Forget subprime; loan given to a loved one can haunt longest

When my brother called I was wrist-deep in bread dough. Both his calls and my bread making are weekly rituals. As we talked he hinted that he might ask me for a loan. Like many people today, he’s having trouble selling the grand house he built when times were flush.

Now he has an opportunity to buy a new, more modest house at a great price. If only he had the down payment. He’d pay it back fast, just as soon as his first house sells. It’s just a matter of time.

Fast. As soon as. Time. Squishy concepts, I thought, as I grabbed a fist-full of dough and squeezed it between my fingers. It’s all about context. And then there’s the slippery slope of lending money to people you love.

I know too well about the squishiness of time and lending money, having made a loan to my best friend, actually it was a couple who were like family to my husband and me, when a credit card company was about to garnish their wages.

No matter how I look at what my husband and I now refer to as the “unfortunate incident,” I can’t shake the image of myself as one of those cartoons with an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil on the other both softly entreating the confused me to “do it,” or “don’t do it.”

The dialog bubble above my head swells with all the questions and conflicting feelings, the moral dilemma posed by those pesky little alter-egos whispering in my ears. “Never lend money to family or friends.”

Was that the angel talking or the devil? “Money problems can happen to anyone. What goes around comes around.” Which one said that?

The truth is it never once crossed my mind that lending money to a friend wasn’t a good idea. I never had any doubts. In fact, I was happy. I have a vague memory of pouring a celebratory glass of wine for everyone. The lights from the Christmas tree in the living room infused the house in a warm, rosy glow. We toasted to our friendship.

It was my idea. My friend and I were braving the after-Christmas sales, doing more looking than buying, but she kept getting interrupted by cellphone calls.

Never one to hide a conversation or crisis, it wasn’t like her to move away or turn her back when she talked on the phone. It was obvious she was upset, but it wasn’t until we were in the car that she broke down.

The calls were from her husband who was trying to keep the credit card company at bay, but the holidays had made it impossible for him to get to a bank for a loan. She cried. She said she didn’t know what was going to happen to their family.

Enter me riding in like Shane to save the day, or me the compulsive fixer of everyone’s problems, or me the sucker. The details are a little vague in my memory, but I know when I got home I told my husband what was happening and that we should loan them the money to avert the crisis.

The friendship didn’t start to deteriorate until about the third, maybe the fourth, year of a loan my husband and I had assumed would be paid back fast, just the time it took our friends to secure a conventional loan.

There were no papers, no signatures. They had been embarrassed by their financial situation and had failed to tell us how much trouble they were really facing.

It was about that time, too, that I became obsessed with the minutia of our friends’ lives and judged their every expenditure.

“We can’t afford a vacation, but they can,” I seethed. Even if they were piggybacking a trip onto a planned business meeting, it still cost money to take the whole family.

Soon my husband and I were arguing about their vacations, their purchases. I was getting angrier and my husband seemed to be resigned to never getting our money back or getting it back in little dribbles at best.

By the fifth year it was affecting our marriage. If my husband showed any compassion to our friends, if he was nice to them, I was mad. And I was mad that I was mad.

Now I really saw my alter-ego angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other. I was clearly caught in the cross fire. By the time the loan was paid off we were barely speaking — I mean the other couple and us.

My husband and I were talking, having been to a marriage counselor after a major marital meltdown, the loan and our deteriorating friendship with the other couple playing a significant role in that, too.

I don’t know what I should have done. I know I started the whole unfortunate incident but I think had they asked, my husband and I wouldn’t have hesitated giving our friends a loan.

We’re not well off — another of those squishy concepts. I don’t think I was, or hope I wasn’t, playing some version of the benevolent lord of the manor bestowing gifts — although it wasn’t a gift — on the less fortunate. We could afford to help and we did.

And now the ironic twist is that had we invested that money it would be worth less than half its value today.

As it was, the dribs and drabs of the repayment were absorbed into everyday life where it vanished in the invisible atmosphere of family spending. None of it ever saw a bank account again.

Now I await a return call from my brother, who I love dearly and will help in any way I can, but I pray he doesn’t ask me for a loan. Hard questions, difficult answers. Squishy. That’s the way life is.

And then there’s the angel with her softly beating wings and the devil whose spiked tail whips back and forth both whispering in my ears and I really don’t know who I should listen to.

The smell of freshly baked bread fills the house, comforting, yet today strangely cloying, too.

Stephanie Tames, a writer, lives in Statesboro.