The Social Climber of Davenport Heights Read online

  Clearly he wanted to steer the discussion in some other direction, but I silently encouraged myself to stay on point. This was an obligation that I wanted to get behind me.

  “I came here to thank you for what you did…” I began.

  He shook his head, snorting.

  “You already thanked me,” he said. “And I don’t even remember what I did. The whole dang night is just a blur to me. That’s the way it is sometimes. If I’d been trying to get out there and help you, I’d never have made it in a million years.”

  “Well, you did get out there and help me, Mr. Durbin,” I told him. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  “Lord help us, you’d better call me Chester,” he said. “When you say that Mr. Durbin, I’m looking over my shoulder for my daddy. And that bad-tempered old drunk has been dead since 1934.”

  He laughed wholeheartedly, as if what he’d said was funny. I was far too uncomfortable to find any humor in it at all.

  “I want to thank you, Mr. Dur…ah, Chester. You saved my life.”

  “Why, you’re welcome, you’re welcome,” he said. “If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. The important thing is that you were saved, weren’t ya?”

  “Well, yes…uh…”

  “Enough said.”

  I felt a tug of annoyance. He seemed to be trying to wave away my gratitude. I couldn’t let him do that.

  “It’s not enough said,” I insisted. “I’m here to thank you and to…and to offer you a reward.”

  I fished through my purse hurriedly, coming up with a pen and my checkbook. I flipped it open and immediately began writing. When I got to the amount, I hesitated. The thought of how much my life was worth stopped me cold. A thousand dollars? Ten thousand? A million? Or much more? Infinitely more.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m writing you a check.”

  “What would I do with that?”

  The question surprised me. Was the fellow not all there, mentally? “You can take the check to the bank and get money,” I explained.

  He chuckled.

  “I know that,” he assured me. “My question is, what can I do with money?”

  I looked at him quizzically, still not sure if he was getting it.

  “You could buy yourself something.”

  He held up his hands, gesturing to the little crowded room that surrounded him.

  “Why would I want to buy myself anything,” he said with a tone that indicated wry humor. “I’ve already had to give up nearly everything I’ve ever had to fit myself into this little room.”

  He had a point. The place was cozy to the point of crowded with bookshelves, chairs, lamps, a writing desk, chest of drawers. Fine wood carvings sat next to cheesy ceramic knickknacks and see-through plastic boxes crammed with fading papers. I didn’t know if he meant his words philosophically or literally. But the place where he lived was tiny and filled.

  “I don’t even cash my social security. They just send it directly to my keepers here, who dole the excess out to me in new undershorts, tooth powder and little bottles of shampoo.”

  His goofy grin was somehow contagious. I was feeling more upbeat about the meeting, yet it obviously was not going at all the way I’d planned.

  “I need to repay you somehow for what you did for me,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because I promised.”

  “You didn’t promise me,” he pointed out. “Who did you promise?”

  I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted to answer that.

  “When I was out in the car,” I said, “when I was trapped…”

  I hadn’t yet spoken of it. I hadn’t told anyone. I hadn’t said a word out loud. It sounded too strange, too crazy, too otherworldly. People like me didn’t make bargains with God. We didn’t plead for miracles. I didn’t know if I could even say what I meant.

  Surprisingly, I didn’t have to.

  Chester’s rheumy eyes suddenly brightened with mischief and understanding. “Oh, I see,” he said. “You, Miss Jane Lofton, you’re one of us, aren’t you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’re one of us,” he said. “You got in a jam that you couldn’t get out of and you made him a deal.”

  “Yes,” I whispered with a guilty glance toward the door.

  “You made a deal with God,” he said. “No need to be ashamed of that with me. I’ve got one going myself.”

  “You made a deal, too?” I was surprised.

  “Years ago,” he answered. “And it’s not just the two of us. It happens every day of the week. Things get bad and people start making promises. I’ll go straight. Or I’ll quit drinking, we say. We tell him we’re going to take up a vocation or go back to our family. We’ve vowed never to cheat again or to limit our conversation to truth and silence.”

  “I…I just promised to do good,” I admitted.

  He whistled appreciatively. “Well, that certainly covers it,” he said. “I bet it’s not as easy as it sounds. How is it going?”

  “Not that great so far.”

  The story came pouring out of me. I told him about my Yellow Pages charity checks and the unpleasant inundating response. I told him everything.

  “So that’s why you came here,” he said. “You were trying to do something good for me.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, there’s not much left that can be done for me,” Chester told me. “I’m not getting well or getting younger. I’m in here for the duration. And I’ve got no way of knowing how long that might be.”

  “I’m…I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what other response to make.

  Chester chuckled. “No use apologizing,” he said. “I’ve had a good long life, happy mostly, and I tried to do what I said I would.”

  “What was your deal with God?” I asked him.

  “Me?” He chuckled again. “I made promises that I spent a lifetime trying to keep.”

  “What kind of promises?” I asked.

  “Oh, kind of like yours. I said I’d be a help to folks in need,” he told me. “And I vowed to live decently and upright, to be truthful, principled and honorable. But hardest of all, I promised never to ask for anything else again.”

