If You Really Love Me

by Gene Gant

  She takes her glass of wine and goes to her bedroom. Tootsie’s is the honky-tonk out on Rochester that Mom likes. It serves dinner and features live bands and has a dance floor. She likes line dancing with her friends from work. Sometimes she picks up men there, but they’re mostly guys just passing through town, and none of them are in the picture for long. Mom will have a bite with her friends, and then they’ll take to the dance floor.

  There’s not much food in the house. I hoped Mom would make a supermarket run on her way home today. When I finish with the floor and put the mop away, I check the cabinets and the fridge. They still look mostly bare. I’m tempted to ask Mom for some money so I can walk up to the supermarket or to McDonald’s, but that might set her off again, especially since she got stiffed by a couple of customers today.

  I take off my wet jersey and go to the little alcove off the kitchen where the washer and dryer stand ready for duty. Mom keeps a hamper there for my dirty clothes, and I stuff my jersey into it. I go to my room, pull on a clean shirt, and return to the kitchen. I get out the saltines and the tub of oleo and sit down at the table. Despite being starved, I eat slowly, spreading butter on crackers and popping them into my mouth one by one. Cary’s not the only one who needs a job around here. It would be good if I had my own money, and if I had a place of my own. I’m almost eighteen, but around Mom, it’s like I’m still some little toddler. I’m too old to get slapped around, jumping every time Mom goes boo.

  I did something really crazy at school once. It cost me my friends, and it’s why none of the kids talk to me now. It’s why Mom started slapping me around. It created such a big mess I don’t even like to think about it. It cost Mom a lot of money, setting her so far back financially it took her almost a year to get back on her feet. I feel so guilty for doing that to her.

  What can I do about the crapheap my life has become? I want to pay Mom back the money she had to shell out to cover for me, every dime of it, but how? I apply for work at fast food joints, but none of them ever calls. Without a job, the only thing I can do is what I’ve been doing for the past two years—try to stay out of Mom’s way. Until I can get out of her way for good.

  I owe her that.

  Chapter Two

  THERE’S NOTHING like the Southern Market on a Saturday morning. About a hundred different vendors set up shop in these three huge, barnlike buildings on the old fairgrounds, selling everything from produce to meats to shoes to original artwork. It not only draws plenty of locals, people from the burbs flock there too. Even on a cold, cloudy weekend like this one, the place is loud and bustling and colorful as customers look over stuff, haggle for bargains, snack on corn dogs and chicken-on-a-stick, and enjoy the songs played by the street musicians.

  I hardly ever have any money, but I like to come here. I like to come because everything is so noisy and busy that no one really even notices me. Not like at school where kids notice me but pretend they don’t. Mom didn’t come home last night; her bed was empty and still made up when I woke this morning. She either met a guy at the honky-tonk or got drunk and spent the night at one of her girlfriends’ places. I got dressed, ate the last of the cereal and milk, brushed my teeth, and walked the six miles to the Market.

  I like to watch the crowds and see what turns up for sale. Sometimes really weird, unexpected stuff goes on the shelves. One Saturday, there was like a ton of Marvel and DC comics from the fifties and sixties in a bookseller’s stall. Another Saturday, an antique dealer had toy train sets that he said came from the time when his grandfather was a boy. The comic books and the trains were cool, but they were selling at prices that made my eyes pop.

  I have another reason for coming to the Market today. After touring the stalls and watching the crowd in action, I stop by Mr. Luigi’s produce stand. He’s in his sixties, says he left Italy and became a US citizen forty years ago, but he still has this warm, buttery accent that makes me think of fresh-baked rolls. A big man who’s sort of medium in height and still pretty strong, he sometimes pays me to unload crates from his pickup truck and help him arrange the fruits and vegetables in the wide, shallow display trays. He has four sons who are in their twenties and thirties, and when they’re around, they do all the heavy lifting, and I don’t make any cash.

  Today, I’m in luck. Mr. Luigi’s manning his stand by himself. He has a head full of curly hair and a thick beard that are black, sprinkled with silvery gray. He spots me as I approach and a big grin splits his face.

