Beaming Sonny Home (10 page)

“I already dialed that 800 number,” said Henry. “The closest agent is in Caribou. I'd have all the area north of Caribou to myself.” Mattie said nothing. Henry selling life insurance. Sonny holed up in a pin-striped trailer. What next? She handed the brochure back, treating it with a certain respect.

“What's Rita say about this?” Mattie asked.

“Rita says I couldn't sell whores in a lumber camp,” said Henry. Mattie nodded sympathetically. It was true. Henry
couldn't
sell whores in a lumber camp. Henry couldn't even sell
Grit.

“Well, I wouldn't go jumping to a conclusion if I were you,” Mattie said finally. “There's no telling when the mill is gonna start hiring again. And where would you be if the foreman called to say so? Running around in a suit and tie somewhere north of Caribou? How'd we ever track you down, sweetie, if you were out selling life insurance to the multitude?” Henry sighed and pushed a big hand, a big Plunkett hand, through his wiry hair. He was a tired man. The mill job aside, just living with Rita could age a human.

“You know as well as I do that there ain't no multitude north of Caribou,” said Henry. “That's another drawback for me selling insurance. That and the fact that I'll have to move away from Mattagash.”

“And then there's the biggest drawback of all,” Mattie reminded him.

“What's that?” Henry asked.

“This time Rita's right, Henry. Selling's your short suit.” Henry said nothing for a time. He cleared his throat once, then twice. The toothpick began to work frantically.

“I guess I'm gonna have to reconsider all this,” said Henry, “now that
you've
added your two cents.”

“I had no intentions of putting up any money,” said Mattie. “It was
you
asked
me
. And I can't lie to you, sweetheart. I just don't see you going door to door with a briefcase full of papers and forms and talking about beneficiaries. That just ain't you, Henry.”

Henry kicked one boot against another and then reversed the action. Mattie could hear nighthawks circling about in the dusk overhead, searching out the early-evening insects. Gracie told her once that scientists had examined the stomach contents of nighthawks and discovered that one had eaten more than five hundred mosquitoes, another more than two thousand flying ants. This put the nighthawk high up on Mattie's list of important birds. Now she could see them, filling up the overhead sky with their easy wing strokes, then shifting gears quickly into rapid winging.

“There ain't nothing to do in Mattagash if you ain't working in the woods,” said Henry. “And no one's hiring. So what am I supposed to do?”

“You ain't nearly as bad off as you think,” Mattie told him. “You ain't as bad off as Pauline, with them five little kids, and Frank riddled with cancer. Now,
that's
a tough ride. But you, Henry, you got yourself two growed boys who can find part-time work in Watertown, that is if Willard dyes his hair some color that befits an earthling.”

“His hair is kind of a grassy color right now,” said Henry. “Rita's still working on it.”

“You got yourself a mobile home that's all paid for,” Mattie continued. “You don't need a pickup truck
and
that big Buick that Rita's running around in, burning up tire rubber. Get rid of one or the other, Henry. And tell Rita she can't buy no more clothes or Avon makeup until you're back on your feet.” Henry scoffed at this last remark, the notion of Rita without her eyeliner, her eyebrow pencils, her gobs of creams, her lipsticks of every color, her eye shadows to match all her sweaters and blouses, summer and winter shades of liquid makeup.

“That'd be like telling a porcupine to give up its quills,” Henry said. It was Mattie's turn to scoff.

“You know she'll have to defy you in some way,” Mattie argued. “And she'll do it by buying her makeup. Let her. Let her think she won that round of the battle. Pauline needs the extra money from them Avon products, so you'll be helping your sister in a roundabout way. You're getting enough unemployment benefits that you can survive if you tighten your belts over there just a bit. And before you know it, things'll get better at the mill.” Henry said nothing for a long time. He sat looking up at the sky, as though he, too, saw the nighthawks circling up there, gulping up their quota of bugs.

“Is Sonny out of jail yet?” Henry wanted to know. Mattie sighed.

“Henry, do you and Rita
ever
talk? Do you ever turn on the television, sweetheart, and listen to the news? What planet do you live on, Henry Plunkett? Sonny's not in jail. He's in a house trailer. Don't ask me why because I'm not in the mood.” Marlene opened the front door.

