Beaming Sonny Home (13 page)

“See?” said Marlene. “He's still the liar he always was. You of all people, Mama, know darn well he wasn't named after Sonny James, or Sonny Bono, or any other Sonny. Now can you admit he's a liar?” Mattie tried not to think of Sonny's comment to the newswoman. He hadn't been named after Sonny James. He had not. But what did it hurt if he wanted folks to think he had? The truth was that she and Lester had argued so long and so hard over what to name their son that they never got around to agreeing on anything. Lester had been all in favor of Lester Junior, but Mattie felt that if she named her son after his father, he would inherit all that was bad about Lester. Sonny would go through life a tagged child, and then a marked man. As it turned out, it had probably hurt him worse that they just let the issue ride. “Son Gifford” is all it ever said on his birth certificate.
Son
Gifford
. And it seemed that, as the years passed, Sonny had come to feel that he'd been cheated out of a name, a birthright of sorts. One time Mattie had found him sitting on the front steps, staring at the harvest moon, a big boy by this time. “What about Thomas?” Sonny had asked her. “Wouldn't Thomas be a nice name for me, Mama?”

“Will you be stating your demands soon, Mr. Gifford?” the thin-faced, thin-haired man asked. Mattie smiled. They were calling her son
mister
. And it seemed as though the important-acting woman had steered them all toward some important-sounding questions. That's probably why that important-acting woman got to be so important in the first place. Her presence had changed the atmosphere of the live press conference. A buzzing rose up from the journalists, everyone wanting to ask their own important question, it seemed to Mattie. Voices cried out about demands not met, hostage conditions, background traumas. Someone representing animal rights inquired about the poodle's well-being.

“All I've got to say at this point, just for the record,” Mattie heard Sonny finally say, “is that if I don't walk out of this house trailer alive, I want Preston Gifford, another great American, to have my pickup truck, which is parked right there in the driveway.” A hand motioned from behind the screen. “And which I notice is being leaned up against by you news folk, and if you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you could lean on trees and such instead. Them cameras can cut a mean swath across a paint job.” Donna was shunted aside suddenly by a burly newsman. She was losing Sonny, Mattie could tell, and she had had him first, before this other woman even knew about him. Before anyone else cared about him.

“If your demands aren't met, Sonny,” the man wanted to know, “what do you plan to do with your hostages?” More microphones were thrust in for the answer.

“And I want my cousin Maynard to have my chain saw,” said Sonny, ignoring the question. Another newsman wondered if the state of affairs in Serbia and Haiti, followed by the despair in Rwanda, had had anything to do with Sonny's actions.

“Is that what John Lennon meant when he told you to stand up for the unfortunate people of the world?” the reporter wondered. Sonny seemed to like that question and fielded it from out of the mass coming at him.

“I got nothing but good wishes for all them people, all over the world,” Sonny announced dramatically. “Now, that's all I have to say at this point in time, for I must boldly go where no man has ever gone before.” His silhouette disappeared and microphones receded. People scrambled about in the front yard. Policemen began herding them away from the trailer. Only Donna and the important-looking woman remained in place, their faces still aimed at the window.

“Oh, another thing,” said Sonny, his outline reappearing. A chorus of voices rang out from the newspeople as they hurried to reassemble. A huge bouquet of microphones appeared immediately, sprouting from several directions, parts of arms and hands holding them firmly. “I would also like to tell Sheila Bumphrey Gifford, from right here in Bangor, Maine, the United States of America, but now on vacation somewhere in Atlantic City with a no-good bum, that I would appreciate it if she would return my dog, Humphrey, or tell me where she hid him. And all I can say at this point is that he'd better not be in Atlantic City with that”—
beep
beep
beep
beep
beep
. Then he was gone. Mattie winced. And Henry thought Rita's microwave did an abnormal amount of
beeping
. But at least now Mattie was one hundred percent certain. With no amount of fallback experience when it came to womanly rejection, Sonny had gone off the limb in a big way to get some attention from his philandering wife.

“Humphrey Bumphrey Gifford?” Marlene asked. She had started on another fingernail. Mattie wondered what her new daughter-in-law looked like. She hoped one of the newspeople would find the time to scrounge up a picture. The Bangor police chief, Chief Melon, was now being interviewed. He had been in touch with Sonny by phone and he felt quite certain, wanted to assure everyone, that the incident would be cleared up soon, with no harm befalling anyone. They were still trying to find Sheila Bumphrey Gifford, and now that CNN was airing the story, they hoped that Ms. Bumphrey Gifford would learn of the events taking place in her house trailer. Bangor police would begin an immediate search for Humphrey the dog. Anything to calm Mr. Gifford down and get him to release the women and himself without further trouble. It seemed to Mattie that Chief Melon had figured out what was wrong with Sonny, too. She imagined Sheila Bumphrey Gifford, in bed in some seedy motel room in Atlantic City, her hair sweaty and ruffled from rolling in the sack with her new beau, the kids asleep on another bed, new shovels and sand pails lying quietly on the motel's frayed rug.

