Doug glanced up and said, “Oh, Glenny. Sorry, I had to leave the site.”
“What’s happened here, Doug?”
“They locked us out,” he said, his voice breaking. “The sons of bitches locked us out of our own home.”
“And you let them,” Betsy snapped. “You didn’t do a goddamn thing to stop them.”
“What the hell was I supposed to do?” he shouted at her. “Did you want me to shoot them? Was that what you wanted me to do?”
I put my hand on Doug’s arm. “Tell me what happened.”
Now he turned on me. “And no thanks to you,” he said. “I came to you for help and you didn’t give a shit.”
“Whatever kind of trouble you’re in,” I said, keeping my voice low and calm, “I don’t think a week or two of advance pay was going to solve it. You know that and I know that. So what happened?”
“They foreclosed,” he said. “They came in and kicked us out.”
“That kind of thing doesn’t happen overnight,” I said. “You have to be at least, what, three months behind on your mortgage? And they send a letter, and put a note on your door and-”
“You think I didn’t see it coming? Why the hell do you think I was asking you for help?” He shook his head. “I should have made that call about you.”
“All that unopened mail, all those bills,” I said, ignoring his last comment. “Maybe a few of the warnings were in there.”
“What the hell am I going to do?” he said, waving his arms at his belongings. “What the hell are we going to do?”
“Oh great, now you’re thinking about a plan,” Betsy sniped. “Too bad you hadn’t been thinking about something a little sooner, Einstein.”
Doug glared at her. “Yeah, you’re totally blameless. You didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with this. How could you? You were never home. You were at the mall. ”
Betsy’s eyes filled with rage. She pointed her finger at her husband and jabbed into the air repeatedly. “Maybe you should have manned up, taken control of the situation. Who’s supposed to have a handle on things? Huh? Who’s supposed to be some kind of a goddamn provider? You? Don’t make me laugh. When have you ever stepped up to the plate?”
“You know what you do?” he spat. “You don’t just suck the money out of me. You suck the life out of me, that’s what you do. I got nothing left. Nothing. You’ve got it all, babe. You’ve got all I ever had to give.”
“Really? Is that why now I’ve got nothing but shit? Because that’s all you’ve ever given me since-”
Doug moved on her. He had his hands out in front of him. He was going for her neck. Rather than run, Betsy stood, frozen in place, wide-eyed, as Doug bolted forward. He had about ten feet to close between them, which gave me enough time to get my arms around him from behind before he could latch onto Betsy.
“Doug!” I shouted into his ear. “Doug!”
He tried to wrestle away from me. He was a strong, wiry guy, like most people who work in construction. But I was just as fit, and I’d locked my fingers together on his chest, pinning his arms in place. He squirmed around for a second or two, then went docile.
Once Betsy saw that he was under control, she resumed her taunting, that finger jabbing into the air again. “You think this is what I wanted? You think I like standing out on my own goddamn lawn, can’t get into my home? You think-”
“Betsy!” I shouted. “Shut up!”
“And who the hell do you think you-”
“Both of you! Just shut up for a second.”
Betsy lowered the finger as I released my grip on Doug. “Look,” I said, “I get it. You’re upset and want to kill each other. If that’s what you want to do, maybe I should just let you. God knows I got enough other things to deal with. But it’s not going to solve your problem. You need to deal with the situation.”
“Easy for you to say,” Doug said.
I’d had enough. “Listen to me, you dumb son of a bitch. You’ve known this day was coming. You can blame Betsy, or me, or Sally for not bailing you out, but the fact is you and Betsy own this mess.” I turned on Betsy. “Same goes for you. You can either deal with this mess now and try to get your life back together, or you can stand out here screaming at each other. Which is it?”
Betsy had tears in her eyes. “He wouldn’t even open the bills. He just stuffed them in a drawer.”
Doug countered, “What was the point of opening them? It’s not like we could pay them.” To me, he said, “They ripped us off. The banks. They sold us a bill of goods. Said we could get this place for, like, nothing down, then when it came time to renew, they’re all like, Hey, we told you this was going to happen. But they didn’t, Glenny, the bastards didn’t tell us anything like that. Those fucking bankers, they take government bailouts and give themselves fat fucking bonuses and people like us get screwed!”
“Doug,” I said, too tired to say anything else.
He picked up the stack of DVDs and threw them across the yard, flinging them like Frisbees. Then he grabbed a kitchen chair and smashed it several times into the dresser. Betsy and I stood back and let him do it. When he was done, he put the chair down, sat himself on it, and hung his head.
To Betsy, I said, “Where can you stay?”
“My mom’s, I guess. In Derby.”
“She’s got room for both of you?” I asked.
“Yeah. But she’s gonna rub our noses in it.”
“If she’ll give you a place to live, suck it up and take it,” I told her.
“I guess.”
“Doug,” I said. He didn’t look up. “Doug.” Slowly, he lifted his head. “I’ll give you a hand, putting this stuff in your truck. You can store it at the shed.” That was the building where we kept equipment, out back of the Garber Contracting office off Cherry Street. “Probably going to take a couple of loads.”
He got up slowly, picked up a single DVD-a Predator movie-and walked it over to his truck like a condemned man. He opened the tailgate and tossed it in.
Loading up was going to take a long time at this rate.
I stuffed some clothes that were spilling out of a suitcase and managed to zip it shut. “This’ll probably go to your mom’s, right?” Betsy nodded. “So you might as well put it in your car.”
Moving equally slowly, she took the case and threw it into the back seat of her Infiniti. Neither of them said a word for the next half hour as the three of us picked up their belongings from the front yard and put them either in the car or truck. The dresser and the end tables wouldn’t fit anywhere, so Doug said he’d come back for those later.
“You heading over to the office?” he asked me.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got another stop to make.”
THIRTY-SIX
Finding the right house on Ward was a piece of cake. There are a lot of older, quaint, seaside-type homes down in that part of Milford, places that shared the kinds of architectural details you’d expect to find on houses on Martha’s Vineyard or somewhere up on the Cape. Sheila and I used to talk about shifting over a few blocks into this neighborhood, but whether you moved down the street or across the country, you still had to pack the same amount of stuff.
But those discussions had been a long time ago.
It was a two-story, green, wood-shingled house with gingerbread trim, and as I’d guessed, there was a Dumpster in the driveway. Parked in front and to the side of it were three pickups, one advertising a plumber on one door, another the name of a contracting company, and the third with Theo’s Electric on the side. A few feet away from the back of the truck, a worker had set up a couple of sawhorses for a makeshift table and was cutting two-by-fours into shorter lengths with a circular saw.
“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”
He nodded, then took in my name on the door of my truck. “Can I help you?”
“Glen Garber,” I said. “You in charge here?”
“Naw, I’m Pete. You’d be looking for Hank. Hank Simmons. He’s inside.”
I knew Hank. Over time, you got to know the other people in town who were doing the same kind of work.