Crazy Girl
B.N. Toler
To All Crazy Girls
Rodney Beckman leaned back, his chair creaking in protest with the shift of his weight, his firm but sympathetic stare fixed on me. He’d just finished playing the bearer of bad news, and now he was about to switch roles and tug on his tough-guy hat. I imagined being a financial advisor wasn’t always a delightful job, and even in the midst of my own life-altering demise, I couldn’t help assessing him. My writer’s mind tended to take over that way; pushing aside real life to absorb an idea for later. Rodney was a big man, his fingers short and plump like sausages, his scalp shiny where hair had long been abandoned. His chest hair sprouted over the collar of his shirt, and his arms were carpeted in it. Why were some men bald yet so hairy everywhere else? He was a kind man, and I’d known him for years. He’d handled the books for my brother’s business since he’d started up. I would never have pegged him as a man in finances from simply looking at him, though. Maybe a bartender. Or a furniture store manager. I pondered if once upon a time he’d dreamed of more. As a youth, did he imagine he’d be something more than this? Was he happy with the way his life had turned out?
“Do you understand what I’ve just explained to you?” he asked when I simply stared at him, unmoving. When I didn’t respond, he tried again. “Hannah. You have to make some decisions.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but the words got lodged in my throat, causing me to cough. I cleared my throat and exhaled a few times. Composing myself after a few seconds, I asked, “My home? I have to sell my home?”
He nodded.
My father’s voice echoed somewhere in the back of my mind. A memory that tapped my brain like glass, sending fragmented cracks across it.
He’d come into my room. It was unusual for him to come home; he never came home anymore. He’d lain on the bed beside me and tugged his hat down to cover his eyes.
“I’m losing the house, Hannah,” he rasped, his voice thick with emotion. I was the youngest of the Bircham brood. My sister had just graduated college and had been gone for years, and my brother was just about to graduate high school.
I’d cried.
So did he.
But mostly, I’d cried for my father. For his pain. For his loss. At twelve, he was the best man I knew and seeing him hurt and on his proverbial knees was devastating.
“Hannah,” Rodney said my name, pulling me from my thoughts.
Blinking back my tears, I cleared my throat. Where the hell had that memory come from?
Once Rodney felt he had my attention again, he continued. “I know you don’t want to, but you’re killing yourself to keep that house. Your utilities alone are too much. The equity in your home will pay off a great deal of the debt, but you’ll still have a ways to go. If you sell the furniture, that might give you a small cushion to help for a few additional months. But you’ll need to get a job.”
“I have a job,” I snapped. I knew he hadn’t meant it that way, but it was a defensive reaction I couldn’t help. People who didn’t write lived in this illusion that authors sat around all day and didn’t do shit. They didn’t understand that there may be days when we didn’t write simply because we couldn’t—the creative door was welded shut—and there were other days where we couldn’t sleep or think about anything other than our story. We exist in two worlds, the real one and the one we create, yet we never entirely exist in either.
“I mean a job that pays you now. Not in six months to a year when you finish your next manuscript.”
“But we’ve sold everything else,” I huffed, defeated.
“Not everything. There’s the Hanover house Ross bought. It’s been on the market for months. You could take a hit, sell it cheap, but you’ll lose your ass on it.” Just the sound of my ex-husband’s name made my jaw clench. He’d ruined me financially then took off, and now I was here alone, losing everything, cleaning up his mess.
“What do I do?” The question skirted out on a desperate breath and wasn’t really meant for him as much as it was meant for me. I had nothing except for a run-down house my ex had purchased when he’d decided he was a real estate tycoon, using my money.
I was losing my home.
My dream home.
“You could live in the house he bought, Hannah,” Rodney asserted. “At least you don’t owe anything on it. You won’t have rent or a mortgage payment, and right now you need to minimize your spending as much as possible until we get you caught up.”
“Is it livable?” I asked, exasperated. I hadn’t seen the property in person, only a photo and tax records when I’d met with the realtor to list it. I didn’t want to see it. Seeing it would only be a painful reminder of how someone I had trusted so much did me wrong. I just wanted it gone.
He snorted and rubbed his head. “Hannah,” he sighed. “It’s not what you’ve become accustomed to, but it’s walls and a roof, hon. That’s a lot more than most people have.” I looked away from him so he wouldn’t see me scowl. I knew people had it worse and no matter how shitty my life got, there would always be people who had it worse. But I hated that he was using that on me in that moment. I wasn’t a lesson. My life had crashed, and I was standing amidst the wreckage watching it slowly burn to ash. In my mind, petty as it may be, I deserved to feel a little sorry for myself.