The Talented Miss Farwell Read online

  What the secretaries didn’t know, what no one in town knew, was the real reason Ken couldn’t stop running. Filing for Chapter 9 would be everything he hated, asking for help, abandoning obligations, announcing to the state the full extent of their failure. His failure. But—he reasoned—what other option did they have? The town was teetering under a massive debt load. Fire and police pension funds had gone unpaid for two years. Public project bills were way past due. Vendors had been ignored, salaries barely covered. Fees were at their highest, while almost all services had been slashed or dropped.

  “Stop,” he begged Becky one night when she handed him piece after piece of paper documenting the full picture of their finances. “We don’t need bankruptcy, we need a bulldozer. Nuke it all, and start over.”

  “It’s always the darkest before the dawn,” Becky said, getting up for more coffee.

  They had stayed late at the office to prepare to meet the Springfield lawyer Ken had hired to put forward their case. What Ken didn’t know was how much Becky had done of her own preparation. Over the past few weeks she had feverishly downloaded every piece of relevant case law. She dug up a connection at the Sidley Austin law firm, and had plied him with Negroni cocktails until the man spilled everything he knew about the hypothetical situation she presented him. Using a fake name she’d cold-called legal professors, journalists, and public policy experts. All of it coalescing into one clear conclusion: their case was bad.

  When pressed for odds that a lawyer would agree to file on their behalf her Sidley connection had mused, “Thousand to one?”

  Thousand to one. Becky could work with those odds. Now she just had to stay close to Ken as it all played out.

  If only Ken wouldn’t take the budget so much to heart. Like a personal shortcoming, or a fall from grace. It was just numbers. Shifted around from screen to screen, page to page. Sometimes Becky really hated how downcast these meetings made him; he’d get quiet and sad, mumbling one-syllable responses to any conversation she attempted. Jesus Christ, he wasn’t the one simultaneously in a weeks-long four-way auction for Christo sketches that had gone from low to high six figures. He didn’t have to juggle three phone lines, four secret credit cards, and a cover bank account so active that a branch manager once flagged it for potential fraudulent activity, sending Becky into a swirl of panicky action. Compared to that, Ken was practically on permanent vacation.

  “The only other thing is . . .” She hesitated to bring it up at this point in the evening, but they might as well face the worst. “The riverwalk.”

  Ken put his face in his hands. “I know. I fucking know.”

  Pierson’s beloved riverwalk had been degrading for years, decades even, and everyone involved had a different idea of how to fix it. They’d had engineers from local colleges run studies, they’d blocked off sections and done a quick-fix pavement smoothing, they’d priced out retaining walls and girders and steel mesh contraptions. Some helpful resident had posted to his blog a video of crumbling chunks of the sloped wall rolling down into the Rock River. At last count it had over nine hundred views.

  “Maybe we can get it taken care of before filing,” Ken mumbled. If granted bankruptcy, a new project of that size would be nearly impossible to get approved.

  “We still need DNR’s report,” Becky reminded him. No new work could take place, even if they had the money, until the state finished testing for erosion and sediment control, and the fish people reported on how the fish would handle it.

  Ken moaned some more curses into his hands and Becky dropped the whole subject.

  All summer Ken insisted they leave by noon on Sundays so he could fit in a long run with his Springfield club before dark. He’d signed up for a half marathon on Labor Day and spent hours (it seemed like) in the car telling Becky how many miles he was scheduled to run every weekend from now until then. Becky let him ramble on, keeping quiet about the fact that she had no idea how long a marathon was, let alone half of one.

  Their lawyer, Cynthia Merron, a black woman in her fifties, specialized in large-firm bankruptcy but had agreed to take on their case because she was intrigued by the challenge of whether a municipality filing was even possible. As Becky expected, she spent a lot of time describing how Illinois law was ambiguous on this point. According to the Illinois constitution, municipalities were prohibited from filing for bankruptcy, but a few downstate villages and suburbs had managed it recently, mostly because—as Cynthia put it—they’d been small enough to fly under the radar.

