All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  Why had he come here? What was the point?

  Stalling again, that’s why. Stalling, when he had other business to attend to. Much more important business—which he would do, finally, and then hightail it out of Brown’s Mill. He’d stayed in this goddamn hellhole far too long.

  So why had he wasted even more time coming to the police station?

  Because of his mother. That’s why.

  It’s always my mother, deep down.

  She was the reason he’d come back to Brown’s Mill in the first place. He’d told her she wasn’t, but she was. He came back because his mother had called him. She’d been upset. This fucking asshole right here, stinkface Garafolo, was upsetting her.

  I think I may be losing my mind.

  Wally heads out of the police station without any further word to the fat smelly cop. He hurries down the hallway toward the front door, his footsteps echoing curiously above him in the high, vaulted ceiling of the station.

  Just as they had that day.

  “Tell your story, the whole story, you little pervert,” his father had said.

  That’s why I came here. I’m retracing my steps, only backward. Miss Aletha’s house. The police station.

  And now Zandy.

  Wally steps outside into the overcast day. The people of Brown’s Mill are milling about, walking up and down the sidewalk, their faces as gray as the sky. They bump into him, brush his shoulders as they pass, but never make contact with his eyes.

  Wally stands still, unable to walk any further.

  This morning Dee had given him a hearty wave and salute, as if nothing had happened. He was off to school, he announced to Missy, and afterward he’d be at the arcade downtown, hanging with his “peeps.” No sign of conflict, no sign of turmoil in his young, unlined, carefree face. Wally had watched as the boy bounded down the steps and hopped astride his bike, pedaling off into the morning.

  “Wally Day?”

  He moves his eyes to the man suddenly standing beside him. A bald, paunchy man reeking of bacon grease and burned coffee, a stained, tattered apron beneath his overcoat.

  “Freddie?” Wally asks. “Freddie Piatrowski?”

  “Yeah,” the man says, and they shake hands.

  But what do they say? No words are needed. Wally knows it all without Freddie having to offer a syllable: he’s getting off the breakfast shift at the Big Boy, where he’s worked as a cook for the past ten, eleven, maybe twelve years. He has a wife—no, he’s divorced by now—with several kids, one of whom Wally is certain is retarded, just like Freddie’s sister Helen. He knows all this just by looking at Freddie, and he believes every bit of it’s true.

  “Visiting your mother, Wally?” Freddie asks. ‘That why you’re here?”

  “Yeah,” Wally says. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Freddie nods. “You still an actor, Wally? I’ve seen you on TV, you know. That movie with the gal from the soap operas. What’s her name? You know who I mean.”

  “Yeah,” Wally tells him. “I know who you mean.”

  “So you still doing that? Acting?”

  “Yeah,” Wally says. “I’m still acting.”

  Freddie smiles awkwardly. That’s all. That’s all they’ll say.

  I wanted to marry him. Told everyone in my kindergarten class that he was the person I would marry someday.

  “Well, good to see ya, Wally,” Freddie says.

  “Yeah,” Wally tells him. “Good to see you, too.”

  Freddie hurries on past him, glancing up at the sky to see if it’s going to rain.

  Wally stands riveted to the spot. He turns toward the corner of Main and Washington, where poor Dicky Trout staggers down the street, drunk as a skunk at ten in the morning. A few yards past him cadaverous old Mr. Smoke leans against a parking meter, a cigarette dangling from his thin blue lips, still not dead from lung cancer after all these years. A bit of commotion in the crosswalk makes Wally look: a woman is scolding an overweight teenage boy. Could it really be Ann Marie Adorno, she of the big pimply tits and tight sweaters in high school, now devolved into a shrill, pop-eyed mother of a fat, belligerent son?

  Wally stands there, caught by the scenes around him. The people of Brown’s Mill go about their day, glancing up at the sky now and then to check for rain. But they never look at each other, and the lost, bewildered man who lingers on the sidewalk never even gets a glance.

  Had there ever been anything good about this place?

