3. THE LAST PAYCHECK

🌹TESSA🌹

I wiped down the table for the third time, the damp cloth dragging in slow circles over the same spot of wood grain I had been staring at for the past five minutes.

The bar was quiet for a Tuesday night, just a few regulars nursing their drinks at the counter and a couple in the corner who had not looked at each other in the last hour. I tucked the cloth into my apron and checked my watch. Another hour and a half and I could go home to Wayne. That was the only thought that kept me moving through nights like this, the only thing that made the aching in my feet bearable.

"Tessa."

I turned and saw my manager standing at the end of the bar with his arms crossed over his chest. He never came out of his office during service hours. He never called anyone over unless something was wrong. My stomach tightened as I walked toward him.

"Can I see you in my office for a moment?" He did not wait for my answer. He just turned and walked toward the back, his footsteps heavy on the worn floorboards.

I followed him past the kitchen where the dishwasher was humming and the cook was smoking by the back door, past the storage room where the boxes of liquor were stacked against the wall, into the tiny office that smelled like stale coffee and old paper.

He closed the door behind me and I stood there with my hands clasped in front of me and I tried to read his face. There was nothing there. Just the same tired expression he wore every night when he counted the till and complained about how slow business had been.

"Tessa, I'm going to be straight with you." He sat down behind his desk and leaned back in his chair and I watched the springs groan under his weight. "Business has been slow. You know this. We've all been feeling it."

I nodded. I did not trust my voice.

"I have to let go of some staff." He said it like he was telling me the weather, like the words did not land somewhere in my chest and settle there like stones. "And unfortunately, it has to be you."

I felt my face go hot. I felt my hands start to shake and I pressed them against my thighs to steady them. "I have been working for you for three years now. I come in early. I stay late. I cover shifts when nobody else will. My qualifications even surpass being a bartender."

"I know you're smart and hardworking, Tessa." He cut me off with a wave of his hand, the same gesture he used when he was dismissing a complaint from a customer. "That's not the issue."

"Then what is the issue?" I heard my voice rising and I could not stop it. "You hired a new girl yesterday and you are letting me go tonight and you are telling me this is about business being slow?"

He leaned forward and laced his fingers together on the desk and I could see the hesitation in his face, the way he was trying to find the right words, and I already knew what he was going to say because I had heard it before. I had heard it my entire life.

"Tessa, you're a good worker. You really are. But the customers come in, they want something nice to look at." He gestured vaguely toward the bar, toward the door. "Your qualifications are good, but your physique isn't helping my business. I need staffs more... appealing to look at. It's just business. It's not personal."

I bit my lip and I felt the sting of it, the small sharp pain that I used to ground myself because if I did not feel something physical I was going to fall apart right there in that tiny office with the stale coffee smell and the stacks of receipts on the desk.

It was not personal. It was not personal.

He said it was not personal but the words landed like they had been aimed at me my entire life, the same words in different mouths, the same dismissal, the same you are not enough.

"I've sent your salary to your account already." He stood up and walked around the desk and opened the door for me, a clear signal that I was supposed to leave. "I'm sorry, Tessa. I really am."

I walked out of the office. I walked past the kitchen and the storage room and the dishwasher who had stopped humming and was looking at me with something that might have been pity. I walked out the back door and into the alley and I stood there with my back against the brick wall and I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes until I saw stars.

I had lost jobs before. I had been let go before. But this was different. This was the same thing dressed in different clothes, the same reason wrapped in nicer words, and I was so tired of being told that my body was the problem.

I walked home through the quiet streets with my hands in my pockets and my head down and I watched my feet move one in front of the other and I tried not to think about the rent that was due in a month, the electricity bill that I had been ignoring, the prescription I needed to pick up for Wayne.

I checked my phone. No missed calls. No messages. I opened my email and I scrolled through the list of applications I had sent out over the past month, ten different companies, ten different jobs, everything from administrative assistant to receptionist to anything that would pay me enough to keep the roof over our heads.