Marlene turned off the television set. Mattie shivered. Something was bothering her. Her motherly instinct was kicking at her insides with a fateful thump. Her heart had begun pounding briskly, all on its own, without any permission from her mind.

“Well, I gotta go home and see if Steven and Lyle have torn down the house yet,” Marlene announced. She stood quickly, and Mattie felt the sofa readjust itself beneath her. “Wesley lets them do as they please when I ain't home. And the last thing I need is for one of them to grow up and be like his uncle Sonny. See you tonight.” Mattie had to ignore the motherly insult, for Marlene was gone in a slam of door, followed by an engine spurting to life, and then tires eating up gravel to get to the road. Then, silence, sweet and long and drifting like a cloud all around Mattie's head and ears. Peace. Tranquillity. The things it now seemed Mattie would never have again, not unless she died and they carted her off to the Catholic graveyard, down by that clutch of pine trees near the old meadow, with only the wind for company.

The picture puzzle of Jesus might stave off that feeling of dread that was tapping its finger on her back. Mattie pulled the cardboard sheet out from under the sofa and placed it gently on the kitchen table. Then she arranged all the bowls with their separated colors in easy-to-grab spots. But all she could do with the puzzle was stare down at it, dazed, dumbfounded as an ox, unable to lift her finger to a single piece of holy earth, of flower, of blessed, blessed sky. It seemed to be telling her something, the scattered puzzle, revealing to her a secret about life, about
her
life, about her life
with
Sonny
. It was as if maybe the chips and fragments of Sonny's existence were like a big picture puzzle, one that Mattie couldn't put together, like that one puzzle she'd bought and failed to solve, the only one since her addiction began. It had twenty-five hundred pieces, and half of them black sky except for an orange of a moon hanging over a desert at night. You could count the clues in that huge picture, those good solid objects to aid you, on one hand. So Mattie had eventually given up, had scooted all the pieces back into the box they came in and filed it away on the top shelf of her closet, feeling embarrassment that, after forty years of unwavering experience, she'd finally met her match. And now Sonny was like that puzzle. Sonny was like
The
Desert
with
Night
Moon.

