The Virtues of Oxygen (23 page)

“Of course I’ve tried his cell phone,” Holly said. “He just texts back and says he’s working on something, and he’ll be in touch whe
n he can.”

Holly had told Vivian all about her mother’s ring, but Vivian wanted to talk to Racine before she tried to extricate herself from the investment. Holly worried that the gold store made its real money from stolen merchandise, and if it did, she wondered how Racine could have been unaware of it. From the beginning, her confidence in his sincerity had an inverse relationship to the length of time they were
separated.

“Another year,” Vivian said, sighing. “Every year at midnight I’m absolutely sure that I won’t be around to see that damned ridiculous crystal-covered ball drop, and then here I am, watching the whole spectacle again. Have you ever been in Times Square on New Ye
ar’s Eve?”

“Are you kidding? That’s the last place I’d want to be, packed into that crowd like a sardine, freezing cold, no place to go to the bathroom. It’s my worst n
ightmare.”

“And yet they all look
so happy.”

“That’s the
alcohol.”

“That reminds me. I had Marveen get me a bottle of champagne. Should we
open it?”

“I thought you weren’t supposed
to drink.”

“I’m not. But I break the rules every now and again. What do
you say?”

“Why not?”

Holly went to the kitchen and found the champagne in the refrigerator. She popped the cork, then poured hers into a water glass—Vivian didn’t own wine glasses—and Vivian’s into one of her plastic cups with the attach
ed straw.

It was almost midnight. The ball had already started inching its way down, which always seemed to Holly like the coward’s way to sneak up on the new year. By all rights, she thought, the ball should free-fall and shatter into a milli
on pieces.

“Ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-two-one,” Vivian said, surprising Holly with her enthusiasm. “Happy
new year!”

“Happy new year, Vivian,” Holly said, clicking her glass with Vivian’s plastic one. She held the straw to Vivian’s mouth and let her take a sip of champagne before taking one of her own. She had eaten early, so the alcohol hit her almost
instantly.

“Nice,” Vivian said. “I feel like a grown-up, even drinking out of
a straw.”

“It’s lovely,” Holly said, closing her eyes. “It takes me momentarily out of my mess o
f a life.”

When Holly opened her eyes again, she could see Vivian staring at her. Once again she felt guilty about calling her life anything less than perfect in Vivian’s
presence.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Vivian said. “Well, give me another sip of champagne first, then tell me what’s
going on.”

Holly put the straw in Vivian’s mouth and watched her suck down half the glass in one pull. She then took a long sip of her own, feeling the bubbles rising through
her brain.

“You really want to know?” Holly said, taking a deep breath. “Well, the bank is about to foreclose on my house because I can’t pay the mortgage anymore—my mother was helping me, but now all her money is tied up in the nursing home. The newspaper is going under at the end of January, so I won’t have a job or health insurance. My rich brother, Henderson, went bankrupt, so I can’t ask him for money, and my sister has even less than I do. And Racine, as you know, is a question mark
at best.”

“Oh, Holly,” Vivian said. “Why didn’t you tell m
e before?”

“What could you do, Vivian? You’re already paying me for a mad
e-up job.”

Vivian nodded at the cup with the champagne in it, and Holly held it up to her again. She d
rained it.

“We need a plan,” Vivian said. “And as long as we’re telling the truth here, I should tell you that my accountant says that most of my investments are basically worthless right now. I was heavily into growth stocks that have completely tanked, so my only hope of climbing back right now is the gold store. I haven’t even told him about the ring s
ituation.”

“Vivian, no. That can’t be. What if the store goes under and we can’t get your mo
ney back?”

Vivian let out a long shuddering sigh. “I won’t be destitute. I own the house free and clear, and I get my medical disability checks every month. My medical bills are covered. Lots of people live on less. I just wanted to have something to show for all those years my parents sacrificed. I was hoping to make a big charity donation in their names when I died—you know, like those secretive cat ladies who stash money in the mattress and endow a library or so
mething.”

She looked at Holly. “But you’re much more important to me than a library. We’ll figure this out. I’m not going to let you and your boy
s suffer.”

Holly drained her own champagne. She told Vivian about the boys and their Christmas tree and about the gifts she gave them after selling her wedd
ing ring.

