Refund

by Karen E. Bender

  THEIR SUBSIDIZED LOW-RENT APARTMENT WAS LOCATED IN A SEVENTIES high-rise where they had braved the abandoned, crumbling warehouses and hefty rats for a rent so cheap they could not afford to live anywhere else. But then the neighborhood changed. They were on the strip of land known as Tribeca, their building a few blocks south of Canal, six blocks north of the World Trade Center, and now there were lofts selling for $20 million, new restaurants with glossy, slim customers posed as though in liquor ads, movie star neighbors moving in such rarified circles they were never actually seen. The building owners were given government subsidies, which meant the tenants’ rents were low, but the owner had said that he would buy out of the program the next year, and thus turn their low-rent apartments into million-dollar condos and effectively send the one thousand tenants out onto the street. Walking into their own building, they heard shrill arguments about the misbehavior of companion animals, feuds about laundry hoisted prematurely out of the dryer. The residents were on edge because they were doomed; Josh and Clarissa now skulked through their neighborhood with the cowed posture of trespassers.

  SOON IT WOULD BE TIME TO SEND THEIR SON TO A PRESCHOOL. IN the park sandbox, mothers talked about Rainbows, the most expensive preschool in the area. Those who had been turned down or could not afford the school spoke of it with a strangled passion. One mother claimed she had stormed out when the director had asked to see her income tax statement during an interview. But another mother, whose son was a student there, leaned toward Clarissa one day after admiring Sammy’s exuberant personality and said, “That’s the only place where they truly treat the children like human beings.”

  This statement had propelled Clarissa through the doors of Rainbows to observe a class. The director, dressed in flowing, silk robes and with large, lidded eyes that made her resemble a woodlands creature from a fairy tale, walked Clarissa through the airy rooms. The director said that the children particularly enjoyed “Medieval Studies,” which apparently meant that the children dressed up as kings and queens. Clarissa watched the children of successful lawyers, doctors, executives, and various moguls stack blocks, roll trucks, and cry. One child had tried to hand her a block. When she smiled at him, a teacher gave her a laminated list of rules for class observation. Number 5 was: Do not engage with a child who tries to talk to you. It interferes with their work. She was ashamed that she had smiled at the child, and that shame convinced her that the school was the only place for Sammy to go.

  “Ten thousand dollars,” said Josh, “so that he can scribble? No. No. No.” She mailed in the application anyway—and when she received the acceptance, she felt it was a sign of some greater good fortune. Their son gazed at them with his beautiful, pure brown eyes, his future gleaming, unsullied, new.

  “At least visit the other schools,” pleaded Josh, and she tried. At one, she peered through a square window in a door to see a crowd of children screaming to be let out. One child punched in a security code, a red light flashed, the door opened, and he shot out, to the roaring approval of the others. That was it. They had enough room on their Visa for the first tuition installment; they loaded it on.

  Then Josh heard about a job for the two of them teaching art at a small university in Virginia, three weeks paid in September, accommodations for all of them in a hotel. They could hurl the money toward Sammy’s tuition. Their apartment would be empty for a month. It occurred to them they could sublet their apartment and pay off part of their substantial debt load. “Let’s charge a fortune,” said Josh.

  Josh’s college friend, Gary, an investment banker, delivered the tenant to them. “I think you can get three thousand,” he said. Their rent was $550 a month. Josh wrote the ad: Fabulous Tribeca apartment. Two bedrooms, terrace. Three thousand for September. Gary sent his friends a mass email, and the call came the next day.

  “My name is Kim. Gary gave me your name. He says you have apartment to let. I live in Montreal, and I am looking for accommodations in the city for September.”

  “Right,” Clarissa said. “Thanks for calling. Well, we’re by the Hudson, beautiful views, wood floors . . . uh . . . we have a dishwasher.” She paused. “Down the block,” she said carefully, “is Nobu.”

  “No-bu,” said Kim solemnly. There was silence. “I’ve known Gary for three years,” Kim said. “We met in the south of France with his friends Janna from Paris and Juan from Brazil . . . we were in town for the day with the Beaujolais festival. We became friends. Now we follow the Michelin Guide all over Europe together. We have a race to see who has the most frequent flyer miles . . . I have 67,000, but he has more.” She paused. “I want to go to Nobu. I want to go with my friend Darla. She is my best friend. I want to walk to all the restaurants there!”

