It’s Walter!
“Hello, Mother,” he says, getting out of the car. That young man, Donald, the one who helped with the dirt, gets out of the other side. His hair is different, Regina notices. Actually it’s gone.
“Well, hello, Walter,” Regina calls, opening the screen door to greet her son. “You remembered about the wood!”
“Yes, I remembered.” He pauses. “Of course I remembered.”
Jorge has come running around to the front yard, having heard the car. He stands in front of Walter, looking up at him.
“You remember Jorge, don’t you, Walter?”
“Yeah, sure,” Walter says, tousling the boy’s hair. “How ya doin’, kid?”
Jorge eyes him with some suspicion still.
“I’m making him Swedish goulash for breakfast,” Regina says.
“For breakfast?”
“It’s what he wanted,” she tells him. “Maybe you’d like to stay for some.”
“Um, no, thank you, Mother. We’ve got to get on the road.”
“Yeah,” Donald says, “Wally’s showing me the city. I’ve never been.”
“Oh, never?” Regina welcomes them all into the house, taking Donald’s hands in her own. “Oh, you’ll love it. You will love the city. There is so much to see, so much to do …”
“Yeah,” the boy says, grinning. “I can’t wait to get out of this town.”
Regina looks at the three of them. Jorge so small, so dark. Donald so wiry, so wide-eyed. And Walter … so tall and fair today, not so much like Robert, who was, after all, very dark. No, today Walter looks more like—well, more like the way she suspects Mama’s baby would’ve looked like, had he lived to grow up. Or Rocky’s baby, for that matter.
“Or my own baby,” she says, before even realizing she’s saying it.
Wally looks at her. “What’s that, Mother?”
She’s lost in another one of her reveries. Wally realizes he can’t just leave without making sure she’s okay. A week ago, he wouldn’t have cared, or at least he’d have acted as if he didn’t care. And he’s still not sure how he really feels, but he knows he can’t just leave, can’t just go back to the city without some sense of where she is, how she’s getting by. She had called him, after all, and he had come.
“Are you taking your pills regularly?” he asks her.
“Oh, yes, I still have the chart Luz made up for me.”
“Has she come back?”
“No. She’s going to stay in the city.” His mother clasps her hands together and looks up at him earnestly. “She couldn’t stay here, Walter. There was nothing in Brown’s Mill for her. She’s going to become a famous model in the city. You saw how pretty she was.”
Wally looks down at the boy at his mother’s side, clinging to her dress. “But him …”
Regina stiffens a little, her hand clutching Jorge around his tiny shoulder. “It’s just for a little while.”
“But, Mother, you know you get confused at times …”
“No, not about Jorge. We do fine together, don’t we, Jorge?”
The boy nods, looking up at Wally with wide, insistent eyes.
Regina’s adamant about this. She won’t let her son think that Jorge is too much trouble for her. “Jorge takes care of me as much as I take care of him,” she tells Walter. “Every morning he says, ‘Take your pills, Missa!’ He calls me ‘Missa.’ He can’t say ‘Mrs.’ So he calls me ‘Missa.’” She smiles and tousles the boy’s hair. “It’s a good name.”
Wally’s surprised by how touched he is by Jorge’s attachment to his mother, how moved he is by his mother’s hand in the boy’s hair.
“Missa,” he says, thinking of another old woman with a similar sobriquet. “Yes,” he agrees, “it’s a good name.”
“Oh, by the way, Walter,” Regina says, as she returns to the kitchen to resume frying the ground beef. “The hospital called this morning. Uncle Axel died during the night.”
He raises an eyebrow and sighs. “Well, Mother, if you want to go to the funeral, I’ll … I’ll take you. I’m coming back Sunday night to bring Dee home …”
“Oh, no.” She’s thought about this. She’s made her decision. “I’ve no intention of going. I’m not even sure there will be a funeral. I’m certainly not going to arrange one. I did my part. For many, many years, I did my part. More than I should have, I suppose.” She sighs. “He wasn’t very nice to me, or to you, either.”
