Be That Person
Elizabeth Brown
Dick was my mother’s fifth husband and my fourth stepfather, a product of my mother’s pattern of having two men in her life, one for stability, another for danger and variety. Her current side hustle was the bad ass fry cook at the bar she owned. My father, whom I’ve never met, was known to me only as MY FIRST MISTAKE. I had grown accustomed to the ensuing parade of stepfathers. There was Charlie who liked to sunbathe in the nude, Tony whose left arm was a couple inches shorter than his right and Andy who gave me my first joint when I was ten. Her marriages usually collapsed when she got sloppy about her extracurriculars. She’d saddle up again with remarkable efficiency, sacrificing good taste for speed.
Ephemeral stepsiblings scuttled in and out of my life along with their fathers. Richie, Dick’s son, was different. The others lived with their mothers, but Richie’s mother had died so he lived with us, sharing my bedroom for a year until he left for college. I don’t think he ever had any friends, at least they never came to our house and he never went out. Sometimes I sat with him in the school cafeteria so he didn’t have to eat alone. Besides, his bizarre set of habits were fascinating. He’d flip a coin for hours and kept a running tab on the ratio of heads and tails. One lunch he relayed riveting news. He had flipped fourteen heads in a row and the 50:50 ratio was off kilter. He confidently predicted it would be back on track by morning, which he announced the next day. He collected abandoned pens on the theory you could always find a free one. Trays in his desk drawer were labeled banks, realtors, pharmaceuticals and then my favorite category of “random.” I periodically dipped into his collection and was surprised to find one from a funeral home in Canada. It took me a while to catch on because he worked discretely, but he liked to put his hand into his armpit and twizzle his armpit hair into miniature dreads. Richie was a combination of weird and endearing.
His father Dick was nice enough, and by nice, I mean he tended to my mother, a job that fell to me between marriages. When she was single, she’d revert to a helpless mode, bemoaning her identity as a “single mother,” and say, “It’s just the two of us now and I’ll need your help.” Her concept of “help” was a list of niggling tasks that she would post on the fridge every Saturday morning, like coordinating her TV clickers or picking up the dry cleaning. I was grateful to Dick; he took the heat off me and gave her the space to be an attentive mother. She’d come to my football games, make my favorite macaroni and cheese with a touch of curry, buy good beer. But Dick was a shitty dad to his only child and namesake. He rarely acknowledged Richie at our family meals. How hard could it be to feign interest in his coin flipping experiments? Richie told us about an English WWII prisoner named Kerrich who flipped a coin 10,000 times in his abundant spare time. He recorded 5067 heads. Richie said that as the number of tosses approached infinity, the ratio would hover ever closer to 50%, but wobbled on every odd throw. I loved this story and engaged Richie in a discussion about whether infinity was an odd or even number. Richie, normally mono-syllabic, jabbered on about the bizarre properties of infinity, that there could be more than one infinity, and or that infinity could even be a prime number, which blew my mind. His father interrupted him twice, once for the mashed potatoes and a second time for the peas.
Richie started at the University of Chicago as a freshman but dropped out after a year. Dick claimed he was taking a “gap” year working as a research assistant in the math department. He lived in his own apartment near campus. I envisioned Richie filling up blackboards with equations, his wavy hair flecked with chalky dust, rushing back and forth to the math lab, always on the lookout for abandoned pens. At first he came once a month for a family meal, which then winnowed down to holidays and then nothing. Richie never returned to college and I assumed that his gap year had become a permanent job . I was consumed with my own college life and then law school. Richie disappeared from my life. Dick and my mother never talked about him.
One summer my mother was converting my old bedroom into her office. She wanted to get rid of my desk, and I suggested that Richie might want it. I hadn’t seen the guy in several years, and thought what the hell, I could get an update on infinity. Dick grudgingly agreed to help me. I added a couple of six packs of beer, chips and salsa. I thought the three of us could sit around and shoot some shit.
Richie lived in a third-floor walk-up. Dick had recently undergone heart surgery, so he couldn’t help lifting the desk. All he could carry was one six pack. Richie didn’t seem to be around, so I was on my own. I put the second six pack and the chips in the desk drawer so that I only had to make one trip. I thrashed the desk up the stairs, trying to maneuver it around the tight corners, nicking both the desk and the wall. Both were already pock-marked, so I pressed ahead, getting more reckless with each turn. Finally, I heaved the dinged-up desk to his landing. The unlocked door swung open. Richie sat motionless on the bed, his hands on his knees. He moved his fingers back and forth as he stared at his long fingernails.
