Sassafras, Part 76

Joan


The coast was clear when I finally poked my head out of the bathroom. I scurried to the bedroom and dressed, then went looking for Billy to apologize again. I knocked on his door. “Billy? Bill, I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed.”

“It’s okay, Aunt Jo,” he said over the explosions from whatever game he was playing. “I’m just glad Scott and Steve didn’t come over with me.” Good grief, I hadn’t even thought about that.

“Do you think you could come out here for a minute, Bill. I need to talk to you.”

I was sitting at the kitchen table looking at the bills again when he came out of his room. He slid onto a chair across the table but managed to avoid actually looking at me. “Look, I’m really sorry, Bill. I shouldn’t have left the door open like that. It was pretty stupid. I haven’t been so embarrassed since I walked around at work all afternoon with my skirt tucked into my pantyhose.” At least that got a smile out of him, but he was still successfully avoiding eye contact.

I shuffled a couple of bills around. “Bill, did your mom ever talk to you about money?”

“Oh, yeah. We’re broke. That’s why she had the satellite dish turned off. She said she was probably going to have to shut off the internet, too, but she didn’t want to have to stop blogging. Don said I was too young to work at the diner with Mom so I cut grass all summer to make money. When it stops snowing I’m going to go out with Scott and Steve and shovel driveways.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him the satellite had been disconnected because Jenny hadn’t paid the bill. Blogging. What kind of hobby was that? Writing details of your private life and then throwing them out for the whole world to know about. It was like turning your life into a circus, open to the public. Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and read all about it. I picked up the bill for the internet. It was part of the phone bill, an extra $40 a month. She was wasting her money on that when her gas and electric bills were both behind, rent was due, and in two months she was going to have to come up with almost a thousand dollars for taxes. I was right. Computers are the work of the devil.

“Did Jenny say she was expecting to get some money?”

“What do you mean, like win the lottery or something?”

“No. Maybe somebody owed her money, or she was going to borrow money from somebody. Or maybe she was going to sell something. I don’t know.”

“No. She was real worried about bills. She never said anything, but I could tell.”

“She never said anything to me, either. I wish I had known. I could have helped with Mom’s bills at least. I never knew it was this bad.”

There was another bill stuck to the back of the phone bill, a notice from the insurance company canceling the policy on Jenny’s car. I flipped through Jenny’s checkbook, but there wasn’t any payment to the insurance company listed after the termination date. Shit. I had been driving that car all last week with no insurance. I picked up my phone and dialed the number on the paperwork. It took some talking before I was able to get insurance on the car. Between the fact that Jenny was dead and hadn’t been paying on time when she was still alive they refused to just renew Jenny’s policy, so I had to get a new policy made up. I hadn’t had insurance since I moved to New York and that put me in a high-risk bracket, which didn’t make much sense to me. I didn’t have insurance because I didn’t need any, not because there was anything wrong with my driving. While I was on the phone the woman mentioned the bill for the house insurance was also past due, so I put that on my credit card, too. I thought I could feel it start to melt from all the charges I had put on it since I got to Sassafras.

“Well, it’s official,” I announced when I hung up the phone.

“What’s official?”

“I just paid more than $700 on insurance for the house and car. Looks like I’m moving back to Sassafras.”

Billy let out a yell, jumped up and ran over to give me a big hug. “Yes! Rick was right.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean, Rick was right?”

“Oh, man, I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, man.” Billy sat back down and squirmed a little. “At Tanner’s, when you were playing the jukebox, Rick and I made a deal to get you to stay in Sassafras.”

“What kind of deal? Come on, spill it.”

“Oh, I was just supposed to make you think the house looked bad so you wouldn’t be able to sell it. Rick figured if the house looked bad you would have to stay long enough to fix it up, and then once you had it fixed you wouldn’t want to leave. I wasn’t going to do anything bad, honest, Aunt Jo. I was just going to turn off the hot water heater so you would think it was broke, and maybe mess with the fuse box so you would think there was electrical problems.”

“That’s the most crazy idea I’ve ever heard! You stay away from that fuse box, Bill. The last thing I need is you in the hospital. What was Rick going to do while you sabotaged the house?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. He just said you’d never want to leave after a couple of weeks. I never did anything because after you came home Saturday night we made our own deal, so I figured the deal I made with Rick didn’t matter anymore.”