Class

by Lucinda Rosenfeld

  And maybe monogamy was nothing more than a middle-class convention.

  And Karen had grown so tired of trying to be good all the time—once the Good Daughter and the Good Student; now the Good Mother, the Good Citizen, the Good Wife.

  And since her husband had already accused her of being unfaithful, Karen felt somehow compelled to fulfill his paranoid prophecy and pay him back for always being mad at her. And if he never learned the truth, and if it was only this one time, would she still be hurting him? If a woman falls in a forest—or a five-star hotel room—and no one hears her moan, or at least no one but an acquaintance from college whom she hasn’t seen in twenty-four years, does she still make a sound?

  And although it went against all her closest-held convictions, Karen had to admit that Clay’s phenomenal wealth was part of his appeal. It divorced him from the mundane concerns of everyday life—made him seem lofty by association, even if he was really only perched atop a mountain of paper. Indeed, Clay was so rich that he didn’t have to worry about the things that other people, other couples, worried and fought about, like living in the right school district or running up too large a bill at Gap Kids.

  While in Clay’s company, Karen didn’t feel as if she were being judged on whether or not she held the correct position either. In fact, he seemed completely uninterested in her politics, her values, her commitment to anything but the here and now.

  Even so, doubt snuck in. “I just—” she began.

  “You just what?” said Clay, again taking her hand and massaging it.

  “I guess I just don’t understand why you…I mean, we don’t even know each other anymore. Not that we ever really did.”

  “Speak for yourself, Kipple. In case you never noticed, I had a total thing for you in college.”

  “For me? I thought you were in love with Lydia.”

  “Well, that was where you were wrong.”

  Was he telling the truth? Did it even matter? For once, Karen was in the moment, and the moment beckoned. “Well, how about you order me a non-laced-with-anything, non–Bill Cosby glass of wine,” Karen told him, “and I’ll see how I feel after I drink it?”

  “At your service,” said Clay, flagging down the bartender.

  At some point soon after, their knees brushed against each other, their breath grew warm on each other’s cheeks. Before long, Clay was whispering in her ear, whispering in a low voice, “I want to kiss you so badly right now,” and then, “I want to be inside you.”

  By then, it was too late—too late for resolve, too late to ask Chahrazad’s mom her name again…

  At the hotel, they shared a bottle of 1996 Krug Clos d’Ambonnay—Karen made a mental note of the vintage so she could tell Troy—toasting their lack of a future as they drank. Then they watched an Animal Planet rerun of a show called Puppy Bowl, in which dogs played football. At some point after that, they fell backward. As their bodies came together, Karen felt as if the two of them were in a giant snow globe with sparkly silver bits swirling all around them, enveloping them in a dizzy dream. For as long as the sky kept falling, they lay safe inside, hidden from view, removed from time and space. “Karen Kipple,” Clay kept whispering as he ran his hands down her, then pushed himself inside her until she couldn’t see straight, couldn’t tell the walls from the ceiling, or the ceiling from the floor. It was only after the last of the sparkly silver bits had settled, and she and Clay lay collapsed on the bed, that reality began to reassert itself. The image of Ruby’s rosy cheeks springing to mind, Karen glanced at the clock on the bedside table, then bolted upright. “Shit—I have to go,” she said, throwing her legs over the side of the bed.

  “Why?” said Clay, his lids half closed as he reached out an arm to pull her back.

  “Because,” she said, sliding out from under him. She felt as if her mouth were filled with paste.

  “Kiss me one more time.”

  She kissed him one more time, but her head was already elsewhere. A swirling mix of panic, satiety, shame, and delirium now filled it, propelling her homeward.

  In the elevator down to the lobby, Karen closed her eyes and imagined the snow globe splitting and herself falling through the bottom. Down and down and down she fell until she reached the red-hot magma at the earth’s core and was instantly burned into oblivion. But when the elevator doors opened, she found the ground still cold and firm beneath her feet and her flesh unscathed. She hurried through the lobby and exited onto the street, her eyes scanning the curb in search of a taxi. She found one idling in front of an Indian restaurant nearby and climbed in.

