Refund

by Karen E. Bender

  “Oh, come on. He’s not that bad,” she said.

  “Not that bad,” I said. “Are you crazy? Are you in love with him?”

  Betsy stood up.

  “Bye,” she said.

  She turned and sailed down to the ditch. I leaned over the edge of the hill, as though I could reel her back, but she was already there, she was already walking. The boys saw her, and a few comments came, like the first zippy pieces of popcorn that explode inside a pan:

  “Hey.”

  “You have a name?”

  “Nice day, sweetie?”

  “Wanna come hold it for me?”

  “Bitch,” I said, quietly, into the sand. She stopped. I hoped she’d run then, make a break for the parking lot, but she didn’t; she was brave. She zeroed in on one boy who had finished and was standing away from the others. He was thin-armed, freckled, pressing a boogie board close to his chest. Betsy walked right over and stood beside him. She kept the tube top wrapped right around her bad hand. You couldn’t see it, couldn’t see that there was anything different about her. She was just a really pretty girl who was trying to make this boy like her. The boy kept his eyes on the sand, and she kept talking. Then she leaned forward and touched his arm with her bad hand.

  I thought he’d know it in a second, feel the bump through her tube top and run. I thought that would teach her, and all those boys would come running to me. But she had him. My sister made him like her. The boy toed the sand, smiling. And even though he wasn’t a very cute boy, even though he was probably named something like Earl, I had never wanted so much to be her.

  I flopped onto my back and closed my eyes so she wouldn’t know that I had been watching. When I opened them, she was there.

  “You know what?” she said.

  “What.”

  “I think he liked it.”

  “What?”

  And she held up her bad hand.

  “That?”

  Betsy smiled.

  “I think he did,” she said.

  THAT NIGHT, WHEN OUR FATHER FELL ASLEEP IN FRONT OF THE TV, we slipped in low, flat, to sit beside him. Once we made it, once we were finally beside our father, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. Betsy sat, staring into the bright white of the TV; then she unwrapped her tube top and took out her bad hand. It glowed in the light of the TV set. I thought it looked as though it entered the world more purely, simply, than a complete hand would. Betsy pulled my father’s feet onto her lap; then she began to rub her bad hand back and forth along them. “Idiot,” I hissed. “What are you doing?” I thought this was it. She was going to be Queen of the Hill; now she would cure our father in some sick mutant way.

  “Fine. Fine,” I hissed. “Wake him up. Just kill him, while you’re at it.” But nothing happened. Betsy stopped.

  “Bitch,” she whispered. “I’m not doing anything.” Neither of us moved from our father. We looked at him for a long time.

  AS SOON AS WE GOT TO THE HILL THE NEXT DAY, SHE ANNOUNCED, “I’m going to kiss a boy for an hour, and I’m going to tell him my name is Sally.”

  She ran down the hill; I followed. She put me against a truck. I started to go back to my towel but stopped: I had to see what she was going to do with my name. Betsy steered clear of the boy she had picked the last time and found one I thought was cute. Clutching the boy with her good hand, she led him over to the truck. She stopped about ten feet from me, turned him around so he couldn’t see me. All I could see of the boy was his pinkish back. She stepped close to him, fiddling her good hand in his hair. I stood against the truck, pretending to look at the seagulls circling. Then Betsy, my sister, reached up and kissed him.

  I could almost feel it inside me when she did that; I could almost taste that boy. But I wasn’t kissing him. It wasn’t me. I was just there, in the shadows, trapped against a truck.

  I wanted to say things. Tramp. Slut o’ the Universe. Crazed Maniac of the World. Major Bitch. Of course, I didn’t. There was nothing to do but stand quietly and watch my sister pull love out of someone else.

  I LEFT THE BEACH EARLY AND HEADED FOR SAV-ON. IT WAS WHERE our family went when we needed to fix things. I went down the Cosmetics aisle and thought of my mother. I thought hard about her, trying to make her stop yelling. I went down Toilet Seats and thought of Betsy. I tried to keep her from taking over the world. I went down Lawn Chairs, and I thought of my father. I tried to make him well.

