The Checkdown

by Jamie Bennett

  “I have to work ahead,” he countered now.

  “Nope, we’re going outside to play. Eat up.”

  I sat on the bed with him with the tray between us, forcing him to eat most of the peanut butter and crackers and drink the glass of milk. We split the orange, then I dragged him back downstairs, taking the wide, polished wood staircase this time that led to the front door. I grabbed the ball and forced him to tell me where he had hidden his shoes in an effort to avoid going outside, then we walked out into his neighborhood.

  Unlike where I lived with Robin, the Dorsets’ street was wide and clean. Big trees lined the sidewalks in front of even bigger houses. Even the air smelled better.

  “Soccer?” I suggested. Benji groaned. “We could always run around the track.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “We have to. You know it’s good for your asthma.”

  “That’s paradoxical,” he informed me.

  “It’s also correct, according to your doctor, who knows a lot more than you do.” He looked ready to object so I cut him off. “Soccer or running on the track?”

  “Fine, soccer,” he sighed. “It’s really absurd that I have to have forced exercise time with my nanny.”

  “It’s really absurd that you live in California and had a vitamin D deficiency from lack of exposure to the sun. Quit whining.”

  He relaxed and even started to have a little fun as we got into playing. I invented an elaborate scenario about a big-league soccer game. It didn’t matter how many details I got wrong, since neither of us knew anything about sports anyway.

  “Goaaaaal!” Benji yelled, after one of his weak little kicks dribbled in between the net-less posts. I looked around and saw two boys on bikes watching us from the red rubber track ringing the field.

  “Ben! Benji, come here.” I motioned him over. “Why don’t you go ask those guys if they want to play with you?”

  He glanced up as I motioned toward the two boys with a lift of my chin. “Why?” he asked me, puzzled.

  “They probably live around here, and you could hang out after school or on weekends. Don’t you think it would be more fun to play with people your age instead of with an old lady?”

  Benji shrugged. “No. You’re not that old, anyway. It’s your ball.” We watched as the boys rode away.

  I bit my lip. I had been to seven different elementary schools when I was a kid. I had been a careful observer of everything I saw in each of them, and I knew what he had to do to make friends. I also understood, all too well, how it felt to be the outcast.

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  “You’re taking this really well,” Amira said sympathetically. “I would be a mess.” My former co-worker handed me an empty cardboard box. I was pleased to see that this one had handle holes cut out—much easier to negotiate the elevator.

  Mostly right now I was feeling relief that I would be able to permanently banish yarn from my life. With God as my witness, I would never touch yarn again. The other feelings about my current situation (fear for the future, humiliation at my failure, etc.) would probably surface soon. For now I would be glad about the yarn. “When one door closes, an angel gets his wings. Right?”

  She crinkled her brow. “Something like that.”

  “I wasn’t a very good fit here, anyway. I don’t even know how to knit.” I examined the stack of books I’d kept hidden in my desk drawer. EZ Knitting 101. The Idiot Knits. Learn to Knit in 200 Painless Steps. None of them had done me much good—I still wouldn’t have known a purl stich if it came up and bit me. “Want these?” I asked Amira, holding up the books.

  “No thanks. I already know how.”

  In fact, everyone working at Needles & Stitches Monthly magazine was supposed to know how to knit. The editor-in-chief, my boss, had gradually come to the understanding that I did not. Thus when the circulation figures (and therefore revenue) continued to decline, and someone had to go, my name was on the top of the list.

  It wasn’t the first time that certain, um, stretches of the truth on my résumé had gotten me a little jammed up. Like when, in desperation before my interview with the Latin American Division at a consulting firm, I had listed “Fluent in Spanish” under the Skills section. I had been a really good Spanish student in high school; granted, it had been a while, but I was pretty sure I could still get by. Then, partway through my interview, a lady had breezed in and asked if this was the bilingual candidate.

  She turned to me with a smile. “¿Sylvie Bowen, verdad? Encantada, soy Elena Etxandi. Disculpe la molestia.” She stuck out her hand for me to shake and blankly I took it. “Soy la secretaria principal. La directora me encargó de comprobar—"

  Nope, I was not going to be able to get by with my high school Spanish, nope, nope, nope. I jumped up and grabbed my purse, the one I had borrowed from my oldest sister Annabel for luck. “Excuse me,” I had said, trying to hold onto a little dignity. “Adiós.”

  My sister Ivy had found that episode particularly hilarious. “Tell me again when she introduced herself,” she demanded, gasping. “Oh fuck, I can just imagine the look on your face!” Ivy had been in Cote d’Ivoire and the connection to my phone in my little studio apartment hadn’t been great. But the laughter came through clear as a bell.

