Providence (22 page)

“Clearly you’ve got it all worked out, but can you stand hearing my side of your story? Or have you gotten too comfortable with the lie? Some people would rather believe lies because hearing the truth requires actual thinking. That doesn’t seem like how a journalist would think. Is that you?”

“I can hear the truth. I just don’t think you have any to tell.”

“If we’re going to get anything done today, we have to get past this.” I sat at one of the tall swivel stools in the kitchen. “So, go ahead … ask away.”

“Just to let you know … When I’m not here, I’ll be researching your answers, and if they don’t add up, I’ll tell the whole world.” Bud stood, grabbed his book bag, and strode to the door. He clutched my manuscript in his left hand.

“I’ll read this and get my questions together. Be back later.” The door shut behind him.

Bud returned an hour later. He’d eaten breakfast at one of the restaurants downstairs while reading through my pages. Thunder and lightning appeared to have left him, and he seemed grounded now by either the story or the pancakes.

He sat on a bar stool at the counter and flipped open his yellow legal pad. It was filled with questions, written in large letters and in a barely legible combination of script and printing. He’d obviously prepped during breakfast.

“Let’s talk finance. You own one home in Providence. What can you tell me about your other properties, condos, or castles?”

“There aren’t any, Bud.”

“None?” His eyes flashed over the top of his notepad, reminding me of a lawyer cross-examining his witness.

“That’s what I said.”

“Zero?”

“Right.”

“I don’t know if I buy that, but let’s move on. You drive a 2001 Jeep Wrangler. List all the other vehicles you own.”

I ignored his irritating deposition-style interrogation and answered, “Just the Jeep, Bud. And it’s a 2000.”

“Why just a Jeep?”

“I like the Jeep.”

He tried helping me jog my memory. “C’mon … any sports cars, SUVs, Hummers, maybe …”

“Nope, nope, and no.”

“What’s your net worth? How much money do you actually have?”

I let out a sigh. “Oh, I don’t know, Bud. My accountant, Richard Hines, would know better than I do”

“You wouldn’t mind if I set up an interview with him, would you?”

I’d dreaded this sort of encounter ever since my flag of notoriety shot up the flagpole. “I’ve got a couple thousand dollars in my checking account, about six thousand in a savings account, a few hundred in my wallet, a few dollars in change on my dresser at home.”

“What else?” He sounded like a butcher who’s learned the secret of suggestive selling.

“That’s about it.”

He looked up again. “You’ve earned over twenty million dollars. Where’d it all go?”

“I gave it away, Bud.”

“You gave it all away.”

I pulled myself from the leather sofa and stood on the thick Oriental rug in the middle of the floor.

“People wonder what they’d do if they came into that kind of money. Here’s what I did. For Christmas that first year, I gave everyone at CMO a check for ten thousand dollars. That was a big hit with the staff. I tried giving a friend of mine, Raymond Mac, the same amount. I thought he might use some of it to visit his sister in Baltimore. He said, ‘What am I gonna do with this?’ and refused it.

“Millions went to CMO. Every project Aaron had ever dreamed of was funded, green-lighted, and switched on. He built a neighborhood medical center. Do you know how many people in Norwood didn’t have prescription glasses? The clinic has twenty-four-hour emergency care within walking distance for people who hadn’t seen a doctor in years.

“We founded Norwood Academy. Nothing has affected the community like that school, Bud. It’s used to teach children during the day and adults in the evenings. President Bush visited our school during his 2004 reelection campaign and recognized its impact on the community. CMO also built Norwood Community Church.”

“Did anyone suggest you were giving too much to the community? I mean you can do too much for people, right?” Bud asked.

“We offer assistance to those who prove themselves by acting responsibly, but I don’t think even you would expect people to earn the right to things like medical care, education, and a place to go to church. And about that school … Parents overwhelmingly voted for school uniforms. Students are expected to maintain a high grade-point average. Parents are expected to volunteer time as part of their tuition grant. There’s also a zero-tolerance drug and gun policy.”

