Pay It Forward (19 page)

“No, I’m not sure either. I figured it’s better to be safe.”

“So, you knew her.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know her well?”

The boy stopped his work, let the clippers hang straight down from his hand, and scratched his nose. “Not real well, I guess. We used to talk.”

“About what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Stuff. Football. This project I was doing for school. She was gonna help me with this project. But then she died.”

Chris rose to leave. He could talk to every living human in this city and not stumble on anyone who really knew. But he had to try one more time, because in the morning, he now knew, he’d be flying home.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about her will?”

“Her what?”

“Her will. Why she left money to certain people.”

“Oh. That kind of will. No. I didn’t even know she had a will.”

“Yeah. I didn’t figure you would. Well, good-bye.”

“See ya.”

He sat in the car for a few minutes, watching the boy work. Thinking it was odd for a boy that age to work when he had death as the perfect excuse to get out of it.

Then he wondered if Mrs. Greenberg
was
looking down.

If you are, he thought, how about a clue? How about letting
me
see something here?

But all he saw was a boy cutting a hedge.

He started the motor and drove away.

I
still don’t think even one single person has paid it forward.

I guess it was a stupid idea.

Only, I think Mrs. Greenberg would have. If she could.

And Reuben wants to. I know he does. But he just can’t think of anything that big.

Here’s the part nobody seems to get. It doesn’t even have to be that big. I mean, not really. I mean, it might just seem big. Depending on who you do it for.

R
euben arrived home from school at four-fifteen. Trevor knocked on his door at four-thirty.

“Where’s Miss Liza?”

“In the kitchen eating. I just fed her. Is that why you came by, Trevor? To see the cat? Or did you want to discuss something?”

“That second thing.” Reuben stepped back and swung the door wide. Trevor came in and perched on the couch. “If you don’t mind.”

Of course he minded, considering the possible topics. “Of course not, Trevor. You know you’re always welcome here.”

Miss Liza came running in from the kitchen and jumped on Trevor’s lap. “Wow. She must’ve heard my voice. Huh?”

“You should be flattered, Trevor. You’re more important to her than food.”

While he small-talked, Reuben nursed a sinking feeling inside his chest, familiar but more pronounced than usual. He’d thought he would still have Trevor, could always be friends with Trevor, but it hadn’t worked out quite that way. It hurt to have the boy around, and Trevor seemed to notice. Trevor’s once-daily trips to
Reuben’s house had dwindled. The last time he’d claimed he’d only come to visit the cat, and he hadn’t stayed long.

“What’s on your mind, Trevor?”

“I was just wondering if you were still going to pay it forward. I guess you don’t exactly have to. The way it worked out. I just thought maybe. I just wondered.”

Reuben took a deep breath and sank into his chair. Sometimes, when the urge to cry came around, and it did, it seemed to come behind both eyes, like an ancient trace memory.

“I’ve thought about that, Trevor. I guess I still would, if I could. I just don’t know yet, what I could do for anybody. I’m having a hard time with that.”

“I know somebody who needs something.”

“Is it someone I know?”

“Yeah. My mom.”

“I’m sure your dad can help her, whatever it is.”

“She threw him out. Besides, he couldn’t have helped her with this. This is something nobody else could do except you.”

Reuben’s chest burned. She’d thrown him out. Did that make everything better, or worse? “Look. Trevor. I really respect the work you did on that project. And I’m going to do my part to keep it going. Sometime. With somebody. But the way things stand between your mother and me….”

“Yeah, that’s what she said. She said you were upset. But I thought, that makes it really good, you know? Because it’s supposed to be a big something. You know. A big help. And if you help somebody you really want to help, then that’s not very big. You know? But if you’re all mad at my mom, and you helped her. That would be a big thing.”

His fingers scratched behind both of Miss Liza’s ears, and she leaned in closer and purred, her eyes half closed.

Reuben stood and walked to the window, needing to be as close as possible to somewhere else. His good ear rang, and he couldn’t imagine why it should. As if through a long tunnel, he
heard himself say, “I’m sorry, Trevor. I’m not sure I’m a big enough man to do something like that.”

Trevor’s face twisted with disappointment. The cat jumped off his lap and ran back to the kitchen.

“Don’t you even wanta know what it is that she needs?”

Better taste in men, he thought, but of course he didn’t say it. “Maybe it would be better if we just talked about something else.”

Trevor shrugged. “I got nothing else I was gonna say.”

“Tell me more about what you said earlier. You said she threw him out.”

