Pay It Forward Read online

  He didn’t let go right away, either. Just held on for a minute, making Arlene think maybe she’d cry again, and if she did, he’d have to think she was some kind of emotional basket case, always crying at the drop of a hat.

  “You’re right,” he said, his mouth up close to her ear. “I get angry when people pretend they don’t notice and I get angry when I know they do. I’m not sure what I want from people. I think I want them not to jump a mile when they first see me, and I’m never going to get that.”

  Then he let go, and sure enough by that time she was crying, because she felt so bad for him. Which, in a way—but a way she’d never try to explain—was the reason she’d kissed his face that morning. Feeling bad for him, like Trevor with a skinned knee, like she’d been a mommy too long and thought she could make it all better if she kissed it.

  He didn’t have any reaction to her tears, and she wondered if she wanted him to notice or if she wanted him to pretend not to. It was a hard problem, he was right about that.

  Then he said, “Arlene, I’ve got a confession to make. These boxes didn’t just arrive. They’ve been here for months. I just can’t bring myself to unpack them. I’ve moved three times in the past four years. I get so tired of it. Every time I try to unpack, I just get overwhelmed.”

  She stared at him and wiped tears out from under her eyes, sideways and carefully so she wouldn’t smear her mascara. “That is so wonderful.”

  “What is?”

  “That you told me that. That’s the first real thing you ever told me about yourself. And what’s even better, I can totally relate to that. Not with moving, but hell, I feel that way about all kinds of things. I just get overwhelmed. Immobile, like.”

  And Reuben said, “Yeah, like that.” And they smiled at each other and got embarrassed again.

  “Maybe it would be easier if you weren’t doing it alone. I could help you unpack.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Course I would. Hell, what’re friends for? Just let me use your phone a minute, tell Trevor where I am.”

  Of course, the first thing Trevor said was could he come over and help, too, so Arlene put her hand over the phone and asked Reuben if he could. Reuben said yes, of course, but additionally he got this sweet look on his face, like he really liked Trevor, which Arlene already knew, but every time she saw it she liked it better than the time before. He had good taste in kids, there was that to be said for him.

  TREVOR GOT DEEPLY INVOLVED in a box of books. He arranged them on Reuben’s bookshelf alphabetically, according to the name of the author. This seemed to impress Reuben, and it amazed the hell out of Arlene, who knew he didn’t get his knack for organization from her side of the family.

  She stood in Reuben’s kitchen unpacking better-than-everyday china, handing it up to Reuben, who arranged it on the high shelves. She felt so short beside him, like he was standing on a chair, which he was not. A little half-Siamese cat with blue eyes came mewing around her feet and Arlene bent down to pet her. The cat arched her back and purred.

  “I didn’t know you had a cat.”

  “That’s Miss Liza.”

  They hadn’t said anything for a long time, and after saying that they fell silent again.

  The light through the windows went murky with a coming rain.

  Then she opened the box with the pictures. They were all framed and laid flat, wrapped in newspapers. She unwrapped the top one. It was a photograph of a nice-looking young couple, a handsome young black man, hardly more than a boy, with his arm around a pretty girl. And the man looked a little familiar. Almost like Reuben. When she looked up, he was over near the closet, looking back at her, watching her look.

  “Is this your brother, Reuben?”

  “I don’t have a brother. That’s me.”

  “Oh.” Boy, what a stupid thing to say, Arlene. Oh. But it was a shock, one she hadn’t nearly adjusted to yet. She must have known, somewhere in the back of her mind, that he wasn’t born with his face blown up. But she’d never thought about it, and certainly never expected to see what he’d looked like before, when he was still whole. So she just kept looking. And he just stood by the closet, watching her look. “Who’s this pretty lady?”

  “Eleanor. She was my fiancée at the time.”

  “But you never got married?”

  “No. I’ve never been married.”

  “No. Me neither.” She had to tell him that sooner or later, and it just sort of came out.

  Eleanor seemed about two shades darker in skin color than Reuben, smooth, shiny black skin, and her hair all drawn back, looking stylish, like somebody with a world of class. Like somebody Arlene never was and never could be. Like somebody Reuben really should be with. Arlene couldn’t seem to get a bead on which face hurt her more. “I can’t believe how handsome you were. Oh, God. I’m sorry, Reuben. Sometimes I say the stupidest things.”

  She looked over at Trevor, preoccupied with his bookshelf, to see if he was taking in any of this very personal stuff. He was not. He was lost in his own little world.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if I still looked like that?”

  “No.”

  She hadn’t known she was going to say that. It just sort of said itself. And the funny thing was, he didn’t ask her to explain. He just stuck his head in the closet and went on about his unpacking.

  From The Other Faces Behind the Movement

  Because, you know, a man like that one in the picture, he would never so much as give me the time of day. He would never have shown up in a little hick town like this one in the first place, and if he had, he’d be with that handsome, sophisticated woman, and I just know he would speak down to me.

  It was real hard to stop staring at that picture. Hard to explain why. It felt like it had ahold of someplace in my gut and it wouldn’t let me go. I mean, it just put a whole lot of things in a whole different light.

