the check (pt.1)

Not sure how plausible the storyline is, but wrote this last summer and recently got around to editing it a bit - it's longer than anything else I've published on this blog, so I've broken it up into three parts for your reading (dis?)pleasure.

(And as always, this work is mine, so don't mess.)

The Check

She remembered when the first envelope arrived in her mailbox. It was in March, years ago. She had thought that it was a mistake, that it had been addressed incorrectly or that the mailman had organized his mail haphazardly that day. But she found that the barely legible blue scrawl clearly indicated her name and her address. And then she found herself at a loss for words.

She had fallen behind on her rent at that time, unsatisfied with her job search but trying to not lose hope. She regularly visited a local resource center run by college students in the area, filling out job applications and picking up flyers when she saw something doable and, more importantly, meaningful. Her church members and her aunt tried to help out when they could, but she didn’t like being dependent on anyone for issues of money.

But it helped.

She was blown away by the amount at first. She was hesitant about cashing the check too, though she was in need, though her name was boldly written in the same blue scrawl on the “Pay to the order of:” line. She was mostly hesitant because she wasn’t sure who the sender was, the name “Magnolia Daly” not ringing any bell. Magnolia Daly's address noted that she was in Seattle, but there was no way of visiting that address, since buying a plane ticket was out of the question. The accompanying note said, “Please do not return,” and though she wanted to disobey, something about the sternness of the handwriting kept her complicit.

The check lay uncashed on her bedside table for a week and a half. Every night, before turning out the lights, she would look at the envelope, adorned in flowers and leaves and smiling teddy bears, just like one of those check-and-envelope sets she would see in the coupon pullouts of newspapers. She had always wondered if people actually ordered those from the advertisements; it seemed like one person did. She would pull out the check and examine that as well: examine the handwriting, examine the teddy bears’ faces. They smiled at one another, and the one in the bottom right hand corner smiled up at her, as if saying, it’s okay, you can use this. It’s safe.

Was it? She couldn't remember what being safe felt like.

Her husband had left for the office one day, when Navah was seven years old, and never came back. In retrospect, she should’ve guessed something was off. He had kissed her goodbye as if he was never going to kiss her again; he spent a long time at the breakfast table with Navah, asking her about 2nd grade life and making her giggle so much she could hardly keep her breakfast in her mouth. When he didn't return from work at the normal hour, she had simply assumed that he was working late, or perhaps had fallen asleep at his office. But when she finally decided to call the office, they told her that he had never come in to work that day. In the era before cell phones, it was practically impossible to reach him otherwise.

She was worried out of her mind, as well as furious, devastated, heartbroken. She had no idea why he had left, but she waited for him to return, to apologize for disappearing and scaring everyone.

He finally called after two excruciatingly long days, saying that he was doing okay and that she didn’t have to worry. The call was frustrating — he dodged questions and gave noncommittal answers.  Toward the end of their conversation, she asked if he wanted a divorce; he said he just needed some time. He said he had sent a money order in the mail as “child support” for the time being; she told him to just come back home.

The day she took the teddy bear check to the bank was one of the most nerve-wrecking days of her life. She half expected it to turn out to be a cruel joke of sorts, something that might ruin her financial reputation or come with an unwritten clause. But it went into her account, no questions asked or issues raised, and she was able to pay for two months of rent and utilities, with money left over to spend on groceries and subway fare. She sent a grateful letter to the address written on the check, but never received a reply. So, she decided to consider it a one-time deal, a stranger’s act of random kindness that God had brought to her at a time she needed it the most. Until another envelope arrived in the mail a few years later.

-----

He remembered the first thing she said to him: “Does your hair naturally stick up like that?”
“Uh...yeah,” he had answered stiltedly, unsure what to make of the petite brunette sitting next to him in the auditorium.

The group had played “Never Have I Ever” at lunchtime on that first day, a game where each person held up ten fingers and the person with the most number of fingers at the end of the game was he or she who had lived the least (each person had to go around saying something they had never done before, and if the rest of the group had, they would have to put a finger down). She was one of the few remaining, with four defiant fingers still held up; he had gotten out much earlier in the game, but it was more fun to watch.

