Kindness for Weakness

by Shawn Goodman

  “Exactly,” my brother says, like it’s settled. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  6

  Louis shifts the truck into gear and peels out. We drive with the stereo blasting “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes, which he says is his own personal anthem and reflects his true kick-ass nature. I don’t have a personal anthem, but I like Louis’s, especially when a convertible full of high school girls pulls up at a red light; they smile and give us these seductive looks that drive me crazy but also make me feel like a fake, because, really, it’s just the truck and the music and Louis’s good looks. Without any of those things, I am just a lonely kid loping along the street with my head down. But right now things are different, because one of the girls looks right at me and blows me a kiss.

  I want to freeze the moment and make it last in case I never get another one. I want to feel the impossible warmth of a kiss whispered through the air at a nowhere stoplight. I want to climb into the convertible with a drop-dead smile and say, “Just drive, damn it, because you are all so beautiful, so impossibly beautiful. And there is nothing outside this car except trouble and loneliness, and we owe it to ourselves to burn through the night with the music playing loud and your hair flying in my face like rivers of silk, until we run out of gas or explode or die of pure happiness.”

  But Louis barely notices the girls. He flicks a smoked-to-the-filter cigarette out the window and shakes loose one more. “How’s Mom?” he says.

  “Same,” I say, which means that she is still sad and drunk and beaten down, a different woman entirely from the one who used to buy us Legos and Matchbox cars. Before the bartending job (and the lines of shots at closing time—Louis walking her home at two a.m., trying to keep her from lying down or passing out in the neighbors’ front yards), she used to get up early and make us eggs and bacon arranged in smiley faces. She used to sew baseball patches onto our Little League jerseys. Before Ron, she used to call us her good boys and kiss our foreheads, leaving a lipstick ring.

  Louis must be thinking these things, too, because the muscles in his face relax along with his attitude. He reaches across the space of the truck’s cab and puts his hand on my shoulder, and I can’t remember the last time someone touched me. I try not to get too sad about this. For a moment at least, Louis is my big brother, the same one who used to put pennies on the tracks and ride me home from baseball practice on the handlebars of his BMX bike and tell me that, if I closed my eyes and put both of my arms out straight, like wings, it would be like flying. “Keep them out,” he’d say in that solid reassuring voice, “and you’ll be king of the world.”

  King of the world, I say to myself now.

  But just as quickly Louis changes back, the hard edges returning along with his attitude. I feel the switch even before he takes his hand off my shoulder and downshifts, making the tachometer jump from three thousand to six thousand rpm, into the red zone. He goes back to being Louis the tough guy, Louis the businessman. We stop in front of a run-down double-wide trailer on the outskirts of town. He thrusts a padded mailing envelope into my hands.

  “Ready?”

  I nod, even though I don’t want to get out of the truck. Who am I kidding? I’m no drug dealer. I’ve seen the kids at school who deal drugs, and I’m not them. They’ve got tattoos, big gold rings, and hundred-dollar sneakers. They know how to fight, and intimidate. People are afraid of them. Nobody’s going to be afraid of me. I’m sure of it.

  I want to tell Louis to turn around and get on I-90 west. I want him to drive to Erie, Pennsylvania, and then Cleveland, Chicago, and whatever lies beyond. I want to drive in shifts, pushing the miles until we’re so far away that neither of us recognizes the names of the places on the green metal highway signs, maybe all the way to the ocean or some big mountain range where people live in little wooden cabins and eat at the same country restaurant on Friday nights for steaks or the meatloaf special. We can share an apartment and get jobs, real jobs in factories or stores, or even mowing lawns. I wouldn’t care. The important thing is that we’d be together, just Louis and me. Starting over. Like brand-new people.

  But all of this is in my head, wishful thinking. I take the package from Louis, surprised at how light it is; I wonder what’s in it, if it’s the crystal meth that fucks Ron up so badly and rots his teeth, or if it’s just weed. But in a way I don’t want to know what’s inside, because it doesn’t matter. Louis has never asked me to help before, and this is my big chance. I have to show him that I’ve got enough balls to do it. I can’t screw it up by asking too many questions or getting cold feet.

