I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MERCHANDISE-“Become What You Are” (Field Recordings, April 17, 2014).

I feel like I’ve heard of Merchandise, but I can’t be sure.  Especially given their complex history:

Merchandise got its start on the Tampa punk and hardcore scene, then got weirder as artier influences like krautrock took hold. As its sound became harder to pin down, the band inspired an 18-month bidding war between record labels: This year, Merchandise finally signed with 4AD, and adventurous new material has begun to trickle out.

For this Field Recording [Merchandise Sprawls Out In The Sunlight] singer Carson Cox and guitarist Dave Vassalotti — a configuration Cox describes as “some component of Merchandise” — held court for an informal session at Friends & Neighbors,

Before he starts singing a bird goes squawking by, Cox says, “The bird’s on backup vocals.”

As the song starts, it’s acoustic guitar and gentle crooning.  Then Vassalotti’s  electric guitar powers in.  It’s so much louder but the acoustic is perfectly audible–great mixing!  For all that build up of punk and krautrock, this proves to be a pretty straightforward folk song with buzzy guitars.

The end builds nicely with the two of them rocking out.  With the ending guitar solo, the song wends it way to over 9 minutes long.

Though it usually keeps its songs to reasonable lengths, Merchandise also knows how to sprawl out: Its new single, “Begging for Your Life/In the City Light,” spans a whopping 14 minutes. So it’s no surprise that even a truncated version of the group would be capable of wringing an epic out of such a casual environment.

[READ: June 2018] The Misfortune of Marion Palm

Because I have been trying to empty my drafts folder of all of the New Yorker and Harper’s stories that have been cluttering it for two years, I have not read that many books this year.  I’m usually good for 100+ books a year, but this year it will be closer to about 30, if that.

I’ve also read some of these books quite a while ago, so my memory isn’t as fresh as it should be.

I’m not exactly sure why I read this book.  The title was intriguing–“misfortune” is a rather compelling noun.  Plus the chapters are almost all around 3 pages.  But I think it was the very premise that was so fascinating.

Marion Palm is a Brooklyn Heights wife and mother.  She works at her children’s (fancy, expensive) school and was a devoted, if suffering wife.  But as the book opens, she is on the lam with $40,000 cash in her pockets.  She said goodbye to her children but did not say goodbye to her husband.

This is all questionable behavior.  What is even more questionable is that she said goodbye to her two girls (aged 8 and 13) in a diner and then ran out on the bill.  It was cash only and all of her cash was in her knapsack and she didn’t want her girls to see it.  So she left them there.

Her husband, Nathan Palm is a writer.  He is pretty oblivious to life around him. When the doorbell rings, he waits for Marion to answer it.  But tonight she isn’t there.  At the door are their daughters, “looking sad and abandoned.”

Where did Marion get all of this money?  She embezzled it from the beloved school.  She is an expert on women who embezzle:

Women who embezzle are not apologetic, but they may cry when caught. When women who embezzle embezzle from churches, they fall to their knees and pray. They do not pray for forgiveness. They pray for safety and protection. Women who embezzle from offices do not cry but cross their arms and stiffly smile, as if to say, What did you expect? They’ve worked at the office for twenty years and are seen as a piece of furniture. A filing cabinet. They may be eager to be caught. They may want credit for their greed and ingenuity.

Marion Palm has embezzled $180,000 over the years from her daughters’ private school in Brooklyn, where she works part-time in the development office. Her daughters’ quarterly tuition payments are paid by her husband’s family trust. She’s never seen his money and so it does not exist.

The school is very expensive and when it needed immediate renovations (the back stories of Marion, Nathan and the school are wonderful) Nathan’s endowment went a long way to paying for it.

Marion spent most of the money on her family (Nathan really had no idea about their money) but she saved $40,000 for herself.  When her supervisor (for whom Marion did all the real work) panicked because the IRS was snooping, it was time for Marion to go.

Nathan panics too, of course and starts calling all around but know one knows her whereabouts.  She told the girls that she was visiting Shelley.  Nathan knows that Marion hasn’t talked to her sister in some time, so that seems unlikely.

Marion is prepared. She has a fake ID and plans to go to “a Midwestern city.”  But when she goes up to the window to buy a ticket, the counter person says she can use the machine.  When Marion reveals she has cash only she realizes that no one uses cash anymore and she is becoming something of a spectacle.  So she decided to do a an unexpected thing–she decides to stay in Brooklyn–but in an area she’s never been to before.

Meanwhile, things are happening to the children as well.  And not just Marion’s children.  In Brooklyn, a boy who goes to a special ed school somehow goes missing. Given his special needs and his predilections, everyone fears the worst.  But a regional manhunt is established.

Since the girls believe (mostly ) that their mother is at their Aunt’s, there is no reason no to go to school.  To act like things are normal.  But things are not really normal.  Ginny,13, stars getting in trouble and getting detentions.  She even starts smoking and flirting with the bad kids. Jane, 8, meanwhile has been turning inwards and losing friends.  There has been some mocking.  So when the kids being a chant on the bus that Jane farted, a boy who claims to have smelt it gets a hearty punch in the face from Jane: “Jane feels good until she feels terrible.”  The only person Jane can talk to anymore is the missing boy.  And she begins to tell him everything.

I like that the story flashes forward to the girls’ adulthood so we know that they survive the story (not that there was any reason to think they wouldn’t, it’s just nice that that option is taken away and everything is fine with them

The only person Nathan can turn to is his old friend Denise.  They have known each other since they were babies.  But their friendship is peculiar.  Like she has never been to his familial house. She is a trust fund artist who smokes and eats what she wants.  Nathan has this weird thing for her that he knows he shouldn’t act on.  Denise arrives and is all business. She asks what Marion took. Nathan shows her (not much).  Then she asks about the basement.

Of course Marion’s family is not the only one to notice she is missing.  The Board of Trustees for whom Marion worked is also well aware of it,  Their conversations about the incident are hilariously written all in dialogue with no attributions.  And everyone proves to be vaguely unreliable with no common sense.

Marion tries to settle down in Brooklyn.  She gets a flat run by a Russian woman, Svetya.  Svetya senses that something is amiss with her and she says she also had an abusive husband and she will keep Marion safe.  She gets Marion a job a cleaning rooms for wealthy Russians.  It turns out that the Russian matriarch who owns her building owns a lot of fancy apartments which wealthy Russian families rent for two weeks a year.  Marion works her tail off but earns a paltry sum for her troubles. This is not how things were supposed to go.

Meanwhile back home Nathan has finally called the cops, and they are (well, one is) suspicious of the details. Nathan seem is too calm, But that could be because Denise comes over almost every day.  And their relationship is changing.  Indeed, despite Nathan’s nerves things are actually starting to look up.  He’s getting good at feeding his children and he has started documenting his successes online.  He’s a single daddy blogger!  He even starts to get a following–sympathetic ears for a successful single father.  But some of them want to know more than he;s willing to share.

Marion meanwhile is unhappy with her situation. There is no way she is going back to the way things were, so she takes the opportunity to do what she is good at.  Stealing money.

But unlike the Board of Trustees, the Russian matriarch might not like that sort of things.  But maybe that detective who is looking for her can help out.

This book moved at a brisk pace and I found myself unable to put it down.  There were many funny components to it and I was happily surprised by the many directions it went in.

And, the ending was actually satisfying.