Beaming Sonny Home (3 page)

“I'll just see that Henry and the boys are okay with the buttons on my new microwave,” said Rita, “and then I'll grab my old flannel nightgown and I'll be back in a jiffy.” She went out and slammed the door to Mattie's house.

“What's this all about?” Mattie asked the two remaining daughters. Marlene was waiting at the door while Gracie pulled jeans on over the purple tights she'd worn to do her exercises.

“We can't leave you alone here tonight, Mama,” said Marlene. “Not with Sonny still holed up in that trailer.”

“Yes you can,” said Mattie. She'd just been thinking how nice it would be to have a little peace and quiet before she tried to sleep, a square of silence in which she could think this Sonny thing out. Having the girls around was like holding a cup of marbles up to your ears and shaking it.

“Now, Mama, think sensible,” said Gracie. “When they find out who Sonny is, there's gonna be people calling us up nonstop and maybe even showing up on the front porch. How are
you
gonna handle that?” Mattie thought about this question.

“I guess the same way I handled that house fire when you four kids were just babies,” Mattie told her daughter. “And I got you all out safe, in the middle of the night, mind you, and even come back inside and saved Grannie's old Bible.”

“This ain't the same thing, Mama,” said Marlene, shaking her head with impatience.

“Or the time Rita almost drowned in the river and I pulled her out and gave her mouth-to-mouth, even though I'd only seen it done on TV,” said Mattie. “I just covered her mouth with my own and saved her life. I suspect that's the way I'll handle this latest thing.”

“I got to admit
that
was a feat,” said Marlene. “Covering Rita's mouth would be like trying to put a piece of Scotch tape over the Grand Canyon.”

“Now, Mama, that's nonsense,” Gracie began, but Mattie stopped her.

“Or the time we were supposed to evacuate during that spring flood, and Lester was God only knows where and we were here alone, up on the top floor, waiting for the water to go back down. I'd say I handled that one pretty good.” Marlene and Gracie glanced at each other, exchanged a look that indicated to Mattie that they knew everything and she knew very little.

“But, Mama, sweetie,” said Gracie. “This is a whole lot different than a drowning, or a fire, or even a springtime flood. This is
television
, Mama.” Mattie waited for a few seconds before she said anything. She tried hard to think of what it all meant, what the implications were in such a mess as Sonny was now wallowing. Would she need a new dress? Maybe she should have her hair done, some of those French curls that Lola Monihan liked to pile on the top of a client's head and lacquer with hair spray until they were as stiff as plastic flowers. Then Mattie hated herself for even thinking such vain thoughts when Sonny was in so much pain. And she knew darn well, just by the sound of Sonny's voice, that he was in
deep
pain
. His heart was hurting him an awful lot. Maybe he did care about children starving. He always had the kindest thoughts about old people and animals. But something else was going on inside that son of hers. Something that no doubt had to do with this Sheila woman he had married, a woman with kids from another marriage, a woman Mattie had yet to meet. “I love this one, Mama,” Sonny had told her over the phone just six months earlier, when he called to say that he and Sheila Bumphrey had gotten married. “This one's gonna be the last one,” Sonny had predicted. He had never said such words before, and Mattie had no doubt that he meant them. She looked at Marlene, then at Gracie.

“If you stay here,” Mattie said, “you'll need to go out on the porch to smoke. I mean it. That's just the way it'll have to be.”

“For heaven's sake, you treat us like we're still in high school,” Gracie protested.

“Well,” said Mattie, “I wonder why.”