  “Now, it’s not fancy,” Clarissa said, alarmed.

  “I want to walk to Montrachet!”

  Kim wanted to send the money immediately; she magically wired $3,000 into their checking account, and that was that.

  It was September 1. Kim held the keys to their apartment. They checked their ATM as they headed out of town. The three thousand dollars registered on their account. Josh whistled when he saw it. They drove toward a month’s employment, a couple in front, a child in the car seat, across the bridges, out of the city. She and Josh held hands. Clarissa turned once to look back at the city, the skyline rising, glittering, frozen and grand in the clear autumn light.

  SHE HAD DROPPED JOSH OFF TO LOOK AT TELEVISIONS AT BEST BUY when she heard the news on the car radio. Her body startled. Howard Stern’s show came on, and the tone of the hosts was terrifying: lost and humorless. “We know who did it,” said a caller, “and we need to go kill them.”

  Her hands were trembling, so it was difficult to grip the wheel. She raced back to the store, where the staff and customers stood, statues, rapt, in front of the television screens.

  She stood with the group in the electronics section, in front of dozens of screens. They saw the Towers on fire. A giant tower buckled on the screen in front of them, frail as a sandcastle. Grown men around her yelled, No! in shocked, womanly voices. Sammy was immediately attracted to the picture. “Booming sound,” said their son. She let him watch. “Booming!” he yelled.

  THE FACT THAT THEY LIVED BY THE TRADE CENTER MADE THEM objects of concern. “I’m so sorry,”’ said strangers. They stood, awkward, marked with an awful, bewildering luck. “Where would you have been?” asked someone eagerly, as though they had been potential victims and they craved an intimacy with the disaster. “We would have been one block away,” Clarissa said. Her arms became cold. This admission felt strangely like bragging. It occurred to her that others thought they could have been dead. She remembered that they had signed Sammy up to attend the preschool on Tuesday/Thursday mornings. Around nine o’clock they would have been steps away, bringing Sammy to his first day of school at Rainbows.

  The chair of the art department told them to take the day off, and they spent it in the hotel. It was stale and hot, full of a thousand strangers’ breaths. She was not supposed to be here and did not know what to do with herself, grubby, ashamed, alive. The TV droned casualty estimates into the room. The curtains were drawn, and the room was dark. They tried all day to get Sammy to nap. He popped out of his room, awake, excited by their fear. “Hello!” he called gaily. “Hello.”

  Somehow, the day ended. They drove down the dark streets. Almost no one was on the road, and it seemed that everyone had fled to their homes. They passed the stores that resembled giant concrete cubes, Walmart and Target and Old Navy, the buildings strangely devoid of windows, like bunkers. Sammy screamed with exhaustion until he fell asleep. A student had said to them: providence had brought them here. “You have been blessed,” the student said in a respectful tone, before inviting them to church. Clarissa declined, though she kept thinking about this. She asked Josh, “Do you think we were blessed?”

  “No,” he said. “We’re not special. Don’t feel special. It could be us next time. It could be us any minute.
”

  She looked out the window. This was not the answer she wanted. “Why do you say that?” she said. “How do you wake up in the morning? How are you going to walk Sammy down the street?”

  He reached for her hand. His fingers felt strange, rubbery; she clung to them, bewildered by the raw facts of fingers, hair.

  “HELLO,” SAID THE VOICE, AGGRIEVED, THREE DAYS LATER. “HELLO, Clarissa. It’s me.”

  “Hello?” asked Clarissa. “Who is this?”

  “I was on my way there. I wanted to go to the observation deck. I went the wrong way on the subway, or I would be dead. I got out, and there were all these people running. Then I saw the second plane. I started running, and then I couldn’t get the windows closed because I’ve never seen windows like yours—”

  “I’m sorry,” Clarissa whispered. “I’m sorry—”

  “They said there’s a bomb under the George Washington Bridge!” Kim shouted. “I can’t get the ferry to New Jersey, it’s closed. Is there a heliport in Manhattan? I’ll pay anything to get to a heliport. Can you tell me?”