  “Anyway, I’ll just wait for the next door to open,” I told Amira now, picking some yarn fuzz off my shirt. I put the framed picture from last Christmas of my parents and my four sisters into the cardboard box. “I’m sure something will come up.”

  “I think you did a good job, despite the fact that you really are not a fiber artist,” Amira consoled me. That was putting it mildly. “I wish they had taken your suggestion about changing the magazine title. All those hospitals are going to keep dropping their subscriptions when they realize that we’re a knitting magazine,” she continued.

  “At the very least they could add a subtitle. Needles & Stitches Monthly, Not a Medical Journal. Something like that.” Amira nodded. “Anyway, good luck here, and keep in touch!” I gave her a hug. I hadn’t lasted long enough at Needles & Stitches to become great friends with anyone, but Amira had always been very nice to me. In fact, everyone there had been great. I felt a little pang. Then I gave a general wave to everyone else in the office and walked out, head held high.

  I’d had lots of practice with this type of exit. Since I’d moved to New York after college, I’d lost six jobs. I used the word lost, because literally one time I had come into work and the office was gone. I kept going from floor to floor, thinking I was having some kind of giant mental lapse. Was I in the wrong building? On the wrong block? Finally, a security guard told me the whole operation had cleared out in the night.

  Ok, so in jobs One, Three, Six, I’d been let go, a nicer phrase than “canned” or “fired.” Not that One and Three were my fault. There were extenuating circumstances (a gropey boss I gave a firm no to at job One and my insistence on getting paid at Three precipitated my firing). Losing job Six, at Needles & Stitches magazine, I would admit was entirely my own doing. For all you employment seekers, it really wasn’t a good idea to claim a life-skill that was impossible to learn overnight. Or, for me and my utter lack of arts and crafts abilities, impossible to learn ever.

  Job Two was the office that disappeared. My employers at jobs Four and Five likewise went under, just a little less abruptly. Although at Four the continued visits from the Heath Department should have given me the hint that the restaurant was going south. That position was just to tide me over until I started at the law firm for job Five anyway, so I told myself it was ok. The end of Five had been a little dramatic too. It was never a good thing when your boss, the managing partner, was frog-marched out of the building by Secret Service agents. It was actually an interesting learning experience for me, because I’d had no idea that the Secret Service investigated money laundering. At any rate, the law firm limped along for a few more weeks, then shut down, with a whimper. No b
ang.

  So here I was again, another box of stuff to carry home to my studio. Due to my impending shortage of funds, I hauled the box with me on the subway instead of taking a cab. When I had first gotten to New York, I had been so excited to take the subway. I still thought it was a little thrilling when the doors closed and we whooshed off through the darkness. There was so much about New York that I liked. All the interesting people, the parks, the museums, the little grocery stores and restaurants. I tried to do at least one new thing every week, and there was always more to discover.

  The thing about living in New York, though, was that almost everything cost. A lot. The jobs I’d had were barely enough to keep me afloat, and they wouldn’t have even been that without supplements from my parents and my big sisters. I accepted all forms of donations: cash, check, online. Now, trudging up the steps to my apartment (the elevator in my building wasn’t really a place you’d want to be enclosed in), my heart started to sink a little as the reality of my situation set in. Again. I was a paycheck-to-paycheck kind of woman and the majority of my paycheck went to this apartment, which my practical sister Annabel had thoughtfully named “The Pit.” It kind of was. My parents had paid to have the carpet cleaned when they came to visit me and my mom took me aside to say that they would happily underwrite a new living situation for me. But I wanted to do things on my own (mostly, but I still accepted contributions). Like that old-time show where that girl threw her hat into the air. I was going to make it!

  I kicked off my shoes on the nice, clean carpet and hefted my box onto the little table that served as my desk, dining room, and kitchen counter. The kitchen itself was an alcove in the wall, probably a converted closet, with a tiny refrigerator like the ones I’d had in my dorm rooms, topped by a very strange, shallow sink with a bathroom faucet over it, alongside a single gas burner. I wouldn’t get into the bathroom situation, but you could use your imagination if you’d ever been in an airplane lavatory.

  I settled down on the twin bed to think. Which sister to call? Annabel could be counted on for sensible, serious career tips. Where to look for my next job, and how to prep for the interview. But I just wanted to vent a little. Emmeline was the big thinker, and she’d be good to delve into any conceptual issues: was I subtly undermining my career, such as it was? Could we see a pattern in my job choices and subsequent job losses? The big concept for me was that I was unemployed, and for the moment I didn’t want to get into the reasons. Ivy would laugh at me and try to make me laugh at myself, and I wasn’t quite ready for that either. And Rosemond was only good to call if you wanted to hear about Rosemond. I loved her a lot, but I was not in the mood.

