Karen’s spirits dropped instantly. He just didn’t mean to take care of this problem of his. How was she ever going to get through to him? After all this, he was still blowing the whole thing off like it wasn’t serious. Now she was wondering if he’d gone to the track yesterday. “So, what did you do yesterday? I mean, where did you go after work? And you know what I’m talking about.”
“I didn’t go play the horses, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t deposit any money in the checking account, but I’ve got $700 cash here to give you today.”
Oh, now he was going to use money as an excuse to see her. She couldn’t believe he’d even stoop low enough to try something like that. But it was working, though. “You promised you’d go to a meeting, John. And since when do you fall asleep that early on a Friday evening? You haven’t done that since I’ve been married to you.”
“I was bored, I guess. I didn’t have anything to do. You said I couldn’t spend the night with you, so I came to my mother’s and fell asleep. That was that.”
“Can’t you see that if you don’t do this, you’re going to be right back out there messing up your money again?”
“Let’s talk about it when I get there.”
She’d known that was coming. Especially since she was cornering him between two walls. He never liked that. “Fine, but you’re not spending the night, so don’t even plan on it.”
He didn’t even acknowledge that last comment. “I’ll see you around noon. You want me to pick up something for lunch?”
“It’s too early for me. But we can pick up something later if you want.”
“I’ll see you then.”
“I can’t believe you’re still runnin’ behind that woman after she put you out the way she did,” John’s mother screamed out in the background. She’d obviously been listening to his conversation all along and had been waiting for the opportune time to throw her two cents in.
“Look, Mama. Karen is my wife, and I’m sick of you disrespecting her. Don’t make me choose between you and my wife, because if you do, you won’t like the outcome. I’m sick of every time I turn around, you’re sticking your nose into my business. This is going to have to stop. I’m not some little kid.”
Ha, ha, and double ha, ha. This was getting good, and Karen was loving every bit of what she was hearing. “Hey. I’ll see you when you get here,” she said and hung up the phone. She laughed so hard that she fell back on the sofa. She lay there cracking up for two whole minutes.
AS USUAL, John was looking casually fine. Karen smiled as she watched him step out of the BMW and walk toward the garage, which was already open. He was dressed in a beige, short-sleeved pullover by Perry Ellis, a pair of perfectly starched Silvertab Levi’s, and a pair of black, toe-enclosed huarache sandals. She shook her head in amazement. It was strange how so many positive aspects could be wrapped up in one man. A gorgeous face, skin like a baby’s, a size thirty-two waist, and the best sense of humor. Not to mention the fact that he dressed impeccably and always smelled good. It was nothing for him to dish out fifty to sixty dollars for a bottle of cologne to replenish his expensive stock of fragrances, and when it came to a piece of clothing, price was no object as long as he was sure he’d look good in it. But then, it was that same reasoning that was the cause of their separation. If only he could value a dollar the same as his physical characteristics. If he did, he’d be batting a thousand.
John entered through the kitchen and went into the great room, where Karen was standing. He walked over to her.
“Hey, baby,” he said, hugging her, then kissing her on the lips.
“Hey,” she said. It felt so good to be in his arms. She’d just seen the man two days ago, but it felt like two weeks. Gosh, she wished he would take those GA meetings more seriously so they could get their marriage back on track, because this current situation was too unstable for her. His visits were starting to feel like those of some boyfriend dropping in to see how his new girlfriend was doing.
“Damn,” he said, stepping away from her. “You’re looking especially fine this afternoon. Is that new?” he asked, checking her out from head to toe.
“I bought the shirt yesterday when Regina and I went shopping, and you know I’ve had these jeans forever.” She was wearing a sleeveless indigo jean shirt, a pair of comfortably snug Guess jeans, and a pair of metallic-gold slip-on sandals.
“So, what’s up for today?” he asked. “You want to go to a movie or something?” He sat down on the sofa, picked up the Saturday edition of the Daily Herald, and started skimming through it.
“I guess we could. Although I don’t know if anything good is playing or not.” She sat down on the love seat adjacent to him and rested her foot on the edge of it. “I want to talk to you first, though, before we go.”
He didn’t say anything and didn’t look up from the paper, which meant he had a pretty good idea where the conversation was headed.
“What I want to know is when you plan on going to a meeting? I hate to keep pressuring you, but you know you have to do this.”
“I think there’s one tomorrow evening, so I’ll probably try to catch that one.”
“Try?” She didn’t like his choice of words.
“You know what I mean. Don’t even worry about it. I’ll go.”
“You’ve been claiming that all week, and still you haven’t gotten there yet. I just don’t understand you. Gambling is no different than alcohol or drugs. Once it becomes an addiction, you have to seek outside help. You can’t do this alone, because if you could, you wouldn’t be throwing away large sums of money like you do.”
“I haven’t gone to the track in over two weeks now, and you know it.”
