Day 45 and 46

Day 45

The plot thickens:

During a routine writing of a rent check, I learn that Rose and Jan are poor as shit. Both Jan and Rose are both out of work, Rose for about six months and Jan for roughly fifteen years.  Rose was still looking for work; Jan had given up long ago. Their sons were out of school, but not out of the house.  Both worked job-to-job as video game quality control.  They would literally play video games before they are released for sale, looking for glitches and (according to their complaints regarding industry pay scale) making eight bucks an hour.  Each night they come home, hit the couch, and do the exact same job for free.  As far as I could tell, neither of them pay rent and contribute to the house. 

This news is kind of stunning. The family lives in a house that has to be worth three-quarters of a million dollars. When I point this out to Rose, I learn this is part of the problem: Through home equity loans to finance various endeavors, the family managed to transform the $60,000 track house they purchased in 1970 into a $3,000-a-month mortgage payment.  Thus, when Rose lost her job a few months ago, the family had begun to fall behind on their bills almost immediately. 

I asked Rose if she has ever considered selling the $800,000 house they cannot afford. Rose squints at me as though I am insane for suggesting this, and informs me she will murder the first banker that tried to repossess her dream house. I glance at Jan, who is staring blankly into space, and begin to wonder if they actually have guns on the premises.  

Day 46

Rose is one of those people who lack the buffer feature that censors most of us. Although she has known me for less than a week, she will truthfully answer any question I pose. This is proving immensely helpful in the study of Jan’s madness.  Rose has built up many theories on the topic over thirty years of marriage, and she could not wait for fresh ears to share them with.  Like me, Jan and Rose moved to San Jose from Chicago.  Their move was perfectly timed to coincide with the tech boom that established San Jose as Silicon Valley.  With a high school degree, Jan found himself making the 1980s equivalent of six figures working for companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard.  Money and some technical proficiency with developing technology apparently acted as a crutch for Jan’s assortment of burgeoning personality problems. The eighties brought heartache; Rose says that the life was driven out of Jan as newer, better-educated workers drove Jan out of a series of increasingly menial jobs.  The last time Jan worked was 1992.  Now he spends most of his time sleeping during the day or sitting at the kitchen table, making daily lists of what’s on sale at the local grocery store.  If you even mention needing groceries, Jan will whip out the list – which he stores in his back pocket at all times – and launch into a protracted reading of what is on sale.  For a man who hasn’t earned a dime in almost twenty years, Jan is eager to spend money; he and Rose frequently argue about the quantities of groceries he buys on his near-daily trips to the supermarket.  Unsurprisingly, Jan is also a packrat: the entire two-car garage is filled from floor to ceiling with Jan’s “papers.”  Although I haven’t seen overt evidence of alcoholism, Rose is hinting that Jan drinks a lot.   

Rose tells these stories in a matter-of-fact way, holding nothing back.  She simply isn’t a person who can tell when something is embarrassing and shouldn’t be discussed with a total stranger.  She’s now discussing Jan’s various medical maladies, his failings as a human being, and – most recently – the reasons she is opposed to divorcing him.  “We just weren’t brought up to divorce,” Rose would say, to my unasked question.  “No divorce.  No. Matter. What.”

I suspect Rose had some less obvious reasons. One of them is convenience: Where Jan is merely obese, Rose is enormous, easily 400 pounds.  She has difficulty standing for more than a few moments.  Jan frequently functions as a waiter, ferrying food from their larder to Rose’s home office.  More on this later.

Next Time: Noah meets the third son; Jan takes it up a notch.