“It’s terminal.” The voice reaches Isabel’s ears from far away, pulling her out of her memories.
“Sorry?” She blinks her brown eyes wide, suddenly very awake.
The older man gives her a strange look, as if he’s wondering if he should be dealing with an actual adult instead of the doe-eyed twenty-two year old in front of him. “Your pipes, they’re terminal.”
He gestures with his wrench and Isabel follows it with her eyes to the floor of the basement, her basement, which is now submerged in two inches of water.
“It doesn’t look like they’ve been updated since this place was built.” The plumber shakes his head in disbelief, as if he can’t imagine how anyone could be so careless. “The house needs a complete overhaul, starting here. Otherwise this won’t be the first leak you’re going to have.” He gives her a warning look as if to emphasize his point.
There’s no need; Isabel is already well aware of how dire the situation is. She’s the one who’s going to have to bail the water out of the basement as if it were boat. The plumber, or Bob as his uniform loudly proclaims, starts packing up his tools and Isabel is gripped by a mild panic. “Wait! What are you doing? You’re not going to fix it now?” She points at the pipe in the ceiling that is still gushing water.
He sighs heavily as if she were asking him for the moon. “It’s an emergency call-out so that’ll be time and a half.” He gives her an appraising look, not bothering to hide the fact that he clearly doesn’t think she has that kind of cash. Isabel has to admit that he wouldn’t be completely wrong. Bob seems to take pity on her, seeing something in her face that makes him a little more amenable. “I knew your mother.” His voice is gruff and he doesn’t look her in the eye, as if the mere thought of having a crying woman on his hands is enough to terrify him. “I was sorry to hear about her passing.”
“Thank you.” Isabel nods quickly, the words coming out of her mouth automatically, without her even having to think about them anymore. For a while she had puzzled over what the appropriate response was to all the ‘we’re sorry for your loss’ commiserations she’d received in the weeks after her mother’s death. She’d learned pretty quickly that a quick thank you was the best way to close what was inevitably an awkward conversation for all concerned.
“I’m sure I can give you a good deal.” Bob gives her a reassuring smile and an awkward pat on the shoulder.
“Thanks.” She breathes a little easier at the thought of a discount; she sorely needed something to lighten the load right now. “Knock yourself out.” Isabel gestures for him to go ahead before she trudges up the stairs.
She makes her way to the office that had been her mother’s. The room still held all of her things: her pens with their chewed tops, her diary with scrawls that were indecipherable to anyone apart from her. Isabel falls more than sits in the chair that she’d christened as ‘the spinney chair’ when she was a kid playing at working. Now sitting in it, faced with the piles of bills in front of her, it doesn’t seem nearly as much fun as it had back then.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Mom?” She looks at the framed picture on the desk, one of the only items she had brought into the space. It was her favorite picture of her mother laughing at some unknown joke, her head thrown back as she clutched a dark-haired serious-looking girl in her arms, Isabel.
It is still so hard to accept the fact that she is gone, that her mother is gone and she is never coming back. No amount of hoping or wishing will change that. Three months have gone by and the loss of her still hits Isabel with such force. It’s like a weight on her chest that makes it hard to breathe.
She rubs her temples, forcing herself not to cry. If she succumbed to that feeling every time she thought about her mother, she wouldn’t be able to function and that is exactly what she needs to do now. Now she’s the only person she can rely on; there is no one else. She is alone.
Isabel takes a deep breath and plunges into the pile of bills in front of her. Electricity, gas, water, taxes, taxes, and more taxes, the mortgage repayments – everything is behind; it is all way behind and way past due. It had taken a while to understand where all the money had gone. The Bishops had never been flush but they’d been comfortable. Isabel’s father had been a cop and his pension still comes through every month but it isn’t a fortune – being killed in the line of duty apparently doesn’t buy your family any kind of real security after the fact.
It’s funny; thinking about her father has never really made Isabel sad, because she barely knew him. He had been shot and killed when she was only four. She has no real memory of him, nothing other than the vague silhouette of him drawn from her memories and the stories her mother used to tell. Caroline Bishop had only been in love once.
