Francine left Allie’s office quietly, but they were both shaken up by the exchange. Francine wondered if Bob knew about it. She guessed that he didn’t. These days you had to be damn careful about who you slept with and how it looked. And Allie wasn’t careful. She never had been. She did whatever she wanted. On the other hand, Francine knew that what she was doing, and had been for years, wasn’t pretty either, and would look bad too. She was mortified at the idea that anyone knew about it, as Allie had hinted. Dan was such a disgusting old pig, and a despicable human being. He wasn’t young and beautiful and a sweet kid like Eric. But Allie was at risk there too, whether she admitted it or not.
When Francine got home that night, she had an email from Tommy’s school. He was in trouble again, and had got in another fight. Francine was exhausted from her workday, but she loved her kids. She sat down with Tommy and tried to talk to him about it.
“What happened? Why are you getting into all these fights?”
“The other boys keep calling me names. They say I don’t have a dad, and call me a bastard. They said you were probably never married to my dad. I know I have a dad, but no one has ever seen him.” Neither had Tommy. Tim Rivers hadn’t seen his son since he left New York with the nanny years before. He lived in Detroit now, with the nanny he married and the two children he had with her. Tommy was three the last time he saw his dad, and Thalia was seven. Tim had traded one family for another. He had a noble job, helping the indigent. And he had been a decent person when they met. He had never made a good living even when they were married, and they’d lived on her meager salary as an editor, at nearly subsistence level, which was why she had taken the agency job when he left. It gave her a huge salary increase, but still wasn’t enough now, with two kids to support and college less than a year away for Thalia. And she deserved to go to a good college, and had the grades. Even a state university would cost money for books, dorms, and all the rest. Francine had been putting aside whatever she could for years, but it was never enough. And her ex couldn’t help her, and didn’t want to.
But the more pressing problem was that Tommy was being bullied. He was a slight kid, short for his age, with some learning disabilities. He was in a remedial reading class. She wondered now if the school was right and she needed to get counseling for him. She was going to look into it before things got worse.
“I’ll talk to your teacher,” she promised. “You’ll be going to high school in the fall if you can hang on till then.” It was late to find him a new school for the rest of eighth grade. It seemed like a long wait till the fall to him and even to her. “I’ll think of something. I promise.”
She had one idea. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a possibility: she was going to tell the school that he was being bullied. He looked a little more cheerful when he went to his room. Thalia came home a few minutes later. Francine smiled at her, and Thalia looked sullen, which was her standard attitude these days. “How was your day?” her mother asked.
“What do you care?” Thalia spat at her with venom, and Francine sighed.
“I do care, or I wouldn’t ask you. What are you so pissed off about all the time?”
“What do I have to look forward to, Mom? A shit college? You went to a decent school. I never will. We can’t afford it, according to you. I’m going to have to take student loans, and I’ll be paying them off forever. So I’ll be poor forever. What part of that sounds happy to you? And wherever I get accepted, we won’t be able to afford it. It’s not just tuition, we’ll have to pay for the dorm, and all the extras that add up.”
“I’ve got some money put aside. Not for four years for the two of you, but enough to help. You can get a job while you go to school, and I’ll help with the student loans.” She made good money at the agency, but private college for two kids cost a fortune and so did life these days. Francine was constantly worried about money. And whenever she paid off one big bill, she got four more. New York was an expensive city. And tuitions were astronomical.
“Why doesn’t my dick of a father pay something? He’s a lawyer, for God’s sake. He owes you years of back child support, and you never even went after him. He got off scot-free from us.”
“There was no point going after him, Thallie, he makes no money. He’s an ACLU lawyer. He and his new family must be living pretty close to the poverty level.”
“So are we,” she said angrily.
“No, we’re not. We don’t have everything you want, fancy trips and clothes like some of your friends.” Francine tried to keep expenses down. “But we have a decent apartment, we live in a safe neighborhood. We have food on the table. You both go to good private schools.”
“I’ve been invited to the senior prom, and I can’t go because I don’t have a dress. You made me wear one of yours last time and I looked ridiculous. I looked like I borrowed it from my grandmother.” Francine hadn’t bought herself a new dress in years. She bought clothes for work and that was it. Thalia’s classmates had designer dresses, which Francine refused to buy for a seventeen-year-old and couldn’t afford.
“Then let’s buy you a really nice dress this time,” Francine said, wanting to improve something for her. She could see how bleak life looked to her daughter. When Thalia looked down the road ahead of her, she saw no hope, no joy, no future, except a mountain of debt and nothing to balance it. “We’ll go shopping on Saturday.” There was a flicker of hope in her daughter’s eyes, and she wanted to fan the flames of that.
“Yeah, maybe, we’ll see,” she said, grabbed a bag of chips from the kitchen, and went to her room. But she didn’t slam the door this time, which was something.
Francine called Tommy’s school the next morning and reported to the assistant principal that he was being bullied. She requested some form of security and protective supervision for him. She asked for recommendations for therapists in the area, and the assistant principal promised to email her some names. It wasn’t much, but it made Francine feel like she was doing something for her children. She couldn’t just let them drift and take care of themselves. She needed to do more than just buy groceries and school supplies for them. She felt so hopeless herself most of the time that she had forgotten to give them hope, and something to look forward to. The school had promised to watch over Tommy and make sure the bullying didn’t happen again.
When she got to the office, she made a cup of coffee and waited for Dan Fletcher to arrive. He came in late as usual, and as soon as he walked into his office, she followed him in and closed the door behind her. He looked surprised. They never talked at the office. He gave a start when he saw her facing him, with a hard look in her eyes.
“I need a raise,” she said, with iron determination.
“Talk to HR,” he said coldly. She had the glory of being the head of the literary department, but she hadn’t had a raise in a long time and she needed it now more than ever for Thalia and Tommy. “You’re not worth it,” he said harshly, and took refuge behind his desk. She looked dangerous. “You’re lucky you still have a job,” he added.
“You’re lucky I don’t go to the press or the police,” she snapped back at him. He looked angry, but she wouldn’t back down. “My son needs a therapist, he’s being bullied at school, and I’m never home because I work here till all hours. And my daughter is going to college.”