by R.P. Burnham
“Say that again!” Donna McClellan said.
Virgie, wearing a cut-off top, low-rider jeans and sandals, sat on one of the kitchen stools and wrapped her arms around a lifted knee. Despite the casualness of her maneuver, she was brimming with conspiratorial excitement. “Chris was arrested for breaking and entering,” she repeated.
They were in the kitchen of the apartment of Leon Margrave, the rock guitarist Donna had been living with for the past several months. Leon’s self-absorption was wearing thin, but one thing Donna still liked was the apartment which offered the background to the portrait of Virgie’s intense and excited face. On the third floor of an old Victorian building off lower Congress Street, it was an irregularly shaped place, charmingly so. The dining room was an alcove with sloping ceilings from a dormer, just large enough to hold two chairs and a dining-room table cluttered with musical paraphernalia—sound equipment, some scattered CDs, raw tapes, sheet music of well-known rock songs, a few books. This being its usual condition, they used the counter separating the kitchen from the rest of the room to eat meals when they were home, which was not that often. When not at work, both Leon and Donna were often out on Cape Elizabeth where one of the members of their rock band, The Backstairs, had an apartment over the garage of his parents’ house. It had sound-recording equipment so good that the band’s two CDs were recorded there. Donna had learned to use this equipment, but she was only allowed to record practice sessions when the band was working on new songs. Some of these session tapes that she had recorded and mixed were among the clutter of the dining-room table.
The living room likewise revealed that it was the domicile of a rock musician. It too had sloping ceilings, these from the slate-covered roof of the building. Only one wall was of regular height. The other two sloped down to about waist height. On the left the ceiling above an ancient and heavily cushioned Victorian couch and two armless easy chairs (like much of the furniture these pieces were from Leon’s elderly aunt’s house, surrendered when she was forced to go into a nursing home) were decorated with posters of heavy-metal rock bands—Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. An ornate pseudo-Persian rug covered the center of the floor. Three electric guitars rested in stands beside the TV or on the other side of a shelf that had a receiver, a tape deck, and DVD and CD players. Here on the one normal wall hung posters of Jimmi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
Virgie liked the place too and often visited. Today she had come at a bad time. Donna and Leon had spent the weekend doing gigs upstate at two clubs in Bangor and at Colby College in Waterville. They had left the house in a mess Friday afternoon and had not finished their last gig until after two in the morning. Then after a long drive they hadn’t got into bed until after five o’clock. Donna had arranged to have the day off from her job at a daycare center in a Portland church. Now exactly twelve hours after they had left Waterville, Leon was still asleep and Donna, though awake, was very tired, having slept only five hours. The information that Virgie had just conveyed to her, however, had snapped her into full wakefulness. She drained her cup of coffee with a long swallow and stared at her friend. “Surely you don’t mean criminal activity.”
“Of course not. He was trying to get evidence in that mercury-poisoning case and, you know, that Ridlon guy. He broke the lock on the shed at the pond. I’ve been there with Chris, so I know it was just a dinky padlock he jimmied.”
“Was he alone?”
“No. Patti was with him. She’s always with him lately.” She spoke with a touch of bitterness that was unmistakable.
“Was Patti arrested?”
“No. No one knows she was with him. He had her walk away and turn her back so she wouldn’t see it. She was furious with him, though. You should have seen her yesterday. She said he didn’t think it through and couldn’t have used any evidence he got anyways. She said it was so stupid to get arrested this way. All he did was hang his head and listen.”
Donna gave a low whistle. “That doesn’t sound like Chris.”
“He thinks it was a setup.” Virgie said. “The cops came the day after he was there and took fingerprints.”
“When was this? This weekend?”
“No, about three weeks ago actually. They had to wait for the prints to come from Amherst, Massachusetts. That’s the other reason Chris thinks it was a setup. The Bedford Police were involved and they’re in Ridlon’s pocket. It had to be Ridlon, see? He must have told the cops to check for Chris’s prints.”
