Her breath held, Karen carefully added a 0 to the end of the figure, followed by a comma between the 4 and the 8. So the $483 that she’d just recorded as having spent on picnic supplies was now $4,830. Then she held the ledger at arm’s length and tried to determine if the figure would look believable to an outside set of eyes. After deciding that it would, she placed the ledger back in the drawer, then quickly wrote a check to herself on the PTA checkbook for the same amount. She put the check in her wallet, then put the checkbook in the drawer next to the ledger. Then she left the PTA office. As she locked the door behind her, her heart was beating madly.
But as she strode down the hall toward the double doors, she felt powerful and righteous. She also found herself thinking of her erstwhile friend Lou and wondering what Lou would think if she could see Karen now. Karen hadn’t spoken to her since their awkward encounter by the train station a few weeks before. But in the days since then, Lou had somehow become the face of Karen’s remorse—Lou’s beautiful, long-lashed brown eyes reminding Karen of the ideals she’d abandoned in the interest of Ruby and herself…
All morning at work, every time someone approached her desk, Karen half jumped out of her seat, somehow imagining that he or she could see into her purse. Lunchtime couldn’t come soon enough. Karen went straight to the bank, took the check to the window, and asked the teller to cash it. She was concerned that her request might raise the teller’s eyebrows. But the woman said nothing, merely methodically counted out the sum in hundreds, counted them again, then slid the bills beneath the Plexiglas.
At the check-writing table, Karen took the roughly five hundred dollars she was owed and stuck it in her wallet. She stuck the other forty-three hundred-dollar bills in a plain white envelope that she’d taken from the supply room at her office. She addressed the envelope to the Parent Teacher Association of the Constance C. Betts School and affixed a stamp to the top right-hand corner. She left the top left corner blank.
She must have stood in front of the mailbox for five minutes before she finally let the envelope drop from her fingers into its maw. As it rattled down the chute with a ka-thunk, Karen flinched and shut her eyes in anticipation of biblical punishments. But the skies didn’t open. Nor did God strike her down with lightning. When she opened her eyes again, it was sunny and mild. And she was still standing on a busy street corner next to a guy selling pretzels.
Just as promised, Matt was home early that evening. Over takeout, he announced that Poor-coran was almost ready to launch. “That’s so exciting!” said Karen, her buoyant mood growing more so.
“What about you?” he asked. “What’s the news?”
“Well, I may have found an important new source of funds,” she said. “But I don’t want to jinx it, so I won’t say any more.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“Guess what I learned in school today,” said Ruby. “How to Charleston!” She stood up from the table and began twisting and torquing her hips, her arms against her sides, her wrists pointing north.
“Awesome!” said Karen, before realizing that she must have sounded exactly like Miss Tammy.
“Also,” said Ruby, sitting down again, “Ivy gave me her gummy bears at lunch.”
“Well, that’s a ridiculous amount of good news for one day,” said Karen, who had no idea who Ivy was but assumed it was a new friend. “I say we celebrate.”
“Yay!” said Ruby. “Can we go out for ice cream?”
“Sure,” said Karen, whose worries had grown larger than how many calories her daughter consumed per day.
“You’re in a good mood,” said Matt, turning to Karen—almost accusatorily, it seemed to her.
“And what’s wrong with that?” she asked.
“Nothing!” he said, shrugging. “Nothing at all.”
After dinner, as promised, they went out as a family for ice cream. Karen suggested the artisanal place with the weird flavors. But Matt and Ruby lobbied hard for Baskin-Robbins. Keen to avoid further conflict, Karen gave in. And while she and Matt didn’t directly hold hands on the way there—Ruby was in the middle—they were at least connected through her. At least they looked like a happy family.
And then they connected some more. After Ruby went to sleep, Karen and Matt split a bottle of wine and watched the last few innings of a baseball game—or, really, Matt watched and Karen let her mind wander. Then Karen forced herself to initiate sex, even though she had little desire to. But once it was under way, biology took charge. And afterward, she was glad that she had. It was neither the greatest sex of Karen’s life, nor the worst. And if the encounter didn’t quite erase the memory of her and Clay, it pushed him farther into the past tense.
If only she hadn’t forwarded him the e-mail about Winners Circle…Karen heard her phone ping just as she was washing up for bed. Matt was already half asleep. She grabbed her phone off the windowsill. Without her reading glasses on, Karen was almost blind. But she held the phone away from her, and eventually she made out the words.
What if I say you’re right? WC sucks and so do I. Then will you see me? Please don’t be mad. I’m just the idiot who writes checks. And I miss you. Badly. CP
I miss you. Badly. As Karen repeated the words in her head, she felt her heart quivering in her chest. Maybe it was just that Clay had the guts to state what Matt never did or had. While Matt had always been a skilled lover, he was also maddeningly silent, finding overt displays of romanticism to be sentimental, indulgent, and insincere. He was especially critical of couples who said “I love you” to each other at the end of every phone call and before every separation, even if it only involved a trip to the supermarket or the bank. But he took the objection to an extreme. He never told Karen he loved her, not even in bed. He never told her he missed her either. But then, they were rarely separated for long periods. At his most emotive, he’d say, “Did I ever tell you how much I like your meat sauce?” It was an old joke, meant to allude to a night early in their courtship, before they made love for the first time.
And yet…a part of her believed that actions spoke louder than words, and that the l-word had become as meaningless as the word friend had on Facebook. Karen also appreciated the fact that Matt gave her space. In her late twenties, she’d had a boyfriend who exuded neediness. Alcohol abuse, overeating, and unemployment were just a few of his many issues. Karen had resented having to take care of the guy. But the role she’d played in their relationship had also felt familiar and therefore comfortable, and she’d struggled to leave him. She’d felt too guilty to do so. Then she’d met Matt. Strong and independent, he’d made her feel strong and independent herself.