  My mom answered after two rings. “Sylvie? Why are you calling me in the morning? What’s wrong?”

  “I lost another job. Fired this time, I didn’t actually lose it.”

  “Oh dear, I’m sorry, baby girl. I’m sure they made a mistake letting you go.”

  “Well, there was the knitting thing,” I mentioned.

  “Yes,” she said. “I had a bit of a feeling that misrepresenting your skills about that was maybe unfortunate.”

  That was about as critical of me as my mom would ever get. “I’m just not sure what I’m doing anymore,” I said in a rush. “I’m not sure about why I’m doing it, either.”

  “Sylvie, I thought it was so thrilling that you wanted to move to New York and make a life there for a few years.”

  I let that slide. My plan was to stay forever.

  “I know your dad wasn’t pleased about it, but I really admired you making your own way.”

  My dad’s lack of pleasure about my move to New York was legendary. “Thanks, Mom. I appreciate that.”

  “But honey, maybe you could take a little break from the city for a while. What do you think? You could come home for a visit—it would make your dad and me so happy. Your sisters and niece and nephews would love to see you, too.” She paused. “By the way, have you talked to Rosemond?”

  “No, not for a few days—hang on, she’s calling me right now! Are you doing black magic again, Mom?”

  “Call me back after you talk to her.”

  I didn’t even have to say hello to my sister.

  “He finally proposed!” Rosemond screamed into my ear. “George finally did it.”

  I sank back against my pillows. “Oh—”

  “I know what you’re going to ask. Five carats, radiant-cut, just like the pictures I showed him. Platinum, of course. I ran out and got a manicure so it would look perfect on my hand. But I wanted to call you before I posted it.” Pause. “Ok, posted now. Take a look!”

  That hadn’t been what I was going to ask. “Did he get down on one knee?” Emmaline’s and Annabel’s now-husbands had done that and I thought it was so romantic, just like in a book. Ivy’s had written his proposal in the sand on the beach in Tanzania. “What did he say?” Emmeline’s husband Duncan had talked about the molecular level of their love, and Annabel’s husband Theo said that he had known since the moment they met when they were 17 that they were right together. Ivy’s husband Jack drew a circle in the sand and wrote “ivy” on one side and “jack” on the other. They were two halves of the same whole.

  Thinking of George, Rosemond’s new fiancé, I found that I doubted that his proposal had been anything very memorable.

  “Well, he just asked me to marry him, silly!” she chided me. So I had been right—nothing outstanding. “Are you wondering what my answer was?”

  “Since you said you had the ring, I’m hoping you said yes!”

  “Of course I said yes! I’ve been trying to get him to ask me for two years.” Almost since their first date. “You know what this means, right?”

  My heart sank. I did.

  “You’re my maid of honor!” Rose crowed.

  I kept in the deep sigh of resignation. This was what we did in my family: the younger sister was the maid of honor for the next oldest, and my sisters had all fallen neatly in line and gotten married in the correct birth order. Our mom expected us to step up big for each other, like she had always expected us to in whatever we all did. That being said, I had dreaded this day since Rosemond first said that George was The One. This was the day when I donned the mantle of responsibility and stepped out from the background assortment of bridesmaids. Now I would be the big cheese in the wedding party world.

  Emmeline and Rosemond had it easy. Annabel was such a planner, she mostly did everything herself when she married Theo, which worked out great for maid of honor Emi (whose head was sometimes, often, in the clouds). Ivy had come back from whatever public heath disaster she was fixing to square away Emmeline’s big day—Ivy was like a military general in how she got that wedding done. She totally banged it out, taking Emmeline’s big ideas and making them an unbelievable reality. And Ivy had married Jack on another continent where they were living, so we had all been out of the loop. It had been a small wedding, and Rosemond had barely lifted a finger when she was Ivy’s maid of honor.

  But Rosemond’s wedding was going to be a different. She wasn’t going to want small, she wasn’t going to do it herself, and she was going to fight me on everything, every little detail. Again, I loved her, but she was opinionated and relentless. Stubborn as a clam, as the saying went.

  And the other thing was, these weddings were a competition. All of us loved each other, and we were friends, too—best friends. But that didn’t mean that my sisters didn’t compete. Annabel got married in a remote, beautiful old church, then had gorgeous, flower-filled tents set up around it for the reception. I couldn’t think that anything would be nicer. But then Emmeline had platforms built on the shore of Lake Michigan with spectacular views, and kind of constructed a whole village for her wedding—it was amazing. Knowing that would be hard to top, Ivy went a different route and had us all fly to Africa where she and Jack got married in Kilimanjaro National Park, a small, fancy safari wedding that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

  Now Rosemond was go
ing to try to best everything the other three had done. Oh, mercy me.

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