Good Karma

by Christina Kelly

White stickers on the windows reminded Fred of remaindered books in a library sale. “Bingo and everything?” he asked.

  “No, really. It’s going to be amazing. It’ll have an indoor pool and cottages for independent living.”

  “Chair fitness? Balloon volleyball?”

  “No, watercolor classes and world history lectures.”

  He could hear the hardness in her voice. When Lissa got angry, she’d do the same thing. Of course, Danielle’s concern was related to her mother’s death. When Fred and Lissa had each other, his daughter hardly worried. But now that he was alone, Danielle probably imagined him padding barefoot around Seven Oaks. As if now that he was seventy-five at any moment he might head straight out the front door, down the steps, and into the ground.

  “Look, I know this is hard for you, Dad. It’s hard for all of us. But I need you to stop thinking of yourself just for a minute. Stop being so selfish.”

  Selfish? He considered himself independent, self-sufficient, low maintenance. He might have told her about his few remaining friends who expected, even demanded, that their children call every Sunday. To send photographs and copies of report cards. To keep them updated on what their grandchildren ate for breakfast. He did nothing of the sort.

  She tried again, a little softer: “If anything happens to you, we’re sunk. I’d have to give up everything to take care of you. As you may recall, I don’t have brothers or sisters to rely on.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying it’s me. Me, me, me.” She thumped the steering wheel with both hands. “I’m saying it’s time to give up that house and that gated community. It’s time to move here. Maybe we need you.”

  chapter 37

  It had stormed almost every afternoon that week. The rain fell in thick sheets so powerful that Catherine wondered if perhaps a nice community on a flat, dry golf course in Phoenix might have been a better retirement decision.

  Although Ralph’s schedule wasn’t put off by the weather—canceled golf games morphed into lunch and an afternoon of liar’s poker at the clubhouse—Catherine felt out of sorts. Her mind became a matinee that spooled endlessly, replaying the moments she’d spent with Fred. To distract herself, she took Karma for long walks in the mornings, to the Seven Oaks playground to watch the swings sway in the wind or past the dog park, to see if she could find Fred’s car. She didn’t. Toward the end of the week she ran into Ernie at the Piggly Wiggly, and he told her that Fred had flown to Maine to visit family. She couldn’t believe he was gone, a shooting star that had flashed momentarily through her world. She threw herself into household projects—scrubbing the vegetable drawer, sorting the recycling, sweeping the attic—and then found herself on the couch at midday, paragraphs into a novel, then somewhere far away. A rocket ship to nowhere.

  She met Amity once downtown to go walking. After lunch, they headed to Colonial Park Cemetery, to wander among the mossy headstones of early Savannahians and heroes of the American Revolution. General Lachlan McIntosh and Archibald Bulloch and Button Gwinnett. Real people who had fought for something they believed in. Catherine even suggested breaking into another house, hoping the rush of adrenaline would surpass the feeling she’d had with Fred, but Amity told her she was trying to cut back. Trying to kick the creeping habit.

  The only thing that brought Catherine temporary relief was strapping Karma into his doggie seat and taking afternoon drives with no particular destination in mind. She cruised along the whimsical cottages of Isle of Hope and the antebellum-style mansions of Victory Drive. After crossing the Talmadge Bridge one dreary afternoon with the hypnotic thwap-thwap-thwap of windshield wipers, she lost herself in her science CD. Before she knew it, she found herself window-shopping on Calhoun Street in Bluffton, South Carolina. As warm mist rose from the pavement around her, she pictured renting a one-bedroom bungalow in the community, deciding what antiques to keep in her living room and which planets to stick to her ceiling.

  Six days into his visit, Fred approached Danielle in the kitchen. “A nine-year-old shouldn’t have math club.”

  She stopped unloading the dishwasher. “Pardon?”

  “A nine-year-old should be out exploring trails or catching frogs. Not have every minute of his day accounted for.”

  “He’s in the sixtieth percentile. If his grades don’t get better, he won’t get into a good college.”

