Pay It Forward Read online

  He watched her march up the walkway, up the steps to his porch. Purpose plastered on to cover human frailty. All outward confidence. And it struck him then, for the first time, how much alike they really were.

  I know you don’t like me, she’d said. I know you’re looking down on me. So there it was. He acted defensive toward her because he assumed she found him ugly. She acted defensive toward him because she assumed he found her stupid.

  It was such a stunning moment he wanted to share it with her. In that split second he felt he might have been able to communicate this realization, if they’d been alone.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen himself in someone else. It changed him, this simple observation, like being jostled off the edge of a tall building, causing him to wonder if it was too late to get his old isolation back.

  “Now, Trevor,” she said. “I bet Mr. St. Clair’s got better things to do than hear about your troubles on a nice Saturday morning like this one. You can talk to me, you know.”

  “You weren’t home.” Trevor studied his scuffed high-tops.

  “I didn’t mind, Miss McKinney. Really. I just wanted you to know where he was.”

  “Well, I thank you for that, but we’ll just be going now.”

  She motioned with a hand to her son, who followed her off the porch obediently.

  “Arlene.” He hadn’t known he was about to call her back, had never intended to use her first name. She must have been surprised too. She spun around, looked at him for the longest time. Really looked at him, as though seeing something she hadn’t seen before. Which she was. And it made him uncomfortable to feel so transparent.

  “Trevor, wait for me in the car,” she said quietly, and rejoined Reuben on the porch.

  She stood strangely close. Reuben’s chest felt heavy with the expectancy of the moment. The notion that he could express his revelation was gone now; still, he had no choice but to try.

  “When you first met me. And you thought I was looking down my nose at you. I just want you to know something.”

  She waited patiently, face slightly turned up to him. She reflected a pleasant expectance. She didn’t dislike him. She just wanted him to like her. It was right there on her face.

  “I have a hard time meeting people. I’m very sensitive about—Well. I tend to think I repel people. I mean, I do. But. I was being defensive. That’s what I’m trying to say. I wasn’t looking down on you. I was being defensive because I thought you were looking down on me.”

  “Really?” A skinless, unguarded question.

  “Really.”

  “Well, thank you. That’s nice.” She moved to the porch rail, glanced at the car and her waiting son. “No, really, that’s nice. I appreciate that you told me that. It’s kind of funny, really. I mean, here we are being all cold to each other. You don’t think I’m dumb? Really?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I don’t talk good like you. Talk well, I mean. I could, I guess. I know how to talk right. I just sorta got out of the habit. Maybe you could come over for dinner again some night.”

  “Maybe.”

  Maybe? Reuben felt surprised to hear himself say it. Maybe. Actually, he’d wanted to say no. Now that she had turned her eyes up to him, hopeful and childlike, flattered to win his approval, he could not get far enough away from her.

  She stared at him for a moment, then marched purposefully back to her car and drove off without comment.

  So. There it is, Reuben thought, his mind caught in a brand of resigned irony. There it was, there it goes.

  What a relief, to know that nothing ever really changes.

  From The Other Faces Behind the Movement

  My friend Lou, from Cincinnati, was gay. We’d go out for a beer and talk sometimes, in the evening, about our respective problems. Lou’s problem was he had a bad habit of falling for guys who were not. Gay, that is. And my problem was I tended to be…what’s the word I’m searching for? Picked up, befriended, latched on to, by attractive women who liked me and found me safe. Safe. That’s just how every lonely, sexually deprived man wants a woman to see him, right? Safe. They’d ask me out to the movies, to dinner. Exactly like dating. If it differed in any way from dating, I’d like someone to explain how. At the end of the evening I’d get a kiss on the cheek. Always the same cheek.

  The hormones would rage. In me, that is. And right around the time I was hopelessly, relentlessly in love and having trouble hiding it, she would say something along the lines of, “I like you as a friend, Reuben. We have such a nice friendship. Let’s not spoil it.” Nice women, in most cases, so I had to assume they had no idea how cruel they had been. Because if any one of them had been monster enough to do that much damage on purpose, I think I would have known.

  Anyway, Lou and I tipped a few one night. I didn’t even know he was gay at the time. I told him the easiest stories to tell, older, less painful. The kind you can laugh at just a little because those “years to come” have already come. “You have no idea how that feels,” I said, not realizing who I was saying it to. “Nobody does. To have that depth of emotion for someone and to know that they would find your feelings utterly repulsive.”

  And Lou laughed and ordered another beer, and told me a story of his own. And then I knew. And I knew as well that he knew how it felt.

  “Why straight guys?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. There’re just so damn many more of them.”

  I got quiet for a long time, and then I said, “Lou. You didn’t mean me, did you? You weren’t saying you had those feelings about me?”

  Not that I would have been repelled if he had—I certainly wouldn’t have stopped being his friend—but I needed to know, to be sure I wasn’t being insensitive without realizing.

  “Hell no, Reub,” he said. “You’re way too ugly for me. I think we should just be friends.”

  “Well, good. That would have been utterly repulsive.”

  We got to laughing then, and the sound of his laughter when he got going was so funny and silly it made me laugh just to hear it. I’d try to stop, but just when I’d get it under control, he’d break up again and we’d go for another round.