  I found it by Gardening. A small bottle filled with bright blue fluid. Fern Encourager. In small print: Bring your thirsty ferns to life.

  I did something I had never done before: I put Fern Encourager in my pocket and went for the door. I walked out past the girls ringing the cash machines, stepping right into the parking lot. I didn’t stop walking for five blocks. In front of me the sidewalk rose up, shining.

  I SHOWED IT TO HER IN THE BATHROOM THAT NIGHT.

  She rolled up her bikini top, flashing her brown nipples, her tiny breasts. Then she ducked, knocking the bottle out of my hand.

  “Are you insane?” she said to me.

  I watched her move into the mirror as though she were in love with it.

  “I can make you sprout fingers,” I said.

  “Sally, you’re such a geek,” she said.

  I swallowed. I stood so hard on the floor I hoped it would begin to tilt and spill Betsy, my family, somewhere.

  “I can,” I told her.

  I WENT OUTSIDE AND SAT WITH MY FATHER.

  “Do you have cancer?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  I felt something, full as a balloon, shrink inside of me. “Do you have heart failure?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Well, then, what?” I said.

  He held out his arms. I stood inside them. They did not surround me the way I wanted.

  “I get tired after I read these books,” he said. “I get tired after I walk one block.” His voice swelled, as though he were in an argument. He rolled over. “Forget it, Sally. Go play with your sister.”

  I didn’t know what to think. My father had just stopped.

  My father closed his eyes. He looked like he could just sink into the lawn chair and disappear. It wouldn’t take long for me to follow. I wouldn’t even have to try. I tried to tell one of the boys at the beach to come get me. The one who could be Craig, pushing open the gate and walking right to me, leaning over, knowing how to kiss.

  That was the first time in ages that I sat right beside my father.

  THAT NIGHT I WOKE UP, BLINKING INTO THE DARK. I MOVED DOWN the long hallway to the kitchen. I stood in the doorway and scanned the utensils. The can opener wasn’t sharp enough. I didn’t know how to put together the Cuisinart. So I took the biggest steak knife, silver and heavy. And I put it against my left hand.

  That knife was stubborn. I held it hard, stood there breathing; I thought of all the love I would possibly get. But the knife wouldn’t go down. It wouldn’t move.

  I lifted the knife off my skin. I put it in the very last trash can in the garage. I dumped garbage over it—old TV dinners, soda bottles, banana peels—until I was sure no one would know it was there. In bed, my hands went slowly all over my body. My body, still ridiculously complete.

  THE NEXT DAY, I TOLD BETSY I WASN’T GOING WITH HER TO THE hill anymore.

  “It’s boring,” I said.

  She was stepping into that day’s swimsuit; she stopped.

  “How?”

  “It just is,” I said.

  Betsy slapped her arms at her sides. “Fine,” she said. “Be that way.” She whirled around. “What color do I wear?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Pink,” she said. “I totally need pink.” She began to hurl shirts and towels. “Fonz Wannabe looks like a fish when he kisses,” she said. “It’s really gross. You have to see.”

  “No,” I said.

  She zoomed out of the bedroom. I listened. She was running. She was also throwing: magazines, big pillows, chairs.
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  “Sally,” she yelled.

  She was in the kitchen.

  “You stole my pink one,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t want it,” I said.

  “Bitch,” she said. “You know you do.”

  She grabbed a spatula lying on a counter. “You know you do,” she yelled, and she went for me with the spatula. I leaped on Betsy. She whacked the spatula everywhere: into my chest, under my armpit, between my legs. I hit her all over; I didn’t want to miss a spot.

  She shoved me off and ran to the den. I couldn’t believe it; she ran inside.

  “Daddy!” Betsy yelled.

  She began to jump all over the den. I did, too. We bounced up and off chairs, the card table. I pretended our father wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t even there.

  Our father opened his eyes. “Girls, out,” he said.

  Betsy hoisted herself on top of the entertainment console. On the big square TV under her feet, a contestant touched a new Buick. Betsy was the tallest thing in the room.

