28

Pierson

2003—2008

Date	Received	Notes
April 4, 2003	$14,500	Lester Snow Removal
	$9,440	Lester Snow Removal
	$33,000	Lester Snow Removal

 

Why did she keep these accounts? Why, after all the years and years of skimming? When she knew by heart the dozens of false companies she rotated through for made-up invoices? Becky didn’t really know. She took; she kept track. She paid out; she kept track. Sometimes she told herself that this stupid accounting of her own crimes was to ensure she didn’t slip up and double-bill by accident. A safety measure. But she knew that leaving such a clear record of the Activity was far more dangerous than the risk of messing up any fake company names or bills. Plus, no one noticed and no one questioned, not a single false invoice in all these years. No matter how obvious (to her) or how much she pushed the edge (they didn’t even have that many snowfalls the winter of 2002–2003!). Sometimes, as comptroller, she had to shake her head. Defalcation was the technical term, which Becky had come across occasionally when she browsed issues of The Journal of Accountancy or Accounting Today.

Incredible, what a person could get away with. She wouldn’t have believed it herself.

 

In May of 2003 she hung up a call and swiveled to find Ken and town council president Tyler “Ty” Rosario standing in her doorway, both smiling with anticipation.

“Uh oh, what’d I do now?” She stood as they came in, carefully closing the door against Mrs. F.’s peering nosiness.

“We’ll make this brief,” Ty said. “You’ve been very good to us, Becky.” He handed her an unsealed envelope.

Becky looked to Ken, who was nearly bouncing with excitement. Before she could unfold the single sheet he burst out, “It’s a three percent raise.”

Becky’s heart sank. She took her time studying the numbers on the page so she wouldn’t have to look back at Ken. Sure enough, her annual salary, effective June 1, would now be $72,400. “Is this across the board? Is the freeze over?” They had been on a wage and hiring lockdown for the past eighteen months.

Ty shook his head. “Unfortunately, as you know, that isn’t possible.”

“I don’t feel comfortable unless the whole team is part of this.” But when she tried to hand the envelope back to him he held up both hands, no takers.

“You’ve got Mayor Brennan’s full support. I hope you’ll see it as a gesture of goodwill from all of us.”

Becky bent the corner of the envelope and let its sharp point dig into her thumb. Probably Ken had forgone any bump so that she could have this. If only he wouldn’t stand there beaming at her! $72,400. Blood squeezed from a stone. How much were the fake snow removal invoices she’d only last week submitted without a second glance? Nearly that.

It took everything she had to muster the right expression, which was the least she could do for Ken: taken aback, gratified, oh but you shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t have.

 

Date	Paid	Notes
February 19, 2004	$4,700	Round-trip airfare, business class, Japan Airlines
	$2,440	One night, Mandarin Oriental
	$23,000	Three Carrington map sketches, ink on paper, sizes various

 

During the thirty-eight hours Becky spent in Tokyo, her first visit to Japan, she ate two meals, the first a type of fried chicken at a stand-up lunch counter outside the private gallery—she saw what the businessman next to her was eating and pointed to that—and the other a steak, medium rare, ordered from room service. She didn’t go to a single boutique or sushi place. She closed the deal for the Carrington works—which were even better in person—and opted out of a star-studded cocktail party in favor of an earlier flight back. As the formally polite stewardess began her welcome, Becky shook her head and asked for an eye mask and ear plugs.

In the time it took for her to fall asleep, her body thoroughly confused by the quick turnaround across time zones, Becky mused about all the art she hadn’t seen in Tokyo. Nothing at Ishii or Arataniurano or Misako & Rosen, though she had contacts at each. No visits to the Hara or Mori museums, despite their holdings. Instead, her buying had taken place at a private home in a meticulously hushed and blank viewing space where the Carrington pieces she had expressed interest in were brought out one at a time, shown to her alone.

That was the thing about completism, she thought sleepily. The term made it sound like it had to do with more. But in practice it meant less. All she needed, all she was interested in, were the works that fit her predetermined categories—in this case, the sketches that Leonora Carrington used to develop Map of Down Below. The collection Becky was working on now was twentieth-century cartographic-like drawings made in preparation for fuller pieces. Not finished works but sketches, plans, maps for future maps. Several times gallerists had misunderstood, had wanted to show her oil paintings of map images, sometimes glorious works by big names. She had refused to even look. Only prep work, only maps, only twentieth century.

