Pay It Forward (12 page)

S
he stood on his front porch with one hand poised to knock and her heart beating so hard she could hear it in her ears. She hadn’t done anything wrong, which was just exactly what she had stopped by to tell him, so why was she so afraid he’d tell her to go to hell? Exactly when had this thing taken a wrong turn again? Arlene decided she must have been in some other room when it all happened without her.

She rapped hard on his front door and immediately wanted to run away. In fact, she’d taken two steps back when he opened the door. He was wearing dark blue sweatpants and a snug, plain white T-shirt.

“Arlene.”

“Reuben, do you think I’m easy?”

“No. Actually I find you quite difficult.” Then he leaned back on the door frame and smiled. And she couldn’t take offense at what he’d said, because it was a nice smile, even though the left corner of his mouth didn’t go along, so he must have been teasing her in a nice way.

“There goes the pot calling the kettle black. Can I come in for just a minute?”

The smile dropped away. “Oh. Uh. It’s a mess.”

“Your place? Get serious. You’re not the type to have a mess.”

He opened the door just a little wider to show her the inside of his living room, all stacked with cardboard moving cartons. “I haven’t quite unpacked yet.”

“Well, hell, Reuben. That ain’t a mess. It’s not your fault if all your stuff just got here, right?”

“Right,” he said, still not sounding too sure of himself; but he stepped back from the doorway and let her in. “Why would I think you’re easy?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I never know what you’re thinking anyway. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t.” She found herself a place on the couch.

“Are
you easy?”

“Well, no. I don’t think so. Well, not by my standards. I mean, I get along fine with sex, it’s not that. But if I’m with one guy, then he’s the only guy. Ricky’s been gone over a year and I still haven’t been with anybody else. That doesn’t exactly make me promiscuous. What about you?”

“No, I’m not exactly promiscuous, either. Can I get you something to drink? Would you like a beer?”

“Hell, I’d love one to pieces, but no. I’m a recovering alcoholic.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.”

“You didn’t know.”

“I noticed you never ordered drinks, but I didn’t think about it.”

“We still don’t really know each other all that well.”

That was the other part of what she’d come to tell him. That he kept himself so shuttered off from her that he felt like a stranger, which might have been why she’d ended up feeling cheap.

“I’ve got orange juice and ginger ale.”

“Ginger ale’d be fine.”

He went off to get it and she sat chewing on the edge of her thumbnail, telling herself to stop it but not stopping. At least he hadn’t told her to go to hell.

When he handed her the cold glass she said, “What did I do
wrong, Reuben? I have no idea. What was wrong with kissing that side of your face, anyway? It’s all you. I was just sort of, you know, accepting it. As part of you.”

He sat down beside her, perched on the edge of his seat the way he did whenever something made him uncomfortable. Well, see, he wasn’t a total stranger. She knew that much about him.

“I’m not sure I can explain it.”

“Know what Trevor told me? He said you told him that it’s better not to pretend like you didn’t notice, because that doesn’t fool you one bit anyway. And you know, when he said that, it made total sense. I thought, shoot, I been doing it wrong all these years, I’m sure not going to make that mistake again. So I didn’t treat that side of your face like it didn’t exist. So you left in a huff and I ain’t heard from you since.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You are?” She hadn’t thought he would be, she’d thought somehow she’d come out sorry, the guilty one. That’s the way it usually went. “Oh. Well, that’s okay. Just kind of hurt my feelings some at the time.”

He took a little slide over to her and gave her a hug. He’d never done that before. And she’d always wanted him to, and always noticed that missing, so why, now that it was here, did it seem to make her feel a little uneasy?

He didn’t let go right away, either. Just held on for a minute, making Arlene think maybe she’d cry again, and if she did, he’d have to think she was some kind of emotional basket case, always crying at the drop of a hat.

“You’re right,” he said, his mouth up close to her ear. “I get angry when people pretend they don’t notice and I get angry when I know they do. I’m not sure what I want from people. I think I want them not to jump a mile when they first see me, and I’m never going to get that.”

