All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  That doesn’t seem to matter to Wally. Before he met Zandy he’d felt so alone. Now he can’t imagine things any better than this. He likes being in the orchards with Zandy. If they never leave these sweet-smelling trees he wouldn’t mind. Not one bit.

  Except, he thinks, the city does sound exciting. And in the city he can be an actor. Like Montgomery Clift. Zandy told him Clift was gay, just like they are. Gay—Wally repeats the word in his head—just like they are.

  “We’re going to be a free people someday, Wally,” Zandy is saying. “They got a dyke elected up in Boston. And we kicked Anita Bryant’s ass down in Florida. It’s our time, babe. You just watch.

  It’s gonna be grand.”

  Wally smiles. “When can you take me to the city?”

  “One of these days. I promise.”

  “And we can stay out all night and dance until dawn?”

  Zandy kisses the top of Wally’s head. “Yeah. We can do that.”

  “It’s gonna be grand,” Wally echoes, and he rests his head against Zandy’s shoulder as they walk through the trees.

  16

  REGINA, FROM FOUR TO SIX

  It’s 4:00 on Friday afternoon, and Regina Christina Gunderson realizes she’s alone.

  She’s typing a letter for Mayor Winslow to the federal government regarding Social Security. The mayor doesn’t understand what it’s all about. Neither does Regina.

  She listens to the girls in the office talking. “Whatcha making for supper tonight, Betty?”

  “Leftover corned beef,” Betty answers. “What about you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Ruth says. “Maybe chicken. I just don’t know. Elmer’s always so picky.”

  It’s 4:01 and Regina, slowly nodding her head over her typewriter, realizes she’s alone.

  “Regina,” comes the voice of Mayor Winslow from his inner office. “Any letters that need to be signed before I leave?”

  “Yes, sir,” she says, getting up from her desk, pushing back her chair on its little wheels. She shakes the letter free from its carbon, watching transfixed as it’s caught by a draft and hangs suspended in the air for a moment before fluttering aimlessly to the floor.

  “There’s just this one, sir,” Regina says.

  She walks into his office and hands him the letter over his enormous mahogany desk. His eyes drop down the page and he scrawls his signature. Regina notices his pink scalp through his thin white hair as he leans over to sign his name. Mayor Winslow is a very pink man.

  It’s been three weeks since he’d hired her. Regina had stood meekly in front of his desk, hoping for a job, holding a note from her high school typing teacher, who was a second cousin of his. All around them that day had been dozens of girls, all of them knocking on office doors at City Hall. So many birds, Mayor Winslow had observed with a grin—with no guarantee that the doves would be picked out from the pigeons.

  “My cousin says here that you just got out of the hospital,” he said, looking up at her from the note.

  “It was a spa. A health spa.”

  The mayor glances back down at the note. “The Valley Institute.” He returns his gaze to Regina. “And how long were you there for?”

  Regina felt her face burn. “About a year.”

  “Did you go there after your sister died, Regina?”

  Everyone in Brown’s Mill knew about Rocky and how she died. The accident had happened up on Eagle Hill and there had been a large photograph on the Reminder’s front page. Lots of mangled metal and broken glass. Rocky’s car had plunged down an embankment, bursting into flames.

  “No, sir,” Regina says. “She died while I was there.”

  “I see. But you’re better now?”

  “Oh, yes, much better. The spa did wonders for me.”

  Mayor Winslow set down the note and looked up at her. “And so pretty too,” he said, smiling, his face glowing very pink.

  He gave her the job.

  Now he’s holding the letter he’s just signed between two pudgy fingers, one with a shiny gold wedding band contrasting against the pink. For a moment Regina is still, intent on counting the little white hairs that grow from his knuckles. And then she smiles, blushing, taking the letter and wishing the mayor a good night.

  “You have a good night too, Regina. And a lovely weekend.” He plays with his wedding band as he speaks. “Do you need a ride home, Regina? I’m happy to drive you.”

  “Oh, thank you, but I’m meeting a girlfriend. We’re having dinner.”

  He smiles. “Some other time then.”

