Four Families on the Move

Two families who grew close at a Hartford campground last year enjoy a holiday together. In West Lebanon, Barry Seaver and his three children move forward. And for waitress Ginny Macomber, spring is a time to start anew.

Chapter Eight

Easter Sunday. On a sunny, windy April afternoon, the last remnants of winter stubbornly cling to West Lebanon's South Main Street.

Under the eaves of weathered, aging houses, patches of gravel-studded snow still cover the ground. Shovels remain propped on porches, their owners unconvinced that winter has really left. Chunks of ice bob up and down in the cold, swollen waters of the nearby Connecticut River.

Nearly 250 years ago, some of Lebanon's earliest settlers planted roots in this part of the city. As a boy in the early 1800s, the future founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, lived on South Main Street.

But the last few decades have seen history slowly stamped out. Farm fields have turned into strip malls. Century-old homes have been chopped up into apartments. Landlords have covered wooden clapboards with vinyl siding.

In the housing-starved Upper Valley, options are limited for people who cannot afford to pay $1,000 or much more a month. So, South Main Street is one of the places they turn. When an apartment becomes available, a landlord has dozens of applicants to choose from -- all willing to overlook a missing handle on the screen door or a closet-sized bathroom, in return for having the security of a place to live in a central location.

Kate Wood is one of them.

Six months ago, she was living out of a tent. When the Hartford campground closed for the winter, her family moved to a hotel. Four people, two beds, one room.

As spring approaches, the classified ad for the three-bedroom apartment on the busy road that leads to West Lebanon's fast-food joints and strip malls catches Kate's attention.

At 24, she is finally in a position to afford the $825 monthly rent and security deposit. After a year at McDonald's, she was hired in January by Geographic Data Technology in Lebanon to work the overnight shift for $12 an hour. Instantly, her paycheck increased $165 a week. Going to work for the computer mapping company also meant her 4-year-old daughter would have health insurance. And for the first time in her life, Olivia would go to a dentist.

There are other, more subtle benefits to the GDT job.

Being able to say she had an entry-level position with one of New Hampshire's fastest-growing high-tech companies seemed to give Kate an edge over the 15 other applicants the South Main Street landlord was considering. Landlords like tenants with solid jobs.

The job with GDT -- and the apartment that followed -- came at a time when Kate felt as though her life was unraveling. She and her daughter, and her mother, Robin, along with her younger sister, Margrette, were staying at the Airport Economy Inn for $50 a night. Instead of getting an apartment, Kate had spent a $3,000 child support check from Olivia's father on bills, family Christmas gifts and winter clothes for Olivia.

She applied for a house that Habitat for Humanity is planning to build later this year, but never heard back from the nonprofit organization that helps working families with modest families. Habitat lost contact with her after she changed hotels in January, so she was not included on the group's list of finalists for the house.

But now that she had found an apartment, Kate's problems seem to be slipping into the past.

ON EASTER SUNDAY, Kate spends hours in the kitchen. For the main course, she chooses roasted lamb. For dessert, she bakes a coconut cake.

"What are the pine needles doing in the mashed potatoes?" asks her sister, Margrette, pointing to a large bowl next to the stove.

"Those aren't pine needles," Kate replies. "It's rosemary,"

"Kate, you're such a Martha Stewart."

Kate places the bowl of mashed potatoes on the kitchen table. The wooden table is another sign that Kate's life is taking a turn for the better. She bought it with part of a $3,600 child support check from Olivia's father that had recently arrived in the mail. It was the second big check she had received in six months after a Massachusetts family court judge ordered Anatoly Matlis of Marblehead, Mass., to catch up on back payments.

To help celebrate her change of fortune this Easter, Kate has invited her neighbor from the campground, Kerrie Ramsey, for dinner. Sam, Kerrie's 6-year-old son, and Olivia played together often at the campground. Today, they quickly pick up where they left off, blowing bubbles at each other in the living room. A Bruce Willis movie is playing on the new TV, another purchase made with the most recent child support check. The check also enabled Kate to finish paying off her college loans.

Overall, the family's financial picture is brighter than it has been in a long time. Her mother, Robin, has a growing web-page design business, which brings in extra income for the family.

"Dinner's ready," Kate shouts from the kitchen.

"Milk or juice, Sam?" his mother asks.

Kerrie is wearing a Ben & Jerry's T-shirt -- a gift from Gary, a single father she recently started dating. Gary, whom she met through the Internet, works in management at Ben & Jerry's headquarters in Waterbury, Vt., Sam calls him "Ice Cream Dude" because when he came to pick up Kerrie for their first date he brought five pints with him.

Gingerly, Kate removes the roasted lamb from the oven.

"Do you want me to fix your plate, Sam?" Kerrie asks.

