All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  She removed the ice pack again and sat there with it in her hands. And then she started to cry. It made Wally very uncomfortable. He watched her, not knowing what to do or say, just wanting her to stop crying, just wanting her to smile. Mothers weren’t supposed to cry. They were supposed to be strong. Strong and pretty and smiling.

  “You can’t be going around getting into fights, Walter,” she said at last. “Especially without your father here. He’d know how to handle it, but I don’t. I’ve gotten through a lot, Walter. I got through my Mama dying and Rocky dying and I even got through going to the funny farm. But I don’t know if I can get through this.”

  He didn’t know what she meant by “this.”

  “Oh, Walter,” his mother said, “I want to do what’s right. I want to be a good mother. But sometimes I just don’t know what to do. Sometimes I just don’t understand.”

  “What don’t you understand?” Wally asked, reaching over and taking the ice pack from her hands to place it against his eye. It was starting to throb again.

  “About you, Walter. What makes you so different.”

  She wiped her tears then, holding out her arms. Her son fell into them, dropping the ice pack, heedless about his eye, just grateful beyond words that she had stopped crying and that she was taking him into her arms.

  “I’m going to try, Walter,” his mother said, her lips at his ear. “I’m going to try to be a good mother, to do the right things. But you’ll have to help me, okay?”

  He nodded against her breasts. “How?”

  She held him tighter. “Just be a good boy. Can you do that? Always be a good boy?”

  He nodded again. It was a big thing to ask, to always be a good boy, especially since he didn’t always know what a good boy was supposed to do.

  Still, he decided, if she was going to try, he would too.

  Standing in the hallway outside her bedroom that last week before going away to school, he listens to her retch, spewing up into a plastic bag the last of the tomato soup he had made for her.

  Stop doing this to me! You’re the mother! You’re supposed to be taking care of me! You were supposed to take care of me all along—and you never did! You broke your part of the bargain! You didn’t try! You didn’t even fucking try!

  She’s quiet now. “Are you all right?” Wally calls into her.

  “Yes,” she says in a voice that pops with phlegm.

  He pokes his head into her room. “You sure?”

  She nods, turning on her side, away from him.

  Wally hears a car in the driveway. “Dr. Fitzgerald’s here, Mom. I’ll send him down.”

  She doesn’t reply.

  Wally heads back into the kitchen and sees the kitchen is a mess: unwashed pans in the sink, old newspapers in a pile, and he hadn’t had a chance to empty the garbage. Coffee grounds are seeping through the paper bag onto the floor. He pushes the bag under the sink just as the doctor rings the bell.

  “Thanks for coming,” Wally says, letting him in.

  “No problem.” Dr. Fitzgerald is an old man. He takes off his hat and sets it on the couch. His face holds a thousand creases when he smiles. “I’ve gotten out of the habit of making home visits, but I’ve known that old gal in there for years. In fact, I brought you into this world, Walter.”

  They head down the hallway. His mother looks up and smiles when they enter. Wally realizes she hadn’t been able to fix her face. The doctor will see she doesn’t have any eyebrows. Her face is gray, her wrinkles deep. “Dear Angel,” the fellas had written. Wally spots the plastic bag filled with vomit sitting by the side of the bed. He picks it up.

  “I’ll leave you alone,” he says, shutting the door behind him. He carries the bag of vomit to the garbage and sets it on top. He covers it with the newspapers and lifts the whole pail, intending to take it out and dump it in the can outside.

  But the garbage falls. Coffee grounds, eggshells, crumpled Kleenex tumble across the kitchen floor. The plastic bag opens and Wally watches as his mother’s vomit oozes out, orange and pink, Campbell’s Tomato Soup with Phlegm and Bile.

  He starts to cry.

  Always be a good boy, Walter. Can you do that?

  By the time Dr. Fitzgerald comes out of the room, most of the garbage is cleaned up. Wally stands with his arms folded over his chest as the old man walks down the hall.

  “Well,” the doctor says, one side of his mouth crooked in a grin, “I guess the old gal will pull through.”

