The Penny Pinchers Club (19 page)

Mom sat back, silent and chastised, making me feel twice as bad for my outburst. How was it she could flip my emotions like that without saying so much as one word?

We didn’t speak until I parked on Main Street near her favorite antique shops and I killed the engine. “I’ll pick you up in an hour. I won’t be long.”

She toyed with a button on her raincoat. “You’re right, Kat. Not about me reuniting you with Liam. I still believe you two were meant to be together. But you’re right about letting Chloe get first dibs on renovating his house. I don’t know why I didn’t tell him about you right off. I guess I’m not that used to you having your own business.”

I softened as I always did on the rare occasions when my mother admitted her fallibility. “That’s okay, Mom. I know your heart was in the right place.”

“I just want you to be happy, Kat, and it frustrates me to see you struggling in your forties, shopping with those Penny Pinchers, when you could have been the lady in the house in pearls and heels.”

My mother’s concept of the good life often seemed to be taken from 1950s sitcoms. “I like my life, Mom. Do I have enough money? No. Who does?”

“I do.” She kissed me on the cheek and opened the door. “One hour, right?”

“Right.”

I waited until she stepped inside Time and Again and then drove off to visit Madeleine.

But my thoughts for once were not on saving or on managing my mother. I was too preoccupied with mentally replaying my reunion with Liam and wondering why I so desperately wanted to see him again.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“
W
hat’s with all the tampons underneath the bathroom sink?” Griff asked three weeks later when I returned from saying good-bye to my beloved Lexus, having traded it for a very practical, very unsexy, very used, economical Toyota Corolla. “You cornering the market or what?”

I threw my new keys on the counter and collapsed on the couch. Our dirt cheap Charlie Brown Christmas tree, usually surrounded with presents by this time, was bare aside from six small boxes scattered over the red felt tree skirt. Griff, Laura, and I had pledged to exchange no more than one present each, an idea that seemed wise at the time—especially to Griff, who so dreaded holiday shopping, he held off until Christmas Eve—but now seemed downright depressing.

I couldn’t help feeling as if the Grinch had visited overnight, what with losing my Lexus and going stingy on the presents and forgoing the tradition of a big Christmas dinner with roast beef and champagne. I’m sorry, but it just wasn’t Christmas without throwing a huge holiday party.

Worse, I hadn’t yet been paid by Madeleine Granville for the $3,450 worth of work I did on her house. Nor was my saving plan flowing seamlessly. We’d been hit by a few surprise expenses—the brakes on Griff’s car and new snow tires for mine—that had derailed me, if not them. I was, in short, dead broke.

“That’s excellent!” Sherise had said during our last Penny Pinchers meeting when I revealed that after many weeks of effort, I had little more than $2,500 to show for my sacrifice of Starbucks and DVDs, new boots, HBO, and Christmas gifts. “That averages out to $250 a week.”

“Yes, but . . .” I looked over to Velma who, content as usual, knitted along, listening. “According to the budget Velma worked out, I should be saving $500. I’ll never get to $16,000 by this summer.”

“It’s DrugSave’s fault,” Opal said. “You’d be at least one hundred dollars richer if it hadn’t been for me and that fight I had with the manager.”

During darker moments, it crossed my mind that Opal had intentionally used me to provoke the manager. After all, why didn’t she get her own in-store rebate slips instead of making a big fuss by yelling to me? Whenever I had these thoughts, though, I’d chastise myself. Out of all the Penny Pinchers, Opal had helped me the most and to attribute ulterior motives to her was ungrateful and wrong.

Wade put down the
NewYorker
he’d borrowed from upstairs. “I’m telling you, Kat, forget all this coupon stuff. Unless you’re minding it every minute like Opal does, it’s a trap. My approach is much more logical. If you don’t want to spend money,
don’t spend money.
This spring you’re coming with me to Dumpster-dive.”

“You mean steal,” Steve said.

“No. I don’t mean steal. If I’d meant steal, I would have said steal.”

But Steve would not give in. “Just like entering private property without permission isn’t trespassing, right?”

“So what that I take other people’s trash? It’s only going to be thrown out, anyway. And let me ask you this . . .” Wade held up his finger, a sure sign he was turning the heat up a notch. “Which is worse? Killing a cow, a sentient being, only to throw away the meat simply because some arbitrary expiration date has passed? Or making sure that a loving animal’s life wasn’t wasted.”

