Chapter 9 - The Downsizing of Ambition
By the second week of July, the heat in Middle Tennessee was historical—twenty-one consecutive days above ninety-five degrees that turned the grass along the highway to the color of brown paper bags and made the asphalt sticky beneath your tires.
The real estate sign went up in front of 1142 Heron Creek Way on a Tuesday morning:
FOR SALE — BY ORDER OF TRUSTEE / EXPEDITED SETTLEMENT.
The listing price was five hundred and forty-nine thousand dollars—thirty-six thousand below the municipal appraisal.
The open house was not catered. There were no imported prosecco bottles, no artisan charcuterie boards, no glossy architectural brochures printed on hundred-pound linen cardstock.
There was only a tired real estate agent named Marsha, sitting at a folding table in the empty foyer where the chandelier had been removed, its bare electrical wires capped with yellow plastic wire-nuts hanging from the ceiling like dead spiders.
Brianna did not attend the closing.
Her attorney—a sharp, aggressive domestic litigator from Knoxville who charged four hundred and fifty dollars an hour—handled the execution via digital power of attorney from her parents' estate in Loudon County.
The divorce decree was entered in the Sumner County Circuit Court on July twenty-fourth, citing "irreconcilable differences and mutual financial insolvency."
Under the terms of the marital dissolution agreement:
The net deficiency from the Heron Creek sale—nineteen thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars—was divided equally between the parties.
Brianna retained the assets and liabilities of Belle & Oak Creative Consultants, LLC, including the thirty-eight-thousand-dollar operating deficit and the nine-thousand-dollar IRS tax lien.
Derek assumed the remaining balance of the secondary home equity line—forty-two thousand dollars—which was converted into an unsecured personal promissory note with an eight-year repayment term at six percent interest.
Neither party was awarded rehabilitative alimony, transitional maintenance, or spousal support.
On the last Saturday of July, I drove my LeSabre to the Sycamore Terrace apartments on Gallatin Pike.
The building was two stories of faded red brick, surrounded by mature pecan trees that dropped small, hard nuts onto the gravel parking lot.
Unit 12B was on the ground floor, near the maintenance shed.
The door was open to catch the evening breeze through the screen. Inside, the walls had been freshly painted with that thick, institutional off-white that apartment complexes use to cover fifty years of previous tenants. The floor was covered in clean, commercial-grade brown carpet that smelled faintly of dry foam.
Derek was in the kitchen.
He was wearing an old gray t-shirt and jeans with holes in the knees, assembling a small, round pine table that he had bought for forty dollars at a local thrift store. He was on his knees with an adjustable wrench, tightening the four lag bolts that held the central pedestal to the base.
In the corner of the living room sat two cardboard boxes of law books, an iron floor lamp from Arthur’s study that I had given him on Wednesday, and a single twin mattress resting on a steel frame beneath the front window.
Beside the sink sat his dinner: a box of generic macaroni and cheese and a can of tuna fish.
"Derek," I said through the screen.
He looked up, wiping his greasy forehead with the back of his wrist.
"Hey, Mom."
He stood up, wiped his hands on a clean kitchen rag, and pushed the screen door open.
"Come in. It’s... well, it’s about twenty degrees cooler than the street, anyway."
I stepped inside.
The room was small—maybe six hundred square feet in total—but it was clean. The kitchen counter was bare Formica, scrubbed until the yellow pattern shone in the afternoon sun. On the small bookshelf beside the window sat his college diploma, his state bar certificate, and a framed photograph of his father standing beside our LeSabre at the Grand Canyon in nineteen ninety-six.
There were no photographs of Heron Creek. There were no French candles. There were no monogrammed silver napkin rings.
I walked to the kitchen counter, set down the small wicker basket I was carrying, and pulled back the blue-and-white checked towel.
Inside was a loaf of warm sourdough bread, a small jar of homemade blackberry preserves from my garden, and two thick pork chops wrapped in white butcher paper from the local meat market.
Derek looked at the basket.
His throat moved twice. He didn't look away, but his eyes grew glossy, the tears pooling along his lower lids before he blinked them back with a sharp, determined breath.
"Thank you, Mom," he said, his voice quiet, steady, and clean.
"You assembled the table backward, Derek," I said, pointing with my finger at the base. "The heavy cross-brace belongs on the north side, near the wall. Otherwise, it will tip when you lean your elbows on it."
He looked down at the pine pedestal, then at the wrench in his hand, and for the first time in five months, a real laugh—a short, dry, self-deprecating chuckle that sounded remarkably like his father’s—came out of his chest.
"I’m an attorney, Mom. We don't read assembly diagrams. We just argue with the instructions."
May you like
"Get your wrench," I said, pulling up my sleeves. "I’ll hold the pedestal while you turn the nuts."
We worked for twenty minutes in the fading light of the Gallatin Pike afternoon, our hands working together over the rough pine, the metal wrench clicking rhythmically against the steel bolts, until the table stood square, solid, and immovable on the brown carpet.
