“But I can’t wear it! They’ll laugh at me!”
“That’s right, they will laugh,” his father says, suddenly looming in. “Which is precisely why you will wear it. You’re going to have to learn to live with your choices.”
“No, please! Don’t make me!”
“You’re behaving like a child,” Captain Day snaps.
“He is a child, Robert,” his mother says softly.
Wally sees the look his father gives to his mother. It’s a bad look. There have been a lot of bad looks since his father has come home. Wally worries that the bad looks mean he’ll soon be sent to stay with Aunt Selma and Uncle Axel again. That always happens when the bad looks start, and Wally hates staying with Aunt Selma and Uncle Axel.
So he doesn’t complain again about his costume. He just sits in the back of his father’s Buick Le Sabre with his hands clasped in front of him in the lap of his black dress. The putty nose on his face feels cold.
No one laughs. There are some stares, some curious smiles. But no one laughs when they walk into the auditorium.
“Captain Day, how honored we are to have you here,” Sister Angela says.
“Welcome home, Robbie,” says Mr. Piatrowski, clapping his father on the back.
Wally looks off past him. Freddie is dressed as Cornelius from Planet of the Apes. It’s a plastic ape mask and a flimsy costume that Wally had seen on sale at Grant’s. It’s totally boring. It doesn’t even have real ape hair.
His cousin Kyle is worse. Kyle’s supposed to be a vampire but all he’s wearing is a black cape and plastic fangs in his mouth. Everything else about him looks the same as always: red Scooby Doo shirt and blue frayed corduroys.
Some lady is bending down at Wally now, touching the tip of his long cold nose with her finger. “And what’s Walter dressed as? A witch?”
“No, no, no,” his father says. “He’s a warlock. Aren’t you, Wally?”
The boy looks from the lady to his father and then back to the lady again. She’s wearing blue glasses and bright red lipstick and is smiling crazily.
“No,” Wally says. “I’m a witch.”
His father laughs. “Well, that’s what a warlock is. A boy witch.” He nudges Wally past the lady’s prying eyes.
“You’ve embarrassed me in front of the whole town wearing that outfit,” his father seethes. “Take off the hat.”
“You wanted me to wear it.”
“Take off the hat!”
“No,” Wally says.
His father’s lips go white. “Do what I say.” He makes a grab for the hat.
“No,” Wally says, ducking. “Mommy made it for me.” He looks to her for help, but his mother is nowhere around.
His father is so white it looks as if his face will burst. “Give me the hat or take a spanking!”
Wally stands his ground. “I’ll take the spanking.”
His father’s eyes nearly explode out of his head. His lips draw tight against his teeth and he makes a move toward Wally. But he stops himself. Just in time, too, because Wally’s teacher, Sister Marita Claire, has come up behind him, and she’s beaming.
“What a creative costume, Captain Day,” she says. “I understand your wife made it.”
“Yes,” Wally’s father says, his eyes still on his son. “She’s very handy with a needle and thread, isn’t she?”
“And for a boy to come as a witch. How very clever.”
“Yes,” Captain Day says. “Clever.”
So that’s how they’ll manage it, Wally realizes. He’s a clever boy with clever ideas. He manages to slip away from his father, his eyes searching for his mother. He finds her sitting by herself surrounded by empty rows of folding metal chairs.
“The awards will be given in a little while,” she tells her son, holding her purse tightly in her lap. “I wanted to get a good seat.”
“Can I sit here with you?”
“If you want, Walter.” She seems to think of something. “But ask your father first, though.”
Wally pays her directive no mind. “Mom,” he asks, “do you think I’m a clever boy?”
“Why, of course, Walter. You always get good marks in all your subjects.”
“No, I mean, do you think I’m clever? Like, clever in—you know, like how I do things?”
She’s looking at him, clearly not sure how to respond. Before she has a chance to think of something to say, Wally feels a tug on his witch’s dress.
It’s his cousin Kyle, the so-called vampire.
