All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  “Have you had love, Wally? Did you find love out there in the world?”

  “Yes,” he tells him. “I found love.”

  “Then that’s all you owe me. To tell me that.”

  Wally moves in closer to him. “What about you, Zandy? Have you had love?”

  The frail little man on the couch grins. “Finally he asks.” His eyes sparkle again with that strange glow. “Tell me, Wally. What do you know about me?”

  Wally’s not sure what he should say.

  “How old am I, Wally? What did I want to be when I was a kid? Were my hopes realized, my dreams accomplished? Is that what I wanted to be, a Brown’s Mill handyman?”

  Wally tries to say something, but can’t.

  “Was it all worth it to me? You? Going to prison? My whole life?”

  “I don’t know,” Wally admits, and he starts to cry.

  Zandy shrugs. “And now it’s too late to find out. Because I’m gone.”

  Wally crouches down in front of him. He touches Zandy’s knees. Once again he’s struck by their incredible lightness, their lack of solidity. It’s as if he’s touching air.

  “Zandy, I’m sorry—”

  “Sorry doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is what you do now.”

  “I don’t understand,” Wally says.

  “You think your time here is finished? You think you can just go back to the city now and forget all about Brown’s Mill, when there’s so much you still don’t know, so much you’ve never bothered to find out?”

  He looks at Wally with those wide, distended eyes.

  “It’s still going to be grand, Wally. It’s still going to be oh-so-fucking grand.”

  Wally just kneels there, saying nothing, staring into Zandy’s eyes.

  The older man smiles. “Do you remember, Wally, the secret Miss Aletha taught me?”

  Wally hesitates for just a second. “You mean … about the apples?”

  “Yes,” Zandy says. “How sweet are the twisted apples that they leave behind.”

  They hold each other’s gaze, and Wally can see through his eyes.

  He knows what he means.

  “Don’t worry,” Zandy says. “You can’t get infected by a dead man.”

  Wally nods. He’s not frightened, being here with the ghost of a man who loved him, who he loved in return, the ghost of a man he could have been, and still might be. They hold each other’s gaze for several seconds. Then Wally runs his hands up the length of Zandy’s bony thighs, gently pulling down his sweat pants. His fingers caress cold, cold flesh. He finds Zandy’s dick, shriveled and blue, and for the first time takes the icy shaft into his mouth. Zandy moans, and for a second Wally remembers that voice: the soft cooing in his ear, the gentle assurances of self, the promises of a world yet to be explored. And when his lover shoots, Wally takes his semen down his throat, drinking every last drop of that sweet freezing liquid. It burns all the way down, purifying him.

  “He’s dead,” he tells Miss Aletha when he returns to her house.

  She’s outside, clipping the purple roses from their vine. “Some warm water,” she says. ‘That’ll keep these for a few more days.”

  The sun is setting in a watery mix of reds and purples.

  Wally just stands there, looking at her. “You’re not surprised.”

  “No,” she says, putting aside the roses and peeling off her gloves. “I knew it was a matter of days. But I also knew you’d get there in time.”

  “But I didn’t,” he tells her.

  She smiles, reaching up to touch his face with her old spotted hands. He covers them with his own. “Yes, you did,” she assures him. “You told him what you needed to tell him. And he knows. He’s always known.”

  Inside, he climbs the stairs to his bedroom, the place he’d first found peace. He looks out over the factories, over the tops of the buildings along Main Street, over the cold brownstone steeple of St. John the Baptist church. He can see the orchards, too, and if he tries hard enough, he can even see—at least in his mind—his mother’s house on the quiet little cul-de-sac where he grew up.

  And there, in the wind, undernearth the honking of horns and the sounds of children at play, he can hear something else. He’s sure of it.

  He can hear Helen Piatrowski scream.

  22

  AND I DETEST OF ALL MY SINS

  The night is cold. This afternoon the man came by and brought the wood, piling it up beside the house out back. Regina is grateful for that. She can’t wait to fire up the wood stove. She’ll be warm then. Everything will be okay once she has the stove aflame.