Donna turned back to the dishes she was just starting when Virgie arrived. She looked at the dish towel and then at Virgie, who was slow to comprehend.
“I gotta get these dishes done. You mind drying?”
Virgie stood and took the dish towel. “Chris is so angry at that Ridlon guy he’s dangerous,” she said as she took the first dish and gave it a circular treatment.
“I still don’t see why Chris thinks it’s a setup.”
Virgie pursed her lips and looked towards the bedroom where Leon grunted in his sleep. “There was a new no-trespassing sign and the place had been emptied out. Where does this plate go?” Donna pointed to the first cabinet. “But it was more than that. Why would the Bedford Police be contacted for Chris’s fingerprints? And why when a lock was jimmied would they be looking for a specific fingerprint? I think Chris is right. He was set up.”
“I get it. Someone was doing research on Chris if they knew police in Massachusetts had his prints.”
“Right. He’d been arrested during some demonstration at UMass when he was in college.”
Donna took a scouring pad to work on a plate with dried-on spaghetti sauce. She wasn’t much of a cook, but one thing she’d learned to do was make a big batch of spaghetti. They had it often. Luckily Leon wasn’t a fussy eater. Coffee, cigarettes, beer and marijuana were his principal oral pleasures, that and one she was the beneficiary of, a thought that momentarily made her mind slip away before she looked at the plate and came back to the present. Her fingernail was more effective than the scouring pad. “Is Chris in jail?”
“No. Alex and Patti bailed him out.”
“Again, why was Patti so mad?”
“Well, she says it’s because he was so stupid. He got some evidence that mercury was in the shed, but the no-trespassing sign would make that inadmissible in court. But the real reason was different.”
She stopped suddenly and looked away. She bit her underlip and appeared to be stricken.
“Is something bothering you?”
She shook her head and said “Not really,” but her eyes made an appeal.
“I think something is. You don’t seem yourself.”
She looked down at the floor as if she was a child who had been doing something naughty. A pained expression passed across her face, and she seemed to be on the verge of tears. “It’s Chris!”
She spoke so tragically that momentarily Donna had to stifle an impulse to laugh. Chris! Chris and Patti, she meant. Virgie was jealous. She weighed the issue rapidly. Was her ticket out of an aimless life marriage? Did she imagine when she gave up trying to take care of herself that he would? Was she incapable of thinking clearly? Virgie being rescued like a fair maiden by the knight-errant Chris was ridiculous and shouldn’t be encouraged. But they had been friends since high school. Even though they were the same age, Virgie always regarded her as the big sister she never had. She would have to be careful.
Soothingly, and with a hand on Virgie’s shoulder, she said, “Oh, I see. You mean Chris and Patti. You know he’s not very dependable.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, hanging her head. “But they’re together all the time now. It started last month. I think they even avoid me.”
“Tears of desolation formed in her eyes and melted Donna’s heart because they were a sign of trust. Virgie, always afraid of being hurt, of being exposed, kept her feelings hidden.
Donna hugged her. “I remember even in high school you were sweet on Chris. But don’t you think Patti will find out he’s not dependable
too?”
With a sudden motion Virgie turned towards the bedroom door. She nodded, then waited.
Leon, wearing only thong underwear, was sleepily making his way to the bathroom, though he was never so sleepy that he didn’t calculate the effect he was making. He was a rock guitarist and a carpenter’s helper in his societal role, but in essence he was a peacock. His arms and body were heavily tattooed with dragons, barbed wire, an eagle, a rock singer and a crudely lettered “LOVE,” which was his first tattoo and done by a friend in high school. He had long hair, which he dyed blond. He didn’t have a beard or mustache, but he carefully cultivated a five-o’clock shadow by always shaving with an electric razor set to leave a sixteenth of an inch of growth. With a hooked nose and deep-set eyes below bony ridges and an angular face, he was not handsome, but he possessed a cocky self-confidence that projected a presence, this despite his small but muscular body, the result not of working out but from the heavy lifting he did when he helped his father episodically as a carpenter’s helper. His father had had rock-musician aspirations and as a result lived vicariously through his son’s career. He was very easy with Leon’s hours, which was part of the problem. Leon was used to getting his own way and thought that because he was a rock guitarist he should get his way all the time. It was the part of their relationship that was wearing thin. He was so self-absorbed, however, that Donna wasn’t even sure he noticed her growing disenchantment.