He nods. Along with lamb, which she cuts into small pieces, she adds broccoli, mashed potatoes and a roll. "Where's the butter?" Sam inquires.

"Sorry, dear," she says. "I've been remiss."

Sam shrugs, not quite sure what his mother means. He grins when she returns with butter in hand.

While everyone else begins to eat, Kate continues to hover over the stove. After a year of living in tents and hotels, she stands in her own kitchen, savoring her return to ordinary family life.

FARTHER UP THE ROAD in West Lebanon on a Saturday in late April, Barry Seaver finishes pounding in the wooden post to his new mailbox, just in time.

"Is this Two Richardson Place?" asks the mail carrier.

"Yes, it is," Barry says proudly.

His hand full of junk mail, Barry turns and faces the one-story ranch, grinning as he heads for the front door.

THE NEXT MORNING, after church, is moving day for the Seavers.

Lucas, Barry's oldest son, is home from Vermont Technical College and ready to help, along with his 16-year-old brother, Ben, and 12-year-old sister, Jessica. For Barry, this is his eighth move since his marriage broke up five years ago.

With the help of two friends and a borrowed pickup, the Seavers empty their Lebanon apartment. Beds, dresser drawers, bags of clothes quickly fill up the truck.

After driving from the apartment to their new house near the West Lebanon-Hanover line, the family begins lugging boxes to the basement.

"Don't you hate moving?" Barry asks his kids as they pass each other on the stairs.

"After you move three or four times, you get the hang of it," replies Ben.

"I didn't know we had this much stuff," adds Jessica.

"We don't," says Lucas, "you do."

Lucas places a box marked "Jessica's junk" on one of the wooden platforms his father has built as protection - just in case the basement floods again. Barry became worried during construction after hard rains left the concrete floor immersed in water. But he feels better about the situation now that the city has agreed to put in a culvert near his house.

With the move nearly complete, a Dartmouth student stops by with his parents, visiting for the weekend from New York. Jeff Murphy was among more than 20 students who helped with the construction.

"Every since he was a little boy, he's said he wanted to build a house," Jeff's mother tells Barry, pointing at her son, the history major.

"He did great," Barry says, grinning. "I just had to go around and fix everything he did."

The move is not complete until the family's piano is eased off the truck and pushed across the living room floor to a place against the wall. During his years of apartment hopping, there was never room for the piano that Barry bought used 20 years ago.

From a cardboard box, he removes the 8 x 10 class pictures of Lucas, Ben and Jessica. He arranges the framed- pictures in a row on top of the piano.

"There," he says, "we're home."

SIX WEEKS LATER and 25 miles north, Ginny Macomber is down on her knees in the front yard. With a spade, she works the dark soil of the flower bed. She makes the hole larger, tossing loose stones and dirt into a small pile. Satisfied, she gently places the plant in its new home.

On her day off from Lou's Restaurant in Hanover, Ginny has spent most of the sunny, June afternoon working in the yard.

Mike, finished with cutting the front lawn, shuts off the power mower and approaches the flower bed.

"What'd you think?" Ginny asks.

"Looks nice," he replies.

Mike's three-bedroom house in Fairlee is feeling more like home to her. Her daughter has certainly adjusted, fast becoming close friends with Mike's daughter. The two third-graders share a room when Mike's daughter is not with her mother. Ginny and Mike bought them new bunk beds and now he is building a tree house in the woods behind the house.

For Ginny, the decision to leave Norwich and move into Mike's house was not difficult. The lease on her two-bedroom house was expiring and in the Upper Valley's tight housing market, she was bracing for a rent increase of a couple of hundred dollars a month. There was no way she could afford $950 a month, not as a single mom working as a waitress.

More importantly, her relationship with Mike was getting stronger. He even pushed her to stop smoking, a pack-a-day habit she had picked up as a teenager. She took her last cigarette break at Lou's more than a month ago.

Being with Mike, who has his own electrical contracting business, has also given Ginny financial security she has seldom known. When Mike asked her to take a Saturday off from work to go to the auto races, Ginny said she needed to work to make her car payment. Mike wrote her a check.

"Pay me back when you can," he said.

Her one regret is that her daughter must leave the Norwich elementary school. The quality of the school was one reason she moved to the community three years ago.

It is particularly difficult to leave Mary Bagnato, Briana's teacher for two years. The daughter of a blue-collar parents, Bagnato exhibits a special fondness for kids from working-class families -- a small minority in Norwich.

Bagnato has taught and lived in Norwich for 15 years. During that time she has watched the school's socio-economic diversity slip away, as soaring home prices and rents cost the town many of its working-class families.