  “I don’t know,” said Clarissa, “I don’t know where one is—”

  There was a pause. “I’m leaving town,” said Kim. “I can’t stay here. And I want a refund. I want it all back.”

  ONE DAY BEFORE THEY LEFT VIRGINIA TO RETURN TO NEW YORK, Clarissa received an email: IN REGARDS TO REFUND:

  I have not heard from you in regards to the status of my refund. Perhaps you are too busy to think of me now. All the hotels are giving refunds. Also free rooms in the future, suite upgrades. My pet peeves are injustice and dishonesty. I know when I am being treated fairly. You did not tell me certain facts about the apartment, which was, I am sorry to say, filthy. Black goo all over the refrigerator. I had to wear plastic gloves to keep my hands clean.

  Darla and I planned our vacation for a long time. We are best friends. We were going to buy the same clothes, go to the newest restaurants. People would admire us and say who are those glamour girls. Her hair is red and more beautiful, but I will admit I have nicer legs, we wanted to start a commotion.

  I expect to receive payment of U.S. $3,000 within a week.

  WHEN THEY GOT OUT OF THEIR CAB AT CANAL STREET, THE BORDER between civilian New York and the war zone, they unloaded their luggage by the rows of blue police barricades. “Let’s see your ID,” said the state trooper, standing trim and noble in his brown uniform, surrounded by pans of homemade cookies. “Do you live here, or do you have reservations?”

  They looked at him.

  “The restaurants gave us lists of people who have reservations,” he said, pulling out a piece of paper. They offered their driver’s licenses, and the officer agreed: this was where they lived.

  He offered to give them a ride to their building. The car floated by the gray, scrolled buildings, the streets deserted, simply a stage set, built quickly, then abandoned. The sky had become a pale, sickly orange and gray. There were too many police cars posted at corners; sirens pierced the warm air. There were American flags everywhere, as though everyone was desperate to have the same thought. People hurried down the streets, carrying groceries, pushing strollers; some were wearing surgical masks.

  Kim had left in great haste, sheets piled in the living room, a pale lipstick in the bathroom sink. Clarissa picked up the lipstick and touched the tip; the color was a frosted pink. Sammy ran ahead of them. She thought that they should make some grand entrance, that they should say something profound to each other, but she merely listened to the sound of their presence ring through the apartment.

  THERE WAS THE SMELL, UNLIKE ANYTHING SHE HAD SMELLED before. Burning concrete and computers and office carpets and jets and steel girders and people. There was nothing natural about the smell; it tasted bitter and metal in her mouth and blew through their neighborhood at variable times; the mornings began sweet and deceptive, yet the afternoons became heavy with it. She began to get a sore throat, and her tongue became numb. The girls at the American Lung Association table gave her a white paper mask and told her that there was nothing to worry about, but to keep her windows closed and stay inside. She walked against the small stream of people wearing paper masks. The streets were dark and shiny, the sanitation trucks spraying down the street to keep the dust from lifting into the air. A man walked by in a suit and a gas mask. Did he know something that they did not? Where did he get the gas mask?

  She went out to the market the first morning after they returned. She pushed Sammy in his stroller downtown, heading straight toward the empty sky. In the market, she picked out cereal, detergent, apples to the pop soundtrack in the supermarket, the cheerful music that usually made her feel as though she were part of some drama greater than herself. Now it floated around her, impossible, but the supermarket did not shut it off.

  When she ran into neighbors, anyone—Modesto, the maintenance man in the building, the counter man at the bodega, mothers from the playground—she moved toward them, the fact of their existence, her fingers like talons. It did not matter that she did not know their names. How are you, they asked each other, and it seemed like they were saying I love you.

  “How are you?” Modesto asked.

  “Where were you?” she asked.

  “How is your apartment?”

  “I’m glad to see you.”

  The meetings were hushed and tender, and then, with further discussion, she found that the neighbors had become deformed by a part of their personalities. The mothers who had been angry now were enormous, stiff-shouldered with anger; the mothers who were fearful were feathery, barely rooted to the ground. “Why do they close the park for asbestos,” said one angrily, “when before it was just full of piss and shit?”

