The Mother-in-Law(51)
“Oh,” I started, feeling foolish, “I thought . . . you would help me.”
“Darling,” she said. “Helping is the worst thing I could do for you.”
After I finish telling Ghezala my story, nothing is off the table. I tell her how I wrote to Mother to tell her she had a grandson and still, she didn’t reply. I tell her how I sent her pictures of Ollie every year. How one day I caught the train to my childhood home to check that my parents still lived there, and saw my father’s car parked in the driveway, and Mother in the garden pulling weeds. I tell her how Mother looked right at me then lowered her straw hat so it covered her face and went back to weeding. I tell her how that was the last time I saw Mother before she died, four years later. That, after Mum’s funeral, I never saw my father again.
“I’m sorry,” Ghezala says.
“It is what it is. I moved forward with my life and started a new family. I have Tom and the children now.”
“But your children are unhappy with you? ”
I sigh. “Because of money. It’s always about money.”
“Your children want your money?”
“Naturally.”
“And you don’t want to give it?”
I smile. There’s something so delightfully simple about the way Ghezala speaks—no double entendre, no judgment. It frees me to speak equally simply.
“Being poor and having to survive without my parents was the single most defining thing I’ve ever done. It showed me what I was capable of. As a mother, I think this is the most important gift you can give to your children. Unlike money, it can’t be taken away or lost.”
“It sounds like you have your answer,” Ghezala said.
“But it’s more complicated than that. Nettie wants to have a baby and she’s having trouble getting pregnant. IVF is very expensive and she wants us to help her with the cost. The clock is ticking, as she’s forty now. And that’s not even the whole picture. I have reason to believe that her husband is unfaithful.”
Ghezala’s brown eyes widen. “Does she know?”
“I’m not sure. The funny thing is . . . I’m not sure she’ll want to know. This baby thing has sent her quite mad. She’s got her eye on the prize—a baby—and she’s unable to see anything else.”
“So . . . instead of talking to her about it, you’re . . . ensuring she won’t get pregnant, by withholding money?”
“As I’ve said, I have many reasons not to give her the money. But to be honest, yes, I’d rather not help her shackle herself to a man who is possibly unfaithful. She’s already struggling. I couldn’t bear for her to become pregnant, give up her livelihood and her career, only to have it thrown back in her face when he leaves her for another woman.”
I look at Ghezala, waiting for some wisdom, or comment or even a question. But Ghezala doesn’t say anything at all which, I realize, is a much more powerful response.
31: LUCY
THE PRESENT . . .
“No iPads,” I tell the kids, to a chorus of moans. They have just gotten home from school and my front hall is full of school bags, my sink is full of lunchboxes and my couch is full of children. “Go play a game or read a book.”
They proceed to go ballistic and I ask myself . . . why am I doing this? Who cares if they watch the iPad for twenty-four hours straight? Their eyeballs won’t bleed or turn square, their brains won’t rot. It doesn’t matter a single jot. And yet, I continue my mothering on autopilot, as natural to me these days as breathing even in spite of everything going on.
Ollie came home from the will reading and immediately shut himself up in the home office. He didn’t say much in the car, other than that he was still in shock and needed some time to think.
He hasn’t been back to work yet since Diana died, and I’m starting to worry about that. For the past year it’s been so hard to keep him away from the place—he regularly worked weekends and well into each evening. I’d hoped that by this point, four years into the business, he’d have been able to back off a little and enjoy what they’d built, but they always seemed to be hurtling toward the next target. (“When we sign this client, we’ll be able to take the kids to Disneyland.” “When we land this contract, champagne for everyone.”) But they kept signing clients and landing contracts—and Ollie kept placing candidates—and still, profits seemed to be skinny.
A year ago, I’d suggested Ollie and Eamon get someone to look at the books, to do an inventory of incomings and outgoings. Ollie had liked that idea, and came home and reported that Eamon had hired an accountant he knew to do exactly that. But the accountant had come back with the same advice that Eamon had been giving. “More clients = more money.” A good philosophy, but with Ollie as the only recruiter, and no money to hire anyone else, it had taken its toll on him. Now, to hear that his parents had disinherited him, it’s got to feel like the final straw in what has been a stressful couple of years.
From the living room, I hear Ollie’s phone ring, and then quickly stop. He’s screening the call, probably, he’s been doing that all day. I imagine him in his swivel chair, his forehead resting against the desk. Ollie and I had never talked explicitly about the fact that we would one day come into money—it always seemed to be in poor taste—but even I could admit that I’d thought about it from time to time, and it always made me feel secure to know that even if we were poor now, our retirement would be taken care of. The idea that Diana would cut all of us out of her will had never occurred to me and it clearly had never occurred to Ollie either.