Sons (2 page)

“Well,” Grandpa seemed to agree, “there
is
something very theatrical about an assassination, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not to mention a
nother
murder following it,” I offered.

“I’m not talking about
that
aspect of it,” my father said.

“Are there any more yams?” Uncle Stanley asked.

“I’m talking about the funeral — the horses, the drums, all that overproduced crap.”

Aunt Linda shot my father a warning look: the children.

My father turned with a faint glance of annoyance, and then passed the candied yams to Uncle Stanley. Stanley was a heavy-set man with a bland open face, thinning blond hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, a Phi Beta Kappa key hanging on a gold chain across the front of his vest. He was wearing a brown suit (he
always
wore brown), a white shirt, and a brown tic upon which there were now several specks of gravy he hadn’t yet noticed. He accepted the proffered yams in the silver dish that had once been my grandmother’s, said, “Thank you, Will,” and promptly served himself the last two potatoes in the dish.

“Someone else may want some,” Aunt Linda said.

“I hate yams,” Mary said.

“I
hate yams, too,” Marcy said.

“I’ll grant you,” my grandfather said, “that the Kennedy women have a certain flair about them, and that perhaps...”

“Even
that
annoys me.”

“What does?”

"
That
my father said. “The
Kennedy
Women!”’ He shook his head. “That’s for O’Hara novels, not real life.”

“The assassination was real life,” I said.

“I beg your pardon,” my grandfather said, turning to me with a small pleased smile, “but that’s where I disagree. That’s exactly my point, Walter, it’s exactly what I was trying to say.”

“Lolly, we need some more butter, please,” Uncle Stanley shouted to the kitchen.

“Coming!”

“I was trying to say that there is an air of total unreality to the events of this past week. The assassination itself, the television murder, the funeral,
all
of it. Unreal. Incredible.”

“The only unreality was the funeral,” my father insisted. “A play in three acts, produced and directed by Jacqueline Kennedy. The rest is only America.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“I mean that this concept of America as a
sophisticated
nation is all a lot of crap. We’re barely out of...”

“Oh, really, Will,
I
think...”

“... our infancy.”

“... America’s a pretty sophisticated country,” Uncle Stanley concluded, and stuffed a whole candied yam into his mouth. Aunt Linda shot my father another warning glance. She really looked a lot like him, I suppose, especially now when her blue eyes were flashing the same anger as his. They’d both inherited Grandpa’s high cheekbones and prominent nose, as well as the somewhat thin-lipped Bertram Tyler mouth — which I had also inherited — and which I felt looked more attractive on a man than on Aunt Linda, who always wore the look of a maiden lady about to peer under the bed, straight blond hair pulled into an old-fashioned bun at the back of her head, good breasts hidden in a high-necked blouse. “This is 1963, Linda,” my father said emphatically, half in response to Uncle Stanley, and half in reprimand to his sister for her prissy-assed ways.

“Yes, and we’re almost...”

“We’re less than two hundred...”

“... on the moon,” Uncle Stanley said.

“Are we
ever
getting that cranberry sauce?” Mary asked.

“Hush, Mary!”

My mother came from the kitchen. The new maid trailed behind her with a bewildered look, carrying hot bread and two butter dishes, as well as the celery and olives she’d forgotten to put on the table at the start of the meal. My mother put down the cranberry sauce, and then tucked a stray wisp of brown hair behind her ear, and smiled at me suddenly and radiantly when she realized I was watching her.

“Why, it’s one of the Tyler Women!” I said, and opened my eyes wide in fake astonishment.

“Yes, of course,” my mother said simply, smiling, and suddenly her eyes met with my father’s, her eyes clashed with the eyes of Will Tyler across those yards of white linen, and held, and I was reminded of the cold hard intelligent waiting eyes of a football team in a huddle, waiting for the play to be called, and my father mimicked in precise derision, “Yes, of course,” and it was as if the play had been called, and their eyes broke contact, I almost expected to hear the clap of hands as the huddle opened. I felt what I had felt last Friday, that something was terribly wrong. I almost expected to learn momentarily that yet another person had been killed. I guess I experienced in that instant an uncertainty I had never before known in my life, the rising fear that everything I’d learned to count on before then, a sane and ordered existence, an America comforting and secure, was rapidly crumbling all around me. And then I realized that the sharp crack of eyes across that Connecticut dining room table had been every bit as fatal as the rifle shots that shattered the Dallas stillness, and I knew further that my mother had been the victim.

