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Eyes of Glass - Hearts of Stone

Chapter Thirty-six

Jogging proved to be an excellent way to burn off excess nervous energy. Karen picked her up at ten o'clock each morning regardless of temperature or threatening weather, huffing and puffing at an awkward gait.

Over the course of a single week, Lori began to notice a perceptible change. "I'm afraid you're going to hurt yourself, Karen. You're losing so much weight so fast."

"I'm gaining muscle mass, I'll have you know," Karen protested. "I'm loosing excess fat. And I'm increasing my cardiovascular efficiency to boot."

Karen's arrogance irritated her, but she followed the woman grimly, determined to keep an eye on her and see what effects the transformation would have.

She broke a barrier of her own toward the last of the week. She followed Karen to Main Street, then paced alongside the woman as the street passed through the business district and a short residential area to become a blacktop highway walled by trees standing stark against the deep blue sky of Indian summer. She ran into the countryside until her side hurt, until she could no longer catch her breath, then felt herself picking up a new stride and rhythm. Her jogging shoes pounded the pavement. Her legs became pistons churning away on their own initiative. Karen glanced back at her in alarm, fixed her attention to the road ahead, and redoubled her effort.

Lori had no idea how far they had gone before she felt ready to collapse. She stopped and dropped to her knees, panting for air. By the time she regained enough breath to call out, Karen was a city block ahead of her and still moving at top speed.

"Karen, stop! You'll kill yourself!"

She walked back home alone. Amy emerged from her house to intercept her, hugging herself in the cold morning air. The twins trotted after her like puppies nipping at her heels.

"Is something the matter?" Lori asked, puzzled by her fearful expression.

"You're going to be mad at me, you and Carol and Karen."

Lori sat on the woman's front porch step to hear her out. "Why are we going to be mad at you?"

Amy tilted her chin with self-conscious defiance. "I'm bringing Ralph home."

Lori was appalled. "You are? Really?"

"He's crippled, and he doesn't have anywhere else to go."

Lori gave a despairing sigh. If only Amy would care for her own feelings as much as she cared for what other people might think of her. "If that's what you're going to do, you don't have to justify yourself. Ralph is your husband."

"You won't be angry with me?"

"I feel guilty, Amy. I'm the one who hurt him."

Amy shook her head emphatically. "You saved his life. If he had shot anyone, he would have gone to prison. Everything's changed now. We don't have money for his drinking, and he can't drive, but he misses the kids, and he wasn't always so mean."

"Nobody hates Ralph except for what he did," Lori said. "And people can change. It happens on rare occasions."

"Do you really believe that?"

"If you don't believe it, then you don't believe people can learn from their mistakes. That would be a stupid thing to believe, don’t you think?”

"Do you think Karen has learned from her mistakes?"

Lori wasn’t at all sure. "Karen's having a rough time of it."

"Is she okay? She doesn't say much to me anymore."

"I've been keeping my eye on her."

"She's running all over town!" Amy said excitedly. "She's looking so slim already!"

"She's going to drop dead of a heart attack. I swear I can't talk sense to that woman."

Amy studied her with a grimace. Lori was drenched in sweat and shivering in the autumn cold. "It doesn't look like very much fun."

"Sure it is. Besides, if Karen does survive and causes more trouble, one of us has to be able to chase her down and tackle her to the ground."

Amy giggled. "Ralph says she's planning on chasing down semi trailers on the highway and raping Carol's truck drivers."

Her brief conversation with Amy brightened the balance of her day, but Karen darkened the following Saturday morning when she made her appearance at the back door. Lori let her in the house without comment. Karen went directly to the kitchen and poured herself coffee. "Kids about?"

"Off with friends."

"Why are you so glum, may I ask?"

"I'm not happy with the way you ran away from me yesterday," Lori said. "I'd like to know why you're behaving this way."

"If you're going to be so uppity about it, Lori Malcolm, it may be none of your business."

"Benjamin says you've done this jogging business before. You're scaring me."

Karen whirled about in surprise. "You've been talking about me behind my back!"

"Why did Benjamin feel it necessary to warn me about your jogging?"

Karen wrinkled her nose and sneered. "How much would it take to upset that mouse of a man?"

"I can't imagine what the two of you saw in each other to begin with. How did Gloria ever manage to get born?"

