Pay It Forward

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  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.

  THE 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.

  THE 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 probab
ly 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.”

  Jerry,

  I cannot bring myself to say dear because right at the moment you are not dear to me at all. I can forgive you for getting busted because we all screw up and I am no exception. But this little boy who helped you and counted on you came down here to see how you were, and you were not in the mood. Which I think makes you eighteen different kinds of chicken shit.

  It’s always easy to get mad on his behalf, in fact it’s sort of a specialty of mine, but truth is I’m mad at what you did to me, too. Telling me all your hopes and dreams so I couldn’t not like you, because this would be a whole lot easier if I had never liked or trusted you, but you have taken even that small comfort away from me.

  I don’t trust many people, and then when I make an exception, seems it’s always the wrong one.

  Get your sorry butt out of this place as soon as you can and then do what you said you would do for my boy, and his school project, which is very important to him.

  But you won’t, I know, because you are a hop-head, which I could forgive, because people can change, even though it seems they never do, but if you can’t face us today, that says a lot about what you will do later.

  I don’t believe in shooting stars, and if I ever had, I would not believe in them no more, and that is what you have done to this family.

  Think about that while you’re doing prison laundry at the state pen, where they say you are going on the next bus out.

  My boy would like to write something on this note when I’m done, which I am.

  Arlene McKinney

  Hi Jerry,

  Hope you are okay and the food is not too terrible. Do you get to watch TV? Will you write me a letter from the state pen? Nobody ever did before.

  Well, gotta go. Mom’s pissed.

  Your friend,

  Trevor

  From The Diary of Trevor

  I wonder where people go when they die. They have to go somewhere. Right?

  I mean, it would be just too weird to think about Mrs. Greenberg not being anywhere. That would just be too sad.

  So, I’ve decided that she’s still out there somewhere. Because I’ve decided I can think whatever I want about it. Because I’ve noticed that everybody thinks something different about it. So I figure that means you can think what you want.

  Course that means I’m gonna have to keep that garden real nice. And the cats! Geez! I just thought. Somebody’s gonna have to keep feeding all those wild cats. I wonder how much cat food costs.

  Anyway. You know what? Even this way, it’s still sad.

  Chapter Nine

  REUBEN

  He’d been in this house for three months, but nothing was unpacked. Almost nothing. The big bed was set up, made, and comfortable, so he spent a lot of time on it, grading papers, eating off his lap, and watching the news.

  He made his way through the sea of boxes to the kitchen, took a small carton of ice cream out of the freezer, and proceeded to eat standing up, right out of the carton, with a plastic spoon, the cat weaving around and through his legs. It made him feel lonely, but then, so did unpacking.

  The phone rang and proved difficult to find.

  It was Trevor.

  “Is it okay that I called you at home? I got the number from information.”

  “Is something wrong, Trevor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble? Is your mother there?”

  “It’s nothing like that. I’m okay. It’s just my project. It’s not going so good. At all. It just got a lot worse. Something bad happened. Can I talk to you about it?”

  “Of course you can, Trevor.”

  “Good. Where do you live?”

  Reuben hadn’t expected that. He let the receiver slip down and looked around. “Maybe I could meet you somewhere, Trevor, like the park. Or the library.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll ride my bike over. Where do you live?”

  So Reuben gave him the address, on Rosita, just off San Anselmo, thinking as he did that this was not the fifties, where public trust was such that a student could go into a teacher’s home without anyone getting a crazy and wrong idea. But he had not thought it through fast enough or well enough, because Trevor was off the phone and on his way.

  They could talk on the front porch.

  To be extra safe, he called Trevor’s mother, who was listed in the phone book, to explain where Trevor was and why. She wasn’t home, and Reuben had no idea if she worked on Saturdays, but he left a message on her answering machine. Just in case.

  Then he looked down and realized he was in sweats, and unshaven. He managed to change into clean jeans and a white shirt and shave before Trevor arrived. It didn’t take very long. He grew beard only on the right side of his face.

  TREVOR DUMPED HIS BIKE ON ITS SIDE on Reuben’s lawn. Reuben realized he had never seen Trevor upset, so far as he knew.

  He stood on the bottom porch step in khaki shorts and a 49ers T-shirt. “Mrs. Greenberg died.”

  “I’m so sorry, Trevor,” he said, offering the boy a straight-backed chair on the porch. “Come sit down and tell me about her. Who she was to you.”

  “She was for my project. She was, like, my last chance.” Then he stopped himself, as if ashamed, and took the chair offered him. “That didn’t sound right. I didn’t mean I was upset about my project. I mean, when she died and all. It’s not that. It’s both. I mean, she really was going to pay it forward. She told me. And then she died. I went over to her house this morning. I always take the paper right up to her door. But the last couple days, it’s like she’s not home. But she’s always home. So today it was Saturday, so I just waited. And then the mailman came, and he said she hadn’t taken the mail out of her box for three days. He said her monthly check was in there and it wasn’t like her not to get it right away. So then we knocked on her neighbor’s door, and they called her son, and he came over and opened the door. And she was in bed, just like she was sleeping. Only she was
n’t sleeping. She was dead.”

  Trevor stopped for a breath.

  This was a difficult moment for Reuben. Any moment that required him to be emotionally helpful, to offer solace or understanding, was a hard moment. Not that he didn’t have any. Just getting it from the inside of himself to the inside of someone else, that was the tricky part.

  “I’m sorry, Trevor. That must have been hard for you.”

  “The project is almost due. Jerry got sent to the state pen. He wouldn’t even come out when we went to visit. And my mom still thinks my daddy is gonna come back. The whole thing is a bust, Mr. St. Clair.”

  “I’m not sure I follow the part about your mother.” He halfway did but hoped Trevor might elaborate.

  “Oh. Well. It doesn’t matter. But what am I gonna do for my project?”

  Reuben shook his head. It hurt to watch the idealism get kicked out of somebody. Almost as much as it had hurt when he’d lost his own. “I guess you just report your effort. I’m grading on effort, not results.”

  “I wanted results.”

  “I know you did, Trevor.”

  He watched the boy pick at a seam on the cuff of his shorts.

  “I didn’t just want a good grade. I really wanted the world to get better.”

  “I know you did. It’s a tough assignment. That’s part of its lesson, I’m afraid. We all want to change the world, and sometimes we need to learn that it’s harder than we think.”

  “I really do feel bad about Mrs. Greenberg, though. She was a nice lady. I don’t think she was really old. I mean, sort of old. But not that old. We used to talk.”

  Reuben looked up to see an old green Dodge Dart pull up to the curb and Arlene McKinney step out. It twisted into an already sore place in his gut to see her unexpectedly. She was the closest he’d come to a date in years, a failed attempt at romance, but he’d never intended to put himself in that position and neither had she. It hadn’t been a real date, but now the awkwardness was real.