Pay It Forward

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Well, that’s my job today,” Frank said. “To show the three of you around, get you safely back to your hotel, and then I’ll be back to get you tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp. We’ll take a little tour of the White House until it’s time for your appointment with the president.”

  “What do we see first?” Trevor said. He and Frank seemed to have formed an instantaneous bond, cutting Reuben and Arlene out of the loop. Which was as it should be, Reuben felt, because this was Trevor’s day. “What all do you want to see?”

  “The Washington Monument, the Library of Congress, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian…”

  “We might not get to all those today,” Frank said. “But there’s tomorrow afternoon. What’s first?”

  “The Vietnam Memorial.”

  Reuben flinched unexpectedly at the mention of the name.

  WALKING DOWN THE MALL, approaching the Vietnam Memorial, Frank dropped back and addressed Reuben by name.

  “I understand you’re a vet.”

  “I am.”

  “I’m not going to give the usual tour guide spiel. I’ve noticed that vets don’t always like that. You probably know a lot I don’t. You might want a moment to view this by yourself.”

  Reuben swallowed past a tight knot in his throat. Until Frank reminded him, he’d avoided focusing on the depths of his own discomfort.

  Trevor said, “We’ll wait back here for you a minute, Reuben, and Frank can give me the tour guide spiel. I wasn’t there.”

  Frank’s polite laughter echoed in his ears as he walked toward the Wall. The sound of his own footsteps seemed to reverberate, bigger than life. Seven weeks in Vietnam. Then a week to stabilize in a medical installation and a quick flight to a stateside hospital. The men with names carved into this black granite had known something about the war. Reuben knew only what he saw in the mirror every morning. Maybe, he thought, that was enough.

  He studied the index for a time, looking for a specific name. Then he moved along the wall until he found the correct panel, reflecting a time late in the war, and ran his fingers across the names until he found Artie. It jolted him slightly to see it, the reality of it, a recurrent nightmare suddenly become provably real. He reached up and traced the letters with his fingers.

  A minute or an hour later he felt Trevor at his right side. In that sudden moment of the child’s presence Reuben knew that his wounded pride was harming Trevor as much as or more than Arlene, and causing Reuben to sacrifice far too much in its name.

  “Reuben, did you know how many names there are here?”

  “About fifty-eight thousand, I think.” It felt strange to talk, and he realized he hadn’t for quite a while.

  “Fifty-eight thousand, one hundred and eighty-three. Who’s Arthur B. Levin?”

  “An old buddy of mine.”

  Arlene’s voice startled him from behind. “Trevor, maybe Reuben wants to be by himself.”

  “No, it’s okay Arlene, really.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about Arthur Levin.”

  “No, it’s okay. He was just someone I got to know in basic training. Artie was the guy voted most likely to screw something up.” He wasn’t sure if he was telling this to Trevor, or Arlene, or both. “First time Artie pulled the pin on a grenade his hands were shaking so much he dropped the grenade. Into high grass. Stood there digging around like he could find it to throw it. I knew he’d never get it in time. He was going to blow himself away. So I ran in and grabbed him, tried to get him to clear the area. Too late, though.”

  “He died?” The quiet voice of Trevor.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you get hurt, Reuben?”

  “Can’t you tell?” A silence. “I didn’t even know him that well. Just better than anyone else there. He was the only person on the continent who wasn’t a total stranger.” He felt Arlene’s arms circle his waist from behind. “Sometimes I look in the mirror and think, What if I had just run? Just saved myself. Artie would be just as dead. And I’d still look like the man in the picture. Just a little older.” But looking at the Wall, he had to wonder. What if it hadn’t happened and he hadn’t been sent home? Would he be a name carved in granite now?

  Arlene’s breath tickled his ear. “That’s not the kind of guy you are. Besides, you’d always wonder. If you could’ve helped.”

  “Whereas this way I know I couldn’t. Trevor? Go talk to Frank for a minute.”

  “Okay, Reuben.”

  Reuben turned and held Arlene. Neither said anything for a few minutes.

