Breaking the Bank

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “Love you, too,” Mia said before clicking off. The winter light, reflecting off the snow, was pale silver, whitening slowly as the sun rose higher in the sky. A bodega on Fifth Avenue was just opening its doors, so Mia bought a cup of coffee and a buttered bagel. The coffee—extra light, three sugars—was like nectar. She tore at the bagel with her teeth, buttering her chin in the process. God, but she was hungry. Three weeks. Three scant weeks to get herself out of this mess and her life back on track again. She walked faster, eager to be home. But when she came to the bank, she slowed so she could peer in the window.

  There was the machine, looking perfectly ordinary in the morning light. She began walking away, and as she did, she caught what seemed like the aftermath of a pinkish glow. Mia whirled around. There! She had seen it—a rosy flickering on the screen that lent a brightness to the surrounding air before it faded away. She waited, ardently hoping to see it again. After her night in jail, she needed to see it. But after several minutes, it became clear that the glow would not reappear, and Mia, strangely bereft, moved on.

  She was back in her apartment by seven. Although she had been in jail for less than a night, she had the sense that she had been away much longer and that everything had been somehow altered in her absence. The place seemed different to her. Unfamiliar. Had the light from the living room window always hit the wall like that? And what about the pattern of cracks in the ceiling? Hadn’t they changed, realigned themselves? Even her most familiar possessions looked different. The spines of her books—and she had so many—were so vivid and various in their colors. A thick blue book that was next to a thin crimson one practically jumped off the shelf. She drank in the contrasts: deep green next to the brown, yellow alongside black. The rug, a relic from her parents’ apartment on Ninety-ninth Street, was worn to a whisper; this rug had been present during her childhood, its warp and weft knew her father’s tread.

  Mia walked through the apartment slowly, marveling at her sense of dislocation. She thought about how she had been living her life, versus the way other people seemed to think she had been living it. Was she a good mother? Or was she guilty of having made poor and irresponsible choices? She stopped when she reached Eden’s room. The bed, with its raucously patterned sheets, was rumpled, and Eden’s clothes were scattered all over the place. But the tiny space was rich in color and pattern. Stacks of books—they had never gotten around to shelves—a puppet theater; an arcane selection of stuffed animals that included a walrus, a hippo, and the outsize giraffe Lloyd had bought; a toy castle; binoculars; a doll’s house, with most of the furniture missing or broken.

  Mia picked up the stuffed hippo—he had an endearing underbite— and stretched out on Eden’s bed. Eden was having a hard time of it; that couldn’t be denied. Yet in this strangely suspended moment, Mia didn’t feel overwhelmed by the usual truckload of guilt. She was hardly a perfect parent. But she didn’t yell—at least not often—and she never, ever hit. She talked to her, read to her, listened to her, loved her more than she had ever loved anyone. And she had always tried—oh, how she had tried!—to protect and cherish her. She would keep trying, too. That had to count for something. She got up, put the hippo back, made the bed, and folded the clothes. Then she went upstairs to fetch her daughter.

  FOR THE REST of the weekend, Eden would not let Mia out of her sight. She declined all invitations, including one to go skating with Caitlin and another to a birthday party that featured a live DJ. She insisted on sleeping in Mia’s bed and camped out by the bathroom door when Mia was inside. She wanted physical contact with Mia all the time, too—holding her hand, kissing her cheek, sitting in her lap. Mia understood, deeply, that she needed to indulge her. Eden was worried; Eden was frightened; Eden needed to be reassured. If sleeping in Mia’s bed, liberal doses of candy—she refused to eat virtually anything else—and a brand-new stuffed animal, a reindeer made of luscious, deep brown velveteen, were what Eden needed, Mia wasn’t going to argue. By Sunday afternoon, she had decided to buy Eden a cell phone of her own; otherwise, she didn’t think she would be able to leave her at school the next morning.

  Eden treated the new phone like a fetish, talking both into it and to it, nuzzling its sleek, metallic blue surface. “Can I call Daddy on it? Please?” Mia nodded, watching while Eden punched in the numbers with a light and practiced touch. Then she trotted off to the bath-room—door smartly closed behind her—to talk to Lloyd.