His appearance shocked me. What had happened to this sweet, quirky kid? In high school, he looked a bit off to the discerning eye, but now, seven years later, his offness was his main feature, the kind that would prompt me to cross the street. One side of his lopsided glasses was held in place with a paper clip, the other with duct tape. The weak afternoon sun highlighted smudges on his lenses. His hair was long, stringy, lank, some of it pulled back into a muddled ponytail. His shoes didn’t match. Neither did his socks. The only human spark was his smell, a musty, earthy greenhouse type of smell, which wafted off his body in pulses. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was a human smell. Richie didn’t reek. That was the most positive thing I could say about him.
There was only one tall kitchen stool, so it didn’t look like the desk was something he’d find useful. Misshapen garbage bags lined the walls, leaving no obvious space for a desk. “Richie where would you like the desk?” He shrugged. “How about I move a few of these bags to the other side of the room and push the desk against the wall?”
Dick remained at the threshold. “Son, you told me you weren’t collecting cans anymore.”
Richie looked at a yellow blotch on the wall just to the left of his father. “I like taking walks. I pick up cans as I walk along the parkway. People throw them out their car windows.”
“What about your job at the university?”
Richie looked down at his hands, using the index finger of his right hand to push the left-hand fingernails into alignment. “I go there some days.”
“Some days, most days, or hardly any days? How many days were you there this week?”
“I’ll go next week.” Richie’s voice withered to a defeated whisper.
Dick turned and clumped down the stairs.
“Richie, where do you want the desk and I’ll get out of your hair.”
“I make money recycling cans. Leave the desk where it is.”
I opened the fridge to load in the beers. A few half-eaten cans of cat food were the only items. More cat food jammed the cupboards. I’d always wanted a cat and I thought I’d stumbled on an interest I could share with Richie, anything to break the strangling silence. I asked him where his cat was, what the name was, where he got him. “I don’t have a cat,” Richie said in a distant monotone.
“Richie, I’m sorry, man. I’ve got to go.”
He looked up and held out his hand. There was a hint of the smile I remembered. And then that spark was gone, snuffed out by his blank stare. As I removed my hand, his long fingernails flicked across my wrist. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wanted to recapture that endearing charm of high school Richie. I wanted to hear about coin flipping or look at his collection of pens. But in that room with all the dusty bags of cans, I could only muster up pity, deep dark pity. Richie had been a person. Now he was a hollowed-out shell.
I lit into my mother when I got home. “What is going on with Richie? Did you know that he’s eating cat food and collecting cans?”
“Dick told me to stay out of it.”
“He’s eating cat food for fuck’s sake! How can you let someone survive on cat food?”
My mother grimaced and shrugged her shoulders. “Dick’s sent him to therapists, but Richie doesn’t show up. Richie isn’t my job.”
“Somebody’s got to do something. How about this? You’re always looking for a dishwasher at your bar, aren’t you? Why don’t you have Richie work there? At least he’ll get a decent meal.”
She sighed and turned her back. “I don’t know honey. Dick worked hard to get Richie that job at the University You’ll have to talk with him.”
Dick ignored my overtures, so I went ahead and asked Richie on my own. He accepted my proposal. He figured he could walk to the restaurant and collect cans along the way. When I pointed out that it was five miles away, he told me he usually covered ten miles in a day. Everything worked out beautifully. The bar needed a dishwasher, Richie needed a job and a place to eat. Done. It was that simple. I got Richie set up at the bar and then returned to my own world, living in downtown Chicago and working as a first-year associate at a law firm.
The regular bartender reported that Richie worked hard at a job no one else wanted, often staying late into the night after the bar closed. When the dirty plates came back to the kitchen Richie would scrape them into a large plastic bag, which everyone assumed he’d take to the trash, but no, that would be his meal. He’d open the bag at the end of the night and pick through the leftovers. At first the kitchen staff was horrified, but then everyone got used to Richie and would carefully make extra plates for him so that he wasn’t eating scraps. The kitchen staff found him as weirdly endearing as I did. The bartender was surprised to learn that Richie was Dick’s son. Dick and my mother ate at the bar most nights. No more than 20 feet away, his namesake was swabbing floors and subsisting on a diet of cold leftovers. They never acknowledged him.
I was subbing in for the bartender the night Dick died, keeled over, his face splashing into his chicken noodle soup. I hoisted him upright, removed a piece of noodle embedded in his stubbled chin, then we both toppled over together, his dead weight flattening me. One diner rolled Dick off me and started CPR; another called the EMTs. After a half hour of thumping, barking orders, frantic attempts to start an IV, my mother sobbing hysterically, it was over. Dick was gone.
