She pulled up the straps of the red and blue striped Speedo she’d picked out. Marisa was trying on a sleek, dark green suit with one shoulder bare. She was a wood nymph, a forest sprite. Looking at herself in the mirror next to Marisa, Karen felt tears coming. What was the matter with her? Was she going to cry over a bathing suit? A T-shirt? A boyfriend who’d been trying to break up with her for weeks before he’d found the nerve to do it?
“Tell me, Karen,” Marisa said, “should I buy it? Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think so? How do I really look?”
“Buy it.” Did Marisa need Karen to tell her she was gorgeous? She had Karen’s old boyfriend. What more did she want? Why be so greedy? Did Karen have to throw in compliments, too?
“I don’t look too skinny in it?” Marisa held out her arms. “Chicken bones.”
“Stop.” Karen peeled off the Speedo.
“I wish I had arms like yours.”
“STOP!” She didn’t want to hear any more.
Marisa bought the wood-nymph suit. They were hungry again and went into a sandwich shop. “I left an application here,” Karen said gloomily as they sat down in a booth. “I’ve left applications everywhere.”
They had finished eating and were just about to leave when Davey showed up. “So I found you,” he said, sitting down next to Marisa. “I looked all over the place. Hi, Karen.”
“Hello, Davey.”
“You didn’t have to go to work?” Marisa said to him.
“No. Any luck shopping?”
“Ta ta!” Marisa pulled out her suit. It looked miniscule; had Karen not seen Marisa in it, she would hardly have believed it would cover her.
“Very nice.” Davey touched the fabric. He and Marisa looked at each other, their faces gleaming.
When they left the mall, they split up. Marisa and Davey were going downtown, in hopes of making the science fair at the War Memorial before it closed for the day. “Come with us, Karen,” Marisa said.
“No, thanks, I have other things to do.” Then as she watched them walk away, she was suddenly enraged. “Marisa!” They didn’t hear her. Too absorbed in each other. They kept walking. And just as well—she didn’t want to go with them. But where did she want to go? What did she want to do? Who did she want to see? She didn’t know until she saw the Five East bus grinding to a stop at the corner. Not her bus. The bus that went across town and all the way down Oak Street, where Scott lived.
Twenty-one
Of course Scott wasn’t home. Why would he be? Karen stood on the porch, wondering, What now? Wait for him to come home? Go away and come back? Go home herself? Why had she even come here? To tell him about The Green Market. To tell him what? There was nothing to tell, and if there was, Liz could do it. An annoying thought! Slipping her knapsack off her shoulder, she tore a piece of paper out of a notebook and sat down on the top step.
“Dear Scott, I went to The Green Market today and saw Mr. Anderson. He was very nice. I left an application—this one must be 1,001! Anyway, thanks a lot for the tip. Karen.”
She looked it over, not satisfied. Naturally. Nothing satisfied her today. Did she have to write him a whole letter in order to tell him one small thing? She took another sheet of paper and scribbled rapidly. “Scott. Went to Grn Mkt. Left app., no job now, maybe later. Thanx. Karen.” Short, not sweet, but to the point.
She dropped it in his mailbox, then walked away, thinking about Scott taking his mail out of the box, finding her note, unfolding it, reading it. What exactly had she written? She’d abbreviated everything. Did it make sense? How had she signed it? Karen? Or, Love, Karen?
She stopped on the corner. What if Scott were there right now, reading the note and laughing, because it was stupid and absurd. The kind of note a kid would write. Kid. Wasn’t that the word Liz had used?
She ran back, retrieved the note. It read as if it had been spit out by a computer. Wrong. All wrong. Why write him at all? She’d call him. But then she thought of his hands touching the paper that had been in her hands and she sat down on the steps again. “Dear Scott, Stopped by to tell you I went to The Green Market today. Mr. Anderson not too encouraging. I left an application. Thanks for the tip. Karen.” She read it over anxiously. It seemed all right. Maybe she should write Love, Karen? No. It was true, but that was exactly why she couldn’t write it.
