Spare Change

by Bette Lee Crosby

  Susanna considered the boy’s ability to fend for himself an admirable trait. “You ought to be more like Ethan Allen,” she’d tell Benjamin, “you don’t see him counting on me for every little thing!”

  “A woman’s supposed to do for her husband,” Benjamin would answer in return, which inevitably led to the screaming of insults back and forth. They’d fight about almost anything they found at hand—things as inconsequential as a missing button or unmade bed. The arguments most always ended with Benjamin leading her off to the bedroom and closing the door behind him. “Slip into that lacy brassiere,” he’d say and she’d do it. Once she could feel the heat of his breath curling into her ear, feel the hunger of his hands groping her body, Susanna would elicit yet another promise of a trip to New York.

  The year Ethan Allen turned eight, everything changed. The promises wore thin and Susanna began to doubt that she would ever see New York City. Despite her husband’s objections, she got a job working in the cosmetic department of Woolworth’s. Every morning, she’d pull on a skirt that was way too short and head into town; Benjamin wouldn’t see hide-nor-hair of her until six hours after the store had closed for the evening. “Where the hell have you been?” he’d scream. “What about dinner?”

  “Oh, please!” Susanna would groan, then turn her back to him and start fussing with some stray hair that had fallen out of place. “Ethan’s got the good sense to fix up something when he’s hungry,” she’d sigh, “seems like you could do the same!”

  “It’s not my place!” he’d storm. “A wife’s got responsibilities! You ought to be seeing to the needs of me and this boy!” Benjamin would gesture to a chair that as it turned out was empty; then he’d wonder aloud where in the hell the boy had gone to.

  Ethan Allen knew when trouble was coming. He knew when his mama’s car came rolling up the drive long after dark, there’d be hell to pay—given his daddy’s shortness of temper there’d for sure be name calling and screaming. If his mama wanted to, she could sweet-talk her way out of anything, but if she was in the mood to start heaving dishes across the room, there could be fisticuffs—the kind that sometimes ended with her having a black eye and him sleeping on the sofa. Nights such as that, Ethan Allen hung around, tried to smooth things over. “Here, Daddy,” he’d say, “I made you a sandwich. Cheese with mayonnaise, like you like.” After that he’d sidle up to Susanna and whisper something about how Benjamin’s bad temper was his way of worrying. “Daddy, don’t mean nothing by it,” he’d say, “He loves you, Mama, he surely does.” On a good day, his parents could end up laughing and tickling each other. On a bad day, there was no telling what would happen. Those nights, the only thing the boy could do was sneak out with a flashlight and a Captain Marvel comic book, wait till things quieted down, then tiptoe back through the kitchen door.

  Some nights it never quieted down and when the sun came up they’d still be screaming insults at each other. Other nights, he’d find the back door locked and have to sleep on the porch curled up alongside Dog, a stray that Susanna had lugged home one night when she’d claimed to have car trouble and stayed out till almost dawn. “Here, Sweetie,” she’d said and handed the dog to Ethan Allen; “This cute little fella’s your birthday present.”

  The dog was as far from cute as possible—he was wobbly-legged and bad tempered with most everybody. “What’s his name?” Ethan Allen asked.

  “Dog,” Susanna answered laughingly; but minutes later all hell broke loose because Benjamin claimed he didn’t believe for one second that she’d had car trouble.

  “You think I’m stupid?” he screamed, “You think I got no idea of what you’re up to?”

  With never knowing which way the wind was gonna blow, Ethan Allen figured he ought to have a hideout, a place to go on nights when there was no appeasing anybody, and that’s when he starting building the fort. First a hammer disappeared from the tool chest, then a good sized sheet of aluminum and some wood Benjamin was planning to use for repairs. After that the large black tarpaulin used to cover the tractor vanished with not a trace, then it was a shag rug that for years had been right there in the hallway. Cans of food began to be missing, a whole pound of weenies, blankets, a pillow, even the portable radio Benjamin claimed, was nowhere to be found.