“The only thing we’ve got to be thankful for this year,” my father said, “is that we’re still alive.”

It was almost midnight, it was almost 1943.

Michael had decorated the room with war posters, and I squinted at the one on the farthest wall, trying to read it like an eye chart, struggling under the slight handicap of having consumed twelve beers since the start of the party. The poster showed a workingman behind a riveting gun, and a soldier behind a machine gun, and the big lettering on the bottom of the poster read BOTH BARRELS, but I couldn’t make out the smaller type to the left of the workingman’s head. I rose unsteadily, navigated my way across the room and past the wilting Christmas tree, and peered at the full message: GIVE ’EM BOTH BARRELS. Very good, I thought, and remembered the barrel of beer in the kitchen, and thought it was time to have another little brew.

I was very depressed.

First of all, whereas Michael Mallory was a close friend of mine, I did not wish to be in his house this New Year’s Eve. I had been in his house last New Year’s Eve, and that had been depressing as hell because the Japanese had practically just finished bombing Pearl Harbor, and nobody was exactly in the mood for revelry and gay abandon. But
this
year’s party was turning out to be just as depressing as last year’s, so naturally I blamed my father. If he had given me permission to join the Air Force, I wouldn’t have been here in Chicago at all, but instead would be up there someplace in the wild blue yonder, being all of seventeen years old and five feet eleven inches bone-dry, which was old enough and tall too for a fighter pilot, so why wouldn’t he sign?

It was all quite depressing.

It was also quite depressing, believe me, that I had been flirting with a redheaded girl all night long, and she was now necking on the sofa with Matty Walsh. Walsh kept trying to sneak his sneaky little hand up under her skirt, but the girl had the good sense to pull it away each time, which certainly didn’t excuse my father. I remembered abruptly that tomorrow was his birthday, that at exactly 12:01 on the first day of January in the year 1900, my dear daddy, Bertram Tyler, had been brought into the world and the century, doubtless screaming his head off. I had already planned to call him after midnight. I would call at exactly 12:01 and listen to the phone ringing in the old house on East Scott Street, and when my father came onto the line, I would say, “This is Western Union, we have a message for Mr. Bertram Tyler, is he there please?” knowing full well he was of course there. And then I would sing “Happy Birthday to You,” and as a finale I would say, “Pop, this is Will. Can I please join the Air Force?”

I wondered why Walsh didn’t take the redhead into one of the bedrooms. It occurred to me in my foamy stupor that perhaps the redheaded girl did not
wish
Walsh to take her into one of the bedrooms, and thus emboldened I staggered across the room doing my imitation of John Wayne, found the record player, and with no little difficulty picked out ten or twelve very good records for dancing close to, all fox trots. I hesitated a moment before approaching Walsh and the girl, partially because they were at the moment kissing, and partially because I was trying to think of a good joke I could tell when I got over to the couch, but all I could think of was the one about the guy at the induction center with a hard-on, and I didn’t think I should risk
that
one with the girl, not having said two words to her all night long. So I shrugged and went into the kitchen instead. Russo and another guy were standing near the keg of beer, talking to two girls from Evanston.

“Hello, hello,” I said.

“What’s going on out there?” Russo asked.

“Walsh is necking,” I said, and heard the first of my records fall into place on the turntable, Jimmy Dorsey’s “Star Eyes.”

“Isn’t everybody?” the other guy said.