Wally approaches her. She’s dumping in a can of Franco-American into the skillet. “Mother,” he says tentatively, “before I go back to the city, I want to—I want to make sure that you’re okay.”
She smiles. “I’m fine, Walter.”
“I’m just worried that—” Wally stops, looking back over at Jorge and Dee, then returning his gaze to his mother. “I don’t think anybody will be bothering you anymore about Kyle, but if they do—”
“If they do …” she echoes, holding his eyes.
“Mother,” Wally asks, “do you have any idea where Kyle might have gone to?”
Her eyes flicker away.
“Mother, do you?”
Why shouldn’t she tell him? He’s her son. She can’t keep hiding it.
“Jorge,” she says, “why don’t you take Donald outside and show him the magic castles you told me about? The ones in the air that only you can see?”
“Kay Missa!”
She smiles. “Maybe Donald will be able to see them, too, because he’s still young, and I think only young people can see magic castles in the air.”
Dee looks oddly at Wally, but accepts the little boy’s hand when it is offered, and follows him out the back door into the yard.
“Walter,” Regina says, turning back to her son when they are alone, “I do know what happened to Kyle.”
“For God’s sake, tell me.”
“I killed him, Walter.”
“Mother!”
“I did.” She stirs the goulash once more, then turns off the flame. She doesn’t tremble. She holds her chin steady and takes a deep breath.
“I killed him in there,” she says, pointing toward the living room. “On the couch, while he slept. I came in with the hoe and crashed it down into his head.”
“Mother!”
“If they find out, I only hope it’s after Jorge is gone. After he’s joined Luz in the city. Because I wouldn’t want—”
“Mother, stop it.”
Regina looks up into her son’s face.
“You didn’t kill him, Mother.”
“Oh, but I did …”
“No, you didn’t, Mother. You’re confused. This is why you need to take your pills.”
“Oh, but I do take them. And I did kill him, Walter, I did …”
Her son is leaning in close to her now. “Mother, listen to me. Don’t you see? Luz has gone off with him. You can’t believe her story that she just went off to the city to become a model. She’s with Kyle. They planned this together. She’s off with him now—”
“No,” Regina says. The thought is monstrous. “Luz wouldn’t—she wouldn’t do that—she didn’t want to go with him—she took the money from me so she could go to the city and become famous …”
“She took money from you?”
Regina looks up into her son’s eyes.
“I did kill Kyle, Walter,” she says, getting more agitated now, losing her calm. “I came in with the hoe and smashed it down into his head. Then I dragged his body—”
Wally can feel sweat breaking out all over his body. “Mother, it’s a physical impossibility. Look at you. Your arthritis, the way it pains you. You could never have lifted that hoe over your head, let alone dragged his body.”
“But I did. I lifted the hoe—or maybe it was the shovel—”
“You see, Mother, how confused you are?”
She fights to keep the thoughts and images clear, the words from getting all tangled up in her mind. “I dragged him down to—to the basement, Walter, and I put his body
in that crate—”
“Mother, I looked in the crate. There was no body.”
Now she trembles. Now her whole body is beginning to shudder, her heart pounding in her ears.
“No, I mean in the shed—no, I buried him—”
“Mother, stop this.”
“I did kill him! I did!”
She begins to cry. Wally takes his mother by the shoulders.
“Mother, you did not kill Kyle. You just wanted to kill him. And God knows, with reason. But you didn’t. You’ve imagined it. This is just another trick of your mind. Look at me, Mother. Our minds play tricks on us. Yours has played tricks before, hasn’t it? You were committed to a mental hospital …”
“It was a spa …”
“Mother, you can’t afford to indulge your fantasies. Not anymore. Not with that asshole Garafolo prowling around. You’re only guilty of being highly susceptible to the power of suggestion.”