“Yeah, only because I asked you to move out. But if I said you could move back in today, you’d be at that track first thing next Friday, right after work.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I’ve given that whole gambling thing up. You just don’t believe it,” he said, setting the paper down, leaning to one side on the sofa, and pulling out the brown leather wallet Karen had bought him last Christmas.
She’d been sort of skeptical when he’d said he had $700 left from the paycheck he’d received yesterday. It had almost been too good to be true, but now, he was actually about to give it to her, and suddenly she felt a huge amount of relief.
“Here’s the money for you to deposit,” he said, passing her a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills folded in half.
She put it on the glass coffee table, pretending like it was no big deal, though what she really wanted to do was count them. But then, that would look like she didn’t trust him, so she decided against it. On a more positive note, though, these one-hundred-dollar bills meant she wouldn’t have to make another unnecessary withdrawal from the credit union. “Thanks.”
“Why don’t you just admit it, I’m a good person,” he said, going back to the paper. “How many men do you know would still be giving their wives money to pay bills, even though they’ve been kicked out of the house? Most people would think I’m some kind of fool.”
“I don’t know why they would, because you own fifty percent of everything we have, just like I do. And just because you’re not staying here doesn’t mean you don’t have any responsibility. I mean, it’s not like I’m taking your money and spending it on myself. I’m using this money to pay the bills that we’ve both made,” she said, staring at him. She was starting to get upset.
“Shit, you don’t have to get mad about it,” he said irritably. “I was just making a point.”
She didn’t say anything, because he didn’t sound anything like the man who’d been in beg mode for the past three weeks. He was upset. And anyway, he was probably right when he said most men wouldn’t give their wives any money, although she didn’t see any reason to let him know that she agreed with him.
He dropped the last section of the newspaper next to him on the sofa. “It’s still too early to catch a matinee, so let’s go get something to eat. I’m starving.
”
That was just like him to carry on as if there hadn’t been one ounce of tension between the two of them just a minute ago, and since she didn’t feel like arguing anyway, she followed his lead. “That’s fine, but I want to wait until the mailman gets here, so I can check the bank statement. When I called the automated teller last night, the bank’s balance seemed to be way off from the one in the checkbook. He should be here in a few minutes, though. Then we can leave.”
“Is there anything good in the refrigerator?” he asked, heading into the kitchen. “I at least need something to tide me over.”
“Some juice and a few cold cuts. That’s about it. I haven’t gone grocery shopping since you moved out.”
“What else is new,” he said, laughing. “Doesn’t make any sense to buy any food, if you don’t plan on cooking it.”
“Shut up,” she said and chuckled.
He came back into the great room with a couple of slices of ham between two pieces of wheat bread and a full glass of Sunny Delight.
“I know this is probably not the time to bring this up and it’s probably the last thing you want to hear, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.”
He was sounding too serious for her, and she could only imagine what he was preparing to say. “What?”
“I think we should reconsider our decision about not having any kids. I mean, I think we’d make great parents. We’ve got all this love between us, and we wouldn’t have any problems financially either.”
Karen frowned and wondered where he’d pulled that big bright idea from. His butt? He had to be kidding. “Have you lost your mind? You knew how I felt about having children from the moment you met me, and I’m sorry to tell you, nothing has changed. And you know I had my tubes sealed off, anyway.”
“Yeah, but remember when we had that consultation with your gynecologist and he said that securing those clips around your tubes was the best method because that way, he could go in and surgically remove them if we changed our minds?”
“Please. I don’t care if he can remove them. The bottom line is, I don’t want any children. I’m already thirty and my career is just now starting to take off. I didn’t struggle to get a master’s degree while working full-time for nothing.” This was pissing her off.
“I just think we need something like that. If we had a baby, I probably wouldn’t have started on this gambling spree. I need something else to devote my time to.”
“A baby isn’t some play toy that you can simply pick up when you get bored and put down when you’ve got something better to do. What about all the times we grab our keys and leave the house at the spur of the moment? We wouldn’t be able to do that anymore if we had a baby. Instead, we’d have to be scrounging around for some babysitter. And the last thing I want to do is hightail it to some day care by five-thirty, trying to make sure we don’t have to pay a whole dollar for each minute thereafter. I just can’t see it. Plus, who has a hundred dollars a week to pay them in the first place? I know we don’t.”
“I get off work before you do, so I can pick the baby up every day. And the day-care costs wouldn’t be a problem if we stop doing some of the other things we do.”
“Like what? Because I know you’re not prepared to give up Claiborne, Perry Ellis, and Kenneth Cole. And although I don’t buy as much designer stuff as you do, I like living comfortably. Living on the edge isn’t my thing. What if we had a baby now? Do you think you could have gone out and thrown whole paychecks away like you did? I don’t think so.”
“If it would mean having a baby, I would give up clothes and everything else.”
