Anything of Value

I found the little black moleskin notebook when I had gone back to check for anything of value. I guess technically I wasn’t supposed to be there, but technically it’s still my house, court rulings be damned. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a good guy. I’m a really good guy. I was an eagle scout and I won the eighth grade junior achievement award, but no way in hell was I going to let her cash in on anything more of value, and I was sure there were some things there that we had failed to remember when splitting the assets with the lawyers and judge; some things that she no doubt had failed to mention, knowing full well that I had a poor memory for that kind of thing.

That little black journal. She was always leaving journals all over the place - flowery ones, big ones, small ones, cheap ones, expensive ones. They were almost as annoyingly prevalent as her sketchbooks, and she was always filling these journals with words. After snooping in one or two a little after we were married I’d given up worrying about what she was writing about. Poetry never interested me much, and even her normal day to day entries read like poetry. Impressive yes, but her words gave me a queasy discomfort I couldn’t quite put my finger on, like a punch in the gut after chugging beer and a strawberry milkshake. It was a feeling that lingered. It seemed like her beautiful words and images were saying something not beautiful about me, even though I wasn’t even mentioned. So I gave up snooping in her journals. Journals are private anyway, and I’m a good guy.

But that little moleskin journal for some reason caught my attention immediately. It was sitting on the nightstand in the bedroom, our bedroom, next to her grandmother’s quaint spindle double bed that now replaced our California-king-size waterbed. I sat on the bed and flipped the journal open to the first page and read what she had written in her weirdly artistic handwriting

"Sometimes life crashes over me smashing

Me open against stone cliffs until I have to let go.

Then the radiance that had sheltered within this shattered heart shines out like

A silvery sliver of hope in a tumultuous storm tossed world.

I am so alive

I need nothing else "

I almost chucked the notebook into the trash but something inspired me to hold onto it and look again. The next page listed dates and odd names, nonsensical phrases and numbers - some with dollar signs. This was definitely more interesting. I knew she had to be hiding something from me financially. It didn’t make sense that she was able to stay afloat during the divorce. I was barely making it and I had steady work. I gazed at the page mystified. What the hell was this?

2/28 Bellinger-Quinn Faun at Dawn $2345 transferred 1226

3/15 Bellinger-Quinn Soma $3863 transferred 1226

3/22 Zoe & Finch Willowgate $2573 transferred 1226

Baffled, I leafed through five more pages similar to the first and found the last entry in the book:

5/23 Janine Bateman The Willie Series $20,000 cash

The Willie Series. A thought occurred to me and I wandered into the hall to the top of the staircase and looked down the wall. The four pictures that my wife had painted of our first son, Willie, were not hanging in their usual places along the staircase wall. I hadn’t even noticed on the way up. I walked down a couple steps, leaned against the banister and looked at the faint outlines where the pictures had been. I tried to remember exactly what they looked like.

I knew they had been full of color, and Willie had been depicted in a surreal kind of way at the swing on the big oak tree out back. I think each picture might have been at a different season and different stages in his life but I couldn’t quite remember any details. I do remember his eyes in each, large and kind of haunting and inquisitive. They were the only real thing about the paintings, and they gave me that punch in the gut feeling, so I never had paid attention to them, just like I never paid attention to any of her other paintings. I had never understood her obsession with painting. She had taken a dinky little course at the Y one Saturday when she was expecting Willie and suddenly she was an "artist". She spent a ton of money on supplies. I tried to argue with her about this but she would always ask me to show her how much I’d spent on hockey and golf and sports tickets that month. The bitch always knew how to shut me up, but at least sports were active and you were doing something. Smearing paint onto a canvas was useless, did nothing for anyone.

I looked down at the notebook in my hand and leafed through the pages again. Most of the entries listed either Zoe & Fritch or Bellinger-Quinn. I googled Bellinger-Quinn and the first thing that came up was Bellinger-Quinn Art Dealer in New York City. So she was selling her paintings? “1226,” that must be part of the bank account number where she was receiving payment. Who the hell would pay so much money for pictures, especially her pictures? I looked at the last entry again.

5/23 Janine Bateman The Willie Series $20,000 cash

Was this the Janine Bateman? Janine Arison Bateman? Wife of Jonathan Bateman? The state senator? The owner of the Arison estate east of town? Did she actually buy those creepy paintings for five grand a piece? I looked again at the blanks on the wall then back at the notebook. The date said 5/23. That was yesterday. If she had really paid cash that meant it might actually be here. I glanced at my watch. I had at least twenty minutes before I had to clear out. I mean the house legally wasn’t mine anymore, so I really wasn’t supposed to be there. My date for getting everything out that I wanted had passed over a month ago and so now technically this was all hers. What a waste.

I headed back to the bedroom and carefully opened her socks and underwear drawer, her favorite stash for cash or presents that she didn’t want the kids to find. Amazingly the drawer held only socks and her familiar underwear in semi disarray. I perused the rest of the room, opened every drawer, looked through everything in the closet. I even checked under the mattress.

I was running out of time. I tried to think like her, but that was the problem wasn’t it? Her thoughts were never anything normal. I checked the bathroom, the kitchen, her paper-piled desk. Nothing. I walked back to the kitchen island. Often she would toss things there whenever she first came in from anywhere. I looked it over carefully; under and in the large wooden fruit bowl full of apples, oranges, banana and kiwi. I looked under Willie’s wadded up sweatshirt, and the stack of random seed and art supply catalogs that were sitting next to Willie’s Social Studies textbook, that he had clearly forgotten to put in his backpack that morning. I looked on all the high stools standing at the far end of the island. I checked my watch and leaned into my elbows holding my defeated head in my hands. As I let out a sigh, I noticed the corner of a big manilla envelope sticking out from under Willie’s Social Studies textbook.

I snatched it and peeked inside. Five glorious bundles of Ben Franklins peeked back at me. Now this was something of value! I hesitated. Could I really just take it? I’m a good guy. I’m not a criminal or anything. I put the envelope back on the counter.

But man that twenty grand would go a long way to appeasing my girlfriend, who kept hounding me about the credit cards being maxed out and not having any money for her wine coolers and eyeliner. I could also pay my late hockey dues and enter the round robin tournament in Toronto next month with my hockey club. With this money I could even bring my woman along and we could hit the Woodbine Casino. I mean, what the hell was my ex going to do with this money anyway? She already was getting a ton of child support from me. She’d probably just fritter it on art stuff or crap for the kids to make sure they like her more than me. I picked up the envelope. Besides, those pictures had been mine too. They were of my kid after all. She had painted them on canvasses and with paints that were bought with my money. I tossed the little black notebook onto the counter and walked out with the envelope. It had definitely been worth taking the time off to come when I knew she wouldn’t be here.

Or so I thought. I didn’t know that Willie had set up the trail cam that I had bought him for his birthday on the oak tree facing the back door. I should have taken it the week before when I went to scarf anything of value then. Those things aren’t cheap and I had gotten him a nice one. I hadn’t taken it though. I’d left it sitting on his desk because I had given it to him, and I’m a good guy.