Richie stood at the swinging doors into the kitchen door watching the futile work of the EMTs. His ashen face turned a translucent shade of pale. My mother was sobbing, but I noticed her skirt was lopsided. The fry-cook hovered behind her, shoeless. Clumps of bloody gauze, two syringes and latex gloves littered the floor. I was torn between tending to my mother, tending to Richie, calming the room, comping the diners, and picking up the mess the EMTs left behind. I chose my sobbing mother, leading her into her office. Pillows were scattered on the floor, the place smelled like a fry basket.
“Shit mom, you’re screwing that fry cook during dinner service, right in front of Dick.”
“Oh, honey, what am I going to do without him?”
“Probably what you always do, you’ll find another guy.” I slammed the door and went to look for Richie. I expected to see him trudging along the sidewalk, but he’d disappeared. When I got back to the restaurant, everyone had cleared out.
The next morning my mother was composed as if last night had never happened.
“Have you been in touch with Richie?”
My mother looked at me quizzically. “Who?”
“Richie, Dick’s son. He disappeared. He doesn’t have a phone. Richie’s got nobody. Somebody’s got to step up.”
“And you think it’s going to be me?” My mother snorted and laughed. “Honey, last night Dick told me he wanted a divorce. It’s over.”
My mother pulled a jug of vodka from the cabinet and combined it with the splash of orange juice left in her cup. It was ten in the morning, dishes were piled in the sink, half-filled glasses lined the counter, some with her characteristic crescent of red lipstick on the rim. She swiveled to look at me briefly, then talked with her back turned. “I found his will. Dick left me nothing. Everything’s going to the deadbeat kid of his. Dick didn’t give two shits about him. All that effort I put into marriage and I’m getting nothing. I’m gonna have to close the bar.
“Mom, think beyond yourself for one moment. I’m sorry Dick died, but he was a terrible father to his only son. He needs our help.”
“Guess what, I only found out about Richie when he moved in with us. Dick never told me he had a son. I doubt I would’ve married him if I had known. I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Well, you guess what. Richie iss a nice kid. I like him. Do you want him back on the streets looking for cans? ”
“Honey, you’re so kind.” I swatted her hand as she tried to stroke my cheek. “Go ahead and be that person for Richie. I can’t. I’ve never been good at kindness. I’m the person who needs kindness. I’m going to need your help more than ever.”
Shit, I thought. Dick has barely cooled off and she’s already thrust me into the role of her enabler. She handed me her to do list and then grabbed it back. With great flourish added “Do about Richie.” As she walked into the sunroom, she said “And find out what he wants to do with his father’s body.”
I visualized Richie’s apartment as I drove into Chicago. If I hadn’t brought the beer for Richie, then I wouldn’t have opened his fridge, then I wouldn’t have seen the cat food, and then I wouldn’t have suggested he work at the bar and then I wouldn’t be driving to his apartment to find out if Richie wanted to cremate his father or bury him whole.
Richie wasn’t really family, was he? Sure, we were close in age, we shared a bedroom for a year, and sometimes I had a school lunch with him. His weirdness was what I liked about him. A shared interest in flipping coins can’t be the basis of a relationship can it? Because that’s what it came down to. Our lives intersected for one year, and that was it.
My mother demanded pity, worked hard at it, reeled me in with her practiced hands. Richie never asked me for anything, but I felt the same pull of pity, elbowing its way out from the shadows, inching towards my frontal cortex, or to whatever sliver of gray matter handles such issues as an abandoned stepbrother with spectrum issues. His mother dead, his father dead. No relatives. My mother divorcing herself of any responsibility. Was I the next in this threadbare line of succession?
I trudged up his stairs, praying that Richie wouldn’t be there. I thought about writing a note, but what would I say? Sorry your shitty father died? I heard Richie huffing up the stairs behind me, trailing a clinking bag of cans.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
I didn’t have a speech prepared. “My mother and I wanted you to know how sorry we are about your father.” So lame, so inadequate.
Richie turned his head to look directly at me, pushing his lopsided glasses up his nose. “What did you think of him?”
I scrambled to find the right tone of dissembling. “He wasn’t an easy man. But he was your father.” I could be describing my mother. My voice trailed off.
“I’m okay. I don’t need anyone’s help.”
“Do you want to bury him or cremate him?”
“Go ahead and cremate, I don’t care.”
