Spare Change (24 page)

For a good part of her life,
Olivia had swallowed down her own painful secrets, she’d choked back words that
needed to be spoken, and stepped aside as life rolled by. She’d bottled herself
up like a person already cremated; which, in looking back, was a thing she
wouldn’t wish on anybody, especially a child. Still, if the boy wasn’t ready to
let go of his troubles, it was downright mean to keep poking at him. The
secrets hidden in a person’s heart could be like a persimmon—bite into them
before they’re ready to be plucked loose and the bitterness will turn your
mouth inside out. Olivia went to the window, parted the curtains and stood
watching for the boy to come home. Further down the street was dark, hidden by
overhanging branches and shadows of buildings; but directly beneath the window
was a watery circle of yellow illumination where she would be able to see him.
He has to come along this walkway, she told herself as she watched and waited.
She could already feel the chill of night air pressing up against the
windowpane. “It’s getting cold,” she sighed, “he’ll be back, just as soon as
his bones start rattling.” …maybe not, the voice inside her head argued, maybe
he’ll never come back.   

While Olivia was still
commiserating over thoughts of the boy huddled alongside a garbage can in some
freezing alleyway, the telephone rang.  In two long strides, she crossed the
room and jerked the receiver to her ear, “Ethan?” she asked.

“Ethan?” Clara echoed,
“isn’t he in bed?”

“Oh,” Olivia moaned, “it’s
you.”

“Yeah, it’s me! How come you
asked if I was Ethan Allen?”

“I thought maybe it was him
calling.”

“Him calling…at twelve
o’clock midnight? Why, a boy his age ought to be in bed! Why in the world would
you let him—”

“I didn’t
let
him. He
got his dander up and went flying out the door.”

“For no reason?”

“Well,” Olivia stammered, “I
might’ve pushed a bit too much in asking about his mama.”

“You of all people,” Clara
grumbled with an air of annoyance, “…should realize that Ethan Allen ain’t
ready to talk about such a tragedy. Right now he just needs comforting,
somebody to reach out…” 

As the words settled on
Olivia’s ears, she could feel herself start to shrink. With every word she seemed
to grow smaller and smaller. She was five feet tall, then four…

“You surely know how it
feels to…”

She slipped down to three
feet, the size of a toddler with a world that revolves around
me’s;
which somehow seemed appropriate considering her behavior. 

“Have you no sense of
compassion?” Clara chided, “Why, that poor motherless boy…”

By the time Clara finished, Olivia
envisioned herself only inches high, small enough swallowed up by the dog searching
for his master. She breathed a heavy sigh and said, “You’re right.”

Clara abruptly hung up the
telephone and Olivia was left with her thoughts—thoughts of how she’d not been
the least bit Christian in her treatment of the boy. Sure, she’d bought him
some clothes and a few games, but the whole while she’d been wishing he’d hurry
up and leave, taking his dog with him. “I’m so sorry, Ethan,” she whispered
into a flood of tears, “please come home.”

A stream of tears was still
rolling down her face when the front door banged open, and in walked a
gathering of neighbors. “We’ve gotta find that boy,” Clara, who was apparently
the person in charge, announced. Fred McGinty nodded, but with his hair
standing on end and his right eye partway closed he had the look of a man not
fully roused from sleep. Harry Hornsby, although he’d had the presence of mind
to grab hold of a flashlight, had missed the fact that a cuff of striped pajama
was poking out from beneath the sleeve of his jacket. Barbara Conklin and
Maggie both had a trail of nightgown hanging from the hem of their coat. With
the exception of Clara, an acknowledged night owl, they were all red-eyed, but
anxious to join in the hunt for Ethan Allen. 

“Which way was he headed?”
Ed Vaughn, a man from the third floor, asked.     

Olivia brushed back a few
last tears and shrugged.

Fred stepped forward and
started organizing the operation.  “Vaughn,” he said, “you check down at the
movie house. “Paul,” he pointed to the thin-faced man standing at the back of
the crowd, a man Olivia had never before seen, “you check the all night burger
stand. Pete and me are gonna head over to the park.”