“They deserve so much more,” Holly said, now weeping champagne tears. “I can’t even keep a roof over the
ir heads.”

“You’ve done everything you can. Now it’s time you let someone else help
you out.”

For an hour Holly resisted. She wanted to keep her house. Yes, it was falling apart, but it still held their memories, and she didn’t want to give up on Chris’s dream of adding to its history. She thought about his plans to renovate the bathrooms and his stubborn refusal to replace the crushed-stone driveway even after the pebbles, always in the boys’ pockets, ruined their washing machine. But Vivian finally convinced her that holding on to the house would only drag her down. They decided that Holly would send her keys to the bank and move in with Vivian. That would take the pressure off the mortgage situation. When the newspaper closed, Holly would use her unemployment checks to buy into the state’s health insurance plan while she looked for an
other job.

When the nursing aide came at two in the morning, Holly left Vivian’s feeling simultaneously relieved and tortured. She couldn’t be more grateful to have a free place to live, even if it meant leaving her cherished home behind, but how would the boys react? If she couldn’t find another job, she might end up even more in Vivian’s debt. And what about Racine? She thought he was basically decent, if a little misguided. She never would have pegged him for the kind of man who would run off with stolen goods, especially after she told him what the ring meant to her. And if he had run off, why was he te
xting her?

As if to respond to the query she threw out to the universe, Holly’s phone rang as she was driving home, and she let it go to voice mail. When she pulled into the driveway, she took the phone out of her purse to see that she had a
message.

“Holly, it’s Racine. I know you’ve been trying to reach me, and I’m so sorry. It’s kind of a long story, but I still have your mother’s ring. I’ll give it back as soon as I can. Please don’t forget about me. I’ll be in to
uch soon.”

Don’t forget about me? Holly couldn’t get over what a strange thing that was to say, especially since she could never forget what it felt like to be unearthed and turned inside out after being entombed in her worries for so long. She was not in love with Racine—at least she didn’t think she was—but she wanted to be. She wanted to lie awake in bed thinking about the way he touched the small of her back when they walked into the Bertram Corners Inn, drop his name into conversations, moon over his smile or the way his suit jacket fit his shoulders. But she found it hard to sigh when she couldn’t breathe. Too many anxieties crowded her every thought, leaping and pushing each other as they shouted for her attention. She had no time for love or even lust when every day was a marathon of maneuvering just to keep from slipping furthe
r behind.

CHAPTER 27

Vivian’s Unaired P
odcast #10

T
he
online world was hot and dense through the ’90s, but then the Internet exploded like the Big Bang into billions of particles of potential energy. Most of them went flying off into space without consequence, but some connected and grew and changed the world at an exponent
ial rate.

It wasn’t just me and my geek friends chatting on message boards anymore; the entire population of the First World was suddenly typing and sharing every thought that had ever entered their excitable little heads. I was a little annoyed at first that everyone suddenly seemed to have a computer and could use it without much, if any, specialized knowledge. But then I realized that my sphere of influence had expanded once again. I e-mailed back and forth with an iron-lung patient in Ireland, and I contributed to a polio study being conducted in Ukraine. I was able to download more and more movies to my computer and watch them whenever I wanted instead of waiting for them to arrive on the cable channels or network te
levision.

My investing took another leap forward as information went online at an accelerating pace, and in turn I purchased the best, most powerful personal computer I could afford. I had become so adept at using my voice-recognition device that I could send an e-mail almost as fast as a typist with ten workin
g fingers.

But as the Internet opened doors for me, it also took a jackhammer to Bertram Corners and left jagged holes in its economy. The small paper mill that employed a quarter of the town closed down because envelopes and paper became a quaint notion associated with prior centuries. Many of the local shops couldn’t compete with the new online retailers and closed their doors, leaving sad little orphaned storefronts that no one loved anymore. The schools and the churches and the institutions like Holly’s weekly persevered, but they had to fight for every dollar. The Internet revolution—which should have eased our lives—instead threw a pall over the town, which couldn’t seem to adjust to a new way of
thinking.

