The Best of Me(88)
It was interesting to see what we all did with our inheritance. Pragmatic Lisa put her check in the bank. Gretchen moved south and saw to some bills while Amy and Paul essentially spent their money on candy. Tiffany was the only one who quit her job, thinking, I guess, that she was set. Within two years she was broke, but rather than rejoining the workforce, she decided that money was evil, as were most of the people who had it. She canceled her checking account and started bartering, exchanging a day’s work for a carton of cigarettes or a bag of groceries. At night she’d go through people’s trash cans, looking for things she could sell. It’s like she saw poverty as an accomplishment. “I’ll be out at one in the morning, knee-deep in a Dumpster and elbowing aside some immigrant Haitian lady for the good stuff,” she boasted once when I visited her in Somerville.
“Maybe the Haitian woman has to be there,” I said. “She has nothing at her disposal, while you have an education. You had braces on your teeth. You speak good English.” My argument was an old and stodgy one: the best thing you can do for the poor is avoid joining their ranks, thus competing with them for limited goods and services.
On that same visit Tiffany explained that poor people refuse to answer surveys. “When census takers come to our doors, we ignore them.” She spoke the way a tribal leader might to a visiting anthropologist. “We Pawnees grind our corn with a rock!”
Every time I visited, her apartment was more of a wreck, not just messy but filthy. “How can you live like this?” I asked the last time I was there.
“We poor people don’t have the energy to clean up after ourselves,” she told me.
After she was evicted, she lived in a series of single rooms, with people just as badly off as herself. According to Tiffany, the only thing wrong with her was her back—that’s why at the age of forty-three she went on disability, she said. Since when, though, do they prescribe lithium and Klonopin for back pain? If she’d been more forthright, we could have put her behavior in context, could have said, when she tested our patience, “That’s her illness talking.” As it was, it didn’t add up. “Why can’t a grown woman hold a job?” we wondered. “Why does she have so many restraining orders against people?”
Tiffany would have inherited money from our father someday, though she likely would have burned right through it. “You want a car?” she’d have said, perhaps to someone she met in a parking lot. “I’ll buy you a fucking Bronco or whatever. Is that what you want?”
Word would have gotten out that some lady was buying people Broncos, and in no time she’d have been penniless again and feeling just fine about it.
An hour before arriving at the beach, Hugh stopped at a fast-food place called Hardee’s so I could get a coffee. The town we were in was small and grim, and the restaurant was deserted except for us. Inside the front door stood a Christmas tree, over-decorated in a majestic combination of red and gold.
“How long has this been up?” I asked the black woman behind the counter.
She scratched at the tattoos on her left forearm, initials that looked like they’d been done at home with a sewing needle.
“Since last Tuesday maybe?” She turned to the fellow cleaning the grill. “Do that sound right?”
“Just about,” he said.
“Will you have a tree at home?” I asked. “Have you put it up yet?”
This is the sort of thing that drives Hugh crazy—What does it matter if her Christmas tree is up?—but there was no one in line behind me, and I was genuinely curious.
“I think it’s too early,” the woman said. “My kids is all excited for one, but we ain’t even had Thanksgiving yet.”
Gretchen ran her good hand over the false hair on top of her head. “Will you cook a turkey on Thursday or go for something else?”
“Are you two happy now?” Hugh asked when we finally returned to the car. “Need to go back in and learn what everyone’s doing for New Year’s, or do you think we can leave?”
Gretchen propped up her broken arm on the narrow window ledge. “If he thinks we’re bad, he should spend more time with Lisa.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “Lisa’s the master. I left her at a Starbucks for ninety seconds last year, and when I returned the woman behind the counter was saying to her, ‘My gynecologist told me that exact same thing.’”
I normally don’t believe in drinking coffee in the car. Most often, I spill more than I swallow, but without it I’d have fallen asleep and then had to revive myself once we reached the house. It was after eleven when we arrived, and I was pleasantly surprised by all the changes. The place we bought is two stories tall and divided down the middle into equal-size units. You can pass back and forth between one half and the other by way of a hotel-style connecting door in the living room, but it’s inconvenient if you’re upstairs. The two kitchens are another problem, as we really only need one. Our initial idea was to knock down some walls and transform it into a single six-bedroom home. Then I recalled our last trip to the beach and the number of times I found my brother lying on the sofa with his shoes on, and decided that two separate halves was probably a good idea. The left side, which was softly lit and decorated with carefully chosen midcentury furniture, was mine and Hugh’s, while the junky right side was for everyone else. Of course other people could stay in our half, but only when we were there to monitor and scold them.