“No, Walter, you don’t know—”
“I do know, Mother. I’m just like you! I had my own delusions, my own fantasies, after Ned died. They had to put me away, too, Mother. I had my own time at the funny farm.”
She looks at her son. “Walter …” she says, reaching out to take his hand.
He hadn’t meant to tell her that. But it was out there now.
“So we’ve got to keep our heads clear, Mother,” he tells her. “You did not kill Kyle. You only imagined you did. Kyle was on the run. He thought he’d beaten a kid to death. He was looking to escape. You did not kill him!”
Suddenly she pulls herself away from him. It’s a violent move, fierce, furious.
“Don’t take this away from me, Walter!” she hisses. “Don’t you dare take it away from me!”
Wally backs away, stunned.
Regina moves across the kitchen, a tigress, a seething, rageful she-devil, like nothing her son ever remembers seeing before.
She raises herself to her full height, her chin in the air, her jaws clenched tightly. “Don’t stand there trying to take it away from me! The way every man in my life has taken everything! Taken everything that ever mattered to me!”
“Mother—”
She pushes away his hands. “Like Papa—what he took—what he did—”
The memories rush into her head like a pack of mad dogs.
“Like Robert—taking everything—everything away from me! Like all the others! All the men!”
She claps her hands over her ears.
“All the men,” she repeats, crying now.
Wally can’t speak for a moment. Then he reaches out his hand.
“Not this man,” he tries, softly.
“It’s the only thing I ever did!” She flares up again and her eyes flash at him. “The only thing! Don’t take that away from me, Walter! It’s the only time I ever stood up and said no! The only time I ever made anything right!”
She strides once more across the room, then turns to look back at Walter.
“If I hadn’t killed him, he’d have taken Luz to Mexico. She would never have made it to the city! Never become famous! I saved her, Walter! I did it for her! She would have been trapped here otherwise. Trapped like I was, Walter, all those years!”
Wally tries to make sense of what his mother is saying. “What are you talking about, Mother? What do you mean by Mexico? Is that where Kyle is?”
“He’s in hell, Walter! Burning in hell with all the rest of them!”
Wally looks over at his mother, at this wild-eyed creature who stands in front of him. He doesn’t know her. But then, he never has.
“Don’t take it away from me, Walter,” she says, her voice breaking, her posture softening.
He touches her face with his hand. “All right,” he says. “I won’t take it away from you.”
“Thank you,” she says, softly now.
Wally stares into her blue eyes. They’re quiet for several moments, just looking at each other.
“Who are you, Regina?” Wally finally asks, his hand gently touching the gray hair that’s pulled back from her face. “Who lives inside there? Where have you been? What have you seen?”
She just blinks.
“I’ve never known,” he says. “Never known.”
No, he hasn’t, Regina supposes. For seventeen years they had shared one bathroom in this little house, one toilet, one bathtub. They ate their meals together. They slept in beds separated by only the flimsiest of plywood walls. But never had he known who she was, and she had never known him.
Regina lifts her hand to press against the one her son has placed upon her cheek.
“Perhaps,” he’s saying, “perhaps I can come back … and begin to find out?”
“Yes, Wally,” Regina says, tightening her grip on her son’s hand. “Maybe we can both … find out.”
Dee’s tooting the car horn from the driveway.
Wally turns to his mother as he stands with her in the doorway. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right? Taking care of the boy?”
She smiles up at him. “I like having him here. I can do it, Wally. I raised you, didn’t I? And look how wonderful and successful you turned out.”
There’s nothing ironic about her words. Wally just sighs. “I’ll stop by on Monday, Mother,” he tells her.
“But the wood, Walter. You promised you’d bring the wood down to the basement.”
“Oh, of course.”
She smiles. “You’re a good boy, Walter.”
He holds her gaze.
