December 8th, 2008
THE TALE OF 2008 Since the year has come and gone with no new Joliffe book, I feel now is the time to explain in detail why.
I've written here about a friend's betrayal that's left me "in a bad
place", and I'm grateful for the sympathy and support I've been given.
It's not the betrayal, though, that's done the damage to my writing.
All too obviously, my sometime-friend had some manner of massive
breakdown and succeeded in hiding it from everyone until far too late.
There's sorrow and pity for that and, yes, sometimes anger at her. But
none of that would have kept me from writing. Over the years, through
the various traumas of disease, divorce, my mother's uhnexpected death,
teenage sons, and multiple moves of house -- troubles worse than a
friend's betrayal because she had a breakdown -- I've always been able
to keep writing. Here is why this time is different. Five years ago, knowing I needed a much smaller house (children
grown; arthritis flaring), I started making plans to sell where I was
living. As it happened, my then-friend's marriage was not only far gone
to the bad, but her estranged husband's secret mishandling of their
money (at least that's what she told me; since then I've come to wonder
just when her lying to me started) meant their property where she was
breeding and raisig Irish wolfhounds and Italian greyhounds was
foreclosed on. She desperately needed somewhere with a large house,
outbuilding, and acreage if she was going to keep her dogs and her work.
My property suited her needs, and she wanted it -- needed it, because
with a foreclosure on her record, getting any sort of financing was
going to impossible. She told me over and over how she loved my house,
and we made an agreement that set her on the way to buying it, while I
found, bought, and moved into somewhere else, all on the assumpition
that she would carry through her part of the deal within the next few
months, making montly payments to me toward the purchase while she got
the money to complete the purchase. Through the next few years the monthly payments continued, but one
legal difficulty after another -- problems with her divorce, etc. --
kept her from completing the purchase as agreed on. I don't know when
she started lying to me. Maybe she was lying to me from the very
start. There's no knowing, now, when her breakdown began, but the end
was that after almost four years she abruptly broke off all payments
toward buying the house and all contact with me. Eventually I had to
force the issue through a lwayer, and because of my erstwhile friend's
bad-faith dealings, she lost claim to the house and was evicted. Now,
because she had been buying the house, not renting, I hadn't had a
landlord's right to demand entrance during the years she lived there;
and being reclusive myself, protective of my privacy, I could
understand why she never had company in but always got together with
people elsewhere. Besides that, my own health problems limited my
energies to my work and my survival, and I let things slide with her
when probably I should have been pressing them. But when we and
other friends got together, or when we talked on the phone, she seemed
to be as she had always been -- sharp-tongued, sharp-witted, fun, and
funny. What distresses to this day is the thought of the inward
nightmare she was living, the disintegration that was going on behind
her outward seeming. Because what I found in that house the day
she was evicted was nightmare. By then I expected to find some
significant mess to be cleared and cleaned, some damage to be
repaired. What I found was what a judge eventually ruled was "an
indoor landfill . . . the indoor equivalent of a city dump".
There was almost nowhere clear floor to walk on, because trash and
garbage were everywhere, in some places piled more than
knee-deep. The stairs to the basement could not be used for the
trash dumped down them. The kitchen counter, sink, and stove were
half a foot deep in trash and garbage. The refrigerator door
could not be closed because it was crammed with stuff, but neither
could it be opened because of the trash heaped high agianst it -- and
it was still running. And anywhere, all through the house, that
was not deep in trash and garbage, there were feces and urine.
Not all of it dog. The stench was horrendous, the damage
incomprehensible. Just having the property cleared so the damage
could be asessed cost more than half what I earned that year. A
realtor who'd known the house said that at that point it was worth
nothing: I could sell it for the acreage and garage, nothing
else. I couldn't afford to sell for that little, but probably I
should have and ended the nightmare then. Supposing I could have
sold it. Instead, through this past year, I have been working
with contractors and blessed volunteering neighbors to bring the house
back to itself, doing all that I could myself in the way of scrubbing,
painting, and carpentry. (I have my own electric jigsaw and power
drill and I'm not afraid to use them!) Through these past months,
day in and day out except when my strength gives out or the arthritis
flares, I've been dealing with the horror she left me. I've
worked until I was staggering with exhaustion, until I literally could
not see straight, I was so tired. During all this, my erstwhile
friend took me back to court -- claiming I owed her $20,000 for
"improvements" she had made to the property. Why she wanted the
affidavits against her -- and the photographs of what she had done --
to go into the Sherburne County public record I don't know, but
countering her claim ballooned my legal fees beyond what I already owed
for the eviction. Now the house is mostly restored and -- I have
to say it -- beautiful again. Unfortunately, the very things
about it that originally most appealed to me -- its octagon shape and
clerestoried living room -- seem to be against it with most
people. After several months on the market, there's been no
interest in it. So -- at this point, with legal fees and
builders' costs and extreme exhaustion -- my savings are gone and my
writing is at nearly a standstill. I've borrowed from friends and
lately been forced to borrow from the bank, which means I can lose my
present home if something desn't happen to the good very soon.
For the first time in mylife I'm severely in debt and going deeper --
merely to meet my daily expenses. I'm told that most mid-list
authors do not make an actual living from their writing but have
signifcant others and/or other income to keep them financially
viable. I have no significant other or other income. By
dint of living close to the bone and being willing to gamble on
continuing contracts from my publisher, I've managed to live on what I
made by my writing. Now -- physically and mentally exhausted by
this past year and on the verge of financial ruin -- I must look at
trying to sell (in this housing market!) not only the house I thought
to be rid of five years ago, but the house where I presently
live. One or the other has to go if my complete financial
destruction is to be averted. But because I'd expected to stay
here, I've made this house very idiosyncratically mine -- there are
lots and lots of bookshelves, for one thing -- and a great deal is
going to have to be packed up and put in storage to make the place
marketable. All in all, this is why, over this past year, I've
lacked strength and focus to do much writing and why there is no new
Joliffe book this year, because instead of focusing on my writing, I am
going to be packing up my house -- including my reference library and
notes -- and hunting for at least a part-time job (which is as
problematical as selling either house, given my physical limitations
and with all my once-marketable skills woefully out-dated). Effectively,
my erstwhile friend has succeeded in exhausting me physically,
destroying me financially, and crippling my writing. But her
betrayl of me is nothing compared to how deeply she's betrayed herself,
her life, her home, her dogs. She's gone away, I don't know
where. The last I knew, she had abandoned the Italian greyhounds
at a kennel and they were bound for greyhound rescue. What's
become of the Irish wolfhounds I don't know. I only hope that
somehwere someone has been able to get her the help she so desperately
needs, poor, destructive and destroyed woman. Meanwhile, please
be assured that Joliffe is not abandoned. His present book limps
onward -- he's in Rouen, doing work for Bishop Beaufort and hoping not
to be caught up in a war. Please wish him luck! - Margaret
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