He stopped with hands on hips and said, “What are you guys talking so seriously about?”
“Our friend Chris Andrews got arrested while he was working on a pollution case. He broke into a shed to look for evidence.”
As they looked at him he put on a show. He rubbed his chin, flexing his biceps as he did so. Then he used his fingers to comb his long hair, again flexing his muscles. “Is that the case where a little boy was poisoned with mercury?”
When Donna answered yes, he said, “Man, that’s a bummer” and continued on his way to the bathroom from whence the sounds of a prodigious piss soon emanated.
Donna and Virgie exchanged glances. Virgie smiled while Donna rolled her eyes. They waited.
He came out of the bathroom with the same swagger he used when his band returned for an encore. To the people who loved him he gave his presence as a gift—that was the message conveyed by his body language.
“Hey, babe. You’re doing your soup-kitchen gig tonight, right? I’ll see you at the joint afterwards.”
The joint was the rock club where the Backstairs performed twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. “Okay,” she said. “See you then.”
“Virgie, you should come too. Maybe we’ll make plans for a benefit concert for your friend.”
She nodded noncommittally. She never liked to be held to a promise.
As they heard him collapsing into the creaky bed (another relic of his aunt’s house), they turned back to the dishes. After they finished them, Donna suggested they get out of the house to give Leon some peace. “Let’s walk down to Deering Oaks,” she said. “I’ve got an hour and a half before I have to be at the soup kitchen.”
For her the period between mid-May and mid-June was the best season for Deering Oaks. In another week or so it would pass its peak, but for now just about every flower in the flower garden was in bloom. The oaks and other deciduous trees were fully leafed with bright and shiny leaves. Birds were everywhere, and the squirrels as always were busy. The grass was still pristine green. The swans joined wild ducks and gulls in the small pond, and a feeling of life’s fullness permeated the air. Lately she had taken to exercising daily, which usually meant a walk down to and through the Oaks. Usually she went alone (often as a circuitous journey to work at the daycare center), but today the trip down the hill and across Park Street was even better with her best friend beside her. But she had another reason for walking with Virgie. It would be easier to talk to her about her problems in the open air. The expanse of blue sky above and green grass below would be conducive to honest talk.
Before she could say the things she wanted to say to Virgie, she had to think. As they walked, they talked some about Chris’s situation, and once when a car full of teenage boys honked their horn and gestured at Virgie’s revealing outfit, they discussed the concept of the yahoo (though unspoken was Donna’s perception that Virgie was in fact inappropriately dressed), but most of the time they walked in silence, and she could think about her and Virgie’s situation. They were more alike than she cared to admit out loud. She told Patti and Alex that she was thinking about getting into teaching. They believed her and even repeated it to others, including Chris, but the only reason she said it was because the two of them, brother and sister, were entering professional fields, and she didn’t want to be left behind. The truth was that she was perfectly satisfied working in a daycare center at a level a high school graduate could do. If she had any goal it was vaguely to get married some day and have children of her own. Even that goal was an abstraction while she was in her twenties. She worried more than Virgie (or hid it less well, for she was never sure what Virgie really thought). She knew herself well enough to realize why she was satisfied with her job: beyond a rudimentary humanity, her job required no special effort. At Boston University she used to get stomachaches every time an exam was scheduled; at the end of each semester during finals period she would become almost physically ill. She lacked self-confidence partly because she had a bad complexion from severe adolescent acne and was very self-conscious about it. With makeup she knew she was quite pretty, but it was not politically correct to wear makeup in her circle. The prospect of twenty-five pairs of eyes staring at her all day, even if the eyes of children, was not one she cared to face. So just as much as Virgie, she avoided the responsibilities of adulthood. The self-awareness did give her the wherewithal to clearly see Virgie’s problems and offer advice. Telling others how to live their lives was easier than living your own, she thought, totally aware of the irony.
