Talking Heads

by John Domini

  Husband and editor—he was nothing if not both.

  Subject again talks Mother. Loves—“I mean, of course.” But never understood M, never gave M credit.

  Since prep sch (S left home at 14) he’s surrounded self w/ diff kind of woman—“All these bony ticking types.”

  Never saw M’s “integrity.”

  But think about the wife. Wife, sex, kids. Nothing the Nielsen idiot understands quicker.

  Kids, guys. When the folks in the kitchen see Alan and Farrah on the box, they have to think—that’s real.

  Real life. Killer marketing.

  *

  Someone must have been reading to Hans about the heroes of ancient Rome. The boy insisted that everyone call his character Darth Caesar. Kit was wondering about it when the women returned.

  When he’d come back downstairs, back to the library hearth, at first Hans and the Rucky-Rat had wanted him to play the Monster. They played Star Wars all the time, they said. Kit’s stitches, they said, made him a cooler Monster than ever. No, my tough guys, no. Uncle Kit has had enough of the Monster for one weekend. Instead he took up the Wookie and jumped between the bad guy and the princess. He bellowed and made phaser noises: phew, phew.

  He’d just noticed the Caesar thing when there came the groan of Ceci’s wagon, the tick-tock of Bette’s Fryes.

  Hans was still into James Earl Jones: “Nohh one eh-scaapes Dahhrth Caeess-ar!”

  “Darth Caesar?” Bette asked, already overhead. “As in, the divine Julius?”

  “You should have heard them this morning,” Ceci said, squatting. “Princess Leia was a Vestal Virgin.”

  This morning—Kit might have heard something in the sister’s tone. He and Bette hadn’t come out till nearly eleven, after which Bette had wasted no time asking about lunch. Now the mother hooked both boys into a prolonged hug. She kissed their hair and murmured how she’d missed them. Seemed like an unnecessary fuss, and she hadn’t yet met Kit’s eye.

  “God,” Bette went on, “Darth Caesar. It’s an image for the American ‘70s. The dying Empire tries to preserve itself as a high-tech fairy tale.”

  Her nerves were pretty obvious too.

  “The new Caesar wants to make himself immortal,” she went on, “and so he turns to Industrial Light and Magic.”

  On your feet, Viddich. If the weekend’s going to amount to anything, on your feet. Five minutes later he and Bette were back in the cold. Their unmatched strides crunched first over the walkway’s oyster shell, then over the frozen beach. There was sun by then, a break in the weather, but the wind seemed to flatten it, dirty it. Kit and Bette left no shadow.

  “So you told her, right?”

  “I’m afraid I did, Kit.”

  He squatted and took up a stone. He chucked it into the surf and reached for another.

  “You must have expected it,” she went on.

  He nodded but didn’t stop, chucking sidearm.

  “And surely you realize, Kit—Ceci’s discreet. You’ve seen how strong she can be. I believe it’s surprised us both, this weekend, seeing how strong she can be.”

  Over the fogged crossing, the Woods Hole channel, gulls hovered unmoving. Kit let his throwing arm drop.

  “Oh, honestly.” Bette paced behind him. “Kit, I had to talk about it. I had to talk about that and, well. I had to talk about everything. There’s this business of having babies, for instance. This very strange business of, well, maybe you and I are trying to have a baby and maybe we’re not. On that little matter we’re coming across rather impressionistic, I’d say.”

  “I’m closing the paper,” Kit said.

  Her pacing stopped. Still in his squat, he twisted, finding her face.

  “I’m closing Sea Level,” he said. “Temporarily for starters, but maybe permanently. Maybe for good, Betts.”

  Bette had a lot of color. Out here her hair—she’d forgotten her hat—was less hay, more frizz.

  “I’ve gotten too close,” Kit said. “It’s what this time away was about. It’s integrity, it’s real life.”

  “Kit,” Bette said, “won’t you let me have this?”

  “Integrity and real life.” Kit shook his head. “Hoo boy. Believe me, Betts, I know what those words sound like.”

  “This moment Kit, just this one moment. Please. Won’t you let me have it?”

