The Dime

By Mark Paxson

The Dime is a bruising but ultimately hopeful small town coming of age tale winding its way through a gauntlet of loss, disability, and abuse. A tragic car crash orphans two sisters, leaving them bound for life, one to a wheelchair and the other as caretaker. An abusive alcoholic dad and criminally derelict mom seed and nurture a paralyzing self-doubt in their son. This story follows three trauma survivors as they intersect for a moment in time, share their scars, and find comfort and resilience together in their paths to healing.

 

Ten years after their parents' deaths, Lily, now 20, is a cashier at the local Five and Dime, a job provided as charity and pity so she can support herself and her sister Sophie, a socially withdrawn 16-year-old in a wheelchair. Lily desperately wants her sister to have a normal high school experience but Sophie is increasingly uninterested in the world. That is, until Lily catches a shoplifter and concocts a plan to help Sophie.

 

Pete is the new kid in town. On his 16th birthday, just another day to his parents, Pete decides to help himself to something from the Five and Dime. His plan goes wrong when Lily see his theft and stops him. Rather than put Pete in cuffs, Lily instead offers a trade – he can keep what he stole and she won't tell, as long as he takes Sophie to the upcoming school dance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Paxson
• Release date: Jan 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798986699288

Book preview

THE DIME

A Novel

––––––––

Mark Paxson

This is a KingMidget Press Book

Copyright © 2021, 2023 Mark Paxson

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States.

ISBN Ebook: 979-8-9866992-8-8

Paperback: 979-8-9866992-9-5

––––––––

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and

incidents are the product of the author’s imagination

or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual

persons, living or dead, events, or locales

is entirely coincidental. That said ...

there is a Northville Five & Dime in the town

of Northville, NY. There is also a family

in Northville that may bear a resemblance

to the Anthem family in this story.

But all of this remains fiction and not real.

Cover design by Karen Phillips (PhillipsCovers.com)

Back cover photograph by Holly Vierra

DEDICATION

––––––––

To Zoe Keithley, a fabulous writer and teacher,

who loved the craft and art

of creating imagery and feeling with words

Part One

Lily

Everything changed on a day that started like any other. Except for Wednesdays, when Old Man Mooney gave me the day off, and Sundays, when the Five & Dime was closed because it was God’s day. No two-day weekends for me. Not that I minded. Having Wednesdays gave me a chance to walk down Second to the lake, sit on the rocky shore in my bikini away from the prying eyes of a crowded weekend and sketch while the quiet wrapped its warm, comforting arms around me. Saturdays at the lake, kids splashed, dogs barked, and moms yelled through it all.

I had finished mopping the entryway. The linoleum reflected the ceiling lights. The cleaner scratched my nose, overpowering the stale candy scent that usually ebbed and flowed through the day. Mooney was in the office in the back, where more often than not he slept through the early afternoon hours when the only customers were retirees puttering down the aisles in their scooters and a mom or two stocking up on Otter Pops for the weekend. It was Thursday after all, and it was supposed to be a scorcher. As in, 90 and 90. If you don’t know what that means, you never lived on the East Coast. If you do, you know that made for a miserable spring day. The kind of weather that didn’t typically show up until well into the summer.

Leafing through a week-old Us, reading about a

Kardashian and a kleptomaniac diva, I heard the church bells toll three times. I put the gossip rag aside, wiped down the counter one last time, and waited. Teenagers and preteens alike streamed through the door in a rush, grabbing candy and cans of soda pop. Going through the magazines, the girls giggled at the pictures and put their hair up like they saw the stars do. The boys loitering in the back laughed at the tacky t-shirts and pants that passed for Five & Dime style.

All the while, I wished I could see my sister in that crowd. Hassling the boys, getting teased back. Maybe there would be a cute guy who hung by her side, filled with awkward teenage charm. Or, Sophie could be the center of attention in the circle of girls that hung out by the magazines, or where the cheap cosmetics were displayed. Giggling and laughing, sampling lipsticks and five-dollar perfumes, Sophie would smile brighter than any girl there, brighter than the fluorescents on the ceiling or the sun bleeding through the front windows. Her smile would be bright enough to ease my guilt and sorrow. Her laugh would be infectious, drawing people to her.