Now she had three of the Carringtons she needed. There was at least one, possibly two, still at large. She had leads, she’d find them. But right now she was at 35,000 feet over the Pacific, and her Ambien was kicking in.

 

Date	Paid	Notes
November 23, 2005	$49.00,	Office party sheet cake Schinkel’s bakery
	$50.00,	Office party sparkling wine and sodas Quick Bev Mart

 

Too much to hope that her fortieth birthday could pass quietly. She had to attend not one but two parties organized for her. The first Becky went along with because not doing so would have jeopardized a precarious deal in progress that depended on several people’s goodwill—or at least what passed for goodwill in the art world: great shows of abundance (food, drugs, luxury abodes) cut with mean-spirited gossip and backbiting.

Becky never figured out how the Van Voutens found out it was her birthday, her “big birthday,” as they kept calling it. But when they insisted she hop on their Gulfstream to Costa Rica, with twenty assorted others, she realized it really was insistence. What followed was a nightmarishly over-the-top four-day weekend in a Punta Islita villa with two private staff members for every guest, no Wi-Fi, and drunken Europeans being loudly naked in the pool all day and night. Howler monkeys woke Becky (Reba) at dawn, and the endless rum drinks gave her diarrhea. On day three she found a giant bullfrog in her toilet and so for the final fourteen hours she peed in the scrubby bushes outside the villa, praying that no snakes—or Europeans—would catch her doing so.

The second party, held on her actual birthday—the day before Thanksgiving break—was in the Town Hall second-floor conference room, of course, where Becky was toasted with a long limerick-style poem whose line endings threatened to be risqué but mostly reverted to rhyming “Farwell” with “barbell” or “is swell.” Paper banners and twisted streamers, decorative paper plates, and a Schinkel’s ice cream cake (yes, ice cream in November)—every detail the same as not just Becky’s previous office birthday parties but every other staff member’s party, ever. Becky had managed to find out the one extra they had planned—sparkling wine to go with the soda—and called ahead to place the charges on her own bill, not the town’s. But that was as much as she could do.

“And now . . .” Ken moved to the ominously draped item propped up on the whiteboard, motioning Louise from HR to help him.

Please don’t let it be a painting. Please don’t let it be a painting.

“Voilà!” Even before Ken and Louise managed to fully uncover her gift Becky could see that it was, indeed, a painting, 24 inches by 18 inches, possibly acrylic. She recognized it right away as one of the constantly rotated items at Prints Unlimited, a frame shop in a mall just outside town. This one was of a dog curled up asleep on a bed, on top of a white comforter. The modeling wasn’t bad, but the artist was clearly enamored of his or her ability with chiaroscuro, because shadows fell on every side of the dog—east and west, front and behind.

“I know you don’t have a dog or anything. We just thought this was the sweetest.”

Becky gave Louise a huge smile. “It’s really something. I’m so . . . wow.”

“It’s a Van Gogh!” someone shouted from the back of the room.

Becky laughed along with everyone else, then, when the crowd quieted, said, “I’m so very touched. Thank you.” She wondered how much each of them had chipped in. Five each? No more than ten, she hoped. “I know exactly where I’m going to put it.”

By her side, Ken was still scrutinizing the painting. “Can’t tell what breed that is,” he muttered. “Huh. Anyway, it’s bad training to let them sleep on the bed.”

 

Date	Received	Notes
April 19, 2006	$64,200	South Elementary wiring repair
	$4,030	Cafeteria upgrade
	$500	Books and supplies
	$81,000	North Elementary playground reconstruction

Date	Paid	Notes
April 26, 2006	$10,000	Table, NYC All Stars Project fundraiser (J. Scanfield)
May 5, 2006	$5,000	Donation, Art Start (J. Scanfield)
	$3,000	Donation, Painting Promise (J. Scanfield)
	$5,000	Donation, Arts for All (J. Scanfield)
May 29, 2006	$19,000	Corn (c. 1935), Grant Wood, 9 1/2" by 7 1/2", graphite on paper, private sale (J. Scanfield.)

 

Jessa’s husband left her in February for a trust-funded preschool teacher who was twenty-eight years old. “I’m lucky,” she said, “that he managed to hold it to that. Just one decade older than our son, maybe that was his red line.”

Becky heard the anger and fear behind the statement, though. She tried to be chipper about it—Jessa would be better off! Hadn’t this been kind of what she’d wanted, after all?