  “I’m not a bad guy, Betts. I’m a good guy.”

  “My moment, Kit. Mine. Let me have it.”

  Aw, Viddich. As Kit got to his feet he resisted the impulse to put his arms around her. He resisted the impulse to apologize, to tell her he loved her, to blurt out more examples of what a hero he was.

  “Let me, Kit,” she said. “Me. I mean, I haven’t even had a decent opportunity to scream about Thursday night yet.”

  She was his type, the bony ticking type, the kind of woman that had always put him in big hurry to prove himself. Upright, he kept his posture slope-shouldered and acquiescent. But for a long moment there was only the ragged surf, the tangled winds. Bette’s look softened just perceptibly.

  “Are you actually closing the paper?” she asked.

  Kit didn’t know what to do with his hands. He wished he still had his stones. Stones, a scrolled newspaper, something.

  “You’re actually going to go in Monday morning,” she asked, “and tell people they’re out of a job?”

  Patience, husband. “I haven’t thought about what I’m going to tell people, Betts.” He repeated that the shutdown might be only temporary. He’d see what things looked like in a month or so, after he’d worked through the ramifications of what had happened in Monsod. “I might need new money, too. There’s a conflict of interest with Mirinex.”

  Bette said she wasn’t surprised—and none too hopeful about the money, either.

  “I guess,” Kit went on, “there’s one woman I’d like to keep on salary if I can.”

  “Oh? A woman? Would that be Zia?”

  That was more like it, the kind of slam Kit had been expecting. And his usual response was to start sounding all lofty and professional, Mr. Top-of-the-Masthead. Not this time. Plain and simple, Kit explained that he’d meant his Administrative Assistant. Corinna Nummold, Betts. “She’s got a kid.”

  Bette shook her head. “Kit, I must say. I still find it hard to believe.”

  “If I don’t close,” he said, “I’ll never figure out why this happened.”

  Her hair was frizz, a ratted frizz, a punk-rock cut. “Why what happened? Monsod, you mean?”

  “I don’t know why it happened, Bette. Something went wrong, I mean I did something wrong. Me, I did it. And I don’t know why.”

  Her eyes glittered. “You don’t know why you had to hit him a second time.”

  Ow, there’s a slam. And that was Bette’s way, sure, getting in a shot when you least expected it. Kit resisted various new impulses. He folded his arms and nodded.

  “Well, Kit, I would have thought that was what you were trying to find out Thursday night. That’s what you were looking for when you didn’t come home.”

  Plain and simple, he apologized. “Like I say,” he went on, “I have to figure this out.”

  “Oh. You do realize, Kit, this isn’t necessarily all about you. This ugly business.”

  “Bette. I realize there’s other guys involved. Bad guys, good guys, and they’ve all got their story. Sure. But besides them, there’s me. I’m sorry, like I say. I’m half-crazed and I’m having nightmares and I’m very sorry about what I did. But just coming out to the beach and saying that—it’s not enough. Not nearly. Also I need to know why.”

  “Well, why. The way you described the incident yesterday, it sounded like self-defense.”

  Kind words, but Bette didn’t look any less like a punk. “Yeah, I could call it self-defense.” He made a face. “Aw Betts, those are just words. Words, words, words. I’d like to think I can do better than that.”

  “Well, Kit. All things considered, I’d say you can see why I need some
time alone.”

  Her hair exploding in the wind, her face battered by crying—who was this person?

  “I need some time alone, Kit. I need to be alone, and I need, oh. To be free to move. I need the car, Kit.”

  “Betts, please. You need—”

  “Kit, let me have this. Let me say this. I need to be alone and I need the car. I might do some traveling.”

  Kit cast around for help. Up behind Bette the lights in the Cottage had gone on, a buttery blur in this cold.

  “There’s public transportation from Woods Hole, Kit.”

  Also Bette’s hair and face was in stark contrast to the rest of her, the undertaker’s coat and the square-toed boots. The first time he’d seen her, in the lobby of the Globe building, he’d gone under before this kind of impact. There too she’d overwhelmed the landscape. She’d made the turnstiles and switchboard disappear simply by flashing her ID.

