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March 20, 2008, 05:34 PM ET
Women and Money: a Story
She wishes she could hire an accountant to go over her emotional balance, somebody to perform a thorough audit of her personal life.
Somebody relentless, and personally driven by the need to organize others, someone who would offer logic rather than understanding. She needs to plan her future and she can’t do that without an accurate and itemized statement explaining her current assets and debits.
Her checkbook is a mess.
This is a new problem for her. For most of their earlier and poorer life, she handled the finances and did a good job. About six or seven years ago, she started screwing up, almost but not quite deliberately forgetting or refusing to keep track of their money. One check — to the cleaners — bounced, followed by a few more.
This was embarrassing but not terrible, because they were written to local merchants who were happy to forgive them and thereby ensure their loyalty. The nice older couple running the cleaners — where he has his shirts done — told her this happened all the time “since women are now so busy.”
He started taking over paying the bills. Once a month he sits down at his mostly unused, impressive desk in his home office, and writes down every check number and balances every checkbook. There are several of these, ones for his business accounts, for his consulting business, and for household finances. She has her own checking account now and has responsibility only for the couple of hundred dollars it contains. Even this, however, she does badly, as if to spite herself.
She no longer bounces checks, but she calls in to the automatic machine the way people call into a psychic’s hotline: not having a clue as to the accuracy of what she’s hearing.
She trusts what she is told, but what else can she do?
This evening when she calls, the automated fortune-teller at the other end tells her she has almost two hundred dollars more than she imagined. She immediately feels a sense of elation. This is like winning at the slots, like finding money under the cushions of the couch, like getting away with something, like shoplifting.
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