have these . . . rigid ideas about what people should do.”
Again the coffee stain spun slightly. Allie raised her eyes to Polyester Lady to see if she had any polyester fingers raised. Not yet.
“You’re seriously insulting me for being honest?”
“Of course not. Not at all, honey. I’m just trying to tell you why we were afraid to get into it with you.”
A movement caught Allie’s eye. She saw three fingers go up.
“Look, we can talk about this later, Mom. Right now I need to know if you’re getting out on bail.”
A pause. Then, “No.”
“The judge didn’t give you bail? You’re not murderers.”
“No, he did. He set bail. It was kind of high because I guess they thought maybe we were a flight risk. But we got a bail amount. But . . . Oh. How do I put this? When the IRS finds out you owe them a lot of money . . . but they don’t know how much yet . . . they have to do a big investigation to find out what income was hidden. Until they do, they pretty much slap a lock on everything you own. Literally or figuratively. Or both. The house. The boat. The bank account. Not technically ours at this point. None of it. None of it is anything we can access right now.”
Allie said nothing. Because she had no idea what to say. She wanted to know if they would lose the house she’d lived in since birth. But if she asked, she might find out.
Polyester Lady folded down one of the three fingers.
“Most people have relatives,” her mom said. “To go to a bail bondsman and put something up for them. But all we have is Nanna and Pop-Pop, and their nest egg is just barely covering their nursing home, and it’s disappearing fast. They can’t go anywhere anyway . . .”
“Right. I’m clear on our lack of relatives. Right now especially. Aren’t you worried these phone calls from the jail get monitored or taped or something? Or overheard by somebody? And here you are more or less admitting to me that you guys are guilty of tax fraud . . .”
“We have no intention of trying to claim innocence, honey. We’re just going to throw ourselves on the mercy of a judge and hope he goes easy.”
“So we’re talking years. I’m out here on my own for years. In two and a half years I’ll just be grown and I’ll turn eighteen and walk out of the system on my own? That’s what I’m being told here?”