He was the first to arrive at Centre Street Motors. He carried his large cardboard container of coffee and his two morning papers in to his desk; he was studying the sports sections and drinking the coffee when Fritchie came in at 8:30. Fritchie had a bag of doughnuts and a container of coffee. “Jesus,” Fritchie said, looking at the wall clock above Earl’s head, “either I’m dreaming or the traffic this morning was worse’n I thought it was. What’re you doing here first?”
Earl grinned. “Ahh,” he said, “we had the big dinner yesterday afternoon, and then Penny gets it in her fool head, she’s got to take the bus up to Portland, spend couple nights with her parents. Wanted me to drive her, but I said I hadda work. I tell you, Roy, I never been so glad I hadda work in my whole life. I never met her family, and from what she tells me, I got no ambition in that line. So anyway, the big dinner, and then I sit down in the chair, and I have the glass of beer, and I watch the football games, and then the movie comes on and I make a turkey sandwich, and I have a little wine, and then I have a glass of beer. The result of which is that I fall asleep in the chair, don’t wake up until about two this morning, get in the sack and sleep till about seven. So I had, I dunno, maybe ten, eleven hours sleep. Wake up rarin’ to go.”
“See?” Fritchie said. He put the bag of doughnuts and the coffee on his desk. “Gettin’ old, just like the rest of us. Your younger days, feed like that, get up from the table rarin’ to go. Go out, spend the night chasin’ broads. Start getting a little older, best thing you can think of’s a nap, and then get ready for bed. Doughnut?”
“No thanks,” Earl said. “I must’ve stretched my gut yesterday. All I had to eat, and then I wake up this morning, it’s like I didn’t eat in a week. Ever eat, Dean’s? The buck-eighty-nine breakfast?” Fritchie shook his head. “Well,” Earl said, “it’s three eggs; stack of three either buttermilk pancakes or blueberry; sausages, bacon, or ham; home fries; toast; all the coffee you can drink.”
“Jesus,” Fritchie said, “who eats there? The paratroopers or something?”
“Truckers, mostly, I think,” Earl said. “The longhaul guys with those tandem trailers they can only pull on the pike? Have to leave them at the terminal over past the Coke plant there? Because there’s a lot of those big tractor diesels with no trailers on them, parked in Dean’s the morning.’
“Anyway,” he said, “I had two of them breakfasts. Did have to leave some of the toast, didn’t finish the second home fries, but now I really feel good. I think I’ll sell, oh, about eight cars today.”
Fritchie scowled. “One of us better,” he said. “I heard Waldo on the phone Wednesday, you’re out on the lot with that young chick? He was talking to his banker, I think. What I could get, Waldo’s ass’s growing grass, and the bank’s thinking of buying a lawn mower.”
“Jesus,” Earl said, “I hope not. I had trouble enough getting this job.”
“You oughta be in my position,” Fritchie said. “This’s all I’ve ever done. You at least had that time in the Peace Corps. That should be worth something, somewhere. And you’re single, too, which I know single guys get sick of hearing from us married guys, because I didn’t like it when I was, but the facts the matter still is: I got responsibilities. Three of them. Plus a wife that never worked. Never a day in her life. And Christmas is coming right up. What do I do, if Waldo goes under? Get fitted for the Santa suit, down the Salvation Army? Earn the money for their presents with a kettle and a bell? I’m telling you, Earl, I’m worried.”
“You got me worried now, too,” Earl said. “Jeez, and I really felt good.”
“Well,” Fritchie said, “maybe it blows over. Waldo’s pretty quick on his feet. I seen him in corners before. Always gotten his dick out the zipper, just ’fore the guy yanked it up.”