  And then, when I got over that, there was the one of Reuben’s parents. They were real good looking too. And they seemed to have that same something, that same thing Eleanor had, and I couldn’t even say for sure what it was, but this much I did know: Reuben had it and I did not. He’d never lose it and I’d never learn it. Some things start out a certain way and never change.

  I asked Reuben if they were still alive, his parents. He said they were, that they lived in Chicago. Oh, thank God, I thought. Now I would probably not have to meet them, and if I never met them, I would never read on their faces that I was not Eleanor material and never would be.

  And then, even though I tried not to, after a while I set Reuben’s parents down and picked up that first picture again. While I stared at it I thought about my mother, and the way she used to shop. We didn’t have much money, see, when I was growing up. So she’d buy seconds, different types of damaged goods, rather than an item of clothing that was whole and unflawed but essentially poorer in quality.

  “But Momma,” I’d complain, “it’s got a stain on it.”

  And Momma would say, “Good thing for you it does, little girl, or we’d a never been able to afford it.”

  Then I looked up at Reuben again and he was still standing in the closet, and one more time I caught him looking back at me.

  This hard rain started pounding on the roof.

  SHE TUCKED HER BOY INTO BED at ten, since it was Saturday, and no school the following day. He asked if they could get a cat and she avoided answering. A few minutes into the eleven o’clock news came the knock.

  The rain was really coming down now. She didn’t even realize how much until she opened the door. It fell in sheets behind him, and he stood on her front porch soaking wet, his hair, his clothes saturated, water dripping off his chin.

  “You’re sopping wet. You better get in here.” He stepped inside and she closed the door behind him. “I’ll get a towel.”

  She went through her bedroom into her own bathroom to get the big cushy one. When she came out with it he had followed her into the bedroom and was stand
ing by the bed, dripping water onto the carpet. She sat him down on the edge of the bed and toweled his closely cropped hair.

  “Don’t take this wrong, but what are you doing here?”

  “I got lonely. It was the funniest thing. Something about having you and Trevor in the house with me all day. After you left the house seemed so empty. I don’t want to be alone anymore, Arlene.”

  As he said this last thing he reached out for her and put his right hand around behind her back and pulled her up close. She set one knee on the bed beside him and held the back of his head, feeling the moisture from his wet clothes soak through her bathrobe. He didn’t touch her in any intimate way, just held her close, but it felt intimate, very much so, the way his forehead pressed against her chest and his face just remained there between her breasts, his breath warm.

  “Why didn’t you take your umbrella, silly?” She knew he had one. She’d unpacked it herself.

  “I couldn’t find it.”

  “I put it in your front closet.”

  “Oh. I didn’t think of that.” A gentle kiss in the open V of her bathrobe, on the bony part of her chest, made it hard to swallow.

  “Doesn’t everybody keep their umbrella in the closet?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Where do you keep it?”

  “In the umbrella stand.”

  “What umbrella stand?”

  “That tall wicker thing.”

  “Oh, is that what that was? I thought that was some kind of big skinny planter. I put it on the back porch.”

  She could feel him lean back, still holding her to him, and if he’d gone all the way over backward on the bed she’d have been on top of him, which she somehow could not manage on such short notice. So she resisted without meaning to.

  He said, “You seem tense.”

  “Do I?”

  “Last time you were so sure.”

  “Yeah, well. Somebody had to be.”

  He pulled his head back a little and she wiped his face with the towel. Even though it was mostly wiped dry on her robe. Maybe she’d be lucky and wouldn’t have to explain it. Maybe he’d just know somehow.

  If he asked, maybe she’d give the easy reason, not that it wasn’t true. That it was hard, being stone cold sober and all, and used to having that painkiller to grease over the rough spots, which you cannot help but have when any two people are so new to each other. But most of it wasn’t that. Most of it was, as far as she could tell, that she’d been wrong about what this could be. He was not an in-the-meantime kind of a man.

  And then, listening to the rain on the roof and pulling his head against her again and holding it there, she was able, by virtue of his presence, to help smooth over the moment, to know what she should have known all along. What she had known all along in a very deep spot where she knew better than to allow herself to go. Alone, anyway.

  That Ricky wasn’t ever coming back.

  And even if he ever did, which he wouldn’t, what kind of woman would she be if she opened the door?

  She leaned forward with him and he ended up on his back on the bed, with Arlene on top, and the handsome young man in the picture came back again, filling up her mind. She would never understand the forces that had brought him from there to here.

  It took her back to that place again, the one she didn’t like. The one where she knew that, by all rights, he was something she should never have been able to afford.

  Chapter Fifteen

  REUBEN

  He woke up knowing full well where he was and remembering everything. Still, the night seemed distant, like something you’d do while drunk. Something harder to imagine in the sober morning. He opened his eye.

  She was on his right side, where she was supposed to be. Wide awake and up on one elbow, watching him. He wanted to reach his hand out, to see if she would take it, but he didn’t.

  “Hey,” he said quietly.

  “Hey.”

  “You okay?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” They lay together for a time, silent, not touching in any way. “You slept in that eye patch all night. Isn’t that uncomfortable?”