“Richie, my mother has to close the bar. It’s losing money. I’m really sorry man.”
“What I’m doing now is better. I get outside and walk around.”
I thought about the judgment that is inherent in pity, that pity meant that I couldn’t imagine being in Richie’s shoes. If he liked wandering the streets collecting cans, who was I to say that this wasn’t a viable life? I shuddered at the ease of my rationalization, that I could forget the cat food, in so many different flavors, filling his cupboard.
“Where do you like to walk? I’ll come find you some day. Maybe give you a lift to the recycling center.”
“I don’t need help with recycling. I’m saving the cans until the price of aluminum goes up.”
He held out his hand. When I shook it, I felt his long fingernails again scraping across my palms. On the way back to the car, I passed a panhandler. I reached into my pocket, as I always did, to add spare change to his cup. This time I opened my wallet for a bill. I only had twenties. I stuffed one into his cup and kept walking. The tentacles of pity, loyalty, kindness jangled into a swirling dissonance.
Over the next couple of weeks, my mother would ask how Richie was doing, not out of any concern, only for the chance to give me her “I told you so” smirk. “It’s starting to get cold. Does Richie have a decent coat, gloves or even a hat? Is he still eating cat food? Does he know how to pay rent? Are you ready to be that person for him?” I didn’t answer. “Honey, here’s a list of errands I could use your help with.”
I noticed a fresh bottle of Stoli on the counter. “Looks like you restocked your liquor all by yourself.”
“Honey, the liquor store delivers. I got a second notice about my car’s emission test. Could you do that for me? I’m not up to that sort of thing yet.”
The next day I headed out with her list. I wormed my way through clotted rush hour traffic. A bleak mist turned into sputtering rain. Across the road a man was pulling a bag behind him. It was Richie. He had fashioned a raincoat, of sorts, out of a garbage bag. Cars honked behind me as I rested my head on the steering wheel. You can’t let someone you know eat cat food, I thought, and you can’t let that person collect cans while wearing a garbage bag raincoat. At the next green light, I made an illegal U-turn to catch up to Richie and was immediately stopped by a policeman.
“You crossed two lanes of traffic to make an illegal U-turn.”
“I’m sorry, officer, but this man needs help.”
Richie bent down to look into the car. He didn’t react to my presence. “Hey, Richie, let me give you a ride.” I turned to the policeman. “Look, officer, go ahead, ticket me. My brother needs my help.”
The cop looked at Richie, the rivulets of rain running down his cheek, his garbage bag coat fluttering in the wind. “Next time make it legal.”
“Cmon, Richie, I’ll take you home. Let’s grab a burger.”
Richie stood looking at me. “My bag’s not full. I always stay out until five o’clock. It’s only four.”
“Richie, I’m on my way into the city. I can drop you off on the way.” This was utterly untrue. I would have to circle back to drop my mother’s car off. It was at least an hour out of my way. And then I would catch deep shit from my mother for not getting the emission test done.
I shoved his bag into the back seat. He reluctantly got in. That same earthy, human, Richie-smell filled the car. “ Where are you working now?”
“Look at this antique beer can I found. It’s called a cone top, a Burgemeister Pilsner, the kind they made 100 years ago, before they invented the pull tab. It’s not dented. Once I clean it up it’ll be in mint condition.” Richie handed me a muddy beer can. “I bet I can sell this for a couple hundred bucks.”
“That’s great Richie. Your apartment okay? You eating okay?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“You know, your dad left you money in his will, there’s enough to pay your rent and more. I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Let me off here. I found an old hobo campsite back in the woods.” Richie turned to me and smiled. “That’s the best place for cone tops.”
His smile was entirely human, full of energy and excitement over the cache of antique beer cans he alone had discovered. I patted him on his back as he got out of the car. “Richie, let me give you my contact information.” I put my number and address on the back of my mother’s errand list and handed it to Richie. “Call me any time. I can help you out with your father’s stuff, get you set up with a bank account. Keep the pen, add it to your collection. It’s got the name of my law firm on it.”
He shoved the pen and paper into his sodden jacket pocket. The paper would dissolve within the hour, but I knew he’d keep the pen. “Richie, what’s the best way to get a hold of you?”
“This parkway, or one of the parks along the lake.”
The cans clinked as he pulled the half-filled garbage bag from the back seat. I watched as he swished through the tall wet grass heading towards the woods. His glasses slipped off his nose as he bent to pick up another can. I honked and waved as the light turned green. Richie looked up, nodded and waved back.
