Harry. She had ten or maybe even a dozen mystery authors. They weren’t big-ticket guys and gals, but their fifteen percent brought in enough to pay the rent and keep the lights on in our new place.
Plus, there was Jane Reynolds, a librarian from North Carolina. Her novel, a mystery titled Dead Red, came in over the transom, and Mom just raved about it. There was an auction for who would get to publish it. All the big companies took part, and the rights ended up selling for two million dollars. Three hundred thousand of those scoots were ours, and my mother began to smile again.
“It will be a long time before we get back to Park Avenue,” she said, “and we’ve got a lot of climbing to do before we get out of the hole Uncle Harry dug for us, but we just might make it.”
“I don’t want to go back to Park Avenue anyway,” I said. “I like it here.”
She smiled and hugged me. “You’re my little love.” She held me at arms’ length and studied me. “Not so little anymore, either. Do you know what I’m hoping, kiddo?”
I shook my head.
“That Jane Reynolds turns out to be a book-a-year babe. And that the movie of Dead Red gets made. Even if neither of those things happen, there’s good old Regis Thomas and his Roanoke Saga. He’s the jewel in our crown.”
Only Dead Red turned out to be like a final flash of sunlight before a big storm moves in. The movie never got made, and the publishers who bid on the book got it wrong, as they sometimes do. The book flopped, which didn’t hurt us financially—the money was paid—but other stuff happened and that three hundred grand vanished like dust in the wind.
First, Mom’s wisdom teeth went to hell and got infected. She had to have them all pulled. That was bad. Then Uncle Harry, troublesome Uncle Harry, still not fifty years old, tripped in the Bayonne care facility and fractured his skull. That was a lot worse.
Mom talked to the lawyer who helped her with book contracts (and took a healthy bite of our agency fee for his trouble). He recommended another lawyer who specialized in liability and negligence suits. That lawyer said we had a good case, and maybe we did, but before the case got anywhere near a courtroom, the Bayonne facility declared bankruptcy. The only one who made money out of that was the fancy slip-and-fall lawyer, who banked just shy of forty thousand dollars.
“Those billable hours are a bitch,” Mom said one night when she and Liz Dutton were well into their second bottle of wine. Liz laughed because it wasn’t her forty thousand. Mom laughed because she was squiffed. I was the only one who didn’t see the humor in it, because it wasn’t just the lawyer’s bills. We were on the hook for Uncle Harry’s medical bills as well.
Worst of all, the IRS came after Mom for back taxes Uncle Harry owed. He had been putting off that other uncle—Sam—so he could dump more money into the Mackenzie Fund. Which left Regis Thomas.
The jewel in our crown.
7
Now check this out.
It’s the fall of 2009. Obama is president, and the economy is slowly getting better. For us, not so much. I’m in the third grade, and Ms. Pierce has me doing a fractions problem on the board because I’m good at shit like that. I mean I was doing percentages when I was seven—literary agent’s kid, remember. The kids behind me are restless because it’s that funny little stretch of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The problem is as easy as soft butter on toast, and I’m just finishing when Mr. Hernandez, the assistant principal, sticks his head in. He and Ms. Pierce have a brief murmured conversation, and then Ms. Pierce asks me to step out into the hall.
My mother is waiting out there, and she’s as pale as a glass of milk. Skim milk. My first thought is that Uncle Harry, who now has a steel plate in his skull to protect his useless brain, has died. Which in a gruesome way would actually be good, because it would cut down on expenses. But when I ask, she says Uncle Harry—by then living in a third-rate care home in Piscataway (he kept moving further west, like some fucked-up brain-dead pioneer)—is fine.
Mom hustles me down the hall and out the door before I can ask any more questions. Parked