Outside the wind smacks him hard against the face, a chill wiggling down the back of his shirt. He gives Dee a sign just to wait one more minute and hurries out to the backyard, where, against the fence, the firewood is stacked in a neat pile. Wally bends down and lifts several pieces under his arm. He grips the door of the bulkhead with his free hand, yanking it open. The wind almost immediately blows the door shut again; Wally has to hang on tight to keep the door in his grip. It sure is getting cold. But in a few moments, he knows, his mother will have the woodstove blazing, and it will pump warmth throughout her house. She’ll snuggle up with her orange tea and graham crackers and she’ll be warm. It makes Wally happy to know this.
He makes nine trips in all, hauling armfuls of wood down into the basement. He drops them in front of the stove, like offerings to some beneficent fire god. It’s a big, squatting iron monster, the stove—twenty years old or more, with a large hatch on its side leading to its oven.
“Walter.” His mother’s voice calls down the cellar steps. It’s a calm, cool voice, so unlike the shrillness of just a few moments before.
He looks up. She stands silhouetted at the top of the stairs.
“Yes, Mother?” Wally calls back.
“Will you get the fire going for me? Save me a trip down the stairs?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you, Walter.”
Upstairs he can hear her teakettle starting to shriek.
He bends over, feeling a twinge of—what?—arthritis, this early?—in his hip. But he disregards the pain, taking hold of several pieces of firewood. He pulls down the iron handle of the stove, and with a hiss and a screech, opens the door, throwing in the wood.
It’s a flash of color that he sees.
A flash of—something.
But whatever he saw in the stove before he threw in the wood, it’s covered now.
He stares into the gaping hatch.
What was it?
What did he think he saw in there?
Nothing. It was nothing.
A sneaker.
No, it wasn’t a sneaker. That’s ridiculous. It wasn’t a sneaker, and it certainly wasn’t a foot—protruding from the ashes and woodchips and crumpled newspaper.
Now whose mind is playing tricks?
Now who’s being susceptible to the power of suggestion?
Upstairs the teakettle is still shrieking on the stove.
So move the wood, he tells himself, if you want to be sure. Move the wood aside and see what�
�s underneath.
“Will you fire it up, Walter?” his mother calls again from the top of the stairs. Her voice is calm, careful, deliberate.
So move the wood.
He can’t budge from where he stands, can’t even lift an arm.
“Yes, Mother,” he finally manages to call back. “I’ll fire it up.”
But he just keeps staring at the stove, listening to the teakettle whistling upstairs.
Then, one by one, he loads the furnace with the rest of the wood, and sets it ablaze.
“All ready?” Dee asks.
“Yeah,” Wally says, sliding in behind the wheel. “All ready.”
Regina has come out onto the front porch.
“Wave to my mother,” Wally says.
“See ya later, Mrs. Day!” Dee calls from the window.
Regina waves back. Even blows them a kiss.
Above her, the chimney is beginning to puff dark gray smoke. The smoke drifts over the neighborhood, out from their little cul-de-sac toward Washington Avenue, down to Main Street, over the orchards, and into the swamps of Dogtown. Wally had loaded the furnace with enough wood to keep the fire burning, hot and ferocious, all day long, maybe well into the night. All that will be left when it’s done will be soot and ashes. And Monday night, when he stops by again to talk with his mother, to have maybe the first real talk they’ve ever had in their lives, he’ll load it up again, get that stove blazing hot once more. His mother’s house will be warm and toasty when they sit down, with orange tea and graham crackers, and begin finding out who each other really are.
“So how long does it take to get to the city?” Dee asks, leaning up next to Wally’s ear, startling him just a little.
“Oh, not long. It’s a world away but not very far.”
Dee slides back over to the window, watching the buildings of Brown’s Mill pass by. “Good-bye Dogtown! Good-bye Main Street! Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!”
They pull onto the highway, leading up over the hill.
“So what are we going to do first when we get there?” Dee asks.
“Anything you want, babe. Anything at all. Sky’s the limit.” Wally smiles, looking over at him. “This is going to be everything I’ve told you it’ll be.”
He returns his eyes to the road heading out of town.
“It’s going to be grand.”
All American Boy Page 33