It never happened that way though. When school was over, Sophie got on the bus for the short trip home or pushed her wheelchair there, where she did her homework and watched TV. Typically, as evening approached, she would go out to the porch and wait for me to come home. A quiet dinner and we’d start it all over the next day. As it had been for two years, since I turned eighteen and got the right to care for my sister.

* * *

We went to New York City. Our parents, Phil and Kirsty Madison, thought it time for us to see the sights of the big city. You may have heard of them, one-hit wonders responsible for a big pop hit in 2002, their career of nondescript folk music turned upside down when that one ballad, You Make Me Want to Love You, went to the top of the charts. For a brief moment they were famous. And rich. They took all of that and escaped to Northville. I was six, Sophie had just started walking. They never performed again.

Except for Sophie and me — in the family room on quiet nights with a fire crackling and the wind rattling outside, or in the car on road trips to nowhere because that’s where they thought we should be headed. They sang only to us, providing a backdrop to our earlier years.

When we went to New York City, I was ten, Sophie five. We saw the Statue of Liberty, rode the subways, got in a taxi with a driver who was on his second day on the job and asked our father, The Statue of Liberty? How to get there? He held out a map, then went careening through traffic to get us to our destination.

On New Year’s Eve we danced with the revelers in Times Square, staying up later than we ever could have before. I had to pee, but there were no restrooms, so Daddy told me to hold it or do it right there. I held it until I could no more and peed right there, surrounded by the protective shell of my parents and sister, who giggled while I did my business.

On the ride home Sophie and I played the alphabet game. I had to look for complete words. She got to look for letters. In alphabetical order, we fought an epic battle, but I got stuck at Q, while she kept going. Leaping and bounding through the alphabet, Sophie got all the way to X.

X! she yelled, pointing out my window.

Where? I feigned disbelief, but I had already seen it. Nexus Printing, blared a roadway sign. I knew I was done.

Sophie broke the game up then. Hey, Lily. See that cloud?

Where?

There. She pulled me to her side of the car and pointed out what I could only see as a blob of white against the blue sky. It looks like a rubber ducky with a sailor hat.

Huh?

Look, she demanded. Don’t you see it?

I looked again, and as I did the driver of the semi next to us decided to change lanes into ours. Daddy couldn’t get out of the way. He and Mom died instantly, the front end of the car crushed like a collapsed accordion. Sophie in the passenger seat on the side nearest the semi, was paralyzed from the waist down and left brain-damaged — enough at least that her thoughts slowed down a bit and her words slowed down just a bit more.

I, on the other hand, had the good fortune of being protected in a cocoon of collapsing steel that formed a chamber around me. I emerged virtually unscathed. Except for the guilt and fear and uncertainty that has haunted me since.

* * *

Every day it seemed like one of the kids would walk off with something. A bag of m & m’s slid in a pocket. Lipstick palmed. A bottle of water hidden in a purse. A cheap paperback tucked brazenly under an arm. I saw it every time, and when I told them to stop, they ran. These kids knew who I was and I knew who they were. Maybe I was a few years older, but I knew and they knew I knew. Susan and Emily and Carlos and Josh and Stan and Ashley and, well, even in a little itty bitty place like Northville, there were enough of them. They knew one other thing. As long as they didn’t get caught, as in stopped, they were good to go.

I wasn’t gonna tell Mooney. Or their parents. Or the cops. Cops. Right. Northville’s one cop. Mooney’s brother Matt, who spent five days a week, Wednesday through Sunday, patrolling the streets in his shiny Crown Victoria. Monday and Tuesday, the wild streets of Northville were patrolled by the county sheriff. The only time Officer Mooney got to run his siren or flash his lights was when a kid asked him.