  “Ethan Allen, you know anything about this?” Susanna asked.

  “Me?” he said, “I’m just a kid, why you asking me?”

  Susanna hitched her mouth up on one side and glared at him in a most suspicious manner. “Seems to me, you know something,” she said.

  Just then Ethan Allen remembered his chores and scooted through the back door, but coincidentally, the disappearing of things suddenly came to an end. “I know you’re up to something, boy,” Benjamin said several times, yet he never noticed that less than fifty yards from the house, behind a stand of Douglas Firs, was a lean-to covered with a black tarpaulin. He never noticed that late at night, when the only sound he should have heard was the chirping of crickets, he could listen carefully and hear the sound of a baseball game being played at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

  Ethan Allen Doyle

  Mama is easier to love than Daddy. He’s got a real serious nature and yells a lot; but Mama, she’ll carry on and act a fool till we’re laughing so hard our sides are likely to split open. Daddy usually starts cussing up a storm when she does that, because he figures she’s making fun at his expense.

  That’s how Mama is—she’s always getting into some kind of trouble. Mama needs somebody to stick up for her and who else is there but me?

  One time I asked Mama if Daddy was mad at her because of me; you know, because of how I don’t mind so good. But she said Daddy’s trouble was that he was just born in a pissed-off mood. The way I figure it, if he ain’t mad cause of me then it’s probably because Mama’s so pretty.

  This one time, Daddy and Mama was fighting so hard, I thought they was gonna kill each other. I told Mama I was scared of that; but she just laughed. She said such a thing wouldn’t ever happen. Maybe not, but I hope if it does, Mama’s the one who kills Daddy ‘cause then maybe we could have fun without always worrying about how we’re gonna get in trouble.

  Passion for Pie

  If Susanna hadn’t been born with a fire inside of her, she might have eventually grown tired of traipsing around, she might have lived to be an old and settled woman, content with her life and with watching her son grow to a man. But, she simply wasn’t a person to slip into the rut of sameness; so with each passing year she became more restless. In the springtime she developed an itch that made her want to shed her skin; then when winter came, her insides burned like the belly of a furnace. “I can’t stand the boredom of this life,” she said over and over again. When she got to feeling she’d scream if she watched another teenage girl breeze by the cosmetic counter and slip a tube of Tangee lipstick into her pocket without paying, she quit the job at Woolworth’s. The news, at first, pleased Benjamin; then she told him she’d now be waitressing at the all-night diner.

  “Feeding dinner to other folks when you don’t bother to so much as cook an egg at home?” he said, his words sharp as a butcher knife.“I cook when I’ve a mind to,” she snapped back.

  “When you’ve a mind to ain’t all that often…”

  “Yeah, well maybe I got more incentive at the diner! You ever heard of tips?” Susanna said sarcastically. “With my way of pleasing folks, I’ll likely end up making two, maybe three, times more than I was making at Woolworth’s,”

  “You’ll be gone the whole night long!”

  Susanna wrapped her arms around Benjamin’s neck and wriggled her body up against his. “Don’t think about me being gone all night,” she cooed, “Think about what’s gonna happen when I get home in the morning. You’ll wake up and I’ll be standing at the foot of the bed,” she edged her tongue along the back of his ear, “wearing one of those lacy brassieres you’re so crazy about.”

  The first three nights she worked at the diner she did ind
eed come home with a glint in her eye and ready for love-making; on the fourth, she claimed he could just forget about such doings, seeing as how she’d been on her feet eight hours and was dog-tired. “But you said…” Benjamin moaned. Susanna didn’t bother to answer, just flopped her head down on the pillow.

  All that summer, Ethan Allen sat across the kitchen table from his father and ate warmed-up cans of spaghetti. Afterward, when his daddy settled down to read the newspaper or watch television, the boy would bicycle five miles into town and head for the diner. “Hi, Mama,” he’d say with a broad-faced grin, then she’d sit him down with an oversized slice of peach pie or a bowl of butterscotch pudding.