When Isabel had asked her why she’d never remarried or even dated anyone else – it wasn’t as if her mother lacked admirers, after all – she looked at Isabel as if she were mad. “Because I’m still married to your father.” She held up the finger where she still wore his ring and that had been the end of the conversation.
Isabel often wonders if she will ever love someone like her mother had loved her father. It seemed unlikely – theirs was a love from another time. Unbidden, thoughts of Mike filter into Isabel’s mind and she pushes them away. That is a whole other can of worms she isn’t ready to deal with just yet. He’d been her closest friend in Dallas, but the night before she’d got the call about her mother they had slept together. They had both had too much to drink at a party, but Isabel knew that was a poor excuse for ruining what she had thought would be a life-long friendship. Now Mike seems to want to take their relationship to the next level and Isabel avoids his calls.
Since that night, he has offered to come to Chicago and help her with the boarding house any number of times, but she knows she has no intention of ever taking him up on it. Doing so would send completely the wrong signal and confuse things even more. But that wasn’t the only reason that she is avoiding Mike’s calls; he also has a habit of asking her the question she can’t answer. Isabel thinks back to their last conversation.
“When are you coming back?” His tone wasn’t accusatory, just expectant.
“I don’t know, Mike. There’s still so much to sort out here.” Isabel had been in the middle of trying to figure out her mother’s booking system when he’d called and it felt like she was trying to understand Greek.
“You’re the best student in the class. I think this is pretty much the definition of extenuating circumstances. I bet if you asked the school, they’d let you repeat the year once you’re done in Chicago.” His tone was soft but it wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned her return as if it were a foregone conclusion.
“I don’t know when I’m going to be ‘done,’ Mike.” She’d raised her voice, the floodgates of her frustration, pain, and sadness over the previous few days had needed a release and he had been the nearest punching bag. “My mother is dead, Mike. She’s dead and I didn’t even know that she was sick! And now I have this house, this business. I have tenants and I have no idea what the hell it is that I’m doing! I’m fighting my way through the medical bills that have taken pretty much every last cent we had so right now I can’t even afford a plane ticket back to Dallas, even if I wanted one. So the answer is I don’t know, Mike. I don’t know when I’m going to be ‘done.’”
She paused for breath, sniffing hard against the inevitable onslaught of tears. Crying was something she’d become very good at since she’d lost her mom. She’d managed to keep it all in while her mother was dying in front of her in the hospital bed; she’d even managed to remain stoic and strong during the funeral. It was only once all the well-wishers had left and she was finally alone in the house with Jamie, the house that had always been filled with love and laughter and noise and the smell of her mother, that Isabel had allowed herself to cry. She had turned it into a rule, she wouldn’t cry in front of anyone, only when she was alone. It was the only way that she could stop herself from mourning her mother 24/7.
“Issy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.” The kindness in Mike’s voice made her feel like a complete bitch for letting rip at him. “I just miss you. I miss us.”
Isabel swallowed hard. She wasn’t sure that one night together constituted an ‘us’ but now wasn’t the time to have that particular debate.
“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bitten your head off like that. I know you were just trying to help.” She sighed deeply, rubbing her tired eyes as her mother’s scrawl swam in front of her. “You’re a good friend, Mike.”
“I hope I’m more than that.” He paused, as if he were expecting her to say something. “You know when you want to come back, whenever that is, I can get you a flight.”
“I know.” She smiled into her cellphone. Mike’s family was old money – Texas oil – and he had always been generous with his cash, but never flashy. He was handsome, rich, and sweet; most women would fall at his feet. But Isabel wasn’t most women. “And you know I don’t like to take favors from friends.”
Mike barked a laugh and she could almost hear him shaking his head at her. It was a discussion they’d had more than once. “Then don’t think of it as a favor; think of it as a loan. You can pay me back when you’re a rich and famous thoracic surgeon.”
Isabel smiled; he had said ‘when’ not ‘if’ she became a surgeon. His certainty was enviable, something she had once possessed. She had been so sure for pretty much all of her life she wanted to be a doctor. She’d studied hard and, despite thinking that they didn’t have the money for college, her mother had somehow found the cash. To this day Isabel still hadn’t been able to figure out where her mother had come up with it.