  “Luz home?”

  “No, not yet, Jorge,” Regina says, tucking the boy into bed, pressing his teddy bear in beside him. She kisses the child on the forehead. “But I’m sure she’ll call soon. In the meantime, I’m here, so don’t worry about anything. I’m here and I’ll keep you safe, Jorge. I promise you that.”

  She thinks she really ought to have given him a bath, but she can do it tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow she’ll give him a bath.

  “He’ll need to go back to school, too,” Regina says to herself, walking back down the hallway into her dimly lit living room. “He was going to school when they lived with their father. I know that much. Now, what school was it? A special school. It was a special school for special children …”

  She hauls out the yellow pages from the cabinet, setting it down on a table and switching on a lamp. Dull yellow light illuminates the book. She flips through the pages until she finds SCHOOLS, but she finds none that are special.

  Outside the wind whips against the house. Regina shivers.

  “I’ll need to haul the wood down into the basement,” she says. “But I can’t possibly. I’m not strong enough. My arthritis—”

  But I dragged his body down. I was strong enough to do that.

  She presses her fingers into her temples.

  “I need to call Walter,” she mutters. “He can bring the wood in for me.”

  But how can she call him? He has one of those new portable phones. She’s seen it clipped to his belt. But she doesn’t know the number.

  She’ll have to call him at Howard Greer’s house.

  She has that number. She’s had it for a long time in her address book, ever since Walter first went over there to live. She disguised the number, writing “Lillian Mayberry” next to it, so that if Robert ever went through the book he wouldn’t find it and get angry with her. She never called the number, of course, not once during that whole time Walter was there, but at least she’d had it. She’d felt better having the number.

  She gets out her address book and flips to the M’s.

  There it is. Lillian Mayberry. Except Lillian Mayberry is long dead, buried out at Eagle Hill with her poor little grandson who drowned in the well. Regina reads the number out loud and then dials. It takes a while, as she doesn’t have push buttons on her phone. She has to wait until each number has completed its rotation across the face of the phone before she can dial the next.

  Finally, there is ringing at the other end of the line.

  “Why are you here?”

  Howard Greer was wearing a white smock and purple eyeshadow. The day was bright, and they were all in the garden. One man was having a fit over by the rose of Sharon, with the nurses eventually needing to tie him down in his chair. But most everyone else was behaving well, enjoying the sunshine. Regina was sitting on a bench reading a magazine—Confidential, she thinks, that scandalous one—when Howard Greer had stood over her, his arms akimbo.

  “I see you all the time,” he said, his chin held high, “just sitting here, with your nose in a magazine or a book. So why are you here?”

  It wasn’t a question Regina had an answer for. “I—I just needed a rest,” she said. That’s what Aunt Selma had told her. That she just needed a rest. Sometimes people laughed at Regina when she told them that, but it seemed to be good enough for Howard Greer, who smiled and sat down next to her, crossing his leg
s like a woman.

  The first time Regina had seen him, in the day room, she had screamed. But she’d grown used to seeing him by now. Howard Greer would have been a handsome young man if not for the eyeshadow. Oh, Regina had to admit it was a pretty color, and it set off his violet eyes, which looked like Elizabeth Taylor’s, she thought. But men weren’t supposed to wear makeup. Looking at him closely, Regina could see he plucked his eyebrows as well, and there may have been some foundation and rogue on his cheeks, too.

  “You’ve cut a photograph out of that magazine,” he observed.

  Regina smiled. “Oh, yes. Ava Gardner. I paste pictures on my walls.”

  “They let you?”

  “Oh, yes. They said I could decorate my room any way I like.”

  Howard Greer shrugged. “I suppose it’s like the eyeshadow. They indulge us a little bit so they can get our trust. Then zap!” He pounds his right fist into his left palm. “They get you!”

  “What do you mean?”

  He disregarded her question, studying her face as closely as she’d studied his. “Oh, you are a pretty girl. So fair.”

  Regina blushed. “Thank you.”

  “Even your eyelashes. I can barely see them.” He smiled broadly. “Would you like some mascara?”