  “She’s okay?”

  “She does have a mild case of pneumonia. But I don’t think she needs the hospital.” The old man smiles. “Looks like she’s got a pretty good nurse right here.”

  “So,” Wally presses, wanting to be sure, “she’s okay?”

  “Yes, son,” the doctor says, folding his stethoscope into his case, “she’s okay.” He snaps the case shut. “I think you were so worried because you just didn’t know what it was. We always imagine the worst.”

  Wally nods.

  They walk to the front door and shake hands. “I’ve given her a shot of penicillin,” the doctor says. “I’ll stop back in a few days. By then she’ll be up and around. She’s a tough old bird. She’s survived a lot worse than this.”

  The doctor knows of what he speaks. He knows how she found her husband swinging from a beam in the basement. He knows how her son scandalized the town. He knows even more, too—much more, in fact, than Wally.

  “She’s stronger than she thinks,” the doctor tells him again. “I do believe she can handle anything.”

  Yes, Wally’s thinking, as he looks into the man’s wise old eyes, I believe she can.

  The question, doctor, is can I?

  24

  GOING HOME

  “Hold still, you little monkey.”

  Regina smiles as she runs the comb through Jorge’s thick black hair. He’s sitting facing her on a kitchen stool.

  “You see,” she says, “I know a thing or two about raising little boys. I had one myself once. I know that you’ve got to keep their hair combed because they’re always messing it up.”

  She hits a snarl, and the boy lets out a yelp.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Jorge!” Regina feels terrible. “I’ll be more careful.”

  He looks up at her with those big brown eyes. She cups her hands against his cheeks.

  “If we’re careful,” she tells him, “we’ll be just fine.”

  He giggles, burying his face in the folds of her yellow polka-dotted dress.

  Gosh, it’s been so long since she’s worn this dress. It’s her favorite. It makes her feel so gay. So much like Rocky.

  “The second thing I know about little boys,” Regina says, resuming her work with the comb, “is that you can’t let them get behind in their schoolwork.” She glances down at Jorge with one eye. ‘That’s why I’m so glad you remembered the name of your special school.”

  “Gee Stwee,” Jorge chirps.

  “Yes. Green Street. You remembered the name! Of course you did. You’re a smart boy, Jorge. A very smart boy!”

  He throws back his head and lets out a long, jittery laugh.

  “Your teacher is so excited that you’ll be back with the class,” Regina tells him. “She said you haven’t missed too much that you can’t make up.”

  He beams.

  Regina smiles back at him. “How about, after school, we take a walk over to the playground? Would you like that?”

  Jorge jumps up and down on the stool. “Yes, Missa! Yes, Missa!”

  “You can play on the swings and the teeter-totter. Oh, how Walter used to love the teeter-totter. We’d sit on it all morning, he and I, up and down, up and down …”

  She leans back to look at the boy’s hair.

  “Oh, you do look so nice with your hair combed. Of course, if we go to the playground, you’ll just get it all mussed up again. But that’s all right. Boys will be boys!”

  She looks across the room toward the window. The trees have all lost
their leaves. Winter is closing in fast, but come spring, she knows, the leaves will be back, just as the bulbs she planted along the walk will push through the dirt and sprout yellow flowers. The winter will be cold and probably long—very long, she fears—but Regina’s prepared for that. And the spring, she’s certain, will be so beautiful, so warm, that everything will prove to have been worth the while.

  “What ’bout tresha?”

  She looks back down at the boy. “Now, no more thinking about the treasure, Jorge. You’re all the treasure I need.”

  “But tresha!”

  “Hush, now, Jorge. I know where the treasure is.” She leans back once again to make sure his hair looks neat. It does. She did a splendid job. “There’s no need to be looking for the treasure anymore.”

  She pulls the boy to her bosom again and hugs him tight.

  Now if Walter will only remember about the wood.

  Wally opens his eyes. Dee’s looking up at him, his chin resting on Wally’s chest.

  “’Morning,” the boy says.

