As she continued down the block, her eye caught the familiar periwinkle-colored font of the local gas company, then the word NONE printed in large caps. Probably a utility bill tossed out by a resident who owed nothing, Karen figured. It seemed like the perfect metaphor for the people who lived there. She kept walking. She walked all the way to the corner. Then she paused, an idea unspooling in her head: Why couldn’t that utility bill be hers and, by extension, why couldn’t she pretend to be a resident of Pendleton Street, in which case she’d be legally entitled to send her daughter to Mather?
In truth, it wasn’t the first time Karen had contemplated lying about her address to secure a better school. Once or twice, it had even crossed her mind to ask Allison if she could borrow hers. Allison probably wouldn’t have minded. But the loss of pride to Karen had seemed potentially detrimental to their friendship. Despite their intimacy, she relished the ability to quietly dangle her woman-of-the-people credentials in Allison’s face. What’s more, Karen had never stolen anything in her life other than a towel from the Yucatán resort where she and Matt had spent their honeymoon. And even that breach, the pettiest of crimes, had caused her heart to palpitate. She could still recall how, while checking out, she’d been half convinced that the man behind the front desk could see into her luggage. She’d also half expected the police suddenly to appear.
And yet, rationally speaking, just as in the case of the filched towel, Karen didn’t see how anyone stood to suffer from her walking away with a stranger’s already-paid gas bill. Besides, she wasn’t committing to any actions, only giving herself options. Pivoting right, then left, she surveyed the now-empty streetscape. The private banker/art consultant and his bulldog had vanished, and no one had taken their place. Or at least no one Karen could see. In the time since she’d left her house, the sky had turned a rich shade of Prussian blue. In the far distance came the muted ululating of an emergency vehicle.
Walking at a brisk pace, Karen reapproached the trash bag. After coming to a stop two feet away, she stood eyeing the bill through the plastic, coveting it like she occasionally craved brownies and cupcakes. But what good had abstention ever done? Karen found that if she said no to a late-afternoon pastry, she would end up eating bread and butter at dinner and feeling equally gluttonous.
The word NONE seemed to be staring back at her, offering itself up as both warning and invitation, but more the latter.
Karen suddenly untwisted the twisty tie that was holding the bag together, thrust her hand into the pile, grabbed hold of the bill, and stuck it in her purse. Her heart was beating madly as she skedaddled back down the block—not so fast as to seem suspicious if anyone should appear, but rapidly enough to discourage questions.
Five minutes after that, she was standing in line at the Korean grocer on her corner, waiting to pay for an exorbitantly priced half gallon of organic 2 percent milk. The carton featured a pastoral scene that seemed to have been lifted out of a nineteenth-century children’s book, with brown-and-white-dappled cows grazing on a rolling green hill next to a red barn. Matt was convinced that the entire organic movement was a scam and that all you were really paying for was the pretty picture on the side of the carton and, by extension, nostalgia for the fantasy of a simpler era. But Karen wasn’t so sure. A few years earlier, she’d read an article in the Huffington Post linking the hormones in nonorganic milk to early puberty. Now she lived in fear of Ruby getting her period while still in elementary school and regularly snuck surreptitious glances at both her daughter’s pubis in search of darkening follicles and her chest in search of buds. It seemed so unfair for a child to be burdened that way at such an early age. But it was also that early menses seemed to portend other undesirable early firsts—for example, teenage pregnancy. Then again, most of the ugly, plastic picture-less milk cartons promised no hormones as well, and Karen couldn’t bring herself to buy them. So maybe she really was a fool.
A fool and also now a thief.
“Where have you been?” Matt asked as Karen closed the door behind her. But to her relief, his voice was more inquisitive than angry.
“Sorry, I ran into a friend on the street,” she said, amazed at how easily the lie spilled from her lips.
“I thought you’d gotten mugged,” he went on. “I was actually worried about you. I called your cell and you didn’t answer.”
“Oh, sorry—I must not have heard it ring,” said Karen. She went into the kitchen to put away the milk they didn’t need.
“Anyway, I’m going to hit the sack early,” said Matt. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
Karen was surprised and relieved by this small stroke of fortune. When did Matt ever go to bed early? It also felt like fate—that she should be left to her own devices that night. “Okay, good night,” she told him.
“Nighty-night,” he replied.
Karen couldn’t tell whether or not he was still mad at her for mentioning who had made the down payment on their apartment. But in truth, a good portion of her marriage in the past year or two had been conducted in a gray space between fine and annoyed, with the two of them operating at a temperature that fell between temperate and chilly. After Matt disappeared into the bedroom, she sat down at her desk and pulled the stolen bill out of her bag. Under the lamp, it revealed new attributes. A greasy brown-black smear on the top left corner suggested recent contact with a banana peel. Or at least, Karen hoped it was a banana. The sight sent a brief spasm of disgust shooting up her spine.
Recovering, Karen noted for the first time that the bill was addressed to Nathaniel Bordwell at 321 Pendleton Street, no apartment number, suggesting that Bordwell and his family lived on all four floors of their extra-wide town house. Lucky them, she thought. Feeling marginally less guilty, she smoothed the creases, wiped the stain off as best she could with a tissue, and placed the paper beneath a well-thumbed hardback of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. At one time, it had been her favorite book. But that evening, its greatest value to her was as a paperweight.