She folded it carefully. Okay, this was it. A good note, she reassured herself. She was just leaving when Scott arrived in the pickup truck. She stopped, watching him park. He didn’t see her until he got out of the truck. “Is that Karen?”
“Hi. I just left you a note.”
He locked the truck and lifted his tool chest from the back. “A note? How come?”
“I went to The Green Market and—”
“Oh, you did. Good. What happened?” He took his mail out of the box. Her note was right on top. He read it. “So that was it?”
“That was it.” She took a breath. “You wouldn’t—do you need anybody to work for you?”
“Me? You mean the company?”
She nodded rapidly. “I’m not afraid of heights,” she said, just the way she had in the dream. “I mean, I could do roof work, whatever—”
“I wish we were taking on apprentices,” he said, “but it’s not in the cards right now.”
“Oh. Well, it was just an idea.” She was embarrassed that she had asked. Her shoulders began to itch furiously under the straps of her knapsack.
He unlocked the door. “You want to see something? A surprise. Actually two surprises.”
She followed him up the stairs to the little landing. There was a scuffling noise behind the door to his apartment, then a high whine. “Okay, boys, I’m coming.” Scott opened the door and two brown and gold puppies with tremendous feet jumped all over him. “Boys, meet Karen. Karen, this is Alfred and that is Harold.”
“Alfred and Harold?”
“Anglo-Saxon kings. Or do you prefer Fido and Spot?”
She bent over, put out her hand for them to sniff.
You like us? You like us? Harold and Alfred cried in their big, young dog voices.
“I love you already.” She got down on the floor with them. They lapped their large rough tongues all over her face and arms. “Oh, you guys, you slobs.…”
Scott squatted down next to her, and the dogs frolicked around them, panting and grinning, huffing in their faces. Scott grabbed Harold, the bigger one, and rubbed his ears, then rolled on the floor with him. “Oh, he’s killing me. Help. Karen, help, this monster is killing me.”
He sat up and, bending toward her, he whispered, “Liz doesn’t know yet that I have these guys.”
“I won’t tell her,” she whispered back, and they both laughed.
Twenty-two
“Room service,” Karen said, setting the tray down on the table next to Tobi’s bed. A pot of tea, orange slices, a soft-boiled egg in the baby cup.
“Oh, the baby cup,” Tobi said, smiling wanly.
The baby cup was actually a small bowl with a picture on the bottom of two little girls in old-fashioned dresses. Each in her turn, Liz, Tobi, and Karen had been fed from the baby cup. Now they only used it when one of them was sick.
Karen pushed a pillow up behind Tobi’s head. “Are you hungry?”
Tobi shook her head and messed the spoon around in the egg. Her face was flushed, her hair sticky on her forehead. “You made such a nice tray, too, Karen. I’m sorry.” It was odd, but Tobi always got really sweet when she was sick.
The next day Karen’s mother came down with the flu, or whatever it was Tobi had, and the day after, Liz got it. The main symptoms were fever, some nausea, and weakness. Karen’s father put on a blue face mask, and he and Karen ran up and down stairs with trays and magazines and boxes of tissues. The little portable tv they never used anymore came out of the attic for Tobi, the one from the living room for Liz. Her mother had a stack of books on the bed with her. “Catch up on my reading,” sh
e said, her arms limp on the covers.
“Did you call into work for me again?” Liz asked the second or third morning she was sick.
“Yes, I spoke to your boss. Lori? She said just call her when you’re better.”
Liz blew her nose on a crumpled tissue. Her eyes were glazed, heavy-lidded. “Scott says you were at the house last week … and he showed you the dogs.”
So it wasn’t their secret anymore. Karen snapped dead leaves off Liz’s pet plant. Of course she hadn’t really expected him not to tell Liz. Harold and Alfred weren’t exactly the kind of secret you could shove into the back of a closet. Besides, who had said anything about keeping them a secret? Liz doesn’t know yet.… I won’t tell her. Notice the word yet. Scott had been excited, joking, playing around, playing up to Karen, pleasing her, teasing her. None of it had meant anything. Not to him.