After college, Isabel had been accepted to medical school. She’d had her pick from Stanford to Columbia, but the only school that offered her what she needed – a full-ride scholarship – was Dallas, so in the end it had been a no-brainer. She’d worked so hard for so long and then when she got the call about her mom, it was as if everything had stopped. Her world had flipped on a dime. Now she didn’t know what she was going to do, if she would ever be able to go back to school, if she’d ever be a doctor.
“So how’s the sale going? Any interest yet?” Mike was filling the silence, knowing her mind was elsewhere. He knew her far too well.
Isabel chewed her bottom lip, not wanting to lie to him but knowing what his reaction would be to the truth. “Ummm…pretty slow actually.”
“Issy, I thought you were going to speak to realtors.” There was no judgment in Mike’s voice but it hurt just the same.
“I was, but the house isn’t in any fit state to sell at the moment. It needs a lot of work done before I would be able to get anything close to market value for it.” Isabel knew her point was a valid one, but it wasn’t the only reason she hadn’t called any of the realtors her mother’s lawyer had recommended to her.
In the past, Isabel had never understood why her mother hadn’t sold the house once her father had died. They could have downsized. Her mom wouldn’t have had to worry about mortgages or tenants or any of the stuff she knew must have kept her mother awake at night. It was only now, that her mother had left the house to her, that Isabel started to understand her reasoning. The house was inextricably linked to her mother. Aside from her clothes and her room, which Isabel hadn’t been able to bring herself to clear out yet, it was the only thing Isabel had left of her. Her mother had loved that house and selling it to a stranger to live in or, worse, knock down just seemed wrong.
Rationally, she knew her mother had never wanted her to leave medical school, that she had never thought Isabel would have to run the house. But Isabel couldn’t see any way around it, not at the moment, anyway. So many times Caroline Bishop had encouraged her to make something of herself, to follow her dreams, to have great adventures. Out of habit, her hand went to the pocket of her jeans where the letter her mother had written her now remained. She kept it with her at all times, as if it would make her feel just a little closer to the woman she had loved more than anything else in the world.
“You know I’m here if you need me, Issy.” Mike’s tone was soft, leaving Isabel under no illusion that he wasn’t just talking about help with selling the house.
“I know. Thanks, Mike. Talk later.” Isabel ended the conversation before they could go any deeper down a path she wasn’t ready for yet. She wondered if she ever would be.
Isabel had a habit of getting involved with guys where there was no hope of a relationship, she had always been so focused on school, on her goals for the future that men had taken a distant back seat. More than once, she’d slipped out of a guy’s bed in the early hours of the morning without leaving a note or a number. Her friends teased her, telling her she was as bad as the guys they had slept with only never to hear from again. She never denied it; it was just the way she was. She didn’t do relationships, didn’t need them. Finishing school and getting her career kick started were too important for anything else to get in the way.
The morning after their drunken sex, Isabel had expected Mike to be as embarrassed as she had been, but nothing could have been farther from the truth. But with Mike, it had been different. She knew him too well to be able to sneak out of his apartment before the sun was up, so she’d only made it as far as the kitchen. He’d found her there, on about her seventeenth cup of coffee. He’d wanted to have ‘the conversation’ and she had to physically stop herself from bolting for the door. She’d managed to distract him and avoid having a real discussion about what happened between them and now she was in Chicago and he was in Dallas. She’d managed to convince herself geography was enough of a reason to delay the inevitable. She didn’t want to break Mike’s heart, but she knew she was going to have to. She simply didn’t feel the same way about him as he so clearly did her.
The memory of their conversation makes her head hurt even more than the figures she’s staring at, as if looking at them alone would make any kind of a real difference. Isabel has no idea how her mother used to make it look so easy to run the boarding house. She can’t remember a time when the place hadn’t been full, when things hadn’t operated like clockwork. Caroline Bishop was warm organized and capable, no job too big or too small. That’s why her tenants kept coming back year after year. But when she died, the regulars started to dwindle away, too. Now, trying to get enough tenants just to make ends meet has been proving a challenge. That combined with the debilitating debt her mother’s illness left Isabel with isn’t exactly a winning combination.
