—
I don’t know the first thing about finance. Thanks to Marlon’s more successful second venture, due entirely to his third wife’s deep coffers, he’s paid for most of our educations. I almost took out a loan to go to Paris, but at the last second Marlon again came through with a good-sized check, and I’ve been coasting by, supplementing his dollars with French government student subsidies. I’m not good with money.
Zelda and I have had a bank account at the Community Credit Union in town since we were six years old, when Marlon gave us our first “paycheck,” for trimming vines with him out in the field. After we’d done an hour or two of work (“an honest day’s labor” in Marlon’s rather generous assessment) he loaded us into the truck, each of us clutching a twenty-dollar bill. Ten dollars an hour seems like lavish pay for two distracted six-year-olds, but we weren’t going to argue. We still have those accounts.
I park the truck in a fifteen-minute loading zone near the bank, hoping to be quick. Before going inside, I retrieve Zelda’s driver’s license. I’m not sure that what I’m about to try will work, but I can use all the government documentation I can get.
Not many people live in Hector, New York, and I suspect there’s a very real possibility that people at the bank will know that Zelda Antipova is presumed dead. I’m certain they will have heard about the fire, but I’m banking (ha ha) on the fact that they won’t know who was involved in it. It’s probably a crime to impersonate someone in order to gain access to her banking information, but I can live with that.
I look up and down the street: quiet, as ever. Watkins Glen is called “the city” by those of us who live out here, but that is a rather generous description of our Podunk county seat. There are a handful of sadly blinking stoplights and a clothing store that sells Carhartt merchandise, thick woolen socks, and long underwear for the frigid winter. Farmer gear. A gaudy life-sized simulation of a pirate ship sits near the water. This bizarre reproduction houses an ice-cream stand and a miniature golf course; Zelda and I would lobby to be brought into town on hot summer evenings for raucous, giddy fun. Nearby, a stark pier juts out into the lake, and you can meander out to the tip on raw winter days and imagine you are somewhere near the North Pole. In the summer months, a yacht perches by the dock, offering chartered wine cruises. An overpriced hotel and a similarly overpriced fish joint sit next door to the dock, providing tourists simultaneously with a view of the thirty-eight-mile lake and glutinous, flavorless pasta al mare swimming in thin cream sauce, despite the fact that there is no mare anywhere nearby and seafood is about as appropriate here as it would be in Ohio. A burger joint, a brewery, and an “Italian” joint that serves microwaved calzones and meatball subs sit along the mostly deserted main drag. Highlights include the huge, freezing-cold public pool and the hike along the (admittedly picturesque) waterfall’s gorge. For a few unpleasant weeks during the humid month of August, NASCAR enthusiasts flood the town, and the streets are crammed with aspirational muscle cars and mullet haircuts. The place fairly reeks of Budweiser during this period, and locals take care to steer clear of the city, heading to Montour Falls or Ithaca for any supplies not harvested from the garden. I find myself wondering what things will need doing at Silenus in August, how busy I will be (preparing for harvest!), and shake my head when I realize what I have been imagining. I will be safely back in Paris by the time NASCAR rolls into town.
I muss my hair distractedly as I walk into the bank, momentarily not realizing that I’m imitating one of Zelda’s gestures. The bangles shake unfamiliarly on my forearms. Inside, the bank is chilly and air-conditioned, and I pad softly across the carpet in my sandals to the customer service area. An employee gestures me toward her stall way too enthusiastically, and I walk over, letting my bag plop into the chair. There are always two chairs in front of bankers, suggesting that a single person will never suffice for the creditors.
The woman in front of me is wearing a thick layer of green eye shadow, and her hair is shellacked with hair spray, making the brownish strands crispy and stiff, almost alien in their brittle anti-gravitational mushroom. She has a gigantic smile on her face, and her nails clack unnervingly on the keyboard in front of her. As we face off, I realize that I’m hugely relieved to be doing this in English; in France, I would have had to submit two forms and enter into a verbal sparring match with whoever was at the front desk just to sit down with another human being, which is when the actual negotiations would begin. This woman may be a foreign creature to me, but at least we speak the same language.
“Hi,” I say. A solid beginning.
“Hi there, sweetie. What can I do for you today?” She clasps her hands together and tilts her head attentively. She has clearly attended her customer service training sessions.
“Well, I have a bank account with you, and I’d like to inquire about the status of some loans. I think I’ve gotten off track with my repayment, and I wanted to know about the remaining balance, see about maybe restructuring?” I don’t know exactly what that means, but I am fairly sure it is what one does with loans that one isn’t paying back. Unfortunately, the whole incompetent and clueless act works better with middle-aged men; they immediately get all paternalistic and want to mansplain the contours of the particular pickle in which you’ve found yourself. But I guess I’ll have to settle for the kindly, concerned woman in front of me.
“Of course, sweetheart. Can I just see your proof of identity and your account number?”
“I don’t have the account number on me, but here’s my license,” I say, sliding Zelda’s across the desk. She gives it a cursory glance before typing in my name.
“And your Social?”
I panic for a minute and almost give her mine, but then I remember Zelda’s and spit it out in a relieved rush.
“Antipova…that name sounds familiar,” she prompts.
“My family owns a vineyard a few miles up the lake. Silenus?”
“Oh.” She nods politely, her eyes going carefully blank, and I can tell she recognizes the name of the vineyard and has tasted our wine. She looks at the screen and then frowns. “Oh, goodness,” she says, and glances at me with a new expression.
“What is it?”