Pay It Forward (6 page)

S
he slipped in to say good night to Trevor the minute Mr. St. Clair left. And he didn’t leave a moment too soon. What was it, anyway, about that man that always made her feel she was missing the boat on something, and why couldn’t she shake the notion that he was doing it on purpose?

Trevor lay on his bed, doing homework in his lap.

“Gotta go to work, honey. You still got the number by the phone?”

“Sure, Mom.”

“And Loretta’s?”

“Know it by heart. You know I’m not scared. I never am.”

“I know, honey. But I am.”

“I’m a big kid, Mom.”

“You sure are, honey. That you are.”

She sat on the edge of his bed combing curly strands of hair off his forehead with her fingers. She knew he probably didn’t like it, smacking as it did of the preening one gives a much younger child, but he did not complain.

He looked so much like his daddy it was spooky, even with his
eyes cast down, and if he’d raised them right at that moment to look into her own, she might have had to look away. He never did, though.

“Honey?”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“You weren’t trying to…”

“What?”

“No. Never mind. I gotta go.”

“No, really. What?”

“You weren’t trying to…like…fix me up with Mr. St. Clair. Were you? I was pretty sure you weren’t.”

Those Ricky eyes came up to find her and she somehow didn’t pull away. “Why? Don’t you like him?”

It hit her in the stomach like a fastball, something she could really feel, to know that he had. Even though she wasn’t sure why it should seem so important. And then, looking down at Trevor’s homework, she saw the sheet of paper with Trevor’s idea sketched out on it. Circles like the ones Jerry had drawn in the dirt, between comets, when they both believed for a flash of a moment that a life could really change.

Or maybe even two lives.

The circles were blank, all except the top three. The first wave. One had Jerry’s name written inside, then scratched out, which made Arlene suddenly, overwhelmingly sad, as if his chance had gone up just that quickly. The second said
Mr. St. Clair,
also scratched out, which also made her feel something, though she could neither name it nor get along with it. The third said
Mrs. Greenberg,
which thankfully meant nothing at all. At least this Mrs. Greenberg wasn’t on her way over with flowers—at least, not as far as Arlene knew.

Her own words didn’t sound quite right at first. “Well, actually, Trevor, no. I don’t think I do like him. He makes me kind of nervous. Why? Do you like him?”

“Yeah. Sure I do.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s because you can say things to him. And then he says things back. Just real simple like that. Whatever you think of, you can just say. That’s good, right?”

“Well, I guess so, but…honey, I just don’t get why you would do that.”

“I think he’s lonely, Mom. And I know you are. And you always said you don’t judge people by how they look.”

“No. That’s right. You don’t.” She learned so much from these little talks with her son. He always swore he’d learned it from her and was only mirroring it back, but somehow the wisdom of her own advice surprised her as it came out of his mouth, and left her wondering if she was wise enough to heed it. It happened this way every time. “And it’s not that at all, honey, it’s not about looks in any way, it’s just that, well, you know as well as anybody that your daddy’ll be back one of these days.”

He didn’t answer at first, just looked up at her with an expression that crystallized like ice around her diaphragm and made it hard for her to breathe. If pressed to put words to it, she’d be tempted to call it a look of pity, but surely he hadn’t meant it to be as harsh as all that. “Mom.” She so didn’t want to hear the next thing he’d say, but felt too tongue-tied to stave it off. “Mom. It’s been more’n a year.”

“So?”

“Mom. He’s not coming back.”

And she’d been so careful to never let those words pollute her home, not even in the chasm of her own tired brain, not even in the silence of four o’clock in the sleepless morning. But now here they were, having to be fought with desperate means.

So Arlene did something she’d never done, not in twelve years; she raised the back of her hand to her own son and cracked him across the mouth. She tried to stop the hand before it quite hit home, but it was too mindless by then, too bent on relief, or maybe the signal didn’t go through in time.

He looked at her without recrimination, without adding one tiny stick of kindling to the shame that already threatened to burn her at the stake.

She’d never hit Trevor, promised herself she never would.

And then, to make matters worse, so unequipped was she to deal with her own shame that she spun on her heels and left him alone.

T
HE SMOKE MADE HER EYES BURN,
like it did every working night of her life, like it had since the truck had come home alone and unusable, unsalable, but still fully financed.

Conway Twitty blasted on the jukebox, which she didn’t like one bit, and which, relieved only by loud voices and the clinking of beer bottles, seemed to add to her already foul mood.

The sound of bottles, the smell of beer—it was one tiny step from all she could take, every night. Now and then she’d get a whiff of it, taste that first cold slug in her mouth, so real, so clear, without ever meaning to imagine it, without any warning whatsoever. Twenty days it had been, and every night seemed harder than the night before.

Half the time she’d call Bonnie at 3
A.M.
, wake her out of a sound sleep, and Bonnie would say, “Girl, quit that damn job,” but that was easy for Bonnie to say, because where was Arlene supposed to find another one?

Frustrating as all hell it was, the whole deal, and she hated herself like crazy for taking it out on her boy.

Hitting might have been in her blood now, like a dog who’s killed his first chicken and so acquired the taste. Because every time that loud redneck with the beard and tattoos leaned out of his booth and patted her butt, the back of her hand wanted to forget itself one more time, only this time it would be wonderful.
And he did it every time she passed his booth. Her eyes kept darting to the clock, hoping for a moment free to call Trevor before he fell asleep, but that moment wouldn’t seem to come.

