Pay It Forward (15 page)

A
rlene had fixed chicken fajitas, Trevor’s favorite, to honor the special occasion. Reuben ate too many, the way he had that first night in this house. The same house felt warmer now. Now and then he glanced over at her, expecting a sign.

She had her hair done up, and she was wearing the ring on her left hand, but if Trevor had noticed, he’d failed to comment. Reuben figured he hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t like Trevor to fail to comment.

“Want me to clear the table, Mom?” he said at last, breaking the quiet.

“In a minute, honey. Reuben and I have something we want to tell you.”

“Okay, what?”

“I think Reuben wants to tell you.”

“Okay. What?”

“Trevor? Your mother and I have made a big decision. That affects you.”

“Okay. What?”

“We’ve decided to be…engaged.”

“Engaged? Like, to be married?”

“That’s right.” He glanced over at Arlene, still holding her fork tightly, her eyes closed, as if the words might hurt.

“Yes!” Trevor shouted, startling Arlene’s eyes open. “Yes! I knew it! I told you! This is so completely cool.”

He jumped up from the table and launched into a little dance, which Arlene said made him look just like Deion Sanders.

Reuben said, “Who’s Deion Sanders?”

He looked up to see both Arlene and Trevor staring with their mouths open. “Who’s Deion Sanders?” Trevor asked, a study in astonishment. “You’re kidding, right?”

Arlene rose to collect the dinner dishes, obviously more comfortable now that the tension had been broken. “Trevor, honey, not everybody follows football.”

“Even so. Deion Sanders.” He sat back down, elbows on the table. “Don’t you
ever
watch football, Reuben? Hey. I just thought of something. Can I call you Dad now? Am I supposed to call you Dad?”

Reuben felt a little warm spot grow behind his ribs, a place that for so long had known only pain. “That would be fine, Trevor. If you’re comfortable with that. And if your mother is.” Arlene looked at them both and nodded. “So, this Deion Sanders. Does he play for the 49ers?”

Trevor rolled his eyes. “Boy. We got a lot of work to do on you.”

“I
THOUGHT
T
REVOR WAS A 49ERS FAN,”
Reuben said when she came back from tucking Trevor into bed.

She slid under the covers, igniting that spot of warmth again. Not even so much sexual, though it could easily enough cross that line. Just comfort, a sort only barely familiar.

“He is. But Deion Sanders plays for Atlanta. So he’s sort of an Atlanta fan, too. When Atlanta plays San Francisco, he just can’t handle it. He gets so upset, he can’t even watch.”

“I love you, Arlene.”

The words seem to reverberate in a suddenly empty room. Reuben wondered who was more amazed to hear them.

“We’re gonna make a great family,” she said after a time. “He sure loves you.”

And then it dawned on Reuben, a thought he’d never had before. It was a sweet thought, but at the same time it stung somehow. He’d never quite known, or let himself know, how much he’d been missing by sealing himself so completely away from others. “I should go kiss him good night.”

“Yeah. I think he’d like that.”

Yeah. I think we both would.

From the chin down, Trevor lay covered in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bedspread. The light from the street lamp showed the left side of the boy’s face in a soft glow.

“Hey,” Reuben said, and sat down on the edge of his bed.

“Hey.” And then, as a pleasant afterthought, “Dad.” A smile broke on his face and came all the way out of hiding. “Doesn’t that sound cool?”

Reuben felt the contagion of the smile sneak onto his own face. “Very cool.” They sat quietly for a minute. “Maybe we can watch some games together.”

“Cool.”

“I warn you, I don’t know the first thing about football.”

“I could teach you. You know what? This means something went right with my project after all.”

“I was thinking about that. About Paying It Forward. I was wondering how I’m going to do that. How do you do that, Trevor?”

“What do you mean? It’s not a how, exactly. You just do.”

“How do you think of things to do for people? I’m afraid I don’t have your imagination.”

“You don’t think it up with imagination. You just look around. Until you see somebody who needs something.”

“That sounds easy.”
Everybody needs something. How far would you have to look?

“It
is
easy.”

If you’re a child, Reuben thought. “Good night, Trevor.”

