Karen Bender - Refund - Stories

Her hands were trembling, so it was difficult to grip the wheel. She raced back to the store, where the staff and customers stood, statues, rapt, in front of the television screens.

She stood with the group in the electronics section, in front of dozens of screens. They saw the Towers on fire. A giant tower buckled on the screen in front of them, frail as a sandcastle. Grown men around her yelled, No! in shocked, womanly voices. Sammy was immediately attracted to the picture. “Booming sound,” said their son. She let him watch. “Booming!” he yelled.

THE FACT THAT THEY LIVED BY THE TRADE CENTER MADE THEM objects of concern. “I’m so sorry,”’ said strangers. They stood, awkward, marked with an awful, bewildering luck. “Where would you have been?” asked someone eagerly, as though they had been potential victims and they craved an intimacy with the disaster. “We would have been one block away,” Clarissa said. Her arms became cold. This admission felt strangely like bragging. It occurred to her that others thought they could have been dead. She remembered that they had signed Sammy up to attend the preschool on Tuesday/Thursday mornings. Around nine o’clock they would have been steps away, bringing Sammy to his first day of school at Rainbows.

The chair of the art department told them to take the day off, and they spent it in the hotel. It was stale and hot, full of a thousand strangers’ breaths. She was not supposed to be here and did not know what to do with herself, grubby, ashamed, alive. The TV droned casualty estimates into the room. The curtains were drawn, and the room was dark. They tried all day to get Sammy to nap. He popped out of his room, awake, excited by their fear. “Hello!” he called gaily. “Hello.”

Somehow, the day ended. They drove down the dark streets. Almost no one was on the road, and it seemed that everyone had fled to their homes. They passed the stores that resembled giant concrete cubes, Walmart and Target and Old Navy, the buildings strangely devoid of windows, like bunkers. Sammy screamed with exhaustion until he fell asleep. A student had said to them: providence had brought them here. “You have been blessed,” the student said in a respectful tone, before inviting them to church. Clarissa declined, though she kept thinking about this. She asked Josh, “Do you think we were blessed?”

“No,” he said. “We’re not special. Don’t feel special. It could be us next time. It could be us any minute.”

She looked out the window. This was not the answer she wanted. “Why do you say that?” she said. “How do you wake up in the morning? How are you going to walk Sammy down the street?”

He reached for her hand. His fingers felt strange, rubbery; she clung to them, bewildered by the raw facts of fingers, hair.

“HELLO,” SAID THE VOICE, AGGRIEVED, THREE DAYS LATER. “HELLO, Clarissa. It’s me.”

“Hello?” asked Clarissa. “Who is this?”

“I was on my way there. I wanted to go to the observation deck. I went the wrong way on the subway, or I would be dead. I got out, and there were all these people running. Then I saw the second plane. I started running, and then I couldn’t get the windows closed because I’ve never seen windows like yours—”

“I’m sorry,” Clarissa whispered. “I’m sorry—”

“They said there’s a bomb under the George Washington Bridge!” Kim shouted. “I can’t get the ferry to New Jersey, it’s closed. Is there a heliport in Manhattan? I’ll pay anything to get to a heliport. Can you tell me?”

“I don’t know,” said Clarissa, “I don’t know where one is—”

There was a pause. “I’m leaving town,” said Kim. “I can’t stay here. And I want a refund. I want it all back.”

ONE DAY BEFORE THEY LEFT VIRGINIA TO RETURN TO NEW YORK, Clarissa received an email: IN REGARDS TO REFUND:

I have not heard from you in regards to the status of my refund. Perhaps you are too busy to think of me now. All the hotels are giving refunds. Also free rooms in the future, suite upgrades. My pet peeves are injustice and dishonesty. I know when I am being treated fairly. You did not tell me certain facts about the apartment, which was, I am sorry to say, filthy. Black goo all over the refrigerator. I had to wear plastic gloves to keep my hands clean .

Darla and I planned our vacation for a long time. We are best friends. We were going to buy the same clothes, go to the newest restaurants. People would admire us and say who are those glamour girls. Her hair is red and more beautiful, but I will admit I have nicer legs, we wanted to start a commotion .

I expect to receive payment of U.S. $3,000 within a week .

WHEN THEY GOT OUT OF THEIR CAB AT CANAL STREET, THE BORDER between civilian New York and the war zone, they unloaded their luggage by the rows of blue police barricades. “Let’s see your ID,” said the state trooper, standing trim and noble in his brown uniform, surrounded by pans of homemade cookies. “Do you live here, or do you have reservations?”

They looked at him.

“The restaurants gave us lists of people who have reservations,” he said, pulling out a piece of paper. They offered their driver’s licenses, and the officer agreed: this was where they lived.

He offered to give them a ride to their building. The car floated by the gray, scrolled buildings, the streets deserted, simply a stage set, built quickly, then abandoned. The sky had become a pale, sickly orange and gray. There were too many police cars posted at corners; sirens pierced the warm air. There were American flags everywhere, as though everyone was desperate to have the same thought. People hurried down the streets, carrying groceries, pushing strollers; some were wearing surgical masks.

Kim had left in great haste, sheets piled in the living room, a pale lipstick in the bathroom sink. Clarissa picked up the lipstick and touched the tip; the color was a frosted pink. Sammy ran ahead of them. She thought that they should make some grand entrance, that they should say something profound to each other, but she merely listened to the sound of their presence ring through the apartment.

THERE WAS THE SMELL, UNLIKE ANYTHING SHE HAD SMELLED before. Burning concrete and computers and office carpets and jets and steel girders and people. There was nothing natural about the smell; it tasted bitter and metal in her mouth and blew through their neighborhood at variable times; the mornings began sweet and deceptive, yet the afternoons became heavy with it. She began to get a sore throat, and her tongue became numb. The girls at the American Lung Association table gave her a white paper mask and told her that there was nothing to worry about, but to keep her windows closed and stay inside. She walked against the small stream of people wearing paper masks. The streets were dark and shiny, the sanitation trucks spraying down the street to keep the dust from lifting into the air. A man walked by in a suit and a gas mask. Did he know something that they did not? Where did he get the gas mask?

She went out to the market the first morning after they returned. She pushed Sammy in his stroller downtown, heading straight toward the empty sky. In the market, she picked out cereal, detergent, apples to the pop soundtrack in the supermarket, the cheerful music that usually made her feel as though she were part of some drama greater than herself. Now it floated around her, impossible, but the supermarket did not shut it off.

When she ran into neighbors, anyone — Modesto, the maintenance man in the building, the counter man at the bodega, mothers from the playground — she moved toward them, the fact of their existence, her fingers like talons. It did not matter that she did not know their names. How are you, they asked each other, and it seemed like they were saying I love you.