Then he let go, and sure enough by that time she was crying, because she felt so bad for him. Which, in a way—but a way she’d never try to explain—was the reason she’d kissed his face that
morning. Feeling bad for him, like Trevor with a skinned knee, like she’d been a mommy too long and thought she could make it all better if she kissed it.

He didn’t have any reaction to her tears, and she wondered if she wanted him to notice or if she wanted him to pretend not to. It was a hard problem, he was right about that.

Then he said, “Arlene, I’ve got a confession to make. These boxes didn’t just arrive. They’ve been here for months. I just can’t bring myself to unpack them. I’ve moved three times in the past four years. I get so tired of it. Every time I try to unpack, I just get overwhelmed.”

She stared at him and wiped tears out from under her eyes, sideways and carefully so she wouldn’t smear her mascara. “That is so wonderful.”

“What is?”

“That you told me that. That’s the first real thing you ever told me about yourself. And what’s even better, I can totally relate to that. Not with moving, but hell, I feel that way about all kinds of things. I just get overwhelmed. Immobile, like.”

And Reuben said, “Yeah, like that.” And they smiled at each other and got embarrassed again.

“Maybe it would be easier if you weren’t doing it alone. I could help you unpack.”

“You’d do that?”

“Course I would. Hell, what’re friends for? Just let me use your phone a minute, tell Trevor where I am.”

Of course, the first thing Trevor said was could he come over and help, too, so Arlene put her hand over the phone and asked Reuben if he could. Reuben said yes, of course, but additionally he got this sweet look on his face, like he really liked Trevor, which Arlene already knew, but every time she saw it she liked it better than the time before. He had good taste in kids, there was that to be said for him.

T
REVOR GOT DEEPLY INVOLVED
in a box of books. He arranged them on Reuben’s bookshelf alphabetically, according to the name of the author. This seemed to impress Reuben, and it amazed the hell out of Arlene, who knew he didn’t get his knack for organization from her side of the family.

She stood in Reuben’s kitchen unpacking better-than-everyday china, handing it up to Reuben, who arranged it on the high shelves. She felt so short beside him, like he was standing on a chair, which he was not. A little half-Siamese cat with blue eyes came mewing around her feet and Arlene bent down to pet her. The cat arched her back and purred.

“I didn’t know you had a cat.”

“That’s Miss Liza.”

They hadn’t said anything for a long time, and after saying that they fell silent again.

The light through the windows went murky with a coming rain.

Then she opened the box with the pictures. They were all framed and laid flat, wrapped in newspapers. She unwrapped the top one. It was a photograph of a nice-looking young couple, a handsome young black man, hardly more than a boy, with his arm around a pretty girl. And the man looked a little familiar. Almost like Reuben. When she looked up, he was over near the closet, looking back at her, watching her look.

“Is this your brother, Reuben?”

“I don’t have a brother. That’s me.”

“Oh.”
Boy, what a stupid thing to say, Arlene. Oh.
But it was a shock, one she hadn’t nearly adjusted to yet. She must have known, somewhere in the back of her mind, that he wasn’t born with his face blown up. But she’d never thought about it, and certainly never expected to see what he’d looked like before, when he was still whole. So she just kept looking. And he just stood by the closet, watching her look. “Who’s this pretty lady?”

“Eleanor. She was my fiancée at the time.”

“But you never got married?”

“No. I’ve never been married.”

“No. Me neither.” She had to tell him that sooner or later, and it just sort of came out.

Eleanor seemed about two shades darker in skin color than Reuben, smooth, shiny black skin, and her hair all drawn back, looking stylish, like somebody with a world of class. Like somebody Arlene never was and never could be. Like somebody Reuben really should be with. Arlene couldn’t seem to get a bead on which face hurt her more. “I can’t believe how handsome you were. Oh, God. I’m sorry, Reuben. Sometimes I say the stupidest things.”

She looked over at Trevor, preoccupied with his bookshelf, to see if he was taking in any of this very personal stuff. He was not. He was lost in his own little world.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if I still looked like that?”

“No.”

