Refund by Karen E. Bender

Author:Karen E. Bender [Bender, Karen E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619025011
Publisher: Counterpoint

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.

“Have you gone out to dinner yet?” she heard one mother ask another. “You wouldn’t believe the good deals down here, plus you can get reservations. Prix fixe at Chanterelle, thirty-five bucks, incredible, plus you have money for a good bottle of wine.”

“The Independence has a special, Eat American,” said another. “The waitstaff is fast and gracious. They have the most exquisite apple pie.”

Clarissa closed her eyes and rubbed her face, wondering if she should admire these mothers’ resilience or be appalled.

“We were refugees at the Plaza,” she heard another mother say. “They had a special for everyone living below Canal. We had to go. Our place was covered in dust. We started throwing up, and I knew we had to get out. It cost a ton to get it cleaned. Should we stay or go? Can someone just tell me?” She whirled around, looking.

The teacher came by. “The children are doing well,” she said. “Do you want to say bye before you go?”

Now Clarissa swerved through the room like a drunken person. Your child was not in the world, and then he was, suddenly, part of it. She crouched and breathed his clean, heartbreaking smell. “I’m going bye,” she said.

Her child ignored her. Slowly, she stood up.

In the office off the main hallway, the in-house psychologist was holding a drop-in support session in which parents could talk about their feelings about sending their children to preschool three blocks from the site. Clarissa stood with the group clustered around the psychologist.

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