  “We’re small,” Ken insisted. “We’re that small!”

  Cynthia exchanged a look with Becky. “Uh huh. Well, often it just depends on what evidence exists.”

  On that point, Becky was ready. She was the one who had prepared their documents for Cynthia, choosing exactly which financials to provide. Throughout the whole of this process she’d be the one to manage the flow of information, not that Ken had ever suggested otherwise. But Becky knew the success of this venture depended on her ability to thread the needle between the appearance of full compliance and the reality of what she needed to conceal.

  Cynthia also encouraged them to continue to press lawmakers for funds. Their two contacts at the capitol were state rep Hugh Forbes, who sent an underling as often as he deigned to meet with them, and someone named Willa from the comptroller’s branch office. Willa—short, white, and too young to have any authority—listened to Ken’s spiels with aggressively noticeable attention, her eyes pinned to his mouth. Becky didn’t bother. Unless they got a face-to-face with Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes himself, it was all wasted air. Ken nevertheless prepared for these pitches to Willa as if they were in the fight for his life: color-coded tabs on obsessively rendered budget reports, photographs of every stalled project or worn-out public area in Pierson, not-so-subtle references to “our service member citizens” (he’d found out Willa’s husband was an Army Reserves captain).

  On the drives home Ken liked to repeat his best lines, in the same aggrieved tones, as if Becky hadn’t heard the performance less than thirty minutes ago. It was 182 miles from Springfield to Pierson. Becky could do it in close to two and a half hours, although she knew Ken felt better when they kept it at the speed limit.

  The week after July Fourth they managed to catch Rep Forbes on his way out to lunch. Ken chose to focus on pensions, which—Becky thought later—was a bad move.

  Hugh Forbes only laughed when Ken showed him the numbers. “You all don’t get the news up in Pierson? Tribune’s reporting two hundred billion, that’s billion with a B, total debt.”

  Becky went a little dizzy from that billion-with-a-B.

  “Because of . . . pensions?” Ken asked, in disbelief.

  “State and local, all retirement benefits.” Forbes pushed their folder back across the table. “We’re neck-deep and that’s for sure. You should know there’s a move to cut costs from all downstate school systems. I’m not saying I’d go that way, but it’s what I’ve heard. Bring some accountability back to local governments.”

  Ken sat back, stunned.

  “What do you suggest?” Becky cut in, quickly. “We’re underwater on both bonds and retiree benefits.”

  Hugh held up both his big hands. “Pray? Go back in time and cast a spell on Cook County Democrats? Because those chickens are home to roost.”

  That night a tractor-trailer derailed on the Stevenson and Becky and Ken sat in traffic for over an hour. Ken was so down he didn’t even complain about Becky playing the new Brad Paisley on repeat. Becky, though she tried to hide it, was elated. Who could pay too much close attention to their exploration of bankruptcy when the whole state was a financial mess? Forget about the national news—financial crisis, the Great Recession. Things were so bad in Illinois that their particular small-time disaster was like one star collapsing into the heat of a supernova. Who could tell which flames consumed what?

  Ken ran eight miles for the first time. He ran four the next day and said it was harder than that eig
ht. He got something called plantar fasciitis in his left foot—Becky refused to find out exactly what it was—and spent most of both drives with his shoe off, rubbing the sole of his foot against a golf ball on the floor of the car.

  Cynthia told them one colleague advised her to pursue the filing, quick and dirty, and hope to jam it through based on speed alone. Another colleague thought it best to work slowly and carefully, testing the waters at every step. A third thought they had no case whatsoever.

  They owed Cynthia $14,000 by mid-July.

  On Sunday, July 23, it was still in the mid-nineties when they arrived at the Hampton Inn after dinner. Ken went down to the gym but was back upstairs to their adjoining rooms right away. Rolling brownouts had caused fuse damage and all the electrical equipment was shut down until further notice. He looked so glum Becky couldn’t even laugh. She shut her book—Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel—which had been mailed from a friend in London months before it would be released in the US. “Let’s go have a drink in the air conditioning.”