Karen sipped her coffee and stared out of the window. "I've been through this before, I'll admit. It's different this time."

"You're becoming a different person. Has that happened before?"

Karen gave her a strangely hostile smile. "It’s happened before, and I reverted back to my old self again, but not this time. The old Karen Radcliff is gone for good. She self-destructed. Odd that people actually kill themselves rather than risk changing. That's what saved me, my willingness to change, my bullheadedness. I won't fall prey to the same self-destructive traps of the past.”

“Karen, I don’t understand.”

“I was fat and ugly when I met Benjamin. If you want to know what he saw in me, maybe he was an angry anal-retentive who didn't think he deserved better. There was another woman at the time, and I should have let him go. Instead, I fought to keep him. I lost weight and Gloria was conceived. Our child was the only thing that held our marriage together, that and the untimely death of his mistress."

"Karen, you should have talked to me about these things years ago. You can't keep unhappiness bottled up inside you like that."

"I made mistakes in judgment, I admit. Ben can be a very spiteful man, and fat has always been a means of self-defense for me. It became a way to hold Benjamin at bay. I loathed his disgusting groveling."

"Are you saying that you chased him away on purpose?"

Karen eyed her in self-defensive anger. "He was a glutton for punishment, let me tell you. I never doubted for a moment that Gloria would prefer living with me. I can't believe I had so little insight into my own behavior."

Karen leaned against the counter with a self-satisfied smile. "But I'm not as crazy as I used to be, Lori Malcolm. I believed in my ugliness back then, before I understood that there are virtues more important than the ability to seduce a man into an act of sex. Now, are we going to run together and get rid of this useless blubber, or am I going to run alone?"

The morning was cold and desolate. Lori maintained a slower pace than usual. Karen accommodated her until she had caught her second wind, then brought their speed back up. Lori, with her shorter legs, had to expend more energy to keep up with Karen's longer stride. They were poorly matched, both physically and psychologically.

A half mile outside town, a pickup slowed and sounded its horn. Two middle-aged farm hands with pudgy faces baked to the consistency of leather by the summer's sun leered from the cab. "Hey, babes!  You want a better way of keeping warm?"

Neither Lori nor Karen bothered to answer the lewd proposition. Both men were drunk. The truck pulled sharply to the side of the road ahead and parked. The driver of the truck got out and blocked Karen's path with a broad grin on his face.

Karen ignored him. Lori fell cautiously behind when Karen picked up her pace without adjusting her trajectory to avoid the man. She did a little skip and jump at the last moment and brought her right foot up hard between the man's legs. He folded at the waist, fell over, and rolled into the roadside ditch.

His partner left the truck bellowing appropriate fury, but lost his footing, fell into the ditch as well and vanished from sight momentarily. Karen paused long enough to lean in through the open window of the truck and snatch the keys from the ignition. She tossed them into the weeds and continued on her way as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

"One thing will never change," she commented as Lori hurried to catch up. "I'll not be a pushover for any man."

They walked the last three blocks to cool down. Karen chuckled, oddly elated by the incident. "Did those men think I was attractive, do you think? They weren't that drunk, were they?"

Lori was still weak-kneed with lingering fear. "Karen, you should have just ignored them."

"Perhaps. They were complimenting me in their own crude fashion."

Lori groaned and picked up her pace.

Karen plodded on, her mood visibly darkening as she mulled over the incident. "Who am I fooling. It wasn't me they wanted. You're just what a man wants, petite and feminine. I've seen the way Trent Scarelli looks at you. When you flirt with him so disgracefully, you remind me of that horrid what's-her-name who used to prance around town chasing after him."

Lori glanced up in alarm.

"Kim somebody. Kim Roberts. I could have throttled that little bitch and fed her to the pigs."

The sun went out and the temperature of the day dropped a thousand degrees.

"Half the women in the county have had a crush on Trent Scarelli at one time or another," Karen murmured, oblivious to what she had said. "I had my foolish dreams, too, I can tell you."

Lori picked up her pace again, eager now to reach the sanctuary and solitude of her home.

"Not that you and I don't have a lot in common," Karen called from behind as an afterthought. "We've kicked our share of butts this summer, Lori Malcolm, and the summer's not quite over with yet."

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