by P. E. Ryan
Garth gazed at the display, admiring how professional it looked. A moment later, he nearly jumped, startled as Mike’s voice boomed across the parking lot.
“Please help us fight this horrible disease!”
He was standing beside the table, standing more erect than usual with a pamphlet held out before him. There were people approaching: women, mostly, some of them alone and some with children in tow.
“It’s a very serious disease, with very serious consequences, affecting children just like yours and mine, friends!” Mike hollered. It was a particular way of hollering: loud, but not angry; emotional, but not accusatory. Garth thought he sounded like a preacher or a TV evangelist.
“Ma’am,” Mike said in a voice toned down a few notches, “just a minute of your time?”
“No, thank you,” the woman said, and carried on into the store.
“Miss?” Mike asked, extending the pamphlet toward another woman. “We’re not asking for more than you’d pay for a can of soda. Meninosis is a terrible disease—but it doesn’t have to be.”
She slowed down, eyeing the banner.
“Even as children suffer, there’s work going on for a cure. Every day—and every dollar—brings us closer to it.”
She accepted the pamphlet, but instead of reading it, she opened her purse and took several dollars from her wallet. As she dropped them into the fishbowl, Mike thanked her and god-blessed her, and she smiled and thanked him.
A man behind her was already digging into his pocket. His coins disappeared among the bills.
Mike glanced over his shoulder at Garth. “You want to help out a little, here?”
Garth looked at the money in the fishbowl. He looked at a couple crossing the parking lot, having just gotten out of their minivan. At a woman holding a baby and slowing down as she passed the table. At Mike, whose head was cocked in his direction expectantly.
“Meninosis kills!” he heard himself shout.
“Easy,” Mike instructed out of the side of his mouth.
“Meninosis is a serious disease!” he hollered at a somewhat lower volume.
“Better,” Mike muttered.
“We need your generous support to fight the good fight!” Where had that come from?
But Mike was nodding his head, even as he held out another pamphlet toward an approaching shopper. “And don’t forget the emotion.”
For a moment, Garth didn’t know what he meant. Then it dawned on him. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and let his face deflate into what he hoped was a mask of sadness. “Please, folks! We can cure meninosis, but we need your help!”
“Hello, miss,” Mike said, and then stood patiently as the woman examined the pamphlet he’d handed her.
“This is terrible,” she said.
“It is,” Mike confirmed.
“I’ve never even heard of this disease.”
“That’s part of the problem: public awareness. Even if people can’t contribute financially today, at least they’ll be made aware. That’s the first step.”
“It’s terrible,” the woman said again.
Garth’s eyes widened as he watched her push a ten-dollar bill into the fishbowl. Mike thanked the woman profusely.
And so it went. At least half the people heading into the store ignored them, but the other half stopped to investigate and eventually contributed or simply dropped a dollar or two into the bowl as they passed without engaging either one of them. Some of the ones who’d ignored them going in, Garth noticed, had apparently reconsidered while they were shopping (or maybe they’d just needed to get change), because when they emerged they pushed their carts deliberately up to the table, money already clutched in their hands and bound for the fishbowl. The Tootsie Pops turned out to be a stroke of genius (Mike, no doubt, already knew this), because even if the parent had no intention of acknowledging the pamphlets and the banner and the charity workers, the child took notice of the plate of lollipops, and went for it. And once the lollipop was in the child’s hand, the wrapper already torn halfway off, the parent seemed successfully guilted into contributing something to the cause. It was almost as if they were doing nothing more than selling lollipops, only nobody would pay five dollars for a lollipop, and some of the parents—once Mike had gotten hold of them and said a few words—did just that.
One very old man dressed in a suit and a bolo tie, his ancient wife on his arm, shuffled to a stop before the table and examined the display. “That your boy?” he asked Mike, squinting at Garth.”
“He is,” Mike lied.
“He’s doing a good thing, a very unselfish thing. That’s a good boy.”
The old woman let go of her husband’s arm and stepped over to Garth. To his horror, she reached up and took hold of one of his cheeks, pinching it. “So handsome,” she said. “I could gobble you up.”
“So,” Mike chimed in, “about meninosis—”
“You don’t need to tell me,” the old man said. “I know all about it. It’s dreadful. But they will find a cure, I’m sure of it. Now, listen.” He held up a withered index finger. “You take this and put it toward the cause.” With his other hand, he took his wallet from inside his suit coat and extracted a fifty-dollar bill.
Garth’s jaw dropped. The old woman thought that was just charming, and pinched his cheek again.
Mike took the bill, deposited it in the fishbowl, and gave the old man a gentle hug as he thanked him.
They spent a total of three hours in front of the grocery store, then relocated to the grand opening of an appliance store a mile away, where the balding, potbellied owner seemed more than happy to have them set up in his parking lot beneath the streamers of flags and balloons. The results were the same. Some people ignored them deliberately as if they were nothing more than a nuisance; some dropped a single dollar bill into the bowl, or two or three bills folded together, and a few people—deeply moved, they claimed, by this charitable effort because members of their own families were suffering from similar illnesses—happily handed over ten-dollar bills. And, as it had been at the grocery store, almost any time a lollipop was usurped by a child, the parent shelled out for it.