It was her turn, and she hesitated, turning slightly pink before saying, “Never have I ever been kissed before.”
The other two looked at each other, paused, before slowly putting down a finger to a chorus of “Oooooooh”s from the circle.
She eventually won — she also had never been to Disneyworld and had never eaten a lobster before.

They didn’t talk too much in that first week because they were in different primary concentrations — she was there for biology and he was there for social studies. During the second week, they saw each other a bit more once their secondary concentrations — music for both of them — started up. They were both surprised to find that the other was a violist too.
“We don’t get enough credit,” she had said.
“It’s because there are too many bad violists out there,” he responded. She agreed, nodding mock-solemnly. They decided to practice the orchestra music together, every Thursday after lunch and before secondaries time, in room 551, the one at the end of the practice rooms hallway with the “good” piano.

“Wow, look at this!” She had held up a giant double bass case. “I think it could fit both of us if we squished in.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “That’s pretty scandalous.”
She gave him a confused look. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like saying we should share a sleeping bag or something.”
She turned pink, just like she had the first day during the game, and quickly put the case back down to open up her own viola case. “That’s not what I meant,” she said quietly.
He laughed and straightened the music on the stand. She sat down next to him, somewhat embarrassed, and smoothed her skirt once.
She cleared her throat before asking, “Do you think a bassist was practicing in here before us?”
“Well, if they were, we can just move if they come back.”

Twenty minutes had passed when they started to hear faint popping noises from upstairs. They would have missed them if she hadn’t paused to rosin her bow again.
“Is something wrong with the air conditioning?” He went over to mess around with the thermostat a bit before turning it off. The room was silent for a brief moment before the noises started again.
“That’s strange,” she pondered. They both looked outside their practice room windows and saw a few other heads poke out their doors before returning to their respective rehearsals.
He had turned on the air again and they had resumed practicing when they suddenly heard a loud crash and what sounded like screams, which jolted both of them up to their feet. Her face turned pale, paler than she already was to begin with.
“What...is going on?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back. “Maybe I should go check outside?” He was thinking to at least lock the main door at the other end of the hallway, just in case.
“No!” she whispered with incredible force, her anxiety wrapped up like a ball that was stuck in her throat. “It sounds too dangerous.”
She suddenly took his hand, which might have stirred teenage hormones within him in a different situation, but in that moment, it seemed to emanate both security and fear simultaneously. It unsettled him for various reasons, but he held on tightly.
“What do you think we should do?” he asked after a prolonged second of shared anxiety.
They stood there, immobile and cold. The small sliver of a window was much too small for either of them to squeeze through, and moving the piano to reach it would have caused too much noise and expended too much effort and time. There was a chance that whoever it was causing the chaos upstairs might not come down into the basement, but neither of them wanted to take any chances.
She looked at the bass case in the corner. “Maybe we should hide in there.” She looked embarrassed for suggesting such a thing again, but they both knew that was their best bet. The practice room was locked from the outside, requiring a code to get in.
They hesitated for a moment, both trying to figure out the best way to go about getting in and zipping up. They couldn’t fit side-by-side by lying down on their backs, but they would have to stack in so the case would sit sideways.
“You can go in,” she said first. “You’re taller; I can squeeze in.”
He pulled himself into the case, having the most fleeting peace of mind to momentarily feel ridiculous. She looked down at him, pondering, before zipping the case up a third of the way. She then slipped in front of him and zipped the case up from the inside, leaving a small opening at the top for air.
And they waited.

It had felt like it had been forever since they zipped up the case, but later it turned out that it had only been about six minutes before the gunman appeared in the hallway.
He had been holding his arms awkwardly at his side, as still as possible, breathing in the scent of her hair and the rosin dust from the case. Both were breathing heavily, but also as quietly as possible. When they heard the main door crash open, out of surprise and fear, he immediately wrapped his arms around her and they both seemed to stop breathing from that moment forward.