  Again, she had picked the center of the universe. She had found the best place to be. I wriggled toward Betsy, getting ready to push her off.

  Our father was faster. He lifted her off the TV. Betsy started kicking. He was holding her, in the air, kicking. It was the first father thing I saw him do the whole summer. It was the first thing he did that made him look strong.

  He gently set Betsy on the floor. I loved him, then, instantly, ridiculously. Now he would talk to us again; now he would tell us what to do.

  But our father didn’t say anything. He didn’t even smile. He stepped away from us as though he thought we were ugly.

  “Just go out,” he said. “Go.”

  I let out a big breath. I wondered how our father felt, watching me and Betsy leave for the beach every day. I couldn’t imagine what it was like, staying in this dark room when outside the sun warmed our shoulders, our arms.

  Our father was alone in the den again, and I had no idea how to save him.

  Betsy shot out of the room. I followed. When we made it to the bathroom, she began to cry.

  She leaned into me, her whole face salty. I wanted to help her stop. I frantically scanned the bathroom. Blow-dryers, lip gloss, a loofah sponge. The bottle of Fern Encourager was beside my toothbrush. I grabbed it and held it out to her.

  “Oh, please,” she said.

  I poured out some blue on a paper towel and touched her bad hand with it. I knew the Fern Encourager wouldn’t work. I knew she didn’t think it would, either. But it was all I could think of then, in the bathroom.

  “Idiot,” she said, softly.

  WE DIDN’T TAKE THE BUS THIS TIME; WE RAN THE WHOLE WAY. BETSY dashed up the hill first, sand flying from her feet like white sparks. When we got to the top, we turned to the sun, and I lifted her arm.

  She twisted away from me, embarrassed, but I held her arm there, hard. “Higher,” I said. “On your toes.”

  The boys at the ditch turned toward us, but they were too far away, I think, to see anything but that she had kissed some of them by the parking lot.

  “Hey,” a couple of them began to call. “Hey.”

  Betsy was frozen in her salute, and the boys began running, across the sand, toward us. I stood behind her and held her arm so it was closer to the sun.

  “Try,” I said. “Push.”

  Betsy closed her eyes. It seemed like she was trying to fling her whole self into that hand. I wrapped my arms around her skinny waist and lifted her, kicking, to the sky.

  “Push.”

  The boys coming up the hill saw me holding Betsy and slowed down. I squeezed my sister, tighter, tighter. I waited for something beautiful to come out of her; I waited for anything at all. Then Betsy started to cough, and we fell, separate, on the sand.

  Betsy was still. I took her hand out of the sand. She kept her face down as I shook the sand off. She must have known there was no difference. And, of course, there wasn’t. Because when her hand was out, I could see that it was the same. It was still my sister’s bad hand.

  The boys began to rush the hill. And they began calling her by the name she had given them. “Sally.” “Sally.”

  When she heard they were still coming, Betsy sat up, yanked her bad hand back.

  “Oh, great,” she said. “Give me something.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Your shirt.”

  She snapped up my shirt with her good hand, and then I was on the top of that hill in my bikini top, the wind touching my shoulders. Betsy wrapped my shirt around her bad hand in about half a second, whip-fast after years of practice. The boys were coming for us. They were coming. Betsy pulled me. “Let’s go,” she said. She took my hand with her good one. Her good hand fit into mine perfectly. It had never fit so well.

  “Come on,” she said. And we walked off the beach, all the boys calling, “Sally,” “Sally,” the whole beach ringing with my name.

  Candidate

  Diane Bernstein paid the babysitter, the third one to quit this month, extremely polite when doing so, blaming it on other issues—sorority functions, heavy schoolwork—as though the boy had not unnerved her at all. When Diane walked through the door, Liza, the baby girl, fell into her mother’s arms, weeping so hard she began to choke. The boy, Tommy, was curled up in his bed, rocking himself, for he had scratched the babysitter in a fury (“I wanted to play the radio,” she said, “and he just went insane”), and the young woman had shut him in his room. Why hadn’t Diane found a better babysitter? It was not a question she allowed herself anymore. She had long stopped worrying about forgiveness, of herself or others. When the therapist had told her, again, that it was not her fault, she laughed. Everything was her fault; everything was everyone’s fault. “Even if it was his fault,” she said, meaning her husband, to the therapist, “What would it matter? He’s gone.”