When her four children had been at home, and Lester was still alive enough to chase women, Mattie had considered the house a tiny mushroom of a thing, too cramped and narrow to offer privacy. There was always the sound of someone's conversation in the air, the smell of someone's perfume or cologne, the sight of someone's shoes, or stockings, or schoolbooks scattered about on floors and chairs. There was even the indelicate smell of someone's private doings emanating from the closet-sized bathroom, mixing sometimes with the aroma of onions, or freshly baked cookies. But then, opening onto the kitchen as it did, the bathroom was only one of Lester's many architectural flops. Even the three bedrooms, meant to sleep a family of six, seemed more likely to have been designed to hold shelves of hatboxes, or Christmas decorations, a sewing machine, maybe. But Lester Gifford had always thought small, except when it came to female breasts. After Rita and Marlene and Gracie had married, Mattie had indeed turned their bedroom into a perfect little sewing room, and she had replaced the bed—which Gracie had paid for with potato harvest money and therefore taken with her—with a pullout sofa. When the girls had lived in it, it had been a room with wall-to-wall beds, what with the bunk beds in which Marlene and Rita had slept pushing up against Gracie's full-size. One of the girls could've put a twin bed in Sonny's room and slept there, where there would have been more space, but there seemed to be something socially wrong with this notion that only teenagers could understand. But they had survived those crowded, sardine years and then, one day, they were all gone, and Mattie was left with a house full of beds. She finally called up Rita one day, since she was the oldest, and offered to give her the bunk beds for her boys. “I'm gonna have a sewing room if it kills me,” Mattie had told Rita. “Come get the beds if you want them.” This had caused a commotion with Marlene, who felt
she
should have the bunk beds for
her
boys. Mattie was just about to take Lester's chain saw to the beds, then give one to each daughter, regardless of how lopsided they turned out, when she thought of her sister Elsa, who had so many big bedrooms and even more little grandchildren. That had shut the daughters up for good. Mattie hadn't seen either of them for two blissful weeks. But what she would remember more sharply about the bunk bed incident were the words she had used, idly, on the phone that day to Rita:
I'm gonna have a sewing room if it kills me.
As it turned out, it had killed Lester instead, his heart exploding in his chest when he bent to lift up his end of the bunk beds, Mattie hoisting the other end as Elsa waited outside in her pickup truck, the tailgate down. All Mattie could do, as she stood with the phone hugging her ear, waiting for the Watertown Emergency number to answer and watching Lester's contorted face, was to pray he would tell her he was sorry, once and for all, sorry for the cheating, sorry for the long evenings when she'd sat up alone in the dark, waiting for him to come home, the sounds of their sleeping children the only rattling noises in the tiny mushroom of a house, a house made larger by Lester's absence. She had stood there with the phone pressed to her ear as though it were a plastic seashell, all the unhappy years of her marriage echoing again in her eardrums, washing up in the coils of her memory. But Lester had simply clutched his heart, that organ he had given to so many women in his day, given it so freely and so often that he had worn the sucker out. Mattie had had a good mind to hang up the phone. “Let one of your women call the ambulance for you and your used-up old heart,” she had wanted to say. But she could tell by the gray color seeping into Lester Gifford's face, the slack way in which his muscles had relaxed, the little string of drool that was lacing down his chin, that his heart was making its last big move. His heart was dancing its last tango. And the house had become even larger once Lester danced on.

Now here it was full of daughters again, all chattering and gossipy, like the grackles Mattie had watched that morning under her clothesline. The girls had returned with their arms filled with nightgowns and magazines and Marlene's VCR, in case anyone was up for a rental movie after the eleven o'clock news. But at eleven Donna, the small, tight-faced little reporter, had nothing new to tell her viewers. The news clip was a rerun. With no adrenaline pumping now to keep them awake, the girls decided to turn in. Gracie pulled the sofa bed out in the sewing room and claimed it as her territory.

“After all, this was my room last,” she told her sisters, “for five whole years after you two left home.” Mattie tried to imagine this. Rita and Marlene, once again sharing a room they had never learned to share as children, or as teenagers. In fact, those two had never learned to share
anything
. How many times in their growing-up years had they squabbled over which one would get those little onions in the bottom of the mixed pickles jar? Or which one would get those bright red cherries, scattered here and there among a can of fruit cocktail? It had gotten to the point where Mattie had to stop buying those products. And she had forbidden anyone in the family to purchase a single box of Cracker Jacks. God only knew what kind of war a
real
prize could create. Now Rita and Marlene would again be
sharing
a bed in Sonny's old room.