  Mia didn’t want the temptation of eavesdropping, so she went into the kitchen and started doing the dishes. There were always dishes in her sink. She was about halfway through this particular sinkful when Eden appeared, holding out the phone.

  “Here,” she said. “He says he wants to talk to you.”

  “Where have you been?” His voice was low but furious. “I had to go over to the police station. To answer some questions.” She would not let him rile her, especially not when Eden was standing right there. Down girl. Down.

  “Your daughter has been out of her mind with worry. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, Mia, and I really don’t care. But when it affects Eden, then I have to step in.”

  “Really? It looks to me like you’ve stepped out.” Her tone was reasonable, but she brought the bowl she was washing down hard in the sink. It cracked down the middle, and she was left holding the pieces, as cleanly broken as if they had been sliced. “You’ll be here soon; you’re taking her for Christmas. What else do you want?”

  “I want some assurance that you still have control over your life.”

  “I do,” Mia lied. “I absolutely do.”

  “Well, you’d better be prepared to prove it.”

  “Stop bullying me first.” He was silent. “Lloyd? Are you there?” But he had clicked off, the conversation clearly over.

  “Mom, you broke that bowl,” Eden said, as if Mia didn’t know this. “Now what are you going to do with it?”

  “Dump it,” Mia said grimly, depositing the two pieces in the trash. “What else?”

  * * *

  THE FRENZIED PREPARATION for Christmas continued to clobber the city with its shrill cheer. There were pseudo-Santas in cheap, fire-resistant costumes everywhere; the subways were packed; and the Empire State Building was lit in strident shades of red and green. Mia called her mother, ignored her brother, had a momentary urge to call Julie again but decided against it. She had a long conversation with Chris Cox and agreed to see him after the twenty-first, which was when Eden left town. She would be able to focus better then, she told him.

  “We’ll meet at your apartment.” Cox didn’t ask; he told. “I want to groom you.”

  “Groom me?” What did he mean, groom? Did he think she was a chimp?

  “For your appearance in court. With the judge.”

  “Can’t I just wear what I normally wear?”

  “Sure,” he said. “If you want to end up back in jail.”

  WORK WAS A madhouse; someone had screwed up, big time, with the raisin-oatmeal-date cookies in Power Pastry. The recipe, which as far as Mia knew had been tested a half dozen times, was now yielding cookies that had the texture and appeal of golf balls with little bits of melted eraser thrown in. So it had to be rewritten and retested; the new recipe threw all the subsequent page spreads out of whack. Usually the managing editor would have dealt with a problem like this, but the managing editor had contracted viral pneumonia and so Mia had offered to step in. Three nights running, she worked until ten. Finally, the whole damn thing was corrected and ready to be shipped off to China, where it would be printed and bound. The editorial director was so grateful for her effort that she told Mia to take the day off—fully paid.

  “Consider it a holiday bonus,” she said. “You’ve earned it.”

  Mia decided she would do some shopping of her own. So far, she had treated the impending holiday like an enemy. But today she would try to make her peace with it. After dropping Eden at school, she headed for the same diner where she had gone with Fred the morni
ng after he and his daughter had stayed over. She slid into a booth and ordered a hot chocolate, which arrived topped with ersatz whipped cream straight from a can. While she sipped, she composed a shopping list.

  Eden

  Julie

  Stuart, Gail & the nieces (?)

  Luisa’s family

  Caitlin & Suzy

  Mr. Ortiz

  Mom & Hank

  Kyra & Fred???

  Fred. Where had he been keeping himself these days anyway? She had thought he would have called by now. Did he know about the night she spent in jail? Unlikely. Who would have told him? Mia scrutinized the list; just looking at it made her tired. She folded the list in half and then in half again, before shoving it into her purse. Holiday shopping would have to wait. She had to do some errands of a wholly different nature.

  Despite the chill, it was a sun-splashed morning, and the walk over to Juicy was invigorating. Snow, no longer pristine, was piled everywhere; Mia had to sidestep soiled mounds and ankle-deep slush at the curbs. The metal gate was still partially pulled down over the bar’s plate-glass window, but Mia banged on it anyway. At first, there was no response, but she kept banging and soon one of the dishwashers appeared and raised the gate a little bit.

