What’s that? she said.
For you, he said.
How come? Why are you doing this? I don’t even understand why you’re here.
I told you. I want to help you.
You’re giving me this money.
Yes. That’s what I come for.
You don’t want nothing in return.
He shook his head.
She pushed the hair away from her face. I can still do things, she said. We could go in the back bedroom. I don’t have no disease or nothing. She put out the cigarette in the ashtray on the table. I don’t look like much but I could still give you a good time. You’d get your money’s worth.
I’m not doubting that, Dad said. But that’s not what I’m here for.
Are you a homo? she said. I wondered after that other time, when I was naked, when I still looked okay.
What are you talking about?
Don’t you like women?
Of course I like women. I’m married. I’m still in love with my wife.
That don’t have to stop you, she said. If you’re not queer, are you just stupid?
Well, Dad said, I might be that.
She smiled for the first time and he saw she was missing a tooth. Jesus, I don’t know about any of this, she said.
How much do you pay for this place? Dad said.
Why?
I’d like to know.
Four hundred dollars.
They pay the utilities?
He does. The old son of a bitch that owns the place.
Dad took out his checkbook. Who do you pay it to? What’s his name?
She told him. He wrote the check in the owner’s name and put it beside the cash. She watched him suspiciously. He wrote the owner’s name in a little notebook. Then he told her what he was going to do. There would be a rent check every month and something extra for them to live on, and she could count on it, he would do these things without fail.
I still don’t understand why you’re doing this.
I told you.
They talked some more and he learned that she was working at night. The woman across the hall checked on the children after she got them to bed, after she left the apartment to start her shift. That isn’t good, he said.
What else do you expect me to do?
You won’t have to do that anymore.
He stood up and looked around the little kitchen and looked once more at her and went out past the two kids and walked out of the old house, and in the months following he sent her the two checks at the beginning of each month, and by the end of the year he decided to make a down payment on a little two-bedroom house in Arvada on the west side of Denver. After that he sent the house payment to the bank that held the mortgage, and she and the two children settled down in the new place. She got a daytime job and paid for regular child care. So things were looking up. She was thin again and her hair was cut nicely. He visited her once during that time but there was little now to talk about.
Two years later there was a letter, written on yellow tablet paper. I got married, I’m writing to tell you. He seems all right to me he’s sixteen years older but that don’t matter. I don’t care about that now. Don’t send the money for the house no more he wouldn’t understand. He don’t want somebody else’s help. And don’t contact me again. We’re on our own now. Forget about me now. You done enough. I thank you for that, the last part of it.
19
IN THE NIGHT he lay awake next to Mary in the downstairs bedroom unable to sleep, remembering everything, taking all of his years into account. He decided he wanted to see the nearby physical world once more. He could let go of it if he saw these familiar places again.
They drove out on the Saturday morning in his good car, Lorraine behind the wheel, Dad in the passenger seat and Mary in the back. There was a robe over him and he was wearing his cap.
Now take it slow, he said. There’s no rush about this.
A bright hot windless July day, and they put the car windows down. They began by driving past Berta May’s yellow house and at the south end of the street where it met the highway they turned a block east and went down Date Street past the grade school and the playgrounds and the practice field and then up Cedar past the Methodist church and across to Birch where the banker lived and where the Community Church was located and then up Ash past the old white frame hotel that was only a broken-down rooming house now with a wide sagging porch and on past the Presbyterian church and the Catholic church and over to Main Street. They drove the length of Main without stopping, from the highway north to the juncture where you had to turn east or west. Which way now, Daddy? Lorraine said.
Go over here to the east, he said. I want to look at these streets too.
They went over a block and then south on Albany and over to Boston and Chicago where Rudy lived and onto Detroit where Bob’s house was and then onto the state highway and back to U.S. 34.
You’re going too fast, Dad said.
I can’t go slow on the highway.
Let them go around. It don’t matter.
Where to now?
Back up Main.
They went up the street again past the little houses that were built at the south end and the old water tower on its tall metal riveted legs and past the post office and then the three blocks of businesses.
Let’s go back in the alley here, Dad said.
She turned slowly into the dark alley behind the stores. The mismatched backs of the buildings, the jumble of various things, and only a few cars and pickups parked along the way in the potholed gravel.
Stop here, please, Dad said.
She parked the car and they sat in the alley behind the hardware store. He looked at it all, the old brick wall with white flaking paint and the rusted Dumpster and the telephone pole black with creosote, the old rear entrances of the businesses on either side.
He shook his head. I should of painted that back wall again.
It looks about the same as always to me, Lorraine said.
That’s what I mean.
Wooden pallets were stacked on one another, and there was the scarred wooden door with the window in it that peered out into the alley.
How many times I went in and out that door. Wasn’t that the way, Mary?
How many times do you think, honey?
Fifty-five years times six days a week times fifty-two, he said.
What’s that come to?
It comes to a lifetime.
That’s right. It amounts to a man’s lifetime, Dad said. All right. We’ve been here long enough. Drive us around front now, please.
Lorraine started the car and they came out on Main Street. Should we stop?
Yes, pull in here at the store.
She parked at the curb in the middle of the block. The store was two old brick buildings side by side with high false fronts. Dad sat looking at the plate-glass display windows with the signs touting table saws and generators. The wide front doors propped open on the hot Saturday morning. The new lawn mowers and garden tillers wheeled out on the sidewalk with chains run through them to keep anybody from taking off with them.
A woman came walking toward them, she stopped to peer in through the window, cupping her hands beside her face to block the glare. She glanced up the street and looked inside again and went on.
What did she want? Dad said. We would of had it for her.
She’s got to make up her mind, Mary said. She wants to take her time.
Let her come back then, he said.
From where they were sitting they could see Bob inside behind the front counter waiting on some man. The man paid, they watched him remove his wallet and put money out and Bob take it and ring the sale and make change and tear off the receipt. Then he ducked out of sight behind the counter and he reappeared with a brown paper sack in his hand and put the purchase — something silver, not shiny, a pipe wrench maybe — in the sack, slipping the receipt in with it, speaking to the man, thanking him, nodding his head, then something more, and the man saying something in return, and then the man swung around and came out through the open doors onto the sidewalk with the paper sack in his hand, coming directly toward them in the car, so near that they could see the buttons on his summer shirt, before he turned and went up the block in the bright sun.