Perfecting the Odds (5 page)

Karis
stared deadpan. “It definitely helps the mind. I have just an hour, so have a good workout, Jennifer. If I don’t see you in school tomorrow, enjoy your Tuesday.” Without waiting for a response, Karis strode toward the changing room door.

Aging woman. “I’ve got your aging, twit,” she muttered to herself as she swung open her locker and began stripping off her work clothes. Spotting the mirror behind her, she groaned. “Too many damn grey hairs for a thirty-four year old,” she mumbled.
And whose fault is that, Karis.
Despite her discontent, she was both too lazy and too tired to dye it. Most thought she was younger by a few years, but her face was beginning to show [shudder]
signs
: sun-made lines around her eyes, a laugh line here and there. Laughing was a rare treat, gifted only to her children and sometimes Eve.
Probably frown lines, then
, she added drolly.

True, the
past three years hadn’t been easy. She’d handle the grief okay, she guessed. Over time, the sad days seemed to distance between each other; though, Robert would sneak into her thoughts at the strangest times. When she pumped her gas…he always did it for her. When she made tacos…he hated them. When she did the god-awful laundry each week….there were two loads instead of three. But she was okay. She was. Mostly, it was the loneliness, but she was destined for it. Truth was, even Robert hadn’t been able to combat the wealth of loneliness that pervaded her life.

With a heavy sigh,
Karis leaned in closer and stared into her eyes. Too small, a muddled, swamp-ass green, and the dark circles beneath seemed to have taken permanent residence. She then glanced at her nose and blinked a few times.

“You have a l
ovely nose,” she repeated in a low timbre then flushed…like she always did when she thought about
him
.

How could she forget her most embarrassing night to date?

Outside that bar
, in true psych-ward escapee form, Karis paced and ranted to the embodiment of toe-curling orgasms. Damn near the closest she would ever come to a sex god. And her nerd tendencies had her identifying which god suited Michael best.

The
archetype fit. A mortal Adonis, he embodied pure male sexuality, having features that would make sculptors weep. Towering build. Strong jaw line. Straight, proportionate nose. A wavy mix of light and dark brown hair. Broad shoulders. And, god, she loved how his navy sweater gripped his thick biceps and how his dark-rinsed jeans hugged him in all the right places. She sighed. After nearly four years of celibacy, she missed the
right
places.

And then there was
that damn mouth. Those lips were criminal, full of wicked promise. Karis would wager he was what she and Eve named a “finisher”. No doubt, he would possess a woman’s mouth, take ownership of the task before him, and not end, but finish the kiss, leaving the female quivering and panting for more, but no less satisfied with the result. 

Perfection
, Karis mused.

Thinking about him always prompted a sigh-slash-throb.
Boy, was she pathetic. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Tattooing himself onto her memory, the sexy bastard lingered in her dreams and fantasies, an obsessive but annoying reminder of her sexual deprivation. Yes, it had been a long time, a very long time since a man-given orgasm. And it seemed that recently, her libido didn’t give two shits about her widow persona. And quite frankly, she was over the guilt of fantasizing about him. She was human after all.

But there was another facit of
Michael that haunted her even more than his sexual magnetism. He was her Apollo, her mortal god of light. That night as she verbally vomited all over him, he stood there, watching her. She spoke aloud things she’d only ever thought and some she hadn’t, as if he literally extracted the truth from her very soul.  She poured out her heart, an exposition of her life and her shitty attitude toward it. The reality of her anger, sadness, fear left her vulnerable and completely stripped bare before a stranger…yet strangely comforted. It was as if she’d asked, he would have taken all the pain, all the crazy. She cringed thinking about how uncomfortable it must have been for him.

Karis
gazed into the mirror again and touched her lips. God, she would have loved to kiss his mouth that night, if only to mask the pain and anger—just to have a moment of happiness, of pleasure. Just more than one goddamn second of peace.

Shaking her head
to dismiss the memory replaying too frequently nowadays, she pulled on her gym shorts and tee shirt and took one last look. She could cover herself well.

Face the facts: You’re still a thirty-
four year old widow. A tiny bit of sag with a hell of a lot of baggage.  Karis pushed the memories to the same dull spot in the back of her mind and headed for the gym.

On the Monday afternoon before Halloween, his hands clutched behind his head, Michael Finn leaned back in his leather wing-armed chair. Filled with his favorite literature, poetry, and criticisms, floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves lined two pale green walls of his office at the university. A haven, his own Mount Parnassus—a source of inspiration—a place he could think, reminisce, evaluate.

Life was just a bit more bearable
here.

Between these walls,
Michael was immersed in his adolescent dream. Even though he hated what the cancer stole over ten years ago, he also acknowledged the blessing it afforded him. Who knows if he would have had the guts to pursue this career otherwise? Now an associate professor of British Literature at the University of Maryland, he had published book-length literary criticisms of Donne, Herbert, and Marvell, more than ten journal articles, was a finalist for the MLA Best First Book Award, completed two fellowships, and for the last six years taught a variety of courses focusing on seventeenth through nineteen century British Literature.

So
why now, after he’d pursued his passion and reached his ultimate goal, did his life feel so fucking empty? As if his professorship was a sufficient spark, but not enough to sustain the fire that seemed essential to his happiness?
Way to wax poetic, Michael.

