Talking Heads

by John Domini

  Stop it, Viddich. Kit, resettling into the sofa, caught a glimpse of the kitchen. The faded enamel was flagged with more cards and posters.

  “My Junior couldn help himself,” the mother was saying. “Doin the white boys, he couldn help himself. Not with a father like he got.”

  “Aw, Mrs. Rebes,” Kit said, “you shouldn’t trust me with your story.”

  She broke off, her square mouth ajar.

  “You shouldn’t,” Kit said. “I’m not the right one to hear it and I’m not the right one to tell everyone else.”

  She made some response, soft-spoken. Kit wasn’t looking. His eyes on the kitchen, he wondered how long it had been since either of them had eaten.

  “I’m not like you,” he said, “and I’m not honest enough. Mrs. Rebes, I’m one of the landlords.”

  Again he couldn’t be sure what she said. Some kind of question, maybe you a landlord? Mostly he heard the radiator, tocking and hissing as it cranked up more heat under ill-fitting windows. And he still hadn’t taken off his coat.

  “My people are landlords,” he told her. “They own a lot of property, back in Minnesota.”

  “Minne-sota?” He heard that. “Shoo. They even got trouble out there?”

  Kit knew what she was doing: Mama fix, Mama comfort.

  “They even got black people, out there?”

  “Oh God. You’re making me go through high school again.” He never could say “prep school,” silly reverse snobbery.

  “How’s that, Kit?”

  “Hoo, boy.” He knew what she was doing, but he couldn’t begin to say what he was doing. “In high school I did all this reading about, you know. About the black experience. I figured I had to catch up. Like Nobody Knows My Name, for instance, I think I read that six times.” The time has come, God knows, for us to examine ourselves, but we can only do that if we can free ourselves from the myth of America.

  The mother made some new reassuring noise.

  “Listen, Mrs. Rebes, that’s not the half of it. In those days I wrote poetry. I wrote protest poetry.”

  She poured another slow and echoing dollop of wine. Kit’s heart grew baggier.

  “Poetry,” he said. “It was lies, Mrs. Rebes. L-I-E-S.

  “I grew up with my uncles,” he said. “My father died in Korea, his plane blew up. And Mrs. Rebes, you should see the ranch, my uncles’ ranch. My mother and I lived in the Big House for twelve years and we hardly made a dent in the place. I’ll tell you. If somebody was coming to the ranch for the first time, for instance we got a lot of sales reps from John Deere or International Harvester, and if they were stopping by for the first time—when my mother or I showed up, they’d look at us like, ‘Where’d you come from?’ Think about it. Such a big well-oiled machine, Mom and I were practically invisible.”

  “Your Daddy’s plane just blew up?”

  Her voice was a whisper, but the words were clear. She stood close, all of a sudden; her house robe almost brushed his tucked-together knees. When had that happened? Kit watched her refill his glass.

  “I grew up with my uncles,” he said. “Not that they weren’t good to me, my uncles.”

  His gullet was tightening. Ordinarily, tears would be coming. “They were good guys, sure. My uncles taught me everything, anything I asked, and God knows I was always asking. I was always after someone about giving me a lesson, Mrs. Rebes.” He eased his throat open with a long drink.

  “But I remember him bringing my mom flowers,” he said. “My father I mean. My mom says there’s no way I could, but I do. I do. I remember a kind of beach-blue orchid, I mean a blue like you find sometimes in the stones on a beach. Aw, I know what that sounds like, I know blue is blue—but you never forget your first honest-to-God orchids, Mrs. Rebes. Your first orchids, the smell, the color, you never forget. It’s like when you learned to read. It’s like the first time you read something and you know you got what was in there, and you know nobody helped you and it was the truth.”

  He drank. There was a feathery touch at his hairline, the mother fingering his stitches.

  “See, that was my father, bringing flowers,” Kit went on. “My uncles would never bring flowers. They were good, oh sure, they were both good guys and one of them always had women around. But this kind of thing we’re talking about now, this kind of sweetness bringing flowers, that wasn’t them.”

  The woman murmured something, over his head. About time she noticed he was hurt.

