“I gave it away, Bud.”
“You gave it all away.”
I pulled myself from the leather sofa and stood on the thick Oriental rug in the middle of the floor.
“People wonder what they’d do if they came into that kind of money. Here’s what I did. For Christmas that first year, I gave everyone at CMO a check for ten thousand dollars. That was a big hit with the staff. I tried giving a friend of mine, Raymond Mac, the same amount. I thought he might use some of it to visit his sister in Baltimore. He said, ‘What am I gonna do with this?’ and refused it.
“Millions went to CMO. Every project Aaron had ever dreamed of was funded, green-lighted, and switched on. He built a neighborhood medical center. Do you know how many people in Norwood didn’t have prescription glasses? The clinic has twenty-four-hour emergency care within walking distance for people who hadn’t seen a doctor in years.
“We founded Norwood Academy. Nothing has affected the community like that school, Bud. It’s used to teach children during the day and adults in the evenings. President Bush visited our school during his 2004 reelection campaign and recognized its impact on the community. CMO also built Norwood Community Church.”
“Did anyone suggest you were giving too much to the community? I mean you can do too much for people, right?” Bud asked.
“We offer assistance to those who prove themselves by acting responsibly, but I don’t think even you would expect people to earn the right to things like medical care, education, and a place to go to church. And about that school … Parents overwhelmingly voted for school uniforms. Students are expected to maintain a high grade-point average. Parents are expected to volunteer time as part of their tuition grant. There’s also a zero-tolerance drug and gun policy.”
“And the results?”
“Drug arrests are down 65 percent. Violent crime has fallen to its lowest levels since 1981. Compare those statistics to the Providence student-housing communities, where levels have increased every year since 1998. This is where my money went, Bud. Because of Laborers, illiterate adults are learning to read, men and women are moving up the economic ladder, and test scores are climbing higher each year.”
“Okay, so some good has come from your success, but—”
“Bud, I don’t take advantage of poor black people, or of anyone. I was staying in the hotel—something I never do—because … I needed a vacation. Yes, I’ve made millions, but most of it went to CMO.”
“I know,” he said.
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
“I’m sorry … What did you say?”
“I know. I investigated your tax records, public since you work for a nonprofit. I’ve seen your credit-card statements for the past three years too. You’re cheap, Clayton. You don’t spend any money.”
“You knew all this and still wrote that story?”
“Yeah, I did. I’m a bad boy.” He looked slightly cocky, slightly contrite. “I didn’t know about the spending before the story, but I did by the time it hit the newsstands. I had a gut feeling you were dirty, and you probably still are. I think you’re still hiding something. But the hotel thing and driving that crap Jeep—that I can clear you of.”
I was infuriated. “There is nothing I’ve done that’s underhanded or illegal. Your own investigation made that clear, but you still wrote your misleading article.”
“That’s the way the game’s played. If someone’s clean, the truth eventually comes out.”
“Months later, after lives are destroyed. Why don’t you reprint what you know to be true now and end the misery you’ve put me, and others, through?”
“Can’t do it. I’m not done asking questions.”
I walked into the kitchenette and ran cold water into the sink. It was ice cold instantly, and I tossed it up in handfuls onto my face, trying to lower my swelling rage. I shut off the water, my face dripping wet.
“Fine,” I said. You’re going to investigate me until your eyes are bloodshot. You’re going to learn more about me than you ever thought was possible, and then you’re going to clear my name,” I shouted at him, cutting the distance between us in half. “And you’re going to write it well, Bud. Because that’s what you’re being paid to do!”
I yanked my coat from the back of a chair and opened the door to leave. Bud shouted back at me from the writing lounge.
“You’re going to tell me everything I need to know. Are you prepared to do that? And if I find out you’ve lied, I’m going to write another book, an unauthorized biography. One filled with the truth.”
I turned around in the hallway and headed back inside. I refused to be pushed around. “All I have to tell is the truth. You’ll have to judge whether or not you’re satisfied with it.”
There was no official documentation of our agreed-upon terms, but we went to work anyway. Bud asked his questions, typed on his PowerBook, and filled microcassettes with the details of my life. Part interview, part deposition.
We worked on working together. It was a job both of us hated.
~ TWENTY-THREE ~
Vacation
All I ever wanted
Vacation
Had to get away
Vacation
Meant to be spent alone.
—The Go-Go’s
“Vacation”
Winter term ended on May 26, exactly a year to the day after our high-school graduation. Mitch and I planned to stay in our apartment through the summer. The girls resigned from dorm living and leased their own apartment. The first Saturday in June, with help from Howard and Angela Cameron, Mitch, and me, they moved into their new living space.
“I asked Erin to marry me,” Mitchell said as we lifted Erin’s heavy hope chest and waddled it into the girls’ apartment in Meadowbrook.
“I’d heard something about it,” I said. “Have you set a date?”
“Next June, we think. I declared my major, too—business management. I’ll either get my degree in accounting or general business. Thanks to summer school, by fall next year, I’ll be a senior.”
