If a Stranger Approaches You: Stories by Kasischke Laura

Author:Kasischke, Laura [Kasischke, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781936747511
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 2013-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

What choice did Karen have but to keep the little dog after Elizabeth never returned from the weekend with her daughter? It was months before they found the poor woman’s body cut into small pieces and stuffed into the toilet tank and the crawl space of her bungalow—which was only inspected some months after the new couple moved in and complained to the realtor who’d sold it to them about the plumbing and the stench—and a huge, protracted courtroom drama full of shouting and paparazzi and Special Reports interrupting every television show Karen tried to watch for many months before Elizabeth’s ex-husband, who happened to be the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, was convicted of her murder.

Buttons learned some tricks. Fetch. Sit. Beg. He slept for the first few weeks at the foot of Karen’s bed, but when she allowed it, he liked to make his way up to the pillow beside hers and curl against her face.

A kind of love blossomed between them, like the love between a mother and her child, perhaps—especially after the accident and the months of recuperation that followed, when Buttons was Karen’s only source of affection and companionship after her sister, who’d returned to Karen’s life to nurse her back to health had died when her cell phone exploded in her hand, killing her instantly in front of the elementary school where the children had just run out the front doors to be greeted by their parents, and the ten million pieces of Karen’s sister’s carnage rained down on them as they screamed.

Now, every spring, Karen planted impatiens for Buttons just so he could dig them up.

It was difficult learning to adjust to life with only one arm after so many years of having two, but Buttons was a great help to Karen. Bringing the mail to her. Licking the tears from her cheeks. Somewhere, she knew, some other woman was driving for hundreds of miles with Karen’s arm embedded in the grill of her car. She’d find it someday, and never know whose it was, or where it had come from.

Probably, she was Conrad’s wife. Probably, Conrad would recognize the arm as Karen’s as soon as he saw the hemp bracelet he had braided for her and his own toenail at the center of it, and have a heart attack, dying in their driveway in front of their home, surrounded by his screaming daughters and his wife. His son would hang himself in the public park, but, it being Halloween weekend, he would be taken simply for a macabre decoration for several days.

It would not be until many years later that Karen would begin to realize how selfish she had been, having an affair with a married man. The chain of events it might have begun. How little she’d known then of love, she realized. And family. The humble, hopeful vows people took to get themselves through this life intact. How a betrayal, even of a stranger, was like a tiny spot of rust that eventually ate away everything.

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