It turned out that this was not at all what Jessa had wanted. Her phone calls from New York turned desperate, agonized, especially once things turned ugly and public, with the husband screwing her from real estate to custody to assets. Becky, full of distaste for all things emotionally dramatic, kept trying to offer concrete solutions when it seemed like all Jessa wanted was to unload her fear and pain. That’s what your Upper East Side friends are for, Becky wanted to say but didn’t. Because one by one these society matrons edged away from Jessa too, afraid to take sides. Soon Becky heard that Jessa was struggling, whatever that meant in New York society, and couldn’t keep up with her many social obligations.

“Thank you, darling. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

“It’s nothing.” Becky held her cell phone between shoulder and chin, sorting papers at her desk in Town Hall. She’d purchased a table for some fundraiser Jessa was connected to and had hoped it would pass unnoticed, but Jessa had found out, had called to thank her. Becky mm-hmmed through a long story about this charity’s board members icing Jessa out at the last meeting, and then another about how the ex-husband was getting married in some bullshit barefoot-on-the-sand island wedding and any minute now Jessa expected to hear that her sons would have a new baby half-sibling.

“So anyway, I can’t wait,” Jessa finally wrapped up. “Don’t even think about a hotel. We’ll stay up late and eat all the calories afterward and I promise I won’t make you talk to a single person not at your table.”

What? Oh. “Actually, I can’t make it in.” When Jessa didn’t respond, Becky hurried on, “I’m swamped next week, I’m completely swamped. But you know Julie Vrettos, right? Multimedia, won the . . . whatever it’s called, the grant from Dia. She’ll bring a great group, I’m sure. Liven up the thing, that’s for sure!”

Becky hoped Julie’s friends would keep it relatively tame for Jessa. Julie herself seemed tame enough—brainy, quiet, conceptual. Becky had been supporting her for less than a year. But who knew what kind of hangers-on she might round up for free food and booze.

“Oh, of course. Of course, darling.” Why was her voice so tinny and small?

“I’ll call Julie tonight. I’ll tell her absolutely no drugs and no drama. And if I even hear one word about—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jessa said, now crisp and loud. “That doesn’t matter at all.”

 

Soon, Jessa had to put her apartment up for sale. Becky watched through the industry news and gossip as she began to sell off piece after piece of her collection, even her beloved Regionalists. Becky continued to write checks whenever she found a charity Jessa sponsored, but the only thing she heard from Jessa was a prompt polite thank-you on a thick creamy notecard.

Becky waited to see what would happen with it, waited as long as she could, and then offered aggressively on the Wood. Corn was a piece she knew Jessa loved dearly, was one of the first she’d owned, had planned to give her son. Becky offered again, and again. She saw through the sales reports how Jessa’s collection was decimated, scattered piece by piece in a way that made her cringe. The numbers alone told how bad things were; Jessa was selling everything she could. Except for a few holdouts, including Corn.

 

When Jessa finally agreed to sell she had a broker finalize the transaction, and Becky paid less than half of what the piece could have brought in over time, through a proper auction.

Becky arranged to pick the piece up a month later, when she was in New York. At Jessa’s Upper East Side building, a young woman let her in, not Jessa (as Becky had hoped and feared) or either of her children (as she’d dreaded). The girl, harried and in dusty jeans, was overseeing movers, the screech of a tape dispenser echoing through the bare halls. She had Becky initial the purchase agreement and handed the piece over, tired, no flourish.

“Can I say hi?” Becky asked tentatively. “Is she in?”

“She’s in Florida,” the girl said. “I’ll text her you were here.”

Becky nodded slowly. She took in the apartment’s empty walls. “Are the other works—the art, I mean . . . have they all been sold?”

The girl held her gaze evenly. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Becky took her cue and left.

In the elevator she untaped the cardboard envelope and peered in at the piece. Plain, dry, but strong. She didn’t love it. She could maybe conjure up admiration. But she owned two graphite realistic pieces exactly this size depicting wheat and soybean plants (by nobodies) so to complete the set she needed corn. If it had to be this one, it had to be this one, no matter how overpriced, given Wood’s name value.

Surely Jessa would understand. If she could only see the three perfectly matched pieces hanging in Becky’s Art Barn . . . a barn, after all. Grant Wood himself would have appreciated that.

“Ma’am?”

Becky realized the elevator had reached the lobby; the doorman was waiting for her to exit. She sorted quickly through the torn wrapping, the tape, looking for something from Jessa—a note, her signature, even one of those fancy notecards with a scribbled “Fuck you.” But there was nothing, only the art.

