Steve’s a little crazy, but at least he isn’t responsible for feeding a family. Steve doesn’t have a wife who works double shifts at the hospital to pay the electric bill. Besides, Steve gets dressed every day and actually leaves the house. Glen sits in front of his computer in his bathrobe and slippers like a pasty human toadstool and buys stocks for one price in the morning and then mostly sells them for the same or less in the afternoon. Sometimes he has a “big day,” but those days don’t happen often, even though in his head I bet they happen a lot.
It’s weird, because I think most people remember the bad days more than the good ones. They remember the morning when the dog died but forget all the mornings before that when the dog was perfectly fine. It’s a good way to live, I suppose. It keeps you alive. Keeps you safe. Better to remember the time you ran into traffic to chase the ball and got hit by the car (which Charlie did two years ago) rather than the hundreds of times you did the same thing without getting hit.
But Glen remembers the “big days” and somehow forgets the days when he loses all the money Mom made at work that day.
Probably because he’s an asshole.
He also loves to say that he’d be making a fortune if it weren’t for all the commissions. I don’t know what commissions are, but I’m pretty sure it’s another word for bullshit excuses.
“Then just stop paying commissions,” Julia said once at dinner after he told us about some should’ve-been-great trade he made that day.
“You can’t just stop paying commissions,” Glen said. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Then maybe you should stop trading altogether,” Mom said in that way when she speaks quietly but somehow makes it sound like thunder.
Glen didn’t say a word for the rest of the meal.
Before investments, Glen played poker on the internet. He loved to tell people that he was a professional gambler, which made men ask lots of questions and made ladies frown and leave the room. But then online poker became illegal and “all the fish went away,” whatever the hell that means.
He wasn’t making a lot of money with poker, either, but I think he had more good days back then.
So now he’s just a paperboy with bad investments.
People pay for their newspapers on the internet now, but Glen says the trick is to find the people who still want a newspaper but can’t or won’t pay online. Mainly old people who don’t know how to use computers or don’t trust technology and one weirdo who says that he’s living off the grid even though he has a TV and works for the electric company driving one of those bucket trucks. Old people are also the only people who want to read newspapers anymore, so Glen’s plan kind of makes sense. He goes to places like the VFW and coffee shops and leaves his business card with the old people who sit there and drink beer or coffee all day. His card says:
The Boston Globe
On your stoop by sunrise. GUARANTEED.
I’m like the pony express. Nothing stops me.
Checks and cash accepted.
Tips not accepted. No arguments.
Glen isn’t making a fortune, but for an idiot, it’s a good idea. That “Tips not accepted” line may suck for me, but it helps him find customers. The old people are constantly reminding me about the policy when they pay me for the newspapers. “Gee, I’d love to tip you, but you know the policy!” They love to tell me about how hard it is to live on a fixed income.
I want to tell them to try to live on the income from a nurse and a paperboy who loses money on the internet every day.
That one business card idea added about fifty new customers in the first month and has been adding about half a dozen every month since. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t. I don’t think Glen can, either. Now he makes me collect from everyone who I could reach by bike. He says that people are more likely to pay if a kid is collecting the money, but that’s bullshit. Collecting money by hand instead of just getting paid on the internet is a pain in the ass, and he knows it.
People hate seeing me at their door. I see the look on their faces when they peek through the curtains to see who’s ringing their bell. They can’t stand handing over their checks, and giving me cash is worse. It’s like they’re cutting their wrists and dripping blood into my palm. I guess it’s because they already read their newspapers by the time I show up, so they don’t feel like they’re buying anything anymore when they pay me. It’s like I’m making them pay for something they already got for free, so it pisses them off.
I told Mom that I shouldn’t be knocking on strangers’ doors. I told her it was dangerous. Who knows what could happen to me? Every mother in the world would agree except my mother. Glen said that he did the same thing when he was a kid, and even though the media wants us to think that the world is full of murderers and child molesters, it’s actually safer than ever before.
I didn’t believe him, so I looked it up. He was right. It really is safer today.
Every squirrel has lucky nuts, as Charlie would say.
Even though none of these old people are murderers or child molesters, they really are a pain in the ass. Mrs. Dubois can never find her checkbook. Mr. and Mrs. Dunn bicker as they pile their coins and dollar bills on the table. The old lady in the blue house with the yappy dog offered me a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch last week because she thought I looked hungry.
Who does that?
She was probably just lonely and wanted someone to talk to (and it was true that I was hungry), but there was no way I was hanging around to eat a bowl of cereal, even if I do love Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I actually felt a little sorry for the old lady, but I’m not going to sit at her kitchen table, eating cereal while she complains about the way her daughter is raising her kids.
Old people hate giving me money, but they love telling me about all their shit, especially if they live alone. Jeff said that trying to serve a paperboy a bowl of sugary cereal so he’ll listen to your shit is fucked up. I agreed.
I never want to get old.
It used to take me less than an hour to make my collections, but with all the stops I have now, it’s almost 5:00 by the time I pull into the driveway for my last stop of the day. Mom might be home from her shift at the hospital by now, unless she’s working a double. I want to get home and see her. It was crazy for me to think that the other mother was real, but I need to see Mom to know for sure. I’ll see her and laugh at myself for being so stupid this morning. It’ll be just like the time Mom drove for an hour in the direction of New York City, got off the highway to get a coffee, and then got back on going the wrong way. She didn’t realize it until almost an hour later when she was two exits from home.
“How is that even possible?” I asked. “You drove in the wrong direction for an hour?”
“I know,” Mom said. “I guess I got lost in my thoughts and didn’t notice.”
“You realize that’s insane,” I said. “Right? You drove past all that stuff. The baseball stadium. That big power plant. The exit with the huge McDonald’s arches. The tunnel? You didn’t notice any of it?”
“I know,” she said. “I guess I can’t help being me.”
That’s how it will be for me when I realize that there is no other mother. It’ll be a good laugh. A save-my-life kind of laugh.