  Diane had to figure out whom to comfort first: two-year-old Liza, who clung to her, frantic with love, unwilling to peel herself from her mother after their long day apart, or Tommy, a knot of frustration in his bed. “They’re cute kids,” the babysitter called back, apologetically, pulling her long sleeves over the scratches the boy had given her; clutching her thirty dollars, she got into her Jeep and drove off.

  Diane had spent the day working in the remedial writing lab of a private university in the Southeast. She hunched in a dimly lit cubicle with the undergraduates, glossy, overfed children who drove SUVs that were gifts from their parents and who could never correctly use a comma. Their essays were supposed to address the upcoming 2004 presidential election and involved passionate, ungrammatical declarations stating why the Republicans should win. Lazy people should not get my tax mony, they wrote, I don’t want any gay agenda on my family. Marriage is between a man and a woman. That day, Diane sat with a young woman dressed like a prostitute, her pink spandex halter top stretched across her breasts. Her hair was styled, confusingly, in two pigtail braids, like an eight-year-old’s. The girl smelled of the beach, of coconut and salt. She had written a diatribe about how the United States should not only invade Iraq but Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia, and Japan, as revenge for Pearl Harbor. It was an extremely long and angry run-on sentence.

  “Do you worry about how other countries might respond to this?” asked Diane.

  The girl glared at her. “The terrorists want to kill me,” she said.

  The girl’s previous paper had recorded her frustrations about her parents’ divorce, the insensitivities of her superiors at Walmart, the cheap gifts her boyfriend had given her. It had been a more interesting paper, though it still lacked any punctuation.

  “The terrorists would come to Briar Wood College?” Diane asked, before she could stop herself.

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. Then, as though concerned about her grade, she smiled and said, sweetly, “You’re just from the North,” which was true, though “the North” seemed to imply anywhere slanting north or west; Diane had moved here from Seattle.

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sp; Diane closed her eyes; the school where she worked had raised tuition too many times, and faculty had been cautioned not to discuss the upcoming election with the mostly conservative students. They lurched about campus, students and teachers, pretending to ignore each other’s pins and T-shirts. She had done what she could: covered her car in bumper stickers and stuck signs in her lawn that were later torn down.

  Sometimes, Diane thought it best to unplug the phone. Then she would not have to decide whether or not to answer it. The father, who was now residing in Florida, was not supposed to call at this hour; he was supposed to speak to the children only in the morning, for his voice upset them when it was time for dinner and bed. She carried the girl up to the boy’s room and sat on his bed. Liza put her head on Diane’s leg and closed her eyes, quiet; her breathing became calm. The boy did not like to be touched, but was generally soothed by coloring in squares in black and yellow. She gave him crayons and paper and he sat up, filling each box with extraordinary love.

  Diane listened to the silence in the room and envied the girl’s belief that she had been rescued. It was an acute misunderstanding between parents and children, one that sometimes comforted her but also felt like a joke.

  SOMEONE KNOCKED AT THE DOOR. DIANE JUMPED UP, HOLDING Liza, and she and Tommy ran for the door. There she found a man in a crisp white shirt and navy pants. His outstretched hand sliced the air in two.

  “Hi there,” he said. “Woody Wilson here. Running for state legislature. I want to represent you.”

  Before he said his name, he was just an ordinary stranger, standing there, slim, brown-haired—a salesman of encyclopedias or cleaning equipment—with the belligerent, trudging optimism of someone who went door to door. After he declared his name, she hated him. This shift in feeling was so abrupt she felt she had been slapped. His face seemed to glow the way a famous person’s did; perhaps it was an accident that he was walking around on earth. He lived most fully on the newspaper ads and billboards all over town. Woody Wilson, Republican for North Carolina State Senate.