Chapter 4

Judy sat at the dining room table. It wasn’t the nice dining room table that had graced that room for twenty years. That had been sold at the garage sale. No, this was the plastic patio table that Paul had purchased the previous summer.

She was sitting there with her hands covering her face. Tears were running down her cheeks, her nose was clogged with snot, and her throat was constricted. She couldn’t stop crying. She’d been crying for three hours.

Although she was slightly over fifty, she had always been a lovely woman. For a couple decades, she was what epitomized a ‘soccer mom’ in appearance. She didn’t look like a lovely ‘soccer mom,’ anymore. Her hair, now limp and ragged, was showing a streak of gray where the hair outgrew the hair dye. The lines on her face had deepened into wrinkles. Her posture had deflated to the presentation of a person in defeat rather than in charge. She had lost weight, more weight than was healthy.

Although it should have been obvious, she couldn’t understand why her life had turned so ugly. All she wanted was a close loving family. Now Paul, her husband, had left her; and Annie, her beautiful daughter, had turned into a harridan.

She still didn’t really comprehend why Paul had left her. It couldn’t have been over those stupid french fries, despite the fact that seemed to be the only explanation. Surely he had understood that Annie had needed her to get them. He was an adult and should know that parents have to do those kinds of things for their children. So if it wasn’t the french fries, then what was it? She couldn’t believe that he had another woman on the side.

At this point in time, Paul had been gone for five months. He was still paying the essential bills, including the mortgage, the utilities, the cell phone, and her car insurance, but that was it. The three hundred a month he was depositing in the checking account barely covered groceries. She had learned very quickly not to spend any of that money on anything other than food. She’d made that mistake, and had gone for almost a week without anything to eat.

Paul had done nothing illegal. He was under no legal obligation to pay the bills of his daughter. She was twenty-six years of age, and was considered an adult. There was nothing wrong with him deciding how his income was spent. Lots of husbands controlled the family budget. For that matter, so did a lot of wives. Living in a house separate from his spouse wasn’t illegal. Lots of couples lived separately because of jobs, or other reasons.

Her parents had abandoned her. When she had asked for money, they had asked what she needed it for. When she had answered that Annie needed a new outfit, they had laughed at her. Her mother and father had actually laughed out loud at her.

It wasn’t until her father had hung up on her that Judy began to question why it was so necessary for Annie to have a new outfit that she had to go begging her parents for the money. Judy hadn’t purchased a new outfit since Paul had left. Actually, she had tried but the credit card she had was declined. That had been a major ‘wake up’ moment.

She had tried to get a loan from the bank, but had been turned down. Paul was the wage earner. It was he who had a credit rating, not her. She had managed to get a couple credit cards with a five hundred dollar limit. They were already maxed out and she didn’t have the money to pay them. She was in trouble and sinking faster.

Annie came into the room and asked, “Have you found money for my car insurance?”

Judy didn’t answer.

“What in the fuck are you doing there? Go out and get some money. I need car insurance or else I can’t drive!”

“There’s no money,” Judy said stopping her sobbing long enough to get the words out.

“Well, sell something.”

There was nothing left to sell. The garage sale three weeks earlier had cleared the house of just about everything. The living room was bare of furniture. She still had a bed in her room, but the lovely antique chest of drawers she had gotten from Paul on their fourth wedding anniversary was gone. Selling that had been very hard.

Well, there was one room that still was furnished. Annie had a lot of stuff in her room. It was filled with expensive items like computers (a laptop and a desktop), a television, and a stereo. She had several generations of ipods, ipads, and iphones.

“How about we sell some of your stuff?” Judy asked.

As far as Annie was concerned, her life had been turned upside down. Nothing had been the same since her father had left. She’d only had a couple of new outfits since he’d left. Her and her mother hadn’t gone to a restaurant in a month. She was sick and tired of eating spaghetti, hamburger helper, and casseroles. She’d barf if she had to eat another baloney sandwich.

Whenever she asked her mother for money, she was immediately turned down. She’d had to cry, beg, and throw tantrums to get her mother to do what she was supposed to do. Her mother wouldn’t even give her money for energy drinks or buy special foods for her at the health food store. It wasn’t the way that things were supposed to be.

She blamed her father. He never wanted to let her do what she wanted to do. He was a horrible father. Didn’t he know that it was a parent’s duty to take care of all of the wants of a child? It seemed he didn’t know that. Thank goodness for her mother, who would just work around the jerk. At least it had been that way until the jerk left. Just because her father had left didn’t mean that her mother had to turn into a jerk too.

Annie exploded. “That’s my stuff. You can’t sell it just because you can’t pay the bills. You’re the parent. You’ve got to pay for stuff.”

“Well, I’ve got no money!” Judy shouted.

“You bitch!” Annie screamed.