The gunshots did not seem to be methodical in any way; they seemed to just be sprayed in every which way into the practice rooms, destroying pianos and other instruments left in some rooms for safekeeping. They both heard one soft but clearly discernible cry in the distance, which got her trembling violently against him. He felt tears come to his eyes.
Then fire opened on their room. They heard the wood of their instruments splinter, the bullets ricocheting off the carpeted floor. He felt her jerk once against him and then searing pain from his left arm and left leg, but neither made a single noise, just a single sharp intake of breath from both of them. Footsteps authoritatively walked away, and he barely whispered, “Are you okay?” He thought he had felt her nod in response.

Even after silence had settled into the hallway, they stayed in the bass case until they heard police officers come downstairs to check on the rooms. Despite the incredible sting in his arm, he pulled open the zipper to face two officers staring down at them in panic, and it was then he found that she had been shot in the neck, dead upon impact.
His voice got sucked back into his throat before he let out a howl in pain and in tears.

-----

The number of casualties was 14, but this had seemed too few to her to justify Navah’s death, especially since it turned out that the main objective of the frustrated teenage gunman was to kill the music directors and destroy as much property of the music building as possible — not to kill fellow students. But investigators and psychologists determined that once an unstable person, especially a child, comes into possession of a gun, they can easily lose sight of their “main purpose,” so to say, and they quickly become trigger happy. The explanation seemed too stupid and obvious to be of any comfort to her.

She wanted to sue. She wanted to sue the summer program and the university where it was hosted out of all the money they had, but money was of no use to her at that point. She felt like her world was caving in and turning itself inside out, and she felt like she was going to go mad with grief. She wanted to mourn in peace, but she also felt like screaming at the world and exclaiming how unfair it all was. The local paper contacted her a few times for an interview, which both infuriated her and tempted her before she declined once, twice, three times. She had nothing left to say. The boy, not having fully succeeded in his “mission” (that is, killing the main director who had rejected him a spot in the program), had shot himself in the head, so she really had no one to curse. His parents had tried contacting her as well — as they did with all the victims’ families — but she hung up on them, unable to fathom what kind of negligent parents would raise their children to become like that.

Her husband had either seen the news or read the news and had driven into their old neighborhood to see her, to mourn with her. It had been nine years since she had last seen him, and he had felt like a complete stranger to her. But she let him drink with her, glass after glass, until she felt more sick from the alcohol than she did from the pain of losing her child. She let him sleep in the living room one last time, watching him furrow his eyebrows in his sleep one last time, and in the morning, asked for a formal divorce. She told him that he didn’t have to send money anymore — they no longer had a child to support.

Her mother was essentially senile and under the care of a hired nurse; her father had passed when she was thirty, so it was her aunt and uncle who prepared the funeral with her and held her as she sobbed uncontrollably at the altar. She told them she was moving into the city and getting a job as a public school teacher, what she had originally been doing before she got married and had Navah. They were worried she would harm herself or fall into serious depression if she lived by herself; she assured them that she would do no such thing. If anything, she would have to live twice as hard to make up for the vacancy that was so clearly visible in her world.

There was one last person who tried to contact her before she left: the mother of the boy who had been found with Navah. She was unsure of whether she wanted to know what Navah had said or done in her last moments. A curiosity kept her up at night after she received her voice message, but there was also a firm resistance from within — part of her was upset that between the two of them, her daughter had to die on the spot and that woman’s son could live to tell the tale. She knew she couldn’t necessarily blame the boy; at the very least, he had made sure that she wasn’t left alone, and she was thankful for that. The only thing she knew about how they were found was that he was holding her until the very end, and since she wasn’t there to do it herself, at least someone had.

She called to let the boy’s mother know that she appreciated her message, but that she also expected nothing and desired to know nothing. She mustered up the most polite thank-you-and-goodbye that she could before her throat closed up and then hung up rather abruptly. She unplugged her home phone for the next few days.

© 2012 by Sarah R.