The Penny Pinchers Club (13 page)

“I’m right about that. Trust me.”

“
Because,
” I continued,“I haven’t had the opportunity to sit down and go over our accounts myself. Therefore, I don’t know how much we have in an IRA.”

I could feel Viv roll her eyes.

“You gotta understand something,Toni.” Viv patted my knee, like she would take care of the talking from now on. “My baby sister’s a great person. Loving. Kind. Smart. Last summer she rescued a clutch of baby rabbits who were drowning in their hole and stayed up all night feeding them with droppers of milk and keeping them warm with a heat lamp.”

“They died anyway,” I said. Where was Viv going with this?

“But she’s horrible with money. Even as a kid, she was the first one to smash open her piggy bank and go buy candy.”

“That’s not true!”

“Face it, Kat. It’s who you are, a spender. But that’s okay. I can’t save, either, and that’s not our fault—we were born to shop. We’re from
South River
and what else was there to do in South River but . . .”

“Shop.” Toni tossed down her glasses. “I get it. That explains your husband’s line in this email, by the way, the one about fearing you’d drain the account.” She underlined that line on the printout I’d brought. “I thought that was very telling.”

Unbelievable. My sister and lawyer were actually blaming
me
for my husband having a secret slush fund. “Are you saying it’s my fault Griff’s leaving?”

Toni said, “Frankly, that’s not my business. That’s for a therapist to help you discern down the road. Which reminds me, I should include psychologist’s fees in the settlement.” She jotted another note. “All I care about is finding the basis for a fault to pin on Griff, starting with adultery.”

Adultery?
The awful word hung in the air like a noxious cloud.

Under her breath,Viv said, “It’s not your fault.”

“What I’m more interested in at this juncture is how you’re going to get the money to pay not only me, but those other expenses we talked about—shelter, food, insurance, car payments. . . . That’s our prime objective—seeing you become fiscally independent.”

“Our mother!” Viv snapped her fingers. “She has savings and she won’t tell Dad if we ask her.”

That was abhorrent. I was not about to approach my elderly mother who’d managed to gather a nest egg from Dad’s allowance by sewing our clothes instead of buying them and making Monday’s meat loaf last for a week’s worth of lunches.

“No.” The image of my mother slowly writing me a check was so pathetic that it imbued me with a burst of unfamiliar resolve. “My mother will
not
pay for me to survive a divorce. Neither will my father, or, for that matter, my husband.”

Toni looked aghast as I jumped from my seat and, caught up in some strange swirl of energy, pounded her desk so hard I toppled her mini Chinese brass gong. “I’ll do it on my own. I don’t know how . . . maybe my new client will lead to bigger and better things. Maybe Chloe will give me a raise. . . .”

“In this economy?” Viv whistled. “Not likely.”

“Okay, then I’ll simply cut back on everything. I will be the best saver you’ve ever met.”

While Viv had the decency not to snort or roll her eyes again, I could tell she was holding back, trying not to laugh at my dramatics.

“I know you don’t believe me,Viv. . . .”

“Who, me?” She put her hand to her chest. “Who am I to say you can’t pull off saving $15,000? I didn’t think a black man from Hawaii had a chance of winning the presidency, either, and look how wrong I was about that.”

So she
did
doubt me.

“It’s what you said about Mom that got me thinking. If our mother could put aside a so-called nest egg by spending less than the allowance Dad gave her, then why can’t I?”

“Because Mom had forty years. You’ve got, what? Eight months?”

“That’s okay.” Toni nodded wisely. “An intensive savings program is the ideal exercise for your sister during these tough months ahead. It’ll build her confidence and independence.”

Viv said, “I know that, but I’d hate to see her try and fail.”

“I won’t fail.” Geesh. I wasn’t a child.

“Failure’s not the enemy. Not trying is.” Toni got up and came around, perching herself on the desk, perhaps to keep me from pounding it again. “And you never know, Kat. You might save more than money.”

CHAPTER NINE

O
kay, so there it was. I had publicly declared my intention to save at least $15,000 despite my abysmal financial history and Viv’s skepticism.

Aha! What my sister didn’t realize was that her doubts only further buoyed my determination. I’d show her, I would. And I’d show Toni, too. And my mother and, most of all, Griff, that I could be smart with money.