“Night, Dad. Is Mom happy?”

“I think so. I think we both are.”

From
Those Who Knew Trevor Speak

Actually, I think she was scared to death. But isn’t everybody at a time like that, faced with such a big decision? I was scared to death too, but I had every intention of going through with it. But there was also…I mean, to complicate things for her…I mean, his name came up. Here and there. Which seemed normal to me. I still expected it would work out.

Until that day.

October 19, 1992. It’s one of those dates you don’t forget. In fact, you don’t forget anything about it. You remember the jingle that was playing on the television. You remember the thought that was spinning around in your head a split second beforehand, when everything was still in order. It’s trite to say, but your life divides up into before and after, and you don’t have trouble placing things in time anymore. You can almost date them, something like
B.C.
and
A.D.
I guess it sounds like I’m wasting a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. I won’t lie. I haven’t completely let go of it. In some ways I have. Not all ways. I’m probably being too sensitive. Maybe other people’s wounds heal in a reasonable space of time.

No, I take that back. They don’t.

R
euben sat on the couch sharing a bag of microwave popcorn with Trevor. Now and then a piece fell, only to be retrieved by Miss Liza, who spent most of her time at Arlene’s now, with the rest of the family. Every time she ate a kernel, Trevor told her that cats aren’t supposed to like popcorn. She seemed unconcerned.

They watched Buffalo play the Raiders, a good game for Trevor to use as a teaching tool, since he wasn’t overly concerned about the outcome. He cheered for Buffalo, but not so much that he couldn’t breathe.

Just as the game had gone to commercial, Trevor had been attempting to teach Reuben the difference between a touchback and a safety. Also between a touchback after an end-zone interception and a touchback after a kickoff. Reuben figured he had most of the basics by now, but might have been unclear on these few details.

A Coca-Cola commercial came on, the jingle familiar, destined to become too familiar, because now Reuben always thinks about it in connection with everything else. Not on purpose. He
just hears it in his head every time the whole ordeal plays through again. Which it still does from time to time.

Trevor was feeding Miss Liza a piece of popcorn on purpose. She stood up on her hind legs to take it, one paw braced on Trevor’s jeans, one poised in the air as if she might need to bat the prize away.

It should have been a good moment, a good day. A good life. By all rights it should have been.

Reuben heard a knock on the door.

Arlene called in from the kitchen. Said she would get it.

She swung the door open. Reuben looked up. Waited for her to say something. He couldn’t see her face, just the back of her head, but he wanted to see her face for some reason.

A man stood in the doorway, saying nothing. A wiry, rather small man, with dark curly hair. The silence seemed to twist into Reuben’s stomach somehow, as if stomachs can know things without needing to be taught. Reuben glanced over at Trevor, who stared at the doorway, his eyes fixed and expressionless. That cola jingle kept going against the back of Reuben’s brain.

Somebody had to say something, and it was the stranger who finally spoke. “You don’t seem too happy to see me.”

Arlene stomped into the bedroom and slammed the door.

Alone in the empty, open doorway, the wiry little man turned his attention to Trevor. “Aren’t you even going to say hello?”

“Hello.” Trevor’s voice sounded hollow and cold. It never had before. That was the moment, really, that Reuben knew something had happened—something irrevocable. Trevor never talked that way to anybody.

“You don’t call me Daddy no more?”

Reuben felt Trevor cast him a sideways glance. This was all building up to hurt, but he couldn’t feel it yet. Just a numbness, a shock, the kind that allows almost anybody to survive almost anything, against their own bets.

“You said never call you Daddy in front of people.”

“Well, that was before, boy. That was then, this is now. You don’t even sound like you’re happy I’m back. Whatsa matter, boy, cat got your tongue?”

Trevor launched himself off the couch and ran for his bedroom, slamming the door hard enough to make Reuben wince.

The man crossed the living room to the couch and stood over Reuben. Towered over him. Just stand up, Reuben thought, because he would surely be a full head taller and outweigh this little man by half again. But his body didn’t do anything he told it to do. The man looked him over the way people who haven’t seen his face tend to do, but openly, as though Reuben wasn’t looking.

“Who the hell are you?” he said.