He shrugged again. “Not much to tell. They kept fighting. Couple days ago she told him to get out. And he did. I guess I’ll go home now.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

“Nah. I got my bike out there.”

“I don’t mind. We’ll put it on my bike rack.”

“I guess. I gotta go say good-bye to Miss Liza.”

T
HEY RODE BACK
to Arlene’s house in silence.

Why had he suggested driving the boy home? He asked himself that question all the way there. If he really didn’t want to see her, and he really didn’t, why hadn’t he just let Trevor pedal home the way he always had?

He wanted to ask Trevor if his mother was home or at work, just to prepare himself somewhat, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to say the words.

He pulled up across the street. Her car wasn’t parked out front. A wash of relief and disappointment struck, warring, with Reuben as the unfortunate battleground.

He cut the motor and they sat quietly for a minute, listening to
an odd, intermittent crashing sound, like a series of small car accidents. It seemed to be coming from nearby.

“I wonder what that is,” Reuben said absently. He didn’t feel particularly motivated to drive away again.

“I’ll see.” Trevor got out of the car, leaving the passenger door open, and walked a few paces. He stopped opposite his own driveway with his hands in his pockets. Then he came back and sat down in the car beside Reuben.

“It’s my mom. She’s pounding the heck out of that truck with a baseball bat.”

A wave of cold numbness struck deep in Reuben’s gut. His ear began to ring again, and this time he could hear his own blood rushing around in his head, like the ocean in a conch shell.

“I thought she wasn’t home.”

“No. She’s home.”

“Her car’s not here.”

“It broke down. Now she has to take a bus to work. I think that’s why she’s all mad at the truck. She still has to pay for it. And now she’s gotta take a bus to two jobs. She had to go back to the Laser Lounge nights.”

“Since she threw your dad out?”

“No. All along. He never really made much money or anything.” The ugly metallic sounds of her pounding punctuated their words and their silences. “That’s my baseball bat, too. Man. That thing’s never gonna be the same.”

I wish I could do that, Reuben thought. It made him feel itchy and explosive, feeling how much he had to vent.

“Did you want me to get her a new car, is that it?”

“No. That wasn’t it.”

“You wanted me to give her rides home from work at three in the morning? I guess that is a dangerous time to ride the bus.”

“I don’t think the buses even run that late. No, Harry the bartender drives her home.”

Pound. Pound. Always the give of metal. No breaking glass.
Reuben tried to remember if the truck still even had glass. “What, then?”

“What, what?” Trevor seemed distracted by the noise, too.

“What does your mother need that only I can do?”

“For you to give her another chance. She knows she really screwed up. She knows that now. She does that a lot. Screws up. You know, like, sees a good thing and a bad thing and takes the bad one. She’s not dumb. She knows. I don’t know why she does it if she knows. It’s just this thing she does. She says you’ll never forgive her. But I figured, well, you could. It would be a really big thing. But you could. If you wanted to do a really big thing. For somebody. I mean, I remember you asked me once how you do something really big like that. Remember? And I said, well, you just look around. And find somebody who needs something. So, she does. Need something. I just thought you’d want to know.”

The interior of the car rang with the absence of words. The pounding continued outside. Reuben could hear Trevor’s breathing. He wanted to hug the boy because he missed him, but nothing moved. “I’m sorry, Trevor. I can’t.”

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Okay. She said you’d say that.”

“You talked about this with her?”

“Not exactly. She just said you were upset and you wouldn’t ever forgive her. But I said she should ask. But she won’t, ’cause she knows you’ll just say no. So I asked.”

“I’m sorry, Trevor.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

The pounding stopped suddenly. The unfamiliar silence felt strange and stunning.

Trevor got out of the car without saying good-bye. He took his bike down and walked it across the street. Reuben waited and watched until Trevor closed the front door behind him. He started up the engine.

As he cruised by the mouth of the driveway he braked slightly. He didn’t tell his foot to do that, but it did.

Arlene stood with the bat on her shoulder, panting and sweaty. She looked up and saw him immediately. The bat clattered onto the driveway.

Reuben pushed the accelerator to the floor. The little engine sagged, then picked up. In his rearview mirror he saw her standing in the middle of the street. He heard her shout his name.

“Reuben. Reuben, wait.”

He swung around a corner, though it would have been more direct to go straight.

From
Those Who Knew Trevor Speak

She told me later that she tried to call me. She said she called me every day after that and I didn’t answer. And I thought, How did she know I was home and not answering? Why couldn’t I have been out? Nobody ever thought of me as someone who could just have been out. Well. I wouldn’t say I was going out a lot at that time. But I didn’t just sit there and let the phone ring. I never did that. I don’t know why she thinks I did, particularly.

