She’d gotten through to Erica on the phone, but the girl would say nothing more than she no longer needed the work, about as naturally as a hostage reading off a cue card.
Stop bothering my things, Filomena, Albert said. Come back over here.
Daddy, last time. What did you do to Erica?
Albert leveled his eyes on her. I don’t remember.
I’ll get to the bottom of it, she said. Honestly, Daddy. Look, I’ve told you not to worry about writing checks.
What are you talking about? Albert said.
Daddy, I pay all the bills. Erica leaves them here for me. She held up the rubber-banded stack of envelopes.
Of course you do. What are telling me not to write checks for? I know full well you’ve robbed me of every adult responsibility.
Just stop writing checks. I’m leaving you a note here that says, No Checks, okay? And where in the world are you getting these numbers? Two forty-nine to D’Agostino’s?
Delivery charge, he shot back.
Daddy, Erica shops with you. You two go to the store on Tuesday and Friday.
I’m fully aware of that, he said. He looked around for Tracy, hoping for confirmation that her sister was behaving unreasonably, but apparently Tracy was the one banging around in the kitchen.
Fil carried over the ledger and laid it in his lap.
What, Filomena, what? he said. I thought I wasn’t to write any more checks. Get this off me.
Daddy, look here. If you want to get away with it, you’ll need to stop documenting your crimes so carefully. These receipts. This one, and this one. You’re too meticulous for your own good.
There it was, handwriting that exactly matched his own. A jolt, as if he’d touched a live wire. He flipped through the stubs.
Fil went back to the desk, opening and shutting drawers until she found what she was after. Good god, Daddy. Here, look. One drawer was packed solid with signed, uncashed checks. You really went on a tear this week, didn’t you? Fil said.
Not so long ago he was still trying to mail them, but recently he’d taken to stashing them all over the desk, a disheartening adjustment, Fil realized, because it meant that the task of writing the check, addressing the envelope, sealing it, locating a stamp, and posting the letter had become too much for him.
She dropped the stack of checks onto the ledger in his lap. Albert glanced down at them, casually, as though assessing a bowl of peanuts put out by a bartender. Fil waited. He picked them up. There were about thirty, all bearing his signature. He hummed to himself as he went through them.
Even confronted with written proof, he could not bring himself to believe that it was his memory that had failed to retain the image of his pen scraping across the check’s pale green surface. Surely it hadn’t been he who had written all these. No, quite impossible. There’d be an imagistic flicker, a tickle somewhere in his brain. Surely it wasn’t he who’d written the checks. It had been someone else.
This is outrageous, he said. It’s the girl. She’s been forging my signature.
Daddy, said Fil, her fingertip tapping at the ink, you wrote these checks. It’s your handwriting. It doesn’t matter that you’ve forgotten. Just acknowledge that you did it.
I’m not a child, Filomena.
Who said you were a child?
You’re treating me like a naughty boy.
No one’s treating you like a naughty boy. You’re just making mistakes, do you get that? You’re making mistakes and that’s fine, but would you just admit it?
I’ll do no such thing. This is a kangaroo court! Let’s drag the girl before judge and jury and we’ll see what she has to say for herself.
It was then that Albert’s eye fell on a check he’d written for $10,000, made out to Erica Spindrake, a check she’d refused to take even though she’d agreed, in principle, to allow him to buy her out. He’d discovered during one of her monologues that her father had taken ill and for that very reason she was working as Albert’s caretaker instead of attending classes at CUNY, and he offered on the spot to rectify the situation in exchange for her prompt resignation. He did not know what to make of the check now in his hand, but he could imagine, and when Fil turned away he hastily stuffed it down the side of his seat cushion.
Fil was threatening to take the ledgers with her if he couldn’t stop himself from writing checks. Well, he said, if he wasn’t even aware of the existence of the impostor who was writing the checks, presumably while he was asleep, then how the hell was he supposed to stop it?
Albert couldn’t have recalled that this had first happened over a year earlier, or that this scene played out every week or so since, Tracy and her wet black eyes watching from her seat across the room. To Albert it was a fresh inquisition every time, and to Fil, ever more depressing. Her frustration had given way long ago to sorrow. She played frustration now, a dutiful daughter creating reality for her father. It was all a stage show and they were a ragged troupe hashing out the same old lines, entering and exiting, a spiritless production of a dusty old American tragedy. Yet Fil dreaded the day she’d search the desk and find empty drawers, a cheerful old man smiling wanly at her from across the room.
What Albert also failed to recall was that Erica, nowhere close to the dim bulb everyone took her for, had the previous Friday walked with him to the Chemical branch on 82nd Street and stood by as he’d withdrawn $10,000 in cash. She had packed and left that afternoon, only too happy to turn half of it over to her father (her whole take, for all the elder Spindrake knew), whose illness’s primary symptom was a tendency to place bets on perennial losers at Aqueduct. With the other half wrapped in butcher paper and stashed in the back of her closet, she began plotting her own escape.
We’re getting someone new, Daddy, Tracy said. I’m phoning an agency as soon as this storm’s blown through. We’re going to get someone who can put up with you. Understand?
Fine, fine.
As girls they had stood on tiptoe, one on either side of him, and he’d bent down for their kisses. Now Tracy knelt at his left, Fil at his right, and they crossed their arms over his chest and pressed their lips to his cheeks.
My girls, he said, folding his hands over their forearms.
As they rose, Albert did an unexpected thing. He caught them both by the wrists and looked into their faces, his great mottled head swiveling back and forth, and then he pulled them both down and embraced them.
They thought at first he was hallucinating, and they weren’t all wrong. He’d heard a sound, something from far away, and he was holding them close the way he’d have held them as children, to keep them quiet, to silence the room, so he could identify the source. But he couldn’t put his finger on it. He thumped them on their backs and released them.
If the trains are running, we’ll be back tomorrow, Daddy, Fil said. Otherwise, we’ll see you the day after.
Not if you’re lucky, he said, his standard sign-off, plunging his girls into an ice bath before sending them out into the cruel world.
Bye, Daddy, Tracy said, kissing his cheek one more time for good measure. The floorboards in the hallway creaked as they made their way out, and the heavy maple door swept closed with a hermetic swoosh, the locks ticked, silence descended.
In the hall outside, Tracy said, I’m telling Manny not to let him out even if the building is on fire.
Hope you have some cash, Fil said.
One of us should stay with him tonight.