“How come you’re wearing a girl’s costume?” Kyle asks.
“It’s not a girl’s costume,” Wally tells him, wishing he’d just go away and leave him and his mother alone.
“Yes, it is,” Kyle says, arms akimbo. “Witches are girls.”
“I don’t care. My mother made it for me.”
He looks back at her for help but she’s turned her gaze back toward the empty stage. Wally knows his mother used to perform on stages. She was a singer once, a long time ago, before she married his father. Once in a while he’ll hear her sing around the house. She has a beautiful voice. Wally loves to hear his mother sing.
“You must really be a girl, Wally,” Kyle taunts, his teeth like a donkey’s when he laughs. “That must be why you’re wearing a dress.”
“Go away,” Wally tells his cousin. “Or else I’ll tell your mother.”
Kyle just hoots and wanders off to find someone else to terrorize.
Wally slides in next to his mother and looks up at her. She gives him a little smile as she takes his hand in hers. Wally closes his eyes and remembers the last time he heard his mother sing.
“My little baby loves short’nin’, short’nin’, my little baby loves short’nin’ bread.”
Wally had watched her transfixed, as she sang herself silly, making a cake. It wasn’t like his mother to sing and smile so much.
“Why are you making a cake?” he asked her. “It’s nobody’s birthday.”
She’d covered her mouth with her hand. “No. It’s for something else.” She tried to look serious but the smile kept tricking the corners of her lips. “Your grandmother died, Walter. I’m making a cake for the get-together after the funeral.”
Wally thought it was odd that his mother was smiling and singing when Gramma Day had just died. When his father came home from the ship, all solemn and serious, Wally’s mother had quit her singing. She walked with him behind the dead lady’s coffin with a very sad look on her face, but Wally had the feeling she still wanted to laugh, maybe even break out into song. She hadn’t wanted Wally to attend the funeral, telling Wally’s father that the boy was too young. But Captain Day insisted his son be there to watch his grandmother lowered into the ground.
Wally was glad to go. He loved coffins and the people in them. On Dark Shadows an old lady died and they laid her out in her coffin right there in the living room. She even opened her eyes and sat up, scaring everyone on the show. But as hard as Wally willed his grandmother to move, she remained still and waxy lying there in the funeral parlor.
I wonder what she looks like now, Wally thinks, sitting there holding his mother’s hand, imagining the maggots and worms eating through Gramma Day’s face.
“And the winner for the second grade’s Most Creative Costume goes to our always imaginative Wally Day!”
Sister Marita Claire leads the applause. Everyone turns around in their chairs to find the little witch. Wally doesn’t dare look up at his father. He just slides out of his seat and hurries down the row of folding chairs, his heart beating in his ears. He trips over his long black dress as he climbs up the steps to the stage, but quickly catches himself. He accepts his award from Sister: a small carved pumpkin with candy corn inside.
“I think it’s marvelous that Wally came as a witch,” Sister Marita Claire says into the microphone. “How very, very clever!”
Wally feels as if he might break down and cry, so much attention is suddenly thrust upon him. He seems to floa
t back to his seat rather than walk, lost in the sound of the applause.
“He’s a good boy, Robbie,” a man tells Wally’s father afterward. “Even in that girl’s costume, he’s still got your charm.”
“A smart boy,” another says. “Everyone says that about Walter. Smart and clever.”
“Clever,” his father repeats.
“He’s going to go far, Robbie.”
“That boy’s going to make you proud.”
“Congratulations, Wally,” his Aunt Bernadette says, leading a tearful Kyle out of the auditorium by the arm. But she doesn’t mean it. She’s angry because Kyle never wins anything. He brings home Cs and Ds and his teachers all ask him why he isn’t as smart as his cousin Wally.
“Will you stay for more cider?” Sister Angela asks.
“No, thank you,” says Wally’s father. “We have to be heading home.”
“You must be so proud of Wally’s creativity.’
His father smiles.
