Going over the numbers. One. More. Time.

"MOM!" I shouted into the phone. "I love you, but sometimes you make me want to hit my head against a wall."

I took a deep breath to try to bring my adrenaline levels down. The knot of frustration in my stomach didn't relax with the increased oxygen levels, though. Don't yell at her, I reminded myself.

She was talking in the background, trying to explain why things weren't as bad I could so clearly see they were. I spoke over her, loudly, so that she would stop talking and listen. "No, that is not what I need to know."

The voice in my ear didn't stop, and I upped the volume again, stopping myself just barely short of yelling again. "No. That is not what I need to hear. How many mortgages are on the house right now? How much of that have you seen and how much did Dad take out?"

The answers were not reassuring. I love my mother, but wow, she can make me feel crazy.

Mom called while I was in the middle of writing a post about the teen (you'll see it tomorrow.) She wanted help understanding a financial deal she is in with my father. When they got divorced, everything was split evenly, community property, all of it, including the house. Mom stayed in the house, with my younger siblings, and went back to college. She was in no position to buy out Dad's half of the house.

Dad, being used to strongarming Mom into doing what he wanted, talked Mom into letting him use the house as collateral for a mortgage on a piece of property he wanted to buy as an investment for his retirement years. (Take notice here. This wasn't just his half of the property, but all of the property that was used as collateral.) Mom, used to being a good little codependent, went along without question, over my fierce objections. I tried and tried and simply could not talk her out of going along with cosigning the loan.

At some point in the years since then, Dad has not only talked Mom into paying him rent on the house, but talked her into refinancing the loan, then, while he took additional money out, she made the mortgage payments. The house was nearly paid off when they got divorced. It is now almost fully mortgaged again and somehow Mom has been persuaded to assume all the financial liability while Dad walked off with most of the cash.

This makes my father sound really evil. He's not. It's just that he lives in this world in which he is the center of the universe. There's no malice, no forethought involved in his actions. He honestly believes that this is the way things should be. His logic is really screwed up, but it's real to him and therein lies the problem. Not only does he believe 2+2=11, he is really good at persuading other people of the same thing. Especially Mom. He can talk rings around her, and she still has so little faith in herself that she assumes she's too stupid to understand and that he must be right.

I have spent so many hours on the phone with her, talking her out of things he's talked her into, only to find out later that she let him talk her into going ahead with what he wanted. He used to pay her only part of the child support, because "he just couldn't afford it this month." Once, I asked him for financial assistance, only to find out a month later he took it out of child support. Mom just let it go, sure that his reasoning was correct. I made sure I never asked him for help again.

Now, they are finally getting out of this mess. Mom is going to own the house outright. The only problem is getting her out of this without winding up owing Dad money. She called me tonight because she realized that, while he owes her a substantial amount of money, he is probably going to hit her up with the argument that, since she is getting the house, she really should be paying him. She wanted me to talk her through it, explain why that wasn't true, so that she'll be less likely to be ensnared by Dad's reasoning.

Which is when things started getting out of hand. I didn't realize they'd refinanced, or that he took almost all the refinance money. Neither did I realize she was actually paying him rent.

"Mom," I told her, "if Dad tries to talk you into paying him anything, call me and get me involved. I want to go over the numbers and make sure everything is OK. I appreciate that you're an adult and can run your own life, but I really want to make sure this isn't ripping you off. SO CALL ME."

I've never felt so strongly before that I needed to intervene in her life. This is extreme, however, and I have no intention of letting my dad manipulate her like this. Somebody has got to step in and protect her from herself, and I'm not only the oldest, I'm the one of all us who is best at dealing with Dad when he's like this. I'm butting in, and I'm not letting them push me out. This is my mother and she needs to be out of debt as she goes into retirement, not taking on her ex-husband's debt.

"I'm so glad I have smart children," Mom said.

"Mom, you're not dumb. You're smart. You're very smart," I told her. "You're just too used to doing what Dad tells you to do."

Sometimes I feel like her daughter. Too often I feel like her mother.

Excuse me. I'm going to go climb in the shower and practice my primal screaming for a while.