  Karen arrived home to find Ashley sitting on the sofa watching the Real Housewives of Somewhere-or-Other without the sound. To her surprise and relief, there was no sign of Matt. “Hi! Sorry I’m late,” she said, waving her arms around. “Dinner went on forever.” When had she become such a good liar?

  Or maybe she wasn’t as good as she thought. “No problem,” said Ashley, but she was looking at her employer funny. Did Karen look suspiciously disheveled? Or was she projecting? Maybe twenty-year-old Ashley couldn’t have cared less where the geriatric mother of her evening charge had been. When Karen was Ashley’s age, she’d barely noticed the existence of people over forty. They might as well have been furniture, which she also hadn’t noticed. These days, when Karen walked into a room, the first thing she checked out was the decor.

  The other difference between Karen at twenty-five and Karen at forty-five was that, in her youthful prime, she’d been dogged by self-consciousness. As a result, sex had felt more like a performance than a source of pleasure. She’d been close to thirty when she’d had her first real orgasm. And it had come as a revelation. But even then, it had seemed apart from her—a thing that happened to her rather than a thing she embodied. It was only now that Karen was in middle age, her hair silvering and the veins protruding behind her knees, that she found herself capable of feeling as if her entire being had been doused with gasoline in preparation for a match. It all seemed backward; wasn’t sex for the young?

  After Karen thanked Ashley for her service and sent her home with an extra-large wad of cash commensurate with Karen’s guilt, she went to check on Ruby. She found her daughter lying on her side with her arms wrapped around her stuffed octopus, Octi. Her lips were parted, her lashes fluttering ever so slightly, her cheeks flushed. Lying there, Ruby looked like a picture of innocence. Karen wondered how soon she’d learn the truth about the world—not just about rape, murder, torture, and war, but about the ways in which people who claimed to love each other tore each other apart for no obvious reason. She also wondered if and when Ruby—not just Empriss—would begin writing “realistic fiction” about her fractured family.

  Suddenly, Karen couldn’t believe what she’d done or how she could have risked so much for the temporary cessation of an animal urge. Or did Karen and Clay’s connection run deeper than biology? It had certainly felt that way. But then, Karen had never understood the concept of casual sex. It was never casual to her. In any event, Karen was determined to keep her infidelity a secret. After burying her soiled clothes in the bottom of the hamper, she stepped into a scalding shower and attempted to wash away every last trace of Clay. She was toweling off when she heard Matt come through the door. “Hey,” she said, walking out in a robe and half expecting to be condemned on the spot.

  But he didn’t even look up. “Hey,” he replied blankly as he went through the mail on the kitchen counter. “How was your dinner?”

  “Fine,” she answered. “What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Well, I’m going to sleep.”

  “Okay,” he said. Apparently, he had no more questions.

  As Karen walked out of the room, she realized that Matt suspected nothing. What’s more, it was likely to stay that way unless Clay reached out to him, which seemed unlikely. The burden of her betrayal, she realized, fell on her. Cheating had proved so easy. Keeping it to herself would be the hard part. Th
e desire to confess stood right there, like a meter reader waiting at the front door.

  Entering her bedroom, Karen glimpsed a sheet of bubble wrap poking out from under her bed—evidence of her latest online purchase, whatever it had been. In truth, she could no longer remember. By the time one of her many purchases arrived, Karen often didn’t even want whatever it was, or it failed to live up to her expectations, or it didn’t look like it had in the picture, or she’d find herself focusing all her energy and regret on the unnecessary amount of packing materials that had been used or the amount of money she’d spent that she shouldn’t have. Although she was capable of paying hundreds of dollars for a single-boiler espresso machine from Italy, Karen had a deeply ingrained cheap streak as well, which caused her to do things like go to the library and photocopy the crossword puzzle from the Sunday paper rather than pay for a subscription.

