When the moment came, when the president said, “I want us to all turn our attention to the memory of a very special young man,” a light was trained onto Reuben and Arlene, and a camera swung around and took a tight shot of them. Arlene turned the baby’s face into her shoulder to shield her sensitive little eyes from the light. “Trevor McKinney is not able to be with us tonight,” the president continued. “Or maybe he is here. I don’t know.” A comfortable smile. “But he left us all with a very special gift this holiday season. He wasn’t even fourteen years old yet, but he was a visionary and a hero, and I want everyone within the sound of my voice to look into your hearts and make sure you haven’t forgotten your promise to that boy. If he were here tonight I’d ask him to throw the switch and light this tree. But I’ll have to do it in his honor. In a small, symbolic way I’m going to do what Trevor did in a very big and very real way: light up the world.”
The baby began to fuss, and Reuben lifted her from Arlene’s arms and turned her to face the tree. The lights were off them now, the cameras faced away. All eyes were on the president, throwing the switch. When the tree sprang to light, a rush of breath and sound escaped the crowd, and just as Reuben had hoped, the baby fell silent. Her eyes and mouth opened wide, frozen in a moment of pure, unguarded awe. Reuben could see the multicolored points of light reflected in her eyes.
A FEW DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, Ricky showed up at their door late at night, unexpectedly, as was his way. Arlene stayed in bed while Reuben put on his robe and answered the knock.
They stared at each other in a measured silence.
“I think I got a right to see my kid,” Ricky said.
“Whose kid?”
“Look, I don’t care what you say. Blood is blood. Now come on, where is she?”
By this time Arlene was up and standing in the living room behind him in one of Reuben’s big shirts. Her face seemed unafraid.
“He just wants to see the baby, Arlene.”
“Okay, fine. Come see her.” She swung one arm wide to motion Ricky into the nursery.
They walked in together and Reuben turned on a soft light over the crib.
She lay curled on her side, knees tucked up, her thumb in her mouth. Her lips and cheeks moved in a suckling motion in her sleep. It struck a spot inside Reuben, the way it always had, probably always would. An excruciating blend of sorrow and joy, springing from who she was and from who she was not. He reached in and ran the back of his fingers over her smooth, caramel-colored cheek.
When he looked up, Ricky’s face had changed. Now he looked pale and helpless.
“Okay. I guess maybe I was wrong.” That was all he said for the moment.
“When she was being born,” Arlene said, her voice soft with respect, “Reuben’s parents came all the way from Chicago to be with us. Pretty nice of ’em to do, I thought, since nobody really knew which way it would go. They brought a picture of Reuben when he was just a baby. Just about the age she is now. I wish you could’ve seen it. Like a mirror image. Gave me goose bumps.”
Before she finished with the telling of this, Ricky had excused himself from the room. Reuben found him in the living room, sitting on the couch with his head in his hands, looking desperate and small.
Reuben took a deep breath and sat down beside him. In his peripheral vision he could see Arlene standing in the bedroom doorway. Nothing was said for the longest time.
Then Ricky spoke up in a small voice. “I hear tell Deion Sanders is gonna leave Atlanta. Go off as a free agent. Can’t say as I blame him. He wants a Super Bowl ring. He’s gonna sign with the team most likely to get him one. People figure that’ll mean San Francisco.” He laughed nervously and shifted his eyes to the ceiling. “I ain’t a superstitious man, but I tell you now…day Deion Sanders signs on with the 49ers, I got to look up at the sky and wonder if that boy don’t have some kinda pull up there.” He allowed an awkward silence. “I know I hardly knew that boy,” he said. His forehead creased. “Something about his bein’ mine. Like blood, you know? Like the part of your own life you think might actually keep going.”
They talked quietly for a few minutes, Reuben saying that life can start over out of the worst circumstances, and he wasn’t just preaching that, he’d proven it.
Ricky said Cheryl had thrown him out. “Right before Christmas,” he said. “How cold is that?” And he had no job, no place to stay, nothing to even start over from or with. Yet it was hard not to notice that Ricky wore a very expensive coat, new-looking heavy suede with a sheepskin lining. Reuben never mentioned that.
Though Ricky never said it straight out, Reuben heard some dashed hope that fatherhood of that girl might have given him an anchor in somebody’s life. If he had been the father of the girl, that is.
Reuben listened for a while, then rose and walked to the living room desk and got the checkbook, because he remembered something that Trevor had said.
“If you help somebody you really want to help, then that’s not very big. You know? But if you’re all mad at my mom, and you helped her. That would be a big thing.” At the time Reuben hadn’t felt that big. But maybe the past few months had stretched him, painfully so, torn him and broken him in such a way as to leave more room inside him now than before.
“Honey,” he said to Arlene, “I’m going to write Ricky a check to help him get started, okay?”
“I guess,” she said. “How much?”
“Well, we’ve got about four thousand in the bank. How about if I give him half?”
“Sure, I guess. We’ll get by.”
He left the name blank, because he didn’t know Ricky’s last name, or need to.
While he was writing it out, Ricky said, “This is a joke. Right?”
He tore the check off the pad and held it out in Ricky’s direction. Ricky half rose from the couch, not quite reaching for it, as though somehow it could hurt him.
“No, it’s not a joke. Take it.”
Ricky took it. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. You just have to pay it forward. Do you know how to do that?”
Ricky let out a nervous little laugh. “Shoot, everybody in the country knows that by now. Maybe the whole world. Last night I had to sleep in the park ’cause Cheryl threw me out with just the clothes on my back. Guy come and stood over me in the middle of the night. I thought he was gonna roll me. Instead he looks down and says, ‘You look cold.’ Takes this coat right off his back and gives it to me. Got to be, like, a five-hundred-dollar coat, right? Takes it off his own back. So then he was cold. Things like that, they’re not even a big deal anymore, you know?”
He shuffled quickly for the door, as if Reuben might still change his mind.
“Uh…” He opened the front door and paused.
Reuben moved back into the bedroom doorway with Arlene and stood with an arm around her shoulder. Not a proud or defensive posture. Just something he wanted, needed, to do.
“I’m obliged.”
“But not to us,” Reuben said.
Ricky just stood a moment, as though there must be one more thing to say, if only he knew where to look for it. Then he said, barely audibly, “Merry Christmas to the both of you,” and closed the door behind him.
Reuben kissed his little girl good night gently, careful not to wake her, before joining Arlene in bed.
Pay It Forward Page 25