“And the results?”

“Drug arrests are down 65 percent. Violent crime has fallen to its lowest levels since 1981. Compare those statistics to the Providence student-housing communities, where levels have increased every year since 1998. This is where my money went, Bud. Because of
Laborers,
illiterate adults are learning to read, men and women are moving up the economic ladder, and test scores are climbing higher each year.”

“Okay, so some good has come from your success, but—”

“Bud, I don’t take advantage of poor black people, or of anyone. I was staying in the hotel—something I
never
do—because … I needed a vacation. Yes, I’ve made millions, but most of it went to CMO.”

“I know,” he said.

I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.

“I’m sorry … What did you say?”

“I know. I investigated your tax records, public since you work for a nonprofit. I’ve seen your credit-card statements for the past three years too. You’re cheap, Clayton. You don’t spend any money.”

“You knew all this and
still
wrote that story?”

“Yeah, I did. I’m a bad boy.” He looked slightly cocky, slightly contrite. “I didn’t know about the spending
before
the story, but I did by the time it hit the newsstands. I had a gut feeling you were dirty, and you probably still are. I think you’re still hiding something. But the hotel thing and driving that crap Jeep—that I can clear you of.”

I was infuriated. “There is nothing I’ve done that’s underhanded or illegal. Your own investigation made that clear, but you still wrote your misleading article.”

“That’s the way the game’s played. If someone’s clean, the truth eventually comes out.”

“Months later, after lives are destroyed. Why don’t you reprint what you know to be true now and end the misery you’ve put me, and others, through?”

“Can’t do it. I’m not done asking questions.”

I walked into the kitchenette and ran cold water into the sink. It was ice cold instantly, and I tossed it up in handfuls onto my face, trying to lower my swelling rage. I shut off the water, my face dripping wet.

“Fine,” I said. You’re going to investigate me until your eyes are bloodshot. You’re going to learn more about me than you ever thought was possible, and then you’re going to clear my name,” I shouted at him, cutting the distance between us in half. “And you’re going to write it well, Bud. Because that’s what you’re being paid to do!”

I yanked my coat from the back of a chair and opened the door to leave. Bud shouted back at me from the writing lounge.

“You’re going to
tell
me everything I need to know. Are you prepared to do that? And if I find out you’ve lied, I’m going to write another book, an unauthorized biography. One filled with the truth.”

I turned around in the hallway and headed back inside. I refused to be pushed around. “All I have to tell is the truth. You’ll have to judge whether or not you’re satisfied with it.”

There was no official documentation of our agreed-upon terms, but we went to work anyway. Bud asked his questions, typed on his PowerBook, and filled microcassettes with the details of my life. Part interview, part deposition.

We worked on working together. It was a job both of us hated.

~
T
WENTY-THREE
~

Vacation
All I ever wanted
Vacation
Had to get away
Vacation
Meant to be spent alone.

—The Go-Go’s

“Vacation”

Winter term ended on May 26, exactly a year to the day after our high-school graduation. Mitch and I planned to stay in our apartment through the summer. The girls resigned from dorm living and leased their own apartment. The first Saturday in June, with help from Howard and Angela Cameron, Mitch, and me, they moved into their new living space.

“I asked Erin to marry me,” Mitchell said as we lifted Erin’s heavy hope chest and waddled it into the girls’ apartment in Meadowbrook.

“I’d heard something about it,” I said. “Have you set a date?”

“Next June, we think. I declared my major, too—business management. I’ll either get my degree in accounting or general business. Thanks to summer school, by fall next year, I’ll be a senior.”

All the changes I’d undergone in my first year at Providence paled in comparison to what was going on with Mitch.

Erin would finish school in December. Jenny had decided not to pursue the internship, instead taking a paid student-director position in Dr. Holland’s program.

And then there was me.