Shortly after 9:00 the young blonde in the white vinyl jacket all but pranced into the lot, followed reluctantly at a distance of about eleven feet by a short, fat woman in a threadbare black coat open at the front over a black flowered dress. She had gathered her gray hair under a yellow kerchief and she wore scuffed black shoes with bunion bulges at the first joints of her big toes. She clutched a worn black leather handbag with a tortoiseshell handle in both hands at her waist. The girl stopped at the platform and gestured animatedly at the Impala. The older woman looked at the car and tightened her lips. “Ah-hah,” Earl said to Fritchie, “do I see two fish climbing into the barrel, or what? Time to go out and start shooting,” Fritchie shook his head and smiled. “You’re just jerking off, Earl,” he said. “It’s okay if you like it, and you wash up afterwards, but it ain’t gonna make you no babies.”
Earl put his coffee aside and stood up. “That’s what you think,” he said. “What I think is different. I’ve got the hot hand today. I can feel it. Just gimme the ball and some room.” He went out into the lot.
“Well,” Earl said, as he approached the women, “good morning again, and a very nice one.” He spoke to the girl in the jacket. “Come back for another look, did you? Hope you had a nice holiday.”
The girl blushed. “I,” she said. “I didn’t want to bother you or anything. Coming back so soon. But I wanted my mother to see what I saw. So I asked her to come down.”
“Look,” Earl said, “you can’t bother us, all right? This’s what we do for a living. Someone spots a car, like this featured one here, wants to come in and ask questions? Well, why do you think we put it up there? And why do you think we’re inside? Because we hope that folks will come in, and we’re here to answer their questions. So, it’s not bother for us.” The girl smiled and the older woman said nothing, fixing her eyes on the car. “First thing, though, we should get straight: I don’t know your name.” He offered his right hand. “My name is Earl Beale.”
“Oh,” the girl said. “Well, I’m Charlene, Charlene Gaffney, and this here, Mister Beale, is my mother.” The girl took his hand and shook it.
“Nice to meet you, Charlene, but please call me Earl.” The older woman turned her gaze on him. He held out his hand toward her. “And nice to meet you, Mrs. Gaffney,” he said. “Thanks for coming down with your daughter.”
The older woman stared at him. “Arnold,” she said. “Gaffney run off, eighteen years ago. Just as well, too. He was no good.”
“Ma married again,” Charlene said to Earl. “That’s why I’m Gaffney, she’s Arnold.”
“Mister Arnold,” Earl said, “will he be dropping by?”
“Dead,” the older woman said. “Sam was a good one, too. He’d roll over in his grave, he saw us in here today.”
“Now, Ma,” Charlene said. “We’re just looking, okay? Just wanted you to see the car. Sam wouldn’t’ve minded, us doing that. Not just looking at something.”
The older woman snorted. “Huh,” she said, “yes he would. Sam knew you better’n that. When you look at something, you want to buy it, and you haven’t got any money.”
“Mrs. Arnold,” Earl said, “it’s not like I want to argue with you, and I hope you understand that. But we hear that same thing from so many people, and more times’n not they are wrong. They don’t know they’re wrong, not when they say it, but that’s what the fact is: they’re wrong. And if they will listen, what we have to say, we can generally prove it to them.”
Mrs. Arnold snickered. She nodded toward the Impala. “Mister,” she said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what that car costs and I don’t know what it’s worth. Sam would know, if he was here. So would my son, Timmy. But Sam and him, they knew the score. Sam always knew the score before he got involved in something. And one the things he taught me was that women don’t buy cars. ‘Men sell cars,’ was what he said, ‘and it takes a man to buy one. It isn’t right, I don’t say that, but that’s the way it is. A woman goes to buy a car, unless it’s from a woman, she’s gonna get taken. That’s the way it is.’ ”
Earl laughed. “Mrs. Arnold,” he said, “bear with me, all right? Let me say what I think, just listen to what I am saying. You don’t ag
ree, when I’m finished? That’s fine. All I’m asking for’s some time.”
Mrs. Arnold shrugged. “Go ahead, mister,” she said. “You can talk all that you want. But when you get finished, we still won’t’ve changed, and this girl still won’t have any money.”