“Mama?” she said. “You out here?” Mattie and Henry said nothing, their bodies blending into the shadows at the upper end of the porch. “Mama?” There was a stroke of silence as Marlene peered through the night, out at the St. Francis of Assisi birdbath, then down the road to Pauline's house, where all the windows were shining with a bright yellow warmth. “Crazy old woman,” Marlene muttered and closed the door with a thud. Mattie giggled. She couldn't help herself. There was something especially gleeful in catching her daughters with their true colors flying like flags. That all three hoped to headline in Mattie's Last Will and Testament was an unspoken fact that floated like a bat over their heads. A vampire bat. How many times had they tried, alone or as a team, to edge Mattie toward talk of a will? “It'll all just go to lawyers if you die without one,” Gracie had noted sadly. Well, there were days when Mattie would rather lawyers get what little she had to leave behind. Henry stirred in the dark beside her, stood up, and stretched.

“Wasn't that a lovely sound?” Mattie asked him. “The music of my daughter's voice?”

“Why don't you send the three of them home?” Henry asked. He selected a fresh toothpick from his pocket. “I never understood why a strong woman like you lets the three of them get away with so much.”

Mattie's eyes could no longer see the nighthawks. They had blended into the twilight sky, disappeared except for the nasal-sounding
pee-ik, pee-ah.

“I wasn't a good mother to them,” Mattie finally answered. “That's why.”

“You wasn't a bad one, either,” said Henry.

“Not being a bad mother ain't much better than not being a good one,” said Mattie. “I don't know why that's true, but it is.” Henry adjusted his toothpick.

“You ever hit one of them?” he asked.

“No,” said Mattie. “Maybe I should've.”

“You ever leave them alone when they was little?”

Mattie shook her head. “No,” she said.

“Was their supper always waiting for them when they come home from school?”

“I spent a few days in bed with pneumonia,” said Mattie. “But I got Eleanor Ryan to come cook for us.”

“Them girls ever look in their closets and not have clean clothes to wear?” Henry kept on.

“They always had clean clothes,” Mattie conceded. “Clean and
ironed
clothes.”

“You ever steal money from them?”

“You know better than that.”

“Then I think you been a pretty damn good mother, old girl. Even if you are crazy, like Marlene says.” With that, Henry Plunkett ambled off across Mattie's lawn. Just before he reached the St. Francis of Assisi birdbath, he stopped, looked toward the western sky.

“Speaking of planets,” said Henry, “that there's Venus.” He pointed at a huge, sparkling ornament in the sky, what Mattie thought to be a brilliant star. “And that there,” he said as he spun around and pointed to the south, “is Jupiter. You can see four moons with a steady pair of binoculars.” He put the life insurance brochure in his hip pocket and went on.

“Mind my birdbath,” Mattie warned.

“Birds taking a bath,” Henry muttered as he sidestepped St. Francis.

“Henry?” Mattie asked. He stopped and turned. The light from the living room window caught his weary face in its beam. “I been thinking, Henry. Maybe you
could
sell whores in a lumber camp.” Henry smiled. Then he disappeared into the shadows of night. Mattie heard his boot heels hit the tar. Overhead, the soft music of the swooping nighthawks,
pee-ik, pee-ah
, was still playing. Mattie looked up at the Mattagash sky where Jupiter and Venus were peering down at her, two bright eyes. Then she watched the orange glow of Henry's cigarette bouncing about in the dark until it disappeared.

Mattie had put on her nightgown and slippers and was sitting at the kitchen table with her puzzle when Rita drove up to the door in her big Buick. Marlene and Gracie were in the bathroom brushing their teeth and plastering their faces with cold cream. Mattie had decided that if she waited for her daughters to leave before she took the
Easter
Rising
puzzle out again, she'd never get it finished. Besides, there was something in what Henry Plunkett, her son-in-law, had said that gave her a bit of a boost. Maybe she hadn't been the best mother, but she hadn't been the worst, as Henry had mentioned. And while it was common knowledge that Mattie Gifford worshiped her boy, Sonny, it didn't seem that any of her daughters stopped long enough to consider that maybe their own mother didn't think the world of them, too. That maybe their own mother would have preferred to have Pauline as a daughter. Ignorance was bliss, so Mattie pulled the puzzle out, took all the little plastic bowls she kept the separated pieces in, and dumped them on the table. She was looking for the blue eyeball when Rita came in and threw her purse on the table, scattering the reds of the clothing Jesus was wearing.

“You ain't gonna believe what Henry Plunkett come home and said to me,” Rita announced. Mattie pushed a finger through the blue pieces, passing over sky, and flower petal, and background water to search for the eye piece.