  “Ellis! My son by proxy!” He grabs me, like always, in a bear hug. “You’re getting so tall, but you’re thinning out too. You gotta eat more.”

  “Hi, Mr. Luigi.” I’m smiling, but the remark about my weight embarrasses me. “You need any help?”

  “I always need help. Look here.” He turns, waving toward the back of his stall. He has already carried in the crates of produce, which are stacked neatly in the back, but he’s only unloaded about a third of them. Apparently, business has been good for him this morning, because his bins are starting to look bare. “I can barely keep up. Go to it!”

  A couple of ladies are picking over the cantaloupes, and a man walks up asking for Granny Smith apples. Mr. Luigi hurries over to his customers. I grab a crate filled with little plastic baskets of blueberries and start lining them up in neat rows in one of the display trays. It’s easy, good work.

  In no time at all, the exertion gets my body warm all over, which is a nice relief from the morning chill. More customers show up. I want them to find what they need at Mr. Luigi’s and not go wandering off to some other vendor’s stall, so I work fast but carefully. Sweat breaks out on my forehead and the back of my neck, but by the time that happens, I’m done. The empty crates are all stacked at the back of the stall, and all of Mr. Luigi’s display trays are packed full.

  Mr. Luigi breaks away suddenly from the cash register to pull me aside. “Great job, Ellis. You do good work,” he says, grinning. “I give you ten dollars an hour, okay? And I figure you work three hours.”

  I frown. “No, it was more like an hour and a half—”

  Mr. Luigi shakes his head sternly, looking at me as if I’m giving him sass. “Three hours,” he says. He yanks his battered old wallet out of his back pocket, plucks three crisp ten-dollar bills free, and presses them into my hand. “There you go. Thank you, Ellis. You’re a hard worker, and a good boy.”

  “Grazie, Mr. Luigi, grazie,” I reply, using one of the Italian words he taught me and blushing hard.

  “Now you go have fun. It’s Saturday. Not a day for you to be stuck in this place. Here….” He hurries over to the cash register, reaches under the counter, and comes up with a brown paper bag. He opens it, pulls out a plastic-wrapped sandwich, and comes rushing back to me. I start to refuse this extra charity, but he is already shaking his head again. “You take this. Eat it. My wife make me two sandwiches. I don’t need a two-sandwich lunch. It’s peanut butter. Good for you.”

  Before I know what’s happening, Mr. Luigi has eased me out of his stall with the sandwich in one of my hands and the money in the other. He waves good-bye as he goes back to his customers. I roll up the money and stuff it into my pocket. As I head out of the building, I unwrap the sandwich and bite into it. The peanut butter is the crunchy kind, which I really like. I think Mr. Luigi’s sons are lucky.

  The sandwich is history three minutes later, and so is the heat my body built up from working. The wind is blowing, which makes everything feel even colder. I zip up my jacket to the neck, shove my hands into my pockets. Dinner from Pizza Hut would be awesome, but that would take half the money I just made.

  It is six miles back to the apartment, and another mile past the apartment to the supermarket. I walk the distance at a rush.

  Chapter Three

  THE PARKING lot is full of cars, so I know the supermarket is packed. It always is on Saturday. I prefer to come on Sunday, when most people have done their shopping and gone off to church, but there’s no food in the apartment, and
I can’t wait until tomorrow. The automatic doors slide open with a big swishing sound as I approach. When I step through them, the heat inside the store feels so good it makes my whole body tremble. There’s something about winter and gray days and being cold that makes me want to curl up under a bunch of quilts and sleep for days.

  The supermarket is bright and crazy noisy—cash registers beeping, plastic bags rustling as sackers stuff groceries into them, voices booming over the PA system announcing specials or calling for the manager, kids yelling and running. I grab a cart and wheel away into the crowd, heading for my first stop, the bread aisle. Mom’s not into cooking so much these days, and she never taught me how to do it. I can’t do much more than fry eggs, make sandwiches, and broil hotdogs, so I get stuff that’s easy to work with. Bread, peanut butter, jelly, hotdogs, eggs, frozen chicken nuggets, cereal, milk, cans of soup, salad mix, and dressing. The salad mix and dressing are for Mom’s sake. She likes salads, which is sometimes all she wants for dinner. She sort of got me hooked on them too.

