Just don’t go crazy, he says. You should be fine.
At first, it’s scary to shop, to go up to the register and wait for the employee to ring everything through and then give her credit card a swipe, and then there’s a long moment of waiting while the computer hums and thinks and the cashier stares at the screen and Gloria thinks that this is it, this time the cashier will take out of a pair of scissors and cut up the card and tell her to get lost, that she doesn’t have enough money to pay for any of it, that she never will. It’s her worst nightmare, that second before the computer spits out the receipt for her to sign, when it seems like the whole world is made of glass. But the card never comes back declined, it always goes through and the cashier smiles and hands her a pen to sign and Gloria smiles back, more than relieved that everything is still okay.
*
There are always people at the house, sometimes professionals from one of the different clubs Jacky belongs to, other business owners looking to network, or sometimes kids from one of the restaurants, teenagers who come over for dinner and stay late, watching TV and drinking beer with Jacky, talking and smoking and laughing about sports and movies and everything, because Jacky can make conversation about anything, that’s always been one of his gifts.
Ever since he took over the restaurant, Jacky likes the house full of people, the floors groaning under the weight of shuffling feet and thick with the smell of perfume and cigarettes, he was never like that before, he always liked their privacy, he liked to come home from work and eat dinner and relax, read the paper and watch the news. It’s called networking, he says, it’s for the business. But she thinks this change might be because they’ve never caught pregnant again, even though they’ve been trying for ten years, even though the doctor says there’s nothing wrong with either of them, and their plans for a family are quietly shelved, then disappear altogether. The house is too big, too empty without the happy sounds kids would make, and he wants it to fill it up, kill the silence.
So he puts out an invitation to everyone, and at first not many show up, but Jacky keeps pushing, keeps cajoling, and more and more come, until every night is a party at the Seever house, plenty of food and beer, Jacky sitting at the head of the dining-room table like a king, his face red and jolly, and it all seems so ridiculous and sad, and there’s something desperate about it too. She doesn’t like Jacky very much when there are other people around—she actually doesn’t like him at all, with his deep, gusty laugh and moronic jokes, and she feels embarrassed for her husband, because he’s busy making a fool of himself, although no one else seems to mind. They all think he’s one helluva good guy, a real gas, like her father used to say. They laugh and slap him on the fat of the arm and sit around her nice cherrywood dining-room table and eat and leave behind wet rings with their glasses because they won’t use the coasters she puts out every damn night.
You should join us, Jacky tells her, but she won’t. She cooks the food, puts it out on the table before they all sit down, and then cleans up, after everyone has moved to another room, so they don’t watch her picking up their messes and wiping up their spills, like a maid in her own house. She loads the dishwasher, wipes down the tables and counters once, and then again, and heads upstairs, puts her hair up in rollers and applies her cold cream. She doesn’t like the noise, their talk about people and places she doesn’t know, will never know. She’d rather be in her own bed, tucked down under the comforter with the ceiling fan whirring companionably overhead.
*
It’s easy to spend money, easier than she ever knew. Her father is a man who uses cash to pay for everything, who has a big steel safe in his bedroom full of greenbacks. He doesn’t trust banks, but that’s not a surprise, because he doesn’t trust anyone. He jeers when Gloria shows him her credit card, his face mean as he mashes his cigarette into a saucer.
“You’re coming up in the world, are you?” he says. “Managed to trick a bank into lending you money you don’t need?”