Elizabeth Brown
Dick was my mother’s fifth husband and my fourth stepfather, a product of my mother’s pattern of having two men in her life, one for stability, another for danger and variety. Her current side hustle was the bad ass fry cook at the bar she owned. My father, whom I’ve never met, was known to me only as MY FIRST MISTAKE. I had grown accustomed to the ensuing parade of stepfathers. There was Charlie who liked to sunbathe in the nude, Tony whose left arm was a couple inches shorter than his right and Andy who gave me my first joint when I was ten. Her marriages usually collapsed when she got sloppy about her extracurriculars. She’d saddle up again with remarkable efficiency, sacrificing good taste for speed.
Ephemeral stepsiblings scuttled in and out of my life along with their fathers. Richie, Dick’s son, was different. The others lived with their mothers, but Richie’s mother had died so he lived with us, sharing my bedroom for a year until he left for college. I don’t think he ever had any friends, at least they never came to our house and he never went out. Sometimes I sat with him in the school cafeteria so he didn’t have to eat alone. Besides, his bizarre set of habits were fascinating. He’d flip a coin for hours and kept a running tab on the ratio of heads and tails. One lunch he relayed riveting news. He had flipped fourteen heads in a row and the 50:50 ratio was off kilter. He confidently predicted it would be back on track by morning, which he announced the next day. He collected abandoned pens on the theory you could always find a free one. Trays in his desk drawer were labeled banks, realtors, pharmaceuticals and then my favorite category of “random.” I periodically dipped into his collection and was surprised to find one from a funeral home in Canada. It took me a while to catch on because he worked discretely, but he liked to put his hand into his armpit and twizzle his armpit hair into miniature dreads. Richie was a combination of weird and endearing.
His father Dick was nice enough, and by nice, I mean he tended to my mother, a job that fell to me between marriages. When she was single, she’d revert to a helpless mode, bemoaning her identity as a “single mother,” and say, “It’s just the two of us now and I’ll need your help.” Her concept of “help” was a list of niggling tasks that she would post on the fridge every Saturday morning, like coordinating her TV clickers or picking up the dry cleaning. I was grateful to Dick; he took the heat off me and gave her the space to be an attentive mother. She’d come to my football games, make my favorite macaroni and cheese with a touch of curry, buy good beer. But Dick was a shitty dad to his only child and namesake. He rarely acknowledged Richie at our family meals. How hard could it be to feign interest in his coin flipping experiments? Richie told us about an English WWII prisoner named Kerrich who flipped a coin 10,000 times in his abundant spare time. He recorded 5067 heads. Richie said that as the number of tosses approached infinity, the ratio would hover ever closer to 50%, but wobbled on every odd throw. I loved this story and engaged Richie in a discussion about whether infinity was an odd or even number. Richie, normally mono-syllabic, jabbered on about the bizarre properties of infinity, that there could be more than one infinity, and or that infinity could even be a prime number, which blew my mind. His father interrupted him twice, once for the mashed potatoes and a second time for the peas.
Richie started at the University of Chicago as a freshman but dropped out after a year. Dick claimed he was taking a “gap” year working as a research assistant in the math department. He lived in his own apartment near campus. I envisioned Richie filling up blackboards with equations, his wavy hair flecked with chalky dust, rushing back and forth to the math lab, always on the lookout for abandoned pens. At first he came once a month for a family meal, which then winnowed down to holidays and then nothing. Richie never returned to college and I assumed that his gap year had become a permanent job . I was consumed with my own college life and then law school. Richie disappeared from my life. Dick and my mother never talked about him.
One summer my mother was converting my old bedroom into her office. She wanted to get rid of my desk, and I suggested that Richie might want it. I hadn’t seen the guy in several years, and thought what the hell, I could get an update on infinity. Dick grudgingly agreed to help me. I added a couple of six packs of beer, chips and salsa. I thought the three of us could sit around and shoot some shit.
Richie lived in a third-floor walk-up. Dick had recently undergone heart surgery, so he couldn’t help lifting the desk. All he could carry was one six pack. Richie didn’t seem to be around, so I was on my own. I put the second six pack and the chips in the desk drawer so that I only had to make one trip. I thrashed the desk up the stairs, trying to maneuver it around the tight corners, nicking both the desk and the wall. Both were already pock-marked, so I pressed ahead, getting more reckless with each turn. Finally, I heaved the dinged-up desk to his landing. The unlocked door swung open. Richie sat motionless on the bed, his hands on his knees. He moved his fingers back and forth as he stared at his long fingernails.