“Okay, you two.” Sherise stood and spread her arms like she was physically splitting them apart. “That’s enough. How about we take a breather for ten minutes and get some fresh air.”

Wade and Steve grinned sheepishly. Ever since Steve announced that this was his last meeting because he’d been hired as a cop in the Rocky River Police Department and couldn’t fit us into his morning schedule, Wade and Steve had been at loggerheads, with Steve telling him in no uncertain terms that if he caught Wade rifling through garbage on private property, he would arrest him.

“Steve’s a jerk,” Libby said under her breath as we slipped out the back door into the gray December day. “He is on Wade’s case for no reason.”

“He’s not a jerk. He’s just under a lot of pressure these days as a single father during the holidays.” I handed her a Christmas cookie, a reindeer with a broken leg, as a substitute for the cigarettes she was trying to quit. “Give him a break. It can’t be easy with two boys begging for snowboards and Xbox 360s.”

She took the cookie and frowned at the gimpy reindeer. “I dunno. If I keep eating like this, I’m going to be the size of a house and then Wade’s never going to ask me to marry him.”

“First of all, if he loves you, he loves you. It has nothing to do with size.” I, who had no compunction these days about ruining my waistline, took a bite of a frosted angel. “Second, since when did you want to get married?”

“Since I walked into the meeting last summer and saw him and just . . . knew.” Her shoulders slumped as she nibbled on the cookie. “He is the most gorgeous guy in the world, Kat. And smart. And sexy. And so well read. I can’t believe he likes me. Me! Libby Wilson. Housecleaner.”

This was where I was tempted to remind her he lived in a tent, but my better side held off. “You are not just a housecleaner, Libby. You are one kick-ass chick, a survivor, a”—I tried to think of what she was—“woman roaring.”

But Libby was lost in thought over Wade. “The problem is,” she added, “I see you and Griff and even though you
seem
like you’re happy on the outside, the perfect married couple and all that, I run into him with Bree now and then and I think maybe marriage is not all it’s cracked up to be.”

My cookie had somehow ended up on the sidewalk, broken into pieces. “What do you mean,” I began, unsure which part of her statement was more offensive, “that you ran into him with Bree?”

“Oh, I don’t run into him all the time, just on Thursdays, when I clean up by Emerly. Sometimes I see him and Bree together, walking, or sitting and talking at that café. You know, the one with the blue awning . . .”

“Belladonna’s?” It was a bit more than a café. In fact, it was one of the nicer restaurants near campus, the place where parents took their kids out to dinner when they came for visits. “You see them at
Belladonna’s
?” And here I hadn’t even been to a freaking McDonald’s.

“Only for lunch. And it’s not like they’re kissing or anything,” she added quickly, finally comprehending that I might not be taking the news so well that my husband regularly was out with another woman. “They’re just talking. Really close talking, though.
Realllly
close.”

Sherise opened the door. “The meeting’s started up again. We’ve been looking for you two. Come on.”

I brushed my crumbs off my coat and shoved my chilled hands under my armpits as we went inside. Curse Griff. Curse him and his stupid girlfriend and their trendy vertical food lunches, the famous Belladonna’s tower of asparagus, hollandaise, risotto, and grilled shrimp. Meanwhile, across town, I’d been subsisting on sixty-nine-cent tuna on thinly sliced dry rye toast and water. So much for our united front in saving money.

Plunking myself down next to Opal, I let out a grunt and eyed Libby, who nestled into Wade’s arms.
Good luck,
I thought.
Marriage bites.

Opal said, “What’s eating you?”

“Nothing.” I tried to rally, sitting up and pasting on a big smile, but I couldn’t even summon the energy to unbutton my coat.

“I made the mistake of mentioning that I’ve been seeing Griff with his assistant at Belladonna’s,” Libby said.

“Belladonna’s?” Sherise widened her eyes. “
Pri-ceee
.”

“I’ll say. That’s where I used to take my wife on our anniversary,” Steve said. “Before she got sick.”