“And might I add, Captain Day, how proud everyone in Brown’s Mill is of your service to this country. At a time when so many are out in the streets protesting and shouting, your bravery and patriotism are inspirations to us all.”
No one speaks on the ride back home. Wally just sits in the backseat with his pumpkin in his lap.
In the morning his father is gone.
“He got a call,” his mother explains, ironing shirts. “He was needed back on the ship.”
“So he won’t be coming back for a while?”
“Not for a while.”
Wally smiles. But his mother doesn’t keep eye contact with him. She just concentrates on her ironing.
Pretty soon, though, she starts to sing, low and sweet.
“My little baby loves short’nin’, short’nin’ …”
Wally joins in. “My little baby loves short’nin’ bread.”
Fade in on a boy, a few years older. He’s in the basement, stacking comic books on a shelf. Each one is carefully bagged in plastic, labeled with issue date and number. On a lower shelf he notices a box. He bends down.
On the soundtrack: “If happy little bluebirds fly …”
He stares down at the box.
“Beyond the rainbow …”
He lifts the lid.
“Why oh why …”
It’s a pointed witch’s hat.
“Can’t I?”
Fade to black.
4
TOUCH ONE
The phone rings like a witch at the window in the middle of the night and a little girl picks it up to learn that her mother has died.
“She’s gone,” she hears, and her aunt, on the phone downstairs, starts to cry.
Regina gently hangs up the extension so that her aunt will not hear. She turns to her sister, sitting in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin, and asks, “What would you do if Mama died?”
“I’d drink iodine,” comes the unhesitating reply.
“Me, too,” Regina says, and she means it.
A month before, Regina and Rocky and their mother had made boiled potatoes and succotash for supper. The girls had mixed the lima beans and corn together with their fingers, imagining the bowl of raw vegetables to be a treasure chest of emeralds and diamonds. Mama was peeling the potatoes over the sink.
“Do the potatoes have eyes, Mama?” Rocky asked.
“Yes, they do.”
“Can they see us?”
“If you believe they can.”
“I believe.” Rocky looked at Regina. “Do you?”
“If you do, Rocky, I do, too.”
“Rochelle,” their mother said, “set the plates out. Regina, you put out the cups.”
The girls opened the cupboard. The door stuck. Both of them had to pull together to get it to pop open. The plates were chipped. Mama had tried to paint the chips white so they wouldn’t be noticed, but now the paint was almost gone. Rocky took out three plates and set them symmetrically around the table. Regina took out four cups.
“You forgot Papa’s plate,” Regina told her sister.
“He doesn’t eat here anymore,” Rocky insisted.
Their mother didn’t turn. She continued peeling the potatoes over the sink. “Put out a cup for your father, Rochelle,” she said. “If he comes in, I want a place set for him.”
Regina smiled, pleased. Rocky put a cup out for her father, but her lips were pressed together so tightly they turned white.
The play unfolds itself. Regina and Rocky are sitting on the edge of the bed, hand-in-hand, waiting. They can hear the clock ticking. One second, two seconds, three, four. Above them a solitary light bulb burns from the ceiling.
Their aunt climbs the stairs with two lace handkerchiefs, newly pressed. She opens the door to their room and her eyes are red from crying.
“The angels have come,” she says, “and carried your Mama home.”
The little girls cry on cue. Their aunt kneels before them, bringing their heads to her breast. Then she hands them the lace handkerchiefs.
“Will my Papa come?” Regina asks.
“I don’t know,” her aunt replies.
“He’ll come home now,” Regina says.
“No, he won’t,” Rocky spits. “He’ll never come home.”
“You have us,” the aunt says. “Me and Uncle Axel and Mormor …”
Regina doesn’t say anything. She keeps her head pressed against her aunt’s breast. Her tears are starting to sting her cheeks.
“I’m going to have a baby,” their mother had told them after dinner.
“A baby?”
“A baby?”
“Yes,” she said, without smiling. “Would you like a little brother?”
“Yes, Mama!” Regina put her hand on her mother’s belly. “Is he in there now?”