Which is why they ran. Even when I heard their jokes about the kids who had to ride the short bus, not realizing Sophie was my sister and she rode that bus, I let them go. And come back the next day. It was an unspoken deal. Keep it small. Keep it quiet. I would make a show of an effort. They wouldn’t make me look bad. Even if I hated them for their intolerance and lack of compassion for Sophie.

It was an odd thing, this guilt that hung over me. I wanted Sophie to be the five-year-old she once was, running and skipping, a nonstop flurry of activity. In my memory, she always smiled with dimples puckering her chubby cheeks and kept me laughing with her incredible imagination. I wanted to see her dancing with a boy and playing on the school basketball team instead of being trapped in her wheelchair, seemingly without friends.

It’s clichéd to say that it should have been me instead of her. And, ultimately, it would also be a lie for me to say that. I was ten. It’s not like I had already lived my life and would gladly take her place. That wasn’t it. I just never understood how I escaped unscathed. If the rest of my family had been left dead or permanently maimed, I should have too. Maybe guilt was my permanent scar, one that did strange things to me.

Like letting the stupid little shoplifters go. It was the guilt driving me. I didn’t want to be responsible for something bad happening to them. If I stopped them, if I told Mooney, if they got in trouble, where would it end? Better to let them go with their small treasures than to be responsible for messing up their lives. Even if I was frustrated that they didn’t give a crap about Sophie, shooting daggers from my eyes at them when they made their narrow-minded little jokes.

They loitered. They stole. They ran. I let them. Then one day, there was a new kid. He didn’t run.

––––––––

Pete

I woke up, knowing what to expect. It was my sixteenth birthday. The old man would be sleeping off the night before. Even with the door closed, when I walked by my parents’ bedroom, I could smell it. The stale odor of alcohol oozing out of his pores mixed with the stench of his sweat-soaked sheets. I have no idea how my mother slept in the same bed.

Speaking of my dear old mother, once I got dressed and went out to the kitchen, I found her sitting at the kitchen table, cigarette in hand, smoke stretching a few inches above before disappearing. The secondhand smoke left me with a permanent cough and runny nose. I guess I could thank her for that.

I grabbed an apple from the refrigerator. Happy birthday, kiddo, Mom said in a voice that rattled like a handful of gravel in the depths of her throat. Hope it’s a good one.

Thanks, I said, not turning to her. I kept my head in the fridge, trying to let the cold soothe my anger. I was sixteen years old, on my own for a happy birthday, just as I had been almost as long as I could remember. Those words would be the extent of my parents’ acknowledgement of the blessing I brought to their lives. Mom would head to work shortly after I left for school and be off her feet by the time I got home.

And Pops? Yeah, he’d get out of bed soon enough. That is, soon enough to get to the bar over in Gloversville by 4:00. His greatest disappointment when we moved to Northville shortly after the first of the year was the lack of a drinking establishment. He had to drive his car five miles to drink and watch a game on TV, instead of being able to walk down to the corner. Mine was that he had yet to spin his car and hit a tree on his way home. Mine was that my sweet mother had yet to cough up a lung and choke to death on it.

It was my birthday. Yippee-fuckin’-ki-yay!

* * *

I was six the last time I had a party. Complete with paper hats and noisemakers, kids from the neighborhood, and my dad even stayed sober for most of it. Sober being a relative term for him. He kept it to a minimum that day. How could I tell? He managed to stay awake through the party, right up to when he spanked my bottom raw.

Mom was right there too, helping with the games, cigarette in hand sending smoke into my friends’ faces. When it came time for cake, she lit the candles with her lighter in one hand, and her cigarette in the other, a clump of ash falling on the cake between the P and the e of my name. I guess I should be thankful they got my name right. She smoked right through the spanking too, the smoke forming a filter that blocked her eyes from my view. ‘Course, I couldn’t really see anything through my tears.

