A Step Toward Falling (14 page)

“I was a bigger jerk. I knew your mom from the library—I had no idea she died and I had no idea she was your mom. I'm really sorry.”

He turns and looks at me. “You knew her?”

“She wouldn't remember me, but I remember her. I loved this one project she did with make-your-own books. I kept wanting to make a different one every week and she always let me—she was really nice about it. I remember that.”

He smiles a little, like he appreciates this. “She was really nice before she got sick. Then she got breast cancer and it was terrible. She got really moody, but it wasn't really her fault.”

“When did she get sick?”

“The first time was when I was in eighth grade. Then it came back in tenth grade.”

I wonder if his friends only knew her as the mom
with cancer. Maybe none of them has the same picture of the woman that I recall. “I remember she had such a nice laugh.”

He smiles now. A real smile. “Yeah.”

“And she really laughed at the stupid things kids sometimes say. She liked kids a lot. I remember that.”

He seems happy to hear this. And grateful. “Yeah, she did.”

There isn't much more to say after this. How is your family doing now? Or what's it like losing a parent? Any option like that feels wrong. I accused his friends of never asking any questions, but the truth is I ask too many sometimes. I sometimes poke and I prod until my friends ask me to please just stop. I don't want to ruin this moment doing that, so for the rest of the ride, we listen to music and say nothing.

This week's class is a potluck dinner party where everyone was supposed to bring a dish they'd cooked themselves or helped to make. At the end of class last week, Mary told Lucas and me not to bring any food. “We always have way too much. We need to do this so everyone can practice socializing around food, but every time, it's the same. People come with three dishes plus a box of Ring Dings.” She shakes her head. “It's the horn of plenty, I'm telling you.”

It turns out she's right. There's a table groaning with food and everyone has taken the “favorite dish” suggestion literally. There's very little in the way of entrées and no salads to speak of. Two people have brought slice-and-bake
Christmas sugar cookies. Someone else has brought a large, expensive-looking tin of kettle corn. Mary points to it and asks, “Ken, did you
make
that popcorn?”

“Is okay,” Ken says. “I make call to order popcorn. Mom said okay. For party okay. I pay myself.”

Mary laughs. “Well, thank you, Ken. That was nice of you.”

Before we eat, Mary reminds them of the rules around eating: don't overload your plate, don't take too much of one thing, don't eat all dessert things. When everyone has gotten food and sat back down, Mary has another list of suggestions she's written out ahead of time and taped to the front board:

        
—Sit
with
someone while you eat.

        
—In between bites, put down your fork and talk to them.

        
—Use your napkin!

        
—If you spill, clean it up!

        
—If you stand up to get something, ask if someone else needs anything.

We volunteers wait until everyone else has taken food before we start. I haven't seen Chad in the two weeks since we went out to lunch, so I'm surprised when he comes up behind me at the food table and whispers over my shoulder, “So I guess we shouldn't have waited. It looks like all the cotton candy's gone.”

I laugh and take a spoonful of something called taco
casserole and then, just as I'm stepping away, Chad says, “I see a little spot in the corner where no one's sitting. Should we sneak over there and eat by ourselves?”

I look around the room. In spite of Mary's instructions, about half the group is sitting by themselves. “I don't think so, Chad. I'm pretty sure we're meant to eat with the other students.” Do I really need to tell him this?

I walk away and sit down with Simon, who has covered most of his plate with taco casserole. To eat, he bends down to shorten the trip between the plate and his mouth. One glance around the room and I realize Mary's right: they all eat as if they've forgotten they're in a room where other people can see them. Not that they're all so messy; they just approach food passionately, with an embarrassing gusto. Ken sticks his tongue out to place a Dorito flat on it, then snaps his teeth over it and grins like he's tricked the poor chip into getting eaten. Peter sits about six feet away from everyone else, eating one noodle at a time by lowering it into his mouth from a fork held high.

Last week Peter surprised us all by saying there's only one woman he'll ever love, so it doesn't make that much sense for him to learn about meeting other women or starting conversations. In all these weeks, it was the first time he'd ever mentioned a girlfriend. Mary looked just as surprised as the rest of us. “Who is it, Peter?” she said.

“You don't know her,” he said. “She used to teach me piano and I love her. That's all. Her voice, her hair, her chest, everything. I love everything about her.”

We were all stunned. This was the most Peter had ever said in class.

“What's her name?” Mary asked.

“Mrs. McCarthy.”

No one laughed or rolled their eyes at the idea that Peter had a great love of his life but didn't know her first name. Nor did anyone point out that it sounded like Mrs. McCarthy probably had a Mr. McCarthy somewhere. Mary usually walks a fine line with these revelations. She doesn't want to dismiss any feelings but she also doesn't want to perpetuate fantasies. She regularly reminds Sheila that Justin Bieber is not a dating option for her and if she wants to go on dates or make more friends, she'll need to look around closer to home. Over the last month and a half, I've learned that they all have some version of these passionate attachments. Daniel loves tae kwon do and his dojo master so much that Mary allows him to wear his outfit every other week and end class with a short demonstration of some new skill. Usually it involves a roundhouse kick and some chops and a “Heee-yah!” He always gets a round of applause and does a courtly bow at the end. It has nothing to do with the class material we're covering, except maybe it does. Afterward Mary always says, “I love seeing how much you love tae kwon do, Daniel,” which is exactly how I feel listening to these folks talk about the things they love. It reminds me of my old self, the girl who loved book-making and acting in plays.

These folks aren't childish; they just haven't lost the enthusiastic attachments I associate with children.

I turn to Simon now. He's nearing the end of his taco casserole, so it seems like a good time to ask him a question. “So where do you work, Simon?” They all talk about jobs
vaguely. Cute girls at work. Bad bosses. I've never been sure where these jobs happen.