  He notices my hesitation. “I need your help, bro. Vern fucking enlisted. I can’t do this myself.”

  I still don’t believe that. Louis probably kicked him out for using their drugs. Or maybe he’s in rehab. But again, I let it go.

  “No worries,” I say, opening the door and climbing down.

  “Good,” he says, checking his cell.

  I stride across the muddy yard to the front door, where a fat guy in a NASCAR T-shirt and a camo cap is waiting. Through a mouthful of chewing tobacco he says, “Who’re you?” He stands behind a ripped screen door, spitting brownish juice into a plastic Gatorade bottle.

  “James,” I say.

  “I don’t know you. Where’s Vern?”

  He looks mean and stupid and twitchy, but I know that Louis is in his truck watching. He won’t let anything bad happen to me, and I want to do a good job for him.

  “Not here,” I say, trying to look unafraid. I show him the package.

  “Fuck you. Tell Louis this is bullshit.” He reaches through the ripped part of the screen door and grabs the padded mailer. “Don’t go nowhere,” he says.

  I wait, wondering if he’s going to come back with a gun and blow my head off. Or maybe he won’t come back at all and I’ll have to go in after him. Or I’ll have to return to Louis’s truck empty-handed, which seems worse. But after a minute he comes back with a small envelope that he pushes through the torn-up door. I start to open the package even though I don’t know how much money should be in it. But it seems like the right thing to do, check and make sure the guy isn’t cheating my brother.

  “Don’t count it, numbnuts!” He spits into his bottle but misses; a line of brown juice hits my jeans. “Don’t you know shit? Get your stupid ass in that truck and don’t come back until you grow some fucking brains.”

  7

  The next houses go easy, and I start feeling hopeful because it’s not too hard a job, and I seem to be good at it, saying “hi” to fuckups and burnouts, handing out mailers, and then collecting. Maybe if I earn Vern’s share of the rent, I can move in with Louis. Forget that Louis didn’t take me with him after his first fight with Ron, almost two years ago. And forget that he hasn’t called or spent time with me, except when he’s needed help, like putting the top on his truck or hauling furniture. I can overlook all that stuff if it means getting out of my mother’s place and the nauseating smell of failure, a mix of body odor, smoke, and spilled beer. The possibility of leaving fills me with hope, and I jog to the remaining houses.

  After the last delivery, I wait in Louis’s truck while he opens up the envelopes and counts the money. He peels off two twenties.

  “This is for you,” he says. “You didn’t do too bad, James, but you can’t take any shit from those assholes. You know what I mean?”

  I nod, even though I have no idea what he means. How can I not take shit from 250-pound guys in NASCAR T-shirts? They’re so much bigger and older. Plus they looked crazy, like there was something wrong with them. They talked to me through ripped screen doors and in dark piss-smelling stairwells. I ask Louis, “What do you want me to do if they don’t pay?” I feel like a big pussy for asking, and I can feel the whole thing slipping away—this job, moving out of my mother’s place, having my own money.

  But Louis is cool about it. “You tell me.” He flexes a bicep and points at it. “I’ll deal with that shit.”

&
nbsp; We both smile. And then we drive to Dimitri’s, by Lake Erie, to eat and hang out, which is something we haven’t done for a long time. Eighteen months and twenty days, to be exact—since Louis moved out. I know the exact amount of time because we switched to a smaller, one-bedroom apartment “to save money.” That’s how come I ended up on the couch.

  “Get what you want, bro,” he says. “It’s on me.”

  I order blueberry pancakes with three eggs, bacon, and hash browns. (I am practically always hungry, even though I’m skinny like you wouldn’t believe.) Louis has oatmeal, coffee, and a side of ham, all of which he says are part of his bodybuilding diet.