I didn’t realize any of this until much later. A six-year-old kid notices none of these things when he’s laughing too hard as his friends dizzily try to Pin the Tail on the Donkey. He doesn’t notice his dad is back at the fridge in the middle of a rousing game of musical chairs. He doesn’t see the omnipresent orange glow at the end of the cigarette. None of it. What the boy sees is happiness and laughter and fun. So much of it that he asks for, no he demands, another game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, after the cake and before the presents.

I blew out the candles and we ate our cake. Mama, can we play Pin the Tail on the Donkey again? Please? The cake was strawberry with white frosting. The ice cream, Neapolitan. I ate around the vanilla but filled myself with chocolate and strawberry and a piece-and-a-half of my birthday cake. Please, I repeated after my last mouthful had filled the final space in my stomach. For good measure, I took another big swig of fruit punch.

I don’t know, Petey, Mama said. Your presents are waiting. Don’t you want to see what you got?

"One more? One more game? Pleeeease."

She sighed and sucked a little more smoke into her lungs, then blowing it out the side of her mouth. Honey, she said to my dad, you wanna spin them around one more time?

Why not? he chuckled. He only has a birthday once a year. My dad picked up the blindfold. Who’s first?

Jack went first. His tail went on the wall five feet from the donkey. Sue, the neighbor girl Mama made me invite, went next. She pinned her tail on the donkey’s nose. I insisted I go next. Dad spun me and spun me and spun me. That’s enough, I heard Mama say through the growing roar in my ears. But he didn’t stop. I went around two more times. The room spun and I tried to turn with it but I couldn’t catch up. The roaring grew louder and then there was a rumble and everything in my stomach, even the jelly beans I had eaten an hour earlier, came up in a volcanic eruption that hit my dad square in the chest, covering him in a pink mush that dripped down to the floor, forming a puddle of half-digested cake, jelly beans, and almost blood-red liquid.

As I tore off the blindfold, afraid it was going to happen again, my old man flung his arms out scattering spots on the walls of the little front room, forming a crime scene–like splatter. He grabbed my elbow and yanked me to him, my body suddenly as limp as an empty pillow case. You little shit! Damn it all! He spanked me with his large hand, alternating every once in a while with a clenched fist that left bruises on my butt and thighs that would last for weeks, muttering as he swung, You Goddamn little shit! My friends scattered and cowered. When he was finally done, he dropped me to the floor and stomped to his room. I looked at Mama, who sat at the table, cigarette in hand, smoke drifting in the air.

Mama? I pleaded.

She stubbed out her cigarette and shrugged. Rather than picking me up, she gathered paper plates and plastic forks and threw them out, cleaning the room instead of cleaning me.

The next day, alone — with my father at a bar and my mother shopping — I opened my presents.

* * *

School was a bust. Being the new kid, as yet another year wound down, meant nobody knew the first thing about me. I got no birthday wishes there. No high fives because it was my day. No cute girl smiling shyly and blushing while she whispered, Happy birthday, Pete. Nope, none of that. Just another day in Boringville, New York.

After school, I followed a group of kids into the Five & Dime. I had a dollar in my pocket. If nobody else was going to do it, the least I could do was buy myself a candy bar and sing happy birthday to myself. I grabbed a Snickers and made my way to the back, where a handful of boys were standing around.

Hey. I nodded to them.

One of them, I think his name was Baxter, said hey back. The others nodded or shuffled around. I moved along. And, that’s when I saw it.

––––––––

Lily

What caught my attention was the price tag. Sticking out of the neck of the Yankees t-shirt he was wearing. The kid had to notice it, rubbing against his skin. How could he not? Damn. Hey you, I said kind of feebly. Stop.

Here’s where he was supposed to glance at me in shock after getting caught. I would look at him and see that he was just a kid and I didn’t mean him any harm. My feeble start would get even more feeble, allowing him to dash through the doors.

Problem is he didn’t follow the script. He didn’t do me the courtesy of breaking and running. And that’s not the only rule he broke. Stealing a t-shirt definitely went beyond the unwritten rules. A candy bar, yes. A bottle of soda pop, yes. A magazine, maybe. But a t-shirt? We’re talking about ten or fifteen bucks minimum. I couldn’t just let that go.

