Can't Buy Me Love

by Chris Kenry

  “So how is the job, Jack?” he asked, and something about his sardonic tone tipped me off that there was more behind this question than what he was asking.

  “Uh, fine, I guess. Tips could have been better, but you know how it goes,” I said carefully.

  “It gets pretty busy at lunchtime, doesn’t it?” he said. I nodded, took a sip of my water, swallowing it with difficulty, and set the glass down slowly. I had a pretty good idea where this was going and I didn’t like it. I avoided making eye contact with him but could feel his gaze boring into me as I poked at my chicken breast.

  “Boy, I’d sure say they’re busy!” he said heartily. “Line almost around the block. I wish I’d made a reservation, because I took some clients there today and we had to wait almost twenty minutes for a table. I tried to catch you this morning before you left to see if you could make one for me, but you were in an awful hurry. Didn’t want to be late for your shift, I suppose.”

  I said nothing but looked straight at him, defiantly, my jaw set. Why didn’t he just come out with it? Why did he have to string me along? He looked down at his plate and pushed the vegetables around with his fork.

  “I spoke to your manager,” he said. “Madge, is it? Nice woman. Straight shooter, like myself, doesn’t bullshit. I liked her.”

  He paused, took a bite of his food, and chewed slowly. When he swallowed, he calmly took a sip of water and continued.

  “I told her I was your father and she really lit up. Evidently she’s very fond of you, which was good, because like I said I was with some important clients and she ushered us right in past the crowds and gave us a great table by the window. Beautiful views of the capitol building, don’t you think?”

  I said nothing. I looked to my mother, who was chewing contentedly, clearly at ease now that the conversation was in what she perceived to be less treacherous waters.

  “Then, Jack, I’ll admit,” he said, giving a sarcastic laugh, “I got a little confused. Madge gave us our menus and asked me ‘How is Jack, where’s he working these days?’” He took another bite of food and poked around on his plate. My mother looked up, perplexed.

  “Maybe you’d like to explain,” he said calmly. The long silence that followed clearly indicated that I did not wish to explain, so he went on.

  “Madge told me you’d been gone almost a month, which I don’t mind saying surprised me more than a little, because I’ve been sitting in that kitchen every morning watching you put on one hell of a show!”

  I looked down at my plate, trying to decide if the truth was worse than any fiction I might create. The silence went from being tense to just annoying.

  “I got fired,” I said softly.

  “Wanna tell me why?” he asked, knife and fork poised for the kill.

  “Because I’m a shitty waiter, all right?” And I threw my napkin on my plate. I took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. My heart was pounding and I was shaking. They regarded me silently, clearly expecting more.

  “Look,” I said, trying not to sound whiny and not really succeeding. “I’ve been trying really hard to find something else. I’ve been going through the paper and going out and looking every day. I’m sure something will come along,” I said as lightheartedly as I could, “but I just haven’t had any luck yet.” Even before that last sentence was out of my mouth I realized that I’d said the wrong thing. I hoped he hadn’t caught it, but his reddening face confirmed my fears. My father is a great believer in self-determination and the belief that we can all rise above the myth of fate to shape our own destinies. For that reason, when I casually mentioned “luck” and things “coming along” he saw me handing responsibility for my life over to some nonexistent deity, and that was very bad.

  “It’s not about luck!” he shouted, slamming his silverware down on the table. “It’s also not about spending the whole day shopping with your mother spending money you don’t have!”

  “Steen, please.”

  “No, Barbara, this has gone on too long!” He stood up and threw down his napkin. “He’s twenty-six, for Christ’s sake, and he’s been spoiled rotten his whole life. First by us, then by Paul, and now by us again! This is not doing him any good. If he’s ever going to learn to fly on his own we’ve got to stop spoon-feeding him and take off the training wheels!”

