Karen Bender - Refund - Stories

They tried the first phone booth on the street. When the number didn’t work there, they tried another. By the fourth phone booth, they realized that there was no neighborhood called Orange Hills and there was no aunt. At the time, the girls had between them $43.

“You want to know why I’m here?” Darlene asked. She looked a bit dazed. “His name was Warren. One minute we were finishing each other’s sentences. The next minute he was packing his bags. Now I’m twenty-two years old and afraid I will never find the one.”

Waiters came out carrying ignited Baked Alaskas. Sparklers on the desserts fizzled, and a faint smoky odor filled the air.

“I went to my parents’ house,” said Darlene. “ Big mistake, they packed me off to the glaciers, to meet people and have fun—”

Ginger did not want to spend one moment of this week comforting someone else. She folded her napkin, stood up. “Well,” said Ginger, “I hope you have a grand time.” Then she turned and walked across the room. The ship was approaching the first glaciers. Sliding down the mountains the ice was rushed and utterly still. The glacial ice was pale blue, and huge pieces drifted by, like the ruined bones of a giant. She watched the pale ice float by her and wondered when she would forget her name.

Her awareness had been her great gift: of the best hour to meet the lonely, of the hairstyle that would make her look most innocent, of the raised eyebrow that indicated a person’s longing, and of course, of the moment when she knew that what a person owned would belong to her. Sitting on a train she would feel the money, a roll wrapped around her hip, as she listened to the click of the wheels along the tracks. She wanted to be the imposters she claimed to be: the lost cousin, the secret aunt, the high school classmate, the one who had loved from afar. Glancing at herself in the dark train windows, she sometimes thought she had become this other person; her heart lightened for a while as she imagined what this person might feel.

THERE WAS A KNOCK ON HER DOOR AT 10:00 AM. IT WAS THE GIRL from lunch. “Remember me?” she said. “I’m your seatmate. I wanted to go to the chocolate buffet.” She clutched her own hands fiercely. “Who wants to gorge on chocolate alone?”

It was the tyranny of the normal, the attempts of regular people to energize their lives. It was ten in the morning, and she could hear the rapid footsteps of the other passengers as they rushed to fill their mouths with sweetness. The girl was insistent, and Ginger found herself in the long winding line. All of the passengers appeared to have risen for this experience. To maintain order, a waiter walked through the crowd, doling out, with silver tongs, chunks of milk chocolate to eager hands. Another waiter, dressed as a Kodiak bear, was offering cups of hot chocolate spiked with rum. There was a radiant excitement in the air.

Darlene was chatty. “After this I go on a diet,” the girl said. “A major one. Celery and water for weeks. .”

Ginger knew that she herself would never go on another diet. She pressed her hands to her waist, her hips. She wanted all of the chocolate, now. She moved quickly, placing truffles, chocolate-dipped potato chips, macaroons, chocolate torte, mousse, fudge on her tray. She was so hungry she was in pain.

When they sat down, she looked at the girl and she wanted to convince her of something; she wanted to shout into Darlene’s ear.

“I’ve had better than this,” she said. “1959. The Academy Awards party at the Sheraton. Truffles everywhere. I said I was a waitress. I said in my off-hours I was working for Cary Grant’s father, who I said was dying of cancer, and could they please contribute to a cancer fund—” She paused. “They were a nice bunch. Generous. I actually have a high opinion of mankind—”

“Did anyone get mad at you?” asked Darlene.

“Mad?” asked Ginger.

“When they realized that you had taken their money—”

Ginger rose halfway in her seat. “Why would I care?” asked Ginger. “Look. You go to a regular job. They tell you what you’re worth. Or you love him and he leaves you and you feel like you’re nothing at all. Darling, I don’t have to tell my worth to anyone.”

Darlene looked down. The longing in the girl’s face was like a bright wound.

“What was so good about him anyway?” asked Ginger.

“He said my eyes were pretty,” Darlene said. “He also liked listening to the Cherry Tones. He liked to put his hands in my hair—”

This was the material of love? “So fool him into loving you.”

“How?” Darlene stared, desolate, at slices of chocolate cake so glossy they appeared to be ceramic.

“What did he want? Pretend to be it,” said Ginger.

“He wanted a million dollars.”

“So say you’ve won the lottery,” said Ginger. She bit into a truffle.

“But I didn’t.”

“No one knows what they want until you show them.”

Darlene’s face was flushed, excited. “But I want him to love the real me—”

“Who do you think you are?” said Ginger. “No one. We all are. That’s what I do, notice no ones—”

“I’m not no one,” said Darlene, huffily. “I come from a nice suburb of San Diego. My father is a successful pediatrician—”

“So? That’s all temporary,” said Ginger. “But the noticing, that’s yours.”

Ginger had never allowed herself weakness, never told anyone how it felt to walk into a new city, how she chose her new name just as the train slowed down. Everyone rushed by, gnarled and worn down by the burden of thwarted love; she was free of that, new. She would wash up in the station bathroom and walk out, erased of her secrets: the fact that everything she did with a man was faked, so the only way she could feel pleasure was to give it to herself; the fact that her broken right hand had healed crooked because she couldn’t afford to see a doctor to fix it; that she often ate alone on holidays. In empty coffee shops on Thanksgiving, Ginger looked at the food on her plate, and she knew a strange, burning love for the things the world offered her, real and surprising, again and again.

EVELYN AND GINGER RENTED A ROOM IN A SALVATION ARMY, AND Evelyn began to weep. She curled up on the hard, stained mattress and cried so hard she screamed. Ginger sat beside her sister, a hand on her shoulder. Sometimes, she had an urge to laugh. Other moments, she wished she could put her hands around Evelyn’s throat and strangle her. She was shocked by the private nature of her emotions. Evelyn seemed to believe she was comforting her, and Ginger was surprised that she could.

During the day, they walked down Hollywood Boulevard, trying to decide what to do. Their breath smelled, darkly, of bananas. In the light, Evelyn talked rapidly; they both listened with hope to the sound of her voice.

“We will be cigarette girls,” Evelyn announced one afternoon.

They walked into sixteen bars before they found one that had jobs for both of them. Every night the two of them strode in wearing black tights and rhinestone loafers, selling cigarettes to heavy, sad-looking men with liquored breath.

Once, Evelyn told Ginger that she tried not to be afraid for five minutes a day. Ginger was impressed that Evelyn could identify when she was afraid, for her own fear floated just outside her skin, like a cloud; she experienced nothing but a heavy numbness. She watched her sister closely, trying to catch her in those precious five minutes when she was clearly not afraid. In those five minutes, Evelyn owned something mysterious, and even the claim of strength made Ginger ache to experience it, too.

At home, Evelyn’s grief metamorphosed into a bloodthirsty envy of the loved, the parented. She wanted their expensive possessions: the jeweled brooches, the feathered hats.