All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  “Maybe he’s not missing,” Garafolo says, holding Walter’s gaze. “Maybe he’s dead. And if somebody killed him here in Brown’s Mill, well, then it’s my job to find out who.”

  “Dead?” Walter seems outraged, infuriated. “You think he’s dead?”

  The policeman shrugs, looking over at Regina. “What do you think, Mrs. Day?”

  She twiddles the button at her throat but doesn’t speak.

  He was lying right there on the couch. Right where you’re sitting. I came in from the garden and picked up the hoe and smashed it down into his head. The hoe or the shovel. Or maybe the rake. I smashed it down into his head once, then again, then I think a third time as he tried to get up. He staggered into the coffee table. He died right there and there was a lot of blood.

  “He had a lot of enemies in this town,” Garafolo says when Regina doesn’t answer. “I suspect he was dealing drugs. There are a lot of scenarios I could come up with.”

  And then I dragged his body out of the living room and down to the basement where I put him in a crate—no, not a crate—in the shed—I dragged him out the door and put him in the shed—no, no, no, the shed is empty. The shed is empty. The shed is empty …

  Garafolo lets out a sigh and stands. “Well, if you remember anything, or if you hear from the girlfriend, please let me know.” He trains his eye on Regina. “Do you mind if I just look around a bit, Mrs. Day?”

  Walter moves up behind him quickly. “You have a search warrant?”

  The policeman smiles pleasantly. “I just wanted to look around. If the lady says no, I’ll leave.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re looking for,” Regina says. “You’ve already looked around several times before.”

  “Yeah,” Walter says. “I think enough is enough. You ought to go.”

  The policeman levels his eyes with her son’s. “Okay, whatever you say.” He pauses, still holding Walter’s gaze. “So, buddy. You ever get your life straightened out?”

  Walter frowns. “What do you mean by that?”

  Regina is watching them, but her mind is somewhere else.

  Where is he? Where is Kyle?

  “Just that I remember all that drama from way back …”

  Why must I always be so fearful of phantoms hiding somewhere in my house?

  “Yeah, well, thanks for asking,” Walter is saying, “I got it straightened out just fine.”

  I dragged him downstairs and—

  Dear God! I dragged him downstairs—I did! I dragged him downstairs!

  Walter has gotten so close to the policeman that it looks as if he might punch him. “And you know what, Garafolo?” he’s saying. “I’m still a big, flaming, cocksucking homo.”

  “Dear God,” Regina says, and she faints, dead away, onto the floor.

  When Regina was a girl, living with Papa, there was a man who lived in the attic apartment of their building on Pleasant Street. His name was John Neumann. He was about fifty years old and had never married. Papa called him an old Jew fairy, but whenever Papa would go out it was to Mr. Neumann that he’d send Regina and Rocky to stay. Papa said that Mr. Neumann was the one man in Brown’s Mill he could trust with his two sweet, pretty, young daughters. He’d wink when he told friends that. Regina never understood what that wink meant, but she knew she liked Mr. Neumann very much.

  “Are you all right, Regina?” he would ask her, every time they stayed with him. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she’d insist. “I’m fine.”

  It was early one Saturday morning and they’d been there all night. Papa hadn’t come home. He was supposed to have been gone just an hour but he never showed up to collect them. So Mr. Neumann had fixed them each a bed of blankets and pillows on his living room floor. In the morning he made them corn flakes and rye toast with raspberry jam.

  “She’s not all right,” Rocky told Mr. Neumann.

  All night Regina had been crying. She wasn’t sure why. She’d just started to cry around 2:00 a.m. and had kept on crying straight until dawn.

  “What troubles you, Regina?” Mr. Neumann asked her.

  “I was just afraid I was alone.”

  “But Rocky was right there next to you. And I was in the other room.”

  “I know.”

  Mr. Neumann had looked so sad sitting there across the table from her. “Maybe you should talk to one of your teachers.”

  “Tell him,” Rocky urged, kicking her sister under the table.

