It comes to me in the middle of the night, what I need to do.
It comes to me in a circuitous sort of way because I’m thinking of horses. Actually, what I’m thinking about is our unborn baby’s bedroom, and how I swore to Clara that I’d have it painted, and now here we were, mere weeks until launch, and the room had yet to be painted. I’m thinking about how much something like that costs—professional painters—because Clara wrongfully assumed I was too busy at work to do it myself, and suggested I hire someone to do it for me. I’d put off so many other tasks on the house—installing the crown molding that Clara wants, maintenance checks for the aging appliances, the sump pump, the hot water heater, the air conditioner, all for lack of money and not time. Clara had already picked out a color for the baby’s room—Let It Rain, it’s called, a delicate gray to pair with the pricey new quilt—so all I needed to do was pick up the paint.
It won’t take more than two hours to paint, I’d told her. Don’t hire someone. I’ll do it.
So there I am lying in bed, thinking about the paint and the paint store, and I start thinking about the horses we drive past on those country roads that lead to the paint store, back where Clara’s parents used to live. I think of Maisie, in the back seat of the car, always so excited to see the horses. “Look, Daddy, brown one!” or, “Horsey with polka dots,” she’ll scream, pointing, so that I find myself enamored by the smile on her face. Horsey with polka dots? Of course there’s no such thing. But I look anyway because that’s what Maisie wants me to do.
But thinking about the horses makes me think of horse racing, and though I don’t know a thing about horse racing, I decide it’s something I can learn.
I don’t actually bother going to a racetrack, but rather find an offtrack betting site online, one that links directly to my bank account so I can easily withdraw money to bet with, and have the winnings just as easily transferred back in. In the morning I stop by the bank and set up a separate account, only in my name so that Clara doesn’t see the comings and goings of cash in our personal accounts, not that she ever looks anyway but just in case. For whatever reason, I set up a POD at the banker’s suggestion, a payable-on-death account to keep my funds out of probate court in the unlikely chance that I should die. I name a beneficiary. Clara.
I’m not trying to be scheming, because that’s not the kind of man I am, but I don’t want Clara to worry about our financial woes; between her mother and the baby, she’s got enough on her mind right now and doesn’t need to be stressed about a problem I can solve. I just need to earn enough money to pay my debts, to get my practice back on track, and then I’ll be happy.
I do research on horse racing; I learn the vocabulary, backstretch and pari-mutuel, bankroll and trifecta. I create an online account and link it to my new bank account. I set myself up in my office during a forty-minute gap when I don’t have an appointment, and discreetly turn the lock on the door. I get to work.
In order to bet, I need money I can bet with. Clara’s savings account has already been drained. My money market, too, has been liquidated and poured into this dental practice. What we have in our combined checking account is barely enough to pay the mortgage and electricity and the rising cost of groceries. I leave it alone, knowing we need to eat. The last thing in the world I want is for Clara to go to the grocery store and have the clerk tell her that the credit or debit card has been denied. She’ll fill with shame and embarrassment long before she fills with anger or dread. I see her there, my beautiful wife with Maisie by her side—Maisie already fussing because of how much she hates to grocery shop—and Clara’s fair cheeks flaming red because everyone is staring at her for the denied payment. I hear her words, the shaky rhythm of her voice as she says to the clerk, There must be some mistake, and asks the clerk to run it again, only to go through the same shame a second time around. I won’t do that to Clara.
The way I see it I have two options: Maisie’s 529-college savings fund, and my life insurance plan. My first thought is to go for the life insurance, to surrender the policy for its cash value. It’s not like I intend to die anytime soon. It’s a whole-life insurance policy, like life insurance and a savings account rolled into one, or at least that’s the way I explained it to Clara years ago when I sought coverage. Instead of a policy for a fixed time—say until our children turn eighteen and become financially independent—I opted for the whole-life policy, a decision that is paramount now. The cash is far more valuable in my hands than sitting squandered away, tied up in a life insurance policy I may never need.
I fill out the necessary paperwork to surrender the policy, though it will take time for the insurance company to pay out. In the meantime, I start slowly with Maisie’s college education fund; the loss is less than withdrawing from my own retirement fund, and so it seems like a smart choice, the lesser of two evils.
By the end of the day I’ve made about seventy-five dollars, which somehow feels like a million bucks. It’s a good day, I tell myself, until an hour or so later when Clara calls, scared out of her mind, saying her mother got ahold of the car keys again and took the car out for a ride.
“I thought your father did away with the car keys,” I say, and she rejoins with, “That’s what I thought, too.”
Turns out Tom forgot to hide the keys.
“They found her,” she assures me, but still she’s scared stiff. “One of these times she’s going to get hurt. Really hurt.”
“Or hurt someone else,” I nearly say, though I don’t want to be the Negative Nelly and remind Clara of this. She and her father both know how much is at stake every time Louisa somehow or other manages to find herself in the driver’s seat of a car.
“Where’d she go this time?” I ask, and Clara reluctantly tells me that her mother was navigating the country roads out to the rental property that Tom still owns, telling a passerby when he found her pulled off to the side of the road, completely lost and disoriented, trying to find directions on the back of an old CD case as if it was a street map, that she was attempting to get home.
Where’s home, ma’am? the passerby had asked, spotting the Medic Alert bracelet that Louisa wears and calling the toll-free number for help, but Louisa had only shaken her head and said she didn’t know. She didn’t have the slightest clue where home was, though she described it, the big, old farmhouse just a mile or so from my favorite shortcut through town, a forgotten, winding road that managed to circumvent nearly all of the town’s traffic.
But Tom and Louisa didn’t live there anymore; they hadn’t lived there in many years.
But as with everything else in life, that was something Louisa couldn’t remember.