the check (pt.3)

A private investigator just seemed too unnecessary. And intrusive. And cheesy. So she held off on formally searching for her somewhat anonymous benefactor, choosing instead to focus on advancing her career at the museum so that when she did find her, she’d be able to firmly let her know that though she had fully appreciated it and benefited from her kindness, she didn’t need the money at all anymore.

It took her a month for it to finally occur to her to visit the website of the editorial assistant’s company, but there was no author picture, only the brief biography:

“As the heiress apparent to Miriam & Marcus Stationery in West Village, Manhattan, Magnolia Daly has always dreamed of publishing the words she used to scribble on the leftover samples from her parents’ store. She studied Comparative Literature at Middlebury College and earned her Masters in French Literature from New York University, though she wholly prefers writing in English. Unable to Stand, her debut novel, will hit bookstores in Summer 2013.”

That following Saturday, she ventured downtown to find the stationery store, heart pounding at the thought that she might actually come face-to-face with this elusive woman. But the store was small, filled with the scent of vanilla-lavender candles that sat near the cash register, which was currently manned by a slim hipster male wearing brown thick-rimmed glasses, a skinny green tie, and a thick beige cardigan sweater that she was fairly sure she’d seen on her aunt years ago. She poked around the room, glancing at the handmade cards against the wall and the table of various kinds of stationery, stamps, and even teapots. There was a curtain separating the store from what she supposed was the storage and/or design&production area, but she only saw another man, a bit older and larger than the cashier, drift in and out, carrying small boxes in and new products out.

The cashier indifferently asked if she needed any help, barely paying attention to her response that no, she was just looking. She made two circles around the store again before heading towards the door, slightly disappointed and more-than-slightly relieved. She knew she wanted to set things right, maybe even pay the woman back over time, but at the same time, she feared that she wouldn’t even know where to start talking. She might even start crying. She stepped out onto the sidewalk, thinking of buying bread from the bakery across the road, but turned around and reentered the store. The youth glanced at her before poking his head back into his used copy of Cannery Row. She found her voice:
“Do you know if Magnolia Daly ever comes into the store?”
He looked at her from beneath his goldenrod bangs. “Who?”
“Magnolia Daly? Doesn’t she...or a relative...own this store?”
“Not a clue.”
“I see. No business cards or anything?”
He fiddled in the drawer under the register and pulled out a lacy cream card with the store’s name, address, and phone number. No contact name. She turned it over in her hand twice and bit her bottom lip.
“If I write my name and number down, could you give it to the store manager or something?”
“Any particular reason?” a voice called from behind her. It was the other man who had been walking back and forth.
Her mouth became dry as she started to feel a bit ridiculous. “I’m looking for a Magnolia Daly.”
“Maggie? She’s my sister. She doesn’t really come into the store, hasn’t for a good number of years since she bought a house in Seattle. What do you need her for?”
She didn’t want to explain the whole situation, knowing that it would sound extremely suspicious or more likely, very crazy, so she settled with: “She’s an old college classmate. I’ve fallen out of touch with her, but I saw that she was publishing a book soon, so I wondered if she was in the city somewhere, and I would love to see her again.”
He stared at her for a minute, as if determining whether she was telling the truth or not. He slowly pulled out the pen tucked behind his ear and took another business card from the drawer and handed it to her. “She flies over every other month these days. You can leave your name and number here, email address if you prefer. I’ll let her know.”
She felt a cool sweat of both relief and anticipation line her forehead. It was finally happening. She was going to meet this woman face-to-face.

-----

His office phone had rung four times before he finally was able to extricate himself from a chatty coworker complaining about the spacing in the Excel document he had produced for him that morning.
“Hi Mom.”
“She’s found us.” It took him a second to register the statement.
“How?”
“She stopped by the West Village store, saying she was a college friend of mine. She left her name and number with your uncle.”
“What are you going to do?”
She didn’t reply, just breathed into the phone, thinking.
“You could just ignore her and tell Uncle Martin that you had a falling out with her.”
“Maybe I should just meet with her, now that I’m going to be living in the city apartment for a few months anyway. See what she says. She’s doing well at her job, right?”
“Mom, you know it’s not only about the money.”
“Sweetie, if it’s not about the money, then maybe you should just send her flowers instead. Or one of those edible arrangements or monthly fruit club cases.”
He rubbed his eyes and breathed out heavily. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds.
“Plus, how long can you keep this from your dad?” His dad had no idea this money had been going out; not only was he constantly busy with international business trips and tennis tournaments, he also would have flat-out refused to let such a thing happen. He would have dismissed it as excessive. It was not your fault, son. Do you understand that? It wasn’t your fault at all, he had said on various occasions.
“Just...don’t meet with her yet. I just want to see this year through, okay? Maybe I’ll send the fruit basket in December or something.”
“This is getting a little ridiculous, you know. I just don’t get it. It happened almost ten years ago. Don’t you think she’s moved on with her life by now? Don’t you think she would be offended if the truth ever came out?”
“Mom, I really don’t want to argue with you about this right now. Just don’t do anything until I stop by after work, okay?”

Despite several protests from his mom and confused queries from his uncle, he decided to let the communication fall through. His parents had decided on New Year’s Eve of that year to move to Hong Kong in a rare attempt for his dad to truly settle down in one place and spend some time with his soon-to-be-famous-or-so-he-believed wife. They flew over in February and bought a dog; they jokingly threatened to call the dog by his name at first, saying it was going to replace him in the family. He stayed behind in the city due to work commitments and the like, and it was nice to have some distance from his family, a freedom unknown since his college days. His parents had offered to hand over the apartment to him, but he preferred the studio where he had made his home; plus, he had just met a wonderful woman and he wanted to give off the impression that he was an independent, normal young adult just like her.