All the changes I’d undergone in my first year at Providence paled in comparison to what was going on with Mitch.
Erin would finish school in December. Jenny had decided not to pursue the internship, instead taking a paid student-director position in Dr. Holland’s program.
And then there was me.
I was restless but didn’t know it yet. My summer plans were simple. I doubled my shifts at City Club, since my savings had dwindled to less than eleven thousand dollars. My summer of ’86 proved to be about Jenny, City Club, and hanging out with Brian Aspen and Reggie Mohler watching the Cincinnati Reds. There was just enough “good” in my life for everything to seem perfect. What I didn’t see—what none of us saw—were the icebergs floating off in the distance, hiding beneath the surface.
Jenny didn’t come to Providence to fall in love, or to find her future husband. But I knew she thought about that. And what it would be like to raise a family. I’d seen the fear in her eyes when she thought of us not being together. I wondered what she saw in mine when I told her at times that I needed space. That I needed time to be alone. She viewed Mitchell’s pairing with Erin as a model of what would naturally come together for us.
In August Brian dropped out of college and went back to Chicago. He got a job tending bar in a trendy downtown dance club. I enrolled for fall semester, cutting my savings in half. But a few weeks into the semester, something didn’t feel right. I started to be less satisfied with school. The classes didn’t interest me. My depleted savings unnerved me. Then I discovered that if I dropped out of the semester less than six weeks in, half of my tuition would be refunded.
I made a fateful decision to quit school. This came as a shock to Jenny.
“You’re kidding! Jack, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! You’ve barely gotten started here!” Her voice was unusually shrill.
“It’s not what I want to do right now. My grades
are down, my money’s half gone. The three of you know what you want, but I know less about my future than I did when I got here.”
I had no idea how much I was hurting Jenny. Her face reddened, and she began to tremble.
“Brian Aspen’s in Chicago now. He’s working in a club there making two hundred dollars a night.”
Jenny looked at me in disbelief. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to leave …” This jolt had scrambled her brain, and she struggled to formulate a persuasive point of view capable of stopping my plan.
We were only halfway through the pain of pulling off a Band-Aid, so I forged ahead. “I need to take some time off and figure out what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.”
Tears swelled up in Jenny’s eyes until they poured out in long streaks down her face. She rallied quickly.
“I’m what you’re supposed to be doing with your life, Jack! What are you thinking?” she asked. “What were you thinking about doing with us? Don’t you care about me?”
“Of course I care about you!”
“Then how can you do this?”
I wanted to run. I wanted to escape the things that scared me most about life. I knew it wasn’t logical, but I would rather have given up the love I’d found in Jenny than give up the mad hunt for inner peace.
“Jenny, haven’t you ever felt like there was something you were supposed to do? Someone you were supposed to be, and you couldn’t get comfortable with yourself until you figured out who it was?”
Jenny nodded in absolute agreement. “Yes, Jack, and when you find it, you keep it. You hold on to it. You don’t throw it away.” She paused for a moment, collecting herself. “Honey, you say you want to find out who you’re supposed to be. I understand this and want it for you.” She grabbed the front of my jacket, pulled me toward her gently, to focus my attention on her words. “But, Jack, honey, listen; this is it. Don’t you see how rare what we’ve got is? Don’t you see how what we’re doing is special?”
I knew it was special. What I didn’t know was how it could all unravel, how hearts are broken. “Yes, I know. But I’m … I’m not like Mitch or Erin. Or you. I’m not sure I’m ready for grown-up life.”
“You sound afraid to grow up.”
“I have to do things for me!” I shouted, a poor attempt to compensate for her emotional astuteness.
“Jack,” Jenny said, “don’t you think about how your decisions affect others? When the man I love announces he’s moving two hundred miles away, don’t you think my life might be affected?”
Jenny continued to sob as we sat, holding each other’s hands. All I wanted to do was get out of there. I spoke as slowly and softly as I could.
“I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to go.”
Jenny closed her eyes tightly as if trying to block out the pain. “Jack …” She struggled to regain her composure. “Don’t go.”
She knelt down on the floor and laid her head on my knees. I stroked her hair, watching her cry, her body heaving in jerky motions.
I stood. “You’ll get over this. It’s not the end of us; we’ll still see each other when I come back.”
“When you come back? And when will that be?”
I turned the door handle.
“So that’s it, Jack? You’re just going to leave? What’s happened to you? Where’s the Jack I once knew?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer.
“Jack …” Jenny opened her mouth to speak calmer words, but they came out like a pained scream, “DON’T LEAVE!”
Fear lifted the hair on my neck.
“I have to go.”
~ TWENTY-FOUR ~
I never meant to be so bad to you
One thing I said that I would never do.
—Asia
“Heat of the Moment”
“So you left Providence and came to Chicago?” Bud asked, refilling his coffee mug in the white tile kitchen, where it always seemed cold.
“Right. It was mid-October 1986.”
“You left the woman who loved you?” he added.
My silence was all the answer he needed to that question.
