He Sat Me by the Warming Racks, So I Pulled the Funding novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Warming Racks
At the gala for her husband's promotion, Maureen is introduced as the woman who files his paperwork and sat by the warming racks. She kills the wire.
At the gala for my husband's promotion, he introduced me to the chief of staff as the woman who handles his paperwork.
I had paid $340,000 to put that man through medical school.
Curtis said it easily, the way he said everything at parties, already reaching for a passing glass.
The chief of staff looked at me for a moment and did not offer his hand.
"Of course," he said.
The seating chart put Curtis and his mother at table one.
It put me in the service corridor behind the ballroom, on a folding chair beside the warming racks.
A waiter set a plate in front of me and said, "Sorry, ma'am, he asked for this one."
The salmon was already half gone.
There was a lipstick print on the rim of the glass.
I did not need to ask whose.
Kendra Pruell, the foundation's development director, was at table one in a deep red dress, laughing at something Curtis had said.
She had been warm to me at the foundation office last spring.
She had walked me to my car with an umbrella and told me how lucky Curtis was.
I had liked her very much.
The doors to the ballroom were propped open a few inches for the servers.
I heard Curtis come out to the hallway with two men from the board.
"Relax," he said, laughing. "She's fine. She got the leftovers. Next time she can eat in the car."
One of them laughed with him.
Then he said, quieter, "She won't make a scene. She's never made a scene in her life."
That was true.
I had never made one.
I had built a billing firm at a card table in my mother's laundry room and grown it to forty employees without raising my voice once.
I had signed every check for his tuition, his residency, his fellowship and the pavilion that was going to carry his mother's name.
I had never once asked him to say it out loud.
Back in the ballroom, the lights went down for the presentation.
Curtis took the podium and thanked his mother, his mentor and "the woman who has stood beside me through every step of this."
He was looking at Kendra when he said it.
The room applauded.
Rosalind Ainsley, in ivory silk, dabbed her eyes while a photographer took her picture.
She wore a small brass key on a chain at her collar.
She had told me once that it opened the green tin box in her closet, where she kept everything that mattered in this family.
I stood at the back and clapped, because that is what you do.
My hands felt like someone else's.
When it was over, Rosalind found me by the coat check.
"You've been so good about all this, Maureen," she said, patting my arm. "Curtis needs a wife who doesn't take things personally."
"Does he?"
"Of course. You're the steady one. Don't spoil his night."
She smiled and went back to her son.
I stood there with my coat over my arm and the silver student-nurse pin in the bottom of my purse, where it had been for twenty-two years.
Curtis passed me on his way to a photo.
"Cab's out front," he said. "Don't wait up, I've got a few more people to see."
He did not look at me.
So I stopped being the steady one.
I went out through the staff entrance on Dunning Avenue, got into my car and opened the banking app.
The monthly wire to the Lakeshore Foundation was scheduled for Monday, as it had been on the first of every month for six years.
I cancelled it.
I cancelled the next one and the one after that.
Then I called the number on the pledge agreement and left a message for the foundation's treasurer, withdrawing the pledge in full.
I am the donor of record.
Curtis had only asked for the name on the building.
On the drive home I called a realtor I had worked with and told her the house on Lindell Road was hers to list.
Then I called Bev Haugen, who runs my office, and told her to expect trouble by Monday noon.
"About time," Bev said.
I had bought the house with firm money.
The deed has my name on it and no one else's.
By Sunday afternoon, I had a cash offer.
I slept in my mother's old duplex, which I had never been able to sell, and I did not answer a single one of his calls.
On Monday at seven in the morning, I was sitting in the foundation's conference room across from the chief of staff, Dr. Lowell Hendry, when the door opened.
Curtis stood there with his badge in his hand.
It had not opened the garage gate.
It had not opened the pavilion offices.
"Maureen?" he said. "What are you doing here?"
Dr. Hendry did not stand up.
"Dr. Ainsley," he said. "You asked me last week who was funding your fellowship."
He pushed the signed withdrawal across the table.
"Ask your wife whose signature is on it."
Curtis read the page and went white.
"Mo," he said. "Whose signature is this?"
"Mine," I said.
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