“We ladies will search up
and down the street,” Clara volunteered, “…check the courtyards, behind
buildings.”

Maggie, a woman known for
toting along her umbrella on even the sunniest of days, wrinkled her brow.
“Cold as it is,” she sighed, “we gotta hope he’s dressed warm.”

“He isn’t,” Olivia
stammered, her voice faltering and falling into another rush of tears, “he left
here in shirtsleeves, no sweater or jacket.”   

“No jacket?” Clara
screeched, but by then Olivia was sobbing so furiously it would have been
unfair to expect an answer. 

“Let’s go,” Fred commanded,
thrusting his right arm forward, “we’re gonna have to move fast!” As the others
started out the door he turned back to Olivia. “Put a leash on that dog,” he
said, “try and get him to sniff the boy out.”

Olivia did as she was told.
With a firm lock on the leash, she trudged up one walkway and down the next,
urging the dog to find his master.  “Find Ethan,” she begged, “please, find
him. Find him and I’ll buy you a gigantic steak bone.”

The residents of Wyattsville
Arms worked throughout the night; poking their heads down alleyways,
crisscrossing the park behind narrow flashlight beams, and hollering out for
Ethan Allen to come home. As the hours crept by, the call of his name grew more
urgent and other people joined in the search. “Ethan Allen, can you hear me?”
they’d shout, flashing a circle of light onto the wall behind a row of garbage
cans, or beneath the branches of an overgrown hedge. By morning, a drizzle of
rain started to fall, not hard enough to send the searchers running for cover,
but hard enough to soak them through to their underwear and set their teeth to
chattering. They still had not found Ethan Allen.  

“A boy as resourceful as he
is could be miles from here by now,” Olivia said, even though she doubted Ethan
Allen had anyplace else to go.  She mournfully suggested the searchers go home,
before they caught their death of cold. “I’ll have to call the police station
and report him missing,” she sobbed, “what else can I do?” With her shoulders
rounded and her chin drooping down into the collar of her coat, she and the dog
walked through the front door of the apartment building. 

Clara grabbed hold of her
arm, “Olivia!  Have you gone stark raving mad?” she said, “Do you
want
someone from the Rules Committee to see you with the dog?” 

“What does it matter now?”
Olivia answered; then she stepped inside the elevator and pushed the button for
the seventh floor.

“Don’t worry,” Clara said,
doggedly following along, “I’m not gonna leave your side till we’ve got some
word of him.”

Olivia shook her head, “I’d
rather be alone.” She turned into her own apartment and closed the door behind
her, leaving Clara in the hallway.  Olivia may have thought she wanted to be
alone, but once she was, the truth of the word settled heavily upon her. Alone
was not at all the peace and quiet she envisioned it to be; it was a giant
loneliness that draped itself across the ceiling and cascaded down the walls.
Alone was cold and hungry and forgotten. Alone was so very…alone. She’d wanted
the boy gone, so why was it she felt such a huge emptiness inside her heart?
She tried to recall the reasons why she’d been opposed to his staying. She
pictured muddy footprints running across the carpet, crusted bowls piled in the
sink, dog hairs on the sofa; but those images faded as quickly as they came—replaced
by blue eyes like Charlie’s and a grin that popped loose when he found a lost
piece of puzzle. It was strange how such a troublesome boy could fill a place
with his being.

“I’m letting my heart rule
my head,” she sighed as she bent down to unleash the dog, “and, such a thing is
foolish.” The words were heavy as bricks tumbling from her mouth. Olivia,
suddenly found a need to remind herself of why she’d always avoided entangling
relationships—there was always the demanding husband and hanging on children.
She searched her memory for the snapshot of poor Francine Burnam, a woman with
youngsters of every shape and size, a woman who couldn’t take a sideways step
without a little one underfoot. It took several seconds, but she finally got
hold of the image; which as it turned out, wasn’t at all the way she remembered
it being. Olivia had seen Francine’s babies as cumbersome things, bananas
hanging onto a stalk and weighing it down with their presence—but suddenly she
could see they weren’t bananas after all; they were bright yellow sunflowers
tilted toward the sun. Standing alongside them was Francine, an oak tree,
straight and tall as anyone could ever hope to be. 