  “You know there’s a picture in one of the albums,” he said, “a shot of my mother and father holding a bunch of orchids. Arm in arm, over these bright fresh black-and-white orchids. It’s ah, it’s a very professional shot.

  “And I realize the mind can play tricks on you, Mrs. Rebes. I know what a photo can do. I realize it might be the reason I remember the orchids, even the color, the blue. It could all be because of the photo. Hoo, boy. But I’ll tell you, Mrs. Rebes, those two loved each other. My mother, my father. They loved each other, that’s the whole truth, and it doesn’t matter if there’s a photo. It doesn’t matter how the mind can play tricks on you. I mean, my father was an ace.”

  Kit, the glass at his lips, found himself sucking air. The thing was empty and the mother was poised to pour again.

  “Seven confirmed kills between September and January, listen, the man was an ace.” He used the glass to put an exclamation point; the mother couldn’t reach it. “He was in the same squadron as Ted Williams. Ted Williams, Mrs. Rebes.”

  What was that thumping, out in the building’s stairwell?

  “Nobody shot him down, my father,” Kit said. “Those old Sabres, you know, they could be temperamental. It just blew up in mid-air. You better believe I know all about it, I’ve read every one of his letters. Every night he wrote home, and for a while there I think I had every one of them memorized.”

  Was that just somebody coming upstairs? Some man, in boots, stomping upstairs?

  “A war hero in love,” Kit looked towards the door. “That was my father. A war hero with orchids in his hand.”

  Of course: the heavy tread came to halt outside the Rebes doorway. Kit flashed on motorcycle boots, a cop, a warrant.

  “A man,” Kit began, but then the door opened and he was on his feet, once more making fists around his glass. Aw, come on. What kind of trouble was he expecting? The newcomer had a key—he was huge, but he had a key. Even the guy’s biker boots looked small on him. His fatigue jacket was open, his shirt collar open, and he went around bareheaded despite the weather. He had a kinky beard and a lot of hair. Just standing there he made the pinups on the walls flutter.

  “What the hey’s going on here, Mama?”

  Mama? The newcomer’s eyes were young, quick, worried.

  “Who’s the boyfriend, Mama?”

  Once more Kit didn’t hear the mother. It took energy enough to catch up with the change of mood—to yank his mind out of a cloud of fragments over Korea and instead get a fix on this baby brother, this Louie-Louie. The man had a good forty pounds on Junior. He had the Caribbean blood, the father’s side of the family. The beard was Castro. So was the shirt-stretching chest, the cinnamon-butter skin. Beside her younger son, the mother seemed to darken.

  “You the reporter.” Louie-Louie met Kit’s stare.

  The mother made introductions, but Kit didn’t offer his hand. Anyway the brother’s hands were full. He’d come in carrying a bundle of magazines, four or five slick things that caught the glare. Reading material for the invalid?

  “The reporter, yeah,” he said. “So what you going to do for us?”

  It must have dumped another spoonful of gall into Junior’s stew, growing up with a baby brother twice his size.

  “You hear me, man? You told our story, you dig?” At least Louie-Louie hadn’t been drinking; his breath smelled of gum. “This is my family, man, the people I love, you dig? And you used us. You used us for your own gain.”

  “Oh Louie-Louie,” the mother said. “You got no right.”


  “You got our story, man, and now what do we get?”

  “Oh see, how you talk. You know he din even use our real names.”

  “You think you can just come in and get our story and then take off, man? That the way you reporters think?”

  How many times did Kit have to hear this question? Leo, Junior, Zia, Bette—now Louie-Louie—how many times?

  “You come in and get what you want and then you scoot. That the way it works?”

  “Oh see. Oh Luis. I’m afraid I’m goin to have to apologize now. Louie-Louie, you soundin like a baby.”

  “Mama why—why don’t you understand? This guy ain’t no friend of ours.”

  “Missah Viddich, I do apologize.” She went on staring up her son, without so much as a glance at Kit. “You goin to have to excuse us now, Missah Viddich.”

  “Ma-ma. This guy, he ain’t no kind of friend, you dig? I still can’t believe you gave him the letters.”