“No place now,” Simon says, lifting his plate so he can tilt what's left on it into his mouth. “I have worked, though. Just a long time ago.”

“Oh!” I'm surprised. Simon is one of the class members who seems the most capable. He never misses a
Jeopardy!
question; his class comments are almost always appropriate. “Where would you like to work?”

He pushes his glasses up his nose. “I like restaurants, but every time I try restaurants they let me work a month, then they say no way.”

“Why?” It's hard to believe. Simon's quirks—his thick glasses that don't stay up, his enthusiastic fist bumps, his plaintive questions—are almost all endearing. How could he not find a restaurant who appreciates him?

“Food service rules. If you touch your mouth or your nose, you have to wash hands. Every time. You forget, you break the law.” Without seeming to realize what he's doing, he wipes the back of his nose with his sleeve pulled over his hand. “Sometimes I forget. I just do.” He throws up his hands in an exaggerated shrug. “What can you do? They say I break the law one more time, I have to go. That's the way it is.”

“So are you looking for a new job?”

My mind scrambles to think of diners and out-of-the-way lunch counters where cleanliness maybe isn't a top priority. “Have you tried Roosters?” I say. Roosters is a breakfast restaurant that high schoolers go to after a
late-night party. I never have, but I hear people talk about it. And I've seen the help wanted sign almost permanently placed in the window. Apparently they have a hard time finding early-rising employees.

“Roosters, no. They say no. No insurance to hire people like me.” He runs through a long list of people who say no for reasons like this: McDonald's, no. Wendy's, no. Stop and Shop, no. “Stop and Shop hires people with disabilities, but all full up for now. That's all. No more.”

I'm stunned at the number of places he's tried and hasn't succeeded in getting a job.

At break, I ask Mary if she knows how many people in the class have actual jobs. “Not very many,” she says. “Most of them go to supervised workshops, or else they have jobs that give them maybe five or eight hours a week. We have about the same number of jobs available for folks with disabilities that we had twenty years ago. The only problem is we have about four times the number of disabled adults now.”

I think about the way expectations have shaped us all. How Lucas feels like he has only one shot at college and my friends and I feel like we have no choice
except
college. But what if the world had
no
expectations for you? What if we were leaving school with no prospects at all?

At the end of our meal, I ask Simon what he does with his days. He thinks about it for a while and then he shrugs. “Not too much,” he says. “On Wednesdays, I come here.”

“Oh, Lucas, it's
terrible
,” I say in the car ride home. I'm grateful for this topic to discuss so he doesn't have a chance
to tease me about the strangest moment of class—when Chad stood up to leave early and interrupted Mary to make an
I'll call you
hand phone, pointing to me. All the women in class spun around to look at me. After class ended, Sheila asked if Chad and I were getting married. “Of course not,” I said, blushing fiercely.

“Why not?” Sheila asked.

I saw Lucas staring, which made me even more nervous. “Well, I'm way too young, for one thing.”

“Not
really
,” Sheila said. “You're allowed. You should. Just do it. I'd get married if Justin Bieber asked me.”

“I would, too,” Lucas said. “If it was
Justin
? Totally.”

Sheila didn't laugh. She just rolled her eyes. I assumed Lucas would spend the ride home making fun of me about Chad, which made me launch off on this topic with particular zeal. “These people need help finding jobs. There need to be some
changes
.”

Lucas smiles and fiddles with his brace. “What—are you going to become a social worker now?”

“No. I'm talking about political activism. Legislative changes. These people need a
voice
.” I think about the time I've spent signing people up for their rice-and-bean Oxfam pledges at school. I should have been going into restaurants with Simon pointing out the moral responsibility we have as a society to find a place for him to work in the community. “Doesn't it shock you that most of these folks don't have jobs? They're all capable of working.”

“I'm not sure about that.”

“Most of them are. With support.”

“Right, but how many bosses want to give them that kind of support? Who can afford it?”

“So there should be incentives for businesses who hire workers with disabilities. Like they have for people who hire vets. Something!”

I look over at him and stop. He's smiling at me in a way that's sort of confusing. “Maybe that should be your new slogan,” he says. “SOMETHING'S GOTTA BE DONE! You could get people to sign pledges at your lunch table.” He's never mentioned my YAC work before. I wouldn't have thought he'd noticed. “Or how about this: I'M GOING TO CHANGE EVERYONE'S LIFE!”

The first comment was funny. This second one seems mean, especially considering what he wrote on my sheet. Theoretically this is what he
likes
about me. “I'm not talking about changing everyone's life. I'm saying this is a vulnerable group that's being ignored right now. No one's helping them get what they really need, which are
jobs
. A sense of productivity. Forget relationships, they need
work.
”

“You want to go out and find twenty jobs for those people?”

“Well, someone should! God, Lucas, you know them as well as I do. They're capable people. You like them.”

“I
do
like them.”

“Then why aren't you agreeing with me? I'm just saying there should be laws that make it easier for these people to get jobs.”

“Okay. I agree. I just don't think screaming about it in
a car to me helps anybody. I'd rather think of something I could do.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. I'm still thinking.”

“Like volunteering in this class? Do you think that's helped anyone?”

“I don't know.” He thinks for a minute and shakes his head. “Not really.”

It seems as if we're getting too close to saying what I've really wanted to say, what we've both avoided saying since Belinda came back to school. Our crime involved her and our punishment hasn't done a thing to help her.

I drive in silence for a while until I pull onto Lucas's street. “Let me know if you think of something,” I say. It comes off as more sarcastic than I intend it to. I know he does care. He's a more reliable, better volunteer than Chad. It's possible Lucas understands what I don't want to admit: that nothing we're doing will help Belinda. Or—when you get right down to it—anyone else.