  “I need you now,” he said. “I’m scared.”

  Did her look soften? Did her shoulders relax?

  “Please, Betts.”

  “Kit,” she asked more quietly, “do you believe in history?”

  What? Kit touched his neck.

  “Do you, Kit? Do you believe in history?”

  “Bette, come on. I want you with me, back in the city. I want you up in the bed beside me—”

  “Kit. Kit. I believe in history. I’m one of those for whom it’s real. History, the weight of history, do you understand? For those like myself, well. History’s nothing less than the person in the mirror. It’s our families and ourselves and it’s whatever we make of ourselves.”

  He reached for her but she checked him. Her sharper angles re-emerged.

  “We live in history, those like myself. When we move we’re moving through history, we can feel it.”

  In her look, her miserable smile, Kit thought he detected a glass of wine too many. Could that be all there was to this? Wine and a bad night?

  “Oh Kit,” she said.

  Could he still win her back? “Darling, tell me.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s seen something this weekend, Kit. You’re not the only one, and as for me, well.

  “I’ve been forced to see the two of us as moving through history,” Bette said. “Both of us, Kit, moving through it.” Her looks came together now, the exploding yellow top and the black wrap beneath it. She became something far older and more powerful: a witch, a seeress. A siren on the rocks.

  “History appears to me now as this awesome light getting brighter and brighter behind our backs. It keeps getting brighter, and it keeps making our shadows stiffer and stranger. Oh, it is certainly getting brighter, Kit. I hope you can understand. Because that light behind us, you see, it’s particularly bright for women. Just now it’s particularly hot and bright on your back if you happen to be a woman. You must’ve noticed, Kit. It’s really quite something for women, this our own 1970’s. Most of it’s sheer silliness, to be sure, utter silliness. Still there they are, the lights of history. Hot and bright if you happen to be a woman. Kit, you must’ve seen all the new women’s papers, at least. There’s Ms., there’s Sojourner. There’s Seven Days—that one even looks like Sea Level. You must’ve noticed.”

  She was incredible, a new newspaper all by herself. Kit had the thought that he might be watching some kind of nervous breakdown. But he recalled as well the magical displacement he felt sometimes when they were in bed together, the way he could tumble upwards into the balloon fabric of their marriage. Tumble out beyond apartment walls, city limits, the date on the calendar.

  “So many new papers,” Bette said.

  She’d been staring out over the crossing. She might’ve been explicating the murk, describing shapes no one else could see. Now, however, she firmed her mouth, that delicate hamper, and her eyes returned to Kit. One look and he knew. One unforgiving scowl, with her mouth shrunk and her hair ratted, and he could tell that this had nothing to do with wine.

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t make me go.”

  This wasn’t about wine, nor nerves either.

  “So tell me, Kit,” she asked, “what have you been doing lately, before the bright lights of history?”

  “Please. You know there was nothing between me and Zia.”

  “What sort of shadow have you been casting? What kind of a man am I married to?”

  Chapter 6

  Boston was no longer a city. Its signature brick and stone, all the more durable-looking during a leaden Sunday in January, in fact only fronted for crackling runaway outbreaks of fire. Fire was chewing up the neighborhoods from within, behind walls, under floorboards. Overhead pipes were feeding the fire too, hiding the fire and also feeding the fire, overhead pipes as bad as anything out in Monsod. Kit saw the trouble happening all over town. He didn’t see the fire, but he saw the smoke. The elevated stretches on the MBTA showed him a winter-drab cityscape dotted everywhere with smoke. Around the misshapen blocks of Cambridgeport, the smoke flexed darkly out of chimneys; in the brown and beaten South End it leaked away disguised as condensation, blurring unfastenable windows. The arson wave had turned supernatural. It had turned into a citywide haunting, with some ghosts the color of flame and some the color of smoke. Yet it was always the same ghost. The same dead young man, a napalm flash behind stately New England fronts. The same dead young man, a gray shred in heavy sea air.