  “Those letters would’ve stayed in a closet without this man. Junior’s letters would have stayed in a closet, and Junior would’ve stayed in a closet. My boy was a hero and nobody would’ve never knowed.”

  “Aw, Mama.”

  “That’s how it woulda been without this man.”

  “Mama, please.” The brother broke into a whine. “Can we just talk about this? Just you and me, huh, please?”

  “Way I remember, Louie-Louie, even you didn’t want to listen to those letters. Even you didn’t want nothin to do with your brother.”

  *

  Aw, my basementarians. You know how those ‘60s relics see Good Guys versus Bad? You know how they see, say, an argument between a man and woman? The way they see Good versus Bad, it’s totally a fairy-tale. Like, a big burly Gl grunt and a wispy weak peasant woman. Or like, a Southern sheriff in a shirt too small for his chest and a grandma on her first Freedom March, wizened but brave.

  Oh see. They blind, these ‘60s guys. They soundin like a baby.

  Kit had at last let go of his glass. He’d retreated towards the door; he knew a family squabble when he heard one. The mother was showing her sharper corners again. Her glare imperial, her gestures sober, Mrs. Rebes backed her remaining son towards the kitchen archway. When she snatched the glossy magazines from his hand (“You insultin this man bringin this trash, this man run an honest paper”), Kit may have glimpsed a bright flyer from Alcoholics Anonymous. But Louie-Louie wasn’t going to get his mom to look at any flyers. Not today. The big kid was teetering backwards, having trouble on the extension cords. His chest and shoulders had shrunk. No, the squabble was no mystery—and Kit’s side had won already. The mother worked fast. Kit had been sprung already, given an excuse to go, and it had happened without his putting in a word in his own defense. He’d only emptied his soft white-boy hands and drifted once more into the cold by the doorway out. Cold, on his back: the worm.

  His idea had seemed so simple, so right. He would go to the woman and tell her. But he’d wound up off by himself, talking to himself. He’d wound up shaming himself with the things he’d found to talk about. How had he ever gotten started on his father? How, in a room where Junior’s ghost burned in every nook and cranny? He’d found no way to free the unhappy spirit, to start it speaking honestly. Instead new ghosts had gotten in the way: the skeletons in Kit’s closet, the hero the mother imagined, the looming Grand Jury. Too many ghosts, too much confusion. He couldn’t even set the story straight for the one person who should hear it first.

  “I ain’t done with you yet!” Louie-Louie called suddenly, across the room.

  The brother’s features remained powerful, though his glare had lost something. “Yeah, you,” he said. “You still got a lot to answer for.”

  “Huh,” the mother said. “Little boys got to play.”

  One last time, Kit looked around the overcrowded room. The Krishna curtain flapped and winked over a radiator making more noise than ever, doing its best against the deepening cold, pumping out rainbows and halos.

  Chapter 7

  Monday morning Corinna beat the process server to the office, but not by much. Kit was the first one in. His empty apartment drove him away, with no more than coffee and an unbuttered slice of toast to go on. Then came Corinna, heaving a big, body-length sigh to see her boss once more at his desk. Naturally, Zia arrived last. The writer showed up yawning and stomping off boot-slush, a good three quarters of an hour after the process server had gotten Kit’s signature and gone. But in the meantime Kit had said nothing about the paper. When Zia got to the office he still hadn’t explained to Corinna—to anyone—what he’d decided to do.

  The process server made Kit nervous just to look at him. The man wasn’t forty yet, not much older than Kit himself really, but already he appeared to be a boozer. His pouchy, florid face called to mind vodka breakfasts. It called to mind Ad and Amby out in Monsod. Mechanical over his clipboard and mail-packet, he was with the sheriff s office. He was serving a subpoena.

  Kit took the packet back to his desk, behind the reflections afloat in his glass walls.

  NOTES: phone con. Asa Popkin, att’y.

  (Monday AM)

  criminal subpoena—2 kinds of cases, civil & criminal. Misdemeanors etc. = civil; felonies etc. more serious = criminal. Thus crim. sub., subpoena to “criminal case,” but not necess’ly for “criminals.” Name misleading. SOURCE: Asa Popkin, jr. partner at Steyes family att’ys.