“Good Lord,” Olivia sighed
and dropped down onto the sofa. “How could I have made such a mistake? How
could I not have seen…” She reached for the telephone and dialed the number for
the Wyattsville Police Station.

“Sergeant Grubber,” a voice
answered.

“I’d like to report—” the
door clicked open and Olivia screamed, “Ethan Allen!”    

“Excuse me?” Sergeant
Grubber said.

“Never mind.” Olivia hung up
the receiver, leaped across the room and grabbed hold of the boy. “Thank heavens
you’re back—”

“I ain’t back,” he grumbled,
“I just came to get Dog.”

“But…”

He removed the new harness
and tossed it to the floor. “Where’s my rope?”

“But, Ethan, there’s no
need—”

“Look, lady, you got your
ways and I got mine!”

“Maybe so,” Olivia answered,
knowing such a thing was indeed true, “but I’ll wager we could find us a way to
work it out.”

“I ain’t telling you
nothing.”

“I won’t ask anymore.”

“I’ll bet,” he said with a
sneer. “Maybe not today, but—”

“I’ll never ask again. When
you’re ready you’ll—”

“What if I ain’t never
ready?”

“Then you’ll never tell me,”
Olivia answered with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

“Is this some kind of
trick?”

“No trick,” Olivia
crisscrossed her heart.

Ethan Allen cocked his mouth
to one side in an expression of doubt.  “I don’t know,” he said, “I still think
I ought to be moving on.”

Olivia could see the
determination in his eyes wavering. “To where?” she asked.

“I ain’t got a specific
place in mind, but…”  

“Then, how about staying
here with me; at least until you make up your mind about where you might be
going?”

“I can leave anytime I’m
ready?”

Olivia nodded.

“And, I don’t have to answer
no questions about what happened?”

She shook her head.

“Well…”

“I could sure use some help
around here. I’ve been thinking of hiring a boy to help me with carrying up the
groceries and other such chores.”

“You pay anything for doing
that?”

Olivia nodded. “Twenty-five
cents a week.”

“Hmm,” Ethan Allen twisted
his face into an expression that could make a person believe he was giving the
offer serious study. “Okay,” he finally said, “but if you start in with asking
me more questions—”

“I won’t,” Olivia said,
“rest assured, I won’t.”

“Dog stays too, right?”

“Right.” This, Olivia
figured, was not the time to be worrying about the seven crotchety old farts
who governed the Rules Committee. “Well,” she sighed, “now that that’s settled,
how about some pancakes and sausage?”

“With potato chips?” Ethan
asked, licking at his lips.

Olivia smiled and gave a
nod, “I suppose,” she said, then turned toward the kitchen. Before starting
breakfast, she called Clara and whispered, “He’s home.” 

“Ethan Allen?”

“Yes.”

“Well, thank the Lord! I’ll
be right there.”

“No,” Olivia said, “wait until this afternoon. We need
to have some time alone.”

A
s soon as she set breakfast on the table, Ethan Allen
dug in. He shoveled up mouthful after mouthful of syrupy pancakes, while Olivia
couldn’t force down a single bite. “I’m really glad you decided to come back,”
she said. “When you left here and didn’t come home all night, the most awful
things ran through my mind. I couldn’t imagine where you’d gone to, and I was
worried blue that you might be shivering to death in some icy cold alleyway, no
jacket, no sweater…”

“I wasn’t even cold.”

“Not cold? With the
temperature dropped down to thirty degrees?”

“Un-uh,” he slipped a piece
of sausage to the dog, “I wrapped up in a blanket.”

“Where’d you get a blanket?”