I tried to help. I volunteered my services to the library and recorded tutorials so that the little old ladies of Bertram Corners could sign up for e-mail accounts and learn how to check a website when they wanted to book a flight to Las Vegas. Holly called me the Cyber Siren, claiming that I wanted to lure everyone to my own
dark side.

“Sometimes I just get tired of these blogs and these long e-mail strings where you have to hear about every random thought that ever crossed someone
’s mind.”

“You don’t get it,” I said. “I spent decades, Holly, with only my mother around, and she wasn’t much of a talker. If you want to tell me that you’re drinking coffee or that you just mowed your lawn or that your kid lost a tooth and that made you cry, I’m all ears. I want to know everything. I am the definition of living vic
ariously.”

“Really? Because it all just seems like overshari
ng to me.”

“Well, you’re living it,” I told her. “But you’re also reporting and writing about Bertram Corners, so maybe none of it’s ne
w to you.”

“I could say that about you,” Holly replied. “You’ve got the whole town circulating in and out of here on a weekly basis. You know more than I do about what’s h
appening.”

Holly was right to some extent. But what I knew wasn’t posted online; I knew the scars and the scabs underneath the makeup. I was the one who told Darla to leave her first husband after he came home drunk one night and gave her a
black eye.

“What happened to you?” I asked her when she came for her volunt
eer shift.

She touched the bruised, yellowing skin under her eye, and burst i
nto tears.

“I’m supposed to say that I walked into a door,” she said. “That’s what Harry told me to tell
everyone.”

I looked at her with pity. I was completely vulnerable to anyone’s abuse, and yet I had never been mistreated. I didn’t really know what it was like to be punched or kicked, but I did know what Darla nee
ded to do.

“Do you have a suitcase
with you?”

“I can’t leave,” she said. “I have nowhe
re to go.”

“You do. You can stay right here with me. In the morning you’ll go to the police station and re
port him.”

Darla put a hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. “He’ll find me. He’ll make me pay for repor
ting him.”

“So he gets away with it? He gets to beat you up whenever
he wants?”

“You don’t un
derstand.”

“You’re right,” I said, holding her gaze. “I can’t understand at all. He’s a monster, and you need to leave him and start a new life. Look inside yourself and find the strength
to do it.”

Darla stayed over that night, and in the morning she reported the assault. Eventually, she divorced him and got the house and the dogs when the bastard moved to Florida. Then she met Phil and had a real marriage, the kind where the only battles were over the
TV remote.

I was the receptacle for all the subterranean drama in Bertram Corners because I listened. I was a captive audience, and I needed my volunteers, but I paid in lost sleep and free therapy. Maybe that’s why I didn’t mind the online chatter about the quotidian stuff. It seemed like the best part of the life I
never had.

CHAPTER 28

Y
ears later Holly remembered that first week in January as the dividing line between one phase of her life and another. She had to tell her newspaper staff that they would be shutting down in a few weeks, and she had to tell her boys they would be leaving the only home they had e
ver known.

“But why so soon?” Portia asked when Holly broke the news at the
Chronicle
. “Can’t they give us a little transition time? A few more months to find
new jobs?”

Darla began to cry, and Les, who for once wasn’t out covering a high school game, put an arm around her. Les, Holly suddenly realized, had aged significantly in the ten years they had worked together. He had a paunch now from eating too many vending-machine dinners in overheated gymnasiums and much of his hair was gone, circling the drain with his dignity. Les, who had once covered the State House for the daily paper in Albany, had been a victim of the great contraction of the American print media, a vicious game of musical chairs in which more than half the chairs were eliminated with every round, leaving the remaining few reporters grappling over what
was left.

“Did Stan say there was any hope?” Les said. “Maybe someone will buy the paper. It’s happened in othe
r places.”

“It’s remotely possible, but I wouldn’t pin my hopes on it,” Holly said. “The strange part is that we still make money, although the margins are smaller than they used to be. Apparently we just don’t make enough to keep the owne
rs happy.”

Darla wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her drugstore jacket, which she had forgotten to remove when she came back fr
om lunch.

“I can’t go home and tell Phil,” she said, sniffing loudly. “I ju
st can’t.”

Portia was the one to finally ask the question Holly knew was coming. “What will you do?”
she said.