“That’s easy to say right now, but reality is a whole different thing. Plus, I don’t want to be tied down with any kids. I watched my mother struggle to take care of me and Sheila when my father conveniently walked out, and if she hadn’t been the excellent money manager that she was, I don’t know where we’d be. That’s never going to happen to me.”
“I know it’s never going to happen to you, because I would never walk out on you. The only reason I moved out this time is because you insisted. I’m telling you, I love you too much to do anything like that. You mean everything to me, so I don’t understand how you would even think something like that?”
“My parents meant everything to each other too, but look what my father did. There’re just no guarantees. My grandmother used to say all the time that you never know what tomorrow might bring, and she was right. I’m sorry, but getting pregnant and having a baby isn’t for me.”
“Well, at least think about it,” he said, setting the near empty plate on the floor. “Okay?”
“There’s nothing to think about,” she said, turning away from him. “This is a dead issue as far as I’m concerned. If you wanted someone to lie around in the house barefoot and pregnant, you should have married someone else, because I’m just not the one.”
“I didn’t want to marry anybody else. I fell in love with you.”
“Look, I can’t change who I am or how I feel.” She stood up when she thought she heard the mailman.
John flicked on the television set. “Fine, Karen. If that’s the way you feel.”
After retrieving the mail, she came back and sat on the love seat, where she shuffled through each piece until she found the monthly statement from Bank First. She dropped everything else onto the coffee table. She opened the envelope and pulled out four pages. The first two summarized the checking account and the last two were for savings. She scanned down the first page and didn’t see any errors. But when she came to the second page, she noticed two withdrawals, each in the amount of $500. She frowned. That just couldn’t be. She hadn’t used her Cirrus card to withdraw that kind of money since she could remember, and as far as she knew, $500 was over and above the daily limit for automatic teller withdrawals. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the maximum was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred fifty. And since John never carried the checkbook, the only way he could have done something like this was by going to the bank and making a teller withdrawal. For his sake, that had better not be the case.
“Did you make two five-hundred-dollar withdrawals over the past four weeks?”
He didn’t answer. His eyes were glued to the television, and she knew he was pretending that he hadn’t heard her.
“John!”
“What?” he said, finally looking at her.
“For the second time, did you make two withdrawals over the last four weeks?”
“How much were they for?”
“If you made the got-damn withdrawals, you should already know how much,” she yelled.
He dropped his face into the palms of his hands and shook his head from side to side like he didn’t know what to say next. “Yeah, I think I did, but that was over two weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Here I am writing checks like they’re going out of style, and you’re stealing money out of the account like some child. What if I’d written too many checks and they started bouncing? If I’m not mistaken, I think they charge around twenty dollars for having insufficient funds.”
He looked up at her but was speechless.
“I’ve never bounced a check in my entire life, and I’m not about to start just because of your irresponsible ass. Hell, I work at that bank. I can’t believe you. You’re not only getting rid of the money you earn, but now you’re messing with the money we’ve got saved at the bank? I should have never told you that I keep an extra thousand dollars in the account for emergencies. Shit, does going to the horse track sound like an emergency situation to you?”
“Look, baby. I’m sorry. That was before I moved out.”
“Stop lying. This second withdrawal was after you moved out. As a matter of fact, the ninth was on a Tuesday, so that means you were gambling on a weekday.”
“I know, but I haven’t done anything like that since. I know how stupid that was. You’re right about me having a problem, and I swear I’m going to t
hat meeting tomorrow, if that’s the last thing I do.”
“I really don’t care what you do tomorrow, but right now, I want you to get the hell out of here.”
“Baby, please. Why are you tripping about something that happened weeks ago? You know I haven’t done anything like that since then. We need to spend some time together. For once, can’t you just forgive me?”
“Get out!”
“Look—”
“I don’t want to hear it. I just want you to get your ass out.”
John rose from the sofa, proceeded through the kitchen, and walked through the garage to his car. He started it up, backed out the wide driveway, and left.
Karen felt like screaming. How could she have been so stupid? It hadn’t dawned on her to check for teller withdrawals when she’d tried to check the balance last evening. She should’ve suspected something like this all along. Drug addicts did this all the time, and she didn’t see much difference with someone who was strung out on gambling. She hated him for doing this. Now she’d have to transfer funds from savings to checking in order to cover some of the purchases she’d made yesterday. To her, that was like robbing Peter to pay Paul, and it made her sick to her stomach just thinking about it. Damn. She could understand if he’d done something responsible like getting the transmission fixed or paying a bill, but gambling, uh-uh.
She lifted the handset of the phone and dialed the twenty-four-hour automated teller line. She pressed “3” to select transfer funds, entered in both account numbers, and then the amount, which was $2,500. She wasn’t taking any chances on him stealing from this account ever again, and she was going to deposit all of it into her credit union first thing Monday morning.
The system was taking longer than usual to process, so she continued to wait. Finally, it responded. “You do not have sufficient funds available to complete this transaction, please press the star key for more options.”
Behind Closed Doors Page 16