Highest Bidder

No, no, no. I reread it and I still couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

I fished my phone from my pocket and dialed my mother.

She picked up on the fifth ring. “I’m at the Food Hall for some groceries,” she said cheerfully.

“Mom, I’m in your office,” I said to her.

“Why are you—” She paused when she realized what my statement meant. “What are you doing in my office?”

“Did you mortgage Grandma’s home to open the boutique?”

For a few seconds there was silence. Then she spoke, “Yes.”

Her voice was so soft I had to strain to hear. I could feel the blood pounding in my ears. “But you told me that you had some savings … that you sold off some of your jewelry.”

“I did, but it wasn’t near enough to get a location on King’s Road.”

“So you mortgaged off the only property we had left?” My voice rose, even though I was trying to keep it down. “That is the only home you have to live in, and it’s Grandma’s apartment. Dad never touched it even when everything was falling apart.”

“Freya,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I did what needed to be done. You know, there’s no point opening in some dreary area. Even my own friends wouldn’t dream of coming to see me if I had opened in Brixton or Peckham—”

Suddenly, it was too much. The university calling me, the Santini Salad woman looking at me as if I was a total idiot, and now this. My voice broke as tears rolled down my cheeks. “H-how could you—do this without telling me, Mom? We talked about it and I told you opening a boutique at a time when everybody is shopping online is pure madness. I even offered to move in with Ella. You could have moved out to a slightly cheaper area and rented out the apartment. You could have used the difference to slowly pay off our debts. That was the safe option, but of course, you had to go and throw every penny we had left into this stupid store. And now we have no more assets left. What are we going to do if the boutique fails, Mom?”

“Freya, come home, let’s talk.”

“Yeah sure,” I said, and disconnected the call. I took a few deep breaths and tried my very best to calm myself down. I didn’t want to upset my mother even further. She was already going through so much, but I felt like I was suffocating in frustration and despair.

An hour later, and relatively calmer, I walked through the door of our apartment in Chelsea, which was technically no longer ours. I could hear her moving around in the kitchen. After dropping my things off in my room, I went to meet her.

“Hello darling,” she chirped brightly as though we had never had the earlier conversation, as though there was absolutely nothing wrong in our lives. “I’m making dinner. I got you your favorite. Beluga caviar and I’m steaming those small potatoes you like so much so you have them together.”

Whatever bit of calm I had worked so hard to claim was gone. “Mom!” I yelled.

She turned to me. “What?”

I couldn’t believe her. I gazed at my forty-five-year old mother and I could have sworn she was the most naive person that I had ever met. “What part of we are completely broke, don't you understand? We’ve defaulted on several monthly payments already. We’ll be foreclosed on at any moment! And you bought caviar?”

“It is your favorite and,” she said, looking confused, as if she couldn’t understand why I was being so unreasonable.

I couldn’t hold back the agony any longer. “Yes!” I screamed. “When dad was alive. When we were bloody rich, and when we weren’t on the brink of being fucking homeless.”

“It is only a thirty-gram tin,” she muttered.

Gazing at her small frame and bedazzled turban made me feel a strange mixture of admiration and exasperation. She refused to cower down to the lowly status my father’s death had brought us to. She looked nothing like an impoverished widow. Her robe was of the finest silk, her ears glistening with diamond studs, and her house slippers were made out of some kind of special material that was imported from llama growing country.

“Mom,” I wailed, not knowing what to say or even think. “Mom!”

I felt so sorry for her, but at the same time, I felt even more sorry for myself. This past year had been a nightmare beyond compare and it seemed as though we weren’t done falling yet. I wanted to break down, but I couldn’t. It would finish us both.

So, I turned around and stormed out of the kitchen.

“Freya …” She came after me. “Where are you going? Freya!”

I banged the door shut, and half ran all the way to the bus stop.

Freya

I had run out without even a coat over my jeans and jumper so when my best friend, Maddie opened the door I was standing on her doorstep shivering like crazy.

Her eyes widened in shock. “What are you doing?”

“Visiting you,” I said through chattering teeth.

She pulled me into the house and shut the door.

When she turned around, I threw my arms around her body.

Automatically her arms went around me and for a while neither of us spoke. Then she quietly asked, “What’s the matter, Freya?”

When I didn’t respond, she went on. “Did something happen to your mother?”