He froze. What? Me?

Yeah. You. Come here. And he did. What a fool.

There was a kid standing at the counter trying to pay for a couple of candy bars. He must have slathered himself in half a bottle of Axe deodorant because I couldn’t smell the linoleum anymore, or the cleaner, or even the licorice in the tub next to the register. All I could smell was him. Move it, I ordered.

I turned my attention back to the Derek Jeter wannabe.

The shirt. You were going to walk out without paying for it. Pay for it or I gotta call the cops.

What do you mean?

Come on. The price tag is still on it, you idiot.

He reached to his neck then and felt the tag there, blushing a deep red that almost matched the licorice in its tub.

Damn, he muttered. He started taking off the t-shirt. Here.

Too late. Pay or I call Officer Mooney.

That’s when he began to tear up. I don’t have enough money. All I have is a dollar. He kept tugging at the shirt, getting an elbow caught in the sleeve. My parents will kill me. Please.

Can’t do it. Store policy. Which it was.

He stopped tugging and stood there, one arm stuck, the neck of the shirt pulled over his head and now he peered at me through the hole of the shirt’s neck. Behind him, the other kids had gathered. They whispered to themselves and watched. They were doing their best not to laugh at him, for which I was silently grateful. The kid was embarrassed enough.

His shoulders slumped. Fine.

That’s when it hit me. I could kill a couple of birds — maybe more than a couple — with one stone if I played this right. Maybe even loosen the hold that ol’ guilt beast had on me. This kid wouldn’t suffer, and I could give Sophie something to remember.

* * *

After Sophie got out of the hospital, rolling out the sliding doors in her shiny new wheelchair without a shiny face to match, we moved into our aunt’s home. Auntie Laura, which is what we had to call her until the day we left, didn’t live on the shores of a lake that we could walk to in minutes. There was no more splashing in the summer or snowball fights in the winter. No more singing by the fire or road trips to nowhere. For almost eight years, Sophie and I lived in Auntie Laura’s ramshackle two bedroom house on the edge of Hemingford and the vast reaches of the Nebraska prairie. With a spinster aunt who insisted we spend our days studying and our Sundays in church.

My God, those Sundays were the worst.

Let’s go, girls, the Lord is waiting.

Sophie and I would grumble and moan, stalling however we could to avoid the boredom of sitting in the last pew on the right-hand aisle. Sophie in her wheelchair next to the pew, getting jostled by worshippers headed closer to the front, and invariably Auntie Laura bemoaning that she couldn’t get closer herself because there wasn’t any room up front for Sophie’s wheelchair.

When we drove home, I always wanted to say something to her. That Sophie couldn’t help what happened to her and you oughta be nicer to her. I even imagined that maybe I would cite Jesus, her savior, for a lesson that might cure her disappointment and help her love my little sister. I owed Sophie that much. And I failed.

For almost eight years, Sophie withered before my eyes. More often than not, she claimed she was too sick to go to school, preferring to sit in Auntie Laura’s front room and look out the window at the waves of grass that stretched out from the boundaries of the property. The little girl who laughed while we chased fireflies, cried when the dog died in My Dog Skip, and demanded, as she first began to struggle with forming words from the page, that I teach her to read rather than our parents, disappeared on the Nebraska prairie.

I had no idea how to prevent her breakdown, to protect her from Auntie Laura. Or even how to bring her along with me as I grew older.

My guilt grew.

* * *

Leave the shirt on and stand over there. I pointed to a corner, where he obediently went. The rest of you — are you gonna stand there forever or do you want to buy something? That lit a fire under them. Within a few minutes, the store was empty except for me and the new kid, and Old Man Mooney asleep in his office. I spoke a silent prayer — as in please don’t let Mr. Mooney wake up now — before I walked over. I’ll make you a deal.

Okay. He was so nervous he could hardly breathe.

Take it easy. You haven’t even heard it yet. I looked at him, trying my best to gauge his character. A hard thing to do when you’re looking at a thief.

"First