  “Actually, yes. It is.”

  “Someday you’ll have to take that off around me.”

  “Someday.”

  “Is it real bad?”

  This was not something he could explain. That it was not grisly, as people expected; maybe they would have liked it better if it had been. Grisly or not, people liked some vestige of an eye, some evidence that it had at one time existed as nature intended.

  “It’s both better and worse than what you’re expecting.”

  She slid down under the covers a little farther and rested her head on his chest. “Know what I was just lying here thinking?”

  “No. What?”

  “I was just thinking you’re gonna have to pay it forward.”

  “Me? Why me? Maybe he was doing this for you. You’re his mother, after all.”

  “Nope. I saw his notes. It said your name in one of those circles.”

  “I think his idea was to get us married, though.”

  She fell silent, pulled away, rose, and began to dress.

  BEFORE HE COULD SLIP OUT OF THE HOUSE, he heard Trevor in the kitchen, pouring something that sounded like cereal. And there was no way out of the house that did not involve crossing by the kitchen doorway.

  He stopped quickly in the hall and Arlene ran into his back.

  “What happened?”

  “Trevor’s up.”

  “Well, of course Trevor’s up. He don’t ever sleep past six, not even on a good day.”

  “This is kind of embarrassing.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m his teacher.”

  “So?”

  “I’m not sure what to say to him.”

  “How ’bout the truth?”

  Oh. Right. The truth. Trevor already knew parts of this, yet somehow Reuben hadn’t thought to discuss it outright. Now it seemed he had no choice. He stepped into the kitchen, where Trevor sat at the table in his pajamas, pouring milk onto a ridiculously large serving of Rice Krispies.

  “Hi, Mr. St. Clair.”

  Reuben sat down at the table with him. Arlene circled around to the stove and asked how Reuben liked his eggs.

  Reuben looked up, confused. “Who, me? Oh. I didn’t know I was staying.”

  “Got someplace you got to be?”

  “Uh, no. Actually, no. Thank you. However you’re going to make them for yourself is fine.”

  “Scrambled it is.”

  Reuben turned his attention back to the boy. “You don’t seemed surprised to see me here, Trevor.”

  Trevor shrugged. “Your car is out front.”

  “Good point.”

  “Were you here all night?”

  Reuben shot a glance at Arlene, more a silent cry for help, really, but she was busy blowing on a burner, trying to get it to light. Surely she could hear all this but was leaving Reuben on his own. “Actually, Trevor, yes. I was.”

  “Cool.” Trevor pulled the Sunday paper off the chair beside him and dug up the color comics.

  “Is that a problem to you, Trevor?” It seemed like a stupid question even as he heard himself say it, because most kids don’t use the word “cool” to describe their problems. It was so far from the reaction he’d expected that it seemed he hadn’t quite heard it yet.

  “It was practically my idea.”

  “Another good point.”

  “Are you two going to get married?”

  “It’s a little soon to think about that. But your mother and I do like each other.”

  “I just knew you would. I just knew it. I sure hope you get married. I don’t have too many new ideas for my project.”

  From Those Who Knew Trevor Speak

  When I got home that night I called Lou, long distance.

  “Wow,” Lou said. “You’re getting laid. That’s amazing. Wish I could say that.”

  I tried to ex
plain that something felt dishonest about it. It wasn’t easy to explain. The only examples I could find involved my shame in being seen by Trevor the following morning. The feeling that I was doing him wrong by being there. He asked if Trevor seemed to mind, and I had to tell the truth.

  He pointed out that the only person who felt odd about it was me. I thought that meant I was worried about nothing. I’m used to that. It’s a specialty of mine. That’s what I wanted him to tell me, I think. That my anxiety was based on nothing, like a shadow with no mass behind it; then, once he’d told me so, I thought it would disappear like a shadow flooded with light.

  That’s not what he said. He said I was the only one who felt dishonest and I was the only one who knew my intentions. Maybe my intentions were dishonest.

  I tried to dismiss his comment, but the minute he said it I felt this great sweep of shame. I admitted to Lou something I’d never said out loud to anyone. Arlene wasn’t quite what I’d pictured for myself. She wasn’t someone I’d usher into a room on my arm with great pride.

  “In other words,” he said, “you’re ashamed of her.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Sure you did.”

  All these thoughts started going around in my head at once, making it hard to breathe. I realized that this was her worst fear about me. That I looked down on her. Worst fears are always based on a grain of truth. That’s what’s so bad about them. I wondered if she had a friend she talked to like this. I wondered if she talked about my face and how hard it was to be physically close to me.

  Lou said, “If you really want somebody else, go find somebody else. You’re not doing her any favors.”

  I said, “No. I want her.”

  It surprised us both.

  I just liked the way I felt around her. The way she made me feel. Which suddenly seemed so much more real and important than wearing a woman on your arm.

  Lou told me a story about his most recent lover. A man who, like most men in his life, held him at arm’s length until Lou couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I finally issued an ultimatum. Get the hell into my life, or get the hell out of it. If you want to stop feeling dishonest, Reub, try making an honest woman out of her.”