  EXAMPLE: Kit gets first look at papers (note hands v. spidery and task-specific as he removes & unfolds), & then K says to Corinna, Relax, relax. Nobody’s charging me with anything.

  Grand jury—State-level investigations into possible crim. wrongdoing. Note possible wrongdoing: G.J. investigates, only. Cannot itself prosecute or convict.

  EX.: K says to C, Relax. They just want testimony.

  —Note crim. wrongdoing: G.J. covened only where felony indictments expected. District Attorney initiates. Crim. sub. required. Wording of document carries harsher implications of “crim.,” suggesting 1), hierarchy of lords & vassals, 2), finality of exorcism: In the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts you are hereby commanded to appear…

  EX.: Looking over subp., C reveals Cosmo-Girl nerves, touching hair & belt. Says, K, you better talk to your lawyer.

  Officer’s return—Receipt for papers served. Server must be officer of court; s/he delivers original plus one copy of crim. sub., & person served signs & returns copy. Note keeping original = closeness to Source, to Absolutes.

  EX.: C says, K, call your lawyer. Call the guy. You told me when I signed the contract that he was a good one.

  —“Off. Ret.” also name of folk song? Heard on lan & Sylvia album? Carolyn Hester? Tune comes to mind, keening Highlands thing.

  EX: Trying to recall K retreats to desk, & w/ subp. in lap stares out over front cubicles. Hospital spaces. Numbed soldier returned from war. If K. called Bette now, if he reached her out on island, would she sing it for him, “Off. Ret.”? Memory: B.’s salt-raw soprano

  True bill of indictment—Actual criminal charges, brought following G.J. G.J. not bound by same rules court of law; hearsay allowable, cross-examination by several officers at a time, badgering & entrapment of witn’s. Whole purpose of G.J. to generate indictment. Note dunning reminders of authority:

  True bill. Authority, sanctity, ultimacy.

  !—Strongly recc’d have att’y present at G.J.

  !—Strongly recc’d meet w/ att’y beforehand & establish testimony.

  EX.: Pop’s intensity recalls Law maniacs at Harvard, all-nighters all exam week. Pop reports rumors of “tough” G.J., speculation in yesterday’s Globe. Says, I saw your name in the paper, too, K. You were in there all weekend. Speaking to you as my client, K., I’m not sure that this delay in coming forward will cast your testimony in the best light.

  Gag order, Shield law—Aspects of G.J. pertaining journalists, media.

  —Gag o. judicial order to keep all testimony & exchanges w/in G.J. confidential. Not
usual case. In usual case only materials produced by G.J. itself are confid’l. Only court recorder’s notes etc. confid’l. Anyone else free to speak, publish.

  —Gag o. must be requested from circuit court, & judge doesn’t always agree. D. A. who wants set up G.J. quickly won’t bother.

  EX.: K nodding at phone, trying sound like he knows what he’s doing: Oh yeah, the Gag o. I don’t see anything like that here.

  —Shield law journalist’s right of confidentiality, re. sources. Even before G.J., journ’t. may omit details or refuse to answer when source’s safety in question. Mass. sh. law oldest in country. Colonial.

  Applies esp. if source currently incarcerated (squealers die). Also family members of incarcerated source, themselves out of prison, considered vulnerable.

  Re. Carlos “Jr.” Rebes, self, Sh. law irrelevant. But, Pop says, if you as my client were in touch with his family, and if in your judgment his family is facing possible abuse or serious harm .

  !—Sea L can publish (see Gag o.).

  !—K. can remain silent (see Sh. law).

  ABUSE OR SERIOUS HARM—

  EX.: K makes app’t to meet Pop @ lunch. 12:30. Eyes stray to table teepees up over desk, paper V’s taped to glass wall: Jackalope from Wyoming, etc. Cartoon paper, picked up when younger & travelling alone.

  *

  “Is this about the subpoena?” Corinna asked. “Is there something in that subpoena, making you do this?”

  Kit kept shaking his head. By now Corinna and Zia had asked the same question, in one form or another, two or three times apiece.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.