  The Palace Theater. It had been good, Wally thinks. So much more majestic than that little Cine 1 and 2. The Palace had closed when Wally was nine, but he remembers sitting in the cobwebby old balcony eating popcorn and watching Beneath the Planet of the Apes. That was good. That was a good memory.

  And the factories. They were the ruins of Mordor for him, and Wally was Aragorn, or sometimes the elf princess Arwen. Or else they were an abandoned abbey and Wally was the vampire Barnabas Collins, with his coffin hidden in the basement …

  And South End News, that was a very good memory. Every Thursday afternoon after school, Wally would head there to buy his comic books. There was a smell to the place: newsprint, bubble gum, tobacco, all mixed together into a wondrous fragrance that would hit him as soon as he pushed open the door. He feels an ache in his chest to be able to inhale that aroma once again, but South End News is gone. Long, long gone.

  And, finally, the orchards. Here is the best memory of all. Wally stops his car in the same place he had on his first day back in Brown’s Mill, hoping once again to spy some lovers among the trees. But the orchards are still today, quiet. The leaves are mostly gone now, bare branches scratching against the gray, overcast sky.

  Here is the place I first knew love.

  But what about Mother?

  Again his thoughts turn to her, even here.

  What love has she ever known?

  He’s surprised by the question. It gnaws at him.

  What love has his mother ever known?

  Did she ever love Wally’s father? It seems unlikely. Who, then? Wally knows so little. Who were his mother’s friends? There was a man named Sully … but who was he? Had he mattered? Or had he been just a name his father liked to throw at her—his father, who probably knew as little about her as Wally did?

  Who else? Who else was there in his mother’s life? Her sister … Wally certainly knows his mother had loved her sister. She always talked about Aunt Rochelle. Rocky, she called her. Oh, yes, it was clear she had loved Rocky. But who had loved Mother? Who had loved Regina Gunderson?

  He’s suddenly terrified by the answer, by the realization that it’s possible no one has ever loved his mother. Oh, maybe Rocky had, but Wally sensed that the aunt he’d never known had always been so busy leading her own life that she’d had little time left over for her sister. Of his grandparents, he knew next to nothing. His grandmother had died when Wally’s mother was just a little girl. His grandfather had been a drunk, and certainly there had been no love coming from the sadistic Uncle Axel or the coiled, repressed Aunt Selma.

  No one’s loved her.

  “No one,” Wally repeats to himself, as the first scattering of raindrops dances upon the windshield.

  And who had loved Zandy?

  “Who’s he?” Wally had asked, all those years ago, holding up a photograph of a red-haired man in a sleeveless sweater, oxford shirt, and checkered bow tie.

  “That’s Lance,” Zandy told him, sitting in his beanbag, smoking a joint. “My first love.”

  Wally felt a momentary stab of jealousy. “Where is he now?” he asked.

  “San Francisco, last I heard.”

  Wally beamed. “You’re going to take me there someday, right?”

  “Sure, kid. I’ll show it all to you.”

  “And can I meet Lance?”

  Zandy laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. I broke his heart.”

  “You did?”

  “Afraid so. I wasn’t much older than you at the time, and he was a college man.” Z
andy folded his hands over his chest and smiled. “You can tell he’s a college man, can’t you? From the way he looks? You can always tell college men from their pictures.”

  Wally settled down beside him in the beanbag, his chin resting on Zandy’s chest as he looked up into his eyes. “So how did you break Lance’s heart?”

  The older man let out a slow ring of smoke over his head. He seemed to be considering his answer. “I grew up, I suppose. I had other things to do, other places to see. I just stopped returning his calls. Oh, I’m sure he got over it.” He took another drag off the pipe. “He probably doesn’t even remember me anymore. But I remember him. I may have broken his heart but still, I’ve carried him around in mine all these years.”

  That’s the image Wally will keep of Alexander Reefy: sitting in his beanbag chair, his face ringed with smoke, his gnarled, beautiful hands folded over his chest.

  And this is where Alexander Reefy ends up: a squat, gray, two-floor apartment building, the old Hebrew Home converted into public housing. Here there is no front porch light to flick on and off as his libido wills. Only a stoop covered with hardened mounds of chewing gum, littered with cigarette butts, graffiti spray-painted on the concrete.