  “Hey, Emilio,” said Mia. “Hey, yourself,” Emilio said. “Kind of early for a drink, isn’t it?”

  “I was looking for Fred.”

  “You just missed him.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yeah, he was here just a few minutes ago, but he had to leave.”

  “Did he say when he’d be back?”

  Emilio shook his head. Mia stood there, feeling foolish. She should have called first. How junior high school is this? she thought.

  “Can I give him a message for you?” Emilio asked. “That’s okay,” Mia said. “Thanks just the same.” She had the image of herself scuttling, like a bug, away from the bar. The wind had picked up, and she was cold, so she ducked into the first place she saw that was open: the Lonelyville Café. She had seen the place before but had never actually gone in. It was meant to resemble an old-fashioned sandwich shop in some small town of fifty years ago. The stools, rooted to the floor, were covered in red leatherette. Big glass jars that held pretzels and rock candy lined the worn marble counter; there were signs advertising eggs creams, lime rickeys, and root-beer floats. Hokey, but Mia didn’t mind. She had had nothing to eat or drink apart from that hot chocolate, so she sat down at the counter and ordered a toasted corn muffin and a cup of tea.

  There was only one other patron in the place, a grizzled guy tucked in the far corner, nursing a coffee in a thick white mug and reading the newspaper. Behind him were a jukebox and a phone booth. Now when had she last seen a phone booth in New York City? Phone booths were from an era when men wore hats, women wore gloves, and you addressed a stranger with the words sir or ma’am—not dude or motherfucker.

  The phone booth looked like the real thing: sturdy glass walls, niftily folding door. Was there a little seat inside, too? Mia finished her muffin and ambled over to find out. Not only did there turn out to be a cunningly curved seat, there was also a phone book—scratch that, several phone books—all relatively intact. Yellow pages, white pages, Brooklyn, Manhattan. Mia felt like she had seen something rare and mysterious, like a red-tailed hawk soaring the Brooklyn skies.

  She opened the folding door, and it glided back with satisfying ease. Then she sat down on the wooden seat and encased herself in the small glass booth. She liked the feeling of being inside, contained and safe, yet able to see out, too. She could sit there all day; maybe she would.

  She pulled out the Brooklyn white pages and, on impulse, started flipping through the F’s. Fa, Fe, here it was: Fi. She kept looking until she found it: Fitzpatrick, Patrick X. It was probably him. But why was she looking, anyway? What did she want to know?

  Mia studied the address, somewhere out in Coney Island, a seedy neighborhood way out on Brooklyn’s tip. She wrote down the address on the back of the shopping list and then got up to pay for her food. Suddenly, the day had a new shape and purpose to it. She knew, as surely as she knew anything, that what she was about to do was monumentally stupid. Stupid and dangerous. She could get herself killed, just like poor Weed, who, whatever he might have done, did not deserve a blindfold and a bullet in the brain.

  But still. Something about her conversation with Patrick that night was haunting her, something that felt authentic, felt real. She was hungry for that feeling. Craving it. Plus, she knew that every single time she had given some of the miracle money away, she had felt so good, so light, so clean, as if her soul had been distilled and purified, refined to its most pellucid, least-contaminated essence. Use it well, right? Hadn’t she been trying? She practically ran back to her apartment, moving so fast she actually broke a sweat. She took five hundreds from her shoe-box stash, then was off again, out in the street and down into the subway.

  Mia emerged in what felt like a different city; there was a sharp, salt-infused smell of ocean in the air, and several gray-and-white gulls circled petulantly overhead. The wind was much stronger, too; she wished she had her hat, which she had already managed to lose. Instead, she pulled her collar up as high as it would go and hurried along. She stopped only once, to buy the least offensive holiday card she could find: a black-and-white image of a cottage, nearly covered in snow, with a plume of smoke coming from its stone chimney and an unobtrusive wreath on its wooden door. Inside, Mia wrote:

  Happy holidays! All best, College Girl

  THEN SHE TUCKED both cash and card into the plain white envelope and sealed it shut. She printed the name patrick x. fitzpatrick on the front, and then was on her way again.

