Reflections - Sleepless

Auditor Hats - Carleen's. Sandi's, & Janet's

I admit. I’m not a horror story fan. I need my sleep.

When I accepted the group leader role in Meadville Vicinity Pennwriters eight years ago this month, I didn’t expect to lose sleep over the task. But at the October 2021 meeting, Jackie read the beginning of her zombie apocalypse. The story’s main character inched through her neighbor’s dark, deserted house. Creepy. Unfortunately, in Jackie’s November submission, a blood-streaked puppy popped out beside his zombie-massacred master.

My armpits dripped, wetting me to my waist. Other writers grinned over the ZOOM screen. “You really captured this,” they echoed each other.

She had indeed. 

That night, unseen zombies hiding in dream shadows haunted me. I twisted the bed covers rolling myself into a mummy. Recordings of Rosamund Pilcher’s stories, my lullaby and soul soother, couldn’t drive the zombies away. Each time I drifted off, the image of the bloody puppy trotted through my mind and woke me.  

Jackie disliked ZOOM meetings and dropped out of the group. Though a leader’s goal is to build membership, I slept more comfortably without her chapters.

Other writings didn’t disturb my sleep. Memoir, science fiction, science fantasy, personal essays, and poems. No nightmares.

Naima’s chapter-by-chapter submission of her alternative historical fiction novel with a romantic subplot, The Name I Chose, delighted me. She craftily wove revolution, cholera, genetics, and justice into action-packed adventures. Tension built. Fireworks exploded. Strangers lurked. And always, one character or another found a piano to play.

At the end of 2022, Naima started a new novel she called Coffinland. I naively anticipated another pleasant story. In her December installment, Lowcountry slaves and masters wait in the Charleston Harbor to disembark with the coffins in their boats. Authorities grant permission for the people—not the coffins. A character mumbling, “Miss Elisabeth is truly dead,” and no tender scenes alerted me.

Could Naima’s story be another zombie apocalypse like Jackie’s? Perhaps it would resemble the Dracula movie PBS broadcast decades ago which haunted me for weeks. Arms clasped against my sides, I hid the damp spots from dripping armpits. “Naima, is this a historical romance?”

“No, it’s a historical horror novel.”

When Naima sent me her January submission, I emailed back. “Is it scary?”

“It's not scary til maybe the last two sentences, but even then it's not a blood-and-guts monster attack. Just an 'oh no' moment that would make a horror fan turn the page to the next chapter.”

Reassured, I read to the end. “Anika was just reaching for the crate when something inside it pounded on its sides.”

I skipped the next chapter. 

Naima kindly informed me which chapters might scare me. I didn’t lose any sleep after reading her otherwise captivating novel—until February 28, 2024.

That Wednesday she emailed. “I attached March's submission here. I don't think you'll find it scary. It has a few items that could be scary, but the encounter is mostly humorous.” 

I raced through the chapter laughing and forgetting to jot suggested revisions. Anika searches for the vampire Malinde in a hashish fog behind a brothel. Running on legs which behave like rubbery stilts, Anika falls onto her butt and drops her switchblade pistol. The vampire zips and zooms as mist in crazy circles. A drunk client escapes the vampire so she bites his chosen prostitute instead. Blood gushes from her neck. Anika rushes in and follows a brown kitten, the vampire in new form.

Though I didn’t expect nightmares to disturb me that night, they did.

Visions of gushing blood or Malinde’s canines extending as she climbed the client’s chest to reach his throat hadn’t haunted me.

The real horror? Five sixty-four. I woke at 2:17 a.m. troubled by incorrect liability withholdings.

The auditors—Sandi, Carlene, and I—had sat at the five-foot long, oval kitchen table for three hours February 28. We’d nearly balanced the township finances that had challenged us since February 5.

Carleen, in her first auditing year, tugged at her Sprang knit cap—“bling” from the company where she works in shipping—and sucked a lollipop. We’d found transactions coded incorrectly, items omitted from the ledger, and bank accounts out of sync with the QuickBook entries—fretting fodder and sleepless nights for me, but Carleen shrugged.  “We get a flat tire, pump it up, and move on.” Carleen also gently took the messed up ledger pages I groaned over, reordered them, and handed them back.

 

Strewn Paper

Sandi and I exchanged many thankful smiles for Carleen’s positive attitude and accurate calculation when our fingers missed numbers on our calculators. 

