The Hole We're In

A Novel

Gabrielle Zevin

• Publisher: Black Cat
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780802161307
• eBook ISBN: 9780802197894
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A "sharply funny and sobering . . . portrait of a family in financial free fall" from the New York Times–bestselling author of Young Jane Young ( People ).
 
With The Hole We're In—a bold, timeless, yet all too timely novel about a troubled American family navigating an even more troubled America—award-winning author and screenwriter, Gabrielle Zevin, delivers a work that places her in the ranks of our shrewdest social observers and top literary talents.
 
Meet the Pomeroys: a church-going family living in a too-red house in a Texas college town. Roger, the patriarch, has impulsively gone back to school, only to find his future ambitions at odds with the temptations of the present. His wife, Georgia, tries to keep things afloat at home, but she's been feeding the bill drawer with unopened envelopes for months and never manages to confront its swelling contents. In an attempt to climb out of the holes they've dug, Roger and Georgia make a series of choices that have catastrophic consequences for their three children—especially for Patsy, the youngest, who will spend most of her life fighting to overcome them. The Hole We're In shines a spotlight on some of the most relevant issues of today: over-reliance on credit, gender and class politics, and the war in Iraq. But it is Zevin's deft exploration of the fragile economy of family life that makes this a book for the ages.
 
"Blazing . . . Sharp . . . a Corrections for our recessionary times . . . [Zevin] establishes herself as an astute chronicler of the way we spend now." — Publishers Weekly, starred review

PART I
The Red House

Oh baby, baby, how was I supposed to know
that something wasn’t right here?

“… BABY ONE MORE TIME”

… that ellipsis tells a tale.

ROLLING STONE, APRIL 25, 1999

A June and Six Septembers

MIDWAY THROUGH HIS son’s graduation from college, somewhere between the Ns and the Os, Roger Pomeroy decided that he owed it to himself to go back to school. He was forty-two years old, though people told him at least once a week that he looked younger. Last Christmas, a salesgirl had mistaken his then nineteen-year-old daughter for his wife. Last week, a different salesgirl had mistaken his forty-one-year-old wife for his mother. He knew it wasn’t flattery, because in both instances the salesgirls had already made their sales: respectively, a flannel nightgown (wife’s Christmas) and a leather fanny pack (son’s graduation). And, at work—Roger was an assistant principal at the same Christian high school that his two older children had attended—all the girls flirted with him no matter how much he discouraged the practice.

His wife, George (née Georgia), nudged him. “You’re supposed to be standing.” Roger looked at the crowd, then past it to the dais. A flag was being raised. Everyone was standing, so Roger stood.

The more he thought about it, the more it made sense to do it now. Roger had completed a master’s in education while working full-time, but if he wanted to get really serious (that is to say, a PhD) he would have to take leave. He had three children: Vincent, the son who was graduating; Helen, who would be a college junior the following year; and Patricia, age ten, the baby of the family though hardly a baby anymore. In any case, the kids were mostly grown, which meant two fewer mouths to feed. And if George had to work a couple of extra hours—here, he paused to smile at his wife. The smile was meant to acknowledge the official magnitude of the occasion, A Son’s Graduation from College, but George immediately detected the ulterior in it. She grinned back.

Roger lowered his thoughts to a whisper. If George had to work a couple of extra hours, it would ultimately be for the best. With a PhD, Roger would earn more money, which meant the wife could retire altogether. Based on the time it had taken him to complete his master’s, Roger estimated three years for a doctorate. He had been a family man for twenty-two years, over half his life. He had never cheated at anything, marriage included. He was an honorary pastor at their church and considered himself to be a better-than-average Christian. He had made sacrifices for others and now, he reckoned, sacrifices should be made for him.

George squeezed her husband’s hand. “Earth to Roger,” she whispered. “Your son’s next.”

They called Vinnie’s name, and Roger applauded. He had missed his own graduation from college because George had gone into labor with the boy. It seemed fitting and good that he had come to this decision on this day.

