Anonymity by McMahan Janna

Author:McMahan, Janna [McMahan, Janna]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: 2012-09-30T21:00:00+00:00

Barbara

SHE TOOK a little Zoloft. Fifty milligrams every day just to take the edge off. All her friends took something. Everybody did, right?

Barbara popped the little white pill into her mouth and washed it down with a swirl of wine. Who could blame her for ignoring that pesky little alcohol warning on the prescription bottle? If she followed all the darned instructions she'd never get to have a glass of wine or a cocktail. And sometimes she needed a drink more than the pharmaceutical.

Her therapist called it self-medicating. Her daughter called it better living through chemistry. Barbara called it survival.

She wandered back into the office, where Gerald was paying bills.

“So what's the damage this month?” she asked.

Gerald removed the reading glasses from his nose and rubbed the red spots where they had pressed him.

“We'll survive another month.”

She sipped her wine and nodded. No need to discuss their situation. Their life that had started as the typical American success story had ended up as the typical American financial disaster. In the beginning, they rode that big wave of money that washed over Austin during the tech boom. The city's nickname was Silicon Hills because of Dell, IBM, 3M, Motorola, Samsung, Texas Instruments and other companies that fed off the young energy of Austin. Gerald had been in software development in the middle of it all. Barbara had worked at a public relations firm.

They were flush. They bought a house. They bought stock. Emily arrived, so they bought a bigger house. For twenty years they had steadily increasing incomes, so they leveraged their future. A future they had never questioned would only get increasingly better.

Then the market soured, the tech bubble burst, and Gerald lost his job. They were left with a huge mortgage, three car payments and credit card debt that climbed each month.

Gerald was unemployed for nearly two years. A situation that devoured their meager savings and cut a gash in their marriage that Barbara was unsure would ever heal. They continued to wait for the real estate market to recover and prayed that their stock portfolio would rebound.

“So, we're okay? No need to tap the line of credit this month?” Barbara asked.

“No. No. We're good. Really.”

The job Gerald eventually landed was a step down in stature and pay. They discussed moving if he got a good out-of-state offer. But their house was worth half of what they had paid for it, so they kept holding on, hoping for the real estate market to recover. Barbara used to drive around collecting the white sale sheets out of the plastic tubes on her neighbors’ lawns. Asking prices kept declining. Barbara finally gave up and quit torturing herself.

Gerald said the recession hit Austin earlier than other parts of the country. Big boom. Big bust.

He pushed a button and the computer screen went black.

“I'm going to watch a movie. You game?” he asked.

“What movie?”

“Wall Street.”

“God, no. Thanks, but I'll pass. Why do you beat yourself up with that depressing stuff?”

“I don't know. Guess I like to think it will help me figure things out.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.