If you’re of a different generation, it’s possible we don’t share the same cultural references, so I should tell you that Jiminy Cricket is a character from the Disney movie Pinocchio. He’s a wisecracking cricket, dressed in a top hat. He’s annoying. Consciences often are annoying.
The insurance man had short, fast little legs and he was smiley and bald. He wore a trilby hat that he removed when we opened the door to him. He did resemble the Disney character, although he wasn’t green.
My mother hated him. She said Jiminy made her skin crawl. She said he was “oily.” I think he must have been one of those unctuous, obsequious, patronizing men. Perhaps you know the type. When I was organizing her funeral, I wondered why I felt such antipathy toward the funeral director. Was it simply because I was paying him to bury my mother? That’s when the word “oily” arose from my memory.
Every month my mother complained about Jiminy. She said life insurance was a waste of money. Like throwing it into the ocean. She said there were so many better things she could do with that money. “I bet,” said Dad dryly.
She said life insurance was bad luck.
My dad said, “Bad luck? I assume you’re not serious.”
She was serious. It’s not uncommon. Superstition is one of the three main reasons why people choose not to buy life insurance. People think it will make them more likely to die.
Investing in life insurance does not increase your risk of dying.
Correction: Investing in life insurance may increase your risk of dying if you are married to a murderer. I’m not trying to be funny. Just accurate.
My dad said, “It’s for your security, Mae, for you and Cherry. Life is unpredictable. It’s a small amount of money to ensure you’re protected if I get hit by a bus or struck by lightning or—”
“Don’t say that! Never, ever say things like that!” My mother rushed about the house knocking on wood wherever she could find it.
Dad gave her a cuddle and they stopped talking about it. Dad said we could start saving for a holiday, not our normal camping holidays on the Central Coast, but a holiday at a proper roadside motel where you hung your breakfast order on the outside door handle before you went to sleep and in the morning you opened the door to find a tray on the footpath, with tiny jars of jam and honey and little gold-wrapped rectangles of butter along with your toast in a paper bag, and a hot pot of tea. Mum and Dad had experienced this kind of breakfast on their honeymoon, and it sounded like a dream to me.
Dad never did take us to a roadside motel.
Not all dreams come true, even for lucky baby boomers like me.
—
Of course, arguing over money is not unusual in a marriage. Conflict over financial matters is a leading cause of divorce. Ask most couples, wealthy or poor, what they argued about last and they are likely to say money.
Ask that young woman who wore my wedding dress on the plane.
Actually, please don’t ask her. She might say their last argument was about me.
Chapter 47
Six weeks after their wedding, Eve opens their credit card bill, shrieks, and claps her hand over her mouth like a girl in a horror movie. She drops the bill on the table, takes a few steps back, leans against the ugly peach-colored kitchen countertop, and tries to calm her breathing.
She is alone in their apartment. It’s a Saturday morning. Dom has back-to-back personal training sessions all day today until five. She doesn’t want to look at it again. She feels literally sick.
No. Grow up, Eve. She picks up the bill with her fingertips. A thought occurs: It’s not their bill! She’s accidentally opened someone else’s mail! But no, it’s their bill. Their shiny new names are right there: Eve and Dominic Archer-Fern.
There will be a mistake. She will find the mistake. She sits at the kitchen table and uses the straight edge of the envelope like a ruler, to go through the bill, line by line. So many lines. So much money. The bridesmaids’ gifts, the groomsmen’s gifts, the hairdresser, the makeup artist, two bottles of prosecco for the girls while they were having their hair and makeup done, three meat lover’s pizzas for the boys when they got hungry waiting for the wedding to start, the stupid uncomfortable wedding-night lingerie she will never wear again, her wedding shoes, Dom’s wedding shoes, the tuxedo rental, the taxis in Sydney, the painful couples massage they thought was included in their accommodation package (the words “additional cost” in tiny letters), the half-price happy hour cocktails (why did they buy drinks for that couple from Adelaide? That girl worked in a literal bank and her husband was up himself), the minibar bill (once they started, they kept taking stuff from the minibar, and it started to feel like it was free), the Uber home from the airport (Dom’s dad offered to pick them up! Why did they say no?), the insurance they had to pay on all their stuff in their new apartment because apparently that’s what you have to do, their phone bills, their first electricity bill (oh my God, why did no one tell them electricity cost so much, isn’t it like a basic human right?), Dom’s daily midmorning smoothie, Eve’s daily midmorning coffee, the grocery bills (why were they buying so many groceries? Who knew eating regular food was so expensive?).