Maybe it was during that time I was having trouble with my phone.

H
E LAY ON HIS BACK IN BED,
pretending to watch the eleven o’clock news. The cat lay curled on his chest, making it hard to breathe deeply, but he didn’t move her.

The phone rang, and as he reached for it the cat stepped off him and onto the bed. As he picked up the receiver, he already
knew who it would be. He didn’t even say hello. Just held it near his ear as though it might be dangerous.

“Reuben, please don’t hang up.”

He hung up.

When it rang again he lifted the receiver and set it on the bedside table. He got up and walked into the living room, just to be sure he wouldn’t hear anything, if anything was said.

He paced around a little, but it made him feel awkward to be naked and exposed, even in the privacy of his house. He walked back into the bedroom and found Miss Liza sniffing the receiver. He picked it up and heard Arlene talking, a long string of breathless sentences, none of which he made out.

He yanked the cord out of the wall and threw the phone through the bedroom window.

He thought it might make him feel better, like beating a wrecked truck with a baseball bat. It proved disappointing, though. Now, instead of an awkward naked man standing in his room alone, in his life alone, he was all that with a broken window. And a warm wind on his naked body. And no telephone.

He should have known he wasn’t the venting type.

T
revor had gone to Joe’s on an overnight. Arlene sat home alone, thinking how she’d drive by Reuben’s if she had a car. Maybe she’d get her courage up, even knock on the door. If she had a car. Which she didn’t. And the fact that she didn’t made her mad. But her arms ached and trembled from her last attack on the carcass of that old beast in her driveway. How much more could either of them take? And it wasn’t really the truck’s fault, she had to admit. What the hell had she been thinking, cosigning that shiny new thing while she drove that awful old Dodge Dart? No wonder she was so sure Ricky would come home sooner or later. What a sweetheart deal.

Then she got madder thinking of that nice collector’s item GTO he drove. All rebuilt from the ground up with shiny chrome headers and a new front end and differential and those big, brand-new monster tires. How did he dare drive off with that thing and leave her with the payments on that truck he totaled?

Here it was her one night off from the Laser Lounge and she couldn’t even go anywhere. With no strength left in her arms to beat or break anything, all that anger was getting to be a problem.
There was a bar on the Camino, just a short walk away. But she must not have wanted to take that route, because she called Bonnie at home.

“Now what?”

“Geez, Bonnie. Get in trouble if I don’t call you, then you don’t seem glad when I do.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t glad. Just waiting to hear what trouble you got in now.”

“Nothing, really. Just my car died.”

“So now you’re thinking about taking a drink.”

“Yeah. But that ain’t why.”

Bonnie let the silence fall, gave Arlene the time she needed to sum it all up. But it seemed a little harder now. She was mad at Ricky. Right. Bonnie’d probably say, Duh. You and everybody else whose path he ever crossed.

But she really did her best to explain it. How mad it made her to think about him running around with Cheryl in that nice car, leaving her with that old hulk to pay off. Coming home and saying he’d go sober and be what he always should have been for her, then going right back to the same old crap, and now it was too late to ever get Reuben back.

Bonnie listened quietly, until the part about Reuben. Then she said, “Bingo.”

“Did I say something smart?”

“I think you just said what’s really eating you. But I can understand. You’re mad at Ricky. So mad you want to hurt him bad. So you’re going to walk down to the bar and throw away a clean year of sobriety. Boy, that’ll teach him. Every time you throw a punch, girl, you break your own jaw.”

Arlene sighed. Waited for the tears to come, but they didn’t. They just came up missing somehow. She breathed again and decided she felt a lot clearer.

“Naw, I won’t, Bonnie. You know that. If I was gonna do that I wouldn’t have called you.”

“I know. You just needed to talk.”

“I feel a little better now.”

“Call again if you want.”

“Maybe tomorrow. Tonight I think I’ll hike over to Cheryl’s and bend Ricky’s ear. Give him a taste of what I’m mad about.”

“If it’ll help you, go ahead. You know damn well it ain’t gonna help him.”

J
UST AS SHE WAS LEAVING THE HOUSE,
she realized she hadn’t packed up Ricky’s shotgun. She had begun to feel a little quieter and more centered, so she took it along. It was a longer walk than she remembered. It didn’t feel right, her having to go on foot, her having to be the one with two jobs, walking, but she had to follow this thought through.

Cheryl answered the door in her bathrobe, then almost closed it again; Arlene could see that little reflex.

“Too late to change your mind now,” Cheryl said.

