8.10 Part One: Money Messes and Sisterly Skirmishes

   I sat at the kitchen table, the bills laid out in front of me. Despite my office job, which I had been promised would be safer and make more than my life guarding job, the family's income was very low. The truth about city desk jobs is you do not get paid better, you just get paid on a schedule, unlike life guarding where the number of hours, weather, tourist season, lives saved, and lawsuits play a much larger part. There was the car payment, the house payment, credit card bills, electric, water, cable, internet, cell phones, groceries, gasoline that I had to manage to pay for. Also, Phoebe had been told that unless she stopped doodling in class and actually started doing the math assignments, she would have to repeat fourth grade because her test score was so low. That meant there was her weekly tutor sessions I had to pay for, plus immunizations, and the cost of getting her and Marlo's cavities fixed. Life was expensive and quite frankly with my measly salary, even with the raises, I could barely pay for it.

 "What ya doing?" Maya asked, strutting into the kitchen.
   "Bills. I think we may need to cut cable, since we're a little short this month."
   "Short? What do you mean? You aren't making any less, are you?"
   "No..." I sighed, glancing at a statement that listed several upscale boutiques and a four star restaurant as recent purchases. "It probably has to do with the four hundred dollar necklace and caviar."
   "Harbor! Look, you know that sometimes I miss the ocean and my family, so I splurge. No biggie. We can cut, oh..." She glanced over my shoulder at the paperwork and pointed to the first thing she spotted. "That. What is it, dear?"
   "Water." I dryly said.
   "Hmm... we have to pay for that? In the ocean, well you know. What about that?"
   "Phoebe's tutor?"
   "Yeah, yeah! Why does she need a tutor, anyways? She's making Cs."
   "Cs aren't good." I exclaimed, standing up from he kitchen chair, turning to face my wife.
   "It is a passing grade."
   "But the teacher said if she doesn't raise her test score it'll go down to an F and she'll fail."
   "But we can't afford it."
   "Shouldn't education come first, though?"
   "I guess... hm..." She sighed, examining her manicure. "I was thinking, we should buy a boat."

 "A what?!" I exclaimed, standing up from the dining chair. I loved boating, I loved the days when I lived on a houseboat and could steer it underneath the midnight sky's starlight, but we couldn't afford a boat. The taxes on it were insane.
   "Not a big one. A small speedboat or something. See, we have the house, the car, the two kids, the office job, right? I show up to PTA meeting occasionally and will buy stuff whenever the school holds a bake sale, but this isn't the model family. Sure, it is a classic family lifestyle or most, but we aren't in some suburb, so we cannot rely on classic. We're on an island. In order to have a model family, we need a boat."
   "They cost-" I sighed. Model family. Dream lifestyle. Two kids, house, car, the works. Trophy wife with handsome office job husband who work too much to support the family and allow the wife to buy overpriced, materialistic junk. I had heard the spiel a thousand times and frankly over the years I had grown tired of it. Maya didn't want to hear my opinion, she wanted what I had told her so many years ago: Y-E-S. Don't fight, agree, "Fine, but we have to cut spending somewhere else."
   "The tutor."
   "She's going to need good grades. Maybe she can grow up and go to college and get an education so she doesn't have to go through this one day. I don't know if anyone in my family has ever attended college, I want my daughters to."

   "She's blonde and if she looks anything like me, not to brag, she'll be pretty damn attractive to the males. Maybe her brain won't be the brightest, that's okay. She'll use other things that being with B to convince some nerd to do her work."

   "Did you seriously just suggest that?" My ten year old daughter was not going to be told to rely on looks; how degrading to woman was that? I didn't want to teach her that just because her genes were good meant she could freeload off of some idiot who had been horny enough to track her down after he'd seen her a couple months ago.
   "Yeah, what's the big deal? I didn't go to college, yet you're in love with me."
   "We're struggling to pay bills! I want a better life for Marlo and Phoebe, so that way they never will."
   "If you wanted a better life for Marlo, should have tacked a W to the end of her name."
   "She's been alive seven whole years and has yet to run into trouble because of a single letter. Let it go!" whenever something happened to Marlo, whether it be she lost the spelling bee, wowed everyone at the class dance party, or could hold her breath sixteen seconds, beating Phoebe's time of eleven, Maya blamed it on the lack of a W in her name. "Why did you even come in here?"

  "Not to listen to you insult me, that's for sure."
   "Me insult you?"
   "Yeah. Do you listen to your self? Anyways, I found a fantastic opportunity for economic gain."
   "Buy a lotto ticket?"
   "No, silly. Buy a resort."
   "A resort?"
   "Yeah."
   "Did you ignore my whole we cannot afford to pay our bills thing?"
   "No, Mister I'm Smart and You're Dumb, I did not. It's free."
   "Really?" I gasped. This was perfect. We buy a resort and I quit the office job I hate to run it. Maya can help out and we can both work together, improving our relationship romantically and professionally.
   "Yep. Free, F-R-E-E."
   "What do we have to do?"
   "Well... I was thinking maybe we could go look at it tomorrow morning, then, if you like it we could talk about the details."
   "Alright." I sighed, up for anything at this point. At least she had waited to get my approval before running off to claim it and was trying to help the family out.