Nothing. Not a single response.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and I kept walking because sitting down and crying was not going to pay the bills and I had learned that a long time ago. I kept walking until I reached the pharmacy. I went inside and I handed the prescription to the pharmacist. I stood there with my wallet in my hand and I counted the bills in my head, I have enough for this. Just this. I have enough for this one thing.

I walked home with the small paper bag tucked under my arm and I climbed the stairs to our apartment, the third floor of a building that smelled like cigarettes and the lives of people who were all just barely getting by. I unlocked the door and I stepped inside and I heard him before I saw him.

"Mama!"

Wayne was sitting on the floor with his books spread out around him, his face lighting up the moment he saw me, and he scrambled to his feet and ran toward me and threw his arms around my legs. I dropped the bag and I knelt down and I wrapped my arms around him. I held him so tight that he laughed and tried to push me away.

"Mama, you're squeezing me."

"Sorry, baby." I pulled back and I looked at his face, his round cheeks and his bright eyes and the way his smile was crooked in that way that reminded me of Raymond, even though I tried not to think about it. "I missed you."

"You saw me this morning."

"That was a long time ago."

He laughed again and grabbed my hand and pulled me into the kitchen, where he had been working on his letters on the small table we used for everything. I saw the stack of papers he had filled out, the careful loops of his handwriting, and I felt something in my chest tighten because he was so smart, so eager, so full of questions that I did not always know how to answer.

"Mama, look." He held up a piece of paper with his name written across the top. "I wrote it all by myself. Wayne. See? W-A-Y-N-E."

"That's beautiful, baby. You did such a good job."

He beamed and I felt the guilt settle in my stomach the way it always did when I looked at him and thought about everything I could not give him. Everything I had already taken from him.

I made dinner. Nothing special, just pasta with some vegetables I had bought on sale, but Wayne sat at the table and ate like it was the best thing he had ever tasted. I watched him while I picked at my own plate and I tried to figure out how I was going to tell him.

"Mama," he said between bites. "I finished all my books. The ones you got me. All of them."

"I saw that, baby. You're getting so smart."

He smiled and stuffed more pasta into his mouth and I felt the words building in my throat, the ones I had been avoiding all week.

"Mama, will I be able to go to school tomorrow?"

My stomach dropped. I had known this question was coming. I had been dreading it. I put my fork down and I reached for him. I pulled him into my lap and I wrapped my arms around him and I pressed my face into his hair.

"Not tomorrow, baby. Mama is working on something. It's going to take a little more time."

He was quiet for a moment and I could feel him thinking, could feel the weight of his silence.

"But you said I could go this month. You said I could go to the school with the big playground."

"I know, baby. I know." I held him tighter. "Mama is trying. She is trying so hard. It is just taking longer than I thought. But I promise, I am going to figure it out. I am going to figure it out for you."

He did not answer. He just leaned back against me and I felt his small body relax into mine and I thought about how he trusted me, how he believed me, how he did not know that I was barely holding us together.

I put him to bed and I read him a story. I watched his eyes flutter closed and I stayed there for a long time after he fell asleep, just watching the rise and fall of his chest and trying to remember how to breathe.

Then I went back to the kitchen and I sat down at the small table. I opened my phone and I stared at the screen. I had applied to everything. Every job I could find. Every listing that asked for any qualification I had. And nothing. Nothing but silence.

I opened my email one more time, a habit I had developed over the past few weeks, this desperate need to check even though I knew there was nothing there.

And there it was.

A new email. Subject: Interview Request—Nanny Position.

I stared at it for a long time. My hands started shaking and I did not know why. I clicked it open.

Dear Ms. Hart,

Thank you for your application for the nanny position. We were impressed with your qualifications and experience. We would like to invite you for an interview tomorrow at 9 AM. The address is attached below.

Please confirm your availability.

I scrolled down to the address and I read it and I read it again. It was in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. The kind of place where the houses had gates and the streets had names that people recognized. The kind of place I had not been near since I walked out of my parents' house eight years ago.