The weather was a stunning diamond in the midst of the numerical turmoil whirring in my mind. It was a beautiful day, with a strange wind gently traipsing through 1910 London, but it could very well have been snowing and it wouldn’t matter to me. Wind will be wind and I figured I had best leave such uncontrollable events to themselves. That doesn’t figure out right, I furrowed my brow in thought. Why would they come to reclaim all the funds? I didn’t realize how brisk my pace had become until I was forced to stop right outside the sturdy soldier of my house.
It took the strongest tug of willpower to finally face with a cheerily annoyed grin the beaming boy behind me. All he had uttered was an exclamation of the dreamy clouds that encircled our heads, but I felt as though he had insulted my brilliant funk, kept kindled my entire trek homeward from Birkbeck bank. I didn’t notice that he was sweeping our doorstep. I nodded in an agreement that I didn’t mean, and muttered something like, “run along lad.” His pitchy reply was drowned out by my attempt to loudly rattle the door in a slam behind me.
“Michael!” Like the cloudlike cry of a doe, my wife’s voice appeared in my eyes before her silhouette did. Her exclamation was her defining weak puppy emotions that are constantly in quiet exuberance. She loved me as a child loves anyone, and I loved her as a beautiful soul. I loved the way she always woke on weekends by the time the dew had melted off our windowsill, but with the attitude that it was half past eight. She stumbled down the polished wooden stairs with uncombed russet knots on her head. She made her black current tea with order, and sat down none too gracefully with her puzzles, sighing, “Salutations”. The day I made Charlotte Pearson my wife, Mrs. Charlotte Wood, was the day of the most tranquility my mind has ever felt.
I embraced her full-bellied figure and rubbed my long, money-worn fingers over her swollen stomach. I let my brain slumber into her warm bony shoulders and clean-smelling hair. I let her murmurs, about hiring a young vacationing boy from America to help around the house, caress my ears for their sound, not their content. I wanted to melt my quandaries in her pores.
Over dinner I unleashed my worries about the survival of Birkbeck bank when the public was making so many runs for their deposits. I knew my dove didn’t understand a word of it, but the minor nods of her head showed more intelligence than she dared let on. She had made dinner for me, which meant a lot because of her increasing tiredness with the pregnancy. As she collected the plate from in front of me, I knew why she had gone to so much trouble.
“Michael, darling, I have been feeling so faint, and I fear the baby will come in a day or two. I want you to- if it would be convenient- could you stay with me tomorrow?” I thought that perhaps she was pulling my leg, trying to retrieve a reaction from me so I could roar with violent laughter and forget my predicaments. I raised my head to gaze at her, lifting it as if I were pulling myself through water, and saw that she genuinely needed me home. It was a stain of tears in her eyes, and I took in what I had overlooked before.
Her frock, a loose-fitting drippy cloth in all places but where it warped and stretched over the smiling sun of her belly. In my mind the fabric suddenly grew dark with a scarlet leering glare at me, but it faded, and there was my beautiful wife with my child. I saw how weak she was, how her moth wing lashes sealed her lids for a moment longer than they should, when she blinked up at me.
Still, I had my bank, my wonderful Birkbeck Bank, my home with its lacquered smell and shining walls. I loved the way I opened the vaults and could hear the well-oiled and hardy click of the bar as it unlocked, and I loved the way the tuppence coins dripped between my fingers like the silken smooth bristles of horsehair. I pictured the scenes I had been watching unfold for the past week: one suspicious customer with his folded comb-over marched in under the stupor of rumor, and demanded his entire account in his hands where he knew it safe.
