Perfecting the Odds (35 page)

Michael

PS. I’ve enclosed the poem that I’ve been reading over and over. If any good comes from losing you, it’s that I’ve had a true love. Please indulge in our favorite poet.

An excerpt from
THE BROKEN HEART by John Donne

Therefore I think my breast hath all

Those pieces still, though they be not unite;

And now, as broken glasses show

A hundred lesser faces, so

My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,

But after one such love, can love no more.

Karis dropped the letter, and it floated like a feather onto her desk. She held her head in her hands as tears flooded down her face. At least with Robert’s death, the deception had an ending. It died with him and left her with the option to deal with it or forget it. Michael’s deception haunted her like a spirit with unfinished business. She couldn’t escape the lie, and now his words and his love enveloped her, pricking at her very soul.  The man was relentless. She should have known he would be. He wrote like he spoke. A cardinal sin to some writers, but she knew why he’d done it. Karis believed his vow. He wouldn’t give up. But it seemed every day since he confessed, every hour, every minute, every goddamn second, she heard his voice ringing in her head: I didn’t want to hurt you. The irony of it all was unbelievable.

             
Karis grabbed the note and violently shoved it in her desk.
No! You’re not going to win, Michael.
But how could she ignore her reaction to his letter? And how would she react if she actually saw him in person? Would she be strong enough, angry enough to push him away again?

For now, she had to be
lieve she would be. She couldn’t risk her job or her family for some bastard liar with selfish regrets. Karis pushed away from her desk and began to organize her room for testing. She would make it through the day because of testing chaos alone. One shitty day at a time was her new motto.

***

At six o’clock on Monday
evening, as Karis made her up the walkway to the front of her house, her children ran full speed ahead of her toward the house. It was Robby’s voice that shocked her out of her routine robotic walk to the front door.

             
“Hey, mom, you have a package,” he called over his shoulder.

             
“Oh, yeah? From whom,” she asked, pushing the key into the lock.

             
“I don’t know, but it says
refrigerate upon opening
. Oh, wait, it’s from...Finn. Who’s Finn?” Karis’s eyes widened as she grabbed the package from his hand.

“No one important,” she responded
tightly, shoving past him.

             
“Doesn’t sound like someone unimportant,” Robby muttered as he she rushed to her bedroom and shut the door.

Damn it
. A package? But she had to admit she was intrigued by the
please refrigerate
sticker on the outside. She shut her eyes tightly.
Open it, baby
. The voice sounded like Robert’s, and a shiver ran down her tense body. She slowly removed the tape from the package, much like one would dismantle a bomb. Her mind flashed to Michael’s favorite movie,
The Godfather
. She supposed a horse’s head didn’t need refrigeration, so why the hell was she so nervous? She chuckled to herself, realizing how ridiculous she was being.

             
As she lifted the top, bright pink tissue paper peeked out. She grabbed the small lime green card on the top.
Read me.
She couldn’t help the smile at the
Alice in Wonderland
reference. It felt good, but still odd, to smile. In beautifully scripted handwriting, it read
, I read Dante’s Canto 6 again the other day, and all I could think about were those gluttonous yogurt lid-lickers. Here’s to temperance, darling.
A tear rolled down her cheek as she rolled her eyes at the over-the-top comparison. Of course he’d be reading about purgatory.
Damned quirky English professor
, she snorted. The message was attached to another wrapped object. Unfolding its paper, she saw a small blue container of key lime Greek yogurt with a note attached:
Eat me. Since chunky yogurt is the anti-christ of dairy products, please thoroughly enjoy your chunk-free yogurt.
Her hand clasp to her mouth and choked down the sob. The flavor. His verbatim comment. The time he took to put something like this together. She’d only read about such things in novels, a place where writers crafted the men only found in dreams and fantasies. To think he hung on every word she said jabbed hard on her wall of anger. She shook her head and blinked her eyes in effort to halt both the tears and the walls around her vulnerable heart from falling. It worked, for the time being.
He remembered I hate licking yogurt lids and ate only chunk-free yogurt.
Big frickin’ deal.

She
removed the next lime green card attached to a water bottle:
Drink me. No seeds to worry about because it’s lemon-flavored. Enjoy the refreshing taste without the threat of those damned stomach-inhabiting lemon trees.
Playful anger bubbled within the tears. Oh, he would pay for this blatant mockery. Who’s to say seeds can’t grow in the human stomach?

She dug further in the cloud of hot pink.
The next object was an ivory envelope titled,
Use me
. She placed it her lap and conjured logical guesses about its contents. She tried to remember what she’d said to him that night. How much could he possibly remember? She carefully flipped open the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper.
American Delivery Laundromat. One year of home-delivery service, dry cleaning included
. It took a moment to realize what he had done. She stared at her ceiling in the traditional glimpse at heaven. This man was unbelievable.

“Mom, are you okay?” Robby’s voice
from outside the room stunned her out of thoughts.

She sniffed and cleared her throat. “Yes, honey, I’ll be out in a minute
.”

“Oh, okay. Just checkin
’.” God, he was a good kid. Why couldn’t she be more like him? He seemed to keep his emotions in line, his focus on school despite his shortened childhood. She was a blubbering mess half the time and a frantic lunatic the other.

Karis
placed everything back in the box—aside from the yogurt—and walked to her bathroom. She washed her face, thinking about how she could stay angry with someone whose sole purpose seemed to be to make her happy.
Because he lied, Karis
. She stared at herself in the mirror, wincing at the signs of fatigue. She had dark circles and looked like she hadn’t eaten in a week because, well, she hadn’t. With caring for Eve and dealing with a broken heart, who had time to frickin’ eat? She growled at the mirror and made her way to the kitchen.

