Chapter Nine - Paul #3
After two spoonfuls of soup, I feel comforted and sated. We both eat in silence for a time, and I realize the soup isn’t canned. She made it. She made it just for me. And she didn’t burn a thing.
I wipe my mouth on a napkin. “I was thinking I should pay you rent.”
She sips her wine. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I want to.”
She nibbles on a cracker. “No. Save your money.”
“For what?”
“For whatever you want.”
“I want to pay you rent. Something. Help with the electric bill. The telephone.”
She looks at me curiously. “Why would you want to do that now?”
“Because you helped me.” I pause. “Are helping me. I want to help you. Not” —I clear my throat— “break your things.”
She says nothing for a minute or so, finishing her cheese and crackers and the wine. I finish the soup and bread. I feel warmed inside and out, as if I’ve been cuddled and petted by hot water and hot food.
Aunt Amy takes our dishes to the sink. I watch the back of her, her apron tied in a neat bow in the same way my mother’s was. I feel my throat tighten. Then she sits next to me and brushes my hair off my forehead, an unthinking gesture, in the way my mother would do. My eyes sting.
“I don’t want money from you, Paul. I just want you to be all right.”
“I’m not.”
“I know.”
But she doesn’t really know. What would she think if I told her the truth about my friend ?
However brief it was, it will follow me forever, I’m sure.
The hurt is hitting me full force now. The confusion.
The feeling of not knowing what to do. He’s gone, just left, and said not a word.
Would he really do such a thing to me? I thought… I really thought…
“Did you love somebody and they didn’t love you back?” The words tumble out of me like a pile of sticks.
Aunt Amy blinks in confusion. “What?”
“Is that why you’re alone?”
“I’m not alone, Paul, you’re here.”
“You know what I mean.”
A look comes across her face, flattening her mouth into almost a warning, but not quite. “It’s just how things are sometimes. Some people marry. Some people don’t.”
“But why not you?”
She stares at me.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You loved somebody, but he didn’t love you.”
She stares at me harder, a long studying look. “I think you should go up to bed,” she says gently. “It’s been a difficult day for you.”
I almost say to her that I’m already in a bed, dreaming this very moment, and when I wake it will all vanish like vapor, and won’t she feel silly telling me to get to sleep?
But I listen to her. I go up to bed.
And I take the broken plate, the casualty of unrequited love, with me.
In the morning, I decide to take a walk, and I end up walking the six blocks to Eckert’s.
It’s an intolerably hot day already with the aging summer heat, and I’m dying for a soda pop.
I notice a sign out front that they’re hiring and to inquire within and that’s just what I do.
I inquire to the stuffy square behind the cash register, gray hair coming out of his ears and glasses so thick they make his steel-colored eyes look tiny.
I don’t try too hard to sell myself. I tell him I’ve got no experience, but that I have nothing better to do with my summer.
I’m free all day, every day. One corner of his mouth shifts thoughtfully.
He points to the soda fountain and asks if I can start tomorrow.
I feel a nervous flutter, the phantom of giggling girls ridiculing me, but I say I can.
I promise him I’ll be in at 10 a.m. sharp.
I smile to myself as I leave with an ice-cold Coke and the humidity wraps around me like a blanket.
The accomplished feeling follows me the rest of the way to Aunt Amy’s house, until I hear the vroom, vroom of an engine near me.
I look up, my heart in my throat, and see a fella on a bike wearing a leather jacket stopped at a light.
I come to a complete halt as he guns the engine at the green light and turns right.
I drop my Coke and sprint down the sidewalk.
My hair is plastered to my forehead and my pits are soaked by the time I get to the corner and turn to see the motorbike parking in front of a tobacco shop.
The guy gets off and goes inside. I run like my life depends on it, my breath nearly splitting my lungs wide open, until I get to the shop.
I fling open the door, the bell jingling frantically, and the fella and a man at the counter both turn to me.
The guy’s eyes are a hard brown. His nose too long and lips too thin.
I let out a whimper and they stare at me.
The guy ambles over, holding his paper sack of goods. I get out of his way.
“You okay, kiddo?”
His voice is deeper, rich and baritone. I nod as I watch him mount his bike. For one wild moment, I want to hop on and ride with him to anywhere. Tangle my arms around him, put my fingers into his pomaded hair, and just pretend and beg him to pretend with me.
He zips off down the road, leaving me in his dust.
Just a mess made and left for no one to clean up.
I go into the front hall and sit down in a sweaty-gross heap beside the telephone.
I dial information and ask for the owner of the apartments on Oak Tree Lane. I scribble down the number the operator gives me and dial it. The secretary tells me that the owner isn’t in his office, but she can check her records to see if any of the tenants have put in a move-out notice.
While I wait, I absently tap a pencil on the table, the knot in my stomach beginning to loosen only slightly.
I turn in the chair toward the kitchen, where I only have a sliver of a view of the apartment building.
It’s suddenly the most important place on earth as if all of humanity sprouted from its foundation.
The secretary comes back to say there have been no notices in months.
I thank her and hang up, the knot in my stomach getting looser by the second.
I dial information again and ask for the number for the garage on Commerce Street.
And as the line rings, I feel like a boulder rolling down a hill, gaining speed, bouncing off ruts, tumbling, rushing.
Once again, another secretary answers. I ask to speak to the owner.
The owner of what?
The garage?
Which garage?
That…one?
She says to hold, and I hold my breath. Almost five minutes go by before a man comes on the line. He sounds like a gruff man, the kind of man I picture rubbing off his greasy hands on a towel and then scratching his scruffy face. He seems more than bothered when I start questioning him about Asher.
“Yes, yes,” he says. “I know Asher.”
“Has he been there at all?”
There’s an exhale, like he’s blowing smoke, the annoyance in his tone growing. “Hasn’t been by all week.”
I press the phone to my ear. “Do you know where he is?”
There’s a hesitation. “Who is this?”
I think about it for a second. “A, um…a friend.”
And that’s when the man seems to be holding back a little, hesitating, and so I press him until he’s so annoyed with me he gives up and says, “He went home to Lancaster. Okay? It was something to do with his family. Look, I gotta lot to do, mister.” He hangs up.
I feel the knot completely unravel, straightening into a smooth line, one I can now work with. One I can now weave into whatever I wish.
It’s an avalanche of relief. A damn torrent.
But it’s quickly replaced with worry.
His family?
That word could mean many things. What kind of family?
Like…just his mother and father? Or…his wife and kids?
That last part just couldn’t be. Wouldn’t be.
But the knot threatens to twist back up again as it becomes more likely, more clear that maybe, maybe I’d read into this all wrong.
But surely he meant his family, the one he was born into, the mother he was sure he’d never see again.
I feel frozen for a second with the fear that I’m wrong.
Possibilities of who this man is flood my brain. I don’t really know him, after all. He had just seemed to me to be the loner type. The type that’s too cool for anyone and especially the likes of me. And maybe that’s exactly it: he’s skipped town because that’s what he does.
A helpless feeling takes over, but I brush it aside.
No. He didn’t just leave me like this, he doesn’t have a secret wife, and I will find him.
I pick up the phone and make another call. This time, to the bus station.