John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

None of that, Viddich. None of that now, and no crying either. Ain’t about no crying. Yesterday on the bus from Woods Hole, he’d still been crying, hiding in the Trailways lavatory, whimpering first Junior’s name and then his wife’s. But today in the mother’s easy-to-burn living room, it was out of the question. The woman was three-quarters drunk, yes, but the rest of her had loaded up on even stronger stuff — on lofty dreams and bloody murder. Back at the coffee shop where she worked, back when Kit had been trying to pump her for information, she’d looked so helpless, string-fingered. Now he was the helpless. Fingers knotted and all eyes.

Kit went backwards along the stereo units, eyeing the eight-tracks. Commodores, Tavares, Parliaments/Funkadelics. He kept going, slow-footed, around the sofa and back to his seat. The mother circled where she stood, watching. She was still spitting bile. “Whatever story you think you get from me, you better have the father my boy got. Father who got off on havin his own child watch.”

Those Movement bozos, I mean, talk about living in the demimonde. Did you ever catch their “sins of flesh” act? Did you ever hear them talk about sex? Or try to talk about it, anyway. Whenever they tried to talk S-E-X (couldn’t say the word by its name , oh see), in fact they talked L–I-E-S. L–I-E-S, my boys and girls. They were about as trustworthy as the Father in the confession booth — the one with his hand inside his robe. Old Martin Luther King himself, oh see, he tomcatted around. Preached the brotherhood and chased the sisterhood. Like the Father in the confession booth, breathing heavy and asking about your nastiest secrets.

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?