“Mrs. Arnold,” Earl said, “most of the people that buy cars from us, or buy cars anywhere else—most of those people don’t have the money, least not the price of a car. Next to your house, car is your biggest purchase.”
Mrs. Arnold laughed again. “Mister,” she said, “we don’t have a house, all right? We live second floor, a three-decker over on Balsam. The winter it’s cold—landlord don’t like oil bills. Summer’s bugs—don’t like buying screens. The last time it’s painted, Sam did it himself, and Sam’s been dead for six years now—you can guess how it looks.”
“Okay,” Earl said, “your furniture, then. The stuff in your bedroom. Your TV and your stereo. Nobody buys them for cash either, you know. Nobody has that much cash.
“Now I’ve been in this business for quite a long time—I know what I’m talking about. And what I say now may surprise you: We don’t pay cash for cars either. You know how we pay for the cars you see here? We borrow the money, that’s how. And that means, well, we’re on pretty good terms, with any number of bankers. All we’re doing, we take you, well, any customer, see one of those bankers, say: ‘Look, how does this hit you? These’re honest people. We’ve got them checked out. Now basically what we want is you let them take our loan over. Let them make the payments now—their down payment wipes out ours.’ And they almost always do.”
Mrs. Arnold shook her head. “Mister,” she said, “I don’t care if you’re engaged to marry them, those bankers you talk about. This child doesn’t have a job. She’s at home with me, and there’s no one else in sight around there that has got a steady job. No banker drunk or sober’s going to lend her fifteen cents, not when we haven’t got a dime we can call our own.”
Charlene chewed her lip. “We got Timmy’s money, Ma. Timmy’s money he sends home. He isn’t gonna need it, not for a long time yet. He said that you should use it, if you needed something. We could do that, pay him back. Timmy wouldn’t mind.”
“No,” Mrs. Arnold said. “Not touching Timmy’s money. He earned that and it’s his. And we don’t need this car, young lady. Don’t need any car.”
“No, we don’t,” Charlene said. “And in the winter you either buy all our stuff at Harold’s little store, the corner, and he steals us blind, or else you take cabs to the Star and spend it all on them. When you go to the doctor, Ma, for your legs and stuff, shouldn’t have to take the bus, not in that cold weather. No, we don’t need a car at all. Well I happen, think we do. I’ll be working after June. I can pay Timmy back then. And make the payments, too.”
Mrs. Arnold laughed. “Listen to her,” she said. “Just proves she’s never worked. I was the same way myself, I first went to work. It looks like so much money. ‘I’ll do this and I’ll do that.’ And then they take your taxes out, and Social Security, and Bond-a-Month, United Fund. And then you pay the rent.
“Don’t get me wrong, mister,” she said. “I had a good job, when I had one, and I worked hard at it, back when I still could. I worked at the post office. It was hard work, mopping those floors, people’s dirty feet. Polishing the brass on the letter drops and tables, but at least the pay was good. Then my back and legs give out, and I hadda quit. Four years shy of a full pension. Got turned down for disability, which I never understood—how’d they think I got so sore, if it wasn’t from my work? They think I work days in construction? Fell off of a roof or something? I said that to them, did they think that? They said no. But it didn’t make no difference, and I got nine more years to wait until I start getting retirement—some retirement at least. And even that, it still looked like, well, maybe we could make it. Mister Arnold was a good man. They liked him where he worked. And when he first got sick, well, they took good care of us. But then he got pneumonia one day, and next thing we know, he’s dead. And that was when I found out how come he did so good when he was sick: he never changed his plan over, the two of us got married. Just left it like it always was, when he was all alone. So when he went to meet his Maker, there was nothing left for us.