  This part of Brooklyn was unfamiliar to her. She had been to the amusement park and the aquarium with Eden a couple of times, but the rest of the neighborhood was a blank that she began to fill in as she walked. The names of the avenues—Mermaid Avenue, Surf, Neptune—had the whiff of the sea, of fairy tales and legends, and bore no relation to the small low-rise buildings, mostly old and ugly or new and even uglier. A dental center with a four-foot neon tooth in the window, a Laundromat, a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint, two liquor stores, and a Chinese restaurant whose brilliantly colored, larger-than-life-size pictures of food had a lurid, almost pornographic glow.

  Mia continued walking until the commercial strip gave way to a row of two-story houses, most with blistered or cracked siding and the occasional substitution of cinder blocks for a front step. She stopped at the one whose number corresponded with the address she had written down. This house was in no better or worse shape than its neighbors. The only distinguishing feature was the plaster cast of the Virgin Mary—paint flaking and the tip of her nose missing—which dominated the fenced-in concrete slab that passed for a yard. Mia approached the door, hesitated, and then rang the bell.

  Almost immediately, the door opened and there stood a bulky woman in a pilled orchid-colored tracksuit and fuzzy slippers of a darker, soiled purple. She had long blond hair that was pulled back and fastened indifferently with a barrette. She took a long drag on her cigarette, and waited.

  “I’m looking for Patrick,” said Mia. “Uh-huh,” the woman said. “Does he live here?”

  “Who wants to know?” She took another drag, and then blew the smoke out, not exactly in Mia’s face, but not exactly not in her face, either.

  “I do,” said Mia. “What, did he knock you up or something?”

  “No,” said Mia. “We just met the other day.”

  “Really?” With her crossed arms and truculent expression, she looked ready for a brawl. “Where did you say you met him?”

  “In jail,” Mia said quietly. “A holding cell at the Seventy-eighth Precinct, to be exact.”

  “Oh,” said the woman. “Oh.” Her arms fell easily to her sides. The cigarette smoldered, and when it had nearly reached her stained finger-tips, she tossed it out the door. It made a small hiss as it hit a small patch of snow. “
Do you want to come in?”

  Did she? Who was this woman anyway? Could she trust her? Mia thought about the envelope, the card, the money. This was what she was here for, wasn’t it? This was her mission.

  Hesitating only slightly, Mia followed her past a cramped, dark living room with a large-screen TV—on, but muted—and an equally cramped dining room, whose table and chairs were nearly obscured by sheets of thick, yellowed plastic. The smell of smoke was everywhere, embedded in the fibers, the floorboards, the walls. Mia tried breathing just through her mouth—tiny, shallow breaths, like a puppy. They kept going until they got to the kitchen, which was at the back of the house. Lined with windows, it was filled with an unexpected, lemony light.

  “Sit down.” The woman gestured to a small round table and matching chairs; the table was covered by a vinyl cloth in a faded floral print. “Want me to take your coat?”

  “That’s okay, I’ll hang on to it.” Mia wanted to be able to make a quick escape. She lowered herself, perching uncomfortably on the edge of her seat.

  “Cigarette?” the woman asked, extending the pack. When Mia shook her head, she took one for herself and lit up. “I’m his sister. Maureen,” she said.

  “Mia.” She could see the family resemblance now. “So,” Maureen said. “So. You saw him, huh? How’s he doing? He hasn’t been home the last few days. He does that sometimes. Goes AWOL on me.”

  “He’s okay,” said Mia. “Though he was pretty angry. Cursed a lot.”

  “That’s Patrick to a T,” said Maureen, looking almost proud. “Al-ways did have a temper on him. Like our dad.”

  “I left before he did,” Mia said. “So I don’t know what happened to him. But I had something I wanted to give him.”

  “You can leave it with me,” said Maureen. “I’ve been living here since Trish died. Kind of taking care of him.”

  “Trish was his wife?”

  “Trish was his world. He was pretty broken up when she went,” Maureen said. “I thought we were going to lose him, too.”