  “Sweetie, this here is Scooter Cobb,” Susanna said, cozily edging herself alongside the pudgy-faced man who was round as a pregnant cow. “He owns the place. Ain’t he just the cutest thing you ever did see?”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mister Scooter,” Ethan Allen replied, chomping down on another bite of strawberry rhubarb pie. Although anyone watching would have thought the boy was one-hundred-percent focused on scooping up that chunk of rhubarb, the truth was he’d seen Scooter’s hand slide down Susanna’s back and come to rest on the round of her butt. “Mama,” he asked days later, “…do you like Mister Scooter more than Daddy?”

  “Good Lord, Ethan,” she answered, “what’s got into you? If your daddy got wind of you asking a thing like that, there’d sure enough be hell to pay!”

  “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it; I swear.”

  “I know you didn’t, baby.” Susanna playfully tousled Ethan Allen’s hair and promised that if he’d keep such thoughts to himself, she’d make sure to have enough spare change for the movies.

  “Candy too?” he asked.

  She grinned, “Yeah, candy too.”

  After that, Ethan Allen had only to mention Scooter’s name and he’d find himself jingling nickels and dimes in his pocket. He found he could go into the diner any time, night or day, whether his mama was behind the counter or not, and have all a boy wanted of pies and puddings. He’d order up a bowl of tapioca or two balls of chocolate ice cream, then tell the person scooping it up they ought to add some whipped cream and a cherry. “Ain’t he something,” Susanna would grin, “chip off his mama’s block, that’s what this boy is!”

  When Susanna said something like that, Scooter would smack his hand up against her behind and start chuckling. “He sure is,” he’d laugh, “he sure is.”

  Even a blind man could see there was something going on between the two of them. A blind man maybe, but not Benjamin, he was too busy counting up the dimes and quarters Susanna was dropping into the cookie jar every day. Each time that jar got heavy, he’d empty it out and cart the money off to the bank in town where he’d opened up an account in his own name, claiming it would keep the money safe from robbers.

  “What robber is gonna come way out here?” Susanna said, but he of course reminded her of all the things that had gone missing.

  “What about the rug? What about the portable radio?”

  It was true that any number of things had simply up and disappeared; so even though she enjoyed counting up stack after stack of coins, she agreed the money might actually be better off in the bank. “Just you keep track of what’s mine,” she said, “because when I got enough, I’m taking you and Ethan Allen on a vacation to New York City!”

  “You still harping on that?” Benjamin asked. “Shit, you passed the age of being a Rockette, ten years ago.”

  “Maybe so, but I still got a real good singing voice.” If she wasn’t afraid he’d come after her with a butcher knife, Susanna would have told him that men still whistled when she walked by; that they’d sometimes follow her for blocks just to watch the swing of her hips and the toss of her head. Benjamin might think she was no longer capable of making men stop dead in their tracks, but she knew better. She knew that a man such as Scooter Cobb would give most anything for her favors—why, she already had a genuine gold necklace and a pearl ring hidden in the glove compartment of her car.

  In the fall of the year, when you would expect a boy in the fifth grade to be slouched over the kitchen table doing his homework instead of bicycling into town for a free piece of pie, Ethan Allen showed up at the diner. “Where’s my mama?” he asked Bertha, the waitress who’d been working nights for the past fifteen years.

  “Ain’t you supposed to be home doing your schoolwork?” she said, her mouth twisted off to one side. “Your mama told me you had arithmetic enough to keep you busy for a week or more.”

  “I finished,” Ethan Allen said, even though he hadn’t cracked open the book.

  “You did no such thing,” Bertha sneered. “With five kids of my own, I can tell right off when a boy’s lying!”

  “Well, it might be I’ve got a bit more to do, but I figured a piece of pumpkin pie would get my mind working.”

  “After you get a slice of pie, you’ll get on home and take care of that arithmetic?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ethan said with a smile, “I’d get to it faster even, if that pie had a fair bit of whipped cream atop it.”

  Bertha raised an eyebrow like she thought she was being had, but she handed over the pumpkin pie mounded with whipped cream. He started in on it; then asked again, “Where’d you say Mama went to?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  “Daddy told me she was working tonight.”