But how?

It wasn’t as though one could flip a switch from consumer to saver and be done with it. There wasn’t a patch or a gum that could curb a spending addiction. Nor did I have the ironic luxury of alcoholics and drug addicts in going cold turkey. I had to feed and clothe my family and that required expending money almost daily.

Knowing when to say when for me was a mystery.

On the ride home from Toni’s office, for instance, I passed a dozen places where I easily could have stopped and shopped—Wegmans for groceries, the camera shop to pick up black-and-white film for Laura’s photography class, the dry cleaner to fetch Griff’s shirts, the pet store to buy the special—and pricey—food for my toothless dog, Jasper. Those errands alone would have sucked over $200 from my checking account in a snap.

And then I saw the Rocky River Public Library and it hit me. If I couldn’t get support from my family, then maybe I could get it from strangers. Libby had been after me to go to one of her Penny Pinchers meetings for years. Perhaps now was the time. Of course, that would require me to eat a bit of crow since I’d never exactly warmed to her invitations, but . . .

“You are not going to regret this,” she said the day we met to go to my first meeting. “The Penny Pinchers are going to change your life, I swear. You are never going to be a victimized consumer again.”

We were outside the Rocky River Public Library a month after my session with Toni on a crisp fall morning invigorated by the snap of autumn. Kids were back in school full swing, the leaves were beginning to turn red and gold, and a sense of organization had replaced the lazy ennui of summer. I wanted to rake leaves, roast a chicken, clean out the closets and fill them with brand-new clothes for winter, perhaps some tweed slacks, a few cashmere twinsets, and cute leather boots.

But I was proud to say I resisted the temptation. Every day when yet another catalog came in the mail promising vigorous hikes through snowy woods (L.L. Bean) or cozy evenings snuggled in black watch flannel around a roaring fire (Plow & Hearth), I’d toss it immediately in the outside trash, forbidding myself from taking so much as a peek at L.L. Bean’s latest offering of periwinkle turtlenecks and sage green sweaters.

“I’ve never gone into fall without buying at least a few new pieces,” I told Libby as we headed up the library steps. “I think it goes back to when I was a kid and my mother would take Viv and me to Two Guys for saddle shoes and plaid jumpers and white blouses with Peter Pan collars to start the new school year.”

And new pencils, I thought, remembering the glorious smell of sharpened Dixon Ticonderogas neatly stowed away in my brand-new zipper pencil case along with a fresh pink eraser, blunt scissors, a six-inch wooden ruler, and a protractor I never learned how to use.

“It feels as if something’s missing from the fall season, not stocking up on new stuff. Don’t you think?”

“Not anymore.” She yanked open the heavy oak doors. “And, someday, you’ll get over it, too.”

Though I wondered, since it seemed Libby had a new fall wardrobe. Or maybe it was that I was so used to her in jeans and T-shirts, her hair in a ponytail, that her black boots, a black skirt, and russet sweater with a rather tasteful scarf was new only to me.

“You have to think of new ways to mark the seasons besides going on a shopping spree, Kat. Ways that don’t cost money. For instance, leave work an hour early and go for a nice long walk in the park with Griff.”

“Not a nice long walk in the mall?”

“Can you smell fallen leaves in the mall? Can you fill your lungs with fresh air and hear the sounds of children playing?”

No. But I could get 20 percent off at Ann Taylor, I thought, hit by a sudden case of nerves as we headed to the basement where the Penny Pinchers met. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

Libby hesitated with her hand on the doorknob. “Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet.”

A burst of laughter erupted from within, along with the distinct sound of clinking coffee cups. “When they find out I’ve never saved a thing, they’re going to kick me out.”

“It’s a public library. They can’t kick you out.” She grabbed me by the sleeve of my leather coat. “Come on!”

All conversation stopped as we entered to find a small group sitting in a semicircle of metal folding chairs, a giant mural of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, and Tigger dancing on blue walls in the background, along with stacked cushions on the floor. Clearly we were in the library story room.

Libby smiled at a man in his thirties in jeans and a half-unbuttoned button-down shirt over a tee, his hand in one pocket as he leaned back on a folding chair. I knew the pose and the clothes all too well. Abercrombie & Fitch 2007. He returned with a wink that turned Libby pink.