His appearance shocked me. What had happened to this sweet, quirky kid? In high school, he looked a bit off to the discerning eye, but now, seven years later, his offness was his main feature, the kind that would prompt me to cross the street. One side of his lopsided glasses was held in place with a paper clip, the other with duct tape. The weak afternoon sun highlighted smudges on his lenses. His hair was long, stringy, lank, some of it pulled back into a muddled ponytail. His shoes didn’t match. Neither did his socks. The only human spark was his smell, a musty, earthy greenhouse type of smell, which wafted off his body in pulses. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was a human smell. Richie didn’t reek. That was the most positive thing I could say about him.
There was only one tall kitchen stool, so it didn’t look like the desk was something he’d find useful. Misshapen garbage bags lined the walls, leaving no obvious space for a desk. “Richie where would you like the desk?” He shrugged. “How about I move a few of these bags to the other side of the room and push the desk against the wall?”
Dick remained at the threshold. “Son, you told me you weren’t collecting cans anymore.”
Richie looked at a yellow blotch on the wall just to the left of his father. “I like taking walks. I pick up cans as I walk along the parkway. People throw them out their car windows.”
“What about your job at the university?”
Richie looked down at his hands, using the index finger of his right hand to push the left-hand fingernails into alignment. “I go there some days.”
“Some days, most days, or hardly any days? How many days were you there this week?”
“I’ll go next week.” Richie’s voice withered to a defeated whisper.
Dick turned and clumped down the stairs.
“Richie, where do you want the desk and I’ll get out of your hair.”
“I make money recycling cans. Leave the desk where it is.”
I opened the fridge to load in the beers. A few half-eaten cans of cat food were the only items. More cat food jammed the cupboards. I’d always wanted a cat and I thought I’d stumbled on an interest I could share with Richie, anything to break the strangling silence. I asked him where his cat was, what the name was, where he got him. “I don’t have a cat,” Richie said in a distant monotone.
“Richie, I’m sorry, man. I’ve got to go.”
He looked up and held out his hand. There was a hint of the smile I remembered. And then that spark was gone, snuffed out by his blank stare. As I removed my hand, his long fingernails flicked across my wrist. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wanted to recapture that endearing charm of high school Richie. I wanted to hear about coin flipping or look at his collection of pens. But in that room with all the dusty bags of cans, I could only muster up pity, deep dark pity. Richie had been a person. Now he was a hollowed-out shell.
I lit into my mother when I got home. “What is going on with Richie? Did you know that he’s eating cat food and collecting cans?”
“Dick told me to stay out of it.”
“He’s eating cat food for fuck’s sake! How can you let someone survive on cat food?”
My mother grimaced and shrugged her shoulders. “Dick’s sent him to therapists, but Richie doesn’t show up. Richie isn’t my job.”
“Somebody’s got to do something. How about this? You’re always looking for a dishwasher at your bar, aren’t you? Why don’t you have Richie work there? At least he’ll get a decent meal.”
She sighed and turned her back. “I don’t know honey. Dick worked hard to get Richie that job at the University You’ll have to talk with him.”
Dick ignored my overtures, so I went ahead and asked Richie on my own. He accepted my proposal. He figured he could walk to the restaurant and collect cans along the way. When I pointed out that it was five miles away, he told me he usually covered ten miles in a day. Everything worked out beautifully. The bar needed a dishwasher, Richie needed a job and a place to eat. Done. It was that simple. I got Richie set up at the bar and then returned to my own world, living in downtown Chicago and working as a first-year associate at a law firm.
The regular bartender reported that Richie worked hard at a job no one else wanted, often staying late into the night after the bar closed. When the dirty plates came back to the kitchen Richie would scrape them into a large plastic bag, which everyone assumed he’d take to the trash, but no, that would be his meal. He’d open the bag at the end of the night and pick through the leftovers. At first the kitchen staff was horrified, but then everyone got used to Richie and would carefully make extra plates for him so that he wasn’t eating scraps. The kitchen staff found him as weirdly endearing as I did. The bartender was surprised to learn that Richie was Dick’s son. Dick and my mother ate at the bar most nights. No more than 20 feet away, his namesake was swabbing floors and subsisting on a diet of cold leftovers. They never acknowledged him.
I was subbing in for the bartender the night Dick died, keeled over, his face splashing into his chicken noodle soup. I hoisted him upright, removed a piece of noodle embedded in his stubbled chin, then we both toppled over together, his dead weight flattening me. One diner rolled Dick off me and started CPR; another called the EMTs. After a half hour of thumping, barking orders, frantic attempts to start an IV, my mother sobbing hysterically, it was over. Dick was gone.