Mattie stood in the kitchen and listened to the same old tune that made up her daughters' voices, that continual whine about “Sonny this” and “Sonny that,” a record stuck in time. She didn't like the idea of them being in there, enemies that they were of Sonny. The only times that room had been used in years was when Sonny turned up unannounced with a pillowcase full of dirty clothes. Or when a grandchild or two thought that staying at Grandma's house would be an adventure. Mowing the lawn once or twice, or washing a few pots and pans in the sink, had turned that adventure into hellish boredom. But Mattie didn't care. She hadn't fledged all four of her own chicks only to raise grandchicks. Now Rita and Marlene were camping in Sonny's room, inspecting the posters of scantily clad women he'd pinned to the wall, the Louis L'Amour paperbacks he kept stacked on the dresser, the baseball Sonny had caught that autumny day at Fenway Park. “Hit by none other than Mr. Rico Petrocelli himself,” Sonny often noted. There were several colorful beer cans, the names of which were alien to Mattie, that had been collected by Sonny on a trip to Texas, during his first and last truck-driving experience. There were pictures of the dogs he had owned and loved in his boyhood days: Cody, his first German shepherd, and Tip-Top, one of the many German shepherds to follow, who had a round black spot on his head. And finally, some teddy bears Sonny had won at the Maine State Fair by throwing softballs at milk cans. And a deck of playing cards on which more young women sported an unspeakable amount of cleavage.

“I can't believe Mama keeps them posters up on the wall,” Mattie heard Marlene say. “Not to mention these cards. Just take a look at the jack of diamonds, if you dare.” Mattie was fixing herself a tall glass of vinegar and water, which was supposed to shrink her varicose veins. Ordinarily, she would have this drink with her supper, but she'd forgotten it, thanks to all the commotion on Channel 4. The spoon made loud clinking sounds as she stirred. She wanted to send a little Morse code into Sonny's bedroom.
Get
the
hell
out
of
Sonny's stuff
, the spoon said. She
wanted
Sonny's stuff there, and that's why she left it just as he liked to find it.

“My taillights hadn't disappeared around the bend,” Rita was now saying, “before Mama had all my stuff packed into boxes. But Sonny could've left a live alligator in here and she'd still be feeding it hamburger.” Mattie let the spoon fall into the sink, a metallic
clunk.

“I can take a hint, Mama,” Rita shouted out. “But you know yourself it's true. While you were packing my stuff, the tin cans were still bouncing behind my wedding car.”

Mattie took her glass of vinegar and water and went in to find her daughters. Gracie had now joined them, standing before a poster of Cindy Crawford.

“You'd think she'd be embarrassed,” Gracie said. “It's bubbleheads like this who make it so hard on all us women.”

Rita took one look at Mattie's glass and then threw her face into a twisted frown. “How can you drink that stuff?” she asked. “You're gonna turn into a walking douche bag.”

“Thanks,” said Mattie. This was nice talk from a born-again Christian.
B.A.
is how Rita referred to it. “It's true I ain't been to college like my sister Gracie,” Rita liked to tell folks, “but I got my B.A. when I got born again.” Rita's being born the first time had almost killed Mattie, a breach birth, and only a midwife to help out. But they had both lived, mother and child, sometimes even to regret it. Mattie was just glad she didn't have to be there with a towel on her forehead and old Mrs. Hart between her legs when Rita was born that second time. Once was enough, thank you very much.

“This sure brings back memories,” said Marlene, “you know, when we were all home here, one big family.” She picked up the Rico Petrocelli ball and rolled it a few times across the palm of her hand.

“Put that back,” said Mattie. “It's very valuable.”