“Those dogs are going to be monsters,” Liz said. “Did you see the size of their paws?” She sounded ready to weep. If Tobi got sweet when sick, Liz regressed. “I wish I wasn’t sick,” she whined.
“You’ll feel better,” Karen said, patting Liz’s head. She was just about out of sympathy for sick people.
“You’re hurting my head,” Liz whined again. “Watch out, you’ll get all my germs.”
“Not me,” Karen said with some satisfaction. “The last time everyone was sick, I was the only one who missed.”
That day in school she sat with Marisa in assembly. “Where’s Davey?”
“Karen, we’re not together every minute.” Marisa nudged her. “How is your love life?”
Ouch! What a question from Marisa. What was she to say? It’s great! Fabulous! Enviable! Barefaced lies. But maybe better than the boo-hoo truth—What love life? No love life! “It’s picking up.”
Marisa brightened. “Yes? Is there someone—?”
Karen smiled mysteriously, as if to say, of course there’s someone.
Marisa hugged her arm. “Now I’ll tell you. Even though I didn’t break you and Davey up, I’ve felt guilty. Yes, I really have. Who is he, Karen?”
She looked around the auditorium. Did she have to say the someone was Scott, to whom Liz was engaged to be engaged? “I don’t see him right now.” Did she have to say that there was no hope, no hope, none at all? Did she have to say that after engaged to be engaged came engaged? And after that, marriage. At which time Scott would become her brother-in-law. Her brother. In. Law. Her sibling by marriage. Liz’s marriage.
She and her father ate supper alone again that night. Karen had stuck a frozen pizza in the oven, opened a can of peaches and a box of cookies. “Kiddie food,” her father said, but he ate it.
They were cleaning up when the phone rang. It was Scott. “Karen?” he said on a sneeze. “Hi, hon.”
“For me?” her father asked.
She shook her head.
“Is Liz near a phone?”
She hesitated just for a moment. “She’s sleeping now, Scott.”
“Oh, well, don’t wake her.” His voice was thick. “I just wanted to talk. I caught her flu.”
“You did?” Dope. He just told you that.
“Yeah. I came home from work feeling rotten. I mean I felt rotten all day.” He sounded almost as weepy as Liz.
Her father went out. Karen pushed the kitchen door closed behind him.
“Scott, do you have a fever? Are you nauseous?” Nurse Karen.
“No. Just feel rotten all over.”
“Well, who’s taking care of you?”
“Harold and Alfred,” he said sadly. “Oh, well, I’ll be all right.”
After she hung up, she finished cleaning the kitchen. Poor Scott. Nobody to take care of him.
She could. She could make him custard, bring him tea, tissues, and the tv. Sick people needed help.
Karen, you’re a godsend. You always know just the right thing to do.
No, it’s nothing special.…
Don’t be modest! You have a real touch with sick people. Liz—well, she’s wonderful, we all know that, but when it comes to this sort of thing, she’s not in the race at all.
She’d walk Alfred and Harold, feed them, straighten up the apartment. Scott would be in bed, of course. She’d sit down near him and they’d talk or, if he was feeling really awful, she’d read to him. Or maybe they’d only sit quietly, not saying anything. Just being together.
Above her she heard muffled thumps, somebody moving around, water in the pipes, the sound of the tv. Poor Scott! Alone in that apartment. At least her mother and her sisters were being sick together. She swept the dirt into a pile and got the dustpan.
Twenty-three
On the Oak Street bus, Karen virtuously read a short story for English. She took notes for the oral report. More virtue. She needed all the virtue she could get her hands on. Was that true? Was she doing something wrong? Was it really so terrible that she was on her way to Scott’s house? What if Florence Nightingale had felt this way? Think of all the soldiers who would never have known her tender touch. Think of all the nurses who would never have been inspired to help the sick and feeble and ailing folk of the world.
Karen Florence Nightingale. On her way to cool the fevered brow and comfort the sick.
Why hadn’t she told Liz her plan? That was the guilty part.