  “’Morning,” Wally echoes, his voice raspy.

  “I was wondering when you were going to wake up.”

  Wally grins. “You’ve been lying there watching me sleep?”

  “Yep.” Dee pulls forward to kiss Wally on the mouth.

  “Hey,” Wally cautions, “morning breath.”

  But they kiss anyway.

  They’d spent the night together. The whole night. The boy came rapping at Wally’s door, that big boner of his poking through his pajama pants.

  “So,” he said, “you wanta do it again?”

  Wally eyed him. “Sure.”

  The boy had started to climb up onto the bed, but Wally stopped him midway, holding his arm. “On one condition,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You stay all night. After we both come, you let me hold you. You fall asleep in my arms.”

  Dee tried very hard to show no particular emotion in his face. “Okay. Whatever.”

  So that’s what they did. They made love not once but twice, the first time hard and fast and passionate, with Wally penetrating the boy, Dee hooking his fingernails into Wally’s back. The second time had been slower, gentler, ending with Dee falling asleep in Wally’s arms, just as Wally had wanted.

  “Do you think,” Dee asks now, sitting up, straddling Wally across his chest, “there might be any auditions in the city this weekend?” His orange hair tumbles down into his face. “I mean, since I’ll be there, maybe I can try out for something. Anything.”

  “Maybe,” Wally says. “I’ll see what’s going on.”

  The boy grins. “Wouldn’t it be cool to be in a show together?”

  Wally laughs. “Yeah. That would be cool.”

  Dee swings his leg over the bed and hops to the floor, his big floppy penis swaying between his legs. He grabs a towel and heads toward the door. “I’m going to shower really quickly,” he says. “Let’s not hang around for long, okay? Let’s get on the road soon.”

  Wally rolls over in bed. “Remember I have to stop by my mother’s.”

  “Oh, right. The wood.”

  “Yeah,” Wally says. “The wood.”

  Wally watches as the boy wraps the towel around his middle and saunters out the door. No question he’s adorable. In another few years that body is going to make an awful lot of men pretty desirous. He’s going to fill out nicely, lean muscle on a strong frame. Not to mention the cock. Dee will be quite the catch, and that’s probably when Wally will lose him.

  Last night, making love with Dee, he had kissed the tautness of the boy’s stomach, running his fingers along the soles of his smooth, unwrinkled feet. There had been no problem keeping an erection last night. Wally had felt something he hadn’t in a long time. Not just lust, not just desire. But—dare he think it, without sounding goopy or sentimental—hope. Not hope for anything specific, not for anything absolute, certainly not with Dee. Just hope. The opposite of despair. The antidote to apathy.

  He places his feet against the floor. And so it’s time to go. Time to hit the road, return to the city.

  And, for a couple of days anyway, Dee will be with him.

  He likes how that sounds.

  “I wish you’d really think about the memorial service.”

  Wally looks up. Miss Aletha leans in the door frame, her arms crossed against her chest.

  “When you bring Donald back on Sunday, you could stay over until Monday. It’ll just be a small affair. Just a few of us.”

  Wally stands, approaching her. “You really think that’s a good idea?”

  Missy nods. “I do.”

  “I told him, you know,” he says, taking into his arms the old woman who saved his life, who, once again, has put him on his path, set him right. “I told him what he’d meant to me, how everything he taught had stayed with me all these years.” He looks down into Miss Aletha’s old eyes. “I’m sure somehow he heard me.”

  “I’m sure he did, too.”

  Wally’s eyes move to look out the window, over the hills. The orchards are nearly all bare now, stark fingers against the cold sky. But the leaves will return, as they do every year, and so will the lovers to the woods.

  No time for breakfast; Dee is too anxious to get on the road. Missy unzips his backpack and thrusts inside a couple pieces of cornbread wrapped in aluminum foil. “Don’t start in about too many carbs,” she scolds. “You need to eat something.”

  Wally showers quickly. It’s a cold morning, with his feet shivering against the tiles of the bathroom, but there’s abundant sunshine, not a cloud in the sky. He hurries down the stairs, shouting back over his shoulder to Dee that he’ll be out at the car.