“Mom, I hope you don’t mind. I ordered a pizza. You didn’t look like
...er...like you were planning on making anything.” Robby looked down, uneasy about his assumption.

Karis
leaned over—when had he gotten so tall? She kissed his forehead. “Thank you, Robby...for being so perceptive. You know, you’re going to be a great husband one day.”

“Ah
jeez, mom, stop! I just ordered a pizza.” He turned to head to his room as Karis stood there smiling in his wake. Typical teenager response. But Karis knew better. She’d been there. She knew what it was like to live without a parent, to become a bit more self-sufficient.

“Hey, mommy, you’re smiling,” Grace interrupted as she tugged on
Karis’s leg.

Karis
peered down at her. “I don’t smile enough, do I, honey?”

“Um, no, you don’t. But I like when
you do at me.” Grace grinned her toothless smile as Karis swept her up into her arms.

“I love to smile at you and Robby. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re the only reason I smile these days.
Hey, how about we take our pizza and see Aunt Eve?”

***

“So, Karis, are you going to tell me what happened with Michael, or am I going to have to hijack your phone and ask him myself?” Great, Eve was back to her normal callous self, and Karis’s visits were growing tenser as she anticipated this very conversation. While the children watched television and munched on pizza in Eve’s living room, Karis sat on the edge of her king-sized bed.

“
You really need a man, Eve. This bed is way too big for you.”

“
I’m working on that. Now spill, Karis,” Eve retorted, her face set sternly. Karis smiled but didn’t press further.
Good luck, Scott
, she thought.

“
It’s a long story.”

“Jesus,
Karis. Does it have to be this way every time? I’m your best friend. I’m laid up right now. I have time, and even if I didn’t, I’d make time. So just get to the miserable details already!”

Karis
scowled and inhaled heavily before blowing out the air. “Fine. Remember in the hospital when you asked me and Scott to leave you alone?” Eve nodded. “I couldn’t find Michael, so I decided to go Diane for a while. I overheard a convers--.” Karis stopped at the sob that had crept its way to her throat.

Eve
straightened, enraged that her friend was hurting so badly. She held Karis’s hand as she gathered herself. “They were talking about some secret he kept from me. And you know what I found out?”

Eve
nodded. “Scott told me.”

Karis
continued wiping the tears that fell with each word. “Same story, ya know, Eve…didn’t want to tell me because he was trying to protect me. I’m so done with men.”

“
I know it hurts, Karis. But he
had
cancer; he doesn’t have it anymore.”

Karis
narrowed her eyes. “Does that matter, Eve? Has! Had! Frickin’ semantics. Cancer’s still a life sentence. His life expectancy is most likely shortened and he’s wide open to other diseases and cancers. If he originally would have lived until sixty-five, most likely he now will only make it to what?”--She looked up to do the math--“like fifty-three, right? I mean he’s thirty-six, so that means I’d have him for only seventeen years.” Karis dropped her head.

Karis
felt Eve’s hand on her back. “Listen to yourself. You’re throwing out random numbers. Jeez, he could live until ninety or get hit by a car tomorrow. I thought you were concerned about the lie. Karis, look at me.” Karis met her eyes, which now were filled with sympathy and concern.
Shit, this is exactly what I didn’t want
. “Which bothers you more? The lie or the probability of a shortened life? Because that answer makes a
huge
difference.”

Karis
stared at Eve for what seemed like eternity. Eve always asked questions like that, the ones that mattered. Eve was the Windex to Karis’s shit-stained windows. She just made things come into focus.

Problem was,
Karis hadn’t really considered what was worse. Was she angry at his deception or the realization that he, too, would leave her too soon? Finally, she answered, “I don’t know, Eve.” Her voice squeaked, conveying the genuine confusion about her own emotions. Karis continued to mumble her feelings. “I just don’t know. I want to stop feeling like at any second something bad will happen. But it will. It always does. Every time I’m happy or at peace, BAM, something bad happens. Always. And you know it, Eve--you know it always does. And, yes, that pisses me off more than anything else.”

***

Eve reached for Karis and pulled her into an embrace. And for the first time in their relationship, Eve felt like there was nothing she could do or say to help Karis through this. When Karis’s parents died, Eve could help her because Eve shared the same kind of life. She knew the pain of losing one’s parents, so she offered Karis her ways to deal with it. And Eve had had months to help Karis prepare for Robert’s death. She helped her ease into the grieving process died. This grief was different. How could Eve help her if Karis couldn’t get over the fact that good things can happen to her? Hell, who could blame her for shielding her heart?

When
Karis walked into school on Tuesday, she knew she looked like crap, but she didn’t give two shits. Thank god for a week of testing. Even after Robert’s death, she hadn’t felt this miserable, most likely because she was prepared for it. But since Michael’s persistent attempts to ask for forgiveness she wasn’t even sure was the reason for her anger, she had to add guilt to the rolling list of emotions trying to kill her from the inside out. Unfortunately, those damn soul-killing bastards were manifesting themselves as puffy, black bags beneath her eyes, pale skin, weight loss, and heavily wrinkled clothing.

If I ever said a day sucked, I was exaggerating. Today sucks
, she mused.

After the
morning bell rang, the students filed in and sat at their assigned testing desks. She followed protocol to a tee. At least, her job performance wasn’t suffering too much, although she wasn’t actually teaching anything. At about fifteen minutes into the first section of the test, she saw Mrs. Winston’ face appear in the window of her door. One of her bony fingers made a come hither gesture. Crap. Damn. Shit.