  And then we fell serious, just like that, and I was so tired, more tired than I’d ever been in my life, and I wanted to go home. As if all of a sudden I realized: it’s not so goddamned funny.

  THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN a safe, comfortable end to everything, but the following Thursday evening he ran into her at the market. Just dropped into a longish line with his ice cream and his TV dinners and found himself looking at the back of her head.

  It seemed to Reuben as though one could look at the back of someone else’s head quietly, without being noticed, but apparently he did it wrong, because she immediately turned around.

  “Oh, you,” she said, and that was it. She turned back, and they both waited in excruciating silence, watching Terri and Matt scan and bag groceries, as if finding their simple movements fascinating.

  She looked briefly over her shoulder at Reuben on her way out of the store.

  Then she was gone, and he breathed deeply, a man just having found his way to safety from grave and immediate danger.

  He found her in the parking lot, leaning on his car.

  “You know what your problem is?” she said.

  It was the old Arlene, and it felt good to Reuben to have her back, that little lightning bolt of indignation all ready to read him the riot act about one thing or another.

  “No. I don’t. What is my problem?”

  “Your problem is, you’re so quick to think nobody wants you, you don’t even give ’em a chance. I couldn’t reject you if I tried. You’re too fast for me.”

  “Thank you, Arlene. That was very informative.”

  He moved for his driver’s door, and she peeled away, out of his trajectory, as he knew she would. He set his groceries on the passenger seat, got in, and slammed the door. But she wasn’t gone. She stood by his window a
s he fired up the little engine, and before he could drive away she tapped on the glass.

  He rolled the window halfway down.

  “So,” she said. “You want to go out, or what?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What the hell kind of answer is that?”

  “The honest kind. What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say, ‘I’m not doing nothing on Sunday night, Arlene. Maybe you and me could take in a movie or something.’”

  Reuben sighed. He put the Volkswagen in gear, popped it out again. “Arlene, would you like to go to a movie this Sunday?”

  He didn’t mean it to, but it came out sounding petulant, like a little boy who’s just been ordered to apologize when he wasn’t feeling one bit sorry.

  “Yes, I would. But I bet I’m gonna be sorry I ever started with this.”

  “I’ll put a couple of dollars on that, too,” Reuben said, but he was half a block away before he said it.

  Chapter Ten

  ARLENE

  Loretta sat in Arlene’s kitchen, drinking coffee and brushing tons of thick blond hair back from her forehead. Arlene figured if she had that much hair she’d fool around with it too, but she never would, and also that she could be a blonde just as easy as Loretta but would prefer to go along with what nature intended.

  Arlene said, “Did I mention he’s black?”

  Loretta said, “No.”

  “Oh. He’s black.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t know. I just mentioned it.”

  “Do you care?”

  “I don’t know. No. I just mentioned it, is all. I told you about his face, though.”

  “More times than I could count. That bothers you.”

  “No. Not really. At first, maybe.”

  “Coulda fooled me.”

  “After a while, I just kinda got used to it. I don’t think about it much anymore.”

  “But what about when you’re, like, close, though? Does it bother you then?”

  Arlene jumped out of her chair to wash her cup in the sink, even though half the coffee was still in it, waiting to be drunk. Over her shoulder she said, “Well. To be real honest with you. We ain’t never been that close.”

  “What about when he kisses you?” Loretta waited patiently for her answer; in fact, Arlene was surprised by how long it took her to give up. “You ain’t gonna tell me you never kissed him.”

  “I ain’t?”

  “You been out with him four times. Don’t you think that might start to hurt his feelings after a while?”

  “Well, I know you won’t believe this, Loretta.” She dumped her coffee and sat back down, leaning close and talking low, a girl-type conspiracy. “It’s not me that’s holding out.”

  “You’re right. I don’t believe you. Say. Now, don’t get this question wrong. I ain’t dared to ask it yet. What you dating this guy for, anyway? You give up on Ricky?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why, then?”

  “Why do you think? How can you even ask me that? It’s been over a year, Loretta. Don’t you think I got needs? Besides, serves Ricky right if he comes back and I been with somebody else. It’s what he gets.”

  Loretta rocked back in her chair, more dramatically than was absolutely necessary. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh what?”

  “That’s, like, the worst reason to date a guy I ever heard.”

  “What is? I didn’t say anything about a reason.”

  “’Cause it would serve Ricky right.”

  “Hypothetically speaking.”

  “So this guy’s just for sex in the meantime?”

  “Yeah, I know how guys just hate that.”

  “Some guys might hate it.”

  “Not no guy I ever met.”

  Arlene looked up suddenly to see Trevor standing in the kitchen doorway. “Trevor, how long you been standing there?”

  “I just woke up.”

  “Don’t sneak up on a body like that.”

  “I just came for breakfast.”

  “Get on out and play, would you?”

  “I haven’t had my breakfast.”

  “Oh. Right. Sit down, let me fix you something.”

  Trevor shook his head in apparent bewilderment and settled at the table, leaning his chin on both hands.

  Loretta said, “Well, anyway. Can’t use a guy for what he won’t give you.”

