Karen McKay

      Karen McKay was born in the backseat of her mother’s minivan, three months premature. Doctors said that Karen’s survival was a medical marvel, and it really was a shame that her mother hadn’t made it. No one knew who the father was, so Karen was taken in by her aunt, who had a one year old of her own. They went to school the same year, and were in the same class. The boy was slow, and the other kids made fun of him. Karen spent her days and nights defending him and learning to dance. She went to New York one fall, to audition for Juilliard. She fell down two flights of stairs on the subway en route to her audition, fracturing her collarbone and shattering her pelvis. Juliard wrote to her; they would be unable to reschedule her audition.

      Karen spent six weeks in hospital and went home to Maine, where she took night classes in Spanish and worked on a checkout at Target. One day, on a late shift at work, Karen was called into Steve, the area manager’s office. He told her that he knew she’d been stealing cleaning products, and he had it on tape. He said he would get rid of the tape if she sucked his dick, and she did. She did that night and most Tuesday nights thereafter. After about two months, he took her on a real date. After six, he proposed.

They were married in Spring, and Karen stopped working on the floor and moved to the back office. She didn’t like it there. The checkout girls all said that Steve and the other managers like to make the little reception girls stay on late. Karen took a requisition form to Steve’s office and caught him fucking Leann Germanotti on the desk. She filed for divorce and he got everything. Karen stopped working at Target altogether. It was either leave quietly or the video footage would be turned in to the authorities, Steve said.

Karen’s aunt called. Her big cousin had been hit by a car on the way to the swimming pool. Karen went to stay in Portland with her aunt. They planned Karen’s 40^th birthday party in the local Masonic hall. Most people had somewhere else to be that night. Steve had a business dinner he just couldn’t get out of.

       Two weeks later, Karen took an overdose in her aunt’s bathroom. At her funeral, Steve read a poem, and said that Karen McKay was the only woman he’d ever loved.