Mean Woman Blues

first. Her father’s mistake was he thought he could out-bluff her. It might have worked if she’d had a lick of sense.
    But she was a girl in love, with no idea in hell somebody like her could end up as Cinderella. She thought of herself as Juliet. It was simple (and in her mind, hugely romantic): The McLeans hated the Bennetts— really
hated
them— and she was a McLean. Charles Bennett, Sr., was her father’s biggest rival in business, in politics, even at the stupid country club. For her to consort with his son Charlie was tantamount to bringing home a serial killer. Her mistake was that she hadn’t understood the depth of the rivalry— that it was more important to her father than she was.
    Her father threatened to disown her if she married him, and the arrogance of it made her even more determined, made her want to do it sooner rather than later. What did
disown
mean, anyway? If he was going to be like that her mother, too, and all her siblings— no one in the family opposed him— if they all were going to be like that, she didn’t care if she never spoke to them again. It didn’t occur to her she might need them sometime.
    She could hear her father now: “You made your bed; you lie in it.”
    That was what he said when she told him, two years into their marriage, that Charlie was cheating on her. Blithely, she filed for divorce, which was exactly what Charlie wanted, having hidden all his assets from her. So there was really no community property except their reasonably modest house, and Texas law— notoriously unfair to women— is extremely stingy with spousal support, not even granting it in a “young” marriage. Because Karen had been married less than ten years, she got none. But there was still the money from the sale of the house, and she could always get a job.
    However, she failed to get one in her field, elementary school education, and ended up teaching aerobics. She invested wisely in a tiny condo— having barely enough for the down payment— and could just scrape by. She was making it on her own, even going back to school, and proud of herself— until income tax time. She’d had no idea she was going to end up owing ten thousand dollars.
    “No problem; they’ll make a deal,” her accountant said. “Just explain your situation, and they’ll set up a payment plan.”
    But she could never get them on the phone, and they didn’t answer her letters. Then one day they sent
her
a letter, saying they were going to put a lien on her house if she didn’t pay them by a certain date.
    Well, she couldn’t have that. She needed a new car, but with a lien on her condo, no bank would give her a loan.
    Panicked, she called the accountant, who asked her if she could come up with any part of the money. “Sure,” she said confidently. “I still have my engagement ring. It ought to bring about five thousand dollars.”
    “Sell it,” he said, eyes cold and unfriendly. “I’ll make the deal myself.”
    And he did make the deal: five thousand up front and the rest in monthly payments.
    She sold the ring, paid the five thousand, and within a week, the IRS slapped the lien on her. As if there’d never been a deal at all.
    She was so depressed she started watching daytime TV, which was how she found the show that changed her life. They
loved
her story.
    Who wouldn’t? Who doesn’t hate the IRS? Hundreds of calls came in from taxpayers who’d been similarly burned, so many that the next week the station abandoned the normal Mr. Right format (one wrong righted, another stated) and devoted a special hour-long show to what it called “The Treachery of the Tax Collectors.”
    The IRS took such a beating they did something no one had ever heard of them doing before: They said there’d been a “mistake” and removed Karen’s lien. Car dealers all over town called
her
, offering extraordinary deals. But as it turned out, she didn’t need their charity. Her father, in a grand, public gesture of conciliation, gave her a car himself. She’d “suffered enough,” he said.
    But, really, social pressure had shamed him into reconciling, and she knew it. Not that she cared; she’d gotten used to her family’s ostracism a long time ago.
    But the best part was that David Wright, Mr. Right himself, a lovely man, seemed to take a personal interest in her, even got her a job at the station. Like Superman, he seemed to have swooped down from the sky to rescue her.
    One day she asked him to have