G
ordie had a date with a man he’d “met” on the Internet. Gordie loved the Internet, the one thing that, two thousand miles from his old home, his real father, his old familiar life, hadn’t changed. Gordie loved things that never changed. The man called himself Wolf, though surely it was not his name. On the screen, you can become whatever you’ve always wanted to be, and Gordie had become Sheila. Until later that night, how was Wolf to know?

Wolf suggested they meet on Pennsylvania Avenue, right in front of the White House. Right against the White House fence. This was fine with Gordie; in fact, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. The street would be crawling with Secret Service and D. C. city cops. Maybe Gordie wouldn’t get beat up this time. Maybe that’s the one place he’d be safe.

He spent an hour on his makeup.

Ralph, his stepfather, watched TV in his recliner in the living room. Standing quietly in the kitchen doorway, Gordie could hear the slight click of his breathing, almost a snore. He slipped by Ralph’s chair with his head turned away, and Ralph did not wake up.

Gordie stepped out into the city night.

In his pocket he held enough money for bus fare to get there. He jingled it through his fingers. It was not enough to get back. Maybe Wolf would drive him. Maybe Wolf would be different and wouldn’t want to send him home at all.

Or maybe he’d have to walk. He should have brought something to wash the makeup off his face, in case that happened, cold cream or something. But he hadn’t. He’d chosen to believe that this night he would not be making his way home alone.

He climbed the shallow stairs of the city bus, blinking in the glare of the light. The driver handed him a transfer as if he wished he were wearing rubber gloves, flinging the piece of paper forward so their hands would not touch. It fell into the aisle. Gordie bent down to pick it up and heard a snicker behind him. He should have worn a longer coat over his tight satin pants, the ones with the zipper in the back. Should have done all kinds of things. Should have admitted that the world he stepped into that night was the real one.

He sat right behind the driver, his eyes on the filthy aisle floor, careful not to meet the eyes of the snickerers. It was a trick he’d learned from a movie about gorillas—exaggeratedly averting your gaze to avoid aggression. It only worked about half the time. Gordie figured it probably worked better on the gorillas. Probably they were more civilized.

G
ORDIE PACED UP AND DOWN
in front of the iron fence that surrounded the White House. Tourist couples walked by hand in hand, tugging on the arms of their children to bring them in close. Uniformed cops strolled by, stared into Gordie’s face, shook their heads or clicked their tongues in judgment. Everybody felt free to judge. It never occurred to anyone to hold their opinion in silence.

Their breath clouded steamy in the biting October air.

He glanced at his watch. Nearly ten o’clock.

At ten o’clock, Wolf would officially be two hours late. Gordie would be left to wonder if he had failed to show at all, or if he had arrived, seen the perfect-cliché white carnation and the young male who wore it, and gone home again. Or maybe gone out and picked up a prostitute, a woman. Anything to keep from going home alone. That was the one part of all this that Gordie truly understood. After a glimmer of hope that there would be company for the evening, almost anything would be better now than going home alone.

If Wolf had shown up and beaten the hell out of him for being Gordie rather than Sheila, that would almost have been better. Then in the morning he could go to school with his tongue gently exploring a swollen lip or a cracked tooth. He would know at least that something had happened. He would bet he was alive. Nobody would beat him up at school, because the bruises would satisfy them that he had received his due already.

He glanced at his watch again. It was after ten now. He would have to walk home.

A uniformed cop cruised by on foot, straining to look into Gordie’s face, like a rubberneck at a tragic accident. The cop had dark oily hair slicked back under his cap, and a broad nose. Handsome in a macho sort of way, Gordie thought. He seemed to find Gordie predictably disgusting, but Gordie knew he wouldn’t use his fists to say so. He just knew. After all these years, he could tell danger before it struck. He couldn’t stop it, though. Just see it coming.

“Excuse me? Sir?”

“What?” The cop stopped suddenly, rocking forward slightly on his toes.

“I seem to have gotten stuck out here with no bus fare.”

“Get your pocket picked or something?”

“Yeah.”
Okay.

“What the hell you pacing out here for? I been watching you for two hours. Is this, like, a solicitation thing?”