Bending forward, he
grunted as he stared at the towering pile of essays on his desk. Red pen in hand, he was about to assess the third of almost sixty undergraduate essays on John Donne’s “The Canonization”. He taught mostly English majors, so he expected one simple task for this first major essay: explicate the poem. State the speaker, the occasion, and central purpose as the thesis and use evidence--the diction, imagery, and poetic devices--to support the central purpose of the poem. Not a damn summary, but an explication. Not the what, but the why and how. Instead, the amateur writers spewed out personal opinions and verbose, invalid arguments. Did they even read the fucking poem? Halfway through the first paragraph of the essay, he stopped grading; otherwise, he would write cruel but honest comments that would inevitably cause a blubbering line of English majors outside his office door. And with the mood he was in, the no-bullshit, tell-them-like-it-is Marine in him would tell the entitled dipshits to get a fucking clue.

Michael rubbed the heels of his hands
into his eyes. He knew why he was so damn bitter...for three fucking years. He leaned back a bit more and recited the lines of Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”. Like always, line seventeen—‘
Our two souls therefore, which are one, /  Though I must go, endure not yet / A breach, but an expansion’
, spurred images of Karis. He couldn’t forget, would never. Her emotions that May night flashed like a slideshow: rubbing her temples, blushing, smiling shyly, laughing, and sobbing. Like the speaker’s love—‘
Inter-assurèd of the mind’
-- Karis’s intelligence, her emotions, and her tenacity moored her to him like a boat to a dock. For three years, Michael remained rocking in the swells of his life--almost unaware of her presence--until one wave of memory crashed into him, reminding him of the hold she still had on him.

She was a part of him
, and she hadn’t a damn clue. 

After the gym on Monday afternoon, Karis’s aching muscles had her hobbling through the front door of the quaint three-bedroom yellow rancher.  Although it was small, it swelled with ten years of memories. Instead of art, portraits lined each wall of the living room. Instead of ornate throw pillows, her great aunt’s vibrant quilts colored the tan sofa and loveseat, and instead of standard shit brown carpet, floral rugs warmed the traditional oak floors.

She really did love their home.

Still,
she and Robert had decided she would sell it after he died. And it was Robby, then only ten years old, who changed her mind. Motivated by innate understanding of duty, Robby took over as man of the house soon after Robert’s death. At his wake, Karis watched Robby’s face—stoic and determined to maintain composure. At the funeral, standing beside his mother, he hung his head and sighed loudly as they lowered his father below the Earth, but still shed no tears. In fact, it was Karis who wept the most that day, for Robby –for his loss of a role model, for the role he was forced to play, for the adolescent years he would lose to responsibly.

Karis
was indebted to her son. Even now at thirteen, he came straight home from school to wait twenty minutes for Grace’s bus. He walked his little sister home. No after-school games. No trips to friends’ houses. No slow walks home with weekly crushes. No, Robby played patriarch to his sister, fed her a snack, and at least twice a week, prepared a family meal. On Sunday afternoons, he scrubbed the kitchen and bathrooms while Karis vacuumed and dusted. She had expected an end to the honeymoon period, but three years later, he continued tenaciously, without a single complaint.

So when Robby brought up the idea of staying in the home, she listened to his reasoning with an open mind. And t
he conversation would forever live in her heart as one of the proudest moments of her life. He explained that with a single income, she would be unwise to sell the house, and it would add too much stress to her already burdened life. He vowed to find a job when he was old enough and contribute if she really wanted to buy a new home. She remembers staring at him, her mouth gaping. And then she just sobbed, hugging him tightly. She let her embrace convey the words she couldn’t say aloud.

The funeral aside, it was the only time she had
allowed him to see her cry.

***

On this particular Monday, Karis found Robby and Grace at the kitchen table. Her small eat-in kitchen transformed many times a day: a place to eat, a place to do homework or grade papers, a place to play board games, or a place to talk.

Robby approached her first. “I have a ton of homework, Mom.
I’m serious. I mean a lot of homework. I’m in eighth grade. It’s only going to get worse. Do you think I’ll make it through high school,” he asked, grimacing with sincere apprehension.

Karis
smiled at his concern. She knew most of her students didn’t really care about homework, good student or not. “Robby, why say ‘I’m serious’? You don’t think I’ll believe you?” she teased.

Grace pushed her way between them and turned toward her brother. “Yeah, Robby. Words have meaning. Choose words wisely and use them correctly.”
Grace scolded her older brother in her own Grace-like way. Karis laughed at her snarky response and ruffled Grace’s hair.

“I’ve got a word for you, Grace. Intrusive. That’s what you are. All the time.” Robby whipped his head
for his mother’s reaction.

Karis
nodded in approval of his usage. “Be kind, Robby.”

Grace
celebrated her victory with a golf clap above her head and skipped to the back door. Robby cowered at his mother’s response. “I forgive you, honey. And, yes, you’ll do so much more than make it. You’ll kick high school’s ass,” she whispered, pulling him into her side. He grinned and wrapped his arm around her as they headed outside for their daily time in the back yard.

***

By 6:30 that evening, Karis was running back and forth between the table to help her children with their homework and the stove to stir the simmering pot of spaghetti sauce. Hall and Oates’ “Maneater” blared from her purse, interrupting the finely-tuned evening routine. She chose to ignore the first two bars until sister-guilt niggled.

“
House of Eternal Widows, Karis speaking,” she answered nasally into the phone.

“
Clever. Bad time?”

“If y
ou call homework slash making dinner a bad time, then yes, it is.”

“
Rhetorical question,” she deadpanned. “I have an
idea
.” The crass woman crooned
idea
like it was the juiciest gossip in town. Eve’s ideas never boded well for Karis. In fact in high school, those lovely ideas most often led to smoking weed in the wooded area behind the school with a group of horny boys, which inevitably led to less than savory rites of passage.