Karen

Laurie
Karen
Starbucks, November 6, 2008

At Karen’s house, the nails of the golden retriever echo on marble floors. A winding staircase sweeps up to a balcony from which you can look down to the opulent foyer and living room below. A maid serves dinner. Her name is Irene, and her copious bosom plumps her chest like a large pillow. Karen has a lisp, and she is tall. She wears different colored Papagallo loafers every day. I don’t discover her sly intelligence until we graduate and, as yearbook editor, she predicts my future as a divorcée with seven husbands, and on my latest trip to Reno I’m decked out in leopard print Capris. When I read this I’m thrown and intrigued, as one always is, by the discovery of being watched and judged and understood.

Karen bows her head as if fending off a blow, like Princess Di. She’s a shy pony. Who knew she was yearbook editor? Who knew there even was such a publication to participate in? At her house, we are served by Irene, who is also the cook. We are served fried chicken or grilled steak, and Karen’s parents ask about my family. I know how to talk to parents or maybe I don’t. I see myself with a fake smile, a little oily, or maybe it’s not obvious I want everything other people have. I live in a small, renovated beach cottage in Long Beach. Karen’s house is hushed. I think it’s safe, I think it’s considerate. Karen has gotten something under control, although maybe I think that because she doesn’t eat her lunches. I tell Karen’s parents that my father manufactures coats. That doesn’t sound like much, and I feel disloyal. I feel disloyal at Woodmere Academy, because I don’t want to be from people who scream.

I sleep over once, although Karen and I are not that kind of friends. There must have been a storm. The roads must have been impassable. She will graduate from Woodmere Academy and attend an Ivy League college and work at a magazine or for a book publisher. She’s the kind of girl who knows her worth, who has been made to feel she’s worth something. I don’t gravitate to her. She seems a little dull and hazy, but I don’t think she was.

She is tall and the girls are fretful about weight. Karen doesn’t open the brown bags Irene packs with fried chicken, cookies, and fruit. A beautiful lunch. On other days there are sandwiches of grilled steak. Every afternoon around 4:30 when I return to the girls’ locker room before catching a bus to Long Beach or the train to Manhattan, I find Karen’s lunch on the window ledge or on top of the lockers, and after checking to see if anyone else is there I unwrap the contents. There is more food than I need, more than any girl needs, and I have had my own lunch at noon. I’m unable to leave this food alone. I’m a leftovers girl. Most of my classmates will follow paths laid out by parents with tender regard or handwringing fear or both. Boys call me. I don’t know who most of them are, so how do they know me? I smell Karen’s lunches though the bag. I put on weight. She wears pearls and sweater sets and straight skirts like a character out of The Group, although this is the ‘60’s. I study what the other girls wear, but I can’t afford their clothes. I am trying to project a style, although it doesn’t always work. I ghost over Woodmere, unable to concentrate. I’m flattered by the phone calls from boys, although I understand it’s not flattery.