  He took a big breath. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Arlene. I’m the kind of person, when I finally let myself love someone, it just goes so deep. You know what I mean? I know you do. I know because you’re the same way. So I was thinking. Maybe I can understand that loyalty you felt.”

  “What do you mean?” From the sound of her voice he figured she knew but couldn’t quite believe he meant it.

  “What happened with Ricky. Maybe I should feel lucky to have a woman like that. Because, years from now, when we have that same kind of history, I know I’d get the same level of loyalty from you.”

  “You saying what I think you’re saying?”

  He placed the little velvet box in her hand. “Look what I just happen to have here.”

  She sucked in a breath, shaky with tears that would show in a minute. “You never took it back for a refund.”

  “Funny, isn’t it, how I never did that?”

  BY THE TIME THEY ARRIVED back at the hotel, Trevor was so fast asleep that Reuben had to haul him in a fireman’s carry up to their room. That is, to Trevor and Arlene’s room. His own room was just across the hall. He wanted to ask her across the hall with him, but it didn’t seem right to leave Trevor alone.

  They kissed good night for a long time, and Reuben said they’d have plenty of time, the rest of their lives, to be together. Arlene smiled and said nothing, seeming nervous or sad or both.

  In the morning, Trevor came over and said she was sick and throwing up over there, but when Reuben expressed concern, Trevor said it happened all the time.

  “It’s just stress,” he said. “She just gets nervous.”

  Reuben could certainly relate to nervousness.

  THEY STOOD ANXIOUSLY on the red carpet of the main hall. The Cross Hall, Trevor called it, staring up at the presidential seal. Reuben thought they faced the front of the building and Pennsylvania Avenue, but Trevor was quick to point out that Reuben was indicating the south portico, facing the Washington Monument. Reuben had given up on getting his bearings. At one end of the hall, the East Room buzzed with press setting up cameras, and Secret Service, and White House staff. Frank asked Trevor if he was nervous, and Trevor said no, an obvious lie.

  The president walked in almost unnoticed, surrounded by Secret Service agents and his press secretary. They just seemed like any other group on first glance. Reuben wondered why he had expected some kind of fanfare.

  A moment later the man himself spun off from the group and walked directly to Trevor, looking natural and friendly and unintimidating somehow. He shook Trevor’s hand.

  “You must be Trevor. Frank treating you okay?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Trevor said, seemingly unfazed. “Sir. I mean, Mr. President Clinton, sir.”

  Mr. President Clinton smiled and said Trevor could call him Bill. Trevor turned and shot a look at his mother.

  “The press is still setting up, so this’ll take a minute. Everybody wants to get this on the news, Trevor.”

  “Okay by me, Bill, sir.”

  “So, what have you gotten to see?”

  “Everything.”

  “What did you like best?”

  “The cherry blossoms. No, wait. The Vietnam Memorial. That was the best because my mom and Reuben got engaged.”

  “Really?” he said, his smiling eyes coming up to take them in. Reuben felt tongue-tied and wished he could handle himself as smoothly and easily as Tr
evor did. “Well, congratulations.”

  “Tomorrow’s my birthday,” Trevor added. “Boy, is it ever gonna be a good one.”

  “Well, you’ve just got all kinds of things to celebrate.”

  “No kidding.”

  A man arrived at Clinton’s elbow. “Mr. President, we’re ready to get under way.”

  CAMERAS ROLLED, FILLING THE EAST ROOM and filming them with the Cross Hall as backdrop. The president stood beside them, behind a podium, and shook Trevor’s hand.

  Reuben tried to look natural, but the lights made him want to squint and blink, and between that and his nerves, the whole scene looked and felt surrealistic.

  “I’m honored to meet you, Trevor,” the president said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Trevor said. “I mean, I’m honored, too. I was so happy when you won the election.”

  “Why, thank you, Trevor.”

  “I didn’t think you had a prayer.”

  Reuben’s jaw tightened. In his peripheral vision he saw Arlene’s face go suddenly white.

  The president threw his head back and laughed, a big, friendly, genuine laugh. Little lines around his eyes crinkled with amusement. A light stir passed through the press corps.