“Oh, I didn’t. Just that Ricky’s got something of mine and I got something of his. I just want to trade up. Then we’ll be all settled and done.”

A familiar voice, faint, calling out from the bedroom. “Who is it, hon?”

“Never mind,” Arlene said, pushing past. “I’ll tell him who it is.”

She stepped into the bedroom with Cheryl dogging close behind, and found him in bed, the sheets pulled up to his waist. It was a hot night, and no cooler in Cheryl’s bedroom.

“Arlene, what the hell?”

“You folks turn in early, huh? Well, I won’t stay and chat. Where’s the keys to the GTO?”

“Why? Why do you ask? I don’t like nobody driving my car, you know that.”

“Well, that don’t matter now, Ricky, because it’s not your car. You’re giving it to me.”

“Hell I am. I built that car from the ground up. It’s my baby. No goddamn way, Arlene. Where the hell do you get off?”

Cheryl gave Arlene’s shoulder a little pull and said, “Get the hell out of here or I’m calling the police.”

Arlene opened the shotgun case. She was able to do it quickly, because she’d left the lock at home. It was her lock, after all. She turned around, not so much to point the gun at Cheryl, but of course it pointed where Arlene did.

“Go on and do that then, Cheryl. They’re pretty damn slow and this won’t take long.”

She turned back to Ricky, who’d managed to plaster himself to the headboard. “Here’s where I get off, Ricky. You sweet-talked me into cosigning that truck. You swore on your honor you’d never let me down. Then you totaled it, left me to work two jobs to pay it, and got something else real nice. Now you got two choices. Pay me every cent I’m out for that truck, or give me the damn GTO.”

He held up his hands in calm, slow gestures, as if to hypnotize the violence out of her. But really she wasn’t feeling violent. Just set on clearing things up. “Put the gun down, baby, we can talk.”

“I think we’ll have a better talk this way. You know, Ricky, I used to feel so bad for you, ’cause you told me them stories about all the women in your life tried to kill you. How your first wife held a loaded gun in your face and Cheryl threw that blanket over you and beat you with a skillet, and that one in between took that knife to you. I thought to myself, poor Ricky. Getting mixed up with all these crazy women. But you know, I really understand now. Get a piece of paper, you can write me out a bill of sale.”

He scrambled for a little message pad in the drawer of the bedside table. Cheryl threw him a pen.

Arlene hadn’t heard her call the police, and didn’t much care if she had. This was just a nice calm business transaction.

“So, I’m selling you my GTO.”

“Damn straight.”

“Make it out for how much?”

“One dollar and other valuable considerations. Don’t try putting the wrong license number. I’m not too dumb to check.”

“What are the other considerations I get?”

“I think it would be very considerate of me not to shoot you. Don’t you think so?”

He put his head down and concentrated on a flurry of scribbling, then handed the slip over, reaching out carefully, ready to jump back.

She read his scribbling. “You forgot to sign it.”

“Oh, yeah.”

He signed it and handed it back.

“Where’re the keys?”

He balked a moment, sulked almost, like a little boy, then he said, “Better get her the keys, Cheryl.”

Arlene took them on her way out the door.

“Thanks. Here’s Ricky’s shotgun. Now we’re all even. Oh, wait. I forgot.” She dug a dollar out of her pocket and threw it on the living room floor.

She left the gun in Cheryl’s arms and walked to her new car. She liked it. It was kind of slick. Nice new race-car paint job, though maybe orange was not ideal. Pretty under the hood. She’d have to replace those old glass-pack mufflers, of course, so the whole goddamned world didn’t have to hear her coming.

At her back she heard Ricky say, “Damn. I really loved that car.”

She sat in the driver’s seat and started it up. It rumbled underneath her while she adjusted the seat to fit her legs. Before she could shift it into drive Ricky arrived at the window with the shotgun and stood spraddle legged and angry, aiming through the window at her head.

“Get out right now, Arlene, I mean it. Gimme that bill of sale back and nobody gets hurt.”

She rolled the window halfway down. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I don’t keep it loaded. And I didn’t bring back any shells.
I
bought those, remember?”

In the red glow of her taillights she enjoyed the look on his face for an instant; then he faded into the night, the dark. The past.

S
HE STOPPED AT THE AUTO PARTS STORE
on the Camino, which was open until nine, and bought one of those club things for the steering wheel. Then she took it out for a ride, just for the joy of riding. It had a lot of power. It would get her around.

She was beginning to feel a little better.

She had no special place to drive, so she drove by Reuben’s house. A light burned in the bedroom, and his car was parked out front. She circled the block and drove by again.