“No,” she said, as it was obvious that Rita was waiting. “I probably won't believe it.”

“He told me we gotta tighten our belts,” said Rita. She was getting herself a pop from the fridge. “He said the kids need to look for a summer job in Watertown and that I can't buy no more clothes and makeup until he's working again. And listen to the clincher.” She had opened her pop with a loud
fizz
and now she paused to take a big drink of it.

“What's the clincher?” Mattie asked. She opened her eyeglasses case and took out her reading glasses, and now they rode low on the bridge of her nose. Rita was at the wall phone, her finger running down Mattie's cardboard sheet of frequently called numbers.

“He says we can't afford two car payments,” said Rita, “and that the Buick goes. He's at home making up a ‘For Sale' sign now.”

“You
don't
need two automobiles,” said Mattie. She put her finger on a brownish piece that was hiding among the blue pieces, scooted it back into the right pile, where it belonged, the earth of the Holy Land.

“You always take his side on everything,” said Rita. “I suppose if Henry come and told you he wanted to move to Caribou and sell life insurance, you'd tell him it was a good idea?” She had found the number she wanted and now she was punching out the digits angrily.

“I don't see anything wrong with Henry selling life insurance in Caribou,” said Mattie. She fitted a piece of blue flower into its rightful spot. She still couldn't find the darn eyeball. “Henry'd look good in a suit, carrying a big shiny briefcase full of important papers. I can see him now.”

“Henry couldn't sell whores in a lumber camp,” said Rita. “Pauline? Pauline, it's Rita. I hope I didn't wake you up, but I'm all out of blush and eye shadow and I need to place an order pronto.” Marlene and Gracie came out of the bathroom looking like they'd had a flour fight.

“You're almost out of cold cream, Mama,” Marlene announced. Her two blue eyes peered from her white face like glassy buttons. Jesus should be so lucky.

“And order me a tube of lipstick, something
red,”
Rita said into the phone. She plunked the receiver back onto the cradle. “That'll show him,” she said. Mattie could feel Gracie peering over her shoulder at the puzzle pieces.

“That looks like the piece of shawl that's missing,” said Gracie, and pointed a fingernail at a bright red chunk of puzzle.

“If I want help, I'll ask for it,” Mattie said calmly. “I ain't color-blind.” She studied the blue pile from over the tops of her glasses, the heap of potential flowers.

“I suppose we should stay up for the eleven o'clock news,” Marlene said, “in case our crazy brother has something new to say.”

“I'm gonna look cute rattling around in that damn pickup,” said Rita.

“What's the matter with
you
?” Gracie asked.

“Never mind,” said Rita. Now Marlene's white face was peering over Mattie's shoulder at the puzzle pieces. Would they ever go home, back to where they belonged?

“Remember the Christmas we worked nonstop to put that picture of the Last Supper together?” Rita asked. “We were gonna glue it and then give it to Mama to hang on the wall?” Mattie pretended not to hear, but Marlene and Gracie nodded.

“And all we needed was one piece to finish it,” Marlene added, “the brown piece that was Judas's money bag.” Mattie remembered the incident painfully. That had been the very day she'd scooted the whole puzzle into her woodstove after the argument over Judas's religious leanings took place.

“Speaking of money bags,” said Mattie, “did I hear you just place an Avon order, Rita? I thought you told me Henry said to tighten your belt.” But it didn't work. Rita was off and running, Sonny's shortcomings too enjoyable a feast for her to walk away from the table.

“We thought we'd lost that piece for good,” Rita plowed on.

“What's Henry gonna say about another makeup order?” Mattie wondered aloud.

“We vacuumed the whole house and then I even emptied them damn vacuum bags and searched through all that mess,” said Marlene.

“Remember how we thought the dog had chewed it up?” Rita wanted to know. Her sisters nodded. “And the whole time we searched for it, Sonny was sitting at the kitchen table watching us, drinking a can of beer and watching.”

“Look, there's the piece of shawl I been hunting for,” Mattie announced. “Now if I could just find that blasted eyeball.”