She picked up a glass from the table and threw it at Judy. Judy ducked to keep from getting hit by the projectile. The glass missed, but not by much. It shattered when it hit the wall.

Judy stared at Annie in shock. With hands clenched into fists and leaning forward aggressively, Annie was still screaming at her. It was an incoherent rant, peppered with obscenities. Spittle was flying from Annie’s mouth. Enough gathered at the edges of her mouth, that it looked like she was foaming at the mouth. She looked and acted like some kind of rabid animal.

All of a sudden, Judy was terrified of Annie. If that glass had connected with her head, she’d have been seriously injured. Annie was still looking around as if seeking something else to throw.

Judy got up from the table and headed towards the front door. She managed to grab her purse on the way there. Annie followed behind her still screaming a constant stream of obscenities. It didn’t stop when they went outdoors.

The elderly couple across the street watched the scene in disgust. They were a rather conservative couple, very religious, and the constant stream of obscenities was offensive to them.

Midway to her car, Judy turned and shouted, “Get away from me! I don’t have the money to pay for your insurance.”

Annie hauled off and slapped Judy. Judy staggered back unable to believe what had just happened.

The elderly couple across the street had seen more than enough. Just because they were elderly, it would be a mistake to think that they weren’t up to date on the latest technologies. They both loved their smart phones, finding that the one device was so much better than carrying a video camera or still camera everywhere they went. The husband called 911 while the wife video taped events with her cell phone.

“Baby girl, calm down,” Judy said.

The words came out of her mouth automatically. It was the same words and voice that she used whenever Annie would throw a temper tantrum. It was an unfortunate choice of words. For Annie, that phrase and voice meant she was about to get her way, but only if she continued acting as she was. Her reaction was just as automatic as Judy’s. She slapped Judy again.

Across the street, the elderly neighbor was recording everything that happened. It was being stored alongside the videos of her grandchildren playing soccer, a birthday party, and other little events that were significant to her.

Her husband was an old fashioned kind of guy. The idea of a child assaulting her mother was absolutely disgusting. He couldn’t stand by and watch it unfold. Still carrying the cell phone with 911 on the line, he strode across the street intending to put an end to all of this foolishness right that moment.

He stepped between mother and daughter. Shaking a finger at Annie, he said, “Stop that right now, young lady. That kind of behavior is never called for!”

Annie hauled off and slapped him. His wife recorded every moment of it. 911 had a voice tape of everything that was said.

Annie shouted, “Shut the fuck up and mind your own fucking business!”

Although he was tempted, nearly eighty years of being a gentleman kept him from slapping her back. He had been raised that a man never hit a woman. What he really wanted to do was put her over his knee and paddle her behind. He did come from a generation where spanking was not only accepted, but expected when children misbehaved in public.

He brought the cell phone to his mouth and said the magic words, “She just assaulted me.”

Annie didn’t know it, but her life was about to take a turn for the worse.

Paul was sitting at his desk, hard at work. He was humming to himself, feeling pretty good about the world in general. His job was going well, his bank accounts (both the legal and hidden) were growing, and he was taking better care of himself than in the past. He had joined the local YMCA, and was taking an aerobics class. He wasn’t losing weight or turning buff, but he did find that he had a bit more stamina.

His apartment, which had been empty of things for ages, was now filled with furniture from his old home. He even had the antique chest of drawers that he had given his wife on their anniversary. He’d had a friend drop by the garage sale his wife held, and purchase things for pennies on the dollar. Purchasing the old stuff had served two purposes: it did help his wife out with some money, and it kept him from losing all of his investment in his previous home.

The fact was that living alone was turning out better than he had ever anticipated. Sure he was lonely, but he had been dealing with that feeling for years. It might not make sense, but feeling alone while living with other people, was worse than feeling alone when no one else was around. When other people are around, loneliness is accompanied by feelings of neglect. Neglect truly hurts the soul.

Paul was, in fact, so satisfied with how his life was going that he was beginning to question if he really wanted to salvage his marriage. It was like a load of bricks had been lifted from his shoulders at not having to listen to Judy worry incessantly about Annie. It had been so bad that even an innocent question about what was for dinner turned into a long lecture on what Annie wanted to eat, and how Judy had to run to the store to get some ingredient, only to have Annie change her mind. He hadn’t realized just how draining that had been.

His office phone rang. Without thinking, he answered it.

“Paul,” his wife said.

“What is it, Judy?”

“Uh ... I need bail money,” Judy said.

Of anything that could have happened, this had never even dawned on him. He wondered what his wife had done that would require her to get bailed out of jail. His first thought - much to his shame - was that she had tried selling her body to get some extra money, and had been arrested. Then he realized that she might have written a hot check or two. His sources in the neighborhood had let him know that the money situation was getting critical.