Richie stood at the swinging doors into the kitchen door watching the futile work of the EMTs. His ashen face turned a translucent shade of pale. My mother was sobbing, but I noticed her skirt was lopsided. The fry-cook hovered behind her, shoeless. Clumps of bloody gauze, two syringes and latex gloves littered the floor. I was torn between tending to my mother, tending to Richie, calming the room, comping the diners, and picking up the mess the EMTs left behind. I chose my sobbing mother, leading her into her office. Pillows were scattered on the floor, the place smelled like a fry basket.
“Shit mom, you’re screwing that fry cook during dinner service, right in front of Dick.”
“Oh, honey, what am I going to do without him?”
“Probably what you always do, you’ll find another guy.” I slammed the door and went to look for Richie. I expected to see him trudging along the sidewalk, but he’d disappeared. When I got back to the restaurant, everyone had cleared out.
The next morning my mother was composed as if last night had never happened.
“Have you been in touch with Richie?”
My mother looked at me quizzically. “Who?”
“Richie, Dick’s son. He disappeared. He doesn’t have a phone. Richie’s got nobody. Somebody’s got to step up.”
“And you think it’s going to be me?” My mother snorted and laughed. “Honey, last night Dick told me he wanted a divorce. It’s over.”
My mother pulled a jug of vodka from the cabinet and combined it with the splash of orange juice left in her cup. It was ten in the morning, dishes were piled in the sink, half-filled glasses lined the counter, some with her characteristic crescent of red lipstick on the rim. She swiveled to look at me briefly, then talked with her back turned. “I found his will. Dick left me nothing. Everything’s going to the deadbeat kid of his. Dick didn’t give two shits about him. All that effort I put into marriage and I’m getting nothing. I’m gonna have to close the bar.
“Mom, think beyond yourself for one moment. I’m sorry Dick died, but he was a terrible father to his only son. He needs our help.”
“Guess what, I only found out about Richie when he moved in with us. Dick never told me he had a son. I doubt I would’ve married him if I had known. I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Well, you guess what. Richie iss a nice kid. I like him. Do you want him back on the streets looking for cans? ”
“Honey, you’re so kind.” I swatted her hand as she tried to stroke my cheek. “Go ahead and be that person for Richie. I can’t. I’ve never been good at kindness. I’m the person who needs kindness. I’m going to need your help more than ever.”
Shit, I thought. Dick has barely cooled off and she’s already thrust me into the role of her enabler. She handed me her to do list and then grabbed it back. With great flourish added “Do about Richie.” As she walked into the sunroom, she said “And find out what he wants to do with his father’s body.”
I visualized Richie’s apartment as I drove into Chicago. If I hadn’t brought the beer for Richie, then I wouldn’t have opened his fridge, then I wouldn’t have seen the cat food, and then I wouldn’t have suggested he work at the bar and then I wouldn’t be driving to his apartment to find out if Richie wanted to cremate his father or bury him whole.
Richie wasn’t really family, was he? Sure, we were close in age, we shared a bedroom for a year, and sometimes I had a school lunch with him. His weirdness was what I liked about him. A shared interest in flipping coins can’t be the basis of a relationship can it? Because that’s what it came down to. Our lives intersected for one year, and that was it.
My mother demanded pity, worked hard at it, reeled me in with her practiced hands. Richie never asked me for anything, but I felt the same pull of pity, elbowing its way out from the shadows, inching towards my frontal cortex, or to whatever sliver of gray matter handles such issues as an abandoned stepbrother with spectrum issues. His mother dead, his father dead. No relatives. My mother divorcing herself of any responsibility. Was I the next in this threadbare line of succession?
I trudged up his stairs, praying that Richie wouldn’t be there. I thought about writing a note, but what would I say? Sorry your shitty father died? I heard Richie huffing up the stairs behind me, trailing a clinking bag of cans.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
I didn’t have a speech prepared. “My mother and I wanted you to know how sorry we are about your father.” So lame, so inadequate.
Richie turned his head to look directly at me, pushing his lopsided glasses up his nose. “What did you think of him?”
I scrambled to find the right tone of dissembling. “He wasn’t an easy man. But he was your father.” I could be describing my mother. My voice trailed off.
“I’m okay. I don’t need anyone’s help.”
“Do you want to bury him or cremate him?”
“Go ahead and cremate, I don’t care.”