  “She is.” Bertha stood there, her arms folded across her chest, and watched him eat the pie. As he swallowed the last bite, she scooped the plate off the counter. “You’re finished up,” she said, “now, get on home.”

  Ethan Allen went whistling out the door, but instead of heading straight home, he circled around to the back of the diner figuring to scout up a few soda bottles and turn them in for the deposit. He’d expected to find some Pepsi bottles, maybe even a beer bottle or two, but he never expected to come across his mama’s butt—buck naked and bouncing around like a ping pong ball in the back seat of Scooter Cobb’s big white Cadillac. “Well, shit my drawers!” he exclaimed.

  “Holy shit!” Scooter hollered when he heard the sound of the boy’s voice.

  Susanna bounced herself over and started tugging down the skirt of her pink uniform. “What in God’s Name are you doing here?” she shouted. “You’re supposed to be home with your daddy. I know you got homework to do!”

  “I was hungry; I needed to get a slice of pie.”

  “I’ll pie your ass! You get on home, tomorrow morning we’re gonna have us a nice long talk about this!”

  “What? I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Get home, I said!”

  “Okay. Okay.” He climbed onto his bicycle and rode off, figuring there would no doubt be hell to pay. His mama would claim he’d been sneaking around, spying on her. She’d likely threaten if he didn’t mend his ways, he’d be shipped off to reform school; but once the fussing was over and done, knowledge such as this would be good for at least a dollar. When he got home, Benjamin, who had now taken to drinking beer after beer as he stared glassy-eyed at the television, called out, “That you, boy?”

  “Yeah, Pa,”

  “Didn’t your mama say you had homework to do?”

  “It’s finished,” Ethan Allen answered. He grabbed a bag of pretzels, slipped out the back door and headed for the fort. He and Dog settled in for the night, something they’d done any number of times before—sleeping in the fort was a far better alternative when his mama was on the warpath. He switched on the radio and listened as Hoot Evers came to bat; it was the bottom of the eighth and the Orioles were down by three runs. “Looks like the birds are in trouble,” Chuck Thompson, the voice of the Orioles said.

  “In trouble?” Ethan Allen answered back, “They plain out stink!” It was a discouraging thing to root for a team that always lost. He’d already decided, if his mama ever did haul ass for New York City, he’d start rooting for the Yankees. He rolled over on his side and curled up with Dog—they were both
fast asleep when Brooks Robinson hit a bases loaded homer in the ninth inning and won the game.

  It was close to dawn when Susanna came home and she was rip-roaring mad. “I’m gonna kill that kid,” she mumbled, as she crept through the house, calling his name in a whispered voice. “Ethan Allen, you’d better come out from wherever you’re hiding, right now!” she threatened, “or else, when I get hold of you…”

  “Susanna, that you?” Benjamin hollered out from the bedroom.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” she answered.

  “Who you talking to?”

  “I’m not talking to nobody!”

  “Well then, quit making such a racket, you’ll wake the boy.”

  “That sorry little shit will wish I’d woken him when I finally get hold of his ass!” Susanna mumbled as she trudged off to the bedroom.

  In the morning, Ethan Allen ate a handful of pretzels for breakfast then bicycled off to school wearing the same shirt and pants as the day before. After school, he went back to the fort and waited until he saw Susanna’s car leaving, then he returned to the house. He followed the same routine for two days, before she finally caught up to him.

  “No you don’t,” she said, grabbing at the back of his shirt as he tried to make off with a package of honey buns. “We’ve got some talking to do!”

  “Why? I didn’t do nothing!”

  “You’re supposed to be home on a school night. You’re supposed to be studying, not jackassing yourself into town for free pie!”

  “I was hungry.”

  “I don’t give a crap if your stomach was turned inside out, you got no business—”

  “You’re just yelling at me cause I seen you waving your naked butt around!”

  “Don’t give me none of your sass!”

  “I ain’t to blame. You was the one.”