Page 26 of Slanting Towards the Sea

TWENTY-THREE

THE NOTICE COMES FROM the bank. We have officially defaulted on our mortgage.

I set the letter on the dining room table, fear roiling in my gut.

Over the last few weeks, I allowed myself a reprieve of blissful denial, deepening the communication with Asier, holding on to the joy it gives me, while ignoring the fact that he is someone I met because I’ve made steps toward selling Lovorun, a course of action my father would vehemently oppose.

Even though it’s afternoon, I make some coffee.

A poor attempt at appeasing Dad so that he takes the news better.

He shouldn’t be getting worked up. The doctors have warned us it’s imperative his blood pressure stay under control.

What they didn’t tell us, though, is how to shield him from life, or how to stop him from being himself once that life inevitably happens.

But as I’m placing his cup on a saucer—he takes his coffee in those unnervingly tiny espresso demitasses—I realize my fear is not so much for him as it is for me.

He’s been a different man for many years now, his rages tamed by time and age and illness, but my stomach hasn’t caught on to that change.

Memories loom alive, of him exploding over things that were impossible to predict.

How quickly you got—or failed to get—out of the car, how long you talked on the phone, how loud you listened to music.

His rage would come so fast it engulfed you before you’d even realized it, and by then, it was too late, you were already inside his furious tornado.

By then, your yellow boot had already been sent crashing through the glass door.

Dad sits down and raises the demitasse to his lips with both hands. I slide the letter to him. He takes it even though he can’t read it. It’s one of the oddities of how he chooses to endure his illness. He’s lost the ability to read, but he still buys newspapers on occasion, or opens a book.

I guess pretending you haven’t lost something is easier than facing the loss head on.

It shouldn’t surprise me, that’s where I excel too.

Through a dry mouth and words barely audible, I explain what the letter says. We have defaulted on our debt, and if we forgo two more monthly payments, the bank will have to charge it off and move into foreclosure. The only way to avoid that is to sell the estate and settle the debt ourselves.

As I’m talking, Dad’s eyes neither emit nor receive anything, but when I say I might have a potential buyer, he snaps and hits his open palm against the table. “We’re not selling,” he thunders, much louder than a man in his condition should be able to.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of choice anymore,” I say, my head sinking between my shoulders the way a turtle slips into her shell.

A humiliating thought comes unbidden—what would Asier think of me if he saw me cowering like this?

“We don’t have the money to open. We’re neck-deep in debt.

I can’t get the hotel up and running without a fresh influx of cash, and we don’t have any. ”

“I said, we’re not losing the hotel and we’re not selling it.” Dad gets up and hobbles to the living room to rummage through a console where he keeps some of his documents. I wait, like the chastised child that I am.

He comes back with an envelope. “There,” he says, shoving it my way. “This should be enough to cover the initial costs and get everything going.”

I extract a contract between him and the bank about running a savings account.

It’s his “safe stash,” for when he’s too old and too sick for me to take care of him by myself.

“It’s enough to get started.” His voice is gruff as he eyes the envelope.

This time, not because he is disappointed in me, which he still undoubtedly is.

His tone has a different undertone now, one of loss.

One of a rabbit fur hanging off the laundry line.

My throat clenches. I place the papers back inside, my fingertips leaving sweat marks on the documents. “Dad, we’re not spending your last savings.”

He looks at me with tired eyes. “Call Sa?a.”

His request saddles me with an unnamable type of sadness.

That he would congregate with Sa?a against me is a special kind of defeat.

Their relationship has been askew since I can remember, as if the two of them spoke different languages and failed, time after time, to understand one another.

Sa?a was a whiny, needy boy, and whenever he’d done something wrong, or failed to do something right, it was always someone else’s fault, someone else’s wrongdoing.

Dad believed in doing things for yourself, in being responsible for your own actions, failures and achievements alike, so he despised this trait of Sa?a’s, deeming it a brand of weakness unbecoming of anyone, let alone his son.

And even though I never liked seeing Sa?a twitch in pain for failing to live up to Dad’s standards, I savored these small victories when Dad would tell me I was his pride.

Because, Sa?a had Mom.

It was Mom I wanted too, not Dad with his droning and temper.

Not Dad with his impossible standards and negativity.

But Dad is whom I got, and while it wasn’t perfect, this was one truth of life I could depend on.

And now he tells me to call Sa?a and it feels like someone has kicked the knee on my one good leg.

I get up from the table and move into the hallway to make the call. When Sa?a picks up, I do my best to relay the conundrum in the few minutes he has mentally assigned to me.

“Look, Ivona,” he says once I’m finished.

“I talked to Dad a few days ago. He may be old and sick, but he still has his business acumen. If we sell the hotel, the best we’ll be able to do is retrieve the original investment.

All the work that went into Lovorun will be lost. And we would lose the property on top of that. ”

The way he speaks about it gets under my skin. He hasn’t been to Lovorun in years. Even before Baba died, he didn’t like going there. The place means nothing to him. He understands its value only because every Croat knows that land is the only resource worth owning.

“But if we invest Dad’s savings,” Sa?a continues, “and start doing business, we won’t only keep the land. Eventually, we’ll make money. With any luck, a lot of it. And then we can put that toward Dad’s care.”

“Everything Dad has in savings isn’t enough to cover what we currently owe. And there’s a myriad of additional costs we would need to cover to get the hotel up and running.”

“So, I’ll invest. I’ll lend you what you need, and you can pay me back when the business starts making a profit. With minimum interest.”

I wipe my hand down my face. My brother, the benefactor.

I look toward the dining room, Dad’s bald head only a shadow behind the glass door.

He isn’t the one to eavesdrop but I measure my tone anyway.

“I don’t think that starting a business with that much debt, owed to family or not, is such a good id—”

“You’re only saying that because you don’t want to do it.”

Sa?a says this with disdain, and immediately, I’m on the defensive, wanting to refute what he’s implying.

It’s not about what I want, it’s about how imprudent it is to not have any money set aside with Dad being as ill as he is.

That his condition could deteriorate overnight, and he might become dependent on other people’s help, the type of help I’m not trained or able to provide.

Or does Sa?a intend to swoop in to help when that happens?

Because I’m not seeing him putting in his fair share even now.

But then I stop. I stop, because, Sa?a is right. I don’t want to do it.

A plain and simple truth I’ve been too afraid to voice for too long.

I start back toward the dining room. It’s an impulse more than a decision, coming from the gut, not the head.

There is a pressure building up in the back of my head that scares me, but I won’t—can’t—stop myself.

I’m an avalanche tumbling downhill, one that’s been a long time coming.

I sit across from my dad and switch the phone to speaker.

“Listen to me, both of you. I don’t think investing all our money and leaving Dad high and dry is a reasonable thing to do, given his condition.

You can both well disagree, but I won’t be the one taking any of your money to the bank or any other place.

I won’t be the one running the hotel or hiring a hotel manager to run it for me.

Sa?a—” I pick up the phone and hold it in front of my mouth so that he can hear me loud and clear.

“I have no problem with you taking over as the director. In fact, I’m happy to make all the necessary arrangements with the public notary and sign the company off to you.

” I pause, already feeling the deflation swooping in, the inevitable fall from the adrenaline high.

“But if you choose to keep me on as director, I’ll do what I think is right.

Sell the property, settle our debts, and liquidate the company. ”

Without waiting for either of them to respond, without even taking my phone, I get up and leave.