  “I’m fine,” Regina insisted.

  “She’s not fine,” Rocky said.

  Mr. Neumann just continued looking sadly at her.

  It was around that time that the people came and took them away from Papa for a while, sending them to stay with Aunt Selma and Uncle Axel. Regina can’t remember how old she was then. Ten, eleven, twelve. Maybe thirteen. So much of their time with Papa is a vague blur to her. But she knows they didn’t stay long with Aunt Selma. It was a problem of school districts, she thinks: Aunt Selma and Uncle Axel lived too far outside town and there was no way of getting them to school. So they went back to live with Papa, and there they stayed until they ran away to the city to become famous.

  “And we would have been, too—”

  “Would have been what, Mrs. Day?”

  Regina blinks. Officer Garafolo’s big bushy mustache is twitching in her face.

  She’s on the couch. Walter sits beside her.

  “Are you all right, Mother?”

  “Did I faint? Oh, dear, how silly of me.”

  Walter’s looking down at her. She can’t tell what he’s thinking. He seems annoyed. Or concerned. Or maybe a little guilty. Then he moves his eyes over to the policeman.

  “She’s on some new medications,” he says.

  Regina watches as her son stands and walks with Garafolo toward the door. They’re whispering about something, hard, angry whispers, but she can’t hear what they’re saying. Still, she can tell that Walter is defending her, coming to her defense, standing between her and that fat, smelly policeman and his unending questions, questions that have made her feel as if she was losing her mind.

  That’s why I called him. That’s why I called Walter and asked him to come home.

  Because he’s my son. Because sons take care of their mothers.

  That is, if mothers take care of them.

  Did she take care of her son?

  He was my responsibility. Did I take care of him?

  Of course she had. She made him Swedish goulash for dinner. She bought him school clothes and comic books. She made him that witch’s costume, even though Robert was so opposed to the idea. She washed Walter’s underwear, even when it was fouled with blood and other things she could barely allow herself to imagine. She let him watch that vampire soap opera even though Bernadette insisted it could warp his mind. She let Walter do whatever he wanted, and every night before he went to bed, she always made sure he brushed his teeth.

  Of course she took care of him.

  “Mother,” Walter says, sitting back down beside her again once the policeman is gone. “Maybe it’s time you told me about Kyle.”

  She blinks. “Kyle?”

  “Yes. Kyle.”

  They say nothing for a moment, just holding each other’s gaze.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Walter asks.

  “I—I’m not sure …”

  “Think, Mother!”

  Her son’s voice frightens her. It’s cold and hard. Like Robert’s.

  It was graduation day, wasn’t it? The last time she saw Kyle? Eighth grade graduation from St. John the Baptist, and Walter was receiving an award from Sister Angela. Oh, how handsome Walter had looked in his beige corduroy suit and green tie. Regina had been right there, snapping the camera, because Robert would want to see the pictures. He’d pass them around the ship, saying, “Here’s my son. My son, the future admiral.”

  But there was commotion in the back of the auditorium. It was Kyle and his friends—and they
were drunk! Drunk, at age twelve! And they were urinating—urinating! Right there, in front of the whole school. All over the floor of the auditorium. Sister Angela had screamed and Father Carson had run down the aisle, but it was too late. The children had all seen, and Walter’s award ceremony was ruined. Kyle was expelled after that. Poor Bernadette was a wreck by then, drunk all the time herself. Regina can’t remember if that’s when Albert shipped Kyle off to the military academy, but that was it. The end of Kyle. They didn’t have to see him again after that.

  Except he came back. Kyle came back …

  “Mother, you’ve got to concentrate.”

  She blinks, looking into Walter’s eyes.

  “When was the last time you saw Kyle?”

  She puts a hand to her head. “I—don’t remember—”

  He turns away from her, swearing under his breath.

  He hates me, she thinks. My son hates me.

  “Mommy,” he’s asking as he sits with her in the dirt of her rock garden, “who do you love more, me or Daddy?”

