"I did," I nod, "but then she found out something that she shouldn't have."
"What? You didn't cheat on her, did you?” she yells at me.
I shake my head no and look away.
"What did you do?"
"I paid for her mother's medical treatment."
Marguerite furrows her brow and leans closer. I can tell that this was the last thing that she had expected to hear.
"I don't know. I don't know how to put it, but she had mentioned that her mom was sick and doctors had recommended this experimental surgery but they had to pay upfront, and she didn't have the money and so, I just did it."
"You just paid for a medical procedure for a stranger?" Marguerite asks. "How much?"
“$250,000,” I say quietly.
"A quarter of a million dollars?" She gasps. "You don't even make that much."
"There were complications and there was an additional amount of about $100,000,” I admit.
"I cannot believe this.” Marguerite stands up, shaking her head. "You don't even have that much money."
Of course, on some level, I have known this part to be true all along, but this is the first time that anyone's ever confronted me with that fact out loud.
"I had some money saved up and I had some in the trust but yeah, I had to really borrow a lot to try to make this work."
"And what about now? Is she paying you back?"
"We had a fight when she found out about it. She was really angry that I didn't tell her."
"She was angry at you?"
"Well, she was really grateful for the treatment, but she was angry that I didn't tell her. She was angry that I just went behind her back."
"Okay," Marguerite rolls her eyes, "but you don't actually have this money, you borrowed it from your trust, right?" Marguerite asks.
She knows exactly what that means. It's not borrowing in that true sense.
"What's going to happen when your mother finds out?"
"She's not going to be happy," I say.
"Yeah, exactly. You think she'll just let it go, $350,000 missing."
"I borrowed about two-hundred from there."
"Just because you liked this woman?"
"No, there's something else, but I can't talk about it right now."
"Look, whatever it is, Adele is not going to understand."
I bite the inside of my cheek. She of all people knows exactly the limits of my mother's understanding.
We sit for a little while in total silence and I look at the drapes: warm, the color of tangerine and diaphanous. The window is slightly cracked, and a little bit of air comes in swaying in the breeze.
"How do you feel about Jacqueline now?" Marguerite asks.
"I thought that this would be a good chance to make a clean break. I shouldn't have been so obsessed with her," I say, pausing slightly before saying the word obsessed in an effort to figure out just the right phrasing. "I was being, I don't know, impulsive and then when we had that fight, I thought, 'Okay, this is my chance.'"
"But aren't you going to ask for the money back?"
"No, I'm just going to pay it back. I'm working a lot of hours, booking a lot of clients, and there's a number of investments that might sell in the near future, so I'll be able to put the money back before Mom notices."
"That's if you're very lucky," she says, swallowing hard.
"You're not going to tell her, are you?"
"No, of course not, but Adele has her way of finding out. Besides, you know how she is about money. God knows why she has a business manager when she takes care of every last thing."
"This came from my trust, I just hope that she doesn't check those amounts very often since they've pretty much stayed the same."
There’s another long pause in conversation.
I'm tempted to fill it up with something inconsequential, some small talk, but there's another pressing issue that I want to discuss with Marguerite.
We've talked about this before.
There's a trust fund that Lincoln would have had access to if he had married the right person. I know that it still weighs heavily on her mind and the last time we talked, the conversation didn't go so well.
11
Dante
Marguerite announces that she's getting hungry and if she doesn't have something to eat quickly, she's going to start to feel nauseous. We head to the kitchen and she frantically looks around for the saltine crackers in the pantry.
"Don't you want some something more substantial?" I ask.
She shakes her head no. "I hate these things. They taste like cardboard, but it's the only thing that makes me feel better."
"Do you want me to order some food, anything like that?"
Again she shakes her head no. "Only if you want some. It's hard for me to predict what's going to make me feel sick to my stomach and what's not, so I kind of stick to this."
I decide to join her in her plate of crackers but cut up an apple and grab a vine of grapes as well.
"Wow. This almost would feel like happy hour if we had some wine," Marguerite remarks.
"I saw some in the back," I joke.
"It's strange but I've never been a big drinker, as you know. And now that I'm pregnant, alcohol is all I can think about."
"Really?" I ask.
"Yeah. I don't mean like to get drunk, just kind of crave that first sip of a cold beer. I don’t even want the whole thing, just a taste.”
I grab a cracker and chew with my mouth open, thundering inside my head.
"I wanted to talk to you about Lincoln's trust fund again.”
She tenses up. A small line forms on her forehead between her eyebrows and she clenches her jaw.
A second later, she bites into another cracker.
"Look, I know this is a tense situation but the money's there, and it would really change the situation for you two. I mean, he wouldn't have to work so hard."
"That's the thing. He still will," she says, shaking her head. "I mean, five million? Yeah, that's a lot of money, but he can't give up his career. It's not enough money to retire on forever in the city in any sort of lifestyle. But it is enough to move to some little town out in the country, get some animals, a little acreage, but that's not Lincoln.”
“What are you going to do out there?” I ask, sitting back in my chair and taking a bite of the apple.
“Maybe open a little practice.”
“You want to be a country doctor?”
She rolls her eyes. "You're not going to make fun of me about it, are you?"
"No, not at all. I just never heard you talk like that."
"Well, you know, we all have dreams. That’s what I was thinking the last time I was in the ER before they forced me to take maternity leave."
"Well, you did throw up on a patient," I point out.
"Dr. Gowalski nearly killed someone because he was hungover, but hey, we're all going to focus on me and my persistent nausea," she says, throwing her hands up. "Lincoln would never want to move somewhere like that, you know?”