And if one more time she had to scream to be heard over the din, if one more time she had to ask for an order to be screamed again, only to hear it no better than the time before, well, she just didn’t know what she would do. She wanted to know what she would do, but really there was nothing.

Years ago, maybe then. “Options” was not such a useless word. But now there was the boy to think about. Suicide, homicide, telling the boss to shove it, they were all off the menu for years, maybe forever. Still, she could have gotten by on one job if not for that damn truck.

And then she screwed up the order for table nine. Bud, Coors, what the hell was the big difference anyway for a table of slobs too drunk to taste?

She sidled up behind Maggie, said she was taking five, bad timing or no. She hated to work with Maggie, nice a girl as she was, helpful and sweet as she was, because Maggie was a big, horsey girl, built funny, whom nobody wanted to pinch, leaving more insult for Arlene to duck and bear.

She used the phone in the kitchen, an overwhelming freeway of body traffic, usually the same few bodies, none of whom seemed to mind the shimmery heat over the fryer or the smell of hot grease near as much as she did.

Trevor picked up on the fourth ring, right before her cardiac arrest set in. “Honey. You okay?”

“Sure, Mom. I’m always okay.”

“Were you asleep?”

“Not yet. I’ll go in a minute, though. I was reading that World War Two book.”

“Trevor, I am so sorry. I mean, I am just so, so sorry. I mean, I am so ashamed that I hit you, I just cannot say.” She paused, hoping for something, anything, that would relieve her of the duty to
continue. “If there’s ever anything I can do to make it up. Anything at all.”

“Well.”

“Anything.”

“I don’t think you’d go for it.”

“Anything.”

“Will you take me to visit Jerry?”

Wow. That big, huh?
Don’t you hate moments like this, she’d said to Jerry, where it seems that we’re all pretty much the same? No, Jerry liked them. Apparently another moment Arlene hated was on its way home. The kind in which you see the person who let you down bad, really messed up everything, and right there in his eyes is you. All you see is the same disappointment and stress you know yourself, nothing to explain how a well-intentioned person could cause all that harm.

Like when Ricky came around after reconciling with his wife, Cheryl, a hateful, miserable thing to do, and he looked like the same man around the eyes, only a little more tired, a little more worried and beaten down.

“Do you even know where he is, honey?”

“We could find out.”

“Okay. Okay, I will, but I gotta get back to work now, Trevor. You be a good boy. Brush your teeth.”

“Mom.”

And Arlene hung up quickly, saved from having to admit she treated him like a three-year-old every time she left him alone at night.

The swinging kitchen door opened at the strike of her shoulder, opened to the sound of Randy Travis too loud and the smell of beer and sweaty men too strong. Hours too long, paychecks too small. Never enough sleep.
Just hold on till three, Arlene.
And then, in the wake of that wisdom, try not to notice that it’s an impossible world away, and when and if it ever does come, it will only lead to tomorrow, another working day. Another no-beer day.

T
HE WOMAN IN THE FRONT CUBICLE
of the county jail wore her blood red nails so long she had to type with the eraser end of a pencil. She sat with her legs crossed, in a tight, short skirt, chewing her gum with clicking sounds Arlene found irritating. Arlene tightened her grip on Trevor’s shoulder.

“Name?”

“Arlene McKinney.”

“And you’re here to visit…”

“Jerry Busconi.”

“Can I see some ID, please?”

Arlene slid her driver’s license across the counter, which she hated to do because the picture made her look so bad. In fact, she thought the woman might have smirked a tiny bit at her expense, though she knew she probably imagined the slight after all.

“Wait in there, please,” the woman said, sliding the license back and gesturing with one amazing nail.

It seemed like a simple enough request. Until Arlene tried. And discovered that she and Trevor would not wait alone, as she had imagined, but in a room filled with dirty children, a snoring old man with his mouth open. Women with ankle bracelets, real or tattooed, teeth stained with tobacco and eyes stained bloodshot with disillusionment. And shy women who looked at the floor as if waiting to be hit, with fussy babies and runny-nosed toddlers.

And no more chairs. But a promise is just that, so she stood with Trevor in a corner, clutching at his sleeve, and wondered if these people would think Jerry was her husband, and if so, why she minded so much that they would.

Ten minutes ticked by, each feeling like a day, then they were allowed into a room with a long table, a long line of chairs, Plexiglas dividers, and telephones. Just like in the movies. Men in two-piece orange suits filed in on the other side, picked up their
phones, and women cried and held their hands to the glass just like in the movies.

A few more long minutes.

No new prisoners, no Jerry, just more waiting, more holding Trevor’s arm, maybe tightly enough to hurt.

A guard shuffled by behind the divider, behind the row of men Arlene wished were not so familiar around the eyes. She leaned forward and tapped on the glass, and the uniformed man picked up the phone. “Problem?”

“What happened to Jerry Busconi?”

“He’s not coming out.”

“What do you mean, he’s not coming out? My son and I came all the way down here to visit him.”

“Can’t make him take a visitor. Said he wasn’t in the mood.”

Wasn’t in the mood. Jerry Busconi wasn’t in the mood to see the boy who was always in the mood to give him all the proceeds of his own hard after-school work. Mood, it takes. That’s rich. Yeah, that’s a good one.
“Can I leave a note?”

“Front desk.”

“Thanks.”