The Remaining Balance

The sun slowly sank in her rearview mirror as Frances drove her tiny sedan to the bank. She felt the sunlight envelope her, even though it first passed through a glass rear window, reflected through a glass rearview mirror, and slipped through her dark sunglasses. The strip mall to her left was baked in an orange pre-dusk glow. A late afternoon in the summer always had this look and feel. An anticipatory calm coddled the town. The day, in a final sleepy motion, stripped down and sunk into a hammock, anticipating a summer’s evening of activities. A few people milled about. But Frances was the one lonely observer to bear witness to this strange time of day.

Frances pulled up to the drive-through ATM to deposit a check for two thousand dollars. The money was an unexpected and generous gift from her great aunt for graduating college. She decided to deposit it in her checking account so that she could eventually invest it in a small mutual fund. Driving home from the bank, she faced the slowly setting sun. She thought the common romanticism behind sunsets was drivel. Frances smirked. This was not a sunset. The sun was still well above the horizon. This was pre-sunset. Far more peaceful, far quieter, and unencumbered by others crowding her gaze. She felt an urge to wax poetically. But there was no one to listen. She thought about trees falling in people-less woods and the lies told about their not making a sound. The beaver who cut the tree down certainly heard it crash. He was a worthy listener. So was Frances. When she returned home, after guiltily snacking on some chips, she pulled out her little black notebook. In it, she recounted her bank experience and recorded her thoughts on the pre-setting sun. Though she left loose crumbs and grease on the pages, she wrote sharply in tones she would only hint at to the external world.

Shortly thereafter, she got ready for a celebratory bonfire with friends. The sun eased below the horizon. It settled under the night, warming the evening’s activities as if they were a pot set to boil. The moon creeped above the tree line – a drunk, smiling companion lit up in an otherwise dark bar. Frances and her best friend Molly sat in her room listening to music, talking about nothing at all. Joining them as always was Frances’ beagle, Leonard. He was old, just shy of 16. Frances barely remembers a time before him. Leonard knew nothing of any time before them. Every time they could, they wandered the fields and trails. Well to Frances, they wandered. To Leonard, they were on a focused search for a rabbit. Frances and Leonard were complementary companions. Leonard experienced the world through his nose. Frances experienced the world through her eyes. To her, he was blind. And at 15, he was close to it. To him, her sense of smell was comically inept.

As they walked from the deck to a fire set by friends, Frances laughed with Molly as she explained the creepy old-man vibe she got from the moon. In contrast to the cold moon, they immediately felt the warmth of the bonfire. Alone in the sky, the moon was only a reflection of the warmth of the sun. Frances told wry jokes about the creepy man in the moon, subtly hinting at the wit below her surface. She was maturing into that person. She would emerge from these years with wit, ladled with exuberance, but equally affectionate and approachable. She was helplessly caring, especially in one-on-one situations.

As her last summer passed, so did Leonard. He died peacefully in early August. Frances wept for Leonard. In late August, Frances departed for graduate school. She completed a PhD in biochemistry after 6 years of intensive study. After graduating, she secured a post-doc at Collier Pharmaceuticals exploring new strategies for treating Alzheimer’s Disease. She spent the next 16 years as a professor at the university. During those 16 years, she married a man of unremarkable achievements, but remarkable love and patience. She was prone to intentionally distancing herself. She did this not out of lack of love, not out of preference, but out of necessity. Their marriage was strong but colored with the normal vicissitudes of two sentient beings sharing themselves. Her husband Mark was faithful, giving, and ever in love. He was bad with money and ruined their credit. But Frances forgave this. The major source of strife in their relationship was that he was prone to imbibe more often than Frances would have liked. He did not turn into a monster, neither a mean nor a happy drunk, but simply an unfamiliar drunk. He was present in the same sense that the sun is present at night, only as a reflection in the light of the moon. From Mark, Frances sourced patience. With her husband, she raised a son, Henry, and another beagle, Walden. Henry taught her the meaning of value. Walden continued the work of a lineage of beagles, teaching Frances the truth.

Henry was a curious and warm little man. Frances took him to the yard to dig up bugs or otherwise explore his natural world. Henry loved Walden. Henry would grab his toy magnifying glass and play detective as Walden sniffed for clues around the house. Frances imagined Henry’s future as a scientist looking through a microscope, or a naturalist looking through a pair of binoculars, or an astronomer looking through a telescope.

A day before his 3rd birthday, Henry was diagnosed with juvenile glaucoma. Left untreated, Henry would go blind. To save his sight, Henry would need corrective surgery. Unfortunately, Frances’ insurance would not cover the $60,000 bill. Her salary as an academic combined with her husband’s freelance writing salary and bad money habits were enough to raise a family and avoid too much financial strife. But their savings were not enough for such a large unexpected cost. In the weeks that followed, Frances did everything she could to raise the money. She started a GoFundMe campaign, asked for donations and loans from friends and relatives, and petitioned the bank for a loan with reasonable terms. But the bank would not lend her enough money on account of bad credit. At the end of her exhausting efforts, she came up with $40,000. Frances thought of Henry’s warm and glowing soul encumbered by a permanent disability. Frances wept for Henry.

One day in January, after putting Henry down for a late afternoon nap, Frances mindlessly meandered to the basement. Walden followed as always. It was winter, so there was no pre-sunset. No serenity in solitude bookended by activity. Just long days that turn to long nights unannounced. She opened and closed boxes, thumbing pictures and memories. She smiled sadly, unable to shake her helplessness and feeling of failure. Walden sniffed as always. He sniffed the gray cement floor of the basement the same way he sniffed the gray earth, reading its story. He bumped a box with his nose, toppled it over, and began to rummage through the contents. Frances thought nothing of it. That was just Walden reading stories that no one else read by storytellers that no one ever heard of.

Abruptly, his sniffing became more audible and drawn out. He had something. Frances put down the photos she had in her hand and calmly walked over to Walden. She reached to grab what he was showing her. Probably an old bag of chips or a discarded container that once held food. She pulled out a small black notebook. Her memories flickered on as if she was a TV antenna grasping for reception. She remembered the black notebook from college and the months shortly thereafter. She read the pages about the stress of her senior thesis, graduation week exploits, beavers listening to fallen trees, and pre-setting suns. And then, like looking at warm room from outside in the snow, she read about her great aunt’s check. A few pages later, she read about transferring that money to a small mutual fund. Accompanying that memory was the long-forgotten account number. She immediately called the brokerage firm. It took them no time to locate the account and confirm her ownership. And there it was. Henry’s remaining balance.