“Sonny had that piece in his pocket,” Rita said. “It wasn't until Mama did the wash the next Monday and was cleaning his pockets that it fell out on the floor. Do you remember that, Mama?” Mattie was still staring at the puzzle, pretending to be unconcerned, all during this current persecution of Sonny, but she was listening to every word. If only Gracie hadn't been visiting that day, sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of pop and gossiping up the whole town, Mattie would've been the only one to lay eyes on that brown piece of puzzle. But it seemed as though the minute Mattie got her old wringer washer out into the middle of the floor, one of the daughters dropped off a kid, or came to borrow a stick of margarine, or stopped by to look under the cake plate lid. “What do you suppose
this
is?” Mattie had asked. She had wanted to get Gracie's mind off Sonny
that
day, too, because Gracie had started in again on why did Mattie still do Sonny's wash. “But Sonny's a man,” Mattie had said. “What's a man know about bleach?” Gracie had shaken her head. “Oh, but they can learn, Mama. We're finding out all kinds of things about men these days, things they been pretending they can't do for years. It's all out of the bag now. Let Sonny do his own wash.” This was a few years before Gracie would come to take those women's studies courses and learn that men weren't good for
anything
, much less doing the laundry. Women like Gracie had been gearing up for such nonsense all their lives. So Mattie had gone ahead and pulled the pockets of Sonny's jeans inside out to check for quarters, or those matchbook covers he was forever writing a girl's phone number on, and that's when the piece of puzzle fell out. “What's this here?” Mattie had asked, hoping Gracie would forget all about men trying to get the stains out of their Fruit of the Looms. Hoping Gracie would just shut up and leave Mattie to her wash. Mattie had held up the little brown piece of puzzle, only to hear Gracie gasp. Mattie had thought about that day over the years, thought about how Sonny chose that money bag piece, chose the thirteen pieces of silver to carry around in his own pocket. It didn't hurt a person to want to be rich, did it? When a child is poor and has to live in a country with people who are rich, what does it do to that child's mind? Those were the kinds of questions Mattie wished those women's magazines Gracie loved would ask, followed by the answers, instead of whether or not men were capable of using Downy fabric softener in an intelligent manner. And yet what had she done? She had held that piece of puzzle up, under the glare of the kitchen light, under the glare of Gracie's pointed little nose. And, Judas that she was, she had betrayed Sonny in doing so, had sold him for a few seconds of peace and quiet.

“Well, I gotta go put on my pj's and cold cream,” said Rita. She plunked her pop bottle down on the counter, grabbed her purse off the kitchen table, and disappeared into the little bathroom.

“Why is she gonna have to ride around in the pickup?” Marlene asked.

Mattie shrugged. “Beats me,” she said.

“That looks like a piece of his sandal,” said Marlene, pointing at the brown pile.

“And I think that might be the yellow center in that flower in the corner,” said Gracie.

Mattie stood and began replacing the piles into their plastic bowls.

“Well, if you didn't want any help, why didn't you say so?” Marlene asked. “Honestly, Mama, you can be so childish in your old age.”

Mattie piled the bowls onto the puzzle itself and lifted the sheet. She carried it gently to the sofa, knelt on the floor, and then scooted it underneath and out of sight.

“I don't expect to come into this house one day soon and find that some elf has pulled this puzzle out to work on it,” she said. She put her glasses back in their case on the kitchen table and went down the hall to her bedroom.

“Have you ever?” she heard Gracie ask Marlene.

***

The eleven o'clock news had carried just a recap of Sonny Gifford's hostage-taking adventures. The girls were disappointed that nothing new had been offered concerning their brother's shenanigans, no Sheila Bumphrey Gifford to turn up and deliver her own part in the movie. After they went to bed, Mattie crept back out to the living room and turned the television on, put the sound down. She would be able to see the set if she left her bedroom door open. Turning if off, leaving it black and quiet, seemed almost like abandoning Sonny in some way. And he had always been so afraid of the dark. Now, with the television's round eye alert and watching, Mattie would be closer to her boy. She had said her prayers and then stood in the darkness at her window, looking out at the starry Mattagash night. This was a habit she had picked up during those years of Lester's cheating, when only the sounds of the sleeping children and the ticking clock had kept her company. By the time she no longer cared where Lester Gifford might be, or who he might be with, Mattie had acquired the habit of spying on the quiet of the night. It was at moments like this that she could almost hear her neighbors, asleep and dreaming in their beds, their dogs snoring on all those front porches, their kids twitching with little nightmares. It was as if Mattagash itself was a big old clock that had run down for the night, its heartbeat still and steady until someone got up early and wound it all up again by being the first one to start a car, or a pickup, or a skidder. And then the mechanism of the clock would commence again, all whirring and ticking and tocking, folks eating and cutting wood and washing dishes and reading newspapers. Only at night, when the clock was still, could Mattie think of her neighbors with a kind of sisterly love. Even knowing that Lester was out there, dozing in one of those beds, his sleeping mouth popping little Os as he slept, even that knowledge didn't bother her after a time. She heard a dog take up a rapid series of barks and wondered if it was Skunk, wondered where the hell Elmer Fennelson had been. She couldn't remember a time in her whole life when she hadn't seen Elmer for three days. And this was a time when she needed him most. Sonny and Elmer had been great friends down through the years. Elmer had been much kinder to Sonny than his own father had.