  I looked back down at my plate and bit my lip hard. To laugh then, or even to crack a smile, would have been fatal. It was not unusual for my father to get this angry, but his ire was more often directed at the IRS or a rival sports team than at me. This time I knew it was bad, as it had been smoldering in him since his lunch at Palladio’s. Seeing my mother and me pull up and unload a large portion of the Neiman Marcus men’s department only added fuel to the fire. I had read enough of the Sister Melanie book he’d given me for my birthday (which I kept, appropriately, in the rack next to the toilet) to recognize, in spite of his mixed metaphors, that he was giving me her tough-love platform. I thought of pulling a teenage move and rolling my eyes, or fleeing from the room in tears, but something kept me rooted. Maybe some masochistic desire to be ridiculed, maybe embarrassment, definitely fear.

  “I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon,” he continued to my mother, “and I hope you’ll back me up on what I’m about to say.”

  I could feel his gaze on me, so I continued to look down at my plate, realizing there was no escape. I’d have to sit there and take it.

  “Son, we both love you very much,” he said, “but you have abused your privileges, and I’m afraid you must suffer some consequences.”

  “But, Stee—” my mother started.

  “Let me finish!” he cut her off, sharply banging his fist on the table. He took a breath and continued looking at me. He smoothed his hair back with his hand, trying to regain his calm.

  “We agreed, after Paul died, that you could live here until you found a job and got back on your feet. Well, you’ve found three, and quit or gotten yourself fired from all of them, knowing all the while that you had a safe place to hide away at the end of the day. Worst of all, you lied to us about it,” he said, his voice choked with that horrible tone of disappointment that is far worse than any anger he could possibly have vented.

  I nodded meekly and tried to explain, “But Dad, come on, I have tried, it’s just taking a little—”

  “No ‘buts,’ Jack,” he said sadly, and fell back onto his chair. “By this time next week you need to find a place of your own.”

  A shudder ran through me.

  “But I don’t have any money,” I whined, regretting my but.

  “I know that,” he said, becoming very matter-of-fact. “I am aware of that and I have a plan.”

  I was not eager to hear it.

  “Your mother and I will give you—do you hear me, give, not loan—the first month’s rent and the deposit on a new place. In addition, we will give you one hundred dollars, but that is it!” he said firmly. “You are on your own after that. We have given you our home for the last I don’t know how many months and you’ve done nothing. You’ve lied to us. It breaks my heart to do this, but that’s the way it’s got to be; you have abused your privileges and you cannot go through your whole life without paying the price.”

  My mother ran from the table in tears. My father watched her leave, shook his head, clearly trying to formulate something more to tell her later, and then gave me a withering look and walked out himself, leaving me alone. I closed my eyes and tried hard to imagine Sister Melanie tied to a stake and surrounded by burning copies of her books.

  8

  JACK HITS THE ROAD

  And so I left my parents’ house. My mother and father fought about it, but in the end she could not wear down the zeal of Sister Melanie’s convert, and after a while even she began to believe that it might be for the best. Nevertheless she stuffed a check for two hundred dollars in my pocket as I was leaving and said it was payment for all of the work I’d done on the garden and the teahouse. She also took me shopping
again, much the way her parents had taken her shopping, for the things needed to furnish an ugly apartment comfortably. I’m afraid I also charged a bit more on my own credit cards for some vertical blinds and bath linens, which I justified by the fact that I had finally found a job working in an espresso bar downtown. Unfortunately, I was fired the following day because I had forgotten to set my new alarm clock and overslept on the first morning I was to open.

  The apartment I found was near a park in a turn-of-the-century building. My father said he would pay no more than four hundred dollars, which limited things considerably, but since I wasn’t working I had no shortage of time to spend looking at places. The building was not bad, but my limited budget forced me to take a ground-level unit with a lovely view of the garages and dumpsters in the alley. It was quite a step down from my parents’, and quite a leap down from Paul’s, but it was something I’d never had before: a place of my own.

