Page 45 of The Things We Never Say

“Wait.” Artie turned away for a moment and then turned back. “Wait. He died?”

“Yeah, such a good man,” Carl LeBlanc said this. “He used to go to the homes of obese customers who were too embarrassed to come into the store. He’d go to their homes and take their measurements and then have the clothes ordered special for them. And then he had the clothes delivered to their homes, and he’d go and make sure they fit right.”

Anne Merrill came out of the bathroom then, and she said, “Are we talking about Charlie Schwartz? Because it’s true. Hi, Artie. I know a woman who knew his wife, and she told me once that his wife was proud that he did that. Who did you hear it from?”

“This is the man who owned the store called Schwartz’s?” Artie was still disbelieving.

“Yeah.” Carl stood up and gathered his things. He said to Anne, “We heard it last night from Lavinia Trotter, who worked there with him years ago. The place was always too expensive for me, but we’d go in there sometimes, anyway, like maybe at Christmastime, and he was just—just a nice man.”

—

All day, Artie was stunned. This man who had recently been so decent to him was now dead.

And there was no one he could tell.

He would take it to his grave, the kindness that Charles Schwartz had shown him.

The snow had turned to rain, and slush could be seen through the window of Artie’s classroom forming on the soccer field outside.

—

When his last class came in for the day, Artie felt again the quiet soberness he’d been feeling all day as he collected the final research papers from the students, some held together with paper clips, others stapled. The students handed him these with a variety of feelings, he could always sense this, those who were proud of them, those who were worried about them. But his somber feeling over the death of Charles Schwartz was lifted when—early on—Rhonda Lazarre said, “Mr. Dam, I brought in some cookies.” She took them out of a big paper bag and spread them out on paper plates she’d also brought. “Wonderful,” Artie said. The kids did not take any of the cookies, so Artie said, “Pass them around, Rhonda,” and she did, and Artie ate two of them right away.

“These are great!” he said. “Did you make them?”

“Yeah.” Rhonda blushed slightly. At least some of the students were eating the cookies now, although he saw a few shake their heads ever so slightly and not take any. The extra cookies remained on paper plates on desks throughout the room. Artie walked around and kept eating them.

Toward the end of the period, he said, “Listen, people, I want to tell you a story.”

They looked at him with expectation. Artie sat behind his desk and told them that there was a man who ran a clothing store, and that this man had gone to the homes of obese men who were too embarrassed to come into the store; he had gone to their homes to take their measurements and then he had the clothes shipped to them.

The students just watched him, and one kid—after a few moments of silence—said, “Why are you telling us this?”

“So you can learn from it, dickwad.” This was Danny Marino who had turned and said this to the kid. Danny turned back and, looking down, said, “Sorry.”

“Danny’s right.” Artie said this quietly. “That’s exactly why I’m telling you about it. Because you might learn something from it.”

The students just kept watching him, and Artie felt a sense of embarrassment increase within him. Rhonda Lazarre said, a little too loudly, “I think that’s a beautiful story.” Then she said, “Can I tell a story?”

“Please,” Artie said.

“Okay, well, uhm, so I used to know this woman when I was little, and she was really scary. I mean like she was old, and bent over and stuff, and she would go to people’s houses, and if anyone let her in, they were always sorry because the old woman never left. I mean, she would finally leave, but she’d just sit and talk and talk, and no one could stand her, and she always scared me, and when I was at my grandmother’s house, my grandmother would hide from this woman because she didn’t want her coming into the house.”

Rhonda paused, and Artie saw some of the kids looking at one another with little smiles, as though quietly making fun of her.

“Go on,” Artie said. He got up and took his chair from behind his desk and put it in front of his desk and sat down in it. “I find this interesting, go on.”

“Oh, okay.” Rhonda was blushing.

“I want to hear the rest of this.” Artie nodded at her.

“So anyways, a whole lot of years later I heard about this old lady that her son had gone blind when he was kind of young.”

Artie and the class waited. But Rhonda seemed to think her story was over.

Artie said, “Thank you, Rhonda. Because what you are telling us is that you learned later in your life why this poor old woman would go from door to door, because she was lonely. And she had suffered things that no one knew about.”

“Yeah,” said Rhonda, a little uncertainly.