Jess Walter - The Financial Lives Of the Poets

Last week, I tracked down the Providential Equity home office, in Benicia, California, but the main number simply returns you to this chase-your-own-tail voicemail system. Today I’m trying an old reporter trick, starting with the prefix, 392, and then tapping in random digits, praying that a phone will ring in a cubicle where an actual human being works, but this particular company seems entirely computerized now, perhaps taken over by the mainframe that wiped out humanity in the Terminator movies. I’m just about to give up, after forty minutes on the phone, when a carbon-based being suddenly answers, “Client services, this is Gilbert.”

“G-…” For just a second I can’t speak. “Gilbert?” I feel like weeping. “Gilbert! Thank God. I need to talk to you. Don’t hang up!”

“Certainly, sir. What can I do for you?”

I patiently explain: (1) I had a mortgage. (2) Lost my job. (3) Fell behind. (4) The mortgage got sold along with a bundle of others. (5) The company that bought these mortgages was bought by Gilbert’s company. (6) Before the sale, I foolishly got a forbearance agreement. (7) And now I have a “Dear Homeowner” letter in front of me that says I’m going to lose my house in less than a week unless I make the necessary reinstatement payment. (8) But I’ve got some things brewing and if I could just have another month or two, I could catch up…

Gilbert says, “Sure, sure,” and “Oh my,” when I mention forbearance, and “I’m sorry,” that I lost my job, and, “Of course,” I need a little more time, and “We want you to stay in your home as much as you do, Mr. Prior.” Gilbert is brilliant, loveable. He takes down my name, email, phone number, looks up my account, says it’s going to be okay. I can hear his organic, nonautomated fingers typing. I tell him I’m going to write a letter about what a star he’s been. Gilbert laughs gently and tells me that’s not necessary. Gilbert isn’t surprised that I’ve had trouble getting anyone on

the phone; he confesses that “things are a little crazy right now” at Providential Equity. But he knows exactly who can help me. There is a program for homeowners like me and I should be eligible for “extended mortgage modification”-and I’m near tears when Gilbert mentions another person’s name and title and extension and says that I should use Gilbert’s name, and while I look for a pen to write down this new human being’s name-Joyce or Joe or Joan, I didn’t quite catch it, Anderson, Addison or Amberton, I’m not sure, either the senior client service manager or the special claims administrator, at some number like 478-2344 or 874-2433 or 487-3342-Gilbert transfers me to-

“Welcome to the Providential Equity Help Line. For English, please press one-”

The phone flies. Cracks against the wall. Not only don’t I recall Joyce Joe Joan Anderson Addison Amberton’s extension, I can’t remember the number I dialed to reach Gilbert. I try a few combinations but they ring into the void and I imagine Gilbert alone in his little cubicle, pants at his ankles, surrounded by ringing phones as he goes back to surfing for fetish porn, or managing his fantasy football team.

I’m beaten for the day. I’ll try again tomorrow. I stuff the Dear Homeowner letter back in my messenger bag. Slump back next to Dad. He pats his smoke pocket. Time bleeds. Wife comes home with kids. We eat pork chops. Dad picks at his. Lisa and I look away from each other.

At dinner, Franklin and Teddy are full of heartwarming stories about school, as if they’ve somehow intuited that their parents may not be able to afford tuition anymore, each story a testimony to what a beacon of academic achievement their little parochial school is, what a warm nest of intelligence and security, what a refuge against the cold, hard world, what a failsafe ticket into a blissful Ivy League future.

“The Math-Quest team is raising money to go to nationals again this spring,” Teddy informs me. Of course, when Teddy’s Math-Quest team goes to nationals, he will be over at Alcatraz Elementary, learning to make a plastic spork into a shiv.

Lisa finally meets my eye, her fork in mid-air. She doesn’t grimace or shake her head, she does something far worse: she smiles sympathetically, her eyes drooping at the corners, as if to say, Don’t worry, Matt. We’ll figure this out. It’s okay.

And her reaction pisses me off because it would be so much easier to lose my wife if she were an asshole, but she has consistently refused to cooperate in this way. Even when I was single and my buddies were required by law to hate my girlfriend, she was unfailingly easy to be around and they grudgingly paid her the highest buddy-compliment: “Nah, man, Lisa’s cool…” I was twenty-four when we met, my first year at the newspaper. And she was cool, twenty-one, a marketing intern at a hospital I covered. I first saw her at a press conference for the hospital’s new outreach program for addicted teens. I only went because I was working on an enterprise story about the hospital’s pending labor trouble and when the spokesman whined that “you never do anything positive about us,” I wanted to point to the two paragraphs about that outreach program buried deep in the business section. I walked into the conference room and immediately saw this girl-bemused eyes, broad lips, toned legs in a just-above-the-knee skirt, and, like a beacon: a pair of expensive-looking, out-of-place, fur-lined boots. It was one of those inane “press conferences” where there’s only one actual member of the press-me. I sat in one of the fifteen chairs they’d put out “for the media” as the hospital spokesman stood at a podium and read me-word for word-the same stupid press release I held in my hand. Then he asked “Anyone have questions,” and being the only anyone, I asked, “How many teens will this serve?” and the stumped spokesman directed me to fur

boots-“Lisa McDermott is facilitating this program, she has those specifics”-and I know it sounds corny, but in my mind I thought, Lisa Prior, as she strode over with a brochure for the program, which had some ridiculous, concocted acronym-N.O.D.O.P.E. or G.O.C.L.E.A.N., and I said, “Nice name,” and fur boots said, “Yeah I know, right?” and-her back to the spokesman-she made a little fist and gave the universal sign for jacking off.

And that was it for me: love.

There were early signs of trouble, of course. Lisa was one of those people you don’t ever feel like you’ve reached the center of; not that she withheld herself, there was just always another, deeper layer that I didn’t have access to, boxes inside boxes… And there was the money thing, always the money thing. Like most guys, relationships progressed physically for me (I kissed her…we made out…we had sex). Like a lot of women, Lisa’s progressions were more financial, security-based steps (he bought dinner…he took me to Napa for the weekend…he wants me to move in). But at least Lisa was always up-front about it; her father had died when she was twelve and she and her mother were dirt-poor for a few years. “I have to warn you, I can sometimes mistake being spoiled for being loved,” she told me on our fourth date, and then she smiled perfectly as she took a bite of her $65 entrée, winked knowingly and said, through a mouthful of seared-scallops-in-truffle-butter: “But I’m working on that.”

No, even Lisa’s quirky nature was alluring to me, partly because she was so open and cool about it. Even when she was suffering in the unfriendly job market, she was cool. Even during her online shopping binge-cool. She felt awful, apologized until I couldn’t take it anymore, volunteered to see a counselor. Hell, even now, when she’s possibly thinking of straying, I can’t seem to blame her . I’m terrified that she’ll find out I might be losing her dream house and leave me, but I can’t seem to blame her for that.