And February 28 Sandi pointed her pencil at me, sinking under the weight of not balancing and not knowing if we’d balance in another moment or a couple of weeks. “Go to bed. Don’t think about any of this.” She waved the pencil over the mess we’d—well mostly I had—created with ledger and municipal report sheets strewn across the table. “Tomorrow don’t talk to Kathy. Don’t work on any of this until I come back.” She stared down her petite nose. “You need a break.”

I gulped. Sandi, thoughtful to the point of wearing a mask so delicate-butterfly me wouldn’t catch her sore throat and laryngitis, took on a mom roll at times. She did give good advice.  “Okay. First, I’ll put the mess away.” 

Brushing my teeth, however, my mind misbehaved. Five dollars and sixty-four cents popped up.

Sandi had frowned at her notion of balancing the general account. If we subtracted the liabilities, we would only be $5.66 off, an amount we couldn’t round away. The $5.66 amount reverberated for me. And the brush swishing on enamel broke the reason loose. The liabilities the former secretary-treasurer had taken out incorrectly totaled $5.64. We’d disregarded those because they were mistakes. If we put them back in . . .

Defying Sandi, I spit toothpaste, checked the figures, and dialed.

As soon as Sandi answered, I blurted, “I know you told me not to work on the audit, but while I brushed my teeth, the solution popped up into my head.”

A half moan, half giggle floated through the ear piece.

“If we keep the incorrect withholdings from Matthew’s paycheck, we balance within two cents. I found the extra two cents listed in Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation, a QuickBooks round.

“Go to bed. We’ll look at it tomorrow.”

I did go to bed. Exhausted, I even fell asleep. My mind, conflicted about using a mistake, opened the sixty-four page tiny print ledger and searched for another missed 5.66 amount or the equivalent. The search jerked me awake. Reading The Man Who Counted didn’t make me drowsy. I nestled into pillows. Patrick Tull’s resonant narration of Cadfael mysteries couldn’t lull me back to sleep. I readjusted the covers. The geothermal furnace fan whistled through vents. Snores from Spence and Charlie vibrated the silence.

Morning finally arrived. I dragged myself out of bed and planned to follow Sandi’s advice—concentrate on house chores and write comments for Pennwriter stories—until Sandi returned on Leap Day evening. Carleen, a young grandma, would be away cheering for her granddaughters at their volleyball game. 

But the phone rang. Kathy, a township supervisor, asked, “How’s it going?”

I told Kathy more than she could absorb about three amounts totaling $2.82 listed incorrectly in the ledger under unemployment compensation and again in federal withholding, which is a match for social security and medicare, not unemployment compensation.

“Wait.” Her practical voice interrupted me. “Did any of this affect what Matthew got paid?”

“No, his check was correct.”

“So the money was just paid by the township?”

“Yes.”

“And the total amount?”

“Five dollars and sixty-four cents.”

“That’s a small amount. If it makes the whole budget balance, leave it in. Just document it well in case we get audited.”

Of course Kathy was right. If the secretary-treasurer had put the money in liabilities, then we should report the transaction. Blunder or not. Duh. 

“Thanks, Kathy.” And I sighed loud enough for Kathy to hear it three miles away without the phone.

When Sandi arrived that evening, I admitted I had talked with Kathy. “But she called me.”

Sandi smirked. We included the liabilities numbers we’d taken out. The general finances balanced. Wiggling eyebrows at each other, we tapped calculator numbers and computed dollars and cents for figures in a five by three row table. Balanced! We redid the fifteen figure table rounded to dollars. 

“It balances!” I texted Carleen at the volleyball game.

“Hip hip hooray!!” binged back.

Sandi and I rounded seven pages of coded expenses. Those figures, rounded up or down, had to match the totals on the table—trickier than it sounds.

After three hours and fifteen minutes of tapping calculator numbers, we succeeded.

Sandi grabbed her coat and hat. “We’re done.” Her yawn ended in a satisfied smile. “I won’t be back for auditing, but I’ll see you next Friday for Fox’s rummage sale.”

Papers scooped tucked away, I collapsed into bed. 

I slept soundly until 2:20 a.m. when I dreamed of an elephant. His wrinkly gray trunk reached over the heads of unseen people, and his “fingers” grasped their hats. Waking, I scribbled the elephant image on the notepad beside my bed. The elephant dream signaled the end of sleepless February. Audit nightmares had terminated and writing suggestions resumed. The elephant also congratulated me for tolerating Naima’s funny-scary chapter and for balancing the township finances with his HATS OFF. 

 

Lenten Rose Planted in Memory of Nancy Musser

Nancy had been French Creek Township’s lead auditor for decades. She was also my mentor and friend. Her rose bloomed the third day of the audit and continued blooming, a reminder her lessons and spirit were with us.