All American Boy (11 page)

“Well, I admit she's interesting,” Wally's teacher had said. “But she wasn't a star, Wally, not really.”

Yet Wally would not be dissuaded. The old woman had arched a suspicious eyebrow at him when he came knocking, but she'd let him in, and they ended up talking for hours. She showed Wally programs with her name heading the cast lists at theaters as far-flung as Des Moines and Syracuse and Pittsburgh and Kansas City. She showed him photographs: she and Miss Le Gallienne, she and Lionel Barrymore, she and Lord Olivier.

“And you were born here, in Brown's Mill, just like me,” he said, in awe.

“That I was.”

“But you left, and you became a star.”

She smiled, clearly relishing Wally's admiration. She told her stories and he listened raptly. He got an A on his report, and when he returned to show Josephine his grade, he confided to her his secret dream, something he'd never told anyone else.

He wanted to be an actor
.

“The theater is a great calling, but one not easily understood by those who do not hear it,” Josephine told him. “And neither is it an easy path, my young friend. A life in the theater is not an easy path, nor should it be.”

“I want it,” he told her. “I want it more than anything.”

Now that he's being taught by her, now that he's been taking instruction these last several weeks, he wants it even more.

“All right now,” she's saying. “Did you study your lines?”

Wally nods.

“Fucking out, man, fuckin' out!” The high-pitched voice of one of the boys in the street comes through the window.

Josephine shudders, moving over to pull the window down with a bang.

“Now,” she says, turning back to Wally, “move into character.” She assumes her position in the middle of the parlor, drawing herself up to her full height. Her chin juts forward. “You are Alice and I'm the Red Queen.”

Wally stands in front of her and imagines himself as Alice in Wonderland. There was no discussion about him playing a girl's role. Wally had understood it was irrelevant. This is the theater, and he is an
actor
. He can play
anything
.

“Alice is facing left,” Josephine instructs. “She has been running from the Pack of Cards, but now she slows down wearily and comes to a stop.”

Wally pantomimes the action. It is important to convey the weariness Alice feels. It's central to the scene. He huffs a little, hangs his head, but is careful not to overdo it. Josephine had scolded him yesterday for doing that.

“Presently, from the left,” Josephine says, the stage directions still memorized from decades before, “come the
thump, thump, thump
of footsteps.” She makes the sounds with her feet. “Enter the Red Queen.”

She draws herself up even taller, her red housecoat lifting to reveal wrinkled, flaking, bare feet beneath.

“Where do you come from and where are you going?” Josephine's voice is high and shrill. “Look up, speak nicely, and don't twiddle your fingers.”

Wally attends to all of these directions as best he can. “You see,” he says, his throat dry, “I've lost my way.”

“I don't see what you mean by your way, all the ways here belong to me—but why did you come out here at all? Curtsy while you're thinking what to say. It saves time.”

Wally does. “I'll try it when I go home the next time I'm a little late for dinner.”

“No, no, no!” Josephine calls. “You dolt!”

Wally's confused. That's not the next line. Then he realizes she's no longer the Red Queen. She's Josephine again and she's scolding him.

“That should be said as an
aside!
” She storms across the room, fuming. “Didn't you read the script at all? You're talking to the
audience
, not to me! It was Miss Le Gallienne's brilliant insertion of wry humor! Oh, Wally, if you failed to see the line as an aside, I'm afraid you'll never become a good actor.”

“Give me another chance.”

“Why should I?”

He's momentarily unsure of his answer.

“Because … because … somebody must have given you another chance once. You got out of here. You left Brown's Mill and became a great actress. You couldn't have done it all on the first try.”

She narrows her old weak eyes at him. “Your father wants you to be a military man.”

“Please give me another chance.”

From somewhere in her house a clock chimes once. The shades are drawn against the bright day and the temperature in the room is stifling. Wally realizes he's sweating. Yet even with the window closed he can still hear the boys playing softball.

“He's safe, man!
Safe!
”

“I did Chekhov in Moscow,” Josephine is saying dreamily. “It was the greatest night of my life.
Uncle Vanya
. I played Sonya.” She laughs. “It was a long, long way from here.”

Wally listens.

“Do you realize what an honor it was for me to do Chekhov for the Moscow Art Theater? I can still hear the applause from that night. The roses thrown at my feet. The reviews were glowing—”

“What did they say?”

“‘A bright star from the heavens,' they called me. They said I
was
Sonya. They didn't know, didn't care, that I was a tailor's daughter from Brown's Mill, a tall, gangly, homely boy-girl who never finished the seventh grade. They just knew that, standing there, on that stage so far away from here, I was Sonya. That I was a bright star from the heavens doing Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theater!”

She stands there in the middle of the parlor, consumed by the memory.

“These sad autumn roses,” she says suddenly, a voice different from her own. “Winter will be here soon and they will all be gone. Perhaps then, Uncle Vanya and I can get back to work.”

Her eyes search out something Wally can't see.

“And in the long evenings,” she says, “we can sit together and do our work, Uncle Vanya and I. Work will save us. We'll live through a long, long line of days, endless evenings … and God will take pity on us, and you and I, Uncle, darling Uncle, shall see life bright, beautiful, fine, we shall be happy and look back tenderly with a smile on these misfortunes we have now—and we shall rest.”

She kneels down with some difficulty, her knees creaking, lowering her head now to gaze at an invisible photograph she holds in her hands.

“We shall rest! We shall hear the angels, we shall see the whole sky all diamonds, we shall see how all earthly evil, all our sufferings, are drowned in the mercy that will fill the whole world. And our life will grow peaceful, tender, sweet as a caress. I believe, I do believe … Poor, dear Uncle Vanya, in your life you haven't known what joy was …”

Large tears drip down off her face. Wally can almost hear them as they hit the carpet.

