Mining Dr. Matt
Wanting just a little bit more, Max shakes the box. The end of the bag burps cereal dust across his perfect Cheerios, muting all that delicious topography, and he wonders aloud what just happened. I consider telling him the whole truth: that kinematic sorting of different-sized particles in an agitated column of sediment will result in smaller particles moving downward and larger particles seeming to rise. Of course, that would lead to another truth: that I studied Geology uselessly in college and am only now, after dragging him and his little siblings and their mother away from Boston and down to Wilmington, in pursuit of my writing goals. This is a bit much for 6:15am, so my answer is to throw a sprinkle of fresh O’s on top from a new box.
A writing program drew me here two hundred and eighteen years after America’s first-ever gold rush drew swarms of prospectors to nearby Georgeville, North Carolina. I imagine them descending, hungry, on unsuspecting lode deposits with mules, tools and ambition. I’ve got my laptop.
On my desk, to the right of my laptop, sits an ashtray, a nice wood one that’s never seen any actual ash. To the left of the laptop, two acrylic blocks hold family pictures. In one, my wife Isabel is frozen happily in plastic, with Lucy on her shoulders and Oliver in her lap. There’s a vague urgency hanging around all of them, like either Lucy’s body or mom’s smile is about to slip. Underneath all of this, the pictures and the ashtray and the laptop I’m typing on, my new desk is the oldest thing here, bought to commemorate my second life as a grad student in creative writing and waiting like a sled dog or a blinking cursor for the real work to begin.
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One of the fundamental principles in the study of geology is the law of superposition: the oldest layers in a vertical sequence will be on the bottom, the younger ones on top. Yesterday’s turkey feather proves this, lounging sideways across the top of the ashtray.
I’m getting used to my school email address, where I’m wdg4659. The department sent official correspondence asking wdg4659 if they would like to help a professor scan and copy documents. I didn’t move my family down to Wilmington from Boston to scan and copy documents, so I toss back the offer like a small fish and cast for another. On top of grad school, we moved here for the low cost of living, in-person (but masked) elementary school, a neutral place neither Isabel nor I had ever been to… It’s too much pressure to think we moved down here just for my grad school — can you imagine the pressure?
We could use extra money, so I open another job offer.
“Dr. Matt Grzesiak needs a personal assistant to run errands, pay bills, go to the pharmacy for him while he is in Turkey…”
I look up his website. He is a motivational speaker who speaks several languages. He is an activist, and “removes barriers for those with disabilities.” Nice. The $400 per week compensation would help us a lot, so as I compose my application for a second side gig, I consider mentioning Max.
My son is looking at me from the second acrylic frame on my desk. Should I use him? He was a few months past conception in our wedding pictures; a few months old when we moved back from our teaching jobs in El Salvador to the wilds of Boston; five years old when we replanted here in Wilmington two months ago. He’s named after the little boy in Where the Wild Things Are, and in the desk photo he’s holding up a drawing of a robot and a heart, his afternoon jammies stamping the image like a watermark from the early days of pandemic lockdown.
You can’t tell from the picture, but he’s on the autism spectrum. Some hard things, like rhyming and word play, are easy for him. Some easy things, like getting dressed, are hard. Progress today looks like putting his clothes on, himself, over his pajamas.
Because Dr. Matt uses the phrase on his website, I use it in my application. I mention Max’s “invisible disability.” I picture Dr. Matt helping orphans in Turkey when I open myself up — open my son up, actually. On his website he’s got one of those hands-free microphones that looks pretentious, but I know it must come off when he’s working in the dirt in Turkey. At $400 per week this is surely a coveted gig, and I reweigh the betrayal of my son’s private condition against this number, and consider it a small price to pay for such a valuable connection.
The next day I get the job. He sends an approval email, followed by a text.
Good morning Dave.
This is Dr. Matt Grzesiak.
How are you?
Did you get the approval email?
Boy, did I! Isabel was on the phone with her mom when I yelled down to her that I got the job. She told Ga-Ga, and Ga-Ga told her to relay to me how proud she was. I paused upstairs for a minute, hands on the banister like it was the helm of a ship, and thought about how this new responsibility shaped the next period of our lives.
