She pulled out a manila envelope from the top drawer of the desk and began to study in earnest the documents she’d managed to compile. She stayed up into the night, sifting through the pages, pouring over the most minute detail of each sheet of paper. She couldn’t be sure if they were enough; she needed them to be sufficient on their own. Each time she doubted the strength of her case her fingers seemed to find the birth certificate. The document reminded her of what could be the lynchpin, a truth that would supersede anything his lawyers could come up with, a truth that she’d repressed for so long that it stung her deeply, as if she were discovering it for the first time.
“No,” she told herself each time. “I can’t use that. If I did the truth would devastate him, but it would devastate the other one too, the one I love. How would he react to it? It’s impossible to say, but with everything else that he’s been through it would be devastating. But at the same time it would crush him.” These thoughts floated around inside of her like a firefly, lighting up periodically, just enough to illuminate depths that had been shrouded in darkness for years. “No matter what happens I won’t play that card, even if it means losing. If I tell the secret it means that I hate him more than I love the other one,”
She had to believe that she still loved more than she hated, so each time the idea flashed up, she resolved not to even consider it, but each time uncertainty crept back into her mind, fortified by the desire for revenge. She didn’t let herself think of those desires, and suppressed the idea of revenge with a better word: justice. The euphemism undermined her resolve, and the birth certificate would again find its way to the top of the pile. And each time as she put it away, her resolution wavered a little more. As the night wore on new arguments assaulted her mind, and she found herself face to face with every kind of justification imaginable for what she really wanted to do, along with justifications for what she’d already done. After all, he’d driven her to it.
But at what price would she be willing to buy victory, how far could she go to exact her revenge on him, for all the years he’d stolen from her, years that could have been happy and blissful, but that instead were dead and stagnant. Like a murderer he’d stolen so much of her life, and indignation welled up inside her until it gave birth to anger and rage. The walls seemed to shrink around her. She forced herself to take deep breaths, and in doing so managed to bury the encroaching truth deep inside of her. Still, she became afraid, terrified, not of losing, but of herself, and of what she found clamoring about in the dark places of her soul. She marveled at how such thoughts and feelings had managed to infiltrate so deeply, how someone like her could even be capable of feeling or thinking such horrible things. She wondered if those feelings hadn’t always been there, if they hadn’t always been a part of who she was. She didn’t want to admit even the possibility and pushed them away again out of her mind where they would fester, stifled and dormant, waiting patiently for a more opportune time to surface.
* * *
When Thomas and Julia left the nursing home they didn’t see Peter’s car in the parking lot. Julia drove Thomas downtown and they found a diner. As they sat down and ate together, they realized that neither of them could remember ever going out just the two of them. While they sat at the table and placed their orders an intimacy swept over them, as if for the first time in their lives they realized that they were brother and sister. All their old competitiveness or disdain seemed to disappear. Thomas talked about college life, and Julia talked about getting the lead in the school play. She was careful not to mention the recent problems that had developed at rehearsal, and he didn’t bring up ideologies.
“Excuse me,” the waitress said. They were so caught up in conversation that neither of them had noticed her. “Would you like to see our desserts?”
“No, just the check,” Thomas said kindly but disinterestedly.
“Of course. I’ll bring it right out.”
When she’d left Julia leaned in and asked, “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“The way she smiled at you?”
“What about it?”
Julia looked over her shoulder as if someone might be listening. “She thinks we’re on a date.”
When the waitress got back Thomas put twenty dollars in the black leather envelope and handed it back to her.
“We don’t need change,” he said. Then looking at Julia he added, “You ready to go honey?”
Julia managed to keep a straight face as she got up and walked out of the restaurant.
“Why haven’t we done this before?” Thomas asked as they stepped outside. “We’re siblings and it’s like we just met each other today.”
“Today’s been different, that’s for sure. Do you think Grandpa’s serious about changing the will?” Julia asked. She’d avoided the subject, but couldn’t resist it any longer.
“He thinks he’s serious. Of course he could have imagined doing the whole thing. I don’t think his grip on reality is all that it could be.”
“He’s more sane than most people we meet,” Julia said flatly.
“Of course it makes sense to you. You’re getting everything.”
Thomas wished he could take the words back. He felt as if he’d finally discovered a friend who had been right under his nose his whole life and then ruined everything with one careless sentence. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”
“It’s okay,” Julia responded. “To be honest none of it makes much sense to me either. But I’m especially baffled by the fact that it would be me instead of Uncle Luke.”
“You really don’t know about Uncle Luke?” Thomas asked.
“How would I? You know as well as I do that we don’t talk about things like that in our family.”
“When he filed for . . .”
Julia didn’t let him finish. “You mean that Grandpa cut him out back when he and his first wife . . .” And then she remembered her father’s accusations. “I didn’t mean to tell him. I thought that he knew. I didn’t know that nobody had told him. If I mentioned it I only did it in passing. You have to believe me.”
“I do.”
“But how did Dad know that I went to visit him?” she asked.
“When did you go?”
