Donna Birdsell - Madam Of The House

“Say no more.” Cecilia’s own son was pretty mellow, but she remembered how her brothers could have brought a Marine drill sergeant to tears when they were kids. “What’s going on?”

“We’re having a last-minute girls’ night out,” Dannie said. “I talked to Roseanna yesterday, and we both agreed we could use a little fun. How about you?”

“Count me in. Where?”

“Philly. A bar in Center City called Caligula. They have an eighties night there that’s supposed to be a riot.”

“Sounds great. What time?”

“How about eight-thirty? We’ll get a jump on the young’uns.”

“Remember when our nights out didn’t even start until eleven?”

“Oh, yeah. I remember.”

Cecilia heard an awful screeching noise on the other end, then Dannie yelling, “Richard! Matchbox cars do not belong in the garbage disposal!” Dannie came back on the line, breathless. “Cecilia, I have to run. But I’ll see you tonight?”

“Absolutely.”

Cecilia placed the phone in the cradle and smiled. It would be great to see her old friends again. Especially Dannie, who’d been going through a rough time lately.

Her husband had died suddenly eight months before, on a business trip off the coast of Mexico, leaving Dannie with four kids under the age of six.

Cecilia sighed. Life hadn’t gone the way either of them had imagined it would when they were filling out their M.A.S.H. books and conferring with their Magic 8 Balls in study hall.

Not every property is a winner. The outside might be mint, but the inside could look like crap in a blender.

Monty could have been talking about Ben. Mint on the outside, crap in a blender on the inside.

It was still strange, though, after four months, to come home and not see him sitting in sweatpants and a T-shirt at the computer. He’d be watching a stock ticker scroll across the bottom of the screen, the blue-gray light illuminating the dark stubble on his chin, Coke cans and junk-food wrappers littering the floor around him.

There had never been a “Hi, honey. How was your day?” Or, “You look exhausted. Should I cook dinner?”

Maybe a “Banco de Chile is down two points, but it’s going to rally. I can feel it.” Or “I just bought five hundred shares of Sara Lee at rock bottom.”

In reality, Ben’s self-proclaimed skill at predicting stock performance sucked. Big time. Before Cecilia had discovered that, though, he’d managed to lose more than sixty thousand dollars of their joint savings day-trading on the Internet.

She kicked her shoes off near the door and pressed the button on the answering machine sitting on the hall table.

“Ms. Katz. This is Melvin Weber from the Catalina School again.” A dry, clipped male voice emanated from the machine. Cecilia’s stomach did a little flip. “I’m calling to remind you that we haven’t received payment for this semester. Please let us know when we can expect it.”

“Ugh.” Cecilia exhaled. She stared at the blinking light on the machine. Seven more messages, most of them undoubtedly similar to the one she just heard.

Unable to listen without some sort of fortification, she shed her jacket, unbuttoned the top button of her blouse and grabbed a bag of M&M’s from the pantry.

As she munched on a handful, she leafed through the pile of mail she’d brought in.

Bills.

Visa. American Express. Lord and Taylor. Boxwood Country Club.

She was still paying off charges from a year ago. Most of them were Ben’s, but she’d done her share of frivolous spending when she’d believed there would be no end to the cash flow.

She picked up an envelope from Cyber-Trade, ignoring the fact that it wasn’t addressed to her. If Ben was going to continue to have his mail sent to the house, it was fair game. She ran a fingernail under the edge and slid the statement out.

He’d lost another six thousand dollars? Where was he getting the money? He’d cleaned out their joint accounts long ago.

She picked up the phone and dialed Ben’s mother’s house. Ben answered on the first ring.

“I just opened your statement from Cyber-Trade by accident.”

Silence.

“Where are you getting this kind of money, Ben?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it? I’m sitting here busting my butt, trying to pay off the debts you left me with, and you’re losing another six thousand dollars?”

“I had some money in savings at work. I never closed out the account when they laid me off, so they mailed me a check last week.”

“Then you should have sent it to me, to pay some bills.”

“But I’m going to make a killing, Cece. I have a really hot lead on an IPO—”

“Ben, stop,” she said. She rubbed a spot on her forehead that had all the markings of an impending tension headache. “Ever since you lost your job, you’ve done nothing but sit in front of the computer. I know it’s hard to get back out there, but you have to try.”

“I’m not ready yet.”

“Well, when do you think you’ll be ready? We’ve got bills piled up to the ceiling, and I can’t handle them anymore.”

“That isn’t all my fault, you know. I’m not the one with a closet full of five-hundred-dollar shoes. And you’re the one who wanted Brian in that private school. It’s costing us a damn fortune.”

“You mean it’s costing me a damn fortune,” she snapped. She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “He’s got problems, Ben. He needs help.”

“The kid would be fine if you’d just leave him alone. Give him some time.”

Ben steadfastly refused to acknowledge the complexity of their son’s difficulties. It didn’t help that all three developmental pediatricians she’d gone to had given them different diagnoses. One put Brian on the autistic scale. Another called it a language delay. The third said he’d catch up with the other children, eventually.

When Brian was a toddler, Ben had insisted his social issues were merely shyness, his speech difficulties just “a boy thing.” But as Brian got older, Ben handled the problems by simply ignoring them.

Cecilia, on the other hand, had always taken an aggressive approach. When the school district refused to provide therapy for him because there was no clear diagnosis of his difficulties she discovered the Catalina School.

It had been a godsend. It was a place where her son could get intensive daily therapy and live with other children who had the same types of problems, and it was close enough to visit every weekend.

Although Brian’s first few weeks away had almost killed her, their son had adjusted beautifully to the boarding school and was improving every day.

“Brian is getting a fantastic education at the Catalina School,” she said to Ben. “But that kind of individualized attention doesn’t come cheap.”

“That’s what it always comes down to, doesn’t it? Money.” Ben’s tone was bitter.

“In this case, yes. When it can pay for the best education for our son, it does.”

“Why is everything about Brian? Ten years it’s been all about him. I needed a little attention, too, you know. I could have used some sympathy.”

Cecilia squeezed her eyes closed. “I was there for you, Ben. I tried to be understanding. I know what you’re going through is hard, but you’ve got to pull it together.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“I want you to see someone,” she said. “A psychologist or a psychiatrist or something. I really think you have an addiction.”

“An addiction?”

“Yes, a day-trading addiction. It’s like gambling. How much do you have to lose to stop?”

“You’re always blowing things out of proportion,” he argued.