 

Date	Paid	Notes
April 9, 2008	$13,500	Pierson Junior/Senior Prom
	$15.90	Smoothie King (Ingrid)

 

Becky was on a karma high. Neither the school nor Town Hall had any idea that this year’s prom would have been impossible if she hadn’t covered it. Somehow they fell for yet another I juggled the accounts to find extra—which amazed her, because if anyone had the slightest inkling of how much these vendors charged, they’d never believe Town Hall could fund what she pulled off. More likely, they were all too grateful to closely examine what went into prom.

Becky didn’t care. She wanted to do this for Pierson, dammit. Every outrageously overpriced item—even mediocre DJs made a killing this time of year—Becky happily took care of out of her own secret funds. Real flower displays? Sure. Laser light show? Absolutely. Giant piñata filled with candy and prom 2008 spelled out in green and white, above a plastic rendering of a Pierson Pirate? Hell yes. The best part was cutting ticket prices—both individual and couple!—by fifty percent, ensuring that about twice as many kids got to go.

The Monday after the dance Becky was dying to hear how it went. She drove to Ingrid’s around lunchtime and leaned on the doorbell with extra zest.

“What?” came a crabby shout from inside. When Ingrid opened the door, wearing fuzzy slipper–style boots and a hooded sweatshirt, she said, “Oh. Hi. Come in, I guess.”

“Good day to you too, Mrs. Yesko.”

“Don’t mess with me, I’m having a day.” Ingrid dropped onto the lower step of her staircase and put her forehead on her knees. Loud TV noises came from up above. “There was a mix-up with TJ’s caregiver schedule so Roz didn’t show this morning, so now I can’t take my mom to the hair appointment I said I’d take her to, plus I said we could run her errands after, and I have to get to the store myself, we barely have any food in the house . . .” She raised her head. “What are you doing now?”

“Me?” Becky hadn’t gone to sleep yet, after many hours of calls to Tokyo and Hong Kong, followed by paperwork in the Art Barn. Nothing on her schedule at Town Hall until 3 pm.

“Forget it.”

“No! I mean, yes, of course. What’s the plan?”

Several hours later they were still on the road, having crisscrossed town four times already. When Ingrid had laid out the itinerary—hair appointment for her mother, Costco out on Route 9, TJ’s physical therapy—she meant to drive them all in her minivan. But Becky quickly convinced her that it would be more efficient for her to be the chauffeur while Ingrid did the shopping and ushering. (She also couldn’t bear the idea of Ingrid’s stained crumby van interior.) Fine, Ingrid said, tiredly.

Becky quite liked chatting with Mrs. Beanton, even if she had to shout over her shoulder at the little old lady buckled up in the back. And TJ was easy as long as he had his music and headphones. By early afternoon they had returned Mrs. Beanton to her home, unloaded the groceries, and dropped TJ at his appointment at a therapy center in a strip mall on Gregerson Avenue.

Before Ingrid could get back into the car, Becky jumped out. “Want to get some lunch? My treat.”

“It’s almost two,” Ingrid said.

“Coffee, then.”

“We’ve been drinking coffee all day.” It was true. They’d gone through the Dunkin drive-through twice.

Becky scanned the strip mall. “Smoothie King?”

Ingrid shrugged. “They’re basically milkshakes, but whatever.”

She perked up a few inches into her Strawberry Kiwi Breezy Blast with a Wellness Shot. Becky had the same thing except with an Awake Shot. They sucked out of the giant plastic cups and strolled under the dripping awning that ran alongside the storefronts, Kay Jewelers, Frum’s Cosmetic Dentistry, a copy center.

Finally Becky had a chance to ask the question she’d come over to ask in the first place. “How was Rachel’s time at prom?”

Ingrid snorted. “That girl is grounded for the next two weeks and if she even looks at me wrong I’ll double it. She got dropped home at one am by some boyfriend on the baseball team. No phone call, no nothing. We specifically said—”

“Right, but how was the dance?”

“I get it, she’s got a rough deal in the family with all the attention going to—” Ingrid nodded her head toward the therapy clinic as if TJ could hear them. “But this acting out! It’s a bad teen movie cliché! You should have heard what she muttered when her dad said she smelled like beer.”

“Did the DJ do the thing where he—”

“Becky! I have no idea about the damn prom. I’ve been coughing for ten days, we got some crazy letter from a creditor when I know I paid that bill, I have the carbon check copy, and now my daughter probably lost her virginity in the back seat to some JV shitbox who plays second base.”