“He is,” her mother answered.
“I can’t feel him.”
“That’s because he’s still very small.”
“What will we name him?” Rocky asked.
“How about Peter?”
“That’s Papa’s name.”
“Yes. Do you think he’d like that?”
Regina leaned against her mother. “But what if it’s a girl?”
“Then we wouldn’t name her Peter, now would we?”
“Would we name her after you?” Regina asked.
“Maybe. We could do that.”
Regina nodded. “I want a girl.”
Mormor lived across town in an old white house covered in ivy. When she wasn’t working at her diner on Main Street, she would be in her living room listening to Stella Dallas on the radio. A few days after they learned about the baby, Regina and Rocky went with their mother to see Mormor. Mama was being very quiet, and she’d scolded them on the way over, something she didn’t often do.
“Behave at your grandmother’s, please,” she said. “Don’t get her upset. Just be good girls.”
Mormor meant mother’s mother in Swedish. When Mama was a girl, she had lived in the big old house on Oak Avenue with Mormor and Aunt Selma. That was back in the days when they all had just come over from Sweden to live in Brown’s Mill. Regina didn’t remember anyone ever talking about a man named Morfar, or mother’s father. It was always just Mormor.
To Regina, Mormor seemed enormous. She was tall and wide and had two silver balls of hair on her head, one on top of the other. There were only a few teeth left in her mouth, so she never smiled. Mormor had arthritis in her legs, so she didn’t walk around much. She just sat in her chair listening to the radio. If anyone asked her about her legs, which sometimes swelled to the size of tree stumps, she would say they had gotten so bad from all the years she had to stand waiting on customers at Britta’s Lunch. Everybody used to go to Britta’s for Mormor’s Swedish meatballs and grilled sardine sandwiches. Mama has shown them where it was, in the place where Henry’s Diner now stood, and told them how she used to work in the kitchen when she was little, peeling apples from the local orchards for Mormor’s pies.
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“Now, please, girls,” Mama said when they got to Mormor’s house. “Stay outside and be good. Promise?”
Regina and Rocky promised. They were glad to not go inside. They much preferred Mormor’s yard to the dusty echoes of her big house. Mormor had tall oak trees, knotting into each other as they crosshatched the sky, and birdhouses of all shapes and sizes, and beautiful roses growing on a trellis. Regina especially loved the roses. They were big and full, red and pink and yellow. It smelled so wonderful near the rose trellis. It smelled almost as nice as Mama’s dressing table at home, with her powders and puffs and old perfume bottles.
But Mormor’s voice had drifted across the afternoon. “How could you let this happen?” Their grandmother’s words were deep and thick and angry in her guttural Swedish accent. “You foolish, foolish girl. As if the two you already have aren’t enough to feed and clothe!”
The girls said nothing to each other. They just stood in front of the rose trellis, smelling the beautiful flowers.
“Listen to the hum,” Regina whispered.
The girls drew closer to the trellis. Behind the vines, dozens of bees droned their monotonous song. A few flew out, and the girls jumped back.
“I wish I had one of those roses to put in my hair,” Regina said, and she reached in, pricking her hand on the thorns. She pulled back in pain, shaking the trellis, and a dozen bees swarmed angrily out at her.
“That’s God punishing you, Gina,” Rocky lectured her crying sister. “You almost killed Mormor’s roses.”
“I just wanted one.”
Rocky shook her head. “It’s just like the robins, Regina. You touch one, you kill them all.”
At the mention of the robins, Regina started to cry harder. For several seconds Rocky just stood there, watching her. Finally she put her arms around her sister and held her close, kissing the blood off her fingers.
“You’ve got to call an ambulance,” Mama whispered in the night. “I’ve hurt myself.”
Regina stood in the doorway. Her mother was on the floor, next to her bed, its linens draped over the side, as if she’d tugged on them, trying to get up. Now she held her knees to her chest, and she had blood on her hands.
All American Boy Page 4