“All the time. I started going by a few months ago when, when I hit a rough patch. I didn’t know who else to go to, and I started to go by and talk. I needed someone to talk to. If you think he’s senile then you must think I’m crazy, but he’s not senile, and I promise that I didn’t tell him on purpose, if I said anything at all. I didn’t want any of this to happen.”
“I’ll admit that it seems a little odd that you would go to visit an old man in a nursing home so you could talk about your problems, but I believe you, and I don’t think you’re crazy.”
Just then a woman came up to them.
“Can you spare a dollar?” she asked. “I have a baby and I need a few dollars. Please, whatever you can spare. Maybe just give me some change. I have a son and ever since,” at this point the woman hesitated. “I can’t find a job. Nobody will hire me and I have to feed my son. If not for me at least for my son. Bread only costs seventy-four cents including tax, can you give me just enough for a loaf of bread?”
Thomas looked at the woman closely for the first time. She did look famished. Her face was pale and sunken in and her belly was bloated as if from fasting. He still didn’t believe her act, and squinted his eyes as if examining her even more carefully.
Then before he knew what he was doing he put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a dollar bill and handed it to the woman. The movement was fluid and the transaction was over before Thomas knew what had happened. He started walking again, but his mind wandered to the rent that would be due in a few days, and then to the shanty of an apartment he was living in. He thought about the possibility of accepting the help that his mother had been forcing on him, but he didn’t even want to consider the possibility of getting caught up in her game. He d
idn’t want to have anything to do with her. The thought of what she was doing made him furious, and in his anger he forgot where he was.
Julia looked at him in surprise. “I’ve never seen you give anything to a beggar before.”
Thomas snapped back to reality. He remembered that Julia was still with him and that she’d witnessed the exchange. “It was a spur of the moment decision,” he said. “A reflex. I can’t believe I let myself get taken by that woman. I feel like such a sap for falling for her scheme,”
“She weren’t a professional beggar you can tell easy,” said a scraggly looking woman sitting on the side of the street. She’d been sitting there the whole time but neither of them had noticed her. The bundle of dingy patched clothes acted as a soft of camouflage allowing her to blend into her dismal surroundings.
“How do you know?” Julia asked.
“She didn’t have her baby with her. Everyone who knows anything about begging has a baby or something to draw sympathy. Nobody wants to help a ratty old beggar anymore, but they’ll give away a few dollars in hopes that some of it will go to the kid. Some of us professional beggars even keep the children malnourished on purpose, even though they’s got plenty of money. They do it so they can make a little extra profit. I aint one of those. You can tell my kid’s well fed.”
The scraggly woman motioned toward the bundle that that she held in her lap before continuing. “The funniest one I ever saw was a man with a dog standing over by one of them onramps. He had him a sign that said: ‘Why lie: beer, burger, and dog food.’ You see he knowed how the game worked. Nobody was going to give him money but he knowed that all those animal lovers weren’t going to stand by and let that dog go even the least bit hungry. All of us, we play on people’s sympathies toward other people, but he’s a step ahead. He knows people don’t really care for one another these days, but that they’s people who want to feel sorry for something, so he got him a dog.”
“How do you know that woman wasn’t just lying about having a baby at home?” Thomas pointed out.
“You ever offered a beggar a job or a place to stay or anything like that?” the woman asked.
Thomas and Julia shook their heads. The woman looked at them curiously then brightened up as if she’d come to an epiphany. “I kind of like you two so I’ll explain the industry. You see some women who don’t have any babies can go to their coworkers who do, but who aren’t working, and borrow one for the day.”
“That’s disgusting. It makes it hard to ever want to help people again,” Thomas interjected.
“Now hear me out. It’s also true that we sometimes make over $70,000 a year, but that’s only the best of us.”
“How on earth can a beggar make so much?” Thomas asked incredulously.
“People walking by like to throw away a dollar to feel good about themselves. Usually jus’ one dollar ‘cause it’s a bill but it’s the smallest kind of bill. And with that one dollar they can ease their guilty consciences. People spend more than that on slot machines or those love testers in the backs of bars. Me, I provide a better service to society than all of those flashy contraptions because I make people feel better about themselves. You know, most businessmen they’s jus’ trying to sap folks dry getting whatever they can out of ‘em to sell ‘em some products that’s really not going to make their life any better.
“People think that they’s good ‘cause they’s business men and ‘cause of the way they’s dressed. People look down on me ‘cause of my shaggy clothes, but when I go home and get changed nobody looks at me like they do when I’m sitting down here. I talks different too when I’m dressed up like one of them fancy business men. If you’s dressed up nice everybody’s gonna think you’s a good person but most of those men who’s dressed up nice are the worst kind of person, taking from people what can hardly afford it, playing off of people’s greed and covetousness so’s that they can get richer. It’s greed playing off greed with them.
“But me I only take a little, a dollar or what they’s willing to give, and I let them ease their guilty conscience by thinking that they’s actually helping someone. With me it’s greed playing off of charity, and so you see it’s only half as bad as the rest of ‘em. Everybody’s got themself a guilty conscience, so everybody wants to throw a dollar in the hat to make ‘em feel better about themselves. Mind you I always empty the hat so nobody don’t know how much I already made ‘cause then the scam would be up. Nobody aint gonna throw a dollar in a hat filled up with more cash than what they’s got in their wallet.”