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Punctuated equilibrium is the hypothesis that after a very long period of little or no evolution, a sudden change in the environment triggers rapid adaptation. You can see it in the fossil record when new species emerge because of sea level change. You can see it around the world on either side of the 65-million-year-old Iridium-rich layer deposited by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Under this stone blanket there are dinosaur fossils; above it there are none, just the sudden debut of mammals, our opportunistic family who sprawled up the fossil record into the vacuum left by catastrophe.
Dr. Matt promised this would only take about four hours per week, but there’s a sense of acceleration here on my first day, entering my second full hour in his employ. Before I step outside I double check that I have a facemask in my pocket, triple-check that Isabel knows she’s got all three kids for the next hour, and hurry to Staples for my first assignment. I need to buy some business check paper because I’ll be printing checks at home.
Mission accomplished, I text him on the way home and read the reply at a stoplight.
Kindly send me the picture of the business check paper and the receipt picture for documentation.
I’m a little nervous that I also bought pens when I was there, but I take pains to circle the cost of only the check paper on the receipt, reiterating that of the $42.78 on the receipt, he only owes me $27.99 for the check paper. At this moment, my grandmother’s remembered voice pipes up in my ear with the quote, “Begin as you mean to go on, and go on as you began.” She passed away in a nursing home, without visitors, during the early pandemic. In her honor, and in honor of what my family has sacrificed to uproot themselves for my schooling, I begin this job with an uncharacteristic level or fastidiousness: I open a new spreadsheet and track all my expenses and disbursements. I share the document with Dr. Matt.
Alright. He texts back.
I will forward your details to the Financial Management to issues a Check to you soon, this check is to be printed on the Business Check paper and deposited into your account so that you can have access to it to be able to carry out your duties.
Do you understand?
I notice the grammar mistakes first, then acknowledge that I’m an asshole for being so critical of a non-native speaker. I note his slight condescension next, and chalk it up to his persona, this hands-free-microphone-kind of busy philanthropist.
I print out my first check. It takes a few tries to orient the paper right, and Oliver is suddenly all about the printer. By how much I’ve been tinkering with it, he can tell it’s important. I’ve got to print out this first check and let it clear so I can start paying myself and doing whatever it is a personal assistant does. I keep picking Ollie up and moving him to other sides of the room, giving him other things to play with.
Here: take a non-toxic marker. Still, he toddles back to where I’m loading more paper.
Here: take a spatula…Not sure what it’s doing up here, but you love spatulas! Still, he toddles back to yank the paper tray out and bang it on the floor. I pick him up and he goes limp, and then ballistic. I put him on the other side of the bedroom door while I try to get this print job right, but the wails and screams of protest continue from the other side.
When I emerge with a single check to myself printed out, he looks up at me and stops crying immediately. Gravity catches a tear on the cusp of his cheek and sends it scurrying towards his mouth. I pick him up and kiss the drop off, carry him and the check downstairs for depositing.
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My parents are sitting in the dark when they Facetime me that evening, and I have some personal assistant business to update them about when they ask if anything’s new. “Sounds like some kind of Nigerian Prince scam,” my dad’s outline mumbles from the couch. We took long walks in the woods when I was little, and there was a recurring theme in his messaging to watch out for scoundrels.
“I print out checks to myself, deposit them, and after they clear I pay different people for him.” I can hear my dad’s silent disapproval a state away. “Don’t worry, Dad. Of course I wait for the checks to clear before I pay anyone. The hardest part is keeping Ollie away from the printer. He basically stands on the paper tray.” I don’t tell them that the first person I paid with the app CashApp had the handle of @smile4ubaby, because I don’t want him to worry, and what Dr. Matt does with his own money is his own business.
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All of the gold on Earth that humankind has ever seen, or will ever see, could fit into a cube about twenty meters on each side. One scientific model suggests that the element arrived here four billion years ago during a short period of intense asteroid impacts known as the Heavy Bombardment. Failed planets and leftover solar system ingredients crashed with nascent Earth and left one of our favorite elements in its folds, like spare change in the couch cushions.