  Regina just smiles. “Yes. Some other time.”

  Aunt Selma had found her a place to live in Dogtown. Mormor would have been appalled had she still been alive—Dogtown was filled with Eye-talians and blacks—but it was the cheapest place Aunt Selma could find. “We can’t keep supporting you forever,” Aunt Selma said. “You’re going to have to get a job.”

  Regina sits back down at her desk.

  “Frank wants me to do a pot roast,” Ruth is saying. “As if I want to work all day and then come home to make a pot roast!”

  “Tell him if he wants pot roast, he should make it,” Betty says.

  “It would taste like shoe leather.”

  “So he’d learn.”

  The girls laugh.

  Regina stares at her typewriter. She’s been meaning to clean the keys all week. All her o’s and p’s keep getting filled in with ink. It’s an old Royal typewriter, heavy and black, not unlike the one she’d learned on back in high school. Her typing teacher, Mayor Winslow’s cousin, was an old woman with orange hair named Miss Hemm. She was the first person Regina went to see when she got out of the spa, because she remembered Miss Hemm fondly and there was no one else to go see now that Rocky was dead. Regina had lovely memories of Miss Hemm, sitting in her typing classroom in the late afternoons, when the sun slanted its rays through the tall windows and spilled out across the old hardwood floors in sharp, diagonal lines. Miss Hemm would allow Regina to come into the school and practice on the typewriter.

  “Want to do mine when you’re done?”

  Regina looks up. Betty’s standing over her, watching Regina pick at the caked ink in her typewriter keys with a straight pin.

  “Sure,” Regina says. “I’d be happy—”

  “I’m only kidding, sweetie,” Betty says, covering her typewriter. “I’m heading out of here early. Got to stop at the market and get something to go with the corned beef.”

  Ruth is putting on her coat. “Any plans for the weekend?”

  Betty nods. “Heading into the city to see Elmer’s sister and her kids.”

  “Oh, that’ll be nice.”

  Regina’s listening with one ear, still picking at her keys, feeling a sense of revenge as she pops out the offending soot. Soon her o’s will be clean, her p’s sharp.

  “I remember during the war,” Betty’s saying, pulling on her coat, “we were stuck here in Brown’s Mill all the time. No chance for holiday weekends. Funny how quiet things are now that the boys are home. Thought it’d be just the opposite.”

  Regina dabs the cleaning fluid over her keys and watches it soak into the black grime.

  “Well, I’m off,” Betty says. She walks around to the front of Regina’s desk. “Your letters all finished?”

  Regina nods.

  “Stick around until he’s through, okay? Don’t leave until he’s gone.”

  “Okay,” Regina agrees. “Have a nice weekend.”

  Betty starts to say, “You too,” but Ruth runs up to her with one last item of business.

  It’s 4:30 and Regina tries not to think about being alone.

  Last Saturday she took a walk past the house where she’d lived as a little girl. Someone had painted it green and put a fence around it. But Mama’s cherry tree was still out in front, bigger now than Regina remembered it. From the sidewalk she could still see the initials she’d carved there when she was eight, the year Mama died. She’d used a nail file to ca
rve her initials in a heart with those of Dennis Appleby, a boy one grade ahead of her. Dennis parted his hair down the middle, and Regina thought he was very sophisticated. She never told Dennis that she liked him, didn’t so much as even give him a clue, not even when they were in high school and they sat next to each other in the cafeteria and Dennis sometimes carried her books for her.

  And then she heard he’d been killed over the North Atlantic early in the war.

  Better that than to live without arms like—what was his name? The soldier who took her out in the city. Who sat there applauding her when she sang—what song was it? There are so many things Regina can no longer remember. But she remembers Dennis Appleby and her mother’s cherry tree.

  “They really aren’t cherries,” Regina reminded herself, standing in front of the house that used to be hers and now was painted green.

  “No, Gina, you can’t eat them,” her mother told her, long ago, when she was five, maybe six. “They’re not cherries. I just call it my cherry tree. They’re crab apples. And you can’t eat them.”

