Karen Bender - Refund - Stories

DEAR CLARISSA:

It is not my concern that you never rest. You cannot get the money from me. It was your choice to pursue this “job” of artist. Why would I owe you anything? You were not honest with me. Honesty is the best policy. When Darla left her husband, she told him that she could not stand his skinny legs. That was just something she felt he should know. We all have our limits. The knowledge might have helped him in his later dating life. You should have told me about the water pressure, scribbled crayon, hallway odor, broken TV, useless air conditioner. Why didn’t you? I expect U.S. $31,000, payable now .

THERE WERE NO MORE EMAILS. AT NIGHT, CLARISSA LAY BESIDE Josh, awake, listening to the wild screaming of the cranes.

On October 30, she sat down and wrote a check for $263.75. There was no reason for this amount except that it was what they had left in their bank account that month. She did not know what to write on the note, so she scribbled, quickly, Here is your refund. God Bless .

HALLOWEEN WOULD BE SAMMY’S LAST DAY AT THE SCHOOL. THE bad tuition check for $2,000 had been sent a week before, and she wanted to stop showing up before they could ask her about it. Sammy dressed as a lion. All the children were in costume. A few mothers were loitering in the lobby, captivated by the sight of their children pretending to be something else. Sammy’s class was populated with two miniature Annies, a Superman, a ballerina, three princesses, some indeterminate sparkly beings, a dog, and Sammy, a lion. The teacher read them a Halloween story, speaking to them as though she believed they would live forever. The children listened as though they believed this, too. Clarissa pressed her hands to the glass window that separated the parents from their children; she wanted to fall into the classroom and join them.

After school, she wanted to buy Sammy a special treat. She brought him a blue helium balloon at a party store. He marched down the street, grinning; she lumbered after him, this tiny being with a golden mane and tail. Suddenly, Sammy stopped and handed her the balloon. “Let it fly away,” he said.

“I’m not getting you another,” she said.

“Let if fly away!” he shouted. “Let it!”

She took the balloon and released it. The wind pushed it, roughly, into the air. Her son laughed, an impossibly bright, flute-like sound. Other people stopped and watched the balloon jab into the air. They laughed at Sammy’s amusement, as though captivated by some tender memory of themselves. Then the balloon was gone.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Her child looked at her.

“Get it,” he said.

A WEEK LATER, SHE PICKED UP THE PHONE. “TWO HUNDRED AND sixty-three? How did you come up with this number? You owe me $54,200, why don’t you give me money?”

“Why do you keep bothering us?” Clarissa asked.

“You were lucky,” said Kim. “You weren’t where you were supposed to be.”

“You weren’t either,” said Clarissa. “You went the wrong way—”

“Maybe it wasn’t the wrong way. Maybe the Towers were the mistake. Why would I have wanted to go there, anyway? Maybe I was supposed to meet someone there, and they never showed up. What do you think of that?”

Clarissa felt cold. “Were you supposed to meet someone there?”

“Would I get my $54,200?”

“Were you meeting someone there?” asked Clarissa. “Were you?”

“She is named Darla,” said Kim.

“Why didn’t you say this?” asked Clarissa.

“Will you pay me money?”

Clarissa’s throat felt hot.

“I was talking to her on my cell phone,” said Kim. “She was on the elevator to the observation deck.” She paused. “She wanted to go to the Empire State Building, but I thought at the Towers we would get a better view.”

What did one owe for being alive? What was the right way to breathe, to taste a strawberry, to love?

“Kim,” said Clarissa, “I—”

“Do you know how long I’m going to charge you?” Kim said, her voice rising.

Clarissa closed her eyes.

“Do you know?” said Kim.

Let me say at the beginning: it was not the cat’s fault. We were at the PetSmart adoption carnival to buy a pet; we had that look of determined acquisition. A cloud of cat rescue people came upon us, presenting their candidates. They started with their hopeless cases. The blind cats. The ones that had tested positive for feline leukemia. The one missing an ear from a fight. The children looked upset. They just wanted a nice cat.

Nice? We have nice. This one is nice but it has six toes. And cat herpes. But that just means it has a runny eye. Give it vitamins.

— That one, said the children.

The cat was skilled at being adorable, stretching and yawning with a tiny squeak. That did it; the children were sold. They were ten and six; by this time, they had stored up enough love to offer it to another being. They mauled him, patting him, making guttural sounds of affection. He was, thank god, tolerant. He stretched again, made that yawn, and I was suddenly, unexpectedly tearful.

— We’ll take him, I said.

He was small enough to fit into the crook of my arm, like a football. I had, in fact, asked for him, though I blamed it on the children, who liked the fact there was someone here more powerless than they. They pressed their faces into his black fur, which was so soft it felt as though you were melting into him. We could not come up with an agreed-upon name. Furry. Fluffy. Midnight. Alan. Fred. Licorice. None seemed quite right. We decided that we would name him later. Now he was just The Cat.

In the morning, they went off to school in a big rush, after they had treated us, the parents, like dirt. They were beautiful and holy and problematic. Do you want cereal? No. Can you brush your teeth? No. Can you make your bed? No. The boy rushed upstairs, in a sly, efficient way, to root out the Nintendo where we had hidden it. The girl ate her cereal with slow, elegant mouthfuls, as though we were her servants and school for her would start at 10:00 AM instead of eight. Why did we keep bothering them, and why did we have to rout them into this glaring, strange thing, a day?

When they were finally out of the house, I took the cat into my arms. I felt purring under his thin ribs. His stomach was as soft as a balloon filled with water. He looked at me with tenderness, me, his savior. There was a familiar fullness in my breasts, a sense of heaviness, dropping, a sensation I had not felt in six years. The cat was looking at me with a pert, intelligent expression. It knew. The fullness got worse.

I wasn’t sure what to do about it; I lifted my shirt and squeezed the right breast. A droplet came out of my nipple. I imagined the cat opening its tiny mouth and latching on. His little paws would bat gently against my arms. It seemed a pure impulse, not strange at all. It seemed perfectly natural.

I WAS A LITTLE BIT PROUD OF THE DROPLET, AS THOUGH IT REVEALED my great prowess as a mother. It had been six years since I nursed an infant, but I could still do this, even if I was closing in on forty-five. Frankly, at this point, I was a little desperate for things to be proud of. But perhaps I was getting younger in some miraculous way. I passed this information on to my gynecologist the following week. She grew pale.

— What? she asked.

— There was a drop.

— Was it bloody?

— No.

— Was it discolored?

— No.

— We have to get this checked out.

She scribbled something on a sheet.

— Go to Havensworth Radiology tomorrow, she said. — We’ll figure it out.

The appearance of the droplet, my apparently perverse desire to nurse the cat, led to a battery of painful tests. I went to Havensworth Radiology center, a giant building full of various X-ray machines. People gathered in the various sections. Knees. Lungs. Breasts. No one looked happy to be in Breasts. The waiting area for the Breast region was decorated in muted greens and blues, clearly designed by someone whose assignment was: create an environment so that patients forget they could lose their breasts or die. The technicians’ voices were too calm. Come here, dear. Put your breast on this ledge. We will squish it so it resembles a flattened donut and take a picture. Let me leave the room while the machine floods you with radioactive waves. Thank you. Let’s take another. The room flashed its poisonous light.