  Wally gets out of the car.

  He hadn’t brought an umbrella. He hurries across the sidewalk as the rain pounds the pavement, stepping up quickly to the buzzer. He sees the name. A. REEFY.

  He doesn’t hesitate. He presses the button beside the name. He hears the shrill electronic sound it makes somewhere inside the building.

  And then he waits.

  And waits.

  There’s no answer, no crackling voice coming over the intercom to ask, “Who is it?” Wally wonders for a moment if he’s gone out, but Zandy’s too sick to go out, Miss Aletha had told him. Maybe he’s too sick to even open the door.

  A young woman is suddenly behind him. She smiles shyly as Wally steps aside, allowing her to slip her key into the lock. In her arms she juggles a bag of groceries, so Wally gallantly holds open the door for her. “Thank you,” she says, stepping inside.

  Wally nods, following her. She doesn’t appear to be uncomfortable with him doing so, nor with his presence behind her up a flight of stairs. At the landing, however, she turns quickly and unlocks the door to the first apartment on the right. Once she is inside, Wally hears a chain lock slide into place.

  He looks down the hallway. Zandy’s apartment is 211.

  Taking a deep breath, he begins to walk. The building smells of mold and mildew. The gray carpeting is marred by large brown stains. At the far end of the corridor, a window is imprinted with grimy fingerprints, letting in shards of dull gray light.

  On his left, he finds 211.

  If it were me, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go all by myself to face somebody who’s life I ruined.

  He gathers his thoughts and knocks. Raps once, then twice. Not too loudly but not just a tap either.

  He listens. He hears nothing. He decides Zandy’s gone, perhaps in the hospital. His whole trip here has been in vain.

  But then he senses something from inside: a shudder, an animal stirring back to life after a long hibernation. There’s a sound, a noiseless kind of sound, as if from under something: a pile of blankets, maybe, or a mound of pine needles and soil.

  “Zandy?” Wally whispers through the door.

  There’s the sound of air, a strange quiver, like the flurry of wind in the eaves. Then it’s quiet again.

  “Zandy? It’s Wally Day.”

  He swallows hard. Why should Zandy want to see him? Who’s to say he doesn’t hate him? And who would blame him? Miss Aletha was right: this has been all about Wally, all about his needs—his need to see Zandy, his need to make peace. He’d given no thought to whether Zandy would want to see him. He should go—get out of here—turn and run back down this filthy hallway—

  Then he hears the scuffing. Footsteps approaching the door. And finally a voice, softly entreating:

  “Go ahead,” it says. “You’re welcome to come in.”

  “It’s the one myth about homos that I hate the most,” Ned had said. “I can take the nelly jokes and the opera queen stories but when they start in on saying we’re out to recruit little kids, that’s when I get mad.”

  He had been clipping his toenails as they sat watching TV. One of the Pats—Robertson or Buchanan—was on the news going on about how America needed to protect its kids from predatory homos. Ned was getting angrier with each toenail clipped. One flew up from his foot and actually pinged against the glass of the television set.

  “Will you be careful with those?” Wally grumbled. “I’m going to have to get out the vacuum if you don’t clean up.”

  “Like the perv you sent to jail,” Ned said, not listening.

  “Oh, come on, Ned. Not the same thing at all.”

  “How was it different?”

  “I was fifteen. I wanted it.”

  “He started you at thirteen.”

  “I rode my bike over there. I rang his doorbell. I grabbed his crotch.”

  “It’s gross. What was he? Forty?”

  “No.” Wally stood from his spot beside Ned on the couch and walked over to the closet to retrieve the handheld vac. He switched it on and began sucking up the little crusts of toenails scattered across the carpet. “Besides,” he said, shouting over the noise, “he was good to me. He taught me a lot.”

  “So is he still in jail?”

  Wally switched off the vacuum and sat cross-legged on the floor. “I don’t know,” he said, staring.

  “Missy not tell you?”

  “We never talk about Zandy.”