  Until college I’d lived in my parents’ house, and then at college I’d lived with roommates. Then came Paul’s house, which was just that: Paul’s. But this little room, with the layers of paint over layers of wallpaper, and the square-plate light fixtures, and the weak shower, was all mine. Granted I was not the one paying the bills, but I was going to be, and that meant I could do whatever I wanted. I could come and go as I wanted, could eat when and what I wanted, could hang whatever pictures I wanted, and could even hang those pictures in the nude. It was fabulous! And fabulously, depressingly lonely, as are most first nights in a new apartment, which is why I quickly invited Andre over.

  He arrived at seven-thirty and brought a case of red wine as a housewarming gift and a Pet Shop Boys disc that he had borrowed from me some months ago. He was clad in black pants and a black turtleneck, and over this he wore a smartly tailored houndstooth jacket. His hair was neatly styled in silky waves and he wore large tortoiseshell sunglasses, which he lifted to his forehead as he assessed the space from the doorway, reluctant to enter. I could see him scanning the defects: the hideous, worn linoleum in the kitchen, the poorly mounted ceiling fan that shook and whirred threateningly, the prehistoric appliances.

  “I know it’s not great,” I said, “but I suppose I’ll have to get used to it. I’m poor now, remember?”

  “Now, girl, I didn’t say a thing.” He stepped lightly into the kitchen and looked around cautiously, as if he’d just entered a construction zone without a hard hat.

  “It’s . . . cute,” he said. “In a bohemian way. It suits you. I love the sofa and the lamps.” And he moved over to where they sat in the middle of the room and examined them closely.

  “You’re not that poor,” he said, “if you can afford these.”

  “I am,” I protested. “I have Mom to thank for those.”

  He nodded and laughed.

  “Barbara always comes through.”

  And indeed she had. I started out with just a bed and a TV and a desk from their basement, but when she was done shopping I had a new sofa and end tables, two leather club chairs and a coffee table, and two table lamps and a floor lamp. There were new dishes and kitchen items, a cedar-lined chest full of sheets and blankets, and a potted fig tree (which soon died from light deprivation). All of these things had either been dropped off when I was gone or had been delivered, with little notes saying that she was thinking about me, or that she hoped my job hunt was going well. I gathered that my father had told her not to see me or speak to me until I’d been on my own for two months, since that is what Sister Melanie recommends in her second book, Making Adults out of Unruly Children, in order to foster the idea of independence. That was fine, except for the hurdle of Christmas, which, much to my father’s chagrin, presented itself during my two-month banishment—a hurdle he cleared by taking my mother on a vacation to Barbados for the holidays, leaving us kids to celebrate on our own.

  Christmas that year was dismal. No fancy gifts from Paul, no gourmet meal painstakingly prepared by my mother. Instead I got a crappy CD from Carey, and ate take-out Chinese with my brother and his Jewish fiancée.

  Andre and I decided on a pizza, and I went across the hall to phone in the order. When I came back I found him standing in the middle of the room nervously eyeing the ceiling fan. I shut it off.

  “This isn’t so bad,” he said, stepping out of a pair of black suede shoes and stretching out his lanky frame on the sofa. “It’s dark, but it’ll be fine until you get on your feet. I bet the rent’s cheap anyway.”

  “Mmm,” I said vaguely, uncorking one of the bottles of wine and pouring out two glasses.

  “What do you mean, ‘Mmm’? What are you paying for this?” he asked with a grand sweep of his arm.

  “Four hundred plus utilities,” I muttered quickly, taking a huge drink from my glass, pretending to study the back of the disc.

  “Hmm, four hundred plus utilities, let’s do the math,” he said, counting on his fingers. “You have rent, you have utilities, you also have the cost of a new phone hookup, car insurance, gas, food, miscellaneous spending money, and of course all of those little credit card payments....” He stopped counting and looked at me. “Now, sugar. Sweetie. Don’t take offense at what I’m about to say, but are you going to be able to afford all this on your coffee-shop wages?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, still staring at the disc. My eyes stuck on the song title “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously.”

