Marion at thirty-eight is an expert in women who embezzle. She’s an encyclopedia of their fates. Her hero, or her alter ego, is a Virginia spinster, Miss Minnie Magnum, who was dubbed a modern-day Robin Hood by Life magazine in 1956. Poor Minnie Magnum embezzled over $3 million from the building-and-loan association where she worked. She gave the money away: she funded businesses, bought cars for her friends, offered down payments so they could own homes. She was sentenced to ten years in prison. Poor Miss Minnie Magnum. She wore a little hat when she was fingerprinted.
A year ago, at thirty-seven, Marion tried to stop. After years of shuffling numbers and funds, of misdirection, and of creating fictitious expense reports and employees, she did not know that she would miss it. To fill her time, she read articles on the Internet about Mason jars and bought them by the dozen and filled them with paper clips, pens, loose change, candles and sand, cotton swabs, and various foodstuffs. The Mason jars weren’t meant to make up for the embezzlement. They were meant to distract. It didn’t work. After twenty-two days, she charged the school events fund twice for folding-chair rental and pocketed $400. That was how it started, and how it remained, and how it ended. Transferring the money into her online bank account, she went to bed feeling safe and calm.
Nathan at forty-eight has spent weeks throwing away his wife’s Mason jars. He finds them overused and uninventive.
Now Marion at thirty-eight returns to her house for the last time. She kept her house keys below the money in the knapsack and transferred them to the suitcase, and she never knew why. Now she does. She’s been assured by the matriarch that the family will all be out of the house. Marion doesn’t ask how the matriarch knows but believes it to be true.
Marion Palm needs her passport. She will be Marion Palm again. She isn’t illegal anymore. The matriarch has fixed her little problem. She said, “You can be once more like a tree in Hollywood.”
Marion lets herself into the house that she knows so well. Nathan has made changes. The furniture has been rearranged. The wallpaper’s been stripped and the walls painted. There are more plants. The house smells like Nathan and like her daughters. She climbs the staircase, looking for evidence that she once lived here. A few pictures of her hang on the wall, but there were never that many to begin with. She hates the way she looks in photographs. But perhaps she always knew she was going to leave and thought it would be easier if her face was allowed to become unrecognizable to her family. She wonders how her daughters will be affected by her disappearance, but allows the thought to float away like a soap bubble.
On the second floor, in her bedroom, in her closet, Marion retrieves her daughters’ birth certificates and Social Security cards from a manila envelope. She places the documents on the bureau for Nathan. The bureau has been moved: it’s now against the wall across from the windows, and Marion believes it has been refinished. A large plant hangs in the corner, looking well cared for. The room seems lighter, more open. The bed is made. Her things have been organized but not stored away. Her clothes still hang in the closet; her toothbrush is in a glass by the sink. Marion brushes her teeth, then puts the toothbrush and a tube of expensive moisturizer in her suitcase.
She hears the whining of the gate in the front yard. She returns to the top of the stairs. The shadow of her husband appears in the frosted windowpane of the front door. Marion is calm as she retreats to the kitchen. She’s made this escape before.
Marion at thirty-eight remembers Minnie Magnum. If Marion adjusts for inflation, Minnie stole around $26 million. Marion, in other words, has work to do. She’ll do it for the matriarch, or for the matriarch’s husband—she isn’t sure yet of the organizational hierarchy. But it seems that Marion, with her special skills, may be of some use to this graceful and perfectly poised family. She wonders how long it will last, her usefulness; how long can she be good? Marion Palm hopes the matriarch understands what she is.
In the basement, she retrieves her passport, driver’s license, Social Security card, and birth certificate from the pink armoire. When Denise found the documents weeks ago, she thought to herself, Oh, Marion’s dead. Then she thought, She killed herself. And she thought, Good. After that, she struggled with her happiness that Marion was no longer breathing and with the fact that what she was feeling was not relief, it was joy. She should have left the Palm house then and never come back, but she didn’t. She allowed Nathan Palm to do what he always does. She found herself sneaking into a house to satisfy and fulfill some need that she doesn’t believe should exist. She sat in the living room with her scary shoes on and listened to Nathan with his daughter. She could have introduced herself, and she could have become Marion if she had wanted. She left without saying goodbye.
Marion slips the documents into her purse and listens to the creaking of the floorboards above her as Nathan and the girls move about on the first floor. Ginny calls out.
Marion exits through the basement door, and like the last time, she leaves it unlocked. It didn’t concern her then, and it doesn’t concern her now. She has a flight to catch.
Marion Is Safe
The detective is sitting at his desk at the station when he gets the phone call. Marion Palm has resurfaced at JFK. She’s leaving the country.
“Where’s she headed?” the detective asks.
“Hang on,” the voice on the phone says. “Moscow.”
“Moscow?” the detective repeats. “Well. That’s unexpected.”
The detective requests that Marion Palm be detained; he wants to talk to her. He speeds the whole way to JFK, siren blaring, cars pulling out of his way. He makes it to JFK in twenty-four minutes. A new record.
He rushes into the terminal, locates the security office, and flashes his badge. He’s led down a hallway to a fluorescent-lit room. There Marion Palm sits with a small suitcase, wearing a gray T-shirt and a bizarre skirt that doesn’t fit. It is the woman from the train. The detective was right. Her roots are showing now, a thin stripe of brown down the middle of her scalp. She’s patiently sitting at the table, hands folded in her lap. She looks up at the detective and smiles.
“Oh, it’s you!” she says brightly.
“Marion Palm?” he says.
“Yes,” she answers. Her voice is low, and there’s that hint of Brooklyn in the vowel.
“Your family is looking for you,” the detective says. Marion Palm looks at him and wrinkles her nose. “Are you in any trouble? Can I take you home?”
“Oh, no, I’m fine,” Marion says.
“Can I tell them where you are? Or where you’re going?”
Marion appears to think about it, but ultimately shakes her head.