After crossing Park Street and going into Deering Oaks, they made their way to a bench in front of the duck pond where they watched magnificent swans gliding elegantly across the water, their wakes expanding V’s. Some ducks slept on the rock with the miniature lighthouse while others patrolled the ground looking for bits of dropped food. They faced Park Street from where the roar of cars and trucks was at first loud before it disappeared into background noise. At first they talked about the swans. Donna was intrigued to find out Virgie had named one of them “Queenie” because she seemed dominant. Then Donna broached the subject by reminding Virgie of Chris’s unreliability.
She seemed to be waiting for the topic to be brought up. “You say Chris is unreliable. Suppose he is, but isn’t Leon unreliable too? The guy is full of himself.” She spoke hesitantly, afraid to offend.
“I know that. I really don’t see us going anywhere. I don’t expect it, that’s for sure. I don’t even want it. I’ve got my eyes open.”
“I wish it was that easy with me. I see one thing. I feel another. But why are you living with him if you think that way?”
Donna laughed nervously. “Call it a last fling. All my life I’ve worried too much, worried about what others think of me, worried about what I should think. I’m twenty-six now, and it’s time to think of what I want to do. I like the Backstairs—they can really rock. Then Leon showed interest in me when he kept seeing me at their gigs. I guess you could say I did it for fun.”
“Is it still fun?”
“Not really. Before I did it I thought traveling with a rock band like I did this weekend would be exciting and fun. Guess what? It’s mostly a drag. You’re with these people constantly. They’re always bickering, and when they’re not fighting among themselves it’s simply boring. Hanging around all day for two or three hours of good rocking, you find yourself exhausted and disillusioned. That kind of life doesn’t lead anywhere. And I’m totally aware that Leon’s favorite person in the whole world is the one he sees in the mirror. Tell me something, do you
think about the future?”
After an embarrassed laugh, Virgie was quiet for a moment. “Not really.”
“What about your job?”
Virgie leaned down and picked a dandelion. Absently plucking at the petals, she said, “What do you mean?”
“You know, a good job.” Virgie’s latest job was part-time work packaging and loading boxes for UPS at close to minimum wages. It was virtually the definition of a dead-end job.
When she didn’t reply, Donna asked, “Do you ever think about going back to college?”
“Not really. Flunking out in sophomore year was enough for me.”
“You might have more choices with a degree.”
She shrugged. “Who needs choices?”
“Well, do you like your job now?”
The subject didn’t interest her. With another shrug, she said, “What’s there to like. It’s a job. I’m not supposed to like it.”
“I don’t mind my job. I like the kids, and the people I work with are okay.” She smiled grimly. “But aren’t we a pair.”
Virgie looked inquiringly into her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Well, look at us. Chris does his green thing so fanatically he gets himself arrested. Patti’s in nursing school and even talks about becoming a doctor. Alex is in law school. But we’re going nowhere.”
“Well…” Virgie started to say something, then, as if proving the point, let the thought drift off.
“I guess we’re different. I worry about it sometimes. I think I should have more ambition.”
“You’re right. You do worry too much. I think you should just live. Look for happiness, but don’t expect it from a job.”
“From love?”
“Yeah.”
“But there’s something else you could do. I mean personal fulfillment. There’s one thing I do I’m really proud of. The soup kitchen. I’m glad Patti told me about volunteering. It’s the best decision I ever made when I decided to volunteer.”