  She stood with Josh, that first week, looking out their closed window at the lines of dump trucks taking the rubble to the barge. They sat, sweaty, greasy, in their living room, listening to the crash of the crumbled buildings as they fell into the steel barge. The swerve of the cranes sounded like huge, screaming cats, and when the heavy debris crashed into the barge, the sound was so loud they could feel it in their jaws.

  They drifted quickly from their damp new gratitude for their lives to the fact that they had to live them. One week after their return, they sat beside the pile of bills that had accumulated. They sat before the pile as though before a dozen accusations: then Josh got up and went to the closet and brought out suits that she had not seen since he was in his twenties. She was startled when she saw him, the same slim figure, but now with gray hair. Suddenly, she realized that she had stopped looking closely at herself in the mirror. She dragged out some of the dresses she had worn fifteen years ago: stretchy Lycra dresses that clung to her skin. Now she looked like a sausage exploding from its casing. She had been hostage to the absurd notion that by acting young, she would not age. The part-time jobs, the haphazard routine, had kept them mired in a state of hope, which now made it difficult to get off the odd welfare state that was the adjunct, freelance, part-time job.

  “We were fools,” he said.

  Clarissa looked at herself in the mirror. She tried to hold her stomach in.

  “We have to get real jobs. We should have had them fifteen years ago.”

  “What about your art?” she asked. “We can cut back. We can eat beans more.” He stared at her. “We can get another gallery, you’re doing great work—”

  She hated the tinny, rotting optimism in her voice. It had pushed them forward blindly, roughly, toward an imagined place where they would be seen for who they really were. She had wanted to walk through museums to see her work displayed on the walls. That sort of presence would, she had thought, cure her sorrow for her own death. But of course, it did not.

  “We were idiots,” he said.

  They looked out the window at the smoke rising. His eyelashes were dark and beautiful. She remembered how when she married him, she hoped that their children would have those eyelashes, hoped that this loveliness would be protection against loneliness o
r cruelty. All of her previous thoughts seemed the musings of a fool. She rubbed her face, which was damp with sweat. Her mind seemed to have stopped. There was a short pause outside; the crane operators stopped for a moment of silence whenever they found part of a body. She looked out and saw one of the workers holding his hat. She opened a window. The bitter, metallic smell entered the apartment.

  “Kim wants all her money back,” she said.

  He lifted his hands in bewilderment.

  DEAR KIM:

  We are so sorry for your terrible experience. We are so glad you were not harmed. This is indeed a terrible time for the world. You did stay in our apartment for ten nights, and I have calculated this stay, at current hotel rates, at $150 a night. We are also deducting a fee for cleaning the apartment, as you did leave a window open, letting some contaminated dust inside. This leaves you with a refund of $1,000. The first installment, in $20, will arrive in a week. Peace be with you.

  She took a deep breath and pressed “Send.”

  SHE TOOK SAMMY TO HIS FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. SHE WALKED down the street, past the taped fliers. The local day spa was offering free massages for firemen and policemen. A neighborhood restaurant offered a $25 Prix Fixe, Macaroni and Roast Beef, Eat American. Donations to Ladder 8 for Missing Firemen accepted. Dozens of Xeroxed faces of the missing clung to lampposts, wrapped with tape; they stared into the street. Loving husband and father. Our dear daughter. Worked on the Eighty-seventh Floor. Worked at Windows on the World. Please call. She walked by them slowly, and she could not breathe. The missing people were on every corner. They were smiling and happy in the photos, and many were younger than her.

  The preschool was a block north of the wooden police barricades that separated regular life from the crumbled heap of buildings, the endless black smoke. Her stroller rattled past them and through the doors of the preschool. The school staff floated around, greeting everyone with an unnerving intimacy, by their first names. Sammy darted into his classroom, and she stood with a cloud of mothers. They had walked to school under the smoky, foul skies, wearing leather coats in blue and orange. It seemed a paltry, mean decision, deciding what to wear, waking up and hearing the broken buildings falling into the boats. They had decided to dress up. Their hair was frosted golden and brown, and they were beautiful, and when they left, they cupped hands over their mouths.