  “Louis,” I say, “you think when you’re done training I can start lifting weights with you?” I know it’s a ridiculous question, because I hate to exercise or play sports. But I would like to get buff. And if I hit the weights hard enough, I can give a certain someone named Ron a real surprise the next time he gets loaded and thinks he can fuck with me.

  “Maybe,” he says. “How come?”

  “To get strong.”

  Louis nods, stuffing half of the ham steak into his mouth. “I’ll help you, little bro. A few weeks in the gym with me and no one will give you any shit. I guarantee it.”

  And I believe him, too, because Louis knows what he’s talking about. I am going to get strong and become a real man, and then I can literally kick Ron’s worthless ass out of the house and save my mother, even if she acts like she doesn’t want to be saved. Is it possible to save someone who wants to go out in a blaze of cigarettes and vodka? I don’t know, but I have to try.

  No matter what, I’m happy to be with Louis. For a long time we sit and eat and hang out like two normal brothers. We talk about cool stuff like girls and cars and music and movies. Louis smiles when I remind him about his old BMX bike and the flying trick on the handlebars.

  “King of the world,” he says, a flicker of a smile spreading across his face. We sit quietly, both of us trying to see into the fog of a few good memories from before our dad left us and it all went bad. But then Louis’s phone buzzes, clattering across the table, returning us both to the bright fluorescent lights of Dimitri’s and the reality that I am a lost boy pretending to be a man.

  “Tomorrow?” he says to me. He stands, reaching for his keys. “Same time, but don’t be late.”

  8

  In the morning my feet hit up against the arm of the living room couch. I am growing, but only in the tall skinny way. Louis is just as tall, but all muscle, like he’s been forged out of a block of iron. I’m just skinny. Stretched thin.

  If I don’t wake up early, I have to look at Ron in his filthy undershirt and briefs. I have to listen to his garbage about how I’m stupid and lazy and it’s my fault that he has no job and hates his life. And whenever he says those things, I just walk out, except that sometimes he blocks my way and shoves me and calls me a disrespectful little shit. “Look at me when I talk to you,” he says. And if I do it, he slaps me so hard in my face that my eyes water. “You gonna cry?” he’ll say, but it’s not that. Because if you slap someone hard enough in the face, their eyes are going to water and it’s not necessarily tears.

  The last time this happened, which was two days ago, he said, “Don’t be such a pussy, James,” and then he hit me again in the same spot. My mother was in the room, getting ready for work. She stood in her barmaid’s uniform with a pained look on her face, like she was torn between the two of us. Like there was any real choice between an unemployed drug addict and her youngest son.

  Ron pointed at her and said, “Don’t give me any shit, Doreen. I’m just trying to toughen him up.” So my mom left the room and sat at the kitchen table, chain-smoking a pack of unfiltered Camels down to her nicotine-stained fingers, waiting to disappear into the bluish haze of her own recycled smoke. She looked used-up way beyond her thirty-nine years. Sad. Tired. Nothing left for anyone else. I bolted out the door, holding the side of my face, squeezing my eyes shut to stop the flow of tears. I hate my life, I thought. I hate myself. When will it end?

  Louis tells me to fight back, and I think about it every day, fantasizing about how I might do it if I could become strong and unafraid, but I can’t bring myself to act. It’s like my cells are afraid. They shake and quiver, and then my nerves won’t tell my muscles to move. But even though my mother chooses to have a boyfriend who is crazy and ugly and a loser, I don’t want to cause her any more trouble. So each morning I wake up, roll my blanket, and pull on a sweatshirt and my worn-out sneakers. I walk until I am no longer angry and scared, until I don’t care about the hits and insults. I pound the sidewalk, and in time, the emotion leaks out of me and I am nothing but an empty kid walking.

  Today is especially cold, so I pull my hood tight around my face and walk faster. I usually wander for a couple of hours until school starts. Or I sit in the student activities center at school, reading books from Mr. Pfeffer, my English teacher. So far this year he’s given me Rule of the Bone, which is kind of like The Catcher in the Rye, but only if Holden Caulfield lived in a trailer and had a Mohawk. And he gave me I Am the Messenger, which is about an underage taxi driver who accidentally stops a bank robbery. I read those two books cover to cover the way my mother smokes her cigarettes, lighting new ones off the burning tip of the last, reading only to lose myself in the words and disappear.