  I’m not getting much, but it takes a while for me to make my way through the store because I have to navigate around all the other shoppers and their carts. The burst of warmth I got coming through the doors has worn off, and I’m starting to feel cold again. My bed back at the apartment is pulling at me now like a big magnet. I get in one of the express checkout lines, twenty items or less, but they seem to be moving as slowly as the regular lines. When it’s finally my turn at the register, when I’m unloading my cart and the cashier is scanning my items and passing them off to the sacker, I see him.

  At first, my mind sort of plays tricks with me. He looks familiar. The guy is wearing a bulky black leather jacket, loose blue jeans, and black sneakers. His back is to me, and his hair spills down to his shoulders in black curls. This is the last place I would have expected to see him, and so it takes a few seconds for my brain to accept the fact that Saul Brooks is standing at the front of my neighborhood supermarket.

  I freeze for a second. Anxiety spreads out from my chest like a shiver. It’s definitely him. I can tell from the don’t-give-a-fuck way he stands there. He’s looking over the magazines lined up on the racks next to the greeting cards. My heart is beating harder and harder because I really want to go over to him, but I haven’t got the first clue as to what I could say once I got there.

  I don’t take my eyes off him, even when the cashier finishes ringing up my groceries and announces the total to me. I pull two ten-dollar bills from my pocket and hand them over. The loud, solid schoonk of the cash drawer sliding open barely registers with me.

  “Sir? Your change….”

  The annoyance in the cashier’s voice finally makes me turn away. I look at her and smile apologetically. “Sorry,” I say. I take the one-dollar bill and coins she is holding out, stuff them in my pocket, and grab up the plastic bags with my groceries, three in each hand. Quickly, I move away from the register to make room for the customer behind me. When I turn back, I expect that Saul will be gone, because I have to be hallucinating, but he’s still there.

  I can see his face in profile now. The stubble on his jaw is thick, which makes him look sullen even though his expression is blank. He reaches out suddenly, grabs a magazine, rolls it up, and stuffs it inside his jacket.

  My mouth almost drops open. My heart definitely stops. He didn’t even look around to see if anybody was watching, and that’s why I hold my breath, because he’s going to get caught. He strolls past the customer service counter, where people are lined up to buy stamps and money orders, and he heads for the exit, not even walking fast. Any second now, a security guard is going to grab him, or a cashier or a sacker is going to yell for him to stop. Only none of that happens, and he sails through the sliding doors.

  I follow like some kind of robot. When I get outside and spot him again, he’s not running; he’s not trying to slip away among the other shoppers heading out with their purchases. He’s standing about thirty feet from the entrance, just standing there. He’s staring off across the busy street with its rushing, honking, fuming traffic. The look on his face is weird and hard to read, sort of like he wants to cry, sort of like he wants to curse, and sort of like he wants to laugh, all at the same time. I stand there too, totally shocked that he’s in my neighborhood, only a few blocks up the street from my apartment, and that he just stole a stupid magazine.

  People flow around us, moving to and from the parking lot. It takes almost a minute for him to move again. He lifts his head, as if sensing something, and then he turns and looks right at me. My heart starts pounding harder, and I get a sudden urge to pee because he’s caught me staring at him and I don’t know what to say or do now. It’s best that I just go on home, but I’d have to walk past him to do that, so I look down at the ground and just keep standing there.

  I look down at the ground forever, and then he says, “Ellis, right?”

  I raise my head, amazed.

  He walks toward me. “I’m not good with names, sorry.”

  “No, you were right. I’m Ellis Carter.”

  “Okay. I’m Saul.”

  “I know. Um, I mean… hi.”

