Plot twist

Following the death of her sister and keeper, an elderly recluse, frail from a years-long battle with cancer, lives alone in her ancestral townhouse in the Bronx, an almost shut-in existence. A scheming niece convinces her to take out a half-million dollar reverse mortgage on the townhouse, ostensibly to help cover medical and living expenses, and offers to harbor the money in her checking account to pay the bills, being careful to conceal the money from sisters who feel entitled to a share in the family’s real-estate legacy and other belongings, and, most of all, her estranged husband, lest he find out about it and make a claim on it while she is simultaneously busy trying to shake him down for even more money. The stuff of a cheap film-noir or bad dime-store detective novel? No, the stuff of real life, my life, take it please. The only plot twist missing: using some of the money to hire a hit-man to do away with the husband, whose bullying nastiness makes the thought seem almost justifiable. But no need, his health is not good, maybe the problem will be solved neatly for you.

Don’t get well soon
The turn in my condition from a benign brain tumor to a malignant brain cancer was the best piece of news I could deliver Julie and her attorney: in the one and only meeting where we sat down with our respective attornies, they could hardly refrain from high-fiving each other over this unanticipated gift, and quickly tried to turn it to their advantage. “Surely you’ll agree,” they said to me, “that it would be too much to ask Julie and the boys to move out of the apartment on top of your death, the trauma of both would be too much for them?” So ownership of the apartment, solved. “And how much is that life insurance policy again? Nah, that’s not really enough, didn’t you use to have more? Can’t get more now with a cancer spreading through your brain? Really, we find that hard to believe. So what more can you give up to make up for this?” And so on, and so on. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery, or not, whichever comes first.

How embarrassing
I see that the only follower of this blog is one devoted to making good marriages, Marriage: the Easy Way. I imagine my angry rants here are the counter example, marriage the effed up way, what can happen when everything just goes wrong, especially between the wrong people. Next time I'll do better, I promise.