There was something about afternoons on any given day that brought a sadness into Mattie's heart. She had had a whole lot of years to consider the whys of such a thing and she had decided this: Life had shoveled up its most smelly stuff during some of the most beautiful winter, spring, summer, and autumn afternoons that northern Maine had to offer. She had caught Lester Gifford with his Fruit of the Looms about his ankles in Eliza Fennelson's bedroom on a spring day in April of 1954. She was eight months along with Gracie at the time. She had already lost three babies, all miscarriages which she would learn later were due to the fact that she didn't have in her O negative blood something that was called an RH factor. She would learn this years later, long after all the other
negative
traits of her life had already surfaced. But she still didn't know it the day she walked—
tiptoed
was a more truthful word—into Eliza Fennelson's house, on that day in late April when you could hear snow melting and dripping from the eaves of all the Mattagash houses, when the warblers had begun returning from the south and were firmly perched in all the trees and singing the new hits of 1954, when the wild cherry trees were thinking about sprouting fuzzy white flowers. All she knew was that she had miscarried three babies, and that was a funny word,
miscarried
, as though she had
dropped
them. And then she'd gone on to have two girls, Rita and Marlene, babies who'd been born anemic but at least healthy enough to live and grow. And she was carrying a third, eight months into lugging that stomach around in front of her, when Martha Monihan stopped by the little mushroom of a house and bothered to tell her a great big Mattagash secret. It seems Lester Gifford was at that very moment in bed with Eliza Fennelson, who was an out-of-state woman, brought to Mattagash by her husband, Pete Fennelson, who had met her while he was stationed down in Fort Dix, New Jersey. Martha Monihan told Mattie this with big tears rimming her eyes. And Mattie thanked her for having the nerve to come forward—
thanked
her, good, kind friend that she was. It would be another five years, after Sonny was finally born and toddling about in his diaper, that Mattie would learn the whole truth from Eliza Fennelson, who had found Jesus in a real big way shortly after Mattie found
her
in bed with Lester. There had been a lot of hide-and-seek going on in those days. And since not even good-looking, sweet-talking Lester Gifford was a match for Jesus, Eliza gave her heart to God and wanted to clear her conscience. Mattie had always found it interesting how folks who find God seem to have a need to do that, to drop off all their dirty baggage on the very folks who'd had to put up with it in the first place. But there came Eliza Fennelson up the road one day. Mattie had just given Sonny his bottle and put him down for his nap. She could still remember how his head of curls fell against the pillow, his little red lips doing some imaginary sucking as he slept. October 1959, one of the most beautiful autumn afternoons she would ever remember. Or maybe she remembered it only because those other details had unfurled in her mind like red and orange leaves. But it
had
been beautiful. The maple trees on the mountain behind the house had burst to scarlet blotches on the horizon. Goldenrod stood yellowish brown in the fields. And the Mattagash River curled like a long, blue dream that day, not a cloud in the sky that rode above it. And here came Eliza Fennelson, clutching her little black Bible in her hands, shaking and perspiring. Mattie let her in. The past was past. Lester had cleaned up his act. He had sworn to this on his mother's grave. And then Eliza was sitting at the kitchen table apologizing, sorting through her dirty, sinful laundry so that she could float on up to heaven one day without so much as a feather of guilt to hold her down. Mattie forgave her. That's what she'd come to hear,
forgiveness
. The way the Fuller Brush man comes around to hear you say you need some furniture polish. Or the man from the bank comes around to hear you promise you'll put that check in the mail. Or the apple man comes by to hear you say you'll buy a crate of apples. Mattie told Eliza Fennelson what she'd come to hear. But then Eliza said something Mattie hadn't expected, something you'd never have to worry about hearing from the Fuller Brush man, or the man from the bank, or the apple man. Men usually didn't have time for things other than business, anyway. “Now that you've forgiven me,” Eliza had cried out that day in the autumn-warm kitchen, that day the last of the river roses ate their way up the banks like a dull red fire. “Now that you've forgiven me, I can go ahead and forgive Martha Monihan for telling you. After all, Lester broke Martha's heart in two when he took up with me.” Mattie had realized that her head was bobbing, pretending she already knew all about Lester and Martha, pretending it didn't matter a whit. And it's a curious thing about people who find God. They can't seem to leave well enough alone after that. They go out looking for poor innocent folks to take to heaven with them, folks who don't even want to go. “You're a saint, Mattie Gifford,” Eliza had gone on to say. “Everyone in Mattagash says so, what with Lester and Martha sleeping together all these years. What with Lester sleeping with all those other women in Mattagash who ain't given up their hearts to Jesus.” It's a curious thing when the day comes that you realize you've been living your tiny life in a big fish bowl and didn't even know it. When you realize that most of the smiles you've encountered on your neighbors faces weren't real smiles, but things pasted there to hide the truth of life from you. You start remembering that quilting party when so-and-so had laughed a little too hard at some joke that was being told about a cheating husband. Or that Sunday picnic, years earlier, when you yourself had made a statement about fidelity, and its importance, and all your listeners fell silent as stones. And eventually you get around to disbelieving everything you've ever done and seen and felt. You go into your miniature house as if it's some kind of hard, safe shell and you watch your neighbors from a distance. That day, a day Mattie always referred to as revealing more of
the
RH
factor,
had been October 15, 1959. She had never once suspected Martha Monihan, not once, not in all those years of knowing her, of having her sit at the kitchen table and nibble on fresh string beans from the garden, of sitting down in Martha's living room to play a game of Charlemagne with Lester and Martha's husband, Tom. Never. Not once. Lester had sworn on his mother's grave that he'd never cheat again. So much for Lester. So much for his dead mother and her grave. And that's when life had begun revealing itself to Mattie as the strangest, most mixed-up notion anyone had ever come up with yet. October 15, 1959. And Martha Monihan had been Mattie's best friend since 1937, since the day that Mattie picked her up from the mud puddle where Thomas Monihan had pushed her. She was Martha Craft in those days, skinny-legged, space-toothed, curly-haired. But she eventually grew up to be Mattie's best friend and to marry Thomas Monihan. Mattie could've left Rita looking after Sonny that day in 1959. She could've waited for her to get off the yellow squash of a Mattagash school bus to babysit.
Could've
. And if Rita was home to babysit, then Mattie should've gone on down the road to confront Martha Monihan.
Should've
. And just when Martha had leaned back against her kitchen sink, her hands finding the cotton of her apron so that they could wipe themselves dry, or her hands pushing back the strands of that still-curly hair, Mattie would've said, “I ought to put you back in the mud, Martha Craft, right where I found you back in 1937.”
Should've
.
Could've
.
Would've
. Those words were no better than the whores Lester had been sleeping with all those years behind Mattie's back. So Mattie didn't do any of that stuff. Instead, she let Martha's round Craft eyes, big cocker spaniel eyes, look into hers every time they met, whether it was over a bowl of homemade ice cream or while they were standing watching their kids play baseball, or even at someone's wake, as they both stared straight ahead at the coffin and thought about the spidery webs of lies spun by the living. And Mattie made little comments, when gossip arose about other women, comments like “That woman has to face her maker one day, and He knows who she's been sleeping with behind her husband's back.” And once, when they sat beside each other in Martha's living room, watching a soap opera in which a woman slept with her friend's husband, Mattie had shook her head sadly. “I'm so lucky I don't know anyone as low as that,” Mattie had said. “There's no one that low in Mattagash, Maine, that's one thing for sure.” And the years had melted away like that. The years had turned from the fifties into the sixties, and the sixties had become the seventies, and the seventies went on to develop into the eighties, and then Lester Gifford's heart took it upon itself to explode and Lester vanished from the two-lane roads of Mattagash, Maine, vanished from the white sheets on all those female beds, sheets that smelled like they'd been drying a whole day in the Mattagash river breezes. Lester disappeared. August 12, 1989, one of the prettiest summer afternoons you were ever privileged to see in northern Maine, was the day they put him into the old-settler earth forever. And what Mattie felt on that day, as she watched Martha Monihan come dizzily into the tiny Catholic church, the only one there wearing black, like she was some kind of widow or something, the only thing Mattie could feel was pity. After all, it was
Martha's
heart that had ached and throbbed and yearned for Lester all those long years of sunrises and sunsets, of flash floods and rains and fires eating up the timberlands, of babies being born and old-timers dying, of PTA meetings and basketball games and softball tournaments, of all those horseshoes tossed on the Fourth of July, all those fireflies burning up the summer nights, the millions and millions of snowflakes that had fluttered over Mattagash, the cuts and bruises that had appeared, then disappeared on the feet and elbows of children, the sandwiches thrown together for all those school lunch pails, the cucumber seeds that had been pried into the earth in all those gardens, the pillowcases washed, the letters written and mailed out to the world, the monthly blood that had flowed from all those women, the cans of peaches opened, the loaves of bread baked, the doughnuts eaten. Martha Monihan had craved Lester Gifford through all of that. And for thirty years Mattie had watched it unfold, with a genuine smile pasted to her face, instead of one of those fake ones. Even after the cancer took Eliza Fennelson up to heaven, light as a feather. And now, in 1994, with Lester dead and gone almost five years, Martha was still after him, through the Ouija board this time. Chasing Mattie's husband when he was alive was one thing, but chasing him long after he went into his grave was another. And that's why Mattie had walked out on Martha's Ouija board session. Enough was enough. Even the marriage vows said “until death do us part.” So there they were, in the present, Martha left with her Ouija board and Mattie with what she called the RH factor and the afternoon blues.

