So I kept Blank sleeved, and went down to retrieve the screw from the basement, not to save the screw from eons of uselessness, nor to grant the threshold bar greater longevity, but only because it seemed the most Curio-safe and readily available approach to killing some time til the boredom wore off, or, at least, til I could get to sleep.
I hadn’t been down there for at least a decade—not since our first washer-dryer combo died and the new one was installed in the first-floor bathroom. As far as I could tell, nothing had changed; even the busted laundry machine remained. The carpeting was rough, the walls wood-paneled, the window wells grimy and leaf-obstructed. Cartons of clothing that used to be my mother’s were stacked along one wall, a couple old computers and some dated small appliances were lined against the baseboard along another, and sharing the wall with the washer-dryer combo was a fireproof cabinet for medical records, insurance policies, property titles, and other such documents. My father’s workbench—a leather tool belt, a drill case, and a pair of plastic goggles all resting on a plank-and-sawhorse table—abutted the wall that was opposite the stairwell and, above it, in a frame, hung one of the original JONBOAT SAY shirts.
He’d gotten it a few weeks after purchasing the first two, saying he thought it could become a collector’s item. Although eventually a couple local shops would start carrying them, the only place to get a JONBOAT SAY shirt at the time was a Mustangs game, and he had invited me to go to another one, and then get some ice cream. I refused the invitation. So my father went to the game without me, and inside five minutes of his departure from the house, I found myself wishing I hadn’t refused. True, he didn’t know Jonboat had apologized (via bags of eighties mall couture) for having given me a possible concussion via beating, but then he also didn’t know that I’d been beaten at all—I’d told him I’d fallen. And maybe another dad, upon having learned that Jonboat had stolen “pissing through a boner,” would have shown more loyalty to his son—maybe another dad would have been outraged on his son’s behalf and thrown away the JONBOAT SAY shirts he’d already bought—but then again, I thought, maybe not. Maybe I was just being oversensitive. Maybe I was just expecting too much. Maybe’s the sound second thoughts make, son. Plus I knew for certain that if my father had known I’d been beaten up by Jonboat, he wouldn’t have stood for it, bagsful of Guess? and Cavaricci or no. He’d have gone to the compound, knocked on the gate, and…then what? Knocked on Jon-Jon’s face? Well, that seemed a little much—but he would have done something. There would have been some kind of confrontation. Some kind of demonstration of his fatherly devotion. And yet, I’d refused to go to a game with him. To go, with my father, to a baseball game, then afterward get some ice cream—I’d refused.
I rode to the ballfield to apologize and join him. I locked my bike to a leg of the bleachers. He was sitting up top, elbows on knees, looking out at the diamond, blank-faced, alone. His wife was gone and his son was insane. It wasn’t his fault, neither one nor the other.
It wasn’t mine either, though.
I unlocked my bike. I rode back home.
* * *
—
The basement was dim, lit by one bulb. I’d have to get on my knees to find the screw. As I was bending to do so, the framed JONBOAT SAY shirt’s fatman seemed to wink.
I leaned over the workbench to get a closer look, and the winking stopped. Probably it had just been a weird reflection. Maybe a silverfish standing on the glass. Nonetheless, it unsettled me a little.
I took the frame off the wall, brought it under the lightbulb, tilted it some, and…there—the winking. No cause for discomfort, much less alarm. Just a shadow effect at play on the glass. I could get the fatman to appear to wink if I held the frame at a particular angle while partially eclipsing the bulb with my chin.
I hung the frame.
No sooner had I back-stepped to confirm it was centered than it dropped to the workbench.
The bang of the initial impact wasn’t loud, but it was paired with a crunch, and instantly followed by silvery tinkling as the frame, glass-first, fell upon the rusty handle of the drill case. Shards blasted everywhere.
The hook the frame’s picture wire had formerly rested in no longer occupied its hole in the wall; it was lying on the workbench by a pile of shattered glass. Maybe it had never been properly inserted. Or maybe I’d let the wire down too hard. Was there even a difference? There probably wasn’t. It certainly wouldn’t make a difference to my father. He’d believe I’d damaged the frame on purpose.
I knew it would be best to just take it on the chin, but I also knew I wouldn’t; I’d try to dodge the blow. Though I’d never expressed my resentment toward my father for having displayed the T-shirt in our house, he had once accused me of harboring such resentment—right after he’d hung the framed shirt above the mantel, just over Hagler, and I’d said it looked tacky—and I’d denied the accusation (convincingly, I’d felt at the time; he had, after all, moved the shirt to the basement), but now he would, if (when) he discovered the damage, believe he knew something he had once known—something that was, anyway, no longer true—and he’d lord the “knowledge” over me til one of us died.
* * *
Apart from the glass, the fallen frame was intact, the T-shirt still mounted without a wrinkle. I drilled a new hole just over the old one, secured the hook, and successfully carried out the evening’s second hanging. I swept up the shards with an old Daily Herald, and discovered in the shovel I was using as a dustpan the screw I’d been seeking. At least there was that.
As I pocketed the screw, though, my fingers grazed something rough and unexpected—Lotta’s money. I’d forgotten all about it.
A mistake I’d made earlier came cruelly to light.
The mistake was this: from the very outset, I’d dismissed the possibility that Lotta had given me the money out of pity. I’d dismissed it because she’d told me she knew I would pay her back, which had seemed to indicate the money was a loan. And pity did not give rise to loans. Pity gave rise to charitable donations. There in the basement, though, sweeping up glass, I recalled what I’d always been taught about charity: that the highest form of charity is anonymous donation. It’s the highest form of charity for two big reasons. First of all, the giver’s anonymity makes it impossible for the recipient to pay the giver back, allowing the recipient to receive the donation without feeling indebted to a particular person. Secondly, though—and more to the point—the giver’s anonymity prevents the recipient from experiencing the shame of being seen accepting charity (or, at the very least, it prevents the recipient from experiencing the shame of being seen by the giver accepting charity). Owing to the circumstances under which I received the $500 (our immediate proximity, and my relatively immediate need), Lotta couldn’t have made an effective, anonymous donation to me even if she’d wanted to and, there in the basement, sweeping glass, what occurred to me was that she might very well have wanted to. She might very well have wanted to grant me an anonymous donation, and on seeing that she couldn’t, did the next best thing: she spoke of what she privately understood to be a donation (i.e. money she counted on never seeing again) as if it were a loan. Calling it a loan couldn’t spare me the feeling of being indebted to a particular person (her), but it could at least spare me the shame of being seen accepting charity (and it had! at least up until I started thinking these thoughts). And I supposed she supposed that if ever I did try to pay her back, she could act as if she’d expected repayment all along—as if the donation, all along, had been a loan—and by those means, I’d never register her pity; I’d lose no face. Either way, she’d have saved me from that initial shame. What a sweetheart she was!