  He’s standing right in front of me, looking at me. The rolled end of the magazine is poked up under the collar of his jacket. Beneath the jacket, he’s wearing a really nice brown pullover sweater. We’re just about the same height. Up close, he doesn’t look as lean as he does in school. For the next few moments, neither of us says anything. My mouth is dry, and it feels like I’m going to choke because I’m so nervous, but he doesn’t seem bothered at all. His face is a blank.

  He looks down at the bags in my hands. “You need a ride?” he asks.

  “Um… yeah.” Shit! Why did I say that? What are we going to talk about once we’re in his car?

  He motions with his head and takes off into the parking lot. I follow.

  He pulls a set of keys from his pocket. I look down at his butt as he walks. His jeans aren’t tight, but I like the way they hang over his butt, sort of flowing with the rolling motion of it. I like the way he walks. Then the fear of having to talk to him comes over me again, and I look away. The idea pops into my head to tell him that I don’t need a ride after all, that I live just down the street and can walk home. Before I can say anything, he presses down on one end of the keychain with his thumb. Straight ahead of us, the lights flash once on a shiny gray MINI Cooper Roadster, and the trunk pops open.

  Saul pushes the lid of the trunk all the way up. “Put your stuff in here.”

  I put my groceries in the trunk, and he slams the lid down. Then we climb into the car. The first thing he does is pull the magazine—the current issue of People—out of his jacket and throw it onto the backseat. There are two other magazines back there, Good Housekeeping and Seventeen. None of that stuff seems to be his cup of tea, which is how Cary’s granddad would put it. There’s also a big green duffel bag on the backseat. He slips the key into the ignition and fires up the engine. A second later, the loud squall of rock music fills the car. I flinch. He nudges a button on the steering wheel and the volume goes way down. “Where to?” he asks.

  “I live down the street a few blocks, Cascade Apartments. That way.” I point.

  He puts the car in gear, drives across the lot, and hangs a right onto Edgington Avenue. He drives fast, weaving from lane to lane to get around vehicles moving too slowly for him. His eyes stay on the road and his face stays blank and he doesn’t say anything, so I just stare straight ahead, too. He doesn’t seem to require anything from me, and I relax a little. It hits me how intimate this is, the two of us breathing the same air here inside his car, cut off from the rest of the world. He’s so close that if I put out my left hand just a few inches, it will be touching his solid-looking thigh. The scent of him is clean, no cologne, just sort of polished and scrubbed. I can smell the spicy manliness of his soap and shampoo radiating from him. That gets me worrying about how I smell to him. I rolled out of bed this morning and wiped m
y face and under my arms with a soapy towel before throwing on the same jeans and jersey I wore yesterday and rushing out of the apartment. On top of that, I worked up a sweat helping Mr. Luigi.

  All too soon, we’re riding through the gates of the Cascade complex. I point the way to my building, and Saul pulls his car right up to the main entrance. He shifts the gear into park and presses the button at the end of the keychain. There’s a dull little thump behind us as the trunk opens itself.

  I glance at Saul. For the first time, my presence seems to affect him in some way. He doesn’t look nervous, exactly, but just sort of… not calm. He turns away and swallows in a loud gulp.

  “Well, thanks a lot for the ride,” I say, and I reach for the door handle.

  Saul runs his fingers through his hair three times. “Hey. You got anything else you have to do right now?”

  I look over at him. He’s looking at me in this strange way that, again, is hard to read. It makes me want to hold his hand or hug him or something. Before running into him, I’d planned to make myself a fried egg sandwich and climb back in bed so I would be out of Mom’s way. “No,” I reply without even thinking about it.

  “You want to hang out for a while?”

  “Sure. But I have to get those groceries inside.”

  He shuts off the engine. “I’ll wait.”

  There’s this rush of excitement in my chest. I get out of the car fast, grab my bags, and close the trunk. I go into the building and take the stairs two at a time until I reach the second floor, where I hurry down the hall to our apartment. Here I slow down. I unlock the door quietly. I don’t know if Mom is home, but if she is, she’s most likely asleep, and it’ll be hell if I wake her. I close the door behind me and go to the kitchen like a mouse. I put the groceries away, making as little sound as possible. I stuff the empty plastic bags in the drawer where Mom keeps them.