Chapter 9 - Homeless on the Curb
From the warmth of my living room window, sipping hot lemon tea, I watched the final humiliation of Eleanor Vance play out on the street below.
The moving men had stacked thirty grey plastic storage bins neatly on the sidewalk beside the curb—everything she had owned or accumulated during her three-year freeloading tenure under my roof. Her designer shoes, her cheap costume jewelry, her endless collection of romance novels, and her boxes of bridge club supplies were now public display for the entire affluent neighborhood to witness.
Eleanor stood on the sidewalk in the drizzling afternoon rain, frantically dialing numbers on her cell phone. I could tell exactly who she was calling by the exaggerated, frantic waving of her arms. She was calling her affluent bridge club friends—the women she had spent years gossiping with, boasting about her successful son and her "wealthy, submissive daughter-in-law."
One by one, the calls were either sent to voicemail or abruptly terminated. High society in our neighborhood was built on gossip and perception; the moment word spread that Eleanor’s son was in county jail and she had been legally evicted onto the curb by the true homeowner, she became a social pariah. Nobody wanted a destitute, hysterical woman with thirty boxes of luggage crashing in their guest rooms.
After forty-five minutes of standing in the cold rain, her silk robe soaked through beneath her raincoat, Eleanor finally called a budget rideshare service.
I watched without a single pang of sympathy as a battered, rusted minivan pulled up to the curb. The driver took one look at the mountain of plastic storage bins and began shaking his head, arguing with her over trunk space and excess baggage fees. Eleanor actually had to drop to her knees on the wet pavement, begging the driver to let her load her boxes into the backseat.
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She crammed as many bins as she could into the minivan, leaving six heavy boxes of her old winter coats and books sitting abandoned on the grass. As the minivan drove away, splashing dirty gutter water onto the remaining boxes, I pulled the living room drapes shut.
The house was finally silent. The toxic, suffocating energy that had plagued my home for years was gone. I took a deep breath of clean air, feeling my healing lungs expand without resistance, and walked into my home office to prepare for the final corporate strike against my husband.