  Trevor perked up his ears. “Who you talking about?”

  “This don’t concern you, Trevor. And Loretta, little pitchers have big ears, if you catch my drift.”

  Loretta shrugged and refilled her own cup at the Mr. Coffee machine. “Anyway. Sounds like a personal problem to me. If I were you, I’d be talking to Bonnie.”

  “Nothing to talk about, Loretta. Just drop it.”

  She set two toaster waffles in front of her boy, then ran down the hall and called Bonnie on the bedroom phone. The machine picked up and Arlene left a message saying she had a personal problem she’d like to discuss.

  SHE CUT HER WAY through Bonnie’s little double-wide mobile home, through knickknacks and home crafts and needlepoint and feathers and pottery and blown glass and porcelain clowns. Bonnie liked things and kept plenty of them around the house so things would never be in short supply. Arlene made herself comfortable on the soft couch in a nest of embroidered pillows.

  Bonnie said, “So. You finally quit the damn Laser Lounge.”

  “Yeah. Guy come and bought the engine off me for eight hundred dollars, so I got two months ahead on the payments.”

  “And in two months? Then what?”

  “Cross that bridge when I come to it. Least I’ll get caught up on my sleep before I gotta worry. That’s not what I come to talk about.”

  “How can you be having relationship problems? I thought we said no new relationships in your first year.”

  Arlene sighed and studied the ceiling. “Well, I’m sorry, Bonnie, but for one time I didn’t do what you told me.”

  “For one time?” Bonnie’s sharp voice cut the air like a siren. If there’d been dogs in the yard, Arlene figured they’d howl along, but there were no dogs allowed in Bonnie’s mobile home park. “Girl, where’d you learn to count? You don’t never do what I told you. What about Ricky?”

  “You see him around here?”

  “No, but what if we do?”

  “Cross that bridge when we come to it too.”

  “In other words, just go on a spending spree and worry about the bills when they get in.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s what I heard. So, what’s the problem?”

  “Well. I been out with this guy four times. He hasn’t even tried to touch me. He’s just, like…a complete…gentleman.”

  “You poor girl. Men are such beasts.”

  “Four times, though, Bonnie. Doesn’t it seem off to you?”

  “You never got to know a guy before you jumped in the sack?”

  Actually, Arlene thought, no, but she didn’t care to say that. “He hasn’t so much as tried to hold my hand. What’s that sound like to you?”

  “Sounds like the guy’s got more sense than you do, not like that’s the hardest contest in the world to win. No offense. Look. You ain’t got but sixty days sober. No time to be adding sex to more immediate problems, but if you’re gonna do it anyway, and I know you are, for God’s sake take it slow.”

  “I guess.”

  “Girl, you hear one word I say to you?”

  “I’m just so damn sick and tired of sleeping alone, Bonnie. Damn tired of it. And I know he is, too. So, what’s so terrible? I mean, what’s his problem?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I come all the way over here. I’m asking you.”

  “Doesn’t that strike you a little odd? To be asking me?”

  “You’re my sponsor.”

  “So I’m supposed to know what this guy’s thinking that I never even met.”<
br />
  “You mean, ask him?”

  Bonnie let out a big, indefinable noise and threw her hands up in a gesture of defeat. “And she thinks she’s ready to have a relationship. Lord help us all.” Then she walked Arlene to the door, since Arlene was going that way anyway, with or without help. “Hey. This the guy you told me about with the scars?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure he knows you want him to?”

  “Well, sure he knows. I mean, he must. What would I be going out with him for if I didn’t want him to?”

  “You better make sure he knows. Don’t tell nobody I said that. You’re supposed to get a year sober first.”

  “Yeah, but you knew I wouldn’t.”

  Bonnie rolled her eyes and slammed the door shut.

  IT MADE HER FEEL LIKE A KID, the way she had to corner him at her own front door, as if her parents were waiting up inside.

  Problem was, Reuben always paid for a baby-sitter. Well, it wasn’t a problem, it was real nice, but it was part of the problem, because if she invited him in, well, there the girl would be, and she didn’t have a car, so Reuben had to drop her home.

  Arlene hadn’t quite figured a way around that. So when he walked her to her door, which he always did, being a gentleman, she slid up to him and put her arms around his neck.

  “I had a real nice time tonight,” she said quietly into his right ear. The muscles in his neck and shoulders felt tight. She waited for him to say the same. Or to say anything, or to relax, or put his hands on her back, but there they hung at his sides while he said nothing at all. “How come you’re so tense?”

  “Do I seem tense?”

  “Am I making you nervous? You want me to stop?”

  “I guess I have mixed feelings about it.”

  Discouraged as she’d been, that seemed like a good jumping-off place to Arlene, who figured mixed feelings to be better than no feelings at all. She took two steps to push up a little closer, but he yielded and ended up with his back against the door. Since he couldn’t go anywhere from there, she kissed him. It didn’t feel different from kissing anybody else.

  It was a soft kiss. She didn’t know why, since she seemed to be leading, and had never felt a soft kiss before. And it brought up all these soft feelings in her stomach, like little breaths trying to get out, only more fluttery.