  She watched as he withdrew a small pink vial from his pocket. He unscrewed the top to reveal a clotted black mascara brush.

  “Just a little?” he tempted. “Just enough to bring out those baby blues?”

  “Well, all right,” Regina said.

  Howard Greer’s hand came toward her, brandishing the mascara brush. She drew in her breath and tensed her body tight, trying to hold her eyelids still. He gently coated her lashes, first the tops, then the bottoms. It felt good, tickly. Regina smiled.

  “Voilà!” Howard pulled back to look at her, evidently pleased with his work. He dug back into his pocket and this time produced a small compact mirror, which he held up so that Regina could see herself.

  “My,” Regina said. Her eyes jumped out at her, big and bold, outlined in black. “How different I look.”

  “Now, a little pencil to your brows,” Howard murmured, artfully coloring her eyebrows. “And then a little rouge—”

  “Okay, faggot, time to go inside,” a male nurse said, coming up behind them.

  “Oh, but I haven’t finished her face.”

  “You heard me.”

  “Oh, poo.” Howard frowned. He began replacing his cosmetics in the pocket of his smock, one by one. The nurse tapped his foot impatiently but Howard ignored him, keeping his focus on Regina. “Tell me, young lady, do you like Grace Kelly?”

  “Do I!” Regina clapped her hands. “Oh, she’s more beautiful even than Elizabeth Taylor!”

  The nurse began tugging at Howard’s arm. “Okay, okay,” he barked. “Don’t damage the merchandise!”

  Regina watched as he was led down the path back toward the building. The nurse and another aide, both men, were pushing him along, laughing at him, calling him “faggot.” Howard’s hands were all fluttery in the air. Finally they disappeared inside, and that was the last time Regina ever saw Howard Greer, until one time, many years later, when she spotted him in the A&P, wearing a wig and a dress.

  But that night, when she went back to her room, on her pillow was a glossy black-and-white photograph of Grace Kelly, in a white dress and pearls. There was no note, but Regina knew who it was from. She pasted it over her bed, and when she left the spa she took it with her. She has it still, somewhere, in one of the boxes in the basement.

  “’Lo?”

  “Hello.”

  “Who’s this?”

  Regina clears her throat. “I’m looking for Walter Day.”

  “Okay, but who is this?”

  “His mother,” Regina says.

  “Whoa, okay,” the person on the other end of the phone says. “This is Dee. Donald. I met you the other day when we were putting dirt down in your yard.”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Regina says. Donald. A nice boy. He had orange hair but he had been awfully nice to help Walter with the dirt.

  “Wally’s not here,” Donald tells her.

  She hears someone come up behind the boy. There’s some mumbling, then the young man comes back to the phone.

  “Missy wants to talk to you.”

  “Missy?”

  “Hello?” comes a new voice over the phone. Deep, a little raspy. “Who is this?”

  “This is Regina Day.”

  “Mrs. Day.” There’s a short pause on the other line. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.” Regina thinks about that statement. Yes, she supposes she is fine. Better than she thought she’d be, actually, with Luz gone for so long. “I’m doing fine,” she says again, determinedly.

  “Well, Wally will be back soon. Would you like me to have him call you?”

  “Yes,” Regina says. “I’d like him to call me.”

  “Is everything all right, Mrs. Day?”

  “Oh, everything’s fine. Jorge’s sound asleep, and I had the wood delivered. The wood for the stove.”

  “I see …”

  “Oh, forgive me,” Regina says, laughing. ‘That’s why I was calling, you see. I need Walter to help me. With the wood.”

  “Okay. I’ll have him call you.”

  “Thank you ever so much.” She pauses. “Oh, and by the way. I never had a chance to thank you.”

  “Oh, it was a long time ago, Mrs. Day.” Howard Greer’s voice sounds compassionate, the way it had that day at the spa. “I did what I had to do.”

  “Oh, but you didn’t have to.”

  “Well, I wanted to. Wally needed help. I was glad I could—”

  “No, I meant for the photo of Grace Kelly. I’ve treasured it ever since.”