There is a huge bowl of fruit in the middle of the table: mandarins, bananas, oranges, apples. Dom eats an extraordinary amount of fruit every single day. “Aren’t raspberries kind of expensive?” Eve said when they did their last shop. “We can afford it, can’t we?” Dom was confused.
The next day Eve discovered half the raspberries were covered in white fur! Disgusting! What a waste of money.
Neither of them has lived away from home before and Eve’s mother keeps reminding them of this, and giving them helpful advice, as if they are actual idiots. They are twenty years old, they can drink and vote and drive.
“Don’t forget you’ll have to pay all your other expenses, like electricity, groceries, car insurance,” she said when they’d put in an application for this rental. “Have you done a budget?”
Budget. Such a Mum-type word. It isn’t like they’d applied for a place somewhere expensive like Battery Point. They are a twenty-minute drive out of Hobart, on the first floor of a red-brick building without balconies.
It’s not exactly charming, but there is a beautiful big tree directly outside their kitchen window and the sunlight filters through its flickering leaves so on breezy days it creates a disco ball effect of bouncing light and shadow, and on clear days they can see right through the big tree to the mountains. “That’s a lovely outlook,” Eve’s mother had said approvingly, but hadn’t been so thrilled by the discarded vapes, cigarette butts, pizza boxes, and empty glass bottles that littered the front of the building, which turns out to be a popular local hangout for teenagers. This wasn’t mentioned on the list of features in the real estate advertisement. Sometimes Eve and Dom are woken in the middle of the night by raucous laughter, sobbing, and yelling: all those big raw teenage emotions.
The point is they didn’t lease a fancy apartment, which is why Eve assumed they could afford, like, normal stuff. Not diamonds and designer bags. Just raspberries and electricity.
She finds a pen and notepad, opens her laptop, and sits upright in her chair, like she is at work. She is an organized, intelligent person. She was pretty good at math at school. She will do a boring “budget.” She will get on top of this.
When they put in their rental application for this apartment, they had to submit their most recent pay stubs. At that time Dom worked full-time at a warehouse and did personal training after hours. The warehouse laid him off after their application was approved, but they weren’t worried. The opposite. They were pleased. The plan was that Dom would expand his personal training business, and work on his fitness app, and make a lot more money. People sold fitness apps for millions!
He is getting more clients, but the problem is last-minute cancellations. Children seem to get sick a lot and cars often won’t start, which Eve finds suspicious, as Dom’s clients all drive better cars than they do. She thinks Dom should charge a cancellation fee if they send a So sorry, Dom! text when he’s literally on the oval setting up equipment, but Dom won’t even consider that. Often his clients say they don’t have any cash and ask if they can pay next time, and Dom, being Dom, always says, “Sure thing,” but he doesn’t keep records and he never chases up money. “Oh, it all works out in the end,” he says, but Eve knows that none of his clients pay twice. So it does not work out in the end.
Nothing has come of the fitness app.
Apparently you need a wealthy investor to get started. Dom isn’t sure where to find one.
She checks the balance of their joint account and whimpers. Their next rental payment is due on the twenty-sixth of the month. Their car payment is due on the twenty-seventh. Eve’s salary is deposited on the twenty-eighth of the month. Unless they deposit some cash into the account they will not have enough money for the direct debit.
She picks up her pen, draws a line down the middle of the page. and lists income on one side and expenses on the other.
Fifteen minutes later she pushes the notepad away and rests her forehead on her hands. She feels fearful, overwhelmed, but mostly she feels deeply embarrassed.
They literally cannot afford to live their lives.
They have miscalculated. Well, they never actually calculated in the first place. They just thought that if you worked hard most days then you could afford the kind of stuff that everyone else had. They have messed up big time.