  Neither one of you, a queer little voice in her head says all at once. But she pushes it away. “Oh, Walter,” she says instead, “what a thing to ask.”

  Of course she loved her son. That was nonsense.

  That night, the night after he’d asked her that question, she had looked at herself in the mirror, studying the lines around her eyes. The house was so quiet. She liked it when it was quiet like this. Walter was asleep and Robert was on the ship. It would be months before he returned. She could sleep late, she could sing as she washed the dishes, she could start watching her afternoon soaps again. Funny how even after weeks away she could tune in to them and still understand everything. Not like life, Regina thought, studying her eyes—but that’s what made the soaps so much fun to watch.

  On The Guiding Light, for example, the last time she’d tuned in, Bill Bauer had been cheating on his wife, Bertha. Poor Bert had found a lady’s hat on the couch, with a veil and a flower in it, and she knew very well what was happening inside the other room.

  Has Robert ever cheated on me? Regina asked herself, stretching the skin on her forehead, making it taut, the way it had been when she was young. She’d never really considered the idea before. It was silly. There was no one to cheat with on the ship. It was all men. And when Robert was home, he was here, in this house, every single night.

  Every single night.

  Regina laughed a little, looking at herself. It might be nice if he cheated, she thought, scandalizing herself for being so naughty. It would get him out of the house. She covered her mouth as she laughed some more.

  Why had there been no other children? No little girl? Robert had wanted another child. He would look at Walter playing jump rope with the girls instead of tag with the boys and he’d say, “Let’s get it right next time.” Robert wanted a different kind of boy, when of course what Regina wanted was a girl.

  He ruined it for me, Regina thought, her hands dropping to her abdomen. He tore me open and the doctor said that was it, no more children.

  Of course, that hadn’t stopped Robert from trying; he never believed what doctors said anyhow. But Regina knew it would be impossible. She’d have no girls. Only the boy.

  She suddenly felt very sad for Walter, the little boy she hardly knew sleeping in the next room, his poster of H. R. Pufinstuf on the wall. She got up from her mirror and tiptoed down the corridor. Slipping into the boy’s room, she stood over his bed, looking down. The sheet across his tiny chest rose and fell with every short breath he took.

  “I don’t know about boys,” Regina whispered in the dark. “I don’t know what you’re supposed to be or what I’m supposed to do. If you were a girl, I’d know. I’d dress you up real pretty, the way Mama dressed Rocky and me. I’d take you for ballet lessons and teach you how to sew. If you had been a girl, everything would have been so much better for everybody.”

  He cooed in his sleep, turning over onto his side.

  “You would have been your father’s little princess and I would have tied beautiful ribbons in your hair.” She paused, looking down at him. “But you’re a boy, and I don’t know about boys.”

  His mother reached down to touch his soft little face. “But still. You’re a good boy, Walter. You’re a good boy.”

  And with that, she tiptoed out of his room.

  He’s not leaving, her son. Not yet.

  She spoons some Swedish goulash onto a plate for him. She’d made it special for him. He sits at the kitchen table, not saying very much.

  “Ketchup,” she says. “You’ll want ketchup.” She turns to Jorge. “Will you bring out the ketchup? Walter likes ketchup on his goulash.”

  Jorge eyes Walter with a little jealousy. He’s not sure about this strange man who barked at him, who’s sitting now slumped in a chair at the table, eating the meal Missa usually made for him. But he obeys Regina, who smiles as she watches the boy.

  “I’m so glad you decided to stay and have supper with us, Walter,” she says, as she sits down at the table herself. “Eat up now. I know this is your favorite.”

  Walter takes a bite. He can’t help but offer a little smile.

  “You see?” Regina beams. “You remember now how good it tastes. Do you ever make it for yourself in the city?”

  “No,” he says. “I’ve never made it for myself.”

  “Do you remember, Walter, how we would sit eating my goulash on TV trays in the living room, watching Match Game PM? How we used to laugh, you and I, when Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly started carrying on?”

