“EFFIE,” says Matthew, so loudly that he surprises himself and everyone else; they all turn toward him suddenly.
“Matthew!” says Effie, just as loudly as he did.
“What’s happening with that woman who spent her rent money for tuition?”
“Oh. Didi.” She looks at Jack and at Belinda and says, by way of explanation, “I’m defending a woman who was being evicted from a housing project because she hadn’t paid her rent for two months. In fact, she had paid part of it, but not all of it. She spent the rest to pay a tuition bill. How did you know, Matthew?”
“I saw the article in the Globe.”
“Oh,” says Effie. “It was a while ago,” she says to the others. “She was ambitious. She enrolled in a couple of courses at the Harvard extension school, and she was about to be evicted because she’d stretched her budget a little too far. You know, she had been so foolish as to spend her rent money on her future. Well, she tried to explain that she would catch up over the next couple of months. They ignored her. She called Legal Aid. I got the case.”
“And bingo!” says Richard. “The woman’s all over the papers!”
Matthew remembers. For a week or more she was always there, sometimes beaming, sometimes sniffling, an attractive black woman, with darling Effie by her side, the little guys against the heartless bureaucracy. Now, sitting here at Flynn’s, smiling at Effie while she goes on, recounting her struggles, he remembers reading the story, remembers the circumstances exactly. He was sitting alone in his living room, after work, drinking a martini. He thought of doing something for the woman, sending her some money. He must have been on his second martini. She only needed a couple of hundred dollars to make up the back rent she owed. It would have been simple to write out a check, and Matthew would hardly have noticed the money, but he put the newspaper aside and began pacing the floor, drinking, thinking. He began thinking beyond this one woman, he —
Uh-oh. Matthew is about to speak. The urge to speak has come upon him, and he’s a little too drunk to fight it.
“You know,” he says in a tone that announces his intention to say something important, interrupting Effie, “I remember reading the story about that woman. In the Globe. I remember the circumstances exactly. I was sitting alone in my living room, reading the paper. And when I read that story, it just struck me that she only needed a couple of hundred dollars. It just struck me. So little. I put the paper aside and started pacing the floor.”
For a terrifying moment, Matthew realizes that he’s about to get up out of his chair and demonstrate this pacing; to his relief, this passes. “I began thinking. Beyond this one woman, you know. To the struggles, the terribly hard time that I know so many people have.” Jesus, I sound like an idiot, he thinks. “Just getting by, of course. But more than that. Breaking through! Getting out of a pattern of poverty and failure. I wondered how many of them could do it, break out, for just a couple of hundred dollars. You know what I mean?”
This question is answered with grave noddings of the head.
“Somebody wants to open a little shop or start some small-scale business. Doing landscape work or something like that. All he needs is a couple hundred dollars. To get started. And so I came up with this idea. We give poor people two hundred dollars apiece. No questions asked.”
He makes a sweeping gesture with his hands, brushing aside the questions.
In Topical Guide 443, Mark Dorset considers Self-Presentation (or Presentation of the Self): Altruist; and Projects, Ideal or Real from this episode.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” complete and uninterrupted as an audiobook through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies and Herb ’n’ Lorna.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document) and at Encyclopedia.com.
🎧 443: “Effie,” says Matthew ...