She paused and followed Virgie’s eyes to the duck pond. Two boys appeared to be looking for rocks, probably to throw at the ducks and swans. Virgie visibly grew tense watching them, ready to spring to the defense of the innocent creatures. The boys were actually looking for something else, however, for they picked up what looked like a tennis ball and went on their way. But the incident served to inspire Donna.
“You thought they were going to throw rocks at the birds, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. Luckily I was wrong.”
Donna leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She looked up at Virgie. “I remember you said you felt terrible seeing those poor country people when you went to Waska with Chris.”
“Especially the kids.”
“Yeah, but you’re already the kind of person who has compassion for the weak and abused, whether it’s cats or little kids.”
She shrugged, saying in effect, “So what?”
Donna stood and faced her. “Why don’t you come with me tonight to the soup kitchen. We’re shorthanded and could use some help.”
“You’ve asked me before, and I said I didn’t think I’d like it.”
“I think you would. And besides, it’s different now.”
Virgie stood and they started walking. “What do you mean?”
“It would bring you out of yourself and put your troubles in perspective. It’d do you some good.”
Virgie crinkled her nose as if she’d tasted something bad. “I don’t follow you. You’ve told me before volunteering would do me some good. If that’s what you’re talking about, I’m not so sure.” Her tone was not promising, but then she glanced at Donna and in a hopeful voice said, “Tell me, how does it do you good?
They were parallel with Forest Avenue now but continued to follow the path that would loop around the park. “I know one way I could explain it. Did I ever tell you about the time my sister got a new bike for her birthday.”
“Yeah, I think so. You had a temper tantrum, didn’t you?”
“That’s what started it, but it’s what I learned that’s important, not that I acted like a spoiled brat, which I certainly did. The reason was that just a month before my bike broke and I got my older sister’s beat-up old bike. Then my kid sister gets a brand-new one for her birthday. I was both jealous, and I thought it was so unfair. You know how kids have a real sense of justice? I did, at least. I simply bristled with a sense of injustice. My mother had no patience with me and told me she was ashamed of my behavior. I wasn’t—not at first. You know what changed my mind?”
Virgie shook her head, then watched an elderly man walking by with two dogs on leashes. She watched the dogs closely, especially the one that was a puppy.
“Well, I was in a snit for a couple of weeks until my sister couldn’t stand it anymore and offered to give me her bike. Get that, would ya. She offers to give me her bike, for God’s sake! Even worse, she says to me, ‘It makes me unhappy to see you unhappy.’ Of course I nobly refused her offer, but she’s the one who made me feel ashamed of myself. And that sweet remark she made stayed with me. I remember years later at B.U. in Boston and here in Portland seeing street people who had nothing. Everything they owned was in a couple plastic bags. We weren’t rich, but we did have most everything most kids had, and of course my parents put us all through college. So you know what I thought when I’d see street people?”
“You thought, it makes me unhappy to see you unhappy. I get it.”
“So here’s my point. You asked how helping people at a soup kitchen does any good. First, it’s good to get outside yourself at times. It gives you perspective on life. To do some good in the world instead of having a temper tantrum is also a very good thing. I know you’re a compassionate human being. You already have the most important thing it takes to help.”
Still she seemed unconvinced. “But street people are so dirty.”
“Yeah, that’s often true. A lot of them are mentally ill, you know. And others are drug addicts and alcoholics. They’re from broken homes. Many have been sexually molested when kids. They’re victims, Virgie. They’ve never had a fair chance at life. Almost nobody would choose this life if they had other choices. They deserve our compassion. And you know what else sometimes happens? Sometimes we actually save someone. They stop drinking. They stop taking drugs. They start taking medication for schizophrenia. And guess what? Underneath that dirty and smelly street person is a human being just like us.”
With a sudden motion, Virgie stopped and turned to her. Raising her arms, she said, “Okay, okay, I’ll try it once.”