  He tosses his backpack into the trunk, Miss Aletha following close behind him. “I don’t have to tell you to take care of him,” she says.

  Wally can’t resist a grin. “I promise I won’t let him do anything that I didn’t do myself when I was his age.”

  “Oh, good God,” she says, shuddering. “I should haul him back inside right now.”

  Wally laughs. “Come on!” he shouts back into the house. “Bus is leaving!”

  Dee makes a mad dash down the front steps, the screen door slamming behind him, and tosses his suitcase into the backseat.

  “Whoa!” Wally says. “What’s up with that head?”

  The boy grins over at him. He’s shaved off all his hair. All that orange spikiness is gone, replaced by a near-military buzzcut. He looks … so much older.

  “I figured orange hair was so Brown’s Mill,” he says. “A big deal here but probably pretty lame in the city.”

  Wally smiles. “Maybe I’ll do the same.”

  “You should. You’re starting to lose it up front, you know.” Dee suddenly stops. “Fuck! My MP3 player!” He bolts back into the house.

  “He won’t want to come back,” Miss Aletha says, a little emotional.

  “Oh, he will.” Wally smiles. “He knows what’s here for him.”

  Dee bolts past them, with not only his MP3 but his pillow tucked under his arm.

  “Why are you bringing that?” Wally asks. “You don’t think I have pillows in my apartment?”

  “I like my own,” he says. “It’s the same one I’ve had since I was ten.”

  Wally watches as Dee slides into the front seat, his pillow beside him, the tiny sound of Avril Lavigne sneaking out from his headphones.

  “You know,” Wally says, turning to Miss Aletha, “I might get used to having him around. Maybe I won’t send him back.”

  Miss Aletha shakes a crooked finger at him. “You’ll send him back, and he’ll finish school, and then, if he chooses, he can come back to you.”

  How old her eyes look. How filled with everything: life, history, love, sadness, grief, wisdom. Everything but regret. How wonderful that must be, to live a life without regret.

  Dee honks the horn.

  “Okay, okay,” Wally shouts.

  “But there’s one more
thing,” Miss Aletha says.

  Wally looks at her.

  “Your mother.”

  Wally sighs. “Yeah, yeah. I’m going over to deal with the wood for her.”

  “But did you ever find it, Wally? What you came here looking for?”

  He doesn’t respond. He looks from her over the orchards, in the direction of his mother’s house, somewhere on the other side of the trees.

  “It’s there, Wally. I’m sure of it. You’ll find it if you just look for it.”

  “Will you come on?” Dee calls from the car. “If we wait any longer everything’s going to be closed when we get to the city.”

  “Nothing closes in the city,” Wally shoots back.

  He turns his eyes back to Miss Aletha.

  “I love you, Missy.”

  “I’m so glad you came home, Wally,” she says, her arms encircling his neck.

  In the backyard, in the hour he has before they need to set out for school, Jorge is playing his games. He’s running in circles, talking to himself. So let Grace Daley from next door call and suggest the boy needs to see a psychiatrist. She said it about Walter, when he’d be out there playing his games, and even though she’s now deaf and nearly blind, she might well say it about Jorge. But Regina doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Jorge’s having a good time out there, and that’s all that matters.

  He wants Swedish goulash for breakfast, so Regina’s frying up some ground meat in the pan. He likes a little pepper in his. Luz always made his food a little spicy, so he’s used to it that way. Walter never liked too much pepper. Every boy is different. That’s something else she knows about boys. Regina adds the pepper and sautés the meat. They’ll have breakfast, then she’ll walk him to school, and afterward they’ll head over to the playground. There will be lots of children there. It will be so nice to watch them all play.

  A sound distracts her. A car in the driveway. She turns off the burner on the stove and walks over to the window to peer out from behind the curtain. Her heart begins to thump a little harder; she’s always a little nervous it will be that policeman again. Or that mean young man in the navy uniform.

  But it’s not.