  He’s in third grade, Fred thought.

  “Look, I know you’re trying to help, and you do, but if he doesn’t get word problems then he won’t understand algebra. Next thing you know he’ll be behind in trigonometry which means he’s out of AP Math. He can kiss a college scholarship good-bye.”

  “Hello. Good-bye,” Tommy said as he walked into the room, a gargantuan book bag hanging from his narrow shoulders.

  Fred looked at the boy and saw a bit of himself in his tired posture. “Can Grandpa help with your homework?”

  Tommy nodded, so Fred followed him to the living room and settled next to him on the couch. Danielle came into the room carrying a plate of apple slices and set it on the coffee table. “Grandpa will be happy to help you with word problems, won’t he?” She looked toward Fred.

  “Happy, happy, happy,” he answered.

  Fred took a deep breath and looked around the room at the collection of board games and puzzles on the bookshelf. Even Legos weren’t Legos anymore but ridiculous collections of spaceships and cowboy hats and faces. When Danielle was a child they were just red, yellow, blue, and white plastic rectangles and squares. Fred would sit with her and they would snap together a building with a pencil bridge. Now every box had a theme. Tommy could build the Empire State Building or the Brandenburg Gate or the Sydney Opera House without leaving the room.

  Tommy grabbed an apple slice and wiggled it playfully in front of Fred. “Wanna bite, Grandpa?”

  Fred took the bait and leaned forward, growling like a lion. He snatched the apple between his teeth, then devoured it with sloppy, exaggerated chews. As Tommy belly-laughed, Fred noticed his long eyelashes, just like Lissa’s, fluttering. Even though the world had changed, some things stayed the same, generation after generation. Old math worked just as well as new math. He could teach his grandson that he didn’t need a step-by-step colored diagram to have or do or become anything.

  Tommy dug into his bag, then handed Fred a canary-yellow work sheet. After Fred found his glasses in his front shirt pocket, he read the first question. “Okay, a man has ten dollars to spend at a fair. Every ride costs three dollars. How many rides can he go on?”

  “I need a dividend,” Tommy said.

  Fred placed the paper on the coffee table, then his gaze rested on the photo of Lissa and Danielle at the fair. Taken on the same day as the one Catherine had asked him about, with Danielle as an astronaut. “You’re making it complicated. It’s not.”

  “I need a dividend, quotient, and divisor. My teacher said.”

  “It’s ten dollars and rides cost three dollars apiece.” He thought of Catherine and imagined they might have taken Tommy to the Coastal Empire Fair if things had worked out differently.

  “What rides are there?”

  “A Ferris wheel,” Fred started. “A giant Ferris wheel with wide comfortable seats and spokes lit up like a birthday cake.” Fred could hear Catherine’s nervous laugh as they rose higher into a starry night. Tommy wrote down a three. “And then a merry-go-round. A merry-go-round so wonderful the horses are real.”

  “And we could ride them?”

  “Of course we can.” Fred motioned to the paper and Tommy crossed off the three and wrote down a six. “Finally, there’s a tunnel of love.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know if they have them anymore. It’s a small boat you row through a dark building.” Tommy replaced the six with a nine. “And remember he had ten dollars to start with.”

  “So the dividend is ten and the quotient is three.”

  “So the remainder? What’s left over
when everything else is accounted for?”

  “They went on three rides and the remainder is one.”

  And Fred thought of Catherine again and reminded himself there wouldn’t be a Ferris wheel or merry-go-round or tunnel of love. The remainder is me, he thought.

  chapter 38

  Fred and Danielle sat side by side on folding camping chairs as they watched a scrimmage. Red versus blue. His grandson was somewhere in the middle of the pack, but Fred kept losing sight of him.

  “I just think you might be micromanaging him, what with math club and travel soccer and everything. He’ll have fifty years of showing up. Showing up for work and showing up for marriage.”

  “Is that what marriage was for you? Something you just showed up for?” Danielle chewed her upper lip, then pulled out a phone to take a photo of the boys.