Plan? What plan? Last night, after Scott’s phone call, she had imagined doing this, true. But that was fantasy, not the real stuff. If she had to tell Liz everything that went on in her mind, there’d be a revolution and she’d be up against the wall, traitor.
“Want to come over to my house and study?” Marisa had asked as they left school. And Karen had said, No, not today, she had something to do. But she only knew what it was she “had” to do, at the moment she said it. So she couldn’t possibly have told Liz beforehand. But, somehow, she still felt guilty.
Look, Liz, Scott’s sick and has no one to do anything for him. You should approve my giving him a bit of help, since you’re feeling too zapped yourself to do anything. And, besides, Scott’s also my friend, so what if I just happen to want to see him? Do I have to report in to you?
Karen Clarence Darrow, famous lawyer, arguing her case before the Supreme Court of Sisters. One moment persuasive, the next cajoling, but always with iron logic. And so your honor.… Say no more, Counselor. Charges dismissed!
She strolled down Oak, knapsack over her shoulder, easy and casual. A person on her way to see a friend. But at Scott’s house, she lost heart. Just barge in on him? What if he hated company when he was sick? Karen, Harold, and Alfred, three big slobbering dogs falling all over Scott. Do you love me? Do you love me? Pant, pant, pant.
She sat down on the top step and argued with herself. Either go in there and see Scott, or go home. She got up, then sat down again.
Come on, someone seemed to be saying to her. Aren’t you tired of watching things happen to other people? To Tobi, Liz, Marisa … to everyone except you?
She went up the stairs resolutely, two at a time. Then, on the landing, she thought if she went away now, nobody would ever know she’d been here. No up against the wall, traitor. No Florence Nightingale. No guilt. No nothing.
She knocked. From inside, Scott called, “Come in.”
She opened the door, peeked in. “It’s me.”
“Karen.” Scott’s voice cracked. “What are you doing all the way over here?” He was unshaven, wearing unlaced work boots, pajamas, and a Snoopy sweat shirt under a bathrobe. He looked like the man with the headache in the aspirin ad. Correction. He made the man with the headache in the aspirin ad look like Mr. Vitality.
“I came to help you. You said you didn’t have anybody to take care of you. Well … here I am.”
“Really? Is that why you came?” She took off her knapsack.
“Sure.”
“Your sister will kill me if you pick up my germs.”
“I won’t. I’m healthy as a horse. But you look awful. You should be in bed.”
“I was.”
He looked down at his feet in surprise. “Oh, right. I was thinking about taking Harold and Alfred out for a walk.” Hearing their names, the dogs got up, grinning, their ears laid back.
“You don’t look as if you have the energy to take yourself down the stairs,” she said.
“That’s true.” His eyes were bloodshot, his bathrobe pockets bulging with tissues. “I should get in bed, I suppose,” he said vaguely, but he didn’t move.
“Scott, if you want me to, I’ll take the dogs out. Where are their leashes?”
He thought about it in slow time. “I guess we could just put them out in the backyard,” he said finally. “It’s fenced.”
“Okay. You want me to do that?”
After another long conference with himself, he nodded. “Door through the kitchen.”
The dogs romped behind her, knocking into each other. She led them out to the back porch. A flight of covered wooden steps went down into the yard. “There you go, boys, have fun.” They galloped down the stairs like a cavalry charge.
Scott was still slumped on the couch when she came back. “Is that your bedroom?” She looked into the room off the kitchen. The bedding was crumpled on the floor. “I’ll change the sheets, Scott. Where do you keep—”
“Ah, no, Karen—” He half rose. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Yes, you can. What do you think I’ve been doing all week for everybody at home?” Moving back and forth with the clean sheets, she said, “Have you eaten anything today?”
“I always eat.” He sat down while she finished, then got in bed. All at once, after all the hustle and bustle, there was a big silence.
“Will that fence really keep the dogs in?” she asked, just to have something to say.
“It has so far.” Scott’s lids trembled and closed. He started snoring. When he opened his eyes he looked surprised to see her still there.
“Want some tea?” she said.
He shook his head.
“I could shave you,” she offered.
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