  “Giiirrrlll . . .” he purred, meaning Cut the bullshit.

  “No!” I snapped, slamming the disc down on the table. “I probably would not be able to afford it on my coffee-shop wages, but that’s sort of a moot point now because I don’t have any coffee-shop wages anymore.”

  “What?” He swung his feet back to the floor and sat up.

  “I got the ax again.”

  He covered his eyes with his hands and slumped back down into the couch. “Oh, no, girl, no,” he groaned.

  “Oh, yes, girl, yes,” I said. “How do you think I feel? I can’t even hold down a six-dollar-an-hour job.”

  We both emptied our glasses and filled them up again. I took another sip and then calmly confessed all the horrible details of my situation. I told him I’d been using my credit cards to pay my bills but that almost all of my cards were now maxed out and I had exactly seventy dollars in cash, twenty of which was going to pay for the pizza we’d just ordered. I said I was relieved the phone hadn’t been hooked up yet because if it had, it would surely be ringing night and day with inquiring calls from my friends at Citibank.

  He listened to my sob story attentively and reacted with all the melodramatic gasps and hand gestures I’d come to expect from him, but when I’d finished, and we were digging into the newly arrived pizza, he was surprisingly matter-of-fact.

  “Well,” he said, wiping his mouth on one of the new linen napkins, “desperate times call for desperate measures, that’s my motto.”

  “What?” I asked, confused. He chewed slowly, pouring us both more wine.

  “Girl, did I ever tell you about my uncle?”

  “I think maybe a little,” I said, remembering only that Andre’s mother had died when he was very young and that after that he’d been bounced back and forth between foster families and his only living relative, Uncle Billy, A.K.A. Miss Shanda Lear—transvestite and heroin addict. I’d known Andre since high school, where we had the academic misfortune of being lab partners in a physics class, but in all those years he had rarely spoken of his past. I recognized his question as a rare opportunity to discover something about it, but wondered, nevertheless, what it had to do with me.

  “You know my past is not my favorite topic of conversation, so I’ll make this as short as possible. As much as I hate to say it, you and old Miss Mess have quite a bit in common.” (Miss Mess being Andre’s term of endearment for Billy/Shanda.)

  “How’s that?” I asked, somewhat offended but still intrigued.

  “Well, you both have tastes that run well beyond your means to afford them, and you a
lways neglect the everyday things like food and keeping a roof over your head.”

  “I don’t see how—”

  “I don’t think I’d finished speaking,” he said in a curt manner that reminded me unpleasantly of my father.

  “Now Miss Mess was just that—an irresponsible, drug-addicted mess—but it’s a funny thing about addicts; they’re not stupid, and before those kind people from social services carted me away I was able to learn a few things, which I’ll now gladly pass on to you, if you’ll take them.”

  I nodded, albeit tentatively.

  “First,” he said, “you need to learn how to work the system. If you’ve been fired from a job, which happened to Miss Mess on a regular basis before she gave up working entirely, and which has even happened to me a time or two, then you are eligible for unemployment. Unfortunately, the law has changed now and you have to be employed for a minimum of six months to collect, so that might not work for you. Darn. Next time try to stick it out a little longer, if at all possible. It can be very profitable.”

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Well, okay, you can’t collect unemployment. There are other programs you can take advantage of.”

  “I don’t think I need—”

  “Girl, don’t interrupt,” he said sternly. “I’m trying to help.”

  “But I’m not—”

  He held up a hand to silence me.

  “The food stamp program was another one that Miss Mess used with great success.”

  “Food stamps!” I cried indignantly, and was again silenced by the hand, accompanied this time by lowered eyelids and a disapproving shake of the head. Only when I had been silent several seconds did he resume speaking.

  “Now Miss Mess rarely used her stamps for food; in fact she was shooting so much smack at the time and eating so little that she got down to a size six, which helped her do a wicked Diana Ross, if nothing else.”

  “So what did she do with the stamps?” I asked.