“Richie, my mother has to close the bar. It’s losing money. I’m really sorry man.”
“What I’m doing now is better. I get outside and walk around.”
I thought about the judgment that is inherent in pity, that pity meant that I couldn’t imagine being in Richie’s shoes. If he liked wandering the streets collecting cans, who was I to say that this wasn’t a viable life? I shuddered at the ease of my rationalization, that I could forget the cat food, in so many different flavors, filling his cupboard.
“Where do you like to walk? I’ll come find you some day. Maybe give you a lift to the recycling center.”
“I don’t need help with recycling. I’m saving the cans until the price of aluminum goes up.”
He held out his hand. When I shook it, I felt his long fingernails again scraping across my palms. On the way back to the car, I passed a panhandler. I reached into my pocket, as I always did, to add spare change to his cup. This time I opened my wallet for a bill. I only had twenties. I stuffed one into his cup and kept walking. The tentacles of pity, loyalty, kindness jangled into a swirling dissonance.
Over the next couple of weeks, my mother would ask how Richie was doing, not out of any concern, only for the chance to give me her “I told you so” smirk. “It’s starting to get cold. Does Richie have a decent coat, gloves or even a hat? Is he still eating cat food? Does he know how to pay rent? Are you ready to be that person for him?” I didn’t answer. “Honey, here’s a list of errands I could use your help with.”
I noticed a fresh bottle of Stoli on the counter. “Looks like you restocked your liquor all by yourself.”
“Honey, the liquor store delivers. I got a second notice about my car’s emission test. Could you do that for me? I’m not up to that sort of thing yet.”
The next day I headed out with her list. I wormed my way through clotted rush hour traffic. A bleak mist turned into sputtering rain. Across the road a man was pulling a bag behind him. It was Richie. He had fashioned a raincoat, of sorts, out of a garbage bag. Cars honked behind me as I rested my head on the steering wheel. You can’t let someone you know eat cat food, I thought, and you can’t let that person collect cans while wearing a garbage bag raincoat. At the next green light, I made an illegal U-turn to catch up to Richie and was immediately stopped by a policeman.
“You crossed two lanes of traffic to make an illegal U-turn.”
“I’m sorry, officer, but this man needs help.”
Richie bent down to look into the car. He didn’t react to my presence. “Hey, Richie, let me give you a ride.” I turned to the policeman. “Look, officer, go ahead, ticket me. My brother needs my help.”
The cop looked at Richie, the rivulets of rain running down his cheek, his garbage bag coat fluttering in the wind. “Next time make it legal.”
“Cmon, Richie, I’ll take you home. Let’s grab a burger.”
Richie stood looking at me. “My bag’s not full. I always stay out until five o’clock. It’s only four.”
“Richie, I’m on my way into the city. I can drop you off on the way.” This was utterly untrue. I would have to circle back to drop my mother’s car off. It was at least an hour out of my way. And then I would catch deep shit from my mother for not getting the emission test done.
I shoved his bag into the back seat. He reluctantly got in. That same earthy, human, Richie-smell filled the car. “ Where are you working now?”
“Look at this antique beer can I found. It’s called a cone top, a Burgemeister Pilsner, the kind they made 100 years ago, before they invented the pull tab. It’s not dented. Once I clean it up it’ll be in mint condition.” Richie handed me a muddy beer can. “I bet I can sell this for a couple hundred bucks.”
“That’s great Richie. Your apartment okay? You eating okay?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“You know, your dad left you money in his will, there’s enough to pay your rent and more. I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Let me off here. I found an old hobo campsite back in the woods.” Richie turned to me and smiled. “That’s the best place for cone tops.”
His smile was entirely human, full of energy and excitement over the cache of antique beer cans he alone had discovered. I patted him on his back as he got out of the car. “Richie, let me give you my contact information.” I put my number and address on the back of my mother’s errand list and handed it to Richie. “Call me any time. I can help you out with your father’s stuff, get you set up with a bank account. Keep the pen, add it to your collection. It’s got the name of my law firm on it.”
He shoved the pen and paper into his sodden jacket pocket. The paper would dissolve within the hour, but I knew he’d keep the pen. “Richie, what’s the best way to get a hold of you?”
“This parkway, or one of the parks along the lake.”
The cans clinked as he pulled the half-filled garbage bag from the back seat. I watched as he swished through the tall wet grass heading towards the woods. His glasses slipped off his nose as he bent to pick up another can. I honked and waved as the light turned green. Richie looked up, nodded and waved back.