She hadn’t known she was going to say that. It just sort of said itself. And the funny thing was, he didn’t ask her to explain. He just stuck his head in the closet and went on about his unpacking.

From
The Other Faces Behind the Movement

Because, you know, a man like that one in the picture, he would never so much as give me the time of day. He would never have shown up in a little hick town like this one in the first place, and if he had, he’d be with that handsome, sophisticated woman, and I just know he would speak down to me.

It was real hard to stop staring at that picture. Hard to explain why. It felt like it had ahold of someplace in my gut and it wouldn’t let me go. I mean, it just put a whole lot of things in a whole different light.

And then, when I got over that, there was the one of Reuben’s parents. They were real good looking too. And they seemed to have that same something, that same thing Eleanor had, and I couldn’t even say for sure what it was, but this much I did know:
Reuben had it and I did not. He’d never lose it and I’d never learn it. Some things start out a certain way and never change.

I asked Reuben if they were still alive, his parents. He said they were, that they lived in Chicago. Oh, thank God, I thought. Now I would probably not have to meet them, and if I never met them, I would never read on their faces that I was not Eleanor material and never would be.

And then, even though I tried not to, after a while I set Reuben’s parents down and picked up that first picture again. While I stared at it I thought about my mother, and the way she used to shop. We didn’t have much money, see, when I was growing up. So she’d buy seconds, different types of damaged goods, rather than an item of clothing that was whole and unflawed but essentially poorer in quality.

“But Momma,” I’d complain, “it’s got a stain on it.”

And Momma would say, “Good thing for you it does, little girl, or we’d a never been able to afford it.”

Then I looked up at Reuben again and he was still standing in the closet, and one more time I caught him looking back at me.

This hard rain started pounding on the roof.

S
HE TUCKED HER BOY INTO BED
at ten, since it was Saturday, and no school the following day. He asked if they could get a cat and she avoided answering. A few minutes into the eleven o’clock news came the knock.

The rain was really coming down now. She didn’t even realize how much until she opened the door. It fell in sheets behind him, and he stood on her front porch soaking wet, his hair, his clothes saturated, water dripping off his chin.

“You’re sopping wet. You better get in here.” He stepped inside and she closed the door behind him. “I’ll get a towel.”

She went through her bedroom into her own bathroom to get
the big cushy one. When she came out with it he had followed her into the bedroom and was standing by the bed, dripping water onto the carpet. She sat him down on the edge of the bed and toweled his closely cropped hair.

“Don’t take this wrong, but what are you doing here?”

“I got lonely. It was the funniest thing. Something about having you and Trevor in the house with me all day. After you left the house seemed so empty. I don’t want to be alone anymore, Arlene.”

As he said this last thing he reached out for her and put his right hand around behind her back and pulled her up close. She set one knee on the bed beside him and held the back of his head, feeling the moisture from his wet clothes soak through her bathrobe. He didn’t touch her in any intimate way, just held her close, but it
felt
intimate, very much so, the way his forehead pressed against her chest and his face just remained there between her breasts, his breath warm.

“Why didn’t you take your umbrella, silly?” She knew he had one. She’d unpacked it herself.

“I couldn’t find it.”

“I put it in your front closet.”

“Oh. I didn’t think of that.” A gentle kiss in the open V of her bathrobe, on the bony part of her chest, made it hard to swallow.

“Doesn’t everybody keep their umbrella in the closet?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Where do you keep it?”

“In the umbrella stand.”

“What umbrella stand?”

“That tall wicker thing.”

“Oh, is that what that was? I thought that was some kind of big skinny planter. I put it on the back porch.”

She could feel him lean back, still holding her to him, and if he’d gone all the way over backward on the bed she’d have been on top of him, which she somehow could not manage on such short notice. So she resisted without meaning to.

He said, “You seem tense.”

“Do I?”

“Last time you were so sure.”

“Yeah, well. Somebody had to be.”

He pulled his head back a little and she wiped his face with the towel. Even though it was mostly wiped dry on her robe. Maybe she’d be lucky and wouldn’t have to explain it. Maybe he’d just know somehow.