  “Well, Trevor, I guess we’re both a good example of what happens when you don’t give up on your dreams.”

  “Yes, sir, Bill, sir. I guess so.”

  Trevor was presented with a small plaque. Reuben couldn’t read it from where he stood. He felt himself sweating profusely but didn’t want to wipe his forehead on camera. Sweat ran into his eye and stung. He heard about one out of every three of the president’s words. Something about one person being able to make a difference, and a reference to a child’s ability to lead us.

  Reuben felt shocked and unprepared when the attention turned to him. He shook Clinton’s hand, knowing his palm felt clammy. He nodded humbly when the president said that children were the future and teachers like him shaped that future. He remembered using the word “sir” a lot and didn’t remember much else.

  Trevor beamed up at Reuben like this was a birthday party, all fun and no tension, and though it was hardly the moment for the thought, Reuben realized he hadn’t known that tomorrow was Trevor’s birthday. Why hadn’t he known? He would have to buy the boy something.

  BY THE TIME REUBEN HAD RELAXED enough to be fully pressent, the visit was over and Frank was driving them back to their hotel.

  “That was so incredibly cool,” Trevor said.

  Reuben felt sorry to have missed it. He consoled himself to know that it would be on the news and his mother would tape it. Maybe he could slow it down and get a better view.

  “This has been the best, most incredible day,” Trevor said. “Do you think there’ll ever be a day this good again, Reuben? Or do you just get one of these? I mean, my birthday tomorrow, and meeting the president, and you and Mom getting married. You think I’ll ever have another day like this one, Reuben?”

  Reuben couldn’t answer, because in truth, it seemed unlikely. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Trevor he might have hit the peak day of his life just before his fourteenth birthday.

  Trevor couldn’t allow the silence to stand.

  “You know this means I only got one more to do.”

  “One more what?” Arlene asked.

  “One more person to help. I got Mrs. Greenberg, and now you two. That only leaves me one more.”

  “You’ve done plenty, Trevor. Hasn’t he, Reuben?”

  Reuben was still busy wondering if Trevor would ever match this day. “I think you can be proud of what you’ve already done, Trevor.”

  “Maybe. But I’ll do one more. Somebody else’ll need something. Right?”

  Reuben and Arlene and Frank all had to agree that it seemed like a reasonably safe bet. Someone always needs something.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  GORDIE

  To Gordie, Sandy was a bear of a man. A sweet bear. From a wolf to a bear, he thought. In one easy lesson.

  Nothing angry or dangerous. Not that kind of a bear. Just big and husky, a somewhat shaggy, unrefined appearance that overpowered his conservative dress. He’d met Sandy on the Capitol Mall. Sandy was almost forty-two, which gave him a quarter of a century on Gordie, but that didn’t matter much, if at all.

  Sandy said Gordie was beautiful.

  Gordie looked in the mirror sometimes, in the evening before bed. With the door to his room locked. Standing naked in front of the full-length reflection. He appeared wispy and thin to himself, something the wind could carry away. But in another respect, Sandy was right.

  Gordie wondered why he had never been given credit for beauty before. Why no one else’s eyes had stretched to that truth.

  Sandy did not hit, and because he weighed well over two hundred pounds, no one else felt inclined to hit Gordie while Sandy stood close by.

  Come live with me, Sandy had said, and Gordie agreed.

  He brought no clothing, so his mother and Ralph would not see immediately that he had left for good. Sandy said he would buy more clothes for him later, nice things, and he did.

  Sandy gave Gordie another present, a high-quality fake driver’s license, making him twenty-one overnight. Sandy frequented upscale bars and key clubs, wearing suits with pilled sweaters for a vest underneath. He wanted Gordie on his arm. He liked to see Gordie dress extravagantly, femininely. The knowledge that Gordie was male underneath his lipstick and silk only added to Sandy’s appreciation for him.

  It was almost like coming home.

  On Saturday nights, Sandy took him dancing. They danced slow and close to a live band, and Gordie had only to follow, which relieved him, because he had been tired. All he really wanted for the time was to follow.