Typically, she didn’t sound enthused—on the contrary her tone suggested she was being browbeaten into submission—but Donna didn’t care. She would do it. That was the first step. She checked her watch. Virgie’s bare midriff and braless top were not really appropriate garb for the soup kitchen, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it. They took two more turns around the park, during which time she explained to Virgie that the patrons were actually a varied lot and included people who were clearly not street people. Even the members of Backstairs had eaten there before while they were downtown waiting to do a gig. The soup kitchen’s policy was to welcome anyone who came, no questions asked. She told Virgie that in hopes it would make her feel relaxed, but as they made their way up the hill Virgie’s face became drawn as she became more and more nervous the closer they came to the church parish house, where in the basement the soup kitchen was located.
Down the rickety, wooden steps they went and through double doors into a hall thirty feet wide and about a hundred feet in length filled with tables and chairs. At the far end in the kitchen, separated from the rest of the room by a cafeteria-style counter, Brad Howard was filling a big coffee urn. The walls were painted a sickly shade of green that Donna had heard described as “puke green.” The panels of the hung ceiling were yellowed, and the linoleum was dingy. Pictures of old ministers and one of Jesus with long, flowing brown hair and blue northern-European eyes wer
e the only decorative touches. It was not a pleasant room and probably not a pleasant place to eat a meal. The crews of volunteers had to work hard to create a feeling of hospitality that the environs so clearly lacked.
Of the three directors, Brad was the one who excelled in hospitality, and he showed it upon being introduced to Virgie. He smiled warmly and put out his hand. He was a small man with dark hair and eyes and with a personality that took a sincere interest in anyone he met. While Donna opened cans of carrots and poured their contents into a large aluminum pot, she listened to them talking. He asked Virgie where she was from, what she did, what kind of music she liked, and similar questions of the getting-to-know-you variety. Virgie answered most of the questions guardedly except for music. That one opened her up, and she became quite talkative. She liked the earlier English rock from the Beatles and Rolling Stones in the sixties through Pink Floyd in the seventies because, she said, when she was a little girl her mother listened to those groups all the time. Brad talked about the classical music he favored, and the conversation broadened to a discussion of taste. The important point for Donna as she overheard them was that Brad had put Virgie completely at ease just as she hoped he would. Someone once told her Brad was like Will Rogers—he never met a man he didn’t like. She’d seen him lose his temper and call the cops on a drunken, disruptive patron a few times, so she knew the remark was an exaggeration. But he was the best person to be met first and made Donna think this was going to be a successful experiment. If things continued going this smoothly, Virgie might even become a regular volunteer.
Soon the other volunteers arrived, and the introductions and pleasantries exchanged went without a hitch. Virgie responded to their friendliness in kind. Sam D’Orsino was an easy-going man who liked to joke around, and Sarah and Jeremy Donahue were pleasant people. They were members of a church group of four that always came together. That the other married couple had had a death in the family was the reason Donna knew Virgie’s help would be needed.
There was no time to waste, however, and everybody got to work. The meatloaf baking in the oven for tonight’s meal was made earlier in the day by a different group of volunteers, but the vegetables Donna had already started, the mashed potatoes and gravy, and the dessert of cookies and fruit cocktail had to be prepared by them. Virgie and the Donahues worked at the mashed potatoes. They poured boxes of potato flakes into the water Brad had boiled, then added sticks of margarine and salt, mixing it with a giant paddle. Virgie did this mixing and called for more potato flakes until the right consistency was achieved. Sam, standing at the stove and stirring a pot of gravy from cans, said her masterful expertise settled the vexing question as to who would serve the potatoes on the line. With the meal prepared and simmering, everyone helped Jeremy spoon portions of fruit cocktail into paper bowls, place them in trays of fifteen, and put all but one tray into the refrigerator.
