What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life_ - Bruce Frankel [113]
All too frequently, they have had to warn off younger men, who don’t know how to lift but whose masculine egos are threatened by the sight of Barbara and Ira carrying off a stove. Once when they arrived to collect a refrigerator from a house, the donor became upset when she saw the two of them alone. She begged them to leave before her husband saw them at work. “He’s just had a heart attack, but if he sees the two of you, he’ll never let you do this alone, and it’ll kill him,” she said.
Erica Gauthie’s expression was subdued when the tall thirty-four-year-old woman with long brown hair, who was wearing a University of Massachusetts sweatshirt, entered the HGRM warehouse one morning. She had recently graduated from a drug rehabilitation program in nearby Lowell. After several months living in a halfway house, she was testing the waters of full sobriety and moving into an apartment of her own with her seventeen-year-old daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend. She had no furniture. Her mother, an uncle, and another recovering addict had come along to help her gather and carry whatever she needed. While the others dispersed across the warehouse with the excitement of game show contestants, an overwhelmed Erica stood frozen still.
Ira Smith, who has a wise, grandfatherly smile, recognized her reaction. He had seen it often enough before. He went to Eric’s rescue, gently introducing himself and handing her a batch of name tags to attach to whatever she selected. “Go get your mattresses first. The good ones go quickly,” he told her.
Erica nodded appreciatively and headed to the “Mattress Room.” Before she got there, she spotted a couple of headboards she liked and was about to tag them when a watchful Ira rushed over. “A bunch of people are coming in soon; you should pick your mattresses first,” he said. “The good ones go quickly,” he repeated.
Erica’s helpers were moving fast. They picked out a pumpkin-colored convertible couch, a pair of upholstered chairs, and a lamp for her living room. Erica’s mother tagged a coffee table. Her uncle took a bookcase. And they kept filling a rented U-Haul truck with all manner of things, including an espresso machine, a microwave, a bagel toaster, and a popcorn maker. “Do they have teakettles?” Erica called across the warehouse to her mother. “You know I like to drink tea instead of coffee during the day.”
Later, as Erica and her family rushed to conclude their two-hour harvest, her mother ran to the front of the warehouse holding a framed picture. “You’ve got to have a Jesus,” she shouted. Barbara smiled, recorded the picture in the computer log, and instructed lightly, “Just take care of Him.” Just as some people may mistake Barbara’s sinewy shape for frailty, so some may mistake her enthusiastic warmth for weakness. But mistake it would be. Barbara can be steely stern. Indeed, when Erica’s mother began to leave the warehouse with a second floor lamp from a new shipment of hotel lamps, Barbara stopped her and, without visible annoyance, told her to put the second lamp back. “There’s a limit of one per family on those,” she said, leaving no room for debate. “We want to have some left for others.”
By then, Erica was reaching for her final item, a yellow ceramic cookie jar. She took a deep breath. “The people who donate all these things don’t really know what they’re doing for a person like me. I can’t believe how much they’ve helped me. Two days ago, I thought that I’d be sleeping on the floor of an empty apartment. I didn’t have the money to do anything, and now I’ve just walked in and took away everything I need.” She took another breath and began to sob, “I’m overwhelmed. I can’t speak.”
When I related the conversation to Ira, he, too, grew teary-eyed. “Every day, I am rewarded here,” he said. “Every day, I still ask myself, Is this really