  He spoke the words with a quiet dignity that was familiar, yet strangely unsettling. Words like decency and honor were only spoken in political campaigns, when everyone knew they were lies. Chester Durbin spoke them with absolute conviction, like some Gary Cooper hero. It was disconcerting. I lived in a world where the most violent, grisly murder is portrayed in graphic detail for the delight of an audience. And where the most heinous sexual perversions are admitted and rationalized on afternoon TV talk shows. The old man’s integrity was out of the ordinary, and made me ill at ease.

  Deliberately, I tried joking us out of the seriousness of the discussion.

  “You must have been really scared to promise all that.”

  He did laugh at my words. But then, he was not the one who was bothered by our conversation.

  “Probably not any more than you were, trapped in that car,” he said.

  “I didn’t promise nearly as much,” I pointed out.

  “That’s because you didn’t have nearly as much time,” he said. “You only had five or ten minutes to make the deal.”

  “It seemed like a lot longer,” I said.

  He nodded. “I’m sure it did,” he said. “I had all night, and that night fills a bigger block in my memory than whole decades of my life.”

  Chester was gazing off into space as if seeing it all again. Surprisingly, he was smiling. He turned his gaze to me.

  “Vera and I had only been married about a year,” he began. “Though it had been a very busy time—1942. My eighteenth birthday I left high school and volunteered for service. I couldn’t wait to go to war. I was full of vinegar. I wanted to wear a uniform and to fight Japs and Germans. Heck, I would have been happy to fight redheaded drunks at the lo
cal bar.”

  Chester chuckled aloud at the memory of his youth.

  “Things didn’t work out that way,” he went on. “I thought I was fit as a fiddle, but the army didn’t see it that way. They bounced me out of boot camp on a medical excuse. I was back home in thirty days.”

  He leaned toward me slightly and raised a collusive eyebrow. “Marrying Vera was my consolation prize,” he told me.

  “Oh.” I nodded.

  “Don’t mistake me, now,” Chester said. “I was in love with that girl. I’d been in love with her since the first moment I ever saw her. But in no time, I was working long hours and we had a baby on the way. It seemed to me that all the other men my age were off to far places, doing exciting, important things. I was jealous of them. And I guess I was resentful of the quiet little life I led.”

  “You were young,” I offered as an extenuation.

  He shrugged, but didn’t take the truth up as an excuse.

  “The foreman came out to get me, saying Vera was in the hospital. For a second, I was excited, thrilled. I thought she’d gone into labor. But there was something on the boss’s face that stopped me short. I knew it was bad before he’d even got the words out. Vera had been in an accident.

  “The baby had been born dead before I even got there, but the doctor hardly gave me time to take that in when he hit me with the rest of it. There would never be any more children. And Vera had lost a lot of blood. The doctor didn’t think she would live. And Vera didn’t appear to be trying very much to do so.”

  Even after all these years, Chester’s aged, lined hand trembled as he stroked his temple.

  “I’d never been much of a praying man,” he admitted. “I figured that if there was a God and he’s all-knowing like they say, then what I’m thinking and wanting should be no big mystery to him. But for once in my life, I prayed.

  “I was beside her bed that long, long night, pleading, begging, deal making.”

  “And she lived?”

  He nodded. “It didn’t feel like a miracle exactly,” he said. “She didn’t open her eyes, give me a big smile and the two of us get up and walk home. The doctor was surprised that she’d lived through the night. As the minute hand had crept around the clock, it was just one hour at a time that she didn’t die. After a day or so, she gradually began to get stronger. She was in the hospital more than a month, but finally I was able to take her home.”

  “And you kept your promises.”

  A wry grin crossed his face.

  “At first I did, because she seemed so fragile,” he admitted. “I thought that if I didn’t keep my part of the bargain, God might not keep his either.”

  “And later?” I asked.

  “Well, I guess I just came to the understanding that a deal is a deal,” he said. “Vera got well and strong and we were happy together. Fifty-four years we’d been married when she passed on. I never regretted my choice.”

  “Then you think it was a choice,” I said. “Do you think she might have lived anyway, even if you hadn’t made the deal?”

  Chester shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. He looked at me questioningly. “Do you think you would have got out of that car?”

  I didn’t want to think about it.

  I left Bluebonnet Manor Assisted Living Center an hour later, convinced that Chester was right. A deal was a deal. I wanted to keep my promise. I wanted to do good. I still didn’t quite know how to go about it, but I was willing to give it a try.

  “Just let the opportunities come to you,” he suggested. “But no more thinking that this is something where you can just write a check.”

  “Are you sure I can’t at least write one for you? Or maybe donate to your favorite charity?”

  He made a tutting noise and shook a finger at me, brooking no further discussion.

  “I’ll tell you what you can do, Jane Lofton,” he said. “You can come visit me from time to time.”

  “I’d like that,” I said, surprising myself with the truth of the statement. “And maybe I could bring you…a fruit basket or gourmet cookies.”