As five o’clock approached, Donna noticed Virgie growing tense again and knew what she was thinking. Luckily they were still shorthanded. She would be so busy she wouldn’t have time to be afraid. At five o’clock sharp Brad went over and opened the double doors, and a crowd of about fifty, most of them men, surged in. The stations were all set. Brad controlled the line. Donna served the meatloaf, Virgie the potatoes; Sarah poured a ladle of gravy over the tray; Sam did the carrots; and Jeremy dispensed the dessert. Everything went quite smoothly; even the slight delay occasioned by each time Jeremy had to go to the refrigerator for more fruit cocktail hardly caused a glitch. Sam pretended to be in a funk because a lot of people declined the carrots. He tried to cajole the patrons by saying, “Didn’t your mother tell you to eat your veggies?” and only stopped when a mean-looking guy scowled at him. Even this act of hostility didn’t seem to bother Virgie. Everybody, and especially the men, were very friendly to her because she was pretty and shapely and dressed in a way that told them she was sexually available. Donna saw them all eyeing her from afar and anxious to chat with her going through the line. “You’re new” was a common greeting. A few bolder spirits said, “Hey, beautiful, how’s it going?” To them all Virgie smiled shyly but spoke little.
Then for a long time after the line was finished Donna’s duties didn’t allow her to keep an eye on Virgie. As a senior volunteer she circulated in the dining room along with Brad, going from table to table to chat and make sure everything was all right. Sometimes she sat at a table when a problem was discovered. Tonight one street person who was diabetic was having trouble getting the right medication. His name was Paul, and he didn’t look good. His face was pale, and he was overweight in a way that showed he wasn’t controlling his condition. He seemed scared and on the verge of tears. She got Brad to come to the table, and the three of them talked for a long time, then followed the discussion with some phone calls to two social workers familiar with his case. They also left a message at the clinic that served street people and runaway kids. After Paul left Brad, who had been the one who talked to the social workers, told Donna their efforts might have been in vain. Paul’s condition was mainly caused by his own behavior. He missed appointments and didn’t take his insulin with any regularity, possibly because of his psychological need to see his condition as something imposed upon him externally. He seemed to think it was a punishment for something he had done.
During the time they were dealing with Paul, Donna occasionally caught sight of Virgie doing dishes and cleaning up in the kitchen. But the next time she looked in Virgie’s direction she saw Tim Longo talking to her. He was a smooth-tongued con artist who worked on a commercial fishing boat out of the port of Portland and often ate at the soup kitchen by taking advantage of their no-questions-asked policy. She was quite sure he was a drug dealer and even suspected the fishing boat he went to sea in was used to ferry drugs from international drug dealers. These were the rumors she had heard from many of the patrons, at any rate. If he was a dealer, he was small-time, probably getting small amounts of the contraband as a reward for keeping his mouth shut. The apprehension she felt for Virgie’s sake concerned the other part of his reputation, the one she could confirm from personal observation. He was a Lothario and a slippery customer who could sweet-talk his way into a nun’s bed. He was incredibly good-looking in a dark, Italian way, tall and muscular, which was the reason his tongue could do its work. Donna thought he could be poison to Virgie in her fragile and vulnerable state. But with latecomers arriving and tables needing to be cleaned off as well as a couple other patrons needing to talk to her, it was some time before she could get back to Virgie.
When she did, it was Virgie who came up to her.
“I saw you talking with Tim Longo. He’s a slippery customer, I can tell you. The last time he told the truth was when he was in kindergarten. He regards himself as a lady’s man, and with those good looks he does get his way. I’m also pretty sure he’s also mixed up with drugs.”
She could see her words passed right over Virgie’s head. The only acknowledgment that she had heard them was the enigmatic smile that passed across her face as she said, “He called me the most beautiful woman in the world.”
The smile was a good sign, though. It showed she didn’t take his honey tongue seriously. With a friendly laugh she said, “Well, he told the truth that time.”
Virgie smiled again, this time pleasantly, at the compliment, but then her face grew serious. “But it’s that young kid with him, the one with the blondish hair and bad complexion.”