So
that
explained her new sweater and boots.

“Guys,” she said, dragging her gaze away from the Adonis. “This is my friend Kat.”

A young black woman in pearls and a gray twinset said, “You mean the same Kat you work for.”

Libby was unruffled. “That’s right. You know how long I’ve been trying to get her to come to one of our meetings. Well . . .”

She found out her husband’s leaving her
, I thought.

“. . . she finally saw the light. So I hope you’ll give her a warm welcome.”

“Hi, Kat,” they singsonged.

“That’s Sherise.” Libby pointed to the woman in the cashmere twinset. “She kind of keeps the group organized.”

“Organized? That’s rich.” A guy about my age with the physique of a body builder—thick neck, big chest popping out of a white T-shirt—leaned his arm on one knee. “What she means is boss us around.”

“Don’t mind Steve,” Sherise said. “He’s a security guard and bouncer, so he thinks he has to act tough, but he’s really a pussycat inside. Sit next to him and he’ll keep the riffraff away.”

I took a seat next to Steve. Libby had already insinuated herself between the Abercrombie guy and an old woman knitting merrily. Abercrombie planted a kiss on Libby’s cheek, prompting an overweight woman in a purple kerchief and black knit skirt pawing through a huge pile of coupons on the floor to exhale in disgust.

“Okay.” Sherise clapped her hands. “I don’t know if Libby told you how we like to start our meetings, Kat, but usually we go around the room and brag about our successes last month and lament about our slips off the wagon.”

Question: Was it possible to slip off if one had technically never been on the wagon?

“I’ll start.” The heavyset woman lifted herself from the coupons.

Steve put his mouth to my ear. “Keep your eye on Opal. She’s a bigger tightwad than everyone else.”

“I heard that, Steve,” Opal said. “And thank you. You know how much that means to me, especially coming from you.”

I wasn’t quite sure I’d heard “tightwad” taken as a compliment before.

“This month,” Opal began matter of factly, “I got forty bottles of Pantene for eighty-eight cents each at Rite Aid and with a buy-one-get-one-free deal and manufacturer’s coupons plus a rebate, I actually ended up making $4 on the transaction.” She pumped her fist as everyone responded with applause.

Steve said, “See what I mean?”

But I was trying to get my mind around what she’d just said.
Forty bottles of Pantene for free?
What does one do with so much shampoo?

“Any slips you regret?” Sherise asked.

“Yeah, one. I finally broke down and bought Jeremy a box of Reese’s Puffs.” She sighed. “Call it a weak moment.”

“Bad mom,” someone teased. It might have been the cute guy with Libby.

“Well, I did have a coupon for thirty cents off, but you know how I feel about sugared cereals. Next, he’ll be looking for harder stuff. Like Coke.”

The cute guy said, “Can heroin be far behind?”

Libby poked him with her elbow.

“You laugh, Wade, but come see my kids in twenty years when they’re strong and healthy and lean and mean. And why? Because I kept them away from overprocessed foods and spared their pancreases, that’s why.”

Buying Reese’s Puffs did not seem all that bad. I mean, Laura used to live on Cap’n Crunch, string cheese, and fruit leather. Whatever fruit leather was.

Opal finished and we went around the room listing our successes and failures. Wade, the cute guy, claimed not to have had any failures, though he did find an awesome transistor radio in a Dumpster. But as I heard everyone else’s answers, I began to worry. I hadn’t really saved much since my meeting in Toni’s office, aside from not hitting up Saks and quitting the gym—more of a pleasure than a hardship, really.

I did call the cable company and cancel HBO, though I wasn’t quite sure these were the types to be impressed by my sacrifice of next season’s
Big Love
.

Velma, the knitter, held up two balls of yarn she’d made from unraveling a moth-eaten sweater she’d picked up for free from the discards box at a church rummage sale. “They’d make a nice pair of socks,” she said, “for the homeless.”

Oh, my word. Not only were these people thrifty—they were
saints
. I slunk down in my chair praying Sherise would be kind and give me a pass. Alas, no. After Libby bragged that she called in the power company for a free energy audit and found she could reduce her electric bill simply by vacuuming the back of her refrigerator, Sherise skipped Steve, who claimed some sort of excuse, and came to me.