Too much happiness_ stories - Alice Munro [46]
“Marnie is our cook this week,” said Kent. “Smells okay, Marnie.”
To his mother he said, “We’ll go and sit in my sanctum, shall we?” and led the way down a couple of steps and along a back hall. It was hard to move there because of the stacks of newspapers, flyers, magazines neatly tied.
“Got to get these out of here,” Kent said. “I told Steve this morning. Fire hazard. Jeez, I used to just say that. Now I know what it means.”
Jeez. She had been wondering if he belonged to some plain-clothes religious order, but if he did, he surely wouldn’t say that, would he? Of course it could be an order of some faith other than Christian.
His room was down some further steps, actually in the cellar. There was a cot, a battered old-fashioned desk with cubbyholes, a couple of straight-backed chairs with rungs missing.
“The chairs are perfectly safe,” he said. “Nearly all our stuff is scavenged from somewhere, but I draw the line at chairs you can’t sit on.”
Sally seated herself with a feeling of exhaustion.
“What are you?” she said. “What is it you do? Is this one of those halfway houses or something like that?”
“No. Not even quarter way. We take in anybody that comes.”
“Even me.”
“Even you,” he said without smiling. “We aren’t supported by anybody but ourselves. We do some recycling with stuff we pick up. Those newspapers. Bottles. We make a bit here and there. And we take turns soliciting the public.”
“Asking for charity?”
“Begging,” he said.
“On the street?”
“What better place for it? On the street. And we go in some pubs that we have an understanding with, though it is against the law.”
“You do that too?”
“I could hardly ask them to do it if I wouldn’t. That’s something I had to overcome. Just about all of us have something to overcome. It can be shame. Or it can be the concept of ‘mine.’ When somebody drops in a ten-dollar bill or even a loonie, that’s when the private ownership kicks in. Whose is it, huh? Mine or—skip a beat—ours? If the answer comes mine it usually gets spent right away and we have the person coming back smelling of booze and saying, I don’t know what’s the matter with me today, I couldn’t get a bite. Then they might start to feel bad later and confess. Or not confess, never mind. We see them disappear for days—weeks—then show up back here when the going gets too rough. And sometimes you’ll see them working the street on their own, never letting on they recognize you. Never come back. And that’s all right. They’re our graduates, you could say. If you believe in the system.”
“Kent—”
“Around here I’m Jonah.”
“Jonah?”
“I just chose it. I thought of Lazarus, but it’s too self-dramatizing. You can call me Kent if you like.”
“I want to know what’s happened in your life. I mean not so much these people—”
“These people are my life.”
“I knew you’d say that.”
“Okay, it was kind of smart-arse. But this—this is what I’ve been doing for—seven years? Nine years. Nine years.”
She persisted. “Before that?”
“What do I know? Before that? Before that. Man’s days are like grass, eh? Cut down and put into the oven. Listen to me. Soon as I meet you again I start the showing off. Cut down and put in the oven—I’m not interested in that. I live each day as it happens. Really. You wouldn’t understand that. I’m not in your world, you’re not in mine—you know why I wanted to meet you here today?”
“No. I didn’t think of it. I mean, I thought naturally maybe the time had come—”
“Naturally. When I saw about my father’s death in the paper I naturally thought, Well, where is the money? I thought, Well, she can tell me.”
“It went to me,” said Sally, with flat disappointment but great self-control. “For the time being. The house as well, if you’re interested.”
“I thought likely that was it. That’s okay.”
“When I die, to Peter and his boys and Savanna.”
“Very nice.”
“He didn’t know if you were alive or dead—”
“You think I’m asking for myself? You think I’m that much of an idiot to want the money for myself? But I did make a mistake thinking how I could use it. Thinking family money, sure, I can use that.