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The texts are coming fast now. Per his request, I’ve installed CashApp on my phone and am waiting for the first check to clear. He says there is a glitch from his Financial Manager and issues me a new check. The bank says it will take a few days to clear.
The agent just need to meet a few disabilities students request in morning that was why I thought if you pay first could be helpful.
“Agent”? This is serious.
I write back, “Sorry if I was misleading. I’m glad to float an initial expense like check paper, but not a thousand dollars via CashApp. Hope you understand.”
Yes I understand.
I will text you in the morning.
Goodnight.
I reply with a moon emoji.
The next day, while Isabel’s Friday morning with the kids is just a tad harder in my absence, I am walking with my classmates through the shifting sand dunes at the South End of Wrightsville Beach, a wild-seeming place in the shadow of mansions. It’s for a class in creative writing, but the professor’s lectures are meandering and skimpy now in our third week, which sends little shit-birds of doubt are popping out of every other bush, asking me if this program is really what I moved my family down to North Carolina for. With messages from Dr. Matt vibrating against my leg, I’m struggling to be present here in nature. The day’s missions are piling up in a digital queue.
When I get home, I see the PDF of a second check in my email. It’s printed later in the usual fashion, with my eleven-month-old son wailing on the other side of my bedroom door. The check soon clears, and I send it to $ReJoyceCohen via CashApp.
The agent’s have received the payment.
I will need you to add $500 to your cash balance now and one you done with that kindly send another $450 to the agent. And don’t forget the payment screenshots.
Something snags with this one, and I ask Isabel to help troubleshoot. She does our online banking and can’t seem to get her CashApp working, either.
Okay do you have Zelle?
I don’t know what that is, but my wife tells me it’s a way to transfer straight from our Bank of America, a lot easier. Our heads come close together while she coaches me over my shoulder, and I’m glad she doesn’t just take the phone away and do it herself.
As I tick off the hours I’ve already worked over the promised four hours per week — has it only been a week? — I get a series of PDFs, print them onto checks, wait for them to clear, and disburse them. His agents all get money: $ReJoyce, @smile4ubaby, Andrea, stacierollins, Bonnie, missmaryjanesthename@gmail, and Chimdi.
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It’s spaghetti night again, and in the middle of the weekly crowd-pleaser Isabel frowns at her phone.
Gaps in the rock record are called “unconformities.” Geologists understand this missing data can come from erosion, deformation, a change in sea-level, or some unforeseen cataclysmic event.
“Why do we have a negative balance?”
I’m wiping my sweaty hands on the dish towel and trying to peek over her shoulder.
Our hatchlings chirp louder and louder for more spaghetti; I choke down bile and a dawning realization.
“Hey can you call?” I text Dr. Matt as Isabel helps clear the food. “Problems with check clearing.”
What kind of problems?
I call him from the next room and realize I’ve never heard his voice.
No answer, an automated voice says leave a message.
I run upstairs and look at his website again. I email the contact there, which I note is different from the email I first used. It seems weird, but I write to him to confirm that I am indeed his personal assistant.
I wait for an answer, and I continue to wait.
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The Aztec word for gold means “god excrement.” Mesoamerican upper management draped themselves in that shit until the Spaniards got an eyeful and demanded all of it. In that sense, it’s all fool’s gold, isn’t it? When the morning sun strikes the gold flecks in Ollie’s iris I’m convinced he’s going to have green eyes. These are the kind of grounding details that keep me from hyperventilating through this disaster.
Halfway between Isabel and me is the demilitarized zone of the kitchen floor. She’s on the other side of the kitchen island, trying to undo my colossal fucking mistake. I’ve got no social capital in this situation. I’m embarrassed, but oddly present here on the floor with Ollie. On the other side of the curtain from this playtime is the uncomfortable truth that I’ve been profoundly suckered. Since last night I’ve revisited the texts and called “Dr. Matt” again, and I still can’t believe I put all my faith — hinged everything, really — on the fact that those checks were clearing.