  Sometimes when I walk, I take Lake Shore Drive past Tim Hortons, wishing I had enough money for a doughnut and a mug of hot chocolate. I always brace myself against the cold wind that blows off the lake from Canada, but that never helps. Half freezing, I follow Erie’s shore, which looks empty and abandoned. The lifeguard stands and overturned aluminum fishing boats have been tagged by graffiti and covered in bird shit. I walk by Pangolin Park with its empty ball fields and volleyball pits, and past streets named after strange animals: Ermine, Genet, Lemming, Jerboa, Armadillo, Serval.

  Other times I go to Canadaway Creek to watch fishermen wading into the current, slow-moving brown and green figures blending with the water, becoming a part of it. They wave their lines in circles above their heads like they’re gathering forces or working magic, and I imagine that one day, when I am older, I will buy a set of waders and a fishing pole and join them. I won’t even care if I catch anything; it will be enough to stand among them in the rushing water, a kind of quiet meditation to put my mind at ease and help me remember that the world isn’t such a shitty place after all. Or if it is, it will remind me that I can still come here and forget that I’m hungry and have no friends.

  But today is different because I have money, so I walk in a totally different direction, to Rusty’s Diner for breakfast. The waitress is this pretty twenty-something-year-old with blond hair that’s piled up on her head in a really nice way. She’s not at all like the girls at my school with their low-cut jeans, belly button studs, and back tattoos. She looks good, though, and as crazy as it might sound, I wonder what it would be like to kiss her. She’s got the beginnings of lines at the edges of her eyes, which totally disappear when she smiles, so she looks young and happy, but only when someone makes the effort to make her smile. I’m guessing this doesn’t happen very often at Rusty’s, because some old guy in a highway worker’s uniform is already giving her a hard time.

  “Do you even remember what I ordered? Because it sure as hell wasn’t a Western omelet.”

  She apologizes and takes his plate away as a silence falls over the half-dozen tables. I want to tell that guy to shut his mouth and not talk to pretty women like that. I want to look him in the eye and make him apologize—“Now say you’re sorry, asshole!” But I don’t do anything, because that’s movie stuff and I’m not that guy. I don’t know what to say to make her smile and do that thing where her eyes light up and her face changes just because she’s found a little bit of happiness in an otherwise crummy day. Still, it’s good to imagine, and I get lost in a fantasy where she touches my arm and says, “James, are you going to take me away from this awful lif
e? I know I’m a little old for you, but I really think we can make it work.”

  Crazy, I know.

  “Are you ready to order?” She’s standing over me with her little pad, and I’m embarrassed because of the stupid shit I have been thinking. “Do you need some more time?” she says.

  “No. I know what I want.”

  She taps her pad, smiling, waiting for me to find my wits and speak again.

  “Bacon and eggs, please. And French toast.”

  “My, you must be hungry. Anything to drink?”

  “Coffee. Black.” I don’t know why I say this, because I’ve never had coffee before. But all the guys at the counter have steaming mugs, and I want to look like a regular guy. She fills my cup.

  “I’ll get your food out in a minute, hon.”

  Nobody has ever called me that and it feels nice, even if she probably says it to everyone. I’d like to say something nice back to her, but nothing comes to mind. Then my food arrives and I dig in because I’m starving, and the guy next to me at the counter, an old-timer in a red plaid shirt and suspenders, slides me a bottle of ketchup and hot sauce without saying a word. I like this, too, and decide it’s a sign that I belong here, that I can come back whenever Louis pays me. Maybe the waitress and I will get to know each other’s names. I’d like that.

  “Can I get you anything else, sweetie?” she says.

  I shake my head because I’m full, and also because I am struck dumb by the nice things she keeps saying. I know these are not romantic things, but still, it feels good. Without thinking, I blurt out, “You have really nice eyes when you smile.”