Only one man gave them trouble: a local doctor who was surprised that he’d never heard of meninosis in all his years of practice and asked a few specific questions.
Garth was at a loss. He had nothing to say about meninosis other than what he’d read in the pamphlet; he swallowed nervously, made the saddest face he could, and spouted, “It’s a potentially fatal disease that deforms organs and feet!”
The doctor didn’t seemed to be moved. He turned to Mike and asked, “Where’s your organization based?”
“California.”
“Is there a web site?”
“There is: yourchildandmeninosis.com. Only, it isn’t up and running yet. Part of the funds we’re raising today will go to the completion and maintenance of the site.”
“Huh,” the doctor said, sounding skeptical. “Well, I’m a bit befuddled, because one would reasonably assume I’d have come across this disease—at least in a textbook. Do you know anyone who personally has it?”
“Yes,” Mike said, lowering his voice, “I do.” He glanced at Garth. Was he talking about him? Is that why Garth was supposed to look so sad? Because he had meninosis? Acting sad was one thing, but acting sick—even for charity work—seemed a little extreme.
He gave a little cough (having no idea whether or not meninosis affected the lungs). The doctor walked over to him. He placed both hands on Garth’s shoulders and looked him dead in the eye. “Son,” he said, “if you really think you’ve contracted something—this ‘meninosis,’ or anything else—you should come see me.” He let go of Garth and reached for his wallet. Instead of money, he handed Garth one of his business cards.
Garth glanced at Mike, who gave him a nod both sincere and severe. “Okay,” Garth said, taking the card. “Thank you.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of this, PDQ,” the doctor said, then glanc
ed one last time at Mike before walking into the appliance store.
“I think we’re done in Hopewell for a while,” Mike said. “What do you say we grab a late lunch, then hit Petersburg?”
The day felt foreign, even cinematic. It was as if Garth had watched it happening to someone else rather than to him. Over dinner that night, his mom talked for a while about a particular partner at the law firm who’d been, as she put it, “a pain in the you-know-what” all afternoon because she couldn’t get his Excel spreadsheet to print right. “Is it my fault the person who sent it to him didn’t bother to set the print area?” she asked. “Is it my fault he won’t pay for me to take an Excel training class?”
“It’s not,” Mike said.
“Anyway, enough about that. I hate complainers. How did you men occupy your time today?”
Garth glanced across the table at Mike.
Without batting an eye, Mike said, “In an educational way, actually. We toured the Museum of the Confederacy.”
“Really? That doesn’t sound too much up Garth’s alley.”
“I think he was more fascinated with it than I was—not that I didn’t find it fascinating. You weren’t bored, were you, Garth?”
“It was pretty interesting,” Garth said, barely recognizing the sound of his own voice.
Mike took it a step further. “Sonja, did you know they have the saw they used to take off Stonewall Jackson’s arm?”
“Ugh,” she said. “I’m sorry I asked.”
Mike grinned and offered a slight shrug, then resumed eating.
After dinner, Garth retreated to his room, turned on his computer, and opened the Wikipedia home page. Suspecting what he was about to find out, he typed meninosis into the search box.
Nothing.
He switched over to Google and tried the word there. Same result, except that Google asked if he’d really meant to type men in noses.
How surprised was he, really? He’d been a little suspicious from the start, but had believed enough in Mike, so had put those suspicions aside in order to get through the day. Which says as much about me as it does about Mike, he thought.
He clicked away from the site, shoved up from his desk, and turned to see Hutch sitting in the doorway to his room, tail wagging and one of his ratty tennis balls in his mouth.
“Sure,” Garth said. “I could use a little distraction.”
The sun was nearly down and the streetlights were starting to come on. He stood in the backyard and threw the ball for Hutch over and over again, replaying the day in his head.
After a while, Mike came out and stood next to him. He slipped his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels.
“You feel set for day two?”
Garth threw the ball again and, without looking over, said, “You’re a pretty good liar.”
“Whoa. That’s either an insult or a compliment. You’re talking about the Museum of the Confederacy thing?”
“Um, that and the fact that meninosis doesn’t exist?”
“It exists,” Mike said. “As a concept. As a…means.”
“That doctor knew.”
“Yeah, that was a little sticky. But other than that, the day went pretty well, don’t you think? I didn’t count it up, but we must have pulled in about five times one of your paychecks.”
Hutch brought the ball back. It was filthy and damp with spit. Garth tossed it again. “And how do we get the money to the charity?”
He’d raised his voice a notch with the question, and Mike shushed him and glanced back at the house. “Come on. Cut me a little slack here.”
“FedEx?”
“No.”
“PayPal?”
“No. There is no charity, and I think you’ve figured that out by now.”
“I know. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“Well, if I’d told you that right off the bat, would you have gone along?”