  Karen lifted the bubble wrap off the floor, then sat down on her bed and began systematically to squish, row by row by row, every last pocket of air, as if, with the eradication of oxygen from that particular sheet of plastic, she would finally gain control over herself and the world. For several minutes, she fell into a mental state where no cogent thoughts entered her head, only the sound of pop-pop-pop. While the feeling lasted, it was nearly as blissful as her time in the hotel with Clay had been. But when she finished and the sheet lay flat—and then so did Karen—she felt as if the planet were careening off its axis, spinning wildly toward the sun. It was Karen’s impossible job to redirect its path before it crashed and burned. She went to the bathroom for a drink of water and an aspirin and came back. But the room kept spinning; the gods kept laughing. Matt didn’t come to bed till two a.m. Karen pretended to be asleep.

  It was just another lie.

  But in the morning, there was a small gift awaiting Karen. To her shock, Ruby didn’t complain about going to her new school. Mostly, she just seemed excited about seeing her mother again after a daylong absence. “Mommy Kajami!” she cried at the sight of Karen leaning over her bed.

  “Hello, sweetheart—Mommy missed you so much yesterday,” said Karen. Her heart flush with an emotion that fell between love and regret, she brushed the hair off Ruby’s face.

  “Me too,” said Ruby.

  And after arriving at school, she scurried down the hall toward the staircase that led to her new classroom without further comment.

  It was on Karen’s way to work, just as she was approaching the entrance to the train station, that her luck ran out. Walking by at the same moment was Lou. Unable to deal with the disapproval and disappointment that Karen assumed Lou would experience after learning that Karen had taken Ruby out of Betts, Karen had more or less shut out all thoughts of her in the previous week. But there was no avoiding them now. “Lou!” said Karen, for a brief moment entertaining the idea that she could tell her about Clay instead.

  “Hey, stranger,” said Lou. “Long time no see.”

  “I know—”

  “Off to the office?”

  “Unfortunately, I am—what about you?”

  “I’m going to the dentist, if you must know.”

  “I hope it’s nothing bad.”

  “Just my lousy mouth with its many cavities.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I have the same lousy mouth.”

  “I do feel better,” said Lou. “But what’s going on with Ruby? Zeke says she’s been out all week. Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” said Karen. “Well, it’s actually not fine. My marriage is literally on death row.”

  “Whose isn’t?” Lou said with a laugh.

  Karen knew she couldn’t keep up the banter indefinitely. “Lou, there’s something I have to tell you,” she began with a scrunched face. “I took Ruby out of Betts.”

  “You what?” cried Lou, her eyebrows up near her hairline.

  “I just—” Whatever remorse Karen had felt the previous night about sleeping with Clay was easily matched by the contrition she felt standing there. Maybe it was because her marital betrayal was an all-white affair, whereas her school betrayal contained a racial component.

  “You just what?” she said again.

  “I just got freaked out about Jayyden. That was part of it. He sort of made a threat against Ruby.”

  “What kind of threat?”

  “He told her he was going to—fuck with her.”

  Lou paused to grimace before she spoke. Then she said, “Perhaps you’re unfamiliar with African American vernacular? Fucking with someone means you want to spend time with them.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Karen, staring at her shoes.

  “And where is Ruby now?” asked Lou.

  Karen motioned behind her. “She’s over there at”—Karen swallowed the final word of her sentence—“Mather.”

  “Ah, the school Maeve fled to,” said Lou, reminding them both.

  “Yes—except Maeve doesn’t actually talk to Ruby anymore.” But if Karen had thought she could enlist Lou’s sympathies by telling her about how Ruby had been blown off by her former best friend, she was mistaken.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Lou said after a while. But she didn’t sound sorry at all.

  Karen couldn’t very well blame her. The silence that followed was as thick as concrete, and it ended only when Karen told Lou, “I’m sorry too—about not telling you sooner.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to say,” said Lou. But she thought of one thing: “I guess I thought you were different from them.”

  Lou didn’t have to explain who them were. The words were like a fist through Karen’s stomach. “I hope we can still be friends,” she said helplessly.