  Regina remembered her mother’s fingers, softly probing inside her mouth, gently removing the bits of bitter crab apple. She’d put four into her mouth, picking them up from the grass where they lay scattered prettily under the tree. Regina had made a face, maybe a sound, and her mother, kneeling in the dirt planting geraniums, had come running.

  They went into the house and Mama had poured her some milk.

  “Here, Gina, drink. That’ll get rid of the taste.”

  “Mama,” she said after she’d drained the glass, white foam on her upper lip, “they really aren’t cherries?”

  “No, honey,” her mother said, with a sudden sadness, putting her arms around her. “They really aren’t cherries.”

  A pink hand is suddenly splayed on her desk. Regina looks up to see the mayor smiling at her. She makes a little gasp.

  “Regina, the very best of weekends to you.”

  She shifts uncomfortably.

  “And to you, sir.”

  “Are you sure I can’t offer you a ride?”

  “Yes, thank you. I’m meeting a girlfriend.”

  “All right, then.”

  He strides out into the hall. Regina can hear his footsteps echoing down the long, deep corridor for a full minute. Then he reaches the stairwell and is gone.

  “We can close up shop now,” Ruth says.

  Regina covers her typewriter.

  “It looks like rain,” Ruth’s saying, looking out the window. “Did you bring an umbrella?”

  “No. It was sunny this morning.”

  “Yes, I know. What strange weather we’ve been having.”

  Ruth slips into the mayor’s office and comes back carrying a large black umbrella. “Here,” she says, thrusting it at Regina. “Use his.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “What if I lost it?”

  “Regina, you’re very responsible.”

  “No. I couldn’t take that chance.”

  Ruth’s eyebrows fuzz together. “All right. But don’t blame me if the heavens open and you end up looking like a sick alley cat.”

  Outside, a heavy gray rain shadow looms over Main Street. Regina says good-bye to Ruth and sits on a bench waiting for the bus, breathing in the cool, damp air. Passersby walk quickly, glancing up at the gathering clouds.

  Regina studies her hands. She’s bitten the nail of her right index finger down to the quick. It helped in typing, but it hurts her now.

  The bus pulls up and throws open its doors to her. Regina steps inside, depositing her coins and sitting up front. Her feet hurt. She’ll soak them tonight. That’ll be nice.

  At least she’ll make it back in time for dinner. Often she missed the meal Mrs. Unwin, her landlady, served, and she’d have to eat it cold in the kitchen. “I serve a hot meal in the dining room promptly at 5:30,” Mrs. Unwin had told her on the day she moved in. “I can’t keep cooking all night. If you’re going to be late, you might want to eat out. Or else have the meal cold in the kitchen.”

  Regina can’t wait to get to her room. It’s small, but she’s glad it’s small. It’s nicer that way. It reminded her of her room at the spa, which she had come to love. She’d covered the walls with photos clipped out of magazines: sailboats and flowers, kittens and angels, movie stars and goldfish. All the other people at the spa knew she collected pretty pictures, and sometimes they’d give her ones they found. Even Howard Greer gave her a picture once: Grace Kelly in a white dress and pearls. Regina pasted that one directly over her bed.

  Of course, at Mrs. Unwin’s house, she couldn’t paste anything on the walls, but she liked her room just the same. She had a firm mattress on her twin bed, a chair, a table, and a two-drawer bureau. It was in the rear of the house, where she had a view of the backyards of the houses on the other side of the block.

  At night sometimes she’d sit and watch from her window as an old black man played his flute on the porch of a second-floor apartment. His music was always so soothing to Regina. He played for hours at a time, rarely stopping for breath, his eyes always closed. The sound of the flute lilted gently across the quiet neighborhood. It seemed to touch everything, to give life even to inanimate objects, like a clothesline pole or a rusted old wheelbarrow. Against the night sky the trees danced, waving their arms against the face of the moon. The curtains at her window swayed gently in time with the old man’s music. Regina sat there transfixed, blissful, at peace. And then the old man would stop, tired, letting out a long breath and running his hand over the white bristles on his head. Regina would be drifting off to sleep, her forehead pressed against the windowpane.