When Ginny broke the news to her that Briana will not be back in the fall, the teacher frowned. "It is our loss," she said

Like all kids, Briana sometimes felt sick at school and might have gone home early. But Bagnato was reluctant to call Ginny at work. "I knew she would drop everything and be here in a second," the teacher said. "I also know that if Ginny doesn't work, she doesn't get paid."

Bagnato speaks fondly of Ginny, admiring her grit in a town where each morning at 8, the maple-lined main street fills with parents rushing to drop their children off at school before heading off on mountain bike rides, workouts at the health club or a workday in a professional office suite.

Many of the parents return shortly before 3 p.m., congregating around the school's flag pole to chat about ski trips to Colorado and summer bicycle tours of Europe before whisking their children away to ballet recitals and orthodontist appointments. Meanwhile, at Lou's Restaurant, Ginny rushes to fill ketchup bottles and salt shakers so she can get home to her daughter.

IT IS NEARLY FIVE IN THE MORNING, two hours before the end of Kate's overnight shift at GDT. Sitting at her work station, she checks her e-mail.

There is one message.

"Wendy," she says to a workmate. "We've got a meeting in five minutes."

According to the e-mail, which had been sent a few minutes earlier, all 110 employees who work the third shift were to report to the conference room at 5 for an important announcement.

As the workers file into the room, somebody says, "Great, now they're going to lay us off."

The words -- intended as a joke -- draw laughter. In December, Business NH magazine named the computer mapping company the state's "best large company to work for." In February, GDT was recognized as one of New Hampshire's 10 fastest-growing private companies.

Standing at the front of the room, a company official waits for the employees to settle into their seats. He gets to the point.

GDT, he says, is eliminating its third shift. The "phase-out," as company executives call it, will be complete within a month.

There is no "hidden agenda," and GDT is not in financial difficulty, the company president writes in an e-mail to all 700 employees. GDT has a bright future, but of the three shifts, the overnight shift is the most difficult to manage and train, he writes. It is also the most expensive to operate.

GDT, the company president says, has openings on its first and second shifts. He says in his letter that he hopes all of the overnight workers will consider applying.

Before filing out of the conference room, the stunned employees are each handed a packet. Among the items inside is a list of other Upper Valley companies that operate overnight shifts. Most of them are supermarkets and large retail stores. Few, if any, offer GDT's wages.

When she was hired in January, Kate started out at $12 per hour, which included an extra $3 per hour for working from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sunday through Thursday. After a few months, her pay had increased to $12.50.

Leaving the conference room, Kate tries not to think about what will happen if she loses her job. She would probably need to work two jobs just to rent her West Lebanon apartment.

But there's more than money at stake here. On the day her GDT health insurance benefits kicked in, she took her 4-year-old daughter to the dentist for the first time. The dentist flagged 10 cavities. If she loses her GDT job, it will be hard to envision more trips to the dentist.

After the announcement is made, workers are told to go home early. A co-worker drops off Kate in front of her apartment building.

She walks up the concrete steps to the porch before climbing the stairs to the second floor. It is before 7 and her mother is already up.

"What you doing home so early, Kate?" her mother asks.

Kate hands her the letter from the company president. "They're ending the third shift."

AS THE EVENING is swallowed by nightfall, the rain stops. But late on the moonless June night, water still drips from the eaves of the two-bedroom Quechee ranch, splashing on the summer flowers that Kerrie Ramsey has planted near the front door.

Parked in the driveway of the house that Kerrie rents is her 1992 Ford Escort station wagon, its hatchback open. Luggage and food coolers are stuffed into the back of the wagon, but Kerrie manages to squeeze in a jug of engine coolant she bought earlier in the day.

Her goal is to leave Quechee by midnight, hoping that Sam will sleep in the back seat for the first six hours or so that they are on the road. Her 18-year-old son, Matt, will ride shotgun and help with the driving.

The trip, Kerrie figures, should take 36 hours.

If the Escort wagon with 137,000 miles and a new thermostat holds up, she should reach Arkansas by Monday afternoon. It's important she gets to her husband's place in the foothills of the Ozarks before he gets home from his job as a copier repairman.

She wants a couple of hours alone with their 12-year-old son, Chris, to find out whether he wants to stay in Arkansas with his father or come back to Vermont.

Chris has been living with Rick since February. Kerrie thought her son, who was having trouble in school and fighting with his brothers, could use a change of scenery.

After four months away, Chris should come home, Kerrie thinks. She worries that Rick gives him too much freedom. She can't tell from their telephone conversations what Chris wants to do, so she's taking vacation time from her respiratory therapist job at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center to find out first-hand.

This is the first time Kerrie has been out of Vermont or New Hampshire since her marriage broke up two years ago.

With the car packed, Kerrie pours herself a cup of coffee for the road. Sam bounces through the open front door and into the kitchen, wearing an orange life jacket.

The jacket was a gift he received earlier in the day from Gary, whom Kerrie started dating this spring. Gary, who takes Sam fishing, gave him the jacket to help him get over his fear of boats.

For the long car ride, Sam brings a sketching pad and toy laptop computer -- a replacement for the one Chris destroyed just before he moved to Arkansas.

"Are we ready to go?" Kerrie asks the boys.

"Do you have the batteries?" says Matt.

"They're already in the car," she says, referring to the 12-pack for the boys' hand-held video games.

Matt, wearing his Atlanta Braves baseball cap backward, slides into the passenger's seat while Sam hops in the back with two pillows.

As the car heads down the driveway, nothing is piled on half of the rear seat. Kerrie intentionally left it that way. When they leave Arkansas in early July, she wants there to be enough room in the car for Chris.

TONIGHT, KATE WILL FIND OUT if she still has a job.

GDT's 110 third-shift employees were told to report for their usual 11 p.m., starting time. One by one they will be called into a supervisor's office and learn whether they have been selected for vacancies on either the first or second shift.

Since there are more workers than jobs, up to 50 on the third shift will leave the building unemployed. Even those who survive the layoff will see their pay drop roughly $80 a week as their bonus for working the overnight shift is eliminated.

Whether they keep their jobs or not tonight, Kate and her friends have agreed to go out together for a midnight breakfast after learning their fate. They're calling it a pity party.

Kate tries not to worry. Her first written performance evaluation was solid and the feedback on her work from supervisors has been good. Still, she has been with the company for only six months.

Five hours before her shift begins, it is time for supper. Kate and her mother agree -- neither feels like cooking. Together, they drive to the supermarket, picking up frozen fish sticks and French fries.

When they return home, Kate's 4-year-old daughter, Olivia, sits down in the living room with a children's workbook and pencil. Carefully, she starts practicing letters of the alphabet. In the same room, the telephone's light is blinking.

The message is from a GDT manager. "I'm calling to let you know," the message begins, "that there will not be a third shift tonight." Apparently, the company has changed its plans on how to break the news to its third-shift employees. Kate's heart pounds.

She listens to the rest of the message. "I'd also like to offer you a position on our second shift."

She lets out a deep breath, then touches the buttons on the phone and listens to the message again. Just to be sure.

ON THE NEXT-TO-LAST DAY of school in Norwich, the temperature is close to 90 degrees and the sun beats relentlessly on the Union Village Dam picnic area.

Ginny Macomber, dressed in jean shorts and a black, sleeveless shirt, has promised her daughter that she will come to the third-grade class picnic -- Briana's final school event in Norwich.

Ginny had intended to go on the third-grade hike the week before, but it came on the Monday following Dartmouth's graduation, one of Lou's busiest days of the year. She could not afford to miss the chance to earn $200 in tips.

Arriving at the class picnic, Ginny approaches the two fathers cooking hamburgers and hot dogs on barbecue grills.

"Do you need anything, John?" she asks.

"Yeah, did you bring the beer?" he jokes, sweat beading on his forehead.

"Shoot, I forgot. But I brought the cake."

Mention of the cake, which says "Have a Great Summer" in big, chocolate letters, brings kids from every direction.

"It's awesome," says one girl.

With lunch ready, Ginny fetches more potato chips for a boy whose plate accidentally landed on the ground. Next, she helps another boy squeeze ketchup onto his cheeseburger.

"You're very popular," says Bagnato, Briana's teacher. "I've lost my flock to you. I don't know if I like this."

Ginny blushes, turning her attention to a little boy with an empty plastic cup in his hand. "What you want to drink, hon?"

AFTER LUNCH, the kids head for the parking lot where Ginny and other parents will drive them to a swimming hole on the Ompompanoosuc River.

"Let's go," one father shouts, gesturing to a Saab rag-top. "I'm going to take you in the convertible."

At the sandy patch of beach, kids splash in the water. Others jump from a small outcrop of ledge. Briana and her friends cake mud onto their legs. Two teenagers, hired by the parents, serve as lifeguards.

"Is this why we live in Vermont?" Bagnato asks Ginny and the other parents on the beach.

Ginny, wearing her bathing suit under her clothes, dabs her toes in the water. A few mothers wade in to their knees, testing the water temperature every step.

After nearly two hours, the time has come to pack up. Taking an advantage of a moment when Bagnato is alone, Ginny approaches the teacher.

"Is it OK if I take Briana home with me rather than going back to school?" she asks.

"Oh, sure," the teacher replies.

A few minutes later, the mini-vans, SUVs and convertible pull out of the parking lot. Ginny's Nissan compact remains.

Alone, mother and daughter wade back into the river.

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