  “Sure, we can still be friends,” said Lou. But in that moment, Karen saw that her and Lou’s friendship, however richly textured, was ultimately one of association. With Betts out of the picture, they no longer had enough in common. They were suddenly two women on a street, one with light skin and one with dark. Since Ruby had decided boys had cooties, Karen didn’t even have the excuse of their kids being close anymore. “Anyway, as I was saying, I have cavities to fill,” Lou went on. But her tone had already changed; now it sounded distant and matter-of-fact.

  “Of course,” said Karen. “Bye, Lou.”

  “See you,” said Lou. She didn’t even say Karen’s name.

  As Karen walked away, she wondered if there was anyone in her life other than Ruby whom she wasn’t in the process of alienating.

  By chance, Troy had business in the office that morning. “Oh no,” he said as he passed by her desk.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “One look at those liquid eyes and that quivering lower lip told me everything,” he answered.

  “Can I buy you a coffee?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not really.”

  “What do I do now?” Karen asked him in line at the Starbucks in the lobby. “Do I tell my husband?”

  “If you want to be a single mother, yes,” said Troy. “Otherwise, I advise keeping your mouth shut.”

  “But what if I can’t stop thinking about him?”

  “Write bad poetry and never show it to anyone. Or listen to Coldplay—that should cure you of feelings…The only thing that guy is good for in the long term is a fat donation to HK before the end of the tax year.”

  “Why are you always right?”

  “Please. If I had all the answers, I wouldn’t be having a fling with a man whose supposedly affectionate moniker for me is Fatso and who makes me feel bad about myself for not going to the gym every day.”

  “Troy, that sounds horrible! You have to get rid of the guy.”

  “Just as you must get rid of yours,” he replied.

  Karen resolved to do as Troy had said.

  But breaking free of Clay became that much harder to conceive of after a bike messenger arrived at the office that afternoon with a package for her. Inside was a palm-size pale blue box containing a pair of diamo
nd studs the size of shirt buttons. While there was no accompanying card, Karen didn’t need one to know who they were from. For a few moments, she sat staring at the earrings and reveling in their scintillating splendor, which made her feel brilliant and desirable by association—and even more desirous of Clay. (The most recent piece of jewelry that Matt had bought her was her wedding ring, a simple gold band that owed its existence to a small-scale mining cooperative in central Peru.) At the same time, she couldn’t get past the notion that the earrings were, in some sense, payment for sex, which in turn made her feel like a prostitute. Disgusted with both herself and Clay, Karen closed the box and stuck it in the top drawer of her desk behind a three-pack of Post-it notes.

  And that evening, gathering courage, she made a first attempt at repairing her marriage. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask your opinion before I enrolled Ruby at Mather,” she told Matt. “It was wrong of me.”

  “Thank you for your apology,” he replied.

  While hardly effusive, Matt’s response seemed like a positive indicator. And for a brief window that evening, Karen allowed herself to be encouraged about her chances for a peaceful old age. But when a message came in from Clay at eleven, just as she was climbing into bed, her heart thumped with such ferocity that she thought it might come catapulting out of her body. He’d written:

  Already missing the puppies—and you. Animal Planet redo next week, same time? Xoxo—p.s. Forgot to ask if you had pierced ears…

  For several seconds, Karen stood frozen and with her fingers poised over the screen of her phone. Every part of her wanted to write back, Me too, and yes. She felt so aroused, but also embarrassed to feel that way. Lust was such a crude emotion—so primal and unsophisticated, really. So selfish too—not unlike Clay. It was true that he wrote checks for good causes. But what social value was there in taking high-risk bets on obscure financial products? Matt, by contrast, might have been unromantic, but he was also impressive. And he was committed to improving the lives of others, not just improving the bottom lines of his already fabulously wealthy clients. Besides, there was no evidence that Clay was prepared to make any changes to his personal life. Though even if he was, Karen couldn’t see herself as the second wife of a billionaire, ordering around the staff. She felt guilty even asking Ashley to load the dishwasher. If Karen left Matt, it would be just her and Ruby, their voices echoing through the apartment. Before Karen had a chance to change her mind, she wrote back: