In Mike We Trust (11 page)

Garth was pretty sure he had gloomy and woeful down pat. But were they going to put on a charity
play
? A benefit performance? “I don't get it.”

“There's nothing to get. We just need you to look convincingly sad about the cause and, most important of all, earnest.”

“I
am
earnest,” Garth said. “Aren't I?”

“No teenage angst. No
ennui
.”

“What's ‘on-wee'?”

“Never mind. Act like someone just slapped you, okay? Trust me, it'll help both the cause and us.”

“What if someone I know sees me doing this ‘act'?”

“I've thought about that. Which is why we won't be doing it in Richmond.”

“We're traveling?”

“Just to nearby towns. You don't have to drive too far to be in some place like Hopewell or Mechanicsville. So we're good to go?”

Garth had the sudden impulse to back out. It just wasn't in him, standing in front of strangers asking for money. Plus, the whole idea just didn't feel quite…right.

At the same time, he didn't want to disappoint his uncle. He also didn't want to come across as being too scared or “saintly” to do something a little edgy.

“I'll give it a try,” he said reluctantly.

Mike lifted his mug as if toasting him. “That's the spirit.” He finished his coffee and set the mug down loudly on the table between them. “Now that business is taken care of…are you going to call Adam?”

“What does he have to do with any of this?”

“Absolutely nothing. But are you going to call him?”

“That's still sort of up in the air.”

“And it could stay that way forever. You've spent some time with him now. You ought to call him and invite him over so we can watch that
Beautiful
whatever it's called.”

“
Beautiful Thing,
” Garth said, thinking,
Since when did I become everyone's pet project?
He'd gone from feeling shoved into gay hiding by his mom to feeling yanked out of it twice over by Lisa and Mike. Couldn't there be a happy medium? Or couldn't these decisions be made by the person they most affected—namely, him?

Not an unreasonable thing to want, he decided, and took a long sip of coffee.

But who was he kidding? He was thankful to Lisa for inviting him to the river, and thankful to Mike for encouraging him to make the call. And if he was going to be doing something as weird as going along with Mike's plan in order to contribute to his college fund
(as well as a charity), he might as well do something potentially good for himself on a personal level.

So long as his mom didn't find out about Adam. Or the charity work.

Or the trip to the bookstore.

Or the fact that he'd quit his job without telling her.

When did that list get so long?

“M
ENINOSIS KILLS!”
The words dominated the front page of the pamphlet in thick, dark letters, the exclamation point a dagger over what looked like a lump of coal. Beneath the headline was the sentence, “Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime—But Most of All…CHILDREN.” And below that, a photo of a child's face taken from such a close proximity that it was impossible to tell whether it was a boy or a girl, only that it was very, very sad.

Garth opened the trifold pamphlet and began reading. It only seemed appropriate that he be familiar with the disease if he was going to spend the day asking people to donate money for a cure. Meninosis, he learned, was related to scoliosis, spinal meningitis, and peritonitis. It affected the bones and certain vital organs, including the liver. It was believed for many years to be environmentally contracted—specifically, through the inhalation of fertilizer residue found on produce grown and
sold throughout the U.S. Many years later, a second “contractual vessel” was discovered: plastic monourethane. This was a most frightening discovery, because by 1994 plastic monourethane—a petroleum by-product long since banned by the EPA—had already been used as insulation in many American homes.

“You don't have to read all that,” Mike said. He was wearing one of the dress shirts and the pair of trousers he'd bought at the mall—much more formal than his usual T-shirt and jeans. He steered them along the entry ramp that funneled onto I-95.

“Don't you think I should know about it? If I'm going to be talking to people?”

“It's depressing. And anyway, you don't have to talk too much. That's what the pamphlets are for. All you need to say is, ‘Please help us fight meninosis.' ‘Meninosis kills.' ‘Your dollars will help us find a cure.' Stuff like that.” He was staring forward, watching the road and mirrors. “If anybody asks you a question, direct them to me.”

Garth turned the pamphlet over and saw grotesque close-ups of twisted spinal columns, braised skin, a foot so deformed it looked like a shaved lion's paw. “Eww.”

“Told you it was depressing.”

“Have you ever known anyone who had it?”

The Camaro swept into the left lane, passed a pickup truck, swept right again. “Thankfully, no.”

“But you've seen people with it?”

“Sure.”

Garth winced. “Deformed?”

“I can't really talk about it,” Mike said, still staring at the road. “Let's just say, seeing it with my own eyes is what brought me to the cause.”

He turned on the radio.

When they reached Hopewell—a town just thirty miles outside of Richmond—it was 10 a.m. They roamed around for a little while, checking out the businesses. Mike ultimately decided on a grocery store, doubled back to it, and pulled into the parking lot. He circled the lot, gliding right past the front of the store, and pulled into a space close to the street. “Can you manage that?” he asked, indicating the box of pamphlets.

“Yeah.”

“All right. I'll get everything else.”

Garth carried the box across the parking lot to the storefront. Mike carried two short plastic poles with round bases, a rolled-up banner, and a card table. They set up camp around twenty feet away from the sliding entry doors. “You mainly want to get them when they're going in, not coming out,” Mike said under his
breath as he doubled and then tripled the length of the telescoping poles. “When they've got free hands and money in their pockets. And when they
haven't
just coughed up a hundred dollars for a week's worth of groceries.”

“Shouldn't we be closer to the entrance?” Garth asked.

“Nuh-uh.” He unrolled the banner (PLEASE HELP FIGHT MENINOSIS—
YOUR GENEROSITY WILL SAVE LIVES
!) and strung it between the poles. Then he set up the card table in front of it. “Hold tight. I've got to run back to the car.”

As he left, a woman and her daughter were approaching the entrance. The daughter—around ten—read the banner, but the mom didn't even seem to notice it
or
Garth. They disappeared into the store.

When Mike returned, he had a plastic bag hanging from his wrist and was carrying a folding chair, a fishbowl, and a large blue plate Garth recognized from their kitchen. He set everything down, unfolded the chair, and placed it beside the table. From the bag he took a large package of Tootsie Pops, which he ripped open and poured onto the plate. Then he reached into his pocket and produced a small wad of bills (mostly singles, but a few fives and tens, as well) and dropped them into the fishbowl. Finally, he spread a handful
of pamphlets across the surface of the table like cards fanned out for a magician's trick.

Garth gazed at the display, admiring how professional it looked. A moment later, he nearly jumped, startled as Mike's voice boomed across the parking lot.

“
Please
help us fight this horrible disease!”

He was standing beside the table, standing more erect than usual with a pamphlet held out before him. There were people approaching: women, mostly, some of them alone and some with children in tow.

“It's a
very
serious disease, with
very
serious consequences, affecting children just like yours and mine, friends!” Mike hollered. It was a particular way of hollering: loud, but not angry; emotional, but not accusatory. Garth thought he sounded like a preacher or a TV evangelist.

“Ma'am,” Mike said in a voice toned down a few notches, “just a minute of your time?”

“No, thank you,” the woman said, and carried on into the store.

“Miss?” Mike asked, extending the pamphlet toward another woman. “We're not asking for more than you'd pay for a can of soda. Meninosis is a terrible disease—but it doesn't have to be.”

She slowed down, eyeing the banner.

“Even as children suffer, there's work going on for
a cure. Every day—and every dollar—brings us closer to it.”

She accepted the pamphlet, but instead of reading it, she opened her purse and took several dollars from her wallet. As she dropped them into the fishbowl, Mike thanked her and god-blessed her, and she smiled and thanked
him
.

A man behind her was already digging into his pocket. His coins disappeared among the bills.

Mike glanced over his shoulder at Garth. “You want to help out a little, here?”

Garth looked at the money in the fishbowl. He looked at a couple crossing the parking lot, having just gotten out of their minivan. At a woman holding a baby and slowing down as she passed the table. At Mike, whose head was cocked in his direction expectantly.

“Meninosis kills!” he heard himself shout.

“
Easy,
” Mike instructed out of the side of his mouth.

“Meninosis is a serious disease!” he hollered at a somewhat lower volume.

“Better,” Mike muttered.

“We need your generous support to fight the good fight!” Where had
that
come from?

But Mike was nodding his head, even as he held
out another pamphlet toward an approaching shopper. “And don't forget the emotion.”

For a moment, Garth didn't know what he meant. Then it dawned on him. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and let his face deflate into what he hoped was a mask of sadness. “Please, folks! We
can
cure meninosis, but we need your help!”

“Hello, miss,” Mike said, and then stood patiently as the woman examined the pamphlet he'd handed her.

“This is terrible,” she said.

“It is,” Mike confirmed.

“I've never even heard of this disease.”

“That's part of the problem: public awareness. Even if people can't contribute financially today, at least they'll be made aware. That's the first step.”

“It's terrible,” the woman said again.

Garth's eyes widened as he watched her push a ten-dollar bill into the fishbowl. Mike thanked the woman profusely.

And so it went. At least half the people heading into the store ignored them, but the other half stopped to investigate and eventually contributed or simply dropped a dollar or two into the bowl as they passed without engaging either one of them. Some of the ones who'd ignored them going in, Garth noticed, had apparently reconsidered while they were shopping (or
maybe they'd just needed to get change), because when they emerged they pushed their carts deliberately up to the table, money already clutched in their hands and bound for the fishbowl. The Tootsie Pops turned out to be a stroke of genius (Mike, no doubt, already knew this), because even if the parent had no intention of acknowledging the pamphlets and the banner and the charity workers, the
child
took notice of the plate of lollipops, and went for it. And once the lollipop was in the child's hand, the wrapper already torn halfway off, the parent seemed successfully guilted into contributing
some
thing to the cause. It was almost as if they were doing nothing more than selling lollipops, only nobody would pay five dollars for a lollipop, and some of the parents—once Mike had gotten hold of them and said a few words—did just that.

One very old man dressed in a suit and a bolo tie, his ancient wife on his arm, shuffled to a stop before the table and examined the display. “That your boy?” he asked Mike, squinting at Garth.”

“He is,” Mike lied.

“He's doing a good thing, a very unselfish thing. That's a good boy.”

The old woman let go of her husband's arm and stepped over to Garth. To his horror, she reached up and took hold of one of his cheeks, pinching it. “
So
handsome,” she said. “I could gobble you up.”

“So,” Mike chimed in, “about meninosis—”

“You don't need to tell me,” the old man said. “I know all about it. It's dreadful. But they
will
find a cure, I'm sure of it. Now, listen.” He held up a withered index finger. “You take this and put it toward the cause.” With his other hand, he took his wallet from inside his suit coat and extracted a fifty-dollar bill.

Garth's jaw dropped. The old woman thought that was just charming, and pinched his cheek again.

Mike took the bill, deposited it in the fishbowl, and gave the old man a gentle hug as he thanked him.

They spent a total of three hours in front of the grocery store, then relocated to the grand opening of an appliance store a mile away, where the balding, potbellied owner seemed more than happy to have them set up in his parking lot beneath the streamers of flags and balloons. The results were the same. Some people ignored them deliberately as if they were nothing more than a nuisance; some dropped a single dollar bill into the bowl, or two or three bills folded together, and a few people—deeply moved, they claimed, by this charitable effort because members of their own families were suffering from similar illnesses—happily handed over ten-dollar bills. And, as it had been at the grocery store, almost any time a lollipop was usurped by a
child, the parent shelled out for it.

Only one man gave them trouble: a local doctor who was surprised that he'd never heard of meninosis in all his years of practice and asked a few specific questions.

Garth was at a loss. He had nothing to say about meninosis other than what he'd read in the pamphlet; he swallowed nervously, made the saddest face he could, and spouted, “It's a potentially fatal disease that deforms organs and feet!”

The doctor didn't seemed to be moved. He turned to Mike and asked, “Where's your organization based?”

“California.”

“Is there a web site?”

“There is: yourchildandmeninosis.com. Only, it isn't up and running yet. Part of the funds we're raising today will go to the completion and maintenance of the site.”

“Huh,” the doctor said, sounding skeptical. “Well, I'm a bit befuddled, because one would reasonably assume I'd have come across this disease—at least in a textbook. Do you know anyone who personally
has
it?”

“Yes,” Mike said, lowering his voice, “I do.” He glanced at Garth. Was he talking about
him
? Is that why Garth was supposed to look so sad? Because he
had meninosis? Acting sad was one thing, but acting sick—even for charity work—seemed a little extreme.

He gave a little cough (having no idea whether or not meninosis affected the lungs). The doctor walked over to him. He placed both hands on Garth's shoulders and looked him dead in the eye. “Son,” he said, “if you really think you've contracted something—this ‘meninosis,' or anything else—you should come see me.” He let go of Garth and reached for his wallet. Instead of money, he handed Garth one of his business cards.

Garth glanced at Mike, who gave him a nod both sincere and severe. “Okay,” Garth said, taking the card. “Thank you.”

“We'll get to the bottom of this, PDQ,” the doctor said, then glanced one last time at Mike before walking into the appliance store.

“I think we're done in Hopewell for a while,” Mike said. “What do you say we grab a late lunch, then hit Petersburg?”

 

The day felt foreign, even cinematic. It was as if Garth had watched it happening to someone else rather than to him. Over dinner that night, his mom talked for a while about a particular partner at the law firm who'd been, as she put it, “a pain in the you-know-what” all
afternoon because she couldn't get his Excel spreadsheet to print right. “Is it my fault the person who sent it to him didn't bother to set the print area?” she asked. “Is it my fault he won't pay for me to take an Excel training class?”

“It's not,” Mike said.

“Anyway, enough about that. I hate complainers. How did you men occupy your time today?”

Garth glanced across the table at Mike.

Without batting an eye, Mike said, “In an educational way, actually. We toured the Museum of the Confederacy.”