As for the money, “It’s always been so important to you to have all the things everyone else at Saint Mark’s has. You think I wanted to be the one to tell you we couldn’t afford all that stuff?” And as for the women, “You try living with someone who’s so much more responsible and successful and such a better parent. It erodes your self-esteem completely! If I hadn’t found some way to feel good about myself, I’d have ended up depressed, or worse. You think that would’ve been better for our son?”
The mortgage company was unimpressed with Markie’s promises that if they would merely give the Bryants a slight extension, she could make things right. Because by then, unbeknownst to her, Kyle had already requested the maximum number of extensions allowed to enable him to divert their monthly mortgage payments to stave off the collection agencies breathing down his neck about the credit cards and home-equity loans that were even more delinquent than the house note. They were all done granting extensions on this account, a mortgage representative told Markie over the phone, in a tone that made it clear just how many times Kyle had called them and how annoying he must have been. But here’s what they would do: they’d give Markie and Kyle six months to either pay up or get the hell out before they initiated foreclosure proceedings.
Markie couldn’t pay. Their “rainy day” fund was gone, along with Jesse’s school account. Enter Clayton and Lydia and their Loan of Many Attached Strings. In hindsight, Markie wondered if borrowing tuition money to keep Jesse at Saint Mark’s a few months longer might have been more an act of cruelty than compassion. Word had traveled through the student body that not only had his parents filed for divorce in the wake of a financial crisis, but Jesse’s father had worked his way into the bedrooms of most of the Mothers’ Club over the course of his son’s nine-year tenure at the school.
There had been vague rumors before—ones Markie had studiously ignored—but in the spirit of upper-crust discretion, the gossip had been tastefully squelched before it had been allowed to gain legs. Apparently, once it got out that the Bryants were no longer financially capable of remaining in the Saint Mark’s circle, it was decided that they should also no longer be afforded diplomacy.
If Markie had paid attention to her husband’s financial shenanigans, she could have put a stop to them before they got so out of control. If she had acknowledged the lipstick stains, the scent of someone else’s perfume, the alibis that didn’t add up, she could have called him on his infidelity, made him renew his vow of faithfulness. If she had stopped to think about it, to piece together that the money and the women were signs of a deeper problem, she could have dragged him with her into counseling, locked the door, and insisted that they not leave until they had worked out all of their issues, recommitted themselves to each other, their family, their son.
Were it not for her willful blindness, she could have spared Jesse the humiliation of trading private school for public, five thousand square feet of living space for nine hundred, family dinners with both of his parents for traded weekends via court-ordered visitation. Relative anonymity among his Saint Mark’s classmates for the infamy of being “that kid whose parents self-destructed.”
The night they told Jesse about the divorce, Kyle pulled the boy aside to say he was sorry about how things had turned out. He didn’t fess up to the maxed-out credit cards, the secret refinancing of the house, the unpaid mortgage statements, his pilfering of Jesse’s education account. He certainly didn’t mention the Mothers’ Club.
What he said was that he had “tried to reason with your mother,” but that it hadn’t worked out. “What can I do, pal? I guess she just doesn’t want to be married anymore.”
When Jesse relayed this to his mother later, he said it in a tone that suggested he wasn’t entirely sure his father had been completely honest with him. Markie studied her son carefully as she considered her answer. The boy knew his parents—he knew his father’s impulsiveness, his occasional immaturity, how it sometimes seemed like there were two children in the house, Markie the lone parent. He knew, deep down, that she would never have given up on her marriage, on their family, unless his father had committed some major matrimonial infraction.
But it didn’t matter what the boy knew, deep down. What mattered was what Markie saw in his eyes, in the set of his mouth: Don’t tell me what he said isn’t true. Don’t tell me your side of it. Don’t tell me anything that will make me question my father, a man whose dependability has always been a fragile, fleeting thing in my life. Because I will not survive that.
Markie patted his hair and kissed his cheek. And did not set him straight. Instead, she let him believe what his father had said, that the blame for the dissolution of their marriage, their family, Jesse’s entire world, lay at her feet.
And that was why, in addition to avoiding their former neighborhood, her job at Saint Mark’s, the Mothers’ Club, and every other person, place, or thing that reminded her of their past life, she was also avoiding her own son. Or letting him avoid her, as the case may be.
Chapter Eight
The side door slammed shut as Markie raced downstairs to say goodbye. “Damn!” she said to the empty kitchen. She should have skipped the hair and teeth brushing. The day before, she had managed to fit those in and still make it to the kitchen as Jesse was making himself a sandwich for breakfast, though when he saw her, he dropped the knife, abandoned the open jars of peanut butter and jam, grunted “Bye,” and walked out of the house, a backpack in one hand and two plain pieces of bread in the other. He must have adjusted his schedule this morning, timing it so he could slip out before she got downstairs.
A couple of weeks earlier, after their first Skype call with her parents from the bungalow, she had made the mistake of interpreting Jesse’s hug, and his offer to split a sandwich with her, as an invitation for her to take another shot at bridging the gap between them. “Listen,” she had said, placing her hand on his, “Mrs. Saint thinks maybe you were smoking outside yesterday when I was out buying lunch. Is that true? Are you smoking?”
He yanked his arm out of her reach. “We haven’t even been here a whole weekend, and you’ve already got the neighbors spying on me? Nice trust, Mom.”
“I didn’t ask her to—”