Caps flew through the air and Roger’s eyes filled with tears. The youngest, Patsy, was standing on the other side of him. He lifted her over his shoulders so that she could better see the show.

“Daddy,” Patsy said. She placed her doll hands on his cheeks. “Are you crying because you’re still mad at Vinnie?”

“No, I’m just happy, baby.”

* * *

FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER, Roger moved his family from Tennessee to Texas and began the PhD program at Teacher’s College, Texas University. He loved being full-time and working forms of the word matriculate into casual conversation. He was a sucker for anything (mugs, mouse pads, tube socks) with the Fighting Yellow Devils logo, despite the fact that these items were sold at a premium. If he could have afforded and gotten his wife to agree to it, he would have lived in student housing.

No doubt about it, the first year was difficult financially. The move alone had drained a good portion of their savings. But, by the second year, Roger had a decent teaching stipend amounting to fifteen thousand dollars per annum—less than a third of what he had taken in as an assistant principal, but combined with low-interest student loans, high-interest credit cards, a cashed-in retirement plan, and George’s job, not bad. And besides, he wouldn’t be a student forever. Just three years. Or four. Certainly no more than four.

After a summer of soul searching, Roger settled on a topic for his dissertation September of his fifth year. He would study the differences between kids who had attended schools with a religious component and kids who hadn’t. The topic was near to his heart: Patsy, now nearly sixteen, was going to a public school because no acceptable religious one had been found within a thirty-mile radius of Texas U. Roger’s standards for such an institution were very high indeed.

For the record, it was not an extraordinarily slow pace at which to complete a PhD. It was on the fast side of average, though it had obviously exceeded Roger’s initial estimates.

George asked him if he might consider going back to work fulltime while writing the dissertation. Roger declined. He had a lot of research to do, and he believed the whole enterprise would go more quickly if he could just focus. One other thing: upon reading his proposal, his adviser, the distinguished professor Carolyn Murray, had commented, “There just might be a book in this, Rog.” He was embarrassed by how many times he’d repeated these words to himself. Despite the comfort he took in them, Roger chose not to share them with his wife. Instead, he imagined the following scene:

Roger, who has not yet turned fifty but regardless looks much younger, has taken Georgia to the nicest restaurant in town.

“Can we afford this?” George asks after a cursory look at the menu.

Roger nods and encourages the woman to order whatever she wants.

“Well, if you’re certain ...”

“I am, George. I am.”

After dessert is served, Roger casually reaches under the table and pulls a published book out from under it.

“What’s this?” she asks.

“It’s a book,” he says. {Alternatively, he says, “It’s all our dreams come true,” though this line effectually ends the scene, and Roger prefers to draw it out.}

George looks at the book. “But, it has your name on the cover.”

“That’s because it’s my book, George. It’s our book, and it’s going to make us very, very rich.”

“Why, Roger,” she says, “I didn’t even know you were writing a book!”

“I wanted to keep it a secret until I was sure,” he says, turning back the cover with a jaunty flick of the wrist. “Read this ...”

George puts on her glasses: “To my family, especially my wife, Georgia, without whom there would be no book. And to our Lord Savior, Jesus Christ, without whom there would be no life.” George clears her throat. {Sometimes, the dedication continues: And to Professor Carolyn Murray, who supported this book in its infancy ... And sometimes not. His wife’s hypothetical retort, “Roger, who’s Carolyn Murray?” pushed the scene in an unusual and frankly somewhat undesirable direction.}

“And look”—Roger flips to the back flap—“your name’s here, too. I’ve used the picture you took of me at Helen’s wedding for my author photo. You’re a professional photographer, George!” {He considers this to be a particularly nice touch, including her in the process as it did.}

George’s voice is husky with emotion. “Come here, you wonderful, wonderful man!”

“Roger.” The dream was deferred by Professor Murray’s latest assistant: a skinny, pimple-scarred, faux-hawked, gay (or so Roger suspected), overpriced-glasses-wearing, twenty-four-year-old kid, who claimed his name was Cherish. The kid was also at approximately the same place in the PhD program as Roger. “Carolyn will see you now.”