-----

November passed, December passed, and she still had not heard from her. She tried visiting the shop again to speak with her brother, but he had taken a three-month leave to travel to Spain, entrusting the store to another manager, one who had no idea how to contact the elusive woman and had no relational ties with her.

She saw Magnola Daly’s book in the bookstore in late June, as promised on the website. It briefly hit #10 on the New York Times Bestseller list before resigning itself to a lower number somewhere along the list of fiction books written by highly educated, middle-aged white women with a nostalgia for their once-in-a-lifetime wild days back in the 1980’s. She picked up a copy; she enjoyed it a decent amount, and when she reached the end, she stopped to reread the author biography, which indicated that she was now living in Hong Kong with her husband of 25 years and her dog, Theodore. The photo was a side profile - she looked quite young for her age, with soft eyes gazing out pensively at a 30-degree angle north.

She tried one last time to get in touch with her again, emailing a contact at her publisher and using the comment box on her personal website. Nothing. She had previously considered finally flying out to Seattle, a vacation of sorts, but now Hong Kong was very much out of the question.

Then life became extremely busy again, like life before the checks — she was promoted and put in charge of a lot more events; her ex-husband came to visit her, and he told her about his new family; her cousin’s daughter got married in August of that year, while her mother passed away quietly in November; and before she knew it, another year had come to a close.

She was having dinner with her ex-husband when he abruptly brought up Navah, how old she would have been and how she would have been doing had she been alive. It nearly made her choke on her food, and she tried not to glare at him for making such unnecessary speculations. There was no doubt in her mind that Navah would have been successful, whatever she had become, and no doubt Navah would have been a huge comfort to her as a one-woman support system in the midst of her father’s presumably continued absence and various unavoidable hardships. Though she found the mention of her daughter’s name aloud to be a foreign act, for it had been consciously avoided by all who knew to spare her the pain, the memory of Navah was no stranger to her mind. She had even consulted Navah mentally when she had received the two checks: would she have been sad and disappointed and ashamed to know that her mother had been desperate enough to cash the first check? Would she have searched for Magnolia Daly with her? Or would she, as she always had, simply laugh at God’s provision, and then suggest that they donate it to real charity?

Returning to the last thought over and over finally made her act upon it; if Magnolia Daly had enough money to send a check to her, a complete stranger, surely she would not mind if it were paid forward to benefit those who were truly in need?

-----

His wife had agreed to accompany him to the museum where Navah’s mother worked; there was a special exhibit going on that his coworkers had deemed absolutely necessary to see before the two of them moved to the west coast. Of course, the real reason for his going was that there was also a special kids’ event going on in another part of the building, and he had wondered if he might see Navah’s mother there. Having no kids of their own yet, they borrowed his wife’s nephew to take him to the event.

There were plenty of screaming toddlers running around in the room, mild-mannered toddlers doing the assigned arts-and-crafts with their cooing parents in the center, and infants sleeping in baby carriages in a corner opposite from the speaker, supposedly soaking in the kid-friendly mini-lecture like they supposedly soaked in their Baby Einstein recordings. His wife led Tod to the group of behaved-and-engaged children and began working on the craft, attempting to instill the excitement of fun educational activities. (Tod would later become a graphic designer and half-jokingly attribute the beginnings of his artistic passions to this visit with his aunt and uncle-in-law.) He circled the room twice, snapping some photos of Tod and his wife hard at work, sneaking other photos of hilariously bored looks on some of the kids’ faces.

A slim woman with slightly graying hair pulled back into a loose bun entered the room to check on the event’s progress. Despite the large-framed glasses that covered the eyes that so clearly identified her as Navah’s mother, he could tell. The way she held herself in a muted way, as if silently shielding herself from being noticed as the mother who had lost a child in an unspeakable disaster, the wife of a troubled husband who had deserted her without an apology, the woman who chose to consistently work overtime for so many years so she wouldn’t have to feel the emptiness of her tiny apartment — it was very similar to the way her daughter had held herself when she had walked into the cafeteria hall for that first lunch. He watched her exchange words with the lecturer from afar and came to sit down at the art table with his wife.

“Is that her?” she whispered, as they both watched Tod make deliberate strokes with his pastel crayons.
“I think so.”
His wife stole a glance at Navah’s mother. “She looks very sweet,” she murmured.
He took another glance too; she was now walking around the room, checking on supplies and organizing the catered boxed lunches that came with the event. “She looks fragile.”
“Really? I think she looks resilient.” His wife took his hand and drew a smiley face on it with one of the markers. “Just like you.”

-----

One December, a few days before Christmas, she opened the door to a deliveryman holding a giant fruit basket for her along with a card with a Santa teddy bear on the front.

“Wishing a warm holiday for you and your loved ones,” it read in the familiar blue scrawl, “as well as continued peace and strength in all the days to come.”

There was a small drawing tucked into the envelope as well: a family of three at Disneyland, smudged slightly because of the pastel crayons that had been used. The date and the young artist’s initials sat in the bottom right-hand corner, N.M.

She didn’t need it confirmed to know what the N stood for: Navah.


© 2012 by Sarah R.