When you got right down to the nitty-gritty, though, the afternoon blues were still better than having the girls all pile back into the little hubcap of a house. But that's just what they did.

“Pauline dropped off my Avon order,” said Gracie. She was back in her exercise outfit, long purple leggings and white turned-down socks. She reminded Mattie of a colt horse, prancing about the springtime fields.

“She dropped mine off, too,” said Rita. “I dare Henry Plunkett to say a single word about my ordering that perfume. Besides, I ordered it back in May.”

“She finally brought me my Skin So Soft,” said Marlene. And then, remembering, she giggled. “Pauline says she's got to teach her daughter Sonya the facts of life. Sonya got up this morning and asked if babies get delivered by Avon.” The girls laughed in tune. Mattie was surprised to hear them harmonizing on something.

“You need to sit right down the moment they ask the first question,” said Gracie, “and tell them everything.” Gracie had that look on her face again, that psychology class, women's studies glare that just defied anyone to argue the point with her. Mattie decided she would.

“I don't think you should tell a child too much too soon,” Mattie pointed out. Marlene shook her head.

“I wouldn't say you were the best when it come to telling us about the birds and the bees, Mama,” Marlene said. “When you were expecting Gracie, I asked you why your belly was so big, and you told me you'd swallowed a watermelon seed.”

“I was so young and stupid in them days,” said Mattie, “I probably believed that myself.”

“To this day I can't eat watermelon,” Marlene added.

Mattie knew the talk couldn't possibly stay away from Sonny. Even if he
wasn't
holed up in a house trailer with two women and a dog, the girls couldn't go an hour without casting some form of slander at their brother. Besmirching Sonny had become more addictive than Avon, cigarettes, and women's studies classes. It had become much more addictive than putting together picture puzzles. And Mattie was right.

“You can't go anywhere in this town without someone asking you about Sonny,” said Rita. “I just tell everybody the God's truth. That's the only thing you can do. And then I ask them if they're at all surprised.”

“At least CNN ain't carrying the full story,” said Marlene. “They've just been showing the trailer every now and then, and mentioning that some nut up in Maine has taken a poodle hostage. It don't seem to matter that he's got those women, too. That's small potatoes these days, what with people going into McDonald's and killing everyone they see.” Rita patted her hand about on the kitchen table, feeling around behind the plastic flower centerpiece that Mattie kept there.