  “Beer is carbo-loading,” Ken said. A slight smile flickered.

  By 1 am they were lolling on the strip of grass behind the Hampton Inn parking lot. Ken had convinced the closing-up bartender to give them to-go cups of watery beer. Becky couldn’t believe Ken could stand to drink it, warm and flat as it was by now, but he’d finished his and was starting on hers. Then again, he’d been drinking with intention and focus all evening.

  “You’re going to feel the hurt tomorrow. I mean later today.” She lay back and looked up at the night sky. Orion’s Belt, she’d always been able to find that first. Big Dipper, of course. Little Dipper. Which one pointed to the North Star? Becky raised a wavering arm—she’d had more than her usual too—and tried to trace a line from the cup’s long handle to the right star, the way her father had taught her to do as a girl.

  Ken put his hand on her knee. She let it stay there, on her jeans. Felt the soft grass under her bare feet and waited to see what would happen.

  For a long moment he said nothing. He was lying on his side, facing her, propped up on one elbow. Big-wheelers revved and rumbled in the dark. At last he said, “I see that I’m going to regret this, but I’m not there yet.”

  “Maybe you won’t even remember.” She matched her tone to his: calm, light.

  “Now’s when you tell me I’m a fool.”

  “You’re a fool,” she said softly. But he didn’t remove his hand. One of his fingers began a small circle on her knee, again and again.

  “I always wondered why you never found someone. I think about it a lot. I think about you a lot. I always have.”

  So many women would kill for this moment, Becky thought. She could see why, objectively. Ken’s throat, that hollow of skin where his top shirt button was open. The heat coming off his body, different in quality from the night’s sticky humidity, but a part of that too. His sweetness, his beauty.

  He leaned over and then he was kissing her, a sweet shock that had so much right, so much precision, that for a moment Becky kissed him back. Just for a moment, though. When she collected herself, made the micro-movements that would disengage, Ken pulled away at once. “Fuck,” he breathed out. Rolled onto his back, away from her. “I’m so sorry. Jesus.”

  “It’s been a long night,” she said, wondering if she could make a quick exit to her room. “All those drinks, all the stress recently . . .” She wasn’t sorry he’d kissed her but she really didn’t want him to spin it into a huge drama.

  “Becky. You don’t need to say a word.”

  So she didn’t. Eventually he pushed himself to standing and held out a hand to help her up. They went without speaking into the hotel and their separate rooms.

  Ken pushed back or rescheduled the next three Monday meetings in Springfield. Becky drove out once by herself and spent three hours in a side office with Cynthia’s law clerk going over spreadsheets, invoices, and receipts, with no visible results. Without Ken, she paid for a night at the Radisson, hoping it would be even one notch more luxurious than the godforsaken Hampton Inn and its dry cereal buffet. No appreciable difference, though.

  Labor Day was windy and rainy but the whole office, and a good part of the town, turned out to watch Ken run his race in neighboring Sterling. Becky stood near the finish line, which had also been the starting line, for over two hours as one of the bookkeepers talked loudly on her cell phone the whole time. When Ken finally approached, smiling in pain, his twins burst onto the race course from under the barricade and sprinted the last stretch with him, pulling him along by the arms. Everyone from Pierson cheered so loudly they drowned out the announcer calling out finishers’ names and times.

  Becky kept a respectful distance while Ken bent over, hands to knees, his face a dark shade of red. When he finally stood up he started giving sweaty hugs and high-fives to the crowd of well-wishers, most of whom had contributed to the cancer research charity his training had raised money for. Becky, who had donated an anonymous thousand to the fund, made sure Ken saw her, gave him a thumbs-up, and headed for her car.

  Ken took one week off from running after the race but the word was he’d already signed up for another one. Although his right hip flexor was tight.

