Under Our Roof by Madeleine Dean & Harry Cunnane

Author:Madeleine Dean & Harry Cunnane [Dean, Madeleine & Cunnane, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2021-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

MAD

Harry peeked his head into our bedroom late one night. “Mom, could I borrow a little money? Just till payday?”

My anxiety was up again. I had just hung up from talking with PJ, who was traveling for work. We talked about the usual: Who had he met with? What city was he headed to next? Then we moved on to the worries at home. Aubrey’s first birthday was coming, and no one seemed to have a plan. Then there was the problem with our bank account. Before hanging up, PJ told me he had reluctantly given Harry a little money earlier in the week—and would I please pay the American Express bill? We had enough money, I said, but my last trip to the ATM revealed a balance way too low. What should have been five or six thousand was only five or six hundred. Now Harry was asking for more.

I told Harry I couldn’t give him anything. There was something wrong with our account, and I had to straighten it out in the morning.

That was it: An unpaid American Express bill unlocked the madness.

As I walked into the bank the next morning, I had no idea what was what. We were in the final two weeks of the campaign, a blur of speeches, debates, meetings, train stations, and door knocking. I sat at the banker’s desk and overexplained that I was running for reelection to the Pennsylvania State House—guessing she would neither know nor care. I hadn’t been checking my bank account, I said, but surely there should have been more money in it.

The banker pulled up our account and asked if we were in the habit of using the ATM a lot. Like, every day or every other day. She turned her screen so I could see a recent history of the last three weeks: Night after night, a series of ATM withdrawals had drained our account. Two hundred dollars this night, $100 the next, $300 another—$4,300 in total, gone.

“I think someone is stealing from you,” she said. “Do you want me to call the police?”

Confused for a moment, I asked her to print out the statement. Could she identify whose card was being used and where?

It was PJ’s card, she said. Used locally, often at Wawa, and always late, around midnight.

A few crazy thoughts bolted through my mind. Had I somehow lost all that money? Had PJ spent it? But then I knew. “No, thank you,” I whispered to the banker, and muttered something about a family member. Out I went to the car to sift through the evidence of the theft—the draining of our account night after night.

And I pictured Harry, going down to the kitchen after we had gone to bed, to remove PJ’s card from his wallet and sneak to Wawa for cash. Then back home, to the counter by the back door, to slip the card back into place. What a lonely, depressing scene.

I sat in the car and called PJ. “I know it’s drugs,” I said when he picked up.

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