  “What could he have possibly taught you, Wally? He was a zoned-out hippie. What did he even do for a living? Collected welfare, right?” Ned looked down at his hands, his nails and fingerprints permanently outlined in black from all the pipes he had cleaned. “I can’t stand freeloaders.”

  “He was a handyman,” Wally said, his voice distracted and far away. “A jack of all trades …”

  “So what did he teach you? How to fix a leaky faucet? How to spackle walls? How to put a hinge on a door?”

  “No,” Wally told his lover. “He never taught me any of that.”

  “Wally Day,” comes the voice from the darkness of the shuttered room behind the door.

  Wally can’t see him clearly. The figure behind the door is vague and imprecise. It steps aside to let Wally in.

  The apartment is dark, cast with a strange blue glow. Venetian blinds are pulled tightly against the windows. The smell is foul: cigarettes, urine, bad milk. And something else, too …

  Wally turns to look at the man standing beside him, his eyes struggling to adjust to the dimness. He can discern that Zandy is wearing a long untucked flannel shirt, way too big for him, though it probably fit him when he was healthy. On his legs are gray sweat pants, stained and torn. He’s barefoot.

  “Wally Day,” he says again.

  He stands there in the dark, grinning. It’s difficult to recognize him. Zandy’s face has the skeletal look Wally has come to recognize as a last sign of the plague: deep hollow cheeks, wide eyes, protruding teeth. His breath is rancid, as if all his organs were decaying inside of him, the stench making its way up through his mouth. He’s unshaven. Poking out of the flannel shirt Wally can see his chest hair. What he’d once so eroticized is now a straggly tuft of gray.

  “Zandy …” he says, and his voice breaks.

  “Wally.”

  “I … I wanted to come and see you.”

  “Well,” he says, “here I am.”

  Wally reaches over to touch him, to shake his hand, something. But Zandy just folds his arms over his chest. His hands—those wonderful, magnificent hands—brush against Wally’s as he does so, and the sensation causes Wally to pull back. At the moment of contact he felt nothing. It’s as if his hand swept through smoke, not flesh.

  “Zandy,” he tries again, “I want you to know—”

&n
bsp; The other man laughs. “How sorry you are? Is that it, babe? Is that why you’ve come?”

  Wally feels as if he’ll start crying. “Yes. I suppose that’s part of it.”

  For a flash he sees the old Zandy: the face hidden behind the death mask. He’s transported nearly two decades back into time, and feels a strange stirring in his loins.

  “And what should I tell you now?” Zandy asks. “What is it that you’ve come back to hear me say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about ‘I exonerate you?’” Zandy asks suddenly, his eyes lighting up, filled with a strange light incongruous to the dark. “Isn’t that why you came back? To receive absolution from a dying man?”

  “Zandy—”

  “Well, you’re too late. I’m already dead.”

  He moves away from Wally abruptly, heading over to his ratty couch, where he sits—where he’s probably been sitting for days at a time.

  “Look, Zandy,” Wally says, following him. “I can understand your anger. And I don’t need you to forgive me. I’ve had to do that for myself.”

  He stops. Looking down at the frail, tiny man on the couch, it’s as if he can see right through him: lungs and heart and ribcage, and then the fabric of the upholstery beyond.

  Wally goes on, desperate to find the right words. “I just wanted to say that I was a fucked-up kid who nonetheless loved you very much.” His voice cracks again. “And still does. And always will.”

  Zandy gives him a small smile. “You little ballbuster, you.”

  “There was so much, so very much you taught me. I am who I am because of you. Everything I know about being gay, about our history, our traditions—you taught me. You taught me not to be ashamed. You taught me that what I felt wasn’t wrong. That I could love and be loved. I owe you enough to at least come back here and tell you that—”

  “You don’t owe me anything.” Zandy puts his hands over his face. They’re as knotty as Wally remembers, but thinner, so much thinner. “Nothing. Not a thing.”

  “But I do.”

  He removes his hands to look back at Wally. “All you owe me is a good life. Have you had one, Wally? Has your life been good?”

  Wally’s not sure how to answer.