Mattie couldn't sleep. She tried first on her stomach, then her left side, then her right. The little aches were back again in her calves, tiny fingers of electricity. Maybe she should take up walking, like Gracie was pestering her to do. Maybe she should have her varicose veins cut and pulled out, as if they were old shoelaces you could throw away. It wasn't a pretty thought, but Dorrie Fennelson had had it done. Dorrie even went through every detail of the operation for anyone who cared to listen. “They cut you here and here,” Dorrie liked to say, her dress pulled up and her meaty calf exposed to her audience. “And then they just pull them suckers out.”

Mattie finally tossed off her comforter, for it felt too weighty on her skin. She lay on her back and pulled the top sheet up to her chin. And that's when the memories started to arrive, those thoughts about Sonny's upbringing that had plagued her for years. Was there such a thing as loving a child too much? Could too much affection kill or cripple a boy? Could too much devotion be a dangerous weight for a young man to carry? His sisters said he was lazy and good for nothing, but every time Mattie saw that Atlas person in those muscle-building ads, all she could say was, “There's Sonny. Holding up the whole weight of the world and no one realizing it.” Memories floated down from off her bedroom ceiling, her personal thoughts that had wafted up there over the years and then bounced like balloons unable to get free. It was while lying on her back in bed, over all those lonesome years, that Mattie did her best thinking. Thoughts of Sonny. How to get Sonny out of trouble, how to set a fire beneath Sonny's pants—which is what Lester said he needed—without burning the boy in the process. Now she remembered a time when Sonny's fifth-grade teacher called her in for a little chat. At least that's what the teacher had labeled it. “I'm worried about Sonny,” she told Mattie. “Can you come in for
a
little
chat?”
The little chat had gone on for well over an hour, with the teacher finally digging out pictures Sonny had drawn. “He mostly draws lighthouses on lonely islands, or silos standing in the middle of fields, beneath zigzags of lightning,” the teacher said, showing Mattie one lighthouse after another, putting silo after silo into her hand. In most of the lighthouse pictures, shark fins cut through the dark waters. “Ain't that something,” Mattie noted with pride. “Sonny ain't ever been to the ocean. I bet the others kids are drawing pictures of the river. Sonny's got an imagination that won't stop. Now, where'd he ever see a silo?” But the teacher didn't view it that way. “It worries me,” she said. “And when we draw pictures of our family, this is what Sonny draws.” Then she handed Mattie a picture of a tiny house with five people all piled into one room. Well, that was Lester's architectural spruce goose all right. In another room was a small stick character, all by itself. Above its head was written
Sonny
, with an arrow running down to point Sonny out. He'd even drawn in his cowlick. Sonny hiding out in one small room by himself. Well, that made good sense to Mattie. That's all she ever wanted in that crazy shoe of a house, too, a little peace and relaxation. “I'd say this is a picture of some good logic,” Mattie said, handing the drawing back to the teacher. “Me and Sonny are of like minds. We both appreciate time alone to think.” And that had ended the little chat. Now Mattie thought about that drawing of Sonny's family, with Sonny holed up alone in one room of the house,
barricaded
. And it seemed so prophetic to her now that she felt hysteria rise up in her chest and flood her very ability to breathe.
Sonny
barricaded
against
the
world
. It was true. It seemed that Sonny, for all of his life, had been pedaling a bicycle that took him nowhere, like the invisible bike Gracie pedaled during her exercises. Sonny's legs might have been turning, but his body didn't seem to ever get somewhere important. Or if it did, he always managed to turn a corner just before the final destination, like the time he
almost
got a job with Maine Parks and Recreation, like the time he
almost
signed up for continuing education classes, like the time he
almost
went into business with his cousin Milton, who now owned Gifford Auto Repair and was doing very well for himself. No, there was something in Sonny Gifford's cards that made the ace of hearts jump out of a royal straight flush so that the ace of clubs could jump in.