Becky took a deep breath and refused to allow herself to make the obvious second base joke. “Sorry. I know how much you have going on.” Her tired friend. No amount of prom magic could erase those faint purple shadows under Ingrid’s eyes.

Ingrid tossed her near-empty smoothie cup into a metal garbage can. “No, I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve been so nice and I took up your whole morning. It’s just . . .” She waved her hand at the therapy center. “I better get in there to check in with his team.”

Twenty minutes later Becky was nodding off in her front seat. The rain had stopped and a gray fog had rolled in. George Strait’s new mega-single “I Saw God Today” woke her up. She wondered if Ingrid thought it was too cheesy or if it got to her the way it was getting to Becky, annoyingly enough. She changed the station.

TJ emerged and stopped right in the doorway. Not wearing his headphones. Stubborn and grouchy in his baggy sweatshirt. From this distance he looked like a regular eighteen-year-old kid out for errands with his mother. But then he wouldn’t move. Becky watched as Ingrid slipped past him in the doorway, motioned to him, coaxed him to keep going even as he stonewalled her, began to flap one hand against his thigh.

Was that Anne Murray on the radio? Becky straightened up. You never heard her anymore. This must be a new version of her cover of the Beatles’ “You Won’t See Me”; another woman’s voice was alternating on the verses, aching and smoky. Who was that? Ingrid would know. They’d had a love-hate relationship with “Harmony” when it came out. Becky remembered Ingrid sobbing through embarrassed laughter during “It Happens All The Time.”

She lowered the window. Ingrid had both hands in TJ’s, talking to him calmly, occasionally touching the side of his face.

Becky turned up the volume, hoping that her friend could hear it.

Ingrid paid no attention. She took baby steps backward, softly leading TJ down the sidewalk in a slow moving dance.

 

Date	Received	Notes
September 29, 2008	$4,500	Community grounds maintenance, annual
	$6,080	Streetlight reinstallation
	$980	Computer equipment

 

Becky leaned into Ken’s office doorway. “Ready when you are.” They had an 11:30 with Accounts Payable.

“You following this?” he asked, so she wandered over to peer at the Tribune homepage on his computer.

“People get so worked up over these debates. Anyone in government can get up there and spout sound bites.” Plus, Obama was going to win. She knew it, everyone knew it. There were plenty of McCain supporters in town—she saw the yard signs when driving her routes—but the groundswell of excitement for their Illinois rep dominated nearly every discussion in Pierson.

“No, I mean the Lehman stuff. The fallout. They’re saying it’s the largest bankruptcy filing in US history.”

“Oh. Well, it’s a shitshow all right,” Becky said cheerfully. She hated when he went into a mope. It’s true her art world colleagues batted around fears about the Dow plunge and mortgage-backed securities—probably some of them had even been at Lehman’s!—but most of Pierson probably still had their money in treasury bonds and savings accounts with interest rates in the low single digits. If not under their mattresses.

“That’s the tipping point for me.” Ken swiveled away from the computer with force. Maybe it wasn’t a mope after all. “I put in that call to the lawyer. If this thing gets worse, and all signs point to that, we can’t be late to the show.”

Becky stepped back. Shit. This couldn’t happen. First because the whole thing was preposterous—no matter what outlier cases you could dig up, no court would realistically let them go forward with a claim to bankruptcy protection. But also it couldn’t happen because . . . she would be exposed! The mere thought of a lawyer requesting back copies of her files and budgets and accounts made Becky’s breathing speed up.

She kept her tone light. “You’re saying we should try filing for bankruptcy, our fifteen-thousand-person municipality, because . . . a multibillion-dollar global financial firm might suck up all the available funds?”

“One bank or business will trigger the next, will trigger the next. It’s a game of mousetrap, and everything’s connected. The courts will be overloaded, the public will turn against the very mention of bankruptcy—if we have any chance, we have to do it now.”

“I don’t think the council will—”

Ken waved that away irritably. “We won’t tell them anything until we know it’s possible. Until there’s a plan in place.”

So his mind was made up. Okay. Okay, she would handle this. Becky edged back toward the door and made a show of checking her watch.

“Let’s circle back to this. I’ll do some asking around. Quietly, of course.”

Ken nodded. They left together for the conference room and while Ken was quiet—resigned, determined—Becky’s mind sped ahead with calculations. She’d research municipality filings right away—and there were at least three art world lawyers she could ask for confidential advice. She’d get ahead of it like she always did, through hard work and hustle. When threatened, Becky had learned to move toward the danger.