Free Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out by Lee Goldberg Page A

person rather than sitting at her computer looking at their faces on a screen. Video-chatting seemed emotionally distant and totally unnecessary when it was possible to actually meet in person without much effort. She didn’t agree. I know because we’d argued about it a dozen times.
    “Dinner is ready,” I said, standing in the doorway to her room.
    “Can I eat in here?” she asked without looking away from her screen.
    “We need to talk. In person. Face-to-face, the way it was done in the olden days.”
    “Can’t we talk later? I’m busy.”
    “Now,” I said. Call me old-fashioned, but I liked to eat dinner together whenever possible.
    She dragged herself into the kitchen as if she was facing a root canal. Her attitude only made what I intended to say to her that much easier.
    “Thanks for embarrassing me in front of my friends,” Julie said, dropping into her seat at the table. She looked at the pizza in front of her like it was a plate of dog poop.
    “Were they in the room? I didn’t see them there.” I took a bite out of my pizza. I wasn’t going to let her ruin the meal for me.
    “That’s not funny,” she said. “You know they were on the computer. They could see and hear everything. You need to be aware of that when you enter my room.”
    “You do. I don’t,” I said. “If you saw them in person instead of on the computer, I could say whatever I wanted in your room without any risk of embarrassing you.”
    “You could just stay out of my room,” she said. “That would solve the problem.”
    I could still remember how sweet and loving my daughter used to be before her hormones started kicking in. She still could be sweet but it was a rare event. I found myself having to assert my authority more and more and I hated it.
    “Don’t talk to me like that,” I said. “I’m your mother. I could solve the problem by taking that computer away from you.”
    “It’s mine,” she said.
    “But I pay for the electricity it runs on and the Internet connection that allows you to chat with your friends,” I said. “Your computer isn’t going to be much use to you if I shut that stuff off, is it? This brings me to what I wanted to talk with you about. We’re going to have to cut back on our spending around here.”
    “We don’t spend anything as it is,” she said.
    “It may mean doing without some things,” I said. “The police department is in a budget crunch, so they had to let Mr. Monk go.”
    “That’s great,” she said. Suddenly even the pizza looked good to her. She picked up her slice and started eating.
    I found her reaction perplexing.
    “How do you figure that?” I asked.
    “Last time he got fired you got a Lexus as a company car.”
    Ah, so that was it.
    Julie saw this as a chance to get my crappy Buick.
    She thought Monk’s firing meant he’d get a better- paying job with a big detective agency like last time and that her car problems would be solved.
    She was so wrong, and she deserved the disappointment she was about to experience for being so self-centered. All she was thinking about was her own needs. What about our needs as a family? What about Monk’s needs?
    It occurred to me that teenagers are a lot like Monk. They think the whole world revolves around them, their troubles, and their needs.
    Julie was in for a wake-up call from life tonight.
    “This time it’s different,” I said. “There’s no job waiting for him anywhere. He’s out of work and so am I. All we’ve got to live on is my last paycheck.”
    “So you’re fired, too.”
    “That’s right. No new car. No new anything. Because there’s no money.”
    She set down her pizza and looked at me. I saw some genuine concern in her eyes. For a moment, the sullen, insolent, and hormonal Julie was gone and my loving daughter was back.
    “This is the longest you’ve ever held one job,” she said.
    “It’s also been the most interesting, exciting, surprising, challenging, frustrating, exhausting, and