  A strange look came into his eyes, one that I couldn’t quite interpret. A moment passed, then he smiled.

  “You know what you could bring me,” he said. “I haven’t had one of those Snickers bars in…Lord, I don’t know how long. They were always my favorite. If every time you come visit me you could bring me a Snickers bar, that would be real good. That would be doing real good.”

  It seemed like a very small thing to ask.

  Chapter 5

  THE NEXT FEW days were not any easier than those that had gone before. I thought often of my afternoon with Chester. He had said I should wait for opportunities to do good. He’d assured me that they would come my way. I didn’t see anything like that on my horizon. But I kept my eye out anyway.

  I was in the mall when a mother and daughter squeezed by me on the escalator. The woman sideswiped me with her shopping bag and then raised a disapproving eyebrow at me, as if the collision were my fault. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed the two, but the mom was half dragging the little girl along. The child was pouty and reluctant, digging her heels in at every opportunity. I remembered a million shopping trips with Brynn that were just that way.

  About ten or fifteen minutes later I was looking through some blouses and I saw the little girl. She was wandering through the clothes racks, crying and calling for her mother.

  I looked around, and being a lot taller, I could see her mother across the room rifling through some Anne Klein sportswear. Apparently, she hadn’t even noticed that her daughter was missing.

  “Are you lost?” I asked the child.

  She wiped her tears and sniveled out, “Yes.”

  I took her hand and told her that I’d take her to her mother. Ordinarily, I would never get involved in anything with strangers, but as I was trying to turn over this new leaf, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to help. And the girl did remind me of Brynn when she was that age.

  We wove our way through the maze of clothes racks and counters, and were just within sight of the mother, when the woman finally realized her daughter wasn’t with her.

  She looked around frantically, and spotted us.

  I don’t know what I expected. I suppose I thought there would be a polite thank-you and a happy reunion between the two of them. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  At the sight of us, her expression changed from anxious parent to rage-crazed she-wolf.

  “Get your hands off my daughter!” she screamed.

  Every person in the store went immediately still and then turned to look accusingly at me.

  “I was just bringing her back to you,” I stammered stupidly.

  The mother paid no attention. She raced over to us and grabbed the girl by the arm.

  Instead of hugging her, she shook her by the shoulders and yelled, “What have I told you about talking to strangers!”

  Feeling inexplicably guilty, I slunk away as inconspicuously as possible.

  Days later when I repeated the story to Chester, he laughed out loud.

  “I was thinking I was such a hero, saving the day,” I admitted derisively. “And then a whole store full of strangers assume I’m a kidnapper or a pedophile.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Chester said.

  “I guess it’s like they say. ‘No good deed goes unpunished,’” I quoted.

  “Now, don’t start thinking that way,” he told me. “It’s important to try to do the right thing, even if it turns out differently than you thought it would.”

  “So motive is more important than outcome?” I asked.

  He was thoughtful for a moment and then shook his head. “Motive is not more important than outcome. But the truth is, you don’t know the outcome. You only see what happens today. A month from now maybe that mother and daughter are in another store and there is a real predator there. Because of what happened with you, the mother keeps a better eye on the little girl, or the ch
ild is less receptive to a person she doesn’t know. Or maybe nothing like that happens, but somewhere deep in the mind of that child is a vague memory of a person who helped her when she needed it. And so she helps someone herself. We can’t know the kind of effect we have tomorrow or next week or next year or ten years from now.”

  “So,” I said, “we’re supposed to keep doing what we think are the right things and just assume that life somehow works out better because of it.”

  Chester smiled, his eyes bright with humor. “I believe we call that faith.”

  I wasn’t sure that Chester had the right of it, but I felt better after going to see him. Just talking with him made me feel less crazy about what I was trying to do. Chester had been there. Just like me, he knew what it felt like to make a promise. And he knew how important it was for me to keep it.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” I said, pulling a Snickers out of my purse. “As per your request, sir.”

  Chester held the candy bar in his hands almost reverently. Then he got up and shuffled to the chest next to his bed. I watched him carefully hide his treasure under a pile of papers, like a kid who feared that his treat would be stolen.

  “I’ll save this for later,” he told me.

  A couple of days later I got an e-mail from the Metro Realtors Alliance about a special low-income housing seminar that was being held downtown. They needed real estate professionals to offer individualized counseling to potential first-time home buyers. I checked my Day-Timer, rearranged a couple of things and replied that I was interested. Five minutes later my phone rang.

  “This is a joke, right?”

  The question came from Ann Rhoder Hines, chair of the Metro Realtors Outreach Commission. I had shared a passing acquaintance with Ann over the years, but we certainly moved in different circles. She was exactly the kind of woman I had worked very hard not to be. Like me, she’d grown up working-class; smart, motivated and ambitious. But she’d married young and wrong. Her husband drank cheap beer and puttered around at low-paying jobs, her children were hopelessly mediocre. No matter how much real estate the woman sold, no matter how many committees she served on, it was doubtful she could ever overcome those handicaps.