Read Online Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Catherine Ryan Hyde
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. G REENBERG
H er late husband, Martin, had believed in miracles, but the cancer took him just the same. Since he’d gone, she’d tried to bring that belief around again, thinking it to be natural to the family, divinely intended to live in her little blue-gray house.
And this evening, for the first time in years, it sat on the porch swing with her as she sipped her iced tea. It smiled for her and through her, and she smiled back.
A miracle in the shape of her garden.
Lately she’d begun to dream of waking up, stretching and flexing through the pain in her arthritic joints, easing to the window to discover that, as if by magic, the garden was once again whole. And now, in the dusk of a cool spring evening, the garden was whole. Trimmed, the grass mowed, beds laid with fresh cedar chips, freshly raked, bags of leaves and trimmings bundled at the curb, soon to be trash-day history.
Not an unexplained miracle, exactly, because she’d watched the neighbor boy do it all, day after day. Barely a head taller than he, she’d stood at his side and shown him the junctions at which rosebushes begged to be trimmed and the aphids to be sprayed,and the weeds that had to come out, and the ground cover meant to be cut back, watered, encouraged to flourish.
But miracles can and do have middlemen, she decided, and then she noticed that her iced tea tasted sweeter than usual that night, though made to the same proportions, and that the cold glass did not ache her arthritis the way it usually did.
And as if to dampen this perfect balance just the moment she’d discovered it, her son, Richard Green, came up the walk for his bimonthly visit.
How a woman named Greenberg had a son named Green was beyond her, but it was his legal name, though she would never call him by it. He had turned his back on the name of his father, her late husband, as if in shame, and the thought of it swept through her scalp the way a migraine would, every time, dividing her brain for the exquisite ache to follow. He walked like James Dean, or half like him, with all of the ego and none of the grace, and every time he came to visit he looked more and more like Elvis, with his big, unruly sideburns. Even on a cool spring night he wore those sleeveless muscle tees—unflattering to his hairy shoulders—and sunglasses, despite the fading light.
He’d been a smart boy, Richard, a brilliant boy, but seemingly with no payoff, unlike the neighbor boy, who appeared quite simple, and average in intelligence, yet seemed to prove otherwise with his very willingness to be where he was needed.
At forty-two, Richard was not a willing man, nor was he serious, unless anxious counts, and not particularly cheerful or helpful. But maybe intelligence is not associated with cheerful willingness; too bad she could not trade in Richard’s intelligence at this late date. Seemed its only real purpose was to lose him every job he ever tried, being too good as he was for all of them. And she had no more money to lend him, and would not if she could.
He stood on her porch step, a cigarette tucked high in the crook of his first two fingers.
“Hi, Mom.”
“So? What do you think?”
“About what?”
“The garden.”
He spun on the heels of his two-tone leather boots and flipped his dark glasses up to the top of his thin hairline.
“Shit. You paid somebody. I told you I’d do it.”
“I didn’t pay.”
“You did it yourself? Come on. You can’t even make a fist.”
“The neighbor boy did it for free.”
“Very funny.”
“He did.”
“It must’ve taken hours.”
“He’s been working for days. You haven’t been around.”
“I told you I’d do it.”
“Yes. You told me. But you didn’t do it.”
“Shit.”
He walked inside and flipped on the TV to a M*A*S*H rerun, and though she called after him to extinguish his cigarette, he failed to hear her or pretended not to.
And then, when she followed him in and sprayed all around the clean living room
H er late husband, Martin, had believed in miracles, but the cancer took him just the same. Since he’d gone, she’d tried to bring that belief around again, thinking it to be natural to the family, divinely intended to live in her little blue-gray house.
And this evening, for the first time in years, it sat on the porch swing with her as she sipped her iced tea. It smiled for her and through her, and she smiled back.
A miracle in the shape of her garden.
Lately she’d begun to dream of waking up, stretching and flexing through the pain in her arthritic joints, easing to the window to discover that, as if by magic, the garden was once again whole. And now, in the dusk of a cool spring evening, the garden was whole. Trimmed, the grass mowed, beds laid with fresh cedar chips, freshly raked, bags of leaves and trimmings bundled at the curb, soon to be trash-day history.
Not an unexplained miracle, exactly, because she’d watched the neighbor boy do it all, day after day. Barely a head taller than he, she’d stood at his side and shown him the junctions at which rosebushes begged to be trimmed and the aphids to be sprayed,and the weeds that had to come out, and the ground cover meant to be cut back, watered, encouraged to flourish.
But miracles can and do have middlemen, she decided, and then she noticed that her iced tea tasted sweeter than usual that night, though made to the same proportions, and that the cold glass did not ache her arthritis the way it usually did.
And as if to dampen this perfect balance just the moment she’d discovered it, her son, Richard Green, came up the walk for his bimonthly visit.
How a woman named Greenberg had a son named Green was beyond her, but it was his legal name, though she would never call him by it. He had turned his back on the name of his father, her late husband, as if in shame, and the thought of it swept through her scalp the way a migraine would, every time, dividing her brain for the exquisite ache to follow. He walked like James Dean, or half like him, with all of the ego and none of the grace, and every time he came to visit he looked more and more like Elvis, with his big, unruly sideburns. Even on a cool spring night he wore those sleeveless muscle tees—unflattering to his hairy shoulders—and sunglasses, despite the fading light.
He’d been a smart boy, Richard, a brilliant boy, but seemingly with no payoff, unlike the neighbor boy, who appeared quite simple, and average in intelligence, yet seemed to prove otherwise with his very willingness to be where he was needed.
At forty-two, Richard was not a willing man, nor was he serious, unless anxious counts, and not particularly cheerful or helpful. But maybe intelligence is not associated with cheerful willingness; too bad she could not trade in Richard’s intelligence at this late date. Seemed its only real purpose was to lose him every job he ever tried, being too good as he was for all of them. And she had no more money to lend him, and would not if she could.
He stood on her porch step, a cigarette tucked high in the crook of his first two fingers.
“Hi, Mom.”
“So? What do you think?”
“About what?”
“The garden.”
He spun on the heels of his two-tone leather boots and flipped his dark glasses up to the top of his thin hairline.
“Shit. You paid somebody. I told you I’d do it.”
“I didn’t pay.”
“You did it yourself? Come on. You can’t even make a fist.”
“The neighbor boy did it for free.”
“Very funny.”
“He did.”
“It must’ve taken hours.”
“He’s been working for days. You haven’t been around.”
“I told you I’d do it.”
“Yes. You told me. But you didn’t do it.”
“Shit.”
He walked inside and flipped on the TV to a M*A*S*H rerun, and though she called after him to extinguish his cigarette, he failed to hear her or pretended not to.
And then, when she followed him in and sprayed all around the clean living room
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