  There’s another pause, longer this time. “Grace Kelly …”

  “Yes, thank you. It was so very thoughtful.”

  “Yes, Grace Kelly,” Howard Greer says, almost as if he was just remembering it himself. “In a white dress and pearls …”

  “It meant the world that someone would be so nice.”

  Howard Greer’s voice has grown thick. “You just sit tight, Mrs. Day. I’ll have Wally call you as soon as he gets back.”

  Regina’s still smiling as she hangs up the phone. She closes her eyes and she’s back at the spa, surrounded by all her pretty pictures.

  Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out where the dream ends and life begins. The other night, Regina dreamt she was back with Rocky in the apartment on Pleasant Street, listening to Miss Wright play the piano somewhere far off in the building. It was such a nice tinkly sound and it stayed with Regina even after she woke up. She was so confused when she looked around her bedroom, because it wasn’t hers. There were no pretty pictures pasted to the walls. It was Robert’s room, and what was she doing in Robert’s house?

  And the time, a few days ago, when she must have fallen asleep over her jigsaw puzzle, because round about three o’clock in the afternoon she woke up to see Walter come in, home from school, heading into the kitchen to make himself a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich. It was Walter. She was sure of it. She would recognize her own son, wouldn’t she? Short blond hair with a cowlick sticking up in back, wearing his St. John the Baptist uniform of navy blue pants, white shirt, and blue crested tie. Later, she even found the knife in the sink with the fluff still on it. She was sure she did.

  “Mrs. Day, are you all right?”

  It’s Kyle’s girlfriend, that pretty Luz. So polite this one is, so unlike the other girls he’s brought here, with their hard eyes and raspy cigarette voices.

  “Oh, I’m just a bit in a fog, I suppose, Luz. But I’m all right.”

  “You seem a little shaky. Do you want me to call a doctor?”

  Regina feels terribly sad all of a sudden, thinking about Doctor Fitzgerald. “Oh, I don’t have a doctor anymore. My doctor died.”

  “But we can call another one, Mrs. Day.”r />
  They hear the automatic garage door rattle open and Kyle’s car, music blaring, glides into the garage.

  “Kyle’s home,” Regina says. And she sees the small, tense smile cross Luz’s face.

  Dreams. When she was a girl, she used to dream of the circus. “Remember the time Mama took us to see the elephants and the acrobats?” she’d ask Rocky.

  “You’re a goon, Regina. We never went to the circus.”

  “We did. I remember it so clearly. The big blue and yellow tents. The girls in their pink costumes on the white horses. And the clowns—”

  “We never went to the circus, Regina!”

  Why did Rocky get so angry with her whenever she mentioned the circus? Regina couldn’t understand why her sister insisted they’d never been there, never seen the tents and the girls and the horses and the clowns. Regina still dreamed of the circus, almost every night, still saw all its marvels in her mind. How could she dream it if she’d never been there? How could the images be so vivid, so full of color and life?

  “It’s a movie, Regina! You’re remembering a movie!”

  Regina was near tears. “I am not! We went to the circus with Mama! Mama took us and we had such a good time! We laughed and we laughed and we—”

  She pauses.

  “Oh, look! Here come the elephants! Look, Mama! Look at their floppy ears! And their trunks! Look, that one’s raising his trunk at us! He’s going to sneeze! Oh, Mama, cover your face!”

  Regina laughs at the memory, standing there giggling in the living room.

  “And what’s so goddamn funny, old woman?”

  Her eyes meet Kyle’s.

  “Look,” her nephew growls, “I’m in a hurry here. I need some food. What you got in the icebox?”

  “I’ve got—oh, I’m not sure—fish sticks, I think.”

  “Make ’em up with some beans, okay?”

  “All right, Kyle.”

  “Luz!” he shouts. “Where the fuck are you?”

  What I did, I did for Luz.

  He was a bad boy, Kyle. Always was. She knew that, even when she let him come live with her. But he had no place to go. His mother was dead and he stood there crying in Regina’s living room. “You’re all I have, Aunt Regina. All I have!”