Garth didn’t answer—in part because he wasn’t entirely sure the answer would be no.
“Let me remind you of the reason we’re doing this,” Mike said. “You and your college fund. If we do this for a little while and get it into the bank, it’ll only be easier on your mom when it comes time to write out the tuition checks.”
“It’s illegal.”
“Not really. When you get into the technicalities of it, no one who gave us money asked for solid proof, no one asked for a receipt, everyone who gave did so of their own free will.”
Hutch was worn out, at last. With the ball in his mouth, he walked a slow circle and then lay down in the middle of the yard, panting. Garth turned and looked at Mike for the first time since he’d come outside. “Right.”
“Okay, okay,” Mike said, shrugging his shoulders, “technically it’s illegal, but it’s a victimless crime. Think about it. When people give money, they get a warm fuzzy feeling, like they’ve done their good deed for the day. They feel better about themselves.”
“That old man gave you fifty bucks!” Garth hissed.
“People only give what they can comfortably afford, so the amount is always relative. That man’s going to go to bed tonight feeling fifty dollars better about himself. See what I mean? Everybody wins.”
“Why did he say he knew about the disease if it doesn’t even exist?”
“Because he’s a know-it-all. And the best kind of know-it-all is a generous one. Listen, you’re not going to get all ethical on me, are you? We’re not picking anyone’s pockets; they’re giving us the money. We’re helping out your mom, and your future.”
“I know. I get it. I just don’t like the idea of being a ‘cause.’”
“We’ve all got needs.” Mike leaned sideways, nudging Garth with his elbow. “And admit it: you got into it after a while, didn’t you? Felt a little rush?”
Of course, Mike was right; Garth had enjoyed watching money fill the bowl, and after a while he’d even enjoyed the attention he was getting.
His brain slide-showed from the “charity” business to oily Mr. Peterson and the rodent parade. He weighed one against the other.
No contest, if you took ethics out of the equation.
Correction: no contest if you took guilt out of the equation.
Addendum: no contest…if you were never caught.
“What about Mom?”
“Like we talked about before, this has got to be our secret,” Mike told him. “That’s the only way it’ll work. You get that, right? She’d be totally against the idea.”
Garth agreed. In fact, his mom would be mortified if she found out what they were doing, even if—or because—it was all for their benefit.
“I hate to put it so bluntly, but we’ll just have to invent a daily roster of fake activities for a little while. And we can’t give her the money piecemeal because she’d ask where it was coming from. We’ll have to…amass it…and then give it to her all at once. We’ll say we bought a lottery ticket and got lucky.”
Garth played out the scenario in his head. “It’s a whole nother lie,” he said.
“I know. I really do. But sometimes you have to lie to a person in order to help them.”
“Which is why you lied to me?”
“Exactly. Does that make sense?”
It did and it didn’t. He clapped his hands together to rouse Hutch, and the dog lumbered toward them.
“Desperate times,” Mike said, “desperate measures.”
The next day they worked Colonial Heights, two different locations, and filled the fishbowl two more times. Garth felt embarrassed one minute, justified the next. Late in the day, he caught himself vying for a person’s attention before Mike could, and felt proud when he succeeded.
During the drive home, Mike said, “You did a good job today, by the way.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“I’m going to have to come up with something else, though. I can only say the word meninosis so many times and keep a straight face, you know?”
Actually, Garth thought, you
could probably say it a billion times, if it brought in a dollar every time you said it.
And so could I.
Meninosis, meninosis, meninosis.
Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.
That evening, Mike made up another story about where they’d been (this one involving the Edgar Allan Poe Museum and the Confederate White House), and rattled it off over dinner, peppering in details he’d no doubt gotten out of a guidebook.
Garth retreated to his room as soon as the meal was over, feeling exhausted but exhilarated. And, yes, guilty about having gone along with the lies to his mom.
And yet, he reminded himself as he sat down at his desk, she’s the one who’s asked me to live a lie.
He stared at the HMS Victory, its plastic hull, its starchy trapezoids of cloth that would comprise the sails, once the ship was completed.
Don’t be an idiot. One lie has nothing to do with the other, and one doesn’t justify the other.
Does it?
As if answering this question, an odd buzzing sound emerged from the Victory’s hull. The entire ship vibrated—but just slightly. He leaned forward and peered into the opening where two of the deck panels had yet to be glued into place.
A cell phone lay inside.
He saw the caller’s number flashing on the little screen. It was their number.
Carefully, he extracted the phone, opened it, and said, “Hello?”
“Just a friendly reminder,” Mike said. “You have a call to make, right?”
8
Two days later, at Bone Sweet Bone, Garth told Lisa about finally getting up his nerve to make the call and how Adam was coming over that Thursday to watch the movie. He thought she was going to be happy for him, and she was—for about two seconds. Then he made the mistake of telling her how Mike had prompted him to finally make the call.
“Wait—I don’t get it,” Lisa said. She was trying to coax Earl, a twelve-year-old whippet, to chase after the squeak toy she’d just bounced across the floor.