“No sir. I was supposed to meet a friend.”

“’Cause if I thought you were out here peddling your services, I’d run you in so fast. Hey, how old are you, kid?”

“Eighteen.”

“Yeah. Sure you are. What’s it to me if you got bus fare?”

That’s when Gordie knew the cop would give him money to get home.

“I just thought, well, it’s a long walk. I could get hurt, you know?”

The cop moved his head as if to study Gordie’s face from additional angles. “You sure as hell could. Why don’t you wash that crap off your face if you don’t want to get hurt? Here.” He handed Gordie a clean, folded white handkerchief from his shirt pocket.

Gordie took it obediently and wiped his face, feeling a sense of loss. It had been a damn near perfect makeup job. It had looked smashing. He hated himself already, felt ugly without it. Dark flesh-colored smears and streaks of black mascara marred the perfect white cloth now. He tried to go easy around the eyes. Maybe some of the green shadow would survive.

He tried to hand the handkerchief back, but the cop threw his hands up in disgust. Gordie folded the smeary mess to the inside and stuck it in his pocket. He liked that he could keep it. Nobody ever gave him anything.

“Is that better?”

“Shoot, kid, not much. Still looks like hell. Look.” He dug in his uniform pants pocket and handed Gordie three one-dollar bills. “Go home. Wash your face. Don’t let me see you around here again.”

“Thank you, sir,” Gordie said, and took off at a half trot, feeling somehow warmed.

G
ORDIE CLUTCHED HIS BUS TRANSFER
in one hand, fingernails digging through the paper.
Halfway home, don’t blow it now.
He stared through the window into the lighted chamber of the bar. It looked welcoming. He had a fake ID, out-of-state though it was. If they wanted to believe it they might.

No women inside that he could see, but he could be wrong. Could be a bunch of good old boys on a night out from the wives. He could learn that too late.

No money for a drink, but someone might buy him one. Gordie just hated like hell to go home alone. Hated to go home at all. He could wash his face for real in the men’s room, save himself a hell of a beating if his stepfather was awake and caught him coming in.

Three men appeared in the doorway. Stepped out toward him onto the street. My God, what had he been thinking? He’d really done it now.

“What the hell are you?” one of the men called out, louder than necessary.

Gordie turned quickly and headed for the bus stop. He could hear the click of his own heels in his head; in fact, for a moment, he couldn’t hear anything else.

Then, from behind him, “Got a nice little swish to her walk. Hey. You hear me talkin’ to you, boy?”

“You sure that’s a boy?”

Two voices. Maybe there were only two of them now. He glanced over his shoulder and saw all three, gaining ground on him.

He broke into a sprint.

A light, powdery snow began to fall.

A split second later something caught him around his legs. His feet came out from under him and he pitched forward. It seemed to take a long time to fall. On the way down he thought about the cop who gave him the handkerchief and the three dollars. If he was here now, watching, would he help? Or laugh?

His chin struck hard on the concrete, and he felt the wind go
out of him. He saw some kind of color explode inside his head, behind his eyes. Felt a big male body on top of him, pinning him. Couldn’t breathe.

“You wish, huh, boy?”

A slight downward pressure, like a simulation of anal sex. Why was sex always the insult of choice? Gordie felt blessedly removed from this thought, from his body, a gentle sense of shock that always kicked in to help him survive.

Then the great weight lifted and a hand pulled him up to his knees by the back of his hair. He wavered there for an instant, free and unrestrained. A hard shoe in the middle of his back knocked him forward again. He fell loosely, like a sock doll, struck his nose on the concrete. Felt the blood flow down his lip and tasted its metallic flavor at the back of his throat. Something personal and familiar.

A third voice sounded, hollow in his ears. Distant, as if from the end of a long tunnel. His ears felt plugged, and they rang. “Shit, he just a little boy. I’m goin’ back to the bar.”

“Maybe he don’t know he’s not a little girl.” It was the voice of the man who’d pinned him.

“Leave ’im be, Jack. Come on.”