Holly looked around at the cluttered office and saw the desks piled halfway to the ceiling with back issues of the
Chronicle
and old phone books, the empty water cooler in the corner that they kept even after they couldn’t afford to refill it, the hole in the suspended ceiling where Les had punted a football one day while demonstrating the exciting finish of a high school game for a group of visiting Cub Scouts, the line of Smurf figurines that Darla had set up on the edge of her cubicle, targets for Portia’s remarkable skill in launching a rubber band. It was a scrap heap, a landfill, but in the articles long yellowed and the notebooks filled with the quotes of widows and widowers, science fair winners and grieving parents, school superintendents and principals, mayors and police officers was the history of Bertram Corners. The sum total o
f a town.

Holly shrugged and tried to smile, but the corners of her mouth trembled. “We’ll be okay,” she said. “I’ll find something. And Vivian has offered to let me and the boys
move in.”

“You’re selling your house?” L
es asked.

“More like giving it back to the bank. That was inevitable even without this news. This just puts us on the sidewalk a littl
e sooner.”

Portia put her hands up to her face. “H
olly, no.”

“Look, guys,” Holly said, “this is not the end of the world. We’re all going to figure out how to move forward from here. In the end we’ll probably all be grateful that we weren’t stuck here until retirement. Try to see it as an opportuni
ty. I do.”

Holly guessed that her optimistic sentiment might be true for at least a few of them. But she knew that this would break one or two of her colleagues, perhaps permanently. They would drift around, writing freelance for too little money and taking on short-term projects, sending out résumés and going to interviews until one day they just gave up and folded themselves into a small corner of the world they once knew, biding their time until Social Security kicked in. That might be
her story.

At home the news did not go down a
ny easier.

“How will I get to school?” Connor said. “Vivian’s on the other side
of town.”

“I’ll still drive you,” Holly said. “It really won’t be much different. You’ll have to share a room, but Vivian has a basement we coul
d fix up.”

Marshall looked down at his hands and rubbed them together. “I hate this, Mom,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I do not want to move into that freak show, with all the volunteers coming and going every hour of the day a
nd night.”

Holly rubbed her temples. She hated to disappoint her kids in any way, but this seemed so primal, so essential. She felt like she had let them down, and yet she had to hold it together. Someone needed to be in charge. Besides, she thought they were being unfair to Vivian, who was sa
ving them.

“It’s not a freak show, Marshall,” she said at a volume that surprised even her. “We’re very fortunate that Vivian is generous enough to give us a place to live rent-free. I know it’s not ideal, but we don’t have too many options r
ight now.”

Connor left for the basement without saying another word. Marshall looked like a young child trying to hold b
ack tears.

“I have a girlfriend now, Mom. Did you know that?” he said. “And I haven’t even invited her here, because of how everything’s falling apart. Don’t you think the whole town is going to find out that Vivian took us in like charity cases? How do you think that makes
me feel?”

Holly looked around the living room. The Christmas tree was half brown, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to take off the ornaments and remove it. The couch—secondhand to begin with—was now so worn and frayed that most of it was draped with throws. She turned the cushions to their slightly better side on the rare occasions they had
company.

“You have every right to be upset, Marshall,” she said. “But in some ways this is going to be better for all of us. If I don’t have a mortgage to pay, maybe we can find the money for your driving
classes.”

“Don’t even say that, Mom. You’re losing your job, too. There won’t be any money for driving classes . . . I just want to graduate from high school and start my
own life.”

“Marshall,” said Holly, who felt her son’s pain as keenly as her own, “I’ll fi
nd a way.”

“No, Mom,” he said. “I’ll fi
nd a way.”

As difficult as it was to accept, the plan to move in with Vivian gave them all purpose, things to be checked off a list, which required forward motion. The first thing Holly did was organize a yard sale so that she could pare down the belongings they would be cramming into Vivian’s small Cape. Since it was January and their yard was covered in snow, she called it an “estate sale” in the classified ad she snuck into the paper for free. That had a better ring to it, although she was afraid it might attract people looking for things of actual value. She invited Desdemona and Henderson, who both wanted to sell a few things of their own, and she got the boys to plaster the upscale subdivision near their house with signs a
nd flyers.

