Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

“It’s a nice apartment you’ve got here, Mrs. Casselman,” Sonny said as heartily as he could.

“Call me Nina,” she said. “I do like the Meadowlark. I was in a bigger place before, but it was one of those strait-laced buildings down on Meridian with a lot of old people. The hallways smelled like a hospital. This place is a little cramped, but it suits just fine for a bachelor girl like myself.”

Sonny vaguely remembered something about Gunner’s father dying when he was a kid, even before he got to high school, but, of course, his mother—Nina, that is—would never think of herself as a “widow” any more than she would think of herself as a “mother.” She was a “bachelor girl.”

“It’s a little cramped with Gunner home, but if he promises to stay I’m going to get us a bigger place, right here in the Meadowlark. Just the two of us.”

“That would be nice.”

“Has he shown you his pictures of Japan?”

“He has been, yes.”

“And the scrapbook?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“I kept a scrapbook for him, while he was gone. Of course he doesn’t appreciate it—but he will someday.”

“Sure,” Sonny said.

Nina stood up and went to a bookcase that had the Churchill volumes on World War II, some textbooks, and a row of orange china elephants, linked trunk to tail. She pulled a green-leather scrapbook off one shelf and came and sat down beside Sonny, laying the book on one of his knees and one of hers. She smelled heavily of some woozy kind of perfume, and when she bent forward over the scrapbook, Sonny could see down her blouse almost to the nipple of her tit. He felt dizzy and tried to focus on the scrapbook. There was a page of newspaper clippings, and Sonny read one that said:

Cpl. Thomas B. “Gunner” Casselman, known to Hoosiers for his gridiron exploits at Shortley and DePauw University, is stationed in Japan, where he recently climbed to the top of the fabled Mt. Fujiyama, according to his mother, Mrs. Nina Casselman, of 3429 East 42nd Street.

“That’s something,” Sonny said.

“Which?” Nina asked.

“Mt. Fujiyama. Climbing it.”

Gunner came in with two cans of beer and stopped short when he saw the scrapbook.

“Mother,” he said.

That was what he called her when he really was pissed off at her.

“Your friend wanted to see it,” she said.

“Whatya think he’d say, no?”

Gunner handed Sonny a beer and grabbed the scrap-book.

“We were looking at that!” Nina shouted.

Gunner put it back on the shelf and said, “ Please , Mother.”

Nina let out a heavy sigh and went back to where she was sitting before and picked up her drink.

“He’s always been like that,” she said to Sonny, “hiding his light under a bushel.”

Gunner got that look like he had on the train after all the sake and the deep contemplation, where it seemed that his eyes became glassy and sunk farther back into his head.

Nina put on a Brubeck record and turned it up real loud. Nobody said anything, they all concentrated on drinking. When Gunner was finished he set down his glass on the coffee table and stood up.

“I’m giving Sonny a lift home,” he said.

“You haven’t forgotten about tonight, I hope?”

“No, Nina.”

“I broke two dates for you, sweetie. Not that I wouldn’t rather go out with you, but you just better show me a good time.”

“We’ll paint the town, Nina.”

“Promise?”

“Absolutely.”

“Come give Nina a kiss.”

She surged up in her chair, her face lifted high and her tits pressing against the tight silk blouse. Gunner went over and leaned down to kiss her and Sonny looked away. He stood up and went to the door and Gunner was there in a moment, his eyes still sunk back, a lipstick stain on his mouth.

“Good-bye, nice to meet you, Mrs. Casselman,” Sonny said.

“Nina,” she corrected.

“Nina,” said Sonny, not looking at her directly, and hurried out the door behind Gunner.

On the way to Sonny’s house, Gunner apologized for Nina’s questions about all the social crap, the fraternity jazz.

“She’s still impressed by that shit,” he explained.

“That’s O.K.”

Gunner said he was trying to get her to take a broader view of things. He had brought her a real kimono and some incense from Japan, and tried to get her interested in Oriental culture, but she got to suspecting that he was secretly married to a Japanese girl and was trying to soften the blow by making the country sound so great. Gunner got mad once and said, Well, what if he had married one, what difference did it make, but Nina went to pieces and he had to drop the whole thing. As Gunner put it, she wasn’t too philosophical.

“Most mothers aren’t,” Sonny said.

“Right,” said Gunner. “I can’t think of any who are, offhand.”

The day after Sonny met Gunner at the Red Key he didn’t sleep till noon, like he’d been doing since he got home, but woke up a little after ten, dragged himself right out of bed, and did seven push-ups. He shaved, dressed, and went downstairs humming, thinking of a lot of stuff he wanted to do. Constructive stuff. Like going down to the darkroom and getting it back in shape again, going out to get some new chemicals and film, and maybe pick up the latest Newsweek .

“You’re up early,” Mrs. Burns said suspiciously. She was puttering around the kitchen, no doubt making more tempting pastries to fatten the world with. She didn’t just feed them to Sonny, but to all the sweet-starved people she met in the course of her work at the church office. She could pretty much make her own hours, and more than being in the office itself she liked driving around on errands of mercy to the sick, the sad, the troubled. It took a load off Reverend Halverson’s back and left him more time for fishing, which was his greatest passion—next to God, of course. He tied his own flies.

Sonny sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the front page of the Indianapolis Star . The main headline was about the Traffic Toll rising. It usually was. If the Reds didn’t get you, the highways would, or so it seemed from reading the Star . He turned to sports and was happy to see Willie Mays still leading the league in batting. The Indianapolis Indians had dropped a double-header to the Toledo Mudhens. Sonny could never get too excited about the Indianapolis Indians. Not being major league, they didn’t seem “real” in a funny way.

“Are you hungry?” his mother asked.

“Yeh, I am.”

He felt he could eat one of those he-men lumberjack breakfasts, with smoked sausage, heaps of eggs, and hot black coffee.

“That Casselman boy,” his mother said, “you say he lives with his mother?”

“Yes. I mean for now, anyway. He just got home from Japan.”

“He looked very familiar.”

When Gunner had taken Sonny home the night before, he had come in to use the phone, and met Mrs. Burns. She was gushy with friendliness and please to stay and have a bite to eat, but there was that little edge in her voice, the way there always was before she had sized up any new friend of Sonny and taken her stand on how he or she would aid or hinder her little boy’s life.

“He was an athlete,” Sonny explained. “His picture used to be in the paper a lot.”

“Isn’t he the one who was awfully fast? In high school?”

“Damn right. He ran the hundred in ten-one.”

“No, dear. I mean fast with the girls.”

“I dunno,” Sonny muttered, looking at the major-league standings.

“I thought everyone knew. I mean, he had quite a reputation, didn’t he? For sowing his wild oats?”