Karen Bender - Refund - Stories

He rolled on the bed, his legs trembling, splayed out, in a shameless erotic display. His belly was pale pink, rimmed with translucent white fur.

What did he feel when he watched us?

My husband petted him. “It was me, wasn’t it,” he murmured. His arm was covered in curly hair. He looked brutish. He was sexier now than when we first met, when he was just thirty, a raw-faced boy. Why didn’t he like the way my toes rubbed against him? What other mistakes would we find in each other? But we loved new things, too. My husband had put a freshly washed plate into the cabinet with a tenderness that moved me. In what corner had he found this gentleness in himself? Would he find other things to love about me? We were peculiar mirrors for the other, and we were each long, stubborn walls; the pressure of marriage was trying to crack through them, to own the gorgeousness that we believed lurked inside. It was a lifelong task to distract us.

“What do you want, Cutie?” I asked. “What? Tell us.”

We wanted an answer. The pressure in the room was unbearable. Nothing would break it, not speech, not sex, not sleep.

Cutie writhed under my husband’s hand and then nipped at my wrist.

He was prone to this sort of casual savagery.

“No, Cutie!” my husband said. “Be nice!”

This was what we were used to — it was comforting, actually. We were more frightened by the idea of the depth of his feelings. Cutie meowed, a regular catlike sound.

“Ignore him,” my husband said, now annoyed.

Cutie leapt off the bed.

“Reunion” appeared in Ploughshares , Fall, 2007.

“Theft” appeared in The Harvard Review , Spring, 2005, and was reprinted in Best American Mystery Stories 2006 .

“Anything for Money” appeared in Zoetrope All-Story, Fall, 2001 , and was reprinted in Zoetrope All-Story 2 , 2003.

“The Third Child” appeared as “The Visiting Child” in Granta , Fall, 2005.

“The Loan Officer’s Visit” appeared as “The Visit” in The Harvard Review , Summer, 2012.

“Refund” appeared in Ploughshares , Summer, 2005, and was reprinted in Pushcart Prize XXXI, Best of the Small Presses, 2006 .

“This Cat” appeared in Narrative , October 2013.

“A Chick from My Dream Life” appeared in The Iowa Review 1992 and was reprinted in Pushcart Prize XVIII, Best of the Small Presses, 1993 .

“Candidate” appeared in Ecotone , Spring, 2007, and was reprinted in New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2008 , and also in Astoria to Zion: Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone’s First Decade .

“The Sea Turtle Hospital” appeared in StoryQuarterly , February 2014.

“Free Lunch,” under the title “Sent,” was one of Narrative magazine’s “Top Five Stories of the Week” in 2013.

“For What Purpose?” appeared in Guernica , October 2014.

“What the Cat Said” appeared in The Harvard Review , Fall, 2008.

Enormous thanks to those who supported these stories over the years, in so many ways, especially: Christina Thompson, Don Lee, Adrienne Brodeur, David Hamilton, Paul Lisicky, Bill Henderson, Meg Wolitzer, Tom Jenks, Olga Zilberbourg, Ian Jack, ZZ Packer, Andrea Barrett, Martin Espada, Otto Penzler, Scott Turow, Danzy Senna, Jacquelyn Mitchard, and Douglas Soesbe; to Eric Simonoff and Claudia Ballard for constant belief in my work and guiding these stories to a good home; to the wonderful team at Counterpoint Press, especially amazing editor and life coach Dan Smetanka and dynamic publicist Megan Fishmann; and, with love, to David and Meri Bender, Suzanne and Aimee Bender, Natalie Plachte-White and Michelle Plachte-Zuieback, Frances Silverglate, Sean Siegel, Perrin Siegel, Margaret Mittelbach, Jennie Litt, Jenny Shaffer, Katherine Wessling, Timothy Bush, Amy Feldman, Hope Edelman, Deborah Lott, Eric Wilson, Rebecca Larner, Rebecca Lee, Dana Sachs, Malena Morling, Virginia Holman, Sunny Xuemei, and Norma Varsos.

And, of course, to Jonah and Maia for their beautiful, essential Jonah- and Maia-ness, teaching me something every day, and to Robert, for being my dear partner in everything and for sharing the best words.