Velma reached over and rubbed his shoulder, exactly what I wanted to do. It was hard ragging on marriage when there was Steve, his heart not quite mended over his dead wife, forever giving the impression of being slightly damaged.

“I’m just saying it’s that expensive,” he said. “Didn’t mean to kill the conversation.”

“Have you spoken to Griff about this?” Sherise said in her patient financial-planner voice. “Or are you still on the stealth savings plan?”

This produced a few welcomed laughs. “I thought we were saving together,” I said. “You know: more quality time, cutting back on Christmas, and all that.”

“Oh, yes,” everyone agreed. No one had splurged this year. Velma had knit everyone socks, and Libby was giving lamps she constructed from odd parts Wade had found in the trash.

“You’ll be grateful come January when those credit card bills come in the mail,” Opal said. “Not that I use credit cards. I don’t. I only keep them on hand for rental cars. It’s what I’ve heard, though, that those first-of-the-year wake-up calls can be brutal.”

“So, not to bring up a delicate subject, but how much have you saved?” Sherise asked. “I mean for . . . the divorce.”

It was embarrassing how little I’d put together. In three months I’d managed to save only $3,400. “I’ve had a setback,” I said. “For the divorce fund, I’ve only got about $3,400. But my new client promises a check any day.” Never mind that the “any day” was two months overdue.

“How can you say that’s a setback? You have to celebrate every dollar.” Sherise motioned for everyone to give me a round of applause.

“I just haven’t been motivated. Griff and I’ve been getting along so well and I thought our saving was bringing us closer together.” I didn’t say this out loud, but it was as if Libby had reopened an old wound and I was angry at her for ruining the progress we’d been making, though reporting bad news was hardly her fault. Logically, I realized that. It was my illogical heart that was struggling.

“The thing is, now that I find he’s been cheating on our budget as well as on me . . .”

“You have a whole new reason to sock it to him,” Velma said. “Don’t you?”

I was confused. “You mean away. Sock it
away
.”

“That, too.” She took a stitch. “Though, personally, I’d prefer to sock it to him. Much more satisfying in the short run.”

“Not so satisfying in the long,” Opal said. “Stick with saving money, honey. Having a pile of it in the bank is a woman’s best revenge.”

 

“What’s got you lost in thought?” Griff sat next to me on the couch and put his arm around my shoulders. “Bummed about losing the Lexus?”

“Yeah.” After much thought, I’d decided not to bring up Belladonna’s or Bree since mentioning her always sent him into a weird seclusion. Better to pretend everything was hunky-dory and to do as Sherise advised: keep my eye on the goal. “Also . . . look.” I gestured to our tree, which was practically raining needles already. “It’s pathetic, and a fire hazard.”

He considered this. “Fire hazard, yes. Pathetic, no. It cost five bucks, Kat. Plus, we gave it a home. Think of this poor little tree still on a gas station parking lot alone in the cold.”

There was a time when Griff, Laura, and I would make a big deal of getting the annual Christmas tree, driving to a tree farm in Cran bury Township that offered free hayrides and hot chocolate. Back then we’d spend a fortune on a huge, lush fir that we loaded with lights. If we loaded this thing with lights, it would explode.

I leaned my head against his chest in a test of the power of positive thinking. Part of me didn’t care what Libby saw. My gut instinct was that Griff and I
had
grown closer since we’d cut back on our expenses. It was a basic matter of logistics. By not spending money, we stayed at home more and in our separate cars less, watching movies from the library or simply reading on the couch, my feet in his lap, Jasper snoring on the rug nearby. As for Bree . . . perhaps they’d been out on Emerly College’s tab.

“Buck up.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Just think what it was like for us last year this time before Christmas. You were running around, exhausted and cursing the crowds and the traffic, worried you didn’t get Laura or your nieces and nephews enough gifts. Not worried about me, of course, since I don’t count.” He sniffed.

I gently punched him.

“Then, after the shopping orgy was done, you’d be in the wrapping orgy and then the mailing orgy. This would be followed by another orgy of baking cookies and then the ultimate orgy—the over-the-top Christmas dinner that nearly always sent you running for the Prozac.”

“I never took a Prozac in my life.”

“Spoken like a true addict.” He kissed my forehead. “Now isn’t this better? The two of us side-by-side on a gray December day simply enjoying each other.”