Page 19 of Mess

“Oh, yes, I guess it is.” Her mother laughed. Whenever she laughed, it seemed so incongruous.

“How is Dad?”

“You know him, he’s very wrapped up in work. He likes that. You can call him.”

“I will.”

“And things are good with Teddy?” her mother asked.

“Pretty good.”

“Does he have a regular job yet?”

“He’s got a lot of irons in the fire.”

Jane thought she saw her mother smirk. “Well, okay. Let’s hope one of those irons turns into something tangible.”

“Yep, that’s exactly what I’m hoping for.”

“Great. Listen, I have to finish this laundry....”

“Yeah, I got to figure dinner out, so... talk soon.”

“Thanks for calling, Jane, and good night.”

Her mother seemed so joyless, so unhappy, that Jane felt a sharp tug of guilt compounding the guilt of her overdue visit. Maybe all this guilt had colored the entire conversation. Or maybe it was all in her head, where the swirl of emotion and memory and need made it hard to gauge the objective reality of things. If there even was any objective reality.

She took a sip of wine and looked through the mail, recoiling at the sight of the dreaded Department of Water and Power bill. She tore it open and gasped. It was a thousand dollars more than their usual bill. How was that even possible?

Jane marched back into the living room and suffered through the end of Teddy and Keith’s rendition of “Diamond Dogs.”

“Teddy, can we speak for a second?”

“Right now?”

“Yes, please.”

“Sure thing, okay—be right back, Keith.”

Teddy followed her into the kitchen, and she waved the DWP bill in his face.

“Did you see how much this is? Well, no, because you left it for me to open. Any idea why it’s gone up so much?”

Teddy’s brow furrowed as he looked at the bill. Jane took a deep breath to calm herself but an awful thought surfaced: Had she waved this bill in Teddy’s face as aggressively as Kim had waved her bony finger at her this morning? And then an even more awful thought: Did she sound as scornful as her mother?

“Well, it looks like the electric is a much higher amount.”

“Why? What are we doing differently? It’s not more air-conditioning. It hasn’t been that hot.”

Jane scrutinized him as he appeared to be weighing his words.

“I don’t know if this could be it, but I’ve been mining crypto—”

She was stunned. “Since when?”

“Keith hooked me up. He’s been doing great with it, so he bought a bunch of ASIC mining rigs and—”

“When were you going to tell me? Where is all this equipment?”