  “No, I didn’t just show up for marriage. I loved your mother. We had a wonderful marriage. I’m sorry she got sick and I’m sorry you lost your mom.”

  “Thank you.” He couldn’t see her eyes behind her dark glasses, but he didn’t need to be psychic to hear her anger.

  “I’m sorry you think I could have done more. Is that what this is about?”

  “Or less.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You could have done less. She told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “About your relationship. About what happened. She told me everything.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said you and she separated because there’d been others.”

  She was the flirt, he wanted to shout. She was the one. She had others. Then a soccer ball rolled off the field and past them. Several boys started to follow it but stopped when Danielle stood. She jogged to where it lay and threw it back onto the field. On her way back she stopped to talk to other parents.

  It was so very long ago, and they were all just doing the best they could. His wife was just a person. She didn’t have X-ray vision, sonic speed, or even superhuman strength to resist opportunity. Marriages are like Legos, he wanted to tell Danielle. They can snap apart and either remain detached single blocks or be rebuilt even stronger. They can take on different, unique shapes and stand the test of time when two people work together.

  Then he heard Lissa: I started to tell her, Freddie.

  It’s ancient history.

  I was going to tell her why we split up. She was just a little girl.

  It was a long, long time ago.

  But she was always so angry after that. I should have told her it was me, not you. I intended to, you know.

  You and I got past it.

  But she never did. That’s the thing. I was going to make it right between you two. Before I left. And I started to do that last week—I really did—I told her how marriage is a journey that sometimes takes routes you don’t expect. Of course, she understood that part. I was going to tell her how I was wrong to leave you but I saw her face and then put it off.

  So you didn’t.

  She said she didn’t want to get into it. Didn’t want that conversation to be what she remembered of our last weeks together. I thought there’d be more time.

  But there wasn’t.

  No, there never is. But I’m trying to make it up to you. I’m trying to give you another chance.

  FRED AND TOMMY moved forward in the movie line. After the game, Danielle had dropped them at the theater. The boy was tired, leaning, his curls resting against Fred’s chest. A gray-haired woman and her granddaughter stood ahead of them at the concession counter. The woman wore a sky-blue jacket embroidered with yellow flowers. It was something he imagined Catherine would wear for a spring day. Something that might cheer up other people. He was sorry that Catherine wasn’t standing in line with them. That she would never get to know his grandson.

  The children glanced awkwardly at each other. The girl waved, but Tommy stood still as a toy soldier.

  “Do you know her?” Fred whispered.

  “No. Not really,” he said and turned away. “Grandpa?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can we get popcorn?”

  “You know your mom said no popcorn,” he said, winking dramatically. Once at the front of the line he ordered a buttered jumbo bucket as big as a soccer ball.

  As they headed into the dimly lit corridor he imagined how a senior center would feel. Carpeted, safe, predictable. There would be no sharp objects or inherent dangers besides the most obvious one—getting older one day at a time. There would be no opportunity to break a hip while slow dancing in the living room. And as he looked at the glowing red exit signs he wondered if it was in fact time to leave Seven Oaks. After all, who was waiting for him when he got back? Ernie and Lulu?

  They found two seats toward the front of the theater. During the opening credits the lights dimmed and Tommy rested his head against his shoulder, so Fred lifted his arm and wrapped it around his grandson. He was an old fool to believe that Catherine would have ever really fallen for him. Would have left her marriage to run off with him in the—what?—ten good years he might have left. And he doubted if she would even forgive him for his deception.

  The smell of suntan lotion revived Fred, and he wondered what he could teach the boy. Not about quotients or dividends or divisors but about love. One day he could teach him how to lead a woman on a dance floor and how to build a strong fire that would last through the night. He would teach him that love may come only a few times in a lifetime, but whether it lasted for thirty years or three days, it was worth the pain. And finally, he could teach the boy that a lie, no matter how small and insignificant, can take down an empire.

  chapter 39

  Wait, I thought you said Fred returned Karma to you.” Amity was having trouble following Catherine and the drama.