  They returned to Springfield on Sunday, September 23. Shortly after they arrived Becky holed up in her Hampton Inn room with a dossier about her newest obsession, a series of encaustics made to look like ancient funeral paintings: images and lists of provenance, show reviews and similar holdings. Ken thumped around in his adjoining room, but his door never opened. Was he skipping his running? She picked up her head and listened: a squeak of bedsprings and the low murmur of the TV.

  When they met for dinner, green curry at Little Saigon, she held back from asking. Ever since the night he’d kissed her, Becky held back from everything, giving Ken the space and time to lead the way forward.

  “Bailed on my run today,” he admitted, poking at his curry.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Stupid. I just felt lazy. Now I wish I’d gone.”

  “You can get it in tomorrow.”

  The TV in the top corner of the restaurant played soundless images of the Bears at training camp, huge men in helmets but no pads, moving easily through drills on a sunny field. They were the only ones in the restaurant, and thankfully the owner and server, knowing they were regulars, left them alone.

  “I don’t know.” Ken glanced up and flashed one of his old smiles, a real one. He looked rumpled, as if he’d fallen asleep this afternoon. “I may need to dial back the running. Got a little out of control there.”

  “No!” Becky exclaimed. He gave a short laugh.

  “Also I’ve been thinking. We need to tell Cynthia we’re not going to pursue this.”

  “Really.” She’d been waiting for this, for him to realize the futility. And yet, the defeat in his tired face stopped any feeling of triumph.

  “We have to call it. It’s adding insult to injury, these bills. She can’t even give us a guarantee we’d make it to a hearing!” Ken shook his head. “I’ll own it. This was my fantasy, a clean slate. But it’s irresponsible to continue, when the odds are so bad.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  Ken shrugged, staring up at the TV.

  “I’m happy to call Cynthia, if you want.”

  Was he actually watching the game? Becky was antsy to get confirmation: this was over, thank god. Tomorrow, they would show up again to Representative Forbes, go through the ritual of asking (begging) for funds, get told no, and drive home. Maybe soon they could move on from this whole Springfield folly.

  “Ken?”

  “Yeah, fine!” he burst out.

  From where he was leaning on the delivery counter with a newspaper, Little Saigon’s owner looked up at them over his glasses.

  “All right,” Becky said quietly.

  Ken tossed his balled-up napkin on the table, a kind of apology. They got the check.

  The next morning Hugh Forbes gave them n
one of the false assurances of the comptroller aides and Becky had to admit this was refreshing.

  Ken had decided that the environmentalism angle might move Hugh when it came to the riverwalk. He walked him patiently through data on forecasted water levels, and how getting ahead of global warming’s effects by shoring up the riverwalk would not only be a major infrastructure win, it would look good to voters in advance of the midterm election. Hugh listened without comment while demolishing a cherry Danish. Becky sighed and got herself a blueberry muffin. At least they’d beat the traffic home.

  Finally Hugh swept the photos of the crumbling riverwalk paths into a pile, handed the pile back to Ken. “It’s just not there, friends. Possibly after midterms, if we can get movement across the aisle. I hate to say you made the trip in vain, because of course I enjoy the chance to visit.” He brushed crumbs off his tie.

  Becky filed away these comments, these mannerisms. The subtle glance he gave to the assistants: Wrap it up, let’s move on. She knew what it was like to say no to budget requests for hours on hours too. For a moment she saw them all in an endless chain of asking and denying: federal to state to local.

  One of the assistants passed Hugh an open file folder and pointed to something there with his pen.

  “Hm? Oh, I see. Well, at least we got some signage for you, back in mid-August.”

  Ken laughed. “Those stop signs for the access roads off 52? No, still missing since . . . when was the prom, Becky? The kids had some kind of bet about who could pull down the most.”

  Becky smiled reflexively. But her mouth had gone cold and dry.

  Hugh squinted at the paper. “Fifty-eight hundred, deposit received August 15. Signage.”

  Ken was relaxed, holding Becky’s gaze, Can you believe this guy? “Well, I hate to break it to you, but we’ve had nothing for roads and repair since—”