In preparation Holly and the boys set up folding tables borrowed from the newspaper office in the living room and kitchen. They all scoured the house looking for items they could live without. Holly told the boys they could keep the proceeds of whatever items they sold, so they were highly motivated to part with their possessions. Maybe too
motivated.

“What’s this?” Holly said. She was putting white sticky strips on each of the boys’ items so they could determin
e a price.

“It’s the Xbox Uncle Hen gave me,” Connor said. “And all my games. Maybe some kid will w
ant them.”

“But you love these. This is your favorite form of enter
tainment.”

Marshall heard them as he was dumping two old tennis rackets on a table. “Who would want that anyway?” he said. “It’s ancient te
chnology.”

“I’ve outgrown it,” Co
nnor said.

Holly had to turn away so the boys wouldn’t see her face. “Help me with this,” she said, pointing to an empty bookshelf from IKEA that she had dragged up from the basement. “O
ver here.”

They moved the bookshelf, then Holly slapped a sticker on it and wrote “$10.” She had no idea how much to charge people for her worn and practically worthless possessions, but she had to start somewhere. She put a sticker on the beat-up couch that said “Move it and it’s yours” and went on to the kitchen items, which included a hot-air popcorn popper and a blender with a cr
acked lid.

Desdemona soon showed up at the front door with a canvas bag full of scarves, old costume jewelry, and some tutus and ballet skirts she no lon
ger used.

“This is great, Des,” Holly said. “We’ll set you up over here with your own table. Girls will love th
is stuff.”

“All right,” she said, soundi
ng tired.

“What’s wrong?” Holly asked. “You look like you haven’t slept i
n a week.”

“It’s the collection agency for Aunt Muriel’s casket. They’re calling me day and night. I’d turn off the phone, but I’m always afraid I’ll miss a call about Mom, or maybe a dance company call. It’s horribl
e, Holly.”

Aunt Muriel was gone, Holly thought, and yet she still owed money on her final home. Death, apparently, was no escape from bill c
ollectors.

“Why are they calling you?” Holly said. “Henderson picke
d it out.”

“I guess my name was first on the documents or something. They’ll probably hit both of
you next.”

“How much do we
owe them?”

“Close to eight t
housand.”

“What were we thinking?” Holly said. Looking back on that day at the funeral home, she had trouble believing they hadn’t even discussed the price tag of t
he casket.

“We thought Mom would pay for it. Or Henderson. That was back when at least some people in our family had money. Poor Aunt Muriel. She’d be mortified to know she was buried in a stole
n casket.”

“Luckily, she won’t ever f
ind out.”

Holly looked around her living room at the dozens of items displayed on tables and draped on racks, the detritus of her life, which would be sold piecemeal to others who might repurpose it, give it away, or sell it eventually at another tag sale. She needed very little of it. She wasn’t sad to lose the items themselves, but she was sad to lose the memories they embodied: the antique rocking chair was the first piece of furniture she and Chris had purchased together; the toboggan made her think of snowy afternoons when the boys were too small to walk through the snowdrifts without losing their Velcro’d boots; the silver-plated teapot had been tarnishing in her mother’s basement until she rescued it a few years ago. Each triggered other related memories, a whole vast canopy of intertwined branches. Her sale was like the gold store—forced amnesia in the name
of profit.

Henderson arrived with his carload of boxes, and Phoebe got out of the car with her trom
bone case.

“Phoebe,” Holly said, giving her a hug and kiss. “I haven’t seen you in ages. Loo
k at you.”

They all looked at Phoebe, who was slightly overweight and sported wire-rimmed glasses that gave her face a pinched look. She was wearing her school uniform of a white blouse and plaid skirt even though it was a
Saturday.

“I surprised Phoebe,” Henderson said. “I picked her up at her brass ensemble rehearsal and came right d
own here.”

“Well, we’re happy you came,” Holly said, shooting Henderson a look. “Let me find Connor and
Marshall.”

“I’ll find them, Aunt Holly,” Phoebe said, looking resigned. She walked into the house with her trombone case as Henderson and Holly follow
ed her in.