She followed Virgie’s eyes to the table and recognized the young man. He had bad teeth, bad skin, bad nutrition, and glassy eyes suggesting he did drugs. He had been coming to most of the meals at the soup kitchen for the past month or so. She remembered talking to him one night when he told her he had run away from home because his father was a tyrant and a businessman who never had any time for his kids or wife. He said he’d worked as a migrant laborer, doing things like pick blueberries in Maine and tomatoes in New Jersey. His name, she thought, was Leighton. She told Virgie t
hese facts.
“It’s more than that,” Virgie said. “His full name is Leighton Kim-ball.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“It might. The family in Waska with the sick boy poisoned by mercury—you know, I mean those people in Chris’s case—their name is Kimball. And you know what?”
“What?”
“He looks just like his father. Chris told me he’d found out their oldest son ran away. They think he’s in the army, but I doubt that. You have to graduate from high school to get into the army nowadays.”
“So you think he’s the son?”
“Yeah, I think so. I’m almost positive the son’s name is Leighton.”
“Did you notice he’s glassy-eyed?”
“No, why?”
“He does drugs. He’s just coming down from a high now, I’d say.”
She peered at him, then her eyes wandered to Tim Longo. Much to Donna’s displeasure they shone as she watched him walk to another table and engage two men in a conversation.
“Well, I’ll go talk to that Kimball boy and see what I can learn.”
Virgie appeared startled out of a daydream. “Oh, and I’ve got to help in the kitchen.”
Donna walked directly over to the table where Leighton was now sitting alone. “Hi, your name’s Leighton, right?”
He nodded, peering at her with distrustful eyes.
“I forgot what town you told me you’re from.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious.”
“Kennebunkport.”
“Your full name’s Leighton Kimball, isn’t it?”
From across the room Brad interrupted. “Donna, we’re going to have to clear some more tables. We have about twenty more latecomers waiting.”
“Okay,” she said, eyeing Leighton, who she could see was becoming uneasy. “I’ll be right on it in a sec.” She turned back to the young man. “So is that your name?”
“Yeah,” he said defensively.
“I ask because I know of some Kimballs from Waska, and…” She paused as she saw the recognition on his face… “and maybe you haven’t heard, but the family is in the news. A company illegally dumped mercury into the pond by their house, and the fish they ate poisoned the little boy in the family. He’s still very sick, I’ve heard.”
His cheek muscle twitched, and he looked down. “Why are you telling me this. I told you I was from Kennebunkport.”
“I thought they might be relatives.”
“Well, they ain’t.”
“Okay, enjoy the rest of your evening.”
She could see Tim Longo at another table behind him talking in a way that made her suspect a drug deal was being made. He was leaning forward and whispering to two men in their twenties dressed in dungarees and soiled T-shirts, their faces lifeworn already despite their tender years. Now, just as she was about to leave the area, he sauntered over in that king-of-the-world way he had (and with which she was intimately familiar from her life with Leon). He collected his jacket hanging on the back of a chair, glanced towards the kitchen to see if Virgie was looking (she wasn’t—she was drying dishes and talking to Sarah), and said, “Hey, Donna, that’s some fine piece of female flesh you brought with you tonight. Some fox. You make sure she comes again.”
“If she comes, it’ll be to work, not to see you.”
He puffed out his chest. “It’s impossible not to see me if I’m here,” he said so confidently and with such conviction that Donna, remembering how Virgie’s face shone awhile ago, was afraid she had made a terrible mistake.
If she had, the damage was already done. Again she remembered Virgie’s shining eyes. The only thing she could think of to remedy the situation was to try to make Chris aware of the depths of Virgie’s feelings, and yet she already knew that Chris wouldn’t listen to her.
But she couldn’t think now. She had some tables to clear off. It was her way of helping people and feeling fulfilled at the same time: humbly laboring in the vineyards widened the circle of light in the world. And if helping strangers turned out to hurt her friend? The thought poisoned the rest of the night for her, and many days to come.
Ave Atque Vale