Thomas and Julia listened in morbid disbelief, not wanting to stay, but unable to leave.
“You see,” continued the woman, “nobody hardly ever stops to find out who or what I really is. Every now and again some genuinely good person who wants to help other people and not jus’ throw away a dollar into this here feel-good-about-yourself machine,” she pointed to her hat, “they’ll stop an’ offer me a job working for ‘em, or a bed in they house so I can stay the night an’ have a hot shower and warm breakfast. Mind you I been working here for a long while and haven’t come across but a few of them kind of people. When they come by I have to decline because I can’t be showering nor eating during working hours. I usually explain to them like what I’m explaining to you two, and they jus’ look at me even sadder about my life than they was when they first stopped to try and help me. Them people are genuinely concerned about other people, but like I said they aint many of ‘em around.
“You know I was thinking about getting that money you gave to the other woman, ‘cause I seen that you got quite a bit of guilt, but I knowed she wasn’t no professional, and I couldn’t go stealing money from someone who really needed it. Some people go around thinking I’m a con-artist, but I got more scruples about stuff like that than most people in this city. That’s why I’m telling you this now, so you wouldn’t feel like you got conned when you was really helping someone. If you ever feel like you got conned you know you didn’t ‘cause us, we’s professionals and nobody knows when they got conned by a professional ‘cause if they did it would be bad for our repeat business.”
Julia and Thomas stood motionless. There was something inside of them that didn’t want to be seen talking to the scraggly woman bundled on the sidewalk but they couldn’t walk away.
“What you lookin’ at me like that for? I aint gonna lie to you. I only lie to people who want to be lied to, and I only con people who wanna be conned. Now don’t you go telling everbody else ‘cause the whole world’s got this system set up to where I can make me a living and they all go away feeling good about theyselves, and if they knew the system it would all fall apart for all the rest of us.”
“We won’t,” Julia said and then grabbed Thomas’s arm. They both turned and walked briskly away. Thomas thought he heard the old woman cackling behind him but didn’t turn around. When they got to the car, Julia took Thomas to their father’s apartment and dropped him off. She didn’t go in, or even turn off the engine. Thomas got out of the car, walked up the creaky stairs, and into the unlocked apartment. Peter wasn’t home.
Chapter 4
Later that night Thomas found himself having coffee with the stranger, whose grim smile and cryptic speech were becoming too familiar. They were sitting across from each other in their usual seats outside the Small Talk Coffee Shop.
“You wanted to know how I knew you didn’t believe in your idea,” the stranger began. “I saw you give money to that woman yesterday.”
“You followed me!” Thomas was indignant.
“Don’t start again; that’s just like you people, saying that nothing is bad—you even disdain the word bad, ‘so childish and pedantic’—and then getting offended at anyone and everyone who doesn’t agree with you as if they were doing something wrong. But that’s only natural, you have an instinct to look after yourself, pure biological instinct explains this deficiency in your logic. But what you did with that woman was utterly unexplainable, it defied all logic and co
ntradicted all your ideas. She isn’t even a good woman, in fact she is utterly wicked, and you gave her money out of pity.”
“How do you know she’s wicked? Did you know the woman?”
“Everyone has that natural bend to do bad things, but to answer your question, yes, I know her and while she has done many bad things in her life that was the first time she’d ever been reduced to begging. It pains me to see her begging.”
“So you have sympathy for her?” Thomas asked. His surprise at the possibility that his companion could feel any love for humanity overrode his instinct to point out one last time that there is no such thing as bad.
“Sympathy?” the stranger retorted, almost snarling, “by no means. I despise her. I even helped bring about her decent into her present state. But you should know that I’d never have done it if I knew she’d have resorted to begging.”
“You’re back to social stratification again. You see if you’d just get it through your head that there are no absolutes then it wouldn’t matter if she was a beggar; begging would be just as noble as being a doctor or a lawyer.”
“But that’s where you’re wrong. Begging is much better for her than if she were higher up in the socioeconomic ladder—worse for me, but better for her. There is too much humility in begging; it’s a humiliating profession—unless, of course, she persists in it. In time begging could ruin her just like anything else because she’ll get used to it, and she won’t be ashamed anymore and then there will be no more humility. She’ll become like that other woman you met and think of herself as a sort of con artist, and then she’ll begin to look down on the poor generous saps like you who give to her. Still it doesn’t make any sense; she should have gone to one of the charities that takes care of people in her situation. She could have still maintained some of her dignity living in one of the shelters; she’d be free of the worry that comes with uncertainty, and the anxiety that causes people to do such rash things, and she would be certain to develop a sense of pride and disdain toward those from whom she took because they’re all so condescending. That’s how she’d look at it, not from the perspective of them giving but from the perspective of her taking. That’s how she would’ve been even if she’d spent the rest of her life as an anonymous face in a serving line at the soup kitchen. Why this begging? Where is her pride? But now you’ve managed to get me off track. What is important is that she really was destitute, and you gave to her out of pity. But that whole bit about her poor starving son—that was a lie, and it worked on you.”