  Likewise, the Globe wasn’t a newspaper. And this name “Viddich” in the weekend stories about Monsod, that too was only a convenience, a pass-through. Another spirit had gone to work in the name—the same spirit as hid crackling behind the walls, eviscerating Boston even as it scattered in gray from windows and chimney tops. The same dead young man reborn. Junior Rebes was in the smoke, and he was in the paper. He’d taken over every medium.

  Including Kit himself. Saturday evening Kit had struggled through hours and hours of making connections, slogging from boat to bus to trolley on his way up from the island—yet by Sunday afternoon here he was, back on the public transportation. He was heading to Junior’s. In Kit’s kitchen, the mother had sounded as static-swamped and faraway as she had in the office. But she was out of church, alone, free to talk. Junior’s brother wasn’t home.

  Her building opened at Kit’s touch. Within the street door’s lock housing something clicked haplessly, and then, with a squeal of half-frozen wood, the lobby stood open. That was a violation right there. Also the dinners starting off the hallways reeked of grime and carbon buildup, fire hazards even when the burners were off. Kit touched his neck. He needed to be taking notes, gathering better “deep background.” He needed to be working out what he was going to say to the mother—what he was doing here at all. But even in this way-under-code stairwell, Kit’s thinking remained mostly full of flashes from his own kitchen.

  He’d been unable to finish even a single Globe story about Monsod. He couldn’t stomach more than three bites of an English muffin. He’d kept unplugging and replugging the phone, shaken first by the message-slips that still covered his kitchen table, then shaken all over again by the hope that Bette might have a change of heart. But first he’d gotten a crank call, a pervert so needy that he’d stayed on the line, breathing heavy, a second or two after Kit said hello. After that, a Globe freelancer. It was the same eager beaver, in fact, who’d gotten to Kit with the news from the Building Commission on Monday morning. The last man Kit wanted to hear from.

  Kit had clung to the frayed and dangling ends of his Editor-in-Chief rigging. No comment. Legal considerations. No comment. The next time he’d replugged the phone he’d called Junior’s mother.

  Now Kit went up her stairway with one arm extended, glove-tips brushing the wall. Exposed wiring, check. Weak rails and loose floorboards, check. Walkups like this, he forced himself to recall, were in most cases a legacy of the Curley years. That was James Michael Curley, four times the mayor, a grandmaster of grease. You could still find traces of Curley in the Kennedys and Tip O’Neill, in their win
king and liquorish grandstanding. Curley had inspired … now what was that book? The Last Hurrah. The Last Hurrah, first a bestseller and then a movie starring Spencer Tracy. Well, why didn’t they try showing the flick in Mrs. Rebes’s hallway? The projector might provide some decent heat in here. And the place was dark enough.

  Cue: Hoo, boy. Are we proud?

  Ayy: Curley signed off on the whole sick scheme. He was a homegrown Hitler. Torchlight rallies, election fraud, even his own Gestapo. Louisiana had Huey Long and Boston had Curley.

  Cue: And Hollywood had them both. Don’t tell me you never saw All the King’s Men.

  Ayy: This isn’t just about images. There are lives at stake.

  Cue: Oh there are? Lives at stake, right now, upstairs? Is that why you’re here?

  Ayy: (eyeing me, thin-lipped, black-gloved: his own Gestapo)

  Cue: Is that why you’re here?

  Ayy: Look, I’ll tell you a movie l never saw. l never saw that movie about a Boston alternative newspaper.

  Cue: Don’t be so sure, man.

  *

  The mother was some time answering his knock. She wore a house robe and sweater, no church getup, and he couldn’t get a decent grip on her viny hand.

  “Why you frownin so, Missah Viddich? Ain’t you happy, be seein my home?”

  Her sweater was a cardigan, roped at the neck with plastic beads. She had the same Native American touches as her son, the model’s cheekbones and lemon-wedge eyes.

  “Missah Viddich, oh see. I’m glad I got all that frownin on my side.”

  She noticed the frowning but not the bruises.

  “I’m happy to be here,” Kit told her. “I am, really.”

  “It’s a house of the Spirit, Missah Viddich. I got me the Spirit, in this house.”

  “Please, Mrs. Rebes—I’m not a mister, okay? I’m just Kit.”