  But some nights he didn’t play. Sometimes Regina waited for him by her window for hours, staring at the stillness of his back porch. Sometimes she fell asleep waiting for him, and she’d wake up in the middle of the night, her neck hurting as she slept against the wall.

  The bus screeches and jolts her. Regina stands, taking her transfer and hurrying off at Buckeye Street, where she waits for the bus to Dogtown. She could walk home from here, she knows, but it looks like rain.

  She sits down on the bench. She’s alone. Regina closes her eyes and pushes her hands deep down into her pockets. It’s getting cold.

  Then she hears a fluttering beside her. She opens her eyes, just a bit, and realizes she’s not alone. A woman sits next to her on the bench, reading a newspaper. Where did she come from? Regina could have sworn there was no one on the bench when she sat down. How long has she been there? Regina can’t see the woman’s face hidden behind the newspaper. But her nails are neon pink.

  Regina quickly glances up at the sky. The rainclouds are heavier now, and the air is thick and damp. It’s dark, darker than usual for just a little after five.

  She jumps a little at the sound of newspaper rustling. The woman’s eyes meet hers over the paper. Regina nods, and she thinks the woman smiles, although she can’t see her mouth. Just her eyes.

  She remembers Rocky’s eyes, how you could tell she was smiling even if you couldn’t see her lips.

  “She was driving,” Aunt Selma told Regina. “She must have skidded in the rain. That’s all they can figure. But she was killed instantly, they say. She and Chase both.”

  “Excuse me, but are you going into Dogtown?”

  “Yes,” Regina says, her eyes still caught by the woman beside her. “I am.”

  “I was worried I’d missed the bus.”

  “Yes, I was wondering too.”

  The woman shivers. “Well, another comes in a half hour, but it looks like rain.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  The woman looks back down at her paper. Out of the corner of her eye, Regina studies her. She likes the woman’s clothes. She wears a brown dress suit, the jacket with broad, padded shoulders. Her shoes have high heels and an ankle strap. She has red hair, hinting at blond, done up in a sweep in front and long in back. A strand of hair has fallen in
front of her eyes, and she absently pushes it away. Regina follows the woman’s pink nails as they cross her face and come to rest in her lap. She’s no typist, Regina thinks.

  A soft mist kisses her cheek. Regina looks up quickly, but the rain is teasing her. The woman does not move.

  She smells like Rocky, too. Her perfume is the same. Lilacs.

  “She was drunk behind the wheel,” Uncle Axel snarled, seeming to delight in giving her the gory details of her sister’s death. “She was drunk when she wrapped her car around that tree.”

  “She was not!”

  “Oh, yes, she was. She was wild. I always knew that girl would come to no good.”

  “You’re wrong! Rocky wasn’t wild. She was—”

  “And he was going to leave her, that college boy. That’s why she was drunk. They were fighting. She knew his rich daddy didn’t want him hanging out with some floozy who—”

  Regina covers her ears, as if that will block out the memory. It was the slick roads. That’s why Rocky’s car went down the embankment. That’s why—

  She realizes the woman next to her is staring at her. Regina smiles awkwardly, dropping her hands from her ears.

  The woman folds her newspaper in her lap. “Do you live in Dogtown?” she asks.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Funny name for a neighborhood, isn’t it? But that’s what everyone calls it.”

  “Yes, everyone does.”

  “I just moved up from the city. I’m staying with a friend until I can find a place. How long have you lived in Dogtown?”

  “Oh, just a little while.”

  “Where are you from?”

  Regina hesitates. “Well, I was born here. Brown’s Mill. But I—I only just moved to Dogtown.”

  The woman lights up a cigarette. Regina watches her every move: striking the match, inhaling the smoke, letting it out through her nose.

  “I’m originally from the city. Lived there all my life. I moved here to start over.” The woman sighs, crossing her legs. “Everyone starts over at least once in their lives, don’t you agree?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “It’s not a bad place, except when the swamps get a little rank.”