“But that’s what you were thinking.”
Was Matt right, and was that why Karen wanted to take Ruby out of Betts? Karen refused to believe that about herself. It went against all her ideals and, really, everything she’d spent her life working toward. “It has nothing to do with race,” she told him. “I just don’t feel comfortable leaving her there in the morning anymore.”
“Well, I do,” said Matt. “Maybe she’ll learn the meaning of compassion, something you seem to have forgotten the definition of.”
“And maybe you’ll stop being so self-righteous,” said Karen, “and admit there are serious behavioral and discipline issues over there and also that it’s basically impossible for one teacher with twenty-five students to simultaneously teach kids who’ve had every advantage, like Ruby, and kids who live in homeless shelters and housing projects and barely have parents and are almost always behind in school.”
“So you want to send her to private school?” asked Matt. “Because money is the new IQ, and all rich kids are smart and want to learn. Is that how it works?”
“It has nothing to do with money,” scoffed Karen. “It has to do with coming from a functional family where people care about their kids getting an education and encourage them. In any case, we can’t afford private. And you know I don’t believe in it anyway.”
“So you want to move to the all-white half of Cortland Hill? Is that the idea? Or—even better—to a house in the suburbs with a picket fence and a green lawn?”
“I don’t particularly want to. But I’m not a hundred percent opposed to the idea,” said Karen.
“Well, I am,” said Matt. “This is my home, and I have no intention of leaving it.”
“It’s my home too,” said Karen. “And please don’t make me point out who actually put down the money for it.”
Matt’s jaw visibly tensed. For a few seconds, he didn’t speak. Then he said, “Are you seriously going there?”
“Sorry, that was unnecessary,” said Karen, already regretting the gambit.
“Thank you for your apology,” said Matt.
“So we’ll stay here. Are you happy now?”
“Happy enough.”
Well, you’re the only one who is, Karen was tempted to reply, but this time she stopped herself. “I’m going to shower,” she said instead and walked out of the room.
Undressing in the bedroom, she caught sight of her reflection in the full-length mirror. Although she was forty-five, it still came as a surprise and a disappointment to find that her body no longer resembled her youthful image of herself, which she continued to cling to despite all evidence to the contrary. Instead, she appeared in the mirror that evening as bulky in all the wrong places and hollow in the others, like a banana split that had been left out in the sun for too long. A part of Karen understood that it no longer mattered what she looked like without her clothes on, since she was (a) already married and (b) at the end of her childbearing years and therefore not expected to resemble a totem of fertility.
But in that moment, it did matter. She felt old and irrelevant and, as with many women in moments of insecurity, began to mentally flagellate herself for her lack of self-control—for her failure to go to the gym often enough and eat sparingly at all times. Her diet may have been largely organic, but it was also frequently excessive. The problem was that the salads never filled her up. And the smoothies only left her craving something smoother, like ice cream.
Once in the shower, the simple joy of hot water streaming down her scalp and back soothed and distracted her. But when she emerged from the downpour, her dissatisfaction both with herself and with the world returned. For Karen, negativity was like a wisteria vine that, if left to its own devices, would creep into every last crevice of her conscience and wind itself around every last limb until she felt strangled by her own discontent and desperate to escape. “I’m going out for milk,” she called out over the voice of the sportscaster.
“Don’t we have some?” Matt called back.
“Not enough,” she answered. It seemed like the easiest explanation.
Karen locked the door behind her and headed to the elevator.
It was far from warm outside, but the dampness had lifted. And the air felt cool and fresh on Karen’s face. Pausing outside the front door of her building, she looked around her. The doggie-day-care center next door was dark. So was the Vietnamese sandwich shop that had recently taken over from a bail bondsman. Only the Korean deli and the bistro on the corner appeared to be open for business. The latter business was so cool it didn’t even have a name. What it did have was greasy comfort food with a gourmet flair, like cheeseburgers made of dry-aged beef with cave-aged cheddar. In the new culinary economy, it seemed, everybody wanted food that had been sitting around for a long time. Karen marveled that it wasn’t the other way around. Out of habit more than anything else, she began walking toward it.
Peering into the bistro’s handsomely canopied windows, she saw tables of white people in their twenties and thirties, their faces elastic with the effects of alcohol, their clothes just the tiniest bit rumpled, their hair unkempt, their heads thrown back in laughter. Every Wednesday—Karen had seen the posters in the window—the bistro hosted a bingo night, which was clearly meant to be ironic. Karen had always hated board games, even as a child, finding them dull and fundamentally pointless. She had a far more ambivalent relationship with the bistro itself.