Her office was nice enough, but nothing special: furniture made of wood and not the particleboard rubbish that cluttered the offices of the junior faculty and staff; a brown leather chair with just the right patina; a Tiffany-style lamp; framed and matted reproductions by O’Keefe and Gauguin; a photograph of the professor with Laura Bush, the governor’s wife; another with Coretta Scott King; a humdinger of a group shot that included First Lady Hillary Clinton, poet laureate Maya Angelou, and Betty Friedan, taken at a women’s education summit in Washington, DC; a rather phallic pillar candle scented in cucumber-melon; an Oriental (Roger wondered if the term was offensive ...) rug on the floor that almost managed to distract from the gray industrial carpet that plagued even the most attractive parts of campus; a first-class view of the university chapel and memorial gardens. It really is nothing special, he thought, but it really should be mine.

He had the same birthday as Professor Murray: March 12, though she was five years older than him. This fact had been revealed under somewhat embarrassing circumstances during Roger’s second year in the program. At the end of one of her famous lecture classes, her inner circle of students, a group that did not include Roger, arranged for a surprise cake. Roger stood when he saw the cake speeding through the door on the borrowed AV cart. How had they known it was his birthday? He was giddy with astonishment and pleasure. The cake made its way down the aisle, sweet and white as a bride, and he felt nearly like he had on his wedding day. And then, it passed him by. Roger wondered if he should follow it to the front: Is that how these things were done? That was when the singing began. By the third line, it became clear that the cake had never been for him. He clapped his hands and tapped his foot in time to the music as if this had been his reason for standing all along.

“Come in, Rog,” Professor Murray called. “Sit.”

He obeyed.

She looked him up and down in a manner that struck Roger as not quite professional. “My, you’re looking well!”

For the record, Carolyn Murray was a handsome woman, though Roger had never been attracted to the kind of women who were thought to be handsome women. She was ten pounds past slim, but she carried the extra weight well. Her suit was well cut, like her gray, curly hair, and its fabric expensive. It was not the kind of suit that often made an appearance at Roger’s church or in his wife’s closet. Even Professor Murray only wore the suit on lecture days, a custom in which Roger perceived gentility. At that moment, she had her shoes off and her feet displayed like a pair of knickknacks on the cluttered cherry desk. Roger could see a hole the size of a dime in her black stockings. It was just over the pad below her big toe, and its presence struck him as obscene. He wanted very badly to cover it up but settled for repositioning himself so he could no longer see it.

Although she was an ordinary enough specimen for a liberal arts college, Roger was a bit dazzled by her—that hole notwithstanding. He had spent his education (and, by extension, his life) in religious settings where the native birds tended to be of a different sort.

“So, Rog,” she said, “I’ve been thinking of you.”

Roger cleared his throat. He wasn’t sure how to respond.

Professor Murray took her feet off the desk and tucked them away from Roger. She laughed a little to herself, then said, “Your work. I’ve been thinking of your dissertation proposal.”

Roger cleared his throat again.

“Are you ill?” she asked.

Roger cleared his throat a third time. “I’m ...,” he began. “What have you been thinking?”

“Well ...”—she removed the proposal from her top desk drawer—“I’ve made some notes.” The top sheet was scarred with red ink. Roger couldn’t make out the words—Professor Murray’s handwriting was indulgently illegible in the style of MDs and PhDs worldwide—but he could see many exclamation points and even more question marks.

“I thought you liked it.” Roger tried not to sound childish, but did not succeed.

“I do, Roger. Very much. I think I mentioned to you when last we spoke that there might even be a book in it.”

He conceded remembering something of the sort.

“Though the truth is, I think this topic might be broader and require more resources than what your standard dissertation allows,” Professor Murray said. “In addition to library work, I foresee you conducting research trips, and you’ll probably ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Part I The Red House
• Part II What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a War Like This?
• Part III A Relative Paradise
• Part IV Baby One More Time
• Acknowledgments