The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende

we had the feeling we were living at the center of a storm, boarding up doors and windows so the winds of misfortune did not level everything.
    Willie’s office was operating on credit. He accepted hopeless cases, spent more than he earned, maintained a herd of useless employees, and was entangled in a number of tax wrangles. He was a terrible administrator, and Tong, his loyal Chinese accountant, could not control him. My presence in his life brought stability because I could help with expenses in emergencies, run the house, check the bank balances, and do away with most of the credit cards. He moved his San Francisco office to a Victorian house I bought in Sausalito, the most picturesque town on the bay. The property had been built around 1870 and boasted a notable pedigree: it was the first brothel in Sausalito. Later it was converted into a church, then a chocolate cookie factory, and finally, a complete ruin, it passed into our hands. As Willie said, it kept sliding down the social ladder. It sat among sick, centuries-old trees that threatened to fall onto the neighbors’ houses with the first gale. We were forced to cut down two of them.
    The executioners arrived dressed like astronauts; they climbed up the trees with saws and axes, swung from the branches on ropes, and proceeded to draw and quarter their victims, who bled to death quietly, as trees do. I had to run away, unable to witness that massacre any longer. The next day we didn’t recognize the house. It was naked and vulnerable, its wood devoured by time and termites, the shingles twisted, the shutters dangling. The trees had hidden the degree of deterioration; without them the house resembled a decrepit courtesan. Willie enthusiastically rubbed his hands. In some previous life he had been a builder, one of the ones who construct cathedrals. “We are going to make this house as beautiful as it was when it was young,” he said, and set off in search of the original plans to return it to its Victorian grace. He succeeded magnificently and, despite the profanation of tools, its walls still hold the French perfume of the whores, the Christian incense, and the chocolate of cookies.
    In the same rooms where the long-ago ladies of the night made their clients forget their sorrows, Willie today combats the uncertainties of the law. In what was formerly the carriage house, I clashed with my literary ghosts for years, until I had my own cuchitril at our house, where I now write. Using the move as an excuse, Willie got rid of half of his employees and then was able to choose his cases more carefully; his office, nonetheless, was still chaotic and not profitable. “However much you bring in, more goes out. Add it up, Willie. You’re working for a dollar an hour,” I pointed out. Willie was never fond of keeping tabs, but Tong, who had worked for him for thirty years and had more than once saved him from bankruptcy by a hair, agreed with me.
    I grew up with a Basque grandfather who was very cautious with money, and then with my Tío Ramón, who barely survived on his meager salary. My stepfather’s philosophy was, “We are filthy rich,” no matter that out of necessity he had to be very prudent with expenditures. He proposed to live life in grand style, though he had to stretch every cent of his paltry pay as a public servant to maintain his four children and my mother’s three. Tío Ramón would divide his month’s salary and put the money to cover our basic needs, counted and recounted, into four envelopes; each had to last a week. If he managed to save a little here and a little there, he would take us to get ice cream. My mother, who was always considered a very stylish woman, made her own dresses, transforming them again and again. They had an active social life, unavoidable for diplomats, and she had a basic gray silk evening gown to which she added and removed sleeves, belts, and bows, so that in photographs