“We’re not,” the girl closest to the keg said, nor was it any wonder since she was possibly ugly as sin or worse, and since she immediately giggled after her funny remark and nudged her friend, who giggled too, a nice ugly pair of gigglers. They were both blondes, both wearing their hair in shoulder-length pageboys, both wearing navy blue taffetas with gold buttons down the front, flaring from the waist over thick legs, their beauty was so fantastic they had to duplicate it.

“Well,” I said, “I think I’ll have another brew.”

I opened the tap and poured myself a foaming glass of beer, and then chug-a-lugged it, aware of the no-doubt-admiring glances of the two ugly gigglers, and then looking toward the living room and wondering what was keeping the redhead. I figured maybe I would have to hit Walsh, but that was okay. He had no right trying to sneak his hand up under, sneaky little Jap. I wondered why my father wouldn’t let me join the Air Force. I opened the tap again. One of the gigglers said, “May I have one, too?”

“Sure,” I said, and handed her the glass I’d already filled.

“Why, thank you,” she said, and giggled again.

“Are you sure you’re old enough to drink?” Russo asked.

“I’m sixteen,” she answered, which meant she was fifteen, and which meant she was just as old as my kid sister Linda who was definitely
not
old enough to drink.

“She’s sixteen,” Russo said.

“Mmm,” I said.

“Yes, I’m sixteen,” the girl said again.

“That’s certainly old enough to drink,” Russo said.

“That’s certainly old enough for a lot of things,” the other guy said.

I didn’t say anything.

There was a momentary silence as “Star Eyes” cleared the record player, a click, and then the next record dropped, the tone arm moved into place, and Frank Sinatra began singing “Sunday, Monday or Always” with a choral background. I began thinking about musician’s union strikes and things like that, and started getting very depressed again, and just then the redhead walked into the kitchen. Her lipstick had all been kissed off, and she was very flushed from all that Walsh activity. Her hair was rolled up from either side of her head into twin pompadours, falling straight and free behind in a cascade around her shoulders, burnished copper against a black crepe dress, three rhinestone buttons over her bosom. She came directly to the beer keg and said, “Can I have a beer?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Will’s the bartender tonight,” Russo said, and laughed, I didn’t know at what.

“Looks that way,” I said, and smiled, not at Russo but at the redhead.

“Is that your name?” she asked. “Will?”

“That’s right.” I handed her the brimming glass. “What’s yours?”

“Marge.”

“That’s a good name for a redhead.”

“Is it?”

“Sure. All beautiful redheads should be named Marge.”

“Oh boy,” she said, “what a line,” and rolled her green eyes, and sipped at the beer.

I poured myself a fresh glass from the open tap. Russo and the other guy had moved toward the sink, the two gigglers following them. “What’s your connection with Walsh?” I asked.

“Who’s Walsh?” she said.

“The guy you were necking with on the couch.”

“No connection,” she said, and shrugged, and sipped some more beer.

“Did he bring you?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“I came alone. Michael invited me, so I came.”

“How old are you?”

“How old do I look?” she asked.

“Fifteen.”

“Oh, come on, I’ll be eighteen in April.”

“Marge what? Did you say Marge?”

“Yes.”

“Marge what?”

“Marge Penner.”

“Wanna buy a duck?”

“No relation.”

“I’ll bet you hear that a lot, though.”

“No, this is only the ten thousandth time,” she said.

“I get the same thing,” I said. “My last name’s Tyler. Everybody always wants to know if I‘m related to the President.”

“To Roosevelt? I don’t get it.”

“No, to Tyler. John Tyler. He was the tenth president. Of the United States.”

“Oh,” she said.
“Are
you?”

“No, no. You want to dance?”

“Sure.”

“What about Walsh?”

“What about him?”

“Won’t he mind?”

“Who cares what he minds?”

“Not me, that’s for sure,” I said, and we went into the other room. Walsh was still on the couch. I gave him my John Wayne look, and then took the girl into my arms.

“Where do you live?” I whispered in her ear.

“On Halsted.”

“Halsted and where?”

“Halsted and Sixty-first.”

“Near the university?”

“Yes.”

“That’s very nice there.”

“Yes, it’s beautiful. You dance awfully close, do you know that?”