As our investigation was revealing, they didn’t actually clear, and in the crack of time after the kids went to school and before Isabel got on the phone, I reported everything to Bank of America. (Hope springs!) When I finally connected with an actual person, they said that since I was a valued customer since 2007 and had never bounced a check, they were showing my self-printed checks as having cleared even though they were actually still pending. (God, excrement.) When smile4ubaby got her money, it was actually our money covering Dr. Matt’s worthless PDF, which I breathed into life with my own goddamn printer. I should have let Ollie break it.
I’m on baby duty because Isabel is fixing things, her shoulders hunched, the phone on speaker, typing on her computer. My chest is in a vise of anxiety and I’m secretly glad to be on the floor in some imaginary-adjacent land with Ollie. Except this sea of toys turns nightmarish when snippets of Isabel’s conversation drifts across from the kitchen, stuffed animals’ eyes glassing sinister against a musical score of tech support and routing numbers and verification codes. I’m beyond worthless, I’ve lost our money. On the surface I’m smiling and playing with him in the sunny room exploding with cars and blocks and iris flecks and Magna-Tiles. Inside I’m begging him for forgiveness. Sorry I dragged you here from Boston during the pandemic so I could go to school for writing. Sorry I lost our money chasing fool’s gold. Maybe I should have stuck with geology, put that degree to use. Fool’s gold’s name is pyrite — I went to college to learn that.
I can’t take the suspense anymore, so I set up Ollie with a plastic alligator and slip silently into the kitchen. Isabel motions for me to be quiet.
Bank of America says they can’t do anything, and to call CashApp to see if they can recall or cancel any of the transfers. She hangs up and Googles the number for CashApp customer service and finally gets through to someone. They coach her through the undoing of my boo-boo.
After a series of verification numbers and the downloading of a screen-sharing app, she tells me to sign in to CashApp so she can transfer money there to get our money back. Far be it from me to tell her how to fix my fuckup, I venture to ask a clarifying question about why any more money needs to come out of our account.
“It’s just a dummy payment,” says the voice on speakerphone, “and will be transferred back with the original payments if you follow these directions I am giving you.”
Isa shoos me away and takes the man off speakerphone and presses the phone to her head, turns away from me. I slink back to the playroom.
When her therapist calls on the other line she curses because she forgot about the appointment and puts CashApp momentarily on hold.
I’m setting up blocks that get knocked down immediately, and listening to the doctor check in with my wife. She wants Isabel to return to the tech support, but sympathizes with us, and before hanging up kindly ventures some of the same clarifying questions about this current phone call that I hadn’t dared.
“And you’re on the phone with CashApp right now?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“And you’re transferring more money out of your account to get the money back?”
“Well, he said it’s a dummy payment.”
“I see.”
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Walter’s Law is a little different from the other geologic laws (like superposition) because it explains what isn’t there. It says that if there is something missing from the geologic sequence, then there must be missing time, or missing data.
Isabel’s therapist sniffed it out. As soon as she got off the phone, she did some checking and found out that CashApp doesn’t have a customer service phone number, and won’t ever ask you to transfer money to fix a problem.
When it was all said and done, we realized Isa’s remedy had patched through to a call center in India as part of another scam, and roughly doubled the dollar amount of our mistake. Misery had company now; I had company now.
Seething, I try to find the words to text him, one final text to Dr. Matt. I know any physical or legal threat is pointless, but I suspect that there is some combination of 26 letters that will have some sort of effect. Angry Aztecs once poured molten gold down the throat of an over-zealous Spanish tax collector. At some point that horrific act was committed to the page. I want to do this in reverse, conjure Dark Arts that lead from the written word to his painful demise. Or at least haunt him until he sends all the money back and begs me to please accept it, with his apologies.
I’m a writer now, so this should come naturally. I type, “When you realize that you are cursed, know that you brought it upon yourself.” Send. Some real cold-hearted shit. I am convinced it will shake him, but it looks weaker the longer it sits there at the bottom of the column of our text correspondence.
At that moment, like a call to prayer, I remember the words of one of my creative writing professors. I can hear her voice in my head and have to answer it. At the end of every Zoom class this inspirational, together professional tells me and the other squares on the screen the same thing, in her beautiful lilting accent that does and does not match the actual words.
“Go out and make terrible choices, so you can write about them.”
Dave Gentry 