“There's just no way that I could cover the rent, the car payment and insurance, along with my groceries, and pay $1200 in student loans every month. I don't make very much.”
“No, I totally get it. Frankly, I don't know how you were managing this whole time in the first place. I mean, your apartment is pretty shitty and so is your car.”
“I know.” I shrug. “It was important for me to stand on my own two feet.”
“You should have at least let them pay for your college tuition. Then you wouldn’t have the loan hanging over you.”
I nod, feeling like a fool. There was a point that I was trying to make but somehow, in all this time that has passed, it got lost somewhere.
“Anyway, when I asked Mom to help me with the loans, she said that she would. She said that she would be happy to. She didn't mention any financial problems. What about when you reached out to her?”
Brooke shakes her head.
“You have reached out to her, right?”
She opens her mouth slightly and moves her jaw from side to side. She casts her eyes down at the table and then slowly brings them up to me. The guilty look on her face is difficult to miss.
“You haven't talked to her?” I ask.
“No, I wasn't sure how to bring it up. That's why I wanted to do it with you.”
“Brooke, seriously?”
“Listen, you know how I don't like to deal with certain things that make me uncomfortable.”
“No, you're actually quite the opposite of that. You're always the one challenging Mom about her views on women's rights and her perceptions of what size women should and shouldn't be.”
“I know, but that stuff is easy,” she says, waving her hand in my face.
I smile and then laugh. Like all sisters we go through ups and downs, but she has always been confident on the outside. She’s so outgoing that she made it easy for me to forget that she’s still pretty young and inexperienced.
Maybe it's more than that. Maybe, when it comes to certain things, we feel this way all of our lives.
After we debate whether or not we should order dessert and instead settle on coffee and tea, I pull out my phone and we decide to call Mom together.
“How are you girls?” she asks in her usual peppy voice.
She immediately turns on the camera and we see her walking around Saks Fifth Avenue. Her hair is immaculate as are her nails and skin. I can only see the top of her blouse, but it probably cost as much as my rent.
After a little bit of chitchat, I get right to the point.
“I was just wondering if you're serious about paying my loans?” I ask. “I know that I brought it up earlier and I just wanted to double check.”
“Yes, of course,” she says quickly and nonchalantly looks at a pair of $2,000 shoes on a beautiful display case in front of her.
“Well, the reason I was asking is that Brooke just told me that the check for her apartment bounced.”
“What are you talking about, honey?” Mom furrows her brow, tilting her head to one side.
“You didn’t know about that?” Brooke asks.
“No, absolutely not.”
“Oh, okay. Well, I don't know what happened, but my landlord reached out to me and told me that the check didn't clear.”
“Your father is making all these payments.”
“Yes, I know and I just wanted to check with you to see if maybe there's something going on.”
“Going on? You think that with one check not clearing we are suddenly having so many financial difficulties that we can't pay $3,000 for your rent?”
“No, that's not what I'm saying,” Brooke backs up quickly. “There's also my credit cards. They are all maxed out, but the payments haven’t been made.”
“Dad is taking care of those also, honey,” Mom says and suddenly her voice turns incredibly saccharine.
I know my mom well enough to know that she's no stranger to putting on airs. She is not someone who wears her emotions on her sleeve and her default position is to be extra friendly and polite, especially when she is frustrated or annoyed.
“Mom, we're not accusing you of anything, we are just trying to find out what's going on, if anything,” I try to clarify things and defuse the tension.
This seems to work.
The expression on her face relaxes a bit and she shows us a pair of pumps that she's considering. They are Jimmy Choos and as she pans the camera, I get a glimmer of the price tag on the box: $1,200.
“Those are great,” Brooke pipes, but then asks to see the pair right next to those.
It has always been some sort of competition between the two of them for who can have the best collection in terms of the most interesting finds. Obviously, Mom’s shoe closet is far more extensive, but Brooke’s is much more eccentric and unique.
When Mom finally chooses the right pair and heads to the cash register, she says, “I will talk to your father about this tonight. As you know, he's working very hard on the new case and it's proving to be very expensive. He keeps getting delayed and the firm is covering all of the costs for the class action suit since they got turned down for financing the litigation.”
Class action lawsuits are very expensive and law firms typically raise financing by working with other firms and splitting the costs as well as just taking out loans to fund all of the experts and lawyers necessary to get them to the trial.
“Oh, wow, so they're paying for everything?” I ask.
“Yes,” Mom says, shaking her head. “When the Meyer brothers pulled out, your father was less than pleased and then Citi Bank announced that they would not be able to help with the financing and that put everything in limbo.”
We both nod our heads in sympathy.
“Anyway, it's nothing to worry about. Your father will take care of it just like he takes care of everything else. Things might have just fallen behind a little bit, but they will catch up. There's no need to worry about something as silly as that.”
3
Emma
After having the conversation, Brooke’s worries seem to be appeased and she doesn't bring up finances again. Of course, it's bad news that the class action suit can't be financed, but the firm has more than enough money in its coffers after having a pretty successful decade of winning all sorts of cases and settlements.
While my financial worries dissipate, my worries about Liam increase.
Days pass without me hearing from him. Then it's a week. Then it’s another.
He doesn't respond to any of my messages or calls. I even write him an email, but he doesn't respond to it either.
I'm not sure what to do. On the tenth day, I decide to confess. I write a very long text explaining what happened. I tell him that the story was compiled from my notes and that I had not given permission for it to be printed. I explain as much as I can and I read the text over a few times to make sure that it's perfect.
Still, I hear nothing.
A lot of time passes. So much so that I feel at a loss as to what to do. I look him up online and write him on his D. B. Carter profiles, but again I hear nothing.
Another week later, I decide to reach out to his sister. We have talked before and I know that she wants to reconnect with him. She just had a baby and she misses her brother.