Bud ferried the hot mug back into our work area, setting it down on a cork coaster and returning to his notepad. He set the small Panasonic tape recorder on the coffee table between us.
I’ll hire someone to come in and ghostwrite for you. All you have to do is remember and talk. You can do that, right?
“You got yourself to Chicago and … what?”
“Moved in with Brian. He was working at a club called XN-tricity and said he could get me a job there.”
“I remember that place,” Bud said with a fondness in his voice. “It closed down about ten years ago, but I was there.” He whistled. “Very hot.”
“Anyway, I moved into Brian’s crummy apartment on his invitation to come up and have a good time, and at the beginning it was fun. Within a few days I was working at the club and making exactly the kind of money Brian had described.”
“What was it like working there?”
Bud kept his eyes on his notes as he asked his questions, typing notations on his PowerBook and sometimes writing on his yellow pad. I ignored the intense feelings of paranoia generated by the slow-turning spindles on the recorder, trying not to think about where the tapes might someday end up. Bud wasn’t my shrink, although by all appearances, it looked like he was. He wasn’t bound by client confidentiality, either. I didn’t trust him, but I trusted God, and so I recounted my story as clearly as I could.
“The first night was frantic and exhilarating. It was hard work because it was busy and we were in constant motion, but the money was great. Two hundred dollars a night minimum—cash. Some nights I left with as much as three hundred dollars. Of course, quitting time was three in the morning. We’d all roll out of the club half starving, too wired to go to bed.”
“You’re no stranger to money, are you, Jack?”
“I worked hard for it from 5:00 p.m. until 3:00 in the morning, on my feet, with no breaks.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, and you used to walk five miles to school in ten feet of snow.”
“Why is it you don’t like me, Bud? Is it something I’ve done to you? I’d really like to know.”
“I retract the comment.” Bud held up his right hand with his black felt pen in it. “Let’s keep it moving.”
Bud was playing chicken with me, but he’d flinched. It was true he didn’t like me, but he either didn’t know why or he didn’t want to know why.
“What did you do with your little fortune?”
“You’ll be happy to learn that I blew it all on myself. I bought new clothes to fit my new lifestyle. Bought a car. Paid my rent a month in advance. I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, wherever I wanted. No restaurant was too exclusive.
“Sounds very wholesome. And what were Mitchell, Erin, and Jenny doing all this time?”
“They stayed at school. Mitch kept the apartment, and Brian’s old roommate, Reggie Mohler, moved in. I kept in touch with Mitchell, but not often.”
“How often?”
“I don’t know. Every month, I guess. He kept me informed about what Jenny was doing. By Christmas I was missing her and wanted to call, but—”
“You hadn’t talked to her in all that time?”
“No. I didn’t think it was right to remind her I wasn’t around. I thought she needed space.”
“I thought it was you who needed space.”
“Ah … good catch. Right. I guess I thought it would be easier just to break contact for a while.”
“So, had you broken up?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t feel like it. It was more like a break, an indefinite break, but I think I was still hoping there’d be another chapter together.”
“Did you two ever talk again?”
“Yeah, that next Christmas. I called her parents’ house and spoke with her mom. By then she was convinced I’d been bad news in her daughter’s life
.”
“She was right.” I didn’t appreciate Bud’s caustic ad-libs, especially when they were true.
“A lot had changed in the year since I’d come home with Jenny for Christmas.”
“What happened?”
I stood up, placing my hands on top of my head, and walked away from the interview.
Bud looked up. “What’s the problem, Jack?”
“Stupid, stupid …”
I pulled a bottle of water from out of the icebox, a sickening feeling intensifying inside me. “The problem is locked up twenty years in the past, Bud. I have the key now, but it’s twenty years too late. That’s the problem.”
“You … you still have feelings for the girl.” Bud laughed. “So, you made the wrong move at the wrong time, and she hung you out to dry. Ouch, that hurts pal. Isn’t it about time to get over her, Clayton?”
As difficult as it was remembering these times alone in the privacy of my own home, it was galling going through them alongside a hostile collaborator.
“Let’s take a break.”
Fifteen minutes later I rejoined Bud, and we picked it up again.
“Sorry about the laughter, there, Jack. Won’t happen again.”
“You may not realize it, but you’re doing something good by me. You’re tearing out the last traces of pride from my character. For the past twenty years, I’ve felt like I was being squeezed in a vise. I believe you’re here to help beat out the last bits of me.”
Bud stared. “You’re not exactly what you might call easygoing, are you, Jack.”
I laughed; we both laughed.
“So did you get to talk to Jenny or what?”
“Yes. Angela put down the phone, and when I heard Jenny’s footsteps approaching, I braced myself for rejection.”
“What’d she say?”
“‘Hello.’”
We both laughed again, punchy from the long hours of work.
“Hey, don’t laugh; this is serious stuff!”
“Jack, you’re better when you’re not so serious. Anyone ever told you that?”
“Not anyone I like.” I smiled.
Providence: Once Upon a Second Chance Page 17