“Now this child here,” she said to Earl, nodding toward Charlene, “this child here’s got big ideas, and big eyes to go with them. Charlene’s a good girl. No better in the world.” Charlene blushed and lowered her eyes. “But this child hasn’t got no sense, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve told her and I’ve told her: ‘Charlene, get your education. Get yourself the diploma. Then go on some other school. I know you’re impatient,’ and I really do, I know, and I really understand, ‘and you want to start out living, having fun and taking trips. But you got to put those things off awhile. The clothes, the cars, the boys, the fun: just grit your teeth and do it. And if you do, you will see, you won’t be in my position and you will be able to.’ Well,” Mrs. Arnold said, “she don’t want to listen. And I don’t blame her any—I didn’t listen either. And look where I am now.”
“You’re in school, Charlene?” Earl said.
She raised her eyes and nodded, chewing on her lower lip.
“Where do you go?” he said.
“Bunker Hill Community,” she said. “I’m taking secretarial. I’m in my second year. It’s just a two-year course. An associate’s thing there.”
“Are you good at it?” Earl said.
She shrugged and looked away from him. She looked down at the ground and scuffed the pavement with the toe of her boot. “Pretty good, I guess,” she said. “Ma says I could be better, if I’d put my mind to it. And she is probably right. But I do pretty good, I guess. Sixty words a minute, shorthand—I was only forty last year. And almost seventy in typing. I guess I’m getting there.”
Mrs. Arnold’s expression combined pride and disappointment. “That’s what’s so hard to take,” she said to Earl. “If Charlene really works hard, she does real good. But then it seems like she gets bored, and she don’t do her work. Like she’s got too much time on her hands, so she don’t use none of it. She never really studies. Not the way she should. Listens to the radio, talks to all her friends, the phone. I bet she says ‘Three hours’ that she just spent studying, I bet she didn’t spend a half one, working on her books. The rest was the music, talking to her girlfriends about boyfriends, the boys about the girls. She put her mind to it, like she should, this’d be just the beginning. If she kept at it, and really worked hard, she’d become a real legal. Work in one of them big law firms.”
“They make good money, I know,” Earl said. “My brother’s a lawyer, used to have his own practice. Remember hearing him say that. Good legal secretary makes real good money. It’s worth thinking about, Charlene.”
“Oh, she’s just like her brother was. Timmy. I kept after that boy, day and night. I said: ‘Now don’t stop with high school. Try out for a scholarship, something. Don’t be in such a big hurry, finish your schooling and quit. Make something big, out of yourself. Get ready to have a career.’ ” Mrs. Arnold sighed. “He wouldn’t listen. The minute he saw he was going to graduate high school, boom, signed up the marines. Like it was a big thing, you know, he got to wear his dress blues when he goes up for his diploma. He looked real nice, sure, but what’s it all lead to? Nothing. Then more nothing after that.
“I can’t understand it,” she said. “I can’t understand my own kids. If somebody’d said to me, when I was a girl over Saint Gregory’s, all them years ago, if they had just said: ‘Well, Florence, now what you should do, when you finish here, you should go to college, you know.’ And without it costing no money? I would’ve jumped at the chance. But nobody said that to me. They didn’t have that kind of college then, where poor kids with no money could go. So I got married, right out of high school, and look what happened to me.”
“Oh, Ma,” Charlene said, “Bunker Hill, all’s they give you’s that
associate diploma. It’s more like it’s just, you know, two more years of high school. It’s not like a real college thing. Timmy knew that, just as good as I do. But he was a boy, and he didn’t have to, and I am a girl, so I do.”
“Don’t you tell me that, Charlene,” Mrs. Arnold said fiercely. “I know the name of that place, and I been there. It’s Bunker Hill Community College, and that means you’re in college now.”
“How do you get there?” Earl said.
Charlene snickered. “Same way we get anywhere, when we go anywhere. Down La Grange and wait for the bus. Four blocks and the thing never comes, so it’s really fun in the winter. Take the bus down to Forest Hills Station. Get on the trolley car there. Take the subway into Park Street, change over for Charlestown. It takes me, it’s taken me over three hours, the weather’s real bad or it’s broken. And even when the weather’s good, and things’re running right, it still takes way over an hour. And that’s just after the bus comes. Sometimes that takes another thirty, forty minutes.”
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