Hints of Heloise by Laura Lippman

she sees one. Brian has occasionally removed his own dishes from the table, but to rinse it and put it in the dishwasher? Things must be very bad indeed.
    â€œWhat are you saying, exactly?” Pay cut, pay cut, pay cut, she prays. Please be a pay cut. Or maybe a bonus didn’t come through.
    â€œI was fired.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œAlmost ten days ago.”
    Yet he has been putting on a suit every morning and driving away. “So where have you been—”
    â€œStarbucks. I thought I would find something so fast that there was no need to trouble you with it. And I did get severance.”
    â€œHow much?”
    â€œJesus, Meghan, don’t overwhelm me with your sympathy and concern.”
    â€œ How much? ”
    â€œSix months.”
    â€œYou’ll find something new.” It’s a question, a plea.
    â€œYeah, but—it’s bad out there, Meghan. I may not make as much. We may have to move. Who knows?”
    Who knows? Meghan knows. She knows what it’s like to live in a house where money is tight. She knows what it’s like when a family falls back a step, what it feels like to try to get by with less than one is used to, how it’s almost impossible to catch up ever again.
    â€œClean the basement,” she says.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou have a Saturday free, you’ve been sitting in Starbucks for two weeks, doing nothing, while I run myself ragged—the least you could do is clean the fucking basement.”
    â€œYou know what, Meghan? This is way harsh, even for you. I lost my job, for no good reason. You’re supposed to be on my side. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
    â€œI have to take Mark to this thing. Which you knew. So don’t blame me because I can’t sit at the kitchen table and rub your head, talking about the job you lost two fucking weeks ago. We’ll talk later. You promised to clean the basement months ago, so do it. It might feel good, accomplishing something. For a change.” She raises her voice, which has been a tight hiss for this entire discussion. “Mark! Time to go.” Then back to the hissing register: “There are boxes in the garage and the county dump is open until two P.M. on Saturdays. Don’t forget that broken old computers can’t go in the landfill.”
    She stares him down and he drops his head, shuffling off to the basement. She checks her watch. “Mark!” This is her second-warning voice, louder than the first but still not angry. The children know what Brian has just been reminded, that it’s Meghan’s softest voice that is to be feared. Funny, because she’s never gone beyond that voice, so what is it that they fear, what power do they assign to her? Mark comes bounding down the stairs, ready for the battle of the bands. It will be a long day, and once he’s with his friends, he won’t want anything to do with Meghan. He certainly won’t stop to think what the day is like for her, how it feels to sit for hours in the drafty arena in downtown Baltimore, with only a library book, a mystery from the library, to keep her company. And the girls are giggling with friends while Michael is chasing a soccer ball down a muddy field somewhere in Western Maryland, and there are Melissa’s fucking Crocs again, or maybe Maggie’s, left in the middle of the mudroom floor.
    â€œMom, why are you shaking?” Mark asks.
    â€œIt’s cold for March.”
    Â 
    B RIAN GOES UP AND DOWN, up and down, up and down. He considered stopping as soon as Meghan left the house. Who does she think she is, talking to him that way? But the chore is a good distraction and, fuck her, she was right: he feels as if he’s accomplishing something for the first time in weeks. Months, actually.
    But as the morning turns into afternoon, he begins to lose his enthusiasm. How did one family ever acquire so much crap? Why do they have all these broken camp