Her mother hadn’t even had time to take out life insurance. Her illness had been quick and lethal, the former of which Isabel could at least be grateful for. She’d had a long talk with her mother’s oncologist. Caro – as he had called her – had only been diagnosed two months before she died. The tumors in her system had been there for years, lying in wait, intruders ready to pounce. Her symptoms had been easy to dismiss as tiredness or stress, until it was too late. Isabel had insisted on looking at the scans; to this day she’s not even really sure why. Perhaps it was a way of facing the silent killer that had attacked her mother from the inside. Whatever peace Isabel had thought the confrontation might give her, she had been sorely mistaken.
A buzz from her cell interrupts her train of thought.
Hope you’re not ugly crying, Bishop.
She smiles as she reads the message from Jamie, her best friend from home. Jamie and Isabel had grown up together, joined at the hip from kindergarten to the end of high school despite the fact the two couldn’t have been more different if they tried. Jamie was petite and blonde where Isabel was tall and dark with exotic looks that came from her father. But it wasn’t just the physical that made people question what they had in common. Where Isabel was academic and studious, Jamie was artistic and carefree. Isabel was valedictorian; Jamie was head cheerleader. Isabel had gone to college and is studying to become a doctor and Jamie had moved to New York to intern at a fashion magazine.
Through it all, they had remained the best of friends. Jamie had a way of making Isabel laugh like no one else. She was blunt and straight-talking, two traits Isabel appreciated even more in the wake of her mother’s death. Some people had been shocked at the way Jamie had treated Isabel during the funeral. Instead of commiserations and sad smiles, Jamie had told her not to cry because it would ruin her makeup and that the black dress she had chosen for the occasion was fashion suicide. Outsiders hadn’t understood that Jamie’s normalcy and her stalwart refusal to act as if anything had changed was exactly what Isabel needed. And when everyone had left the house and it was just Jamie and Isabel, Jamie had held her hand and rubbed her back when she finally broke down.
How rude! I am NOT an ugly crier. How you doing? Still busy trying to feed the models?
The glamour of Jamie’s job is completely in keeping with her personality, but she always sticks to her roots, trying to persuade the paper-thin models to eat chocolate bars she smuggled into the shoots every now and again.
Honey, don’t kid yourself. EVERYONE is an ugly crier! Now get back to work, slacker! Call you later. x
Isabel smiles before placing the cell carefully back down on the table. She will talk to Jamie about what to do. She’ll ask her advice about the house and about school. Jamie is the one person Isabel can rely on not to pull any punches and not to judge. She will tell Isabel exactly what she thinks and, as Isabel had learned over the many years they’d been friends, Jamie has an annoying habit of being right.
Isabel knows her friends back in Dallas, with the possible exception of Mike, haven’t really understood why she had left med school with no fixed plans of returning. They think she’s being dramatic. Jared – the aspiring Psychiatrist of the group – had suggested she was traumatized over the death of her mother and was acting out. The simple truth is that she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do anymore, or even really who she’s supposed to be. When she lost her mother, Isabel also lost a part of herself that she’d always taken for granted. Her mother had been her North, the one constant in her life, the one person outside of herself she could always depend on, that she dared to depend on. Now she is well and truly on her own.
“You’re all set there.” The plumber’s voice makes her jump out of her chair. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” He gives her a curious look and makes a calming gesture with his hands. “Anyway, your pipe’s all patched and you’re good to go. But you really do need to get your plumbing redone. It’s not a pretty picture.” He shakes his head and hands over his card. “My fee is on the back.” He winks at her conspiratorially.
Isabel smiles back as she turns the card over before she feels her eyes bug out of her head. “Hey, umm…Bob…I thought you said you could work in a discount for me?” Isabel struggles to get the words out around the lump in her throat.
“That figure,” he points at the slip of paper he’s just handed her, “that’s with the discount. Call me when you want me to start and it’s fifty percent up front.” He saunters out of the room, leaving Isabel to blink blankly at the figure that’s so far over and above what she can afford she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Isabel remains with the business card in her hands for a good few minutes after she’s heard the door close. Now what the hell is she going to do? Where is she supposed to get that kind of money from?