“One big
dysfunctional
family,” Gracie added. “By the way, the jack of diamonds is nothing. Have you seen the queen of hearts? She looks just like a young, naked Doris Day.” Mattie took the playing cards from Gracie, opened Sonny's top dresser drawer, and dropped them inside.

“Dysfunctional family, pish posh,” said Marlene. “You been taking too damn many college courses, Gracie, you know that? Who the hell ain't dysfunctional these days? When the Kennedys straighten out, then maybe the rest of us should worry.”

“All
I
remember, personally,” said Rita, “was the sheer hell of that last spring before I finally married Henry and got out of this nuthouse for good.”

“The spring of 1970,” said Marlene, “when Sonny was at his craziest.” Mattie had moved to Sonny's bedroom window and lifted the curtain. How many times had she come in at night to tuck him in, only to find just the outline of him, the black outline of a boy against the window, his cowlick sticking up like a little periscope, his chin resting in his hands? “I'm looking for the Big Dipper,” is what he told her on those starry nights, all those years ago.

“I can't see a single star out tonight,” said Mattie, although she wasn't looking. She was staring instead at the ghostly reflection of her daughters in the glass and wishing talk about the stars would nudge them toward a new subject. She considered opening up the dresser drawer and giving them back the playing cards, just to shut them up. They hadn't even gotten to the queen of spades yet. Now,
that
one would give them considerable pause. At first, Mattie had thought that the face peering up at her over those immense, chocolate boobs was that of Pearl Bailey, in her younger years, before the wear of time cut her down. But it wasn't Pearl Bailey. It was just some poor misguided girl who probably needed to make a fast buck.

“He should've been taken to a shrink back in 1970,” Gracie was saying, “when it was obvious that a couple of bricks had bounced off the wagon.” Mattie peered out at the black heavens, past the phantom images of her daughters alive in the glass, and thought of Sonny in that house trailer down in Bangor, the one with the red pinstripe running through the middle of it.

“That was the spring we had what they call a
polterguest
living in this house,” Mattie said, finally coming to her son's defense. She had been right. There were no stars anywhere in the dark sky over Mattagash.

“It's polter
geist
, Mama,” said Gracie, “and you know damn well that was Sonny himself doing them things.” Maybe Marlene was right. Maybe Gracie
had
taken too many college courses.

“It wasn't neither,” said Mattie. “It was a
polterguest
.”

“It was Sonny Gifford,” said Marlene. “Pure and simple.”

“You're the only one who never saw him, Mama,” Rita added, “but the rest of us caught him in the act, throwing all them ashtrays up against the wall, slinging eggs on the floor.”

“He was only a child,” said Mattie. “He was only twelve years old.”

“
Damien
was only a child,” Rita reminded everyone. “I was lucky to get a date to come pick me up. Sonny was always sneaking out to let the air out of their tires. And I was even luckier to find a husband, considering the nuthouse those young men had to enter every time they took me out.”

“I don't remember you dating much,” said Marlene.

“Remember when Sonny put a box of toothpicks in my bed?” asked Gracie.

Mattie watched as the first drops of rain began to run against the window, thin varicose veins sliding down the pane. Did Sonny have clean underwear? she wondered, and then smiled. With two women hostages, Sonny would be waited on hand and foot. Women just couldn't help themselves when it came to Sonny Gifford. That was part of his deadly charm. Mattie imagined him seated just then before a full plate of good food, a boiled dinner, maybe, the New England way, with plenty of ham and cabbage and carrots. She hoped at least one of Sonny's hostages was a good cook.

“I had as many dates as
you
did,” Rita told Marlene.

“He should've gone to see a shrink back then,” Gracie said again. “I can tell you, just from the psychology classes I've been taking as part of my requirements, that 1970 was the beginning of the end for Sonny Gifford and nobody did a thing about it. Now look what's happened.” She pointed toward the living room, where Mattie's big television sat waiting for the next round of news about Sonny.