On the third trip she stopped and cut the engine, and just sat awhile. Looking. Thinking about a time when she was welcome there and could have knocked and gone right in. Thinking about how the cat used to rub under her chin to wake her up, and how they would have been married by now and could have pooled their financial resources to get her a new car. He would have helped, she knew he would. That was just the kind of man he was.

Something big and heavy sat in her chest. It felt harder and harder to breathe around it.

After a while she drove home. She put the club thing on the steering wheel and locked it up for the night.

He might come back for it. But she’d report it stolen if he did. She had a bill of sale, all nice and legal.

She’d tell the cop, “I demanded my money for the truck, but he couldn’t pay it, so I said I’d take the GTO. He signed it over to me. He didn’t have to, you know. Nobody held a gun to his head.”

Then she remembered that Ricky had two outstanding war
rants in this state, and felt much better about her chances of finding the car in her driveway in the morning.

She tried calling Reuben, but he didn’t answer the phone. It wasn’t very late. How did he even know it was her? She tried to lie down and sleep, but nothing happened. Other than the thoughts that rolled around in her head, like all the things she’d said to Reuben on the phone last night, and whether he’d even been listening or not.

She got up and dressed again, and checked the car, which was still there. She drove over to Reuben’s again and sat outside for an hour. When she saw the lights go out, she knew it must be time to move, one way or another. Go in or go home. No point to just sit there all night.

Her heart pounding in her ears, she walked around to his back door and knocked. The bedroom light came on again. The back door opened and Reuben stood in the doorway in his bathrobe. He didn’t look angry. Big and imposing, that he looked. And yet at the same time vulnerable somehow, like he couldn’t really make her go away, even if she were to physically drive home.

“I thought you were just going to sit out there all night,” he said.

“You knew I was out there?”

“Of course I did.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Your muffler made me look out the window. Or lack of muffler. Where did you get that car?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“You left Trevor home alone?” She smelled a hint of judgment, as if he’d accused her of losing whatever manners and sense he’d helped her to find.

“He’s spending the night at a friend’s.”

“Oh.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his robe and they stood a moment, both looking down at the stoop. “Why the back door?” he said after a time.

But that was a question she couldn’t quite answer. If called upon to guess, she might say it had something to do with shame, but she wasn’t anxious to learn exactly what. So she changed the subject as best she could.

“I love you, Reuben.” She allowed the words to echo between them until their sting wore off. She hoped he would say something, maybe even something nice. But she could only wait just so long. “I guess that’s all I came by to say. I know it doesn’t really change what happened. But I wanted you to know. I don’t guess I ever said that before. Even though it was true enough. Anyway. I just had to say it now.”

His hands came out of his pockets to hang at his sides, and his chin rose slightly. He said, “I notice you didn’t feel compelled to say that until it was over with him.” His hand came up to the edge of the door, leading her to believe she’d better talk fast, before it slammed shut.

“That’s not why, though, Reuben. I know it looks that way but it’s not. Know why? It’s because of that time you drove Trevor home. And you went by the driveway and slowed down. Almost stopped. Until then I thought you just flat out wouldn’t talk to me. After that I knew part of you wanted to talk to me and part of you didn’t.” She winced slightly, waiting for the door to slam, but his hand found its way down to his side again. “I know you don’t forgive me, Reuben. I don’t expect you to. But some little part of you must miss me, right? God knows I miss you.”

She reached for his dangling right hand and he allowed it to be held. He looked into her face for a minute, even though it seemed to hurt him. The light wasn’t good, coming mostly from behind him, and she wasn’t sure of her ability to read his face. She smiled, hoping he could see, hoping she was not about to cry. Holding her hand firmly, he stepped back and pulled her inside.

I
N THE MORNING
the sun came in strong across the head of his bed, just the way she remembered. She opened her eyes to see him awake and watching her. When she smiled he rolled away.

“Hey. You okay?”

He didn’t answer.

“Talk to me, Reuben.”

“This was probably a mistake.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just your opinion.” He rose and began to dress. His scars seemed sadder somehow, in bright daylight, and in a moment when he insisted upon distance between them. He might have known this, because he dressed quickly.

“Fine,” he said. “You caught me in the middle of the night. I let you in. Things got carried away. Now I guess you think everything that happened is water under the bridge. Well, it isn’t.”

He perched on the edge of the bed, faced away, as if this was the only thing he still remembered how to do. She moved over to his side of the bed, sat up. Draped herself across his back and tried to hold him. His body felt stiff and resistant.