I was restless but didn’t know it yet. My summer plans were simple. I doubled my shifts at City Club, since my savings had dwindled to less than eleven thousand dollars. My summer of ’86 proved to be about Jenny, City Club, and hanging out with Brian Aspen and Reggie Mohler watching the Cincinnati Reds. There was just enough “good” in my life for everything to seem perfect. What I didn’t see—what none of us saw—were the icebergs floating off in the distance, hiding beneath the surface.

Jenny didn’t come to Providence to fall in love, or to find her future husband. But I knew she thought about that. And what it would be like to raise a family. I’d seen the fear in her eyes when she thought of us not being together. I wondered what she saw in mine when I told her at times that I needed space. That I needed time to be alone. She viewed Mitchell’s pairing with Erin as a model of what would naturally come together for us.

In August Brian dropped out of college and went back to Chicago. He got a job tending bar in a trendy downtown dance club. I enrolled for fall semester, cutting my savings in half. But a few weeks into the semester, something didn’t feel right. I started to be less satisfied with school. The classes didn’t interest me. My depleted savings unnerved me. Then I discovered that if I dropped out of the semester less than six weeks in, half of my tuition would be refunded.

I made a fateful decision to quit school. This came as a shock to Jenny.

“You’re kidding! Jack, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! You’ve barely gotten started here!” Her voice was unusually shrill.

“It’s not what I want to do right now. My grades are down, my money’s half gone. The three of you know what you want, but I know less about my future than I did when I got here.”

I had no idea how much I was hurting Jenny. Her face reddened, and she began to tremble.

“Brian Aspen’s in Chicago now. He’s working in a club there making two hundred dollars a night.”

Jenny looked at me in disbelief. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to leave …” This jolt had scrambled her brain, and she struggled to formulate a persuasive point of view capable of stopping my plan.

We were only halfway through the pain of pulling off a Band-Aid, so I forged ahead. “I need to take some time off and figure out what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.”

Tears swelled up in Jenny’s eyes until they poured out in long streaks down her face. She rallied quickly.

“
I’m
what you’re supposed to be doing with your life, Jack! What are you thinking?” she asked. “What were you thinking about doing with us? Don’t you care about me?”

“Of course I care about you!”

“Then how can you do this?”

I wanted to run. I wanted to escape the things that scared me most about life. I knew it wasn’t logical, but I would rather have given up the love I’d found in Jenny than give up the mad hunt for inner peace.

“Jenny, haven’t you ever felt like there was something you were supposed to do? Someone you were supposed to be, and you couldn’t get comfortable with yourself until you figured out who it was?”

Jenny nodded in absolute agreement. “Yes, Jack, and when you find it,
you keep it
. You hold on to it. You don’t throw it away.” She paused for a moment, collecting herself. “Honey, you say you want to find out who you’re supposed to be. I understand this and want it for you.” She grabbed the front of my jacket, pulled me toward her gently, to focus my attention on her words. “But, Jack, honey, listen; this is it. Don’t you see how rare what we’ve got is? Don’t you see how what we’re doing is special?”

I knew it was special. What I didn’t know was how it could all unravel, how hearts are broken. “Yes, I know. But I’m … I’m not like Mitch or Erin. Or you. I’m not sure I’m ready for grown-up life.”

“You sound
afraid
to grow up.”

“I have to do things for me!” I shouted, a poor attempt to compensate for her emotional astuteness.

“Jack,” Jenny said, “don’t you think about how your decisions affect others? When the man I love announces he’s moving two hundred miles away, don’t you think my life might be affected?”

Jenny continued to sob as we sat, holding each other’s hands. All I wanted to do was get out of there. I spoke as slowly and softly as I could.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to go.”

Jenny closed her eyes tightly as if trying to block out the pain. “Jack …” She struggled to regain her composure. “Don’t go.”

She knelt down on the floor and laid her head on my knees. I stroked her hair, watching her cry, her body heaving in jerky motions.

I stood. “You’ll get over this. It’s not the end of us; we’ll still see each other when I come back.”

“When you come back? And when will that be?”

I turned the door handle.

“So that’s it, Jack? You’re just going to leave? What’s happened to you? Where’s the Jack I once knew?”