  He laughs, almost despite himself. “Yes, I remember.”

  They’re quiet. Walter seems to consider saying something, stops, then finally goes ahead. “I’ve worked with him, you know,” he says. “Charles Nelson Reilly. He’s a brilliant acting teacher.”

  Regina can’t speak for a moment. “You’ve worked with Charles Nelson Reilly? Oh, Walter! Really?”

  He doesn’t answer. He seems embarrassed, as if he wished he hadn’t told her. He just brings another forkful of goulash to his mouth, then puts his head back and closes his eyes as he chews.

  Jorge is standing at Regina’s side, looking up at her with his big brown eyes, feeling forgotten. She pats her lap, and he gratefully climbs up.

  “I can’t get over it,” Luz had told her. “How he’s taken to you. He’s usually so afraid of people.”

  Regina looks down into the little boy’s face.

  “Push him down if he gets too heavy,” Luz would add. “He can be like a dog, just sleeping in your lap all night if you let him.”

  “You’re not too heavy, are you, Jorge?” Regina asks.

  She looks up. Walter is staring at her cradling the boy.

  “Thank you for supper, Mother,” he says abruptly, standing up, “but I’ve got to go.”

  “Oh, Walter, you’re not going for good, are you?” She tries to stand, but Jorge remains insistent in her lap. He is indeed too heavy for her to budge.

  Walter stands over her. “I don’t know. Let me just say good-bye now in case I’m not able to stop back—”

  Regina feels terribly desolate all of a sudden. “Are you still going to see—him?”

  Her son’s face tightens. “You mean Alexander Reefy?”

  Regina nods.

  “Yes, I’m still going to see him, Mother. That’s why I came back to Brown’s Mill.”

  “It wasn’t because I called you?”

  “Goddamn it, Mother!” Walter seems to snap, the way Robert used to snap, his emotions suddenly shooting across the room and ricocheting against the wall. “No, not because you called me! What—do you think you can just call me and then make me some Swedish goulash and I’ll just forget all about the past? You think you can just suck me into your life and your dramas and make me care?”

  “Walter, I—”

  “Why should I care? Why should I care what some goddamn homophobic cop thinks about you? Why should I care what happened to
that asshole Kyle? Why should I give a damn when you never did? Not once, Mother! Not once did you care about what. happened to me when I was growing up! Not once!”

  “Oh, Walter, please, you were always such a good boy—”

  But he’s paying no attention to her. He rushes out of the kitchen. Regina can hear the front door slam as he leaves.

  She starts to cry.

  She sits there, crying almost as hard as she had the night Luz left. She forgets all about the little boy sitting in her lap.

  A little boy who eventually reaches up with his sticky hands and places them against Regina’s cheeks.

  She looks down at him.

  “You’re a good boy,” she says, between her tears, “aren’t you, Jorge?”

  He smiles a gap-toothed grin up at her.

  Regina pulls him close.

  “I had a little boy once,” she says, rocking him in her arms. “He was a good boy. Just like you. He was a very good boy.”

  19

  IT’S GOING TO BE GRAND

  The day after Schaefer’s Shoes closed its doors for the last time, Wally let the world find out what he’d been doing with Alexander Reefy in the orchards.

  The little shoe store just couldn’t compete with the brand new Shoe Town that had opened up on North Washington, next to the new Burger King with the giant playground. “There’s a big parking lot out there,” Wally’s mother would say, by way of explanation, as if parking lots could explain the entire world. His father, meanwhile, blamed Jimmy Carter and the A-rabs.

  Standing in front of his house, Wally dreads going inside. He just stands there on the sidewalk looking at the front door, his bookbag slung over his shoulder. What will his father be like today? What will he do? Yesterday had been very bad. The store was gone, he was out of work, they were all going to end up on the street. Wally hopes his father has gotten so drunk that he’s fallen asleep in his La-Z-Boy.

  Finally he works up the courage to go inside. His father is sitting wide awake on the couch, not moving, not speaking, just staring into the air.