  “Yes, but you see he told me he didn’t know where the Great Dane was. He made me believe something that wasn’t true.”

  Amity was thankful that Catherine had called to suggest coffee, but her friend was jumping around as if she’d already drunk too much espresso.

  “And besides,” Catherine continued, “how do I know Fred and Ida Blue didn’t lure Karma away from the dog park on purpose?”

  “So what does Ralph have to do with this?”

  “Maybe they’re all connected.”

  Amity knew about people keeping secrets, both large and small, but she also knew that Catherine was acting crazy. It wasn’t Fred that Catherine needed protection from, it was Ralph, who kept a gun in his file cabinet. People keep guns for protection, of course, but not hidden from their wives beneath piles of paperwork.

  “Don’t you see?” Catherine’s voice had a tinge of exasperation. “I don’t even know if Sequoia is Fred’s dog at all.”

  Amity sipped her cappuccino and nodded politely. For the first time she felt thankful that she’d gotten out of her doomed marriage early and hadn’t let the charade run for thirty or forty years, hadn’t become a wife on the edge of insanity. “So you think it’s a conspiracy?”

  “Could be.” Catherine shrugged and then looked down into her muffin as if she might find the answer there. “I mean, Fred and I had all these wonderful moments over just a few days, but maybe they weren’t real at all.”

  “Listen, there are lots of things that aren’t real but serve a purpose.” Amity thought of Buddy, her invisible dog, whose leash allowed her to go anywhere in search of him. “Plastic Christmas trees. Artificial sweetener”—a waitress walked by with a dessert tray—“mock apple pie. Even our creeping. It’s not a real thing, just a temporary fix that makes us feel better momentarily. People don’t just lie in wait at the dog park hoping to encounter dupes. From what you’ve said, Fred sounds like a sweet guy.”

  “Fred is a sweet guy.”

  Every time Catherine said his name, she seemed anxious, looking around as if expecting him to be sitting in the next booth or entering when the front doorbell chimed. Although Catherine hadn’t mentioned any physical contact, Amity knew a
love connection when she saw it.

  “But what I can’t figure out is, why would he have gone through all the trouble to hide Sequoia?” Catherine asked.

  “I think maybe he likes you that much.”

  “You do?” Catherine leaned forward across the table. “Really?”

  From creeping in Catherine’s house, Amity felt like she understood her friend a little better. She was glad she could help her on occasion, as sort of a domestic secret Santa, refilling the soap dispenser, folding laundry, whatever needed to be done. But she kept coming back to Ralph’s gun, which didn’t quite fit into their tidy house. Maybe he suspected his wife had a boyfriend. Maybe Catherine was in trouble. She’d like to warn her, but couldn’t let her know she’d been a regular interloper in her house. “And do you think this psychic sitter had something to do with the dognapping?”

  “Maybe Fred and Ida Blue are secretly sleeping together.” Catherine sounded jealous. “Maybe they’ve had me in their crosshairs for months and Ralph is even in on the action. Maybe Fred was meant to lure me to a truck stop in Pooler so they could chop me into little pieces and Ralph could move on.”

  “Their crosshairs? Have you ever tried skeet or trap shooting? Does Ralph have an interest in sporting clays?”

  “Pardon?”

  Amity had to rein herself in. As when she taught English, she couldn’t jump into diagramming on the first day: Ralph (noun) keeps (transitive verb) a hidden (adjective) gun (direct object). She sipped her cappuccino and came back to Catherine. “You’re getting a tad ahead of yourself.” Amity hadn’t realized Catherine had such a vivid imagination. She wondered if taking her creeping had shown her a darker way of living and opened up a dangerous skylight in her mind. Truth be told, after her own near overdose, Amity decided creeping wasn’t an effective coping mechanism, though a climactic farewell before starting therapy might be in order. She was even starting to think like Catherine, as she imagined jimmying the lock on the golf maintenance building and taking a fairway mower for a joyride. “Okay, Catherine, so now what are you going to do? You can’t just sit on it.”