“Come in!” I said sulkily.
And the door opened to reveal my mom’s pudgy form, her hair in a graying bun. I feel for Mary, I do really. After my dad died, she fell into a tailspin of depression and sadness. Grandma Nancy had had to live with us for a while to take care of me and make sure food got on the table because Mary couldn’t even get out of bed.
But in the decade since, Mom has recovered. She’s disabled, so she doesn’t work a formal job. Instead, Mary stays home most days, doing some tailoring work for a nearby shop, but really, we’re living off of the proceeds of my dad’s life insurance policy.
“Honey, you’re old enough so that we can have an adult conversation,” began my mom gently, the bed creaking a little as she sat next to me. I moved Raggedy Ann out of the way, refusing to look at her.
“What?” I mumbled, staring out the window. “What?”
“Honey, we didn’t get that much from life insurance, you know that,” Mary said gently.
I interrupted.
“But you don’t work! I mean, not really, just helping out with a couple things from the shop.”
My mom nodded.
“That’s true, your late dad had the foresight to set us up well,” she began, eyes tearing up at the thought of her husband. I know they’d been in love, that they were high school sweethearts who never had eyes for anyone else. But the truth is, I had no memories of George. Zero. Zip. I didn’t have the heart to tell Mary that her precious husband was merely a ghost to me. He was my father sure, but he also wasn’t because I couldn’t summon a face, a voice, not anything. He was someone who lived in stories and pictures only, tales of “George this” and “George that.”
And like she could hear his name, Mary took a big breath and tried again.
“Like I said, Laney, your father had the foresight to buy insurance. But have you ever heard of something called the stock market?”
I nodded.
“It’s where you buy stocks, right? Buy and sell them? Why, what does that have to do with us?”
Mary took another deep breath, her eyes tearing again.
“I think that’s right, honey. Honestly, I’m not so sure myself, you know I’m not good with financial things. But from what our accountant tells me, we were invested in the market and things haven’t been going so well. We don’t have much anymore. In fact, we’re almost down to nothing.”
I shook my head, confused.
“How is that possible? How could that happen? I thought Daddy left us plenty!”
Mary gulped again, one slow tear trickling down her cheek this time.
“He did honey, but I guess I trusted the wrong people. You know I put the money with a financial adviser that I found on the web. They had such a fancy website! There were so many colorful graphics, and the customer representative was very nice when I called.”
I gasped.
“Ma, you used an on-line financial adviser? With no references?”
“Well, there were testimonials on their website,” she said sadly. “There were so many reviews that gave them five stars and I thought that was enough.”
I groaned inside, shaking my head. Even at thirteen, I had more common sense than Mary. Because there are so many scams on the web, you can buy Facebook likes, you can pay people to review your product, saying, “Oh yeah, XYZ is amazing, thumbs up!”
But my mom is living in the past, and besides, she’s innocent. Mary grew up in the time of typewriters before there was a world wide web, so in some sense, you couldn’t blame her.
“How much did we lose?” I asked, voice trembling. “How much do we have left?”
Mary swallowed heavily, her spotted hand grabbing onto mine.
“We have enough for another year,” she said in quiet voice. “We can survive another year.”
“Another year or what?” I cried, gesturing helplessly. “And then what happens?”
Mary shook her head.
“I don’t know honey, I don’t know. We’ll have to move, we’ll have to find a cheaper place to live. We’ll have to economize, we’ll have to give up meat maybe. Would that be okay? I know you’re almost vegetarian already, Laney.”
I goggled at her. This was way worse than what I expected, even my thirteen year-old brain recognized big trouble on the horizon.
“We won’t have enough money for food?” I asked quietly, my hands twisting in the bedsheets. “Really?”
“No, I didn’t say that!” rushed Mary, her face flushing. “I just said that we need to eat more cheaply, maybe by giving up meat. Maybe we’ll go on a fun vegan diet, you know, beans, rice, no animal products. How does that sound?”
My mouth remained closed even as I stared at her, dumbfounded. First, because clearly my mom had no idea what she was talking about. Veganism can be really expensive with all the special items you have to buy to maintain a balanced diet. There’s special tofu, special supplements, and a host of vitamins to make sure you don’t wither away.