It wasn’t his fault really.
Honestly. Compared to most of the folks we grew up around, Julian was basically normal.
Jules was my third cousin, twice removed or my second cousin, thrice removed or something like that. Our great-grandparents were siblings. Whatever.
Growing up I knew of the Marshalls. Folks in my family occasionally spoke of kin’ in North Carolina that was well off. But they hadn’t been to any family reunions or functions that I recalled, so I’d thought of them in the same way one thinks of rumors that your family was royalty back in Africa. Mighta been true, but probably wasn’t, and definitely wasn’t relevant to your day-to-day either way.
Needless to say crash landing on their doorstep in the dead of night when I was eleven had been difficult. Crashing. Yeah that about summed it up.
Because although we were allegedly related, our families were nothing alike. Our worlds were nothing alike. And in the beginning we had been nothing alike.
For starters there were a lot of rules and most of them weren’t said out loud. You see, the Marshalls were not just well off after all.
The Marshalls were rich, rich.
Sent-us-to-a-fancy-ass-boarding-school-from-eleven-years-to-eightteen-years-old rich.
Jules had private tennis lessons and I had an art instructor when they’d discovered I could draw rich.
Spent half the summer at his nana’s house in Oak Bluffs rich.
Spent the other half of the summer at the best sleepaway camp in the entire world rich.
But putting all those privileges aside, that wasn’t how I knew the Marshalls were loaded.
After all they could’ve been leveraged up to their eyeballs in debt the same way my parents had been.
No, forgetting the house in Martha’s Vineyard and the fancy school—the way I knew the Marshalls were rich, was that they never, ever, discussed money.
Ever.
And we weren’t allowed to discuss it either, hence Jules and I having a terse exchange wherein he wanted me to accept his charity and I would not. Julian was generous, to a fault sometimes, but he was the exception not the rule.
The thing about rich people was that they knew how to hold on to money. That’s how they got rich.
Well … a lot of them got rich through human pain and suffering, but they stayed rich because they knew how to hold on to that money by hook or by crook.
So while I was well cared for, at least, materially while I was growing up—and was given opportunities most folks could only ever dream of—the Marshall’s money was not and would never be my money. And I never forgot that.
They never let me forget it.
Case in point: they were very graciously footing the bill for my college education, with the caveat that I begin paying them back as soon as I graduated, with eight percent interest.
“Eight for the number of years we’ve done your parents job for them,” was how May, so graciously, phrased it.
It wasn’t the repayment or the interest that upset me, it was the spite.
And the helplessness. I would never have qualified for student aid, the Marshalls had too much money and they were for better or mostly worse my guardians. Just to add insult they’d encouraged me to turn down scholarship money over and over again telling me to “consider people who really needed the money” and “that they’d make sure my education was paid for.”
And they’d made good on that promise, they just hadn’t mentioned it came with stipulations until after I’d already turned the scholarships down.
So yes, I had … complicated feelings about the Marshalls. On the one hand they took care of me, on the other hand they never let me forget my place, and my place was firmly beneath them in their convoluted minds.
But I’d learned to get by all right.
I lived a decidedly frugal life. Eating out, dinners, movies, dates were luxuries I could not afford. I supposed I was lucky, in a way, that dating hadn’t been in the cards for me. The very thought of spending money unnecessarily made my heart race and my palms sweat. I had a plan for paying back Julian’s parents and every spare cent I had went toward that.
You’re already in debt just like your parents, Trev. Soon you’ll be giving your own kids away in order to get by.
I rejected the thought immediately, if I were blessed enough to have children I’d never let them out of my sight.
I squinted at the bright sun as we walked, Jules had started going on endlessly about this fine girl he’d seen and how she must’ve been a supermodel. I was listening but I wasn’t really paying attention.
Julian’s suggestion that we go out to eat still weighed on me.
It was the kind of thing that niggled and burrowed deep under your skin because it was so simple. It wasn’t always easy to grow up with personal lack surrounded by folks whose excess had excess.
But I didn’t mind paying my dues. One day, maybe in the next six or seven years, I’d be able to go out to eat without care. One day, I’d be able to treat Julian to pay him back for always looking out for me. Maybe I’d even be able to take a date to a nice restaurant and have a steak.
“God, I’m tired,” Julian said, as he lifted his frames from his face and rubbed his eyes. “Who the hell called the house so early this morning? It took me forever to drop back off to sleep.”
It took everything in me not to groan. “My father.”
“What?” Julian slowed, his head whipping up. A little of my disgruntled tone must’ve seeped in my voice despite myself, because Julian stopped walking all together and his eyebrows were near touching as he stared at me with concern.
My parents were a touchy topic.
“Yeah. Caught my ass at six thirty in the a.m.”
Jules whistled low, shaking his head.
At the Marshall’s house the switchboard operator knew how to rig the lines, both his parents and mine were perpetual recipients of the busy tone. Julian’s parents were gone a lot so when we were in Charlotte we were mostly left in peace.
At Fisk, there was no one to bribe into doing our bidding, so the call had come through, and I’d been dumb enough to pick up.
“What did he want?” Jules prompted at my silence.
I sighed. “He wants me to come ‘home’ for the Christmas break.”
Green Valley was not home.
Not anymore.
I hadn’t lived there in years and could hardly remember what life was like when I’d been there. I did remember my parents being stressed about money, all the time, especially after my little brother was born.
I remembered the distressed look my mother gave me every time she measured me fearing I’d grown another inch and would need new pants. I remembered willing my feet not to grow because I didn’t want to ask for new shoes. That—the feeling of actively trying to be invisible so as not to burden my family—was how I remembered my time in Green Valley more than anything else. I knew they were pouring everything into trying to keep their business afloat, so I’d tried in my own way to stay out of the way.
It hadn’t worked, you were a burden and they sent you away anyway.
Julian looked at me, his expression carefully neutral. Too careful. “What did you say?”
I caught myself before I sighed again, frustrated that I couldn’t get a read on Julian’s thoughts. “I told him I’d think about it.”