Page 45 of Tell Me Softly
“Since I said so!”
“You never told me!”
“I sent you a text.”
“You took away my phone, remember?”
My mother fell silent for a few seconds, then screamed, “And after this, I’m keeping it another week!”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Why?” I asked.
“Because I said so.” She pointed at Cameron and said, “And you’re punished too. If I hear you’ve gotten into another fight, I’m taking you out and sending you to military school! I swear to God!”
“No! I don’t want to go! I don’t want to wear a stupid uniform!” my brother shouted, but then he wilted under my mother’s fiery stare.
“Not another word,” she said.
“So you’re taking it out on the kids now?” my father called down. He walked downstairs, trying to take hold of the situation. My mother by now looked completely insane.
“They’re my children, and I’m trying to raise them to behave. You wouldn’t know anything about that, though, since you’re never here!”
“Oh, please!” my father exclaimed. He was losing his patience. “This has nothing to do with me being away from home. You’re mad because I told you we need to rein in our expenses, and you just can’t live with the thought that you might have to drink less or get one less mani-pedi a month.”
“I’m not going to give up my life just because you’ve decided to get paranoid about some crisis you’ve made up in your head.”
“We’re on the verge of bankruptcy!” When Dad screamed this, we all fell silent. Everything was so quiet, we could even hear my father’s breathing. “I’m going to work it out, but you have to understand that from now on…”
“I don’t have to listen to this shit!” my mother butted in again. “You caused these problems; now you solve them so your family can get on with their lives. It’s literally theonlything I’ve ever asked of you.”
She ran back upstairs and slammed the door.
What my father had just said had frightened me. I didn’t care about the money—I wasn’t like Mom in that way—but I was worried about him.
“Dad, what’s going on?”
He stood there staring up toward their room, looking deeply disappointed. I swore to myself I would never do anything to hurt him in that way. I couldn’t stand the thought that I might ever make him that upset.
“Everything’s OK.” My brother jumped up and hugged him. “I know it’s late, but Mom didn’t make any dinner, I’m starving, and I could use a little fresh air. How about if I take you kids for a late snack and tell you what’s going on?”
My brother nodded, then asked if he could bring Juana. Dad sighed and said yes but told him to grab a windbreaker too. As he ran upstairs, I told Dad I hadn’t had anything to eat but a piece of cake and that I was starving.
Annoyingly, my brother insisted on going to McDonald’s, which meant we had to drive out toward the interstate, but I got it. He was a kid, he loved junk food, and Mom would never let him have it. So Dad and I agreed to do it for his sake, even though a Big Mac wasn’t exactly what either of us would have preferred.
When we got there, Cam and I sat down, and Dad ordered and brought over our trays. For a while, we talked about random things––the weather, what was going on at school––but when we’d nearly finished and Cam was making annoying slurping sounds as he sucked the last bit of soda through his straw, my father turned serious.
“Next week is going to bring changes,” he said. He kept his attention focused on me while my brother played with the toy from his Happy Meal. “The company’s in bad shape. We tooksome wrong steps––I took some wrong steps––and a lot of our investors are getting cold feet.”
“What did you do wrong?” I asked, afraid for him, knowing how harshly he judged himself.
“I delegated something to the wrong person, and a lot of important people’s money has disappeared.”
“Did they steal it?”
“I don’t know the details yet, but there’s no other explanation that makes sense. It seems like Carrowell has been embezzling from us.”
“Can’t you fire him? Or go to the cops?”
“I wish it were that easy, but the thing is, Carrowell was doing it on my behalf. I trusted him, and I signed off on almost every one of those contracts.”