Phoebe's Point of View...

   I climbed up the stairs, walking towards my room. I needed to find my hair band before going out, in case it was windy. I didn't like the wind, because my hair got in my eyes and I couldn't see then. According to the weather woman, today is suppose to be clear and sunny, but you never know. Daddy had said that we were going to go look at some resort that he and mom might buy and they wanted to know if Marlo and I liked it. I hope it was nice; imagine your parents running their own resort! I bet if we did, the teachers wouldn't talk to daddy in hushed voices and make him get me a tutor.
   They all think I'm failing because I doodle and don't want to work, but the truth is I doodle because the work is boring. I know that five time eleven is fifty-five, why do I have to write it down three times and show my thought process? The same goes for English, I know what a synonym is and what a homophone is and what a is hyperbole and the difference between their and there, why do I have to do sheet dedicated to the subjects? I draw because no one knows what the end result is; nobody an memorize the correct answers and make you do three essay questions on it. I mostly doodle pictures of my classroom, only I decorate in my drawings. I add curtains and bright colors and lamps and fluffy rugs and bean bag chairs and change the walls from white concrete to wallpaper printed with roses.
   I reached the top of the stairs, walked to the second door on the right, the door to my room. and opened it.

   "Marlo!" I exclaimed. My little sister was always in my room and it was annoying. I spent a lot of time going to stores with mom to pick out which lamp and bed spread and doll I wanted and color coordinated all of it; she was messing it up.
   "What? I'm just playing with your toys. I left mine of the playground and mommy says I can't get them back until Monday."
   "That's tomorrow." I said, through clenched teeth. "Besides, why would you take toys to first grade? Don't they have lots is the classroom?"
   "Yeah, but mine are funner."
   "That isn't a word."
   "How do you know? You aren't a dictionary or mommy or daddy or my teacher."
   "Give me back my toys, please."
   "I wanna play more."
   "I said please."
   "But, Phoebe! Why can't you be fun?"
   "I am fun."
   "No you aren't. You think just cause you're in fourth grade you're too old to play with me. You spend all your time drawing and coloring."
   "I like drawing and coloring! It's creative and the drawings don't go into my room without asking first and play with my toys."
   "Haha, toys can't talk, they couldn't ask."
   "Get out of my room." I said for what was probably the ten jillionth time. Marlo didn't listen, she was stuck thinking whatever rules existed didn't apply to her.
   "Okay, since you said so!" She giggled, hopping up from the floor and running towards the closet that leas to her room.

   "Don't take my toys!" I shouted, following her to her room. Her room was decorated by mom it hadn't changed since it was her nursry. I didn't like it as much as mine, but I had to admit it was pretty.

Harbor's POV... 

   "DAD! Marlo stole my toys!" I sighed, after hearing the familiar sound of Phoebe screeching that Marlo had done something. Marlo was in her room, Marlo called her Rudolph cause she had a sunburn,   Marlo this and that. When the two got along, things were wonderful. When the couldn't, well let's just say life got difficult. Difficult, of course, meant that Maya would lecture me on proper discipline, go off to some store or restaurant to blow money, forcing me to  fix whatever fight was about to happen between our daughters.
   "Girls, we need to go! Come on." I called, as Maya  stood by the door tapping her foot.
   "You should be stricter."
   "I don't want to be mean."
   "Come one, man up. Lay down the law. They have a fight every two weeks, clearly your apologize to each other and no sweets for two weeks thing only works for, well, two weeks."
   "Wait, you're right... How did you realize that?"
   "Oh, I schedule my mani-pedis on those days." She smiled. "See, my polish is getting worn, I need a touch up."
   "Instead of telling my this when you realized, you scheduled a manicure?"
   "Yeah. Parenting stresses me out. I wish we had a boy, it would make stuff so much easier. They're so low effort."
   "Let's just go get in the car." I said, just as Phoebe and Marlo came rushing down the stairs, talking bout dolls and toys and rooms and boundaries. "Girls, I've decided to sweets until you stop fighting and can get along for two whole months."
   "Dad!" The whining instantly began. They'd complain, they'd mope, then they'd accept it and get along. This is what my life had become, fixing my children's silly quarrels and having to put up with Maya. I loved everyone so dearly, but damn did this have to keep on keeping on?

NOTE: I'm so sorry that it took forever to get a new chapter out, I have a new computer that's incredibly slow and blah-blah-excuses. I appreciate you hanging in there for the three (or four?) chapter-less weeks. I promise that chapters will be coming out much more quickly; I already have the next two semi-written. Thank ya! =)