  This Saturday, May Day, as Sandy called it, they danced at a bar and grill with an overwhelmingly gay clientele. A uniformed security guard in blue and gray stood at the door and nodded respectfully as he came through on Sandy’s arm. The guard didn’t have a gun, as far as Gordie could see, but he made a statement by virtue of his presence.

  Gordie decided the guard was probably straight. Maybe he didn’t even like or approve of the men he protected, in the most personal sense. But if that was true, he was careful not to show it. Men like Sandy paid his salary, in a roundabout way, and sometimes tipped him on their way out the door. So he appeared to view the male clientele as his professionalism dictated he should. As things of value, to remain unmolested at any cost.

  Gordie smiled shyly as he slipped by.

  SANDY BOUGHT HIM A STEAK DINNER, and Gordie chewed carefully and watched the men dancing. Halfway through the meal they were joined by Alex and Jay, friends of Sandy’s, both of whom worked as congressional pages. Neither cared to eat; both felt they weighed far too much already.

  “Gordie doesn’t have to worry,” Alex said, lightly pinching Gordie’s waist. Gordie smiled at Sandy because he liked Sandy just the way he was. Not fat, but big, overwhelmingly big, and Gordie didn’t mind being overwhelmed by someone gentle.

  Gordie remained silent, unsure of his ability to join the conversation.

  “How the hell do you sneak him in here, Sand?” Jay stage-whispered under his breath.

  “What do you mean?” Sandy replied, unfazed. “He’s twenty-one.”

  Jay sprayed a sound between his lips, a kind of hybrid between a laugh and a Bronx cheer. Then he leaned close to Gordie and whispered in his ear.

  “Youth is so attractive,” he said.

  Gordie smiled and watched Sandy buttering his roll. No way was he ever going back home now.

  From The Other Faces Behind the Movement

  I was just getting happy. I was finally happy. But then, I’m happy again now. I think everyone is happy now.

  Sandy recovered fully. A couple of cracked ribs and a concussion. We nursed each other back to health.

  I just wish the Boy had picked somebody else to help.

  But if he had, maybe I wouldn’t be here. Unless we’d
stayed home that night. But you’ll make yourself crazy with that kind of thinking. Isn’t it bad enough how many other people used to beat me up? I have to pick up where they left off?

  When people read my part of the story, I really hope they’ll understand.

  I’ll tell you as much as I can remember. It’s one of those things, though. It happened so fast. The shock sets in so fast. It played out like a dream. So I’ll just tell it like a dream.

  It happened, though.

  HE HOOKED HIS ARM THROUGH SANDY’S as they stepped out into the night. A warm spring night. Gordie turned his head to smile at the guard, but the guard wasn’t there.

  Then Gordie saw him, off to the left of the awning-covered entryway, his back pressed to the brick wall of the bar. Holding strangely still. A skin-headed young man stood close, pinning him against the brick. The guard’s chin jutted out and up, exposing the white of his throat. Gordie’s knees felt watery and warm at the flash of the blade. Long and mean and curved, bright with use and care.

  It occupied his attention until he heard the sound of Sandy’s breath. The sudden evacuation. And felt Sandy’s arm pull free as he crumpled away.

  Two men stood before Gordie in baggy, low-slung jeans and gang colors. One tapped a baseball bat against his palm. His military-short hair stuck straight up from his white scalp. One eyebrow had been scarred by a cut and had healed back together mismatched.

  “Oops,” he said quietly, his face so close that Gordie could smell tobacco on his breath. “Look what happened to your boyfriend.”

  Much to Gordie’s surprise and relief, he found the ability to detach had not abandoned him. It would be another beating, like so many before. He would watch it from a distance, and his skin and bones would heal. Or maybe this time not. But he would be elsewhere as it happened, shut down. When you don’t care anymore you deprive them of the joy of hurting you. Hard to hit somebody where they live if there’s nobody home.

  He closed his eyes, not wanting to see the bat swung.

  It hit him across his soft underbelly, doubling him. A hand around his throat brought him up straight again, and the bat folded him again.