Gordie lay motionless on the cold sidewalk, playing dead. Nothing touched him. He thought he heard their footsteps walk away, but there were other footsteps. People walking up and down this street. They had been there all along, he realized. He’d been too busy to notice. His senses acutely alive now, he heard the click of their shoes as they cut a wide circle around him.

Blood from his nose pooled around his fingers as he pushed to his feet.

From
The Other Faces Behind the Movement

You know I got death threats after it first happened? Can you explain to me how it was my fault? Enough people say it is, though,
you start to wonder. Like, if I hadn’t been out that night. If I’d gone out the next night. The Kid would have made it to the airport by then. He’d be back in his hometown. I guess everybody’s thinking it should have been me. I’m just so damned expendable. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound bitter.

I think if there’s a message in all this, it’s that things happen the way they’re supposed to. The way they have to. I couldn’t have gone out on a different night, and the Kid couldn’t have made it out of the city that night. Look how much good came in the long run.

It’s not my fault. People just like to put a name and a face on their hatred. My face goes real well with hatred. I’ve noticed that.

It’s better, now, though. It was hard for the first few months. But now. Everything’s better now.

H
IS MOTHER WAS HOME FROM WORK—
the good news. Ralph was still awake—the bad.

Gordie held the smeary handkerchief to his nose and tried to slip by. If only his mother would let him slip by. But she wanted to see his face, so Ralph saw it, too.

“Oh, honey,” she said, grabbing Gordie’s arm. He tried to pull away, but he felt so weak and shaky. “Oh, Gordie. Honey. What happened to you?” She turned him around and tried to move the handkerchief away. His only cover.

“Nothing, Ma. I’m fine. I fell down, is all.”

She disappeared suddenly, pushed out of the way by her new husband. Ralph loomed in his face, holding Gordie’s wrist to keep him from running. Gordie longed suddenly for the familiar company of the three men from the bar. They seemed safer in comparison. At least they were not in his home.

“What the hell’s all over your face, boy?”

He felt the back of Ralph’s hand, hard. He heard his mother
scream. Gordie fell easily, steadied himself on hands and knees, tried to keep his head down.
No more. Not tonight. Please no more tonight.
He wiggled a loose molar with his tongue.

“Stand up to me, boy. You hear?” A roar, a bellow, like the roar of a forest fire out of control. He did not stand up.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw his mother grab Ralph from behind, grab him with her arms around his neck. They yelled at each other, but Gordie couldn’t make out the words. Ralph shook her off, turned back to Gordie. But Gordie had seen that brief window of opportunity and used it. He launched from his crouched position like a runner at the gun.

He locked the door of his room before Ralph could catch him.

The door shuddered when Ralph hit it. Gordie wedged a chair under the knob. His hands trembled, a feeling that ran all the way to a place inside his gut. A second strike came, followed by the sound of wood splintering, but the door held.

Then relative quiet.

Gordie could hear his mother’s voice, the steady, comforting litany of it. Couldn’t make out all the words, though. Something about how Ralph should take some nice deep breaths and she would fix him a nice drink.

Their footsteps moved off down the hall.

Gordie washed his face in his bathroom sink. The comfort of warm water, the sting of soap. Leftover blood and makeup swirled down the drain.

Then he lay on his back on the bed, wondering what Wolf might have looked like. Wishing he had aspirin, but they were in the kitchen.

In time he heard a shy, gentle knock that he knew was his mother. He rose painfully and unlocked the door, then lay down again.

“Lock it behind you, Ma.”

“He’s asleep, sweetie.”

“Passed out, you mean.”

She didn’t answer. She sat on the edge of his bed and handed him three aspirin and a half glass of water. He swallowed the aspirin. She gave him an ice bag for his face. He wanted to put it everywhere at once. His head pounded with pain, his chin and nose felt painfully swollen. His jaw ached at the spot of the loose teeth. He put the bag over his nose and eyes. The world disappeared.

“He’s not a bad man, honey. It just makes him mad. If you could just wash your face before you come home. Maybe change your clothes. Just don’t rub his nose in it, you know?”

“Sure, Ma. Okay, I will.”

“He’s not a bad man.”

“Ma? I just want to go to sleep. I don’t really want to talk tonight, okay? I just want to go to sleep.”