Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

“Would you care to have something cold to drink, Mrs. Burns?” Gunner asked politely.

“I don’t drink, thank you,” she said as curtly as possible.

“I meant a Coke or something. Orange juice?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

Gunner and his mother already had drinks themselves, and without even asking Sonny, Gunner brought him a martini strong enough to curl the hair on your chest.

Nina dipped a finger in her martini, sort of stirring it around, and said haughtily, “It’s too bad this had to happen.”

“I agree with you there,” Mrs. Burns said. “If your son hadn’t influenced Sonny the way he had—”

“My son,” said Nina, “is a leader, always has been. Frankly it’s beyond me how he got mixed up with your son and his radical, antisocial ideas, but—”

“ My son has always been a good boy, a normal person, until he met— him— that playboy with a beard.”

“He never had a beard before he got mixed up with your son.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Gunner said.

“It’s true,” Nina insisted.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” Gunner said.

“No,” Sonny said. “It really doesn’t.”

Neither of the mothers paid any attention.

“I can understand,” Nina continued, “how a boy like your son, who never pledged anything, who wasn’t in any house at all in college much less a good house—I can understand how a bitter boy like that would be attracted by Jews and Communists, but—”

“Jews! It’s your son who’s out lalligagging around with a Jewish girl day and night, everyone knows about that , let me tell you—”

“My son was never involved with any Jew girl until he started running with your son and his crowd.”

“What crowd?” Sonny asked, startled at the notion of his being the leader of a crowd of any kind, which is what Nina made it sound like.

“There isn’t any crowd, Nina,” Gunner said.

“Don’t lie for him, he’s got you all confused,” Nina said.

“I really don’t have any crowd, Mrs. Casselman,” Sonny said.

“Don’t try to brainwash me , young man!”

“Brainwash!” Mrs. Burns shouted. “My boy’s the one who’s been brainwashed. It’s your son who has the communistic beard. My Sonny shaves, like a good American.”

“Of course!” Nina said. “He wants to be safe himself, he wants to talk other people into beards and let them take the consequences.”

“It’s my goddam beard!” Gunner said. “Nobody talked me into it.”

“They have their ways,” Nina insisted. “You don’t even know how they do it, how they talk you into doing their bidding.”

“Are you implying my Sonny is a Communist?” Mrs. Burns asked in a trembling voice.

“If the shoe fits, wear it,” Nina said. “If you lie down with dogs you come up with fleas.”

“You can say that again, but it’s my son who got the fleas!” Mrs. Burns yelled.

“Please,” Sonny pleaded, looking helplessly at Gunner.

Gunner went to the middle of the room, pointing his hands at each mother, like a referee, and made an announcement.

“Listen,” he said. “I’ll shave off the beard. Will that make everybody happy? Is that what it’s all about?”

“It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” Mrs. Burns said, sobbing.

“It sure is, sister,” Nina said sharply. “And let me tell you—”

“Cut it, Nina, just cut it,” Gunner ordered. “I’m shaving the beard and that’s all she wrote.”

Sonny put a hand on his mother’s quaking shoulder and said firmly, “Come on, let’s go. We have to go home.”

Sonny drove the car back while his mother sat sniffling and crying, leaning against her door as if she were trying to press so hard she’d fall out. When they got home she washed her face and had two aspirin and a Pepsi.

“Are you still going to see that boy, after what happened?”

“After what happened!” Sonny yelled. “What happened was you and his mother acted like crazy people, that’s what happened!”

“See!” Mrs. Burns cried. “He’s turning you against me, he’s making you take his side!”

“Jesus Hannah Christ,” said Sonny. He was too tired to scream or even to argue. He went to his room and slammed the door, flopped on his bunk, and tried to shut his mind off.

Help me, God, God help me. I hate your ass, but help me if you can. Help me lie down beside the still waters .

Shaving the beard off seemed to make Gunner look older—maybe just having the damn thing had aged him, what with all the crap he had to take about it. His cheeks looked hollower and whiter than before he had the beard, and his skin was a little raw, making him appear as if he’d just recovered from an illness. A couple days after the Great Mother Meeting, he picked up Sonny and they got a six-pack of Bud and went up to Crown Hill Cemetery, picking a high, shady spot where you could look out over the city and no one was likely to bother you. They just sat and sipped for a while without saying anything, and then Gunner started talking about how Marty’s mother was hounding her about seeing so much of a shaygetz —that was the Jewish word for a guy who wasn’t what Marty called “O.O.T.T.,” One of the Tribe—just as Gunner’s mother was on his back about dating a Jewish girl.

“We’re getting it from both ends,” Gunner said. “What a lot of shit.”

“Are you really serious about Marty?”

“‘Serious about?’ What does that mean? How the hell do I know? I like to fuck her and I like to talk to her—that’s a pretty rare combination, you know?”

“Hell, yes.”

“But we both have things to do. She doesn’t want to get locked into a picket fence, like DeeDee’s so hot to do. She’s got her own stuff to do, her art. And I don’t even know yet what the hell I’ve got to do. Except try to find out what it is.”

“Are you still going up to see the ad agency? In Chicago?”

“Yeh, I figure I owe ’em that. And myself, too. I really think I’ll get on the GI Bill train, but I at least could tell ’em that, maybe they’d like the idea of a guy doing that before he settles into a regular job.”

“Yeh, right. Might as well keep it open.”

“The pay ain’t hay, I’ll tell you that. They were talking seven thousand as a starting salary.”

Sonny whistled and said, “Shit, that’s as much as Biff Barkely makes over at the Star right now, and he’s been with ’em—Jesus, maybe fifteen years.”

“You talked to him, huh? About a job there?”

“Yeh, but I don’t know. He’s kind of bitter, it seems like. He kind of encouraged me to go to New York or something, try the big guys.”

“Why not? You can always come back here, you might as well see what it’s like in the big city. Hell, you could get the bill and do some work on the side.”

“Maybe. I guess maybe I ought to go talk to the guys at the V.A. About getting the bill.”

“Yeh, I was down there once, but I have to go back and get the forms and shit. I think I’m going to try to get into Columbia. I was talking to Marty about it.”

“Man, that’d be great. Having a girl there, right there in New York.”

“Yeh. New York.”

New York City .

Just hearing the name or saying it to himself gave Sonny a kind of tingly feeling, exciting and scary at the same time. The flat, familiar town stretched out below seemed tamer but also safer. He just didn’t know if he had what it took to survive in a real big city, much less the biggest and toughest of them all. Of course, if he had a friend there, a friend like Gunner, who’d make out anywhere in the world, it might be easier, might even be some fun.