Page 39 of Mr. North
I unfold the paper, my eyes stinging as I look down at the all-too familiar picture on the very front page of the New York Times: my family home. The two-story building with the peeling paintwork, surrounded by a sea of sunflowers, looks more than a little humble, but it’s where I grew up. The long, winding driveway up to the house is where my father taught me how to ride a bicycle. I cracked my front tooth when I was six, falling off the rope swing hanging from the large live oak towering over the property to the right of the picture. You can’t see my old bedroom window from the front of the house, but I know that around the side of the colonial style home, there’s a tiny ledge that I used to clamber out onto at night after Mom and Dad had gone to sleep, so I could meet my friend Sarah and her boyfriend in the back field barn. The same barn where my mother was violently raped when I was six years old.
Above the image of the house, the blocky, aggressive strapline reads: DREYMON SUNFLOWER FARM $250,000 IN DEBT. Then, in smaller letters: WILL RAPHAEL NORTH BE FOOTING THE BILL?
I almost sink to my knees where I stand. The newspaper shakes in my hands as I try and read the article below, but my eyes are blurry, filled with tears. What the hell is this about? There’s no way. No way the farm is in trouble. I make a point of checking in with Mom to see how the business is doing every week, and she’s had nothing but positive reports for me. If there were something wrong, if she were struggling financially, she would have told me.
She’s been calling non-stop since last night but I haven’t listened to her messages or called her back yet. I’ve been too afraid of what she might say to me. I haven’t known what to say to her. It’ll crush me to hear disappointment or disapproval in her tone. Worse, if she’s angry that I slept with a man I barely know, in a painfully visible way, she’s going to start lecturing me about being sexually irresponsible and inviting an attack upon myself. I need to speak to her though. I can’t avoid her forever. I take out my phone and dial her number. The carriage doors to the subway begin to close, and I almost let them. I almost hang back, allowing the train to carry me off somewhere else rather than get off and face the world. That would be foolish, though. I can’t be late for class. It’s already bad enough that I’m going to have to face the wrath of Professor Dalziel without being tardy on top of that.
I keep my head down as I climb the stairs out of the station. My mom answers the phone on the seventh ring.
“For god’s sake, Beth, I’ve been worried sick about you. Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” Anger tinges her voice, but I can hear the pain there, too. She’s hurt, and I’m the one who’s caused that hurt. My stomach rolls, nausea hitting me hard.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry. I just…I haven’t been able to…I didn’t know what to say.”
“How about, ‘I’m okay, Mom. I’m fine. I’m alive. I’m not in any trouble or danger?’”
“I am fine. I’m sorry I worried you. I just saw the paper, though. Mom, they’re saying we’re in debt on the farm? Not just in debt. They’re saying we’re bankrupt. What the hell are they talking about?”
“Oh, nonsense, Beth. What are you doing paying attention to gossip columns, anyway? You know these people love to create a scandal. I don’t want to talk about the farm. I want to talk about—”
I cut her off before she can say his name. Before she can start warning of the dangers of sleeping with a man. Any man. I need to stay focused here. “This isn’t some gossip column, Mom.” I look down at the newspaper I’ve folded up and am carrying to school with me. “This is the New York Times , for crying out loud. They don’t just make things up. They have fact checkers. And this is on the front page!”
She’s quiet for a second. Then a second longer.
“Mom! Tell me what’s going on!”
“Okay, okay.” She sighs tiredly. “When your father died, the business was in great shape. He spent years working very hard to build it up, to make sure it was stable. I used to do the books for the business as you know, but I had no experience with any other aspect of the company, honey. I didn’t know how the contracts worked, or how to market and get out there and gain more clients. We lost one of our most valuable contracts a couple of years ago when the import prices from the Netherlands dropped, and that was it. I couldn’t find another company to pick up the shortfall, and the business has been suffering ever since. I remortgaged the land eighteen months ago, so I could pay off some of the debt we owed, but then it became harder and harder to make the repayments on the property and the land…and that’s where we are now.”
I don’t know what to say. My throat feels dry, like it’s made of sandpaper. “Years, Mom. You’ve been struggling with this for years and you didn’t say anything. Why?”
“What would you have done if I had?” she asks.
“I would have come home! I would have helped with the business!”
“Exactly. You would have dropped out of school, and how many years of hard work would have been wasted then? I wasn’t going to let you sacrifice all your hard work for this old place, Beth. No way, no how.”
“How can you say that? You and Dad built the farm up from nothing. It was his life work.”
“I know, sweetie. I know. It really was. But at the end of the day, that’s what you need to remember. It was his life’s work. His passion. Not yours. Your father’s gone now, and he wouldn’t want to see you give up on your hopes and dreams to protect something that doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Mom...” Tears slide down my face; I can’t seem to hold them back.
“Answer me this. Do you want to run the farm for the rest of your life, Beth?”
I sniff, dashing at my cheeks with the back of my hand. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it before.” I have, though. I’ve thought about it at great length. I couldn’t wait to get away from Kansas. Couldn’t wait to qualify, work hard, make partner somewhere and work on thrilling cases that made me feel like my blood was on fire.
“You don’t need to feel bad about wanting your own life, honey,” Mom says quietly. “It’s taken me a long time to realize that, too. I always loved doing this because it made your father so happy, but now…it’s almost a relief that I won’t be doing it anymore. I have a life I need to live, too, baby girl. I’m excited to go and see what’s out there for me now.”
“So what does that mean? For the business? For the house?”
“It’s all got to go. Everything. You don’t need to worry about me, though, sweetheart. I’m not sad about this at all. It’s a fresh start for me. And now that is all out of the way, tell me what the hell is going on with you, Beth. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I turned on the television last night. You’re dating Raphael North?” Perhaps she’s feeling too kind to mention that she saw him fucking the living daylights out of me in real time, along with the rest of the entire nation. I grind my teeth together, sighing heavily.
“I don’t even know where to begin. I haven’t got a clue where to start.”
She makes the same soft humming sound she used to make when she would console me as a child. “How about you start at the beginning.”
* * *
S he doesn’t judge me. Doesn’t shout at me. She listens patiently, and every second I find myself talking to her, telling her everything that’s happened, I’m just waiting for her to get angry. To my surprise, she doesn’t. She fucking apologizes . She tells me how sorry she is that what happened to her all those years ago affected me for so long. She cries . She tells me to call Raphael, or at least answer his texts. I haven’t taken a look at my phone’s messaging app since last night—I just can’t face it—so I have no idea if he’s even called or messaged again, but Mom encourages me to reach out to him either way, to tidy up the situation once and for all. I tell her I will, and I hang up just as I hurry through the lecture hall door. It’s funny—I immediately feel better having spoken to my mother. I shouldn’t have put it off for so long. The world still seems to be crashing down around my ears, but just knowing she’s on my side, she isn’t angry, and she has my back makes everything feel a little less scary.