“But wait, Uncle Vanya, wait … We shall rest … We shall rest … We shall rest …”

She is still. She doesn't move.

Wally applauds. The sound of his little boy hands clapping echoes in the dark old house.

Josephine says nothing. She remains fixed in position, kneeling on the floor.

“Bravo!” Wally calls. “Encore, encore!”

Then slowly, softly, gently, she falls over onto her side.

“Josephine?”

“You're out, man, you're fucking out,” comes the high-pitched voice of one of the boys in the street.

Ever since he played St. Joseph in his fifth grade Christmas play, Wally has wanted to be an actor. His lines had been enunciated loudly and clearly, and he'd taken three curtain calls—and afterward, in the cafeteria for punch and cookies, he'd overheard the parents saying to each other, “That Wally Day is going to go far.”

Go far
. It's a phrase he often repeats to himself, holds close to his heart.

He likes to believe those parents meant he had great acting ability, that his St. Joseph was the best they'd ever seen, that someday they were certain he'd be one of the greats, the star of
The Wally Day Show
on CBS on Saturday night. Now he studies his mother's soap operas whenever his father is away, watching how the actors move, how they deliver their lines, how they dress. They're all so handsome. They're what Wally wants to be: sturdy and handsome, a real All American Actor.

“Josephine?”

It takes him several minutes to realize that she's dead.

He tries to take her pulse but he doesn't know how to do it. He grips her wrist but feels nothing. He pushes his head in toward her chest to listen for her heart. Her body rolls over onto her back.

He sits back on his knees in horror.

She's dead
.

Josephine is dead
.

“You're going to go far,” said Sister Angela, the principal of St. John the Baptist elementary school, after St. Joseph had made his last curtain call. “Yes, indeed, Walter Day. You are going to go
very
far.”

Josephine is dead
.

“And Dad will find out I wasn't playing softball,” Wally whispers into the dark.

He stands, looking down at Josephine's body. He feels cold and dizzy. He wants to scream but knows he'd better not.

She's not dead
, he tells himself.
She'll open her eyes. She'll make a sound. She'll be all right
.

“Josephine?”

Her eyes are still halfway open.

“Josephine, please be alive.”

He leans down over her, looking closely into her face.

No, she's dead. She's really dead
.

I've got to go
.

Go far
.

“Go to second! Go to second!”

In the bushes, Wally steels himself. The boys in the street had seen him arrive. They'd seen him go into Josephine's house. They could tell the police that someone had been there just before she died. But he didn't know these boys. They weren't in his class. He recognized none of them. Had any of them recognized him?

He can think of nothing but getting his bike and sneaking out through Josephine's backyard. He feels no grief, no sadness, no sympathy—just fear. He just wants to get away from the house, away from the body. He wants to get back home before his father can find out he lied about playing softball with Freddie.

That's when he spots his cousin Kyle with the boys.

“No,” Wally whispers to himself.

Kyle had almost ruined his portrayal of St. Joseph. He had sat there in the audience and hooted, “Hey, look, St. Joseph's wearing Keds!” Wally's sneakers had been showing from under his robes. The audience had laughed, and oh, how Wally hates being laughed at it. He almost forgot his next line. But he recovered, as Josephine would say. He recovered and went on.

My bike
, he thinks.
Please, just let me get my bike
.

It's lying in the grass beside the walkway to Josephine's front porch. If he can make a run for it, grab its handlebars, and dive back into the bushes, there's a chance he won't be seen. There's a possibility even Kyle's eagle eye will miss him. It's now or never. He can't wait any longer. Someone might come by and find Josephine dead inside.

She's dead! Josephine is dead!

Wally runs.

“He's safe! He's safe!”

He takes hold of his bike and trips, falling face down in the grass.

“No way, Baronowski, he's safe! He's fuckin' safe!”

The blood is pounding in Wally's ears. He gets up and runs with his bike into Josephine's backyard. He's skinned his knee and it stings but he hops onto the bike anyway and pedals the hell out of there, all the way across town, barely stopping for traffic, until he's home.

“Benjamin Franklin was not only a statesman but also a scientist, coming up with a new theory on the nature of electricity,” John Davidson says, perky and dimpled on the television set.

Wally's always thought that John Davidson was very handsome, but of course he's never told anyone that. Boys weren't supposed to know who was handsome and who was not. But tonight John Davidson's dimples aren't really getting much thought anyway. “Thanks for watching,” the baby-faced actor is saying. “This has been another Bicentennial minute.”

Drums roll and flags unfurl. Wally's mother sits knitting on the couch, her eyeglasses having slipped down toward the brim of her nose.

“I'm going to bed,” Wally tells her.

“You don't want to watch
Welcome Back, Rotter
?”

“No, I'm tired.”

His father is stretched out in his La-Z-Boy. “Pooped from the game, huh? Who ended up winning?”

“We did.”

“Attaboy.”

He starts down the hall.

Josephine is dead
.

And I left her there
.

It's the only thing he's been able to think about all day.

Why didn't I call an ambulance? I can't believe I didn't call an ambulance. What if she needed help? What if she would've lived if I hadn't panicked and run off?

I killed her. I killed Josephine
.

She's still there the next day, on the floor in the parlor, in the exact same position he left her. Wally's not sure what he expected to see, but somehow it surprises him that she's still there, in the same position.

Of course she is
, he tells himself.
She's dead, and dead people don't move
.

There's no smell. He expected there would be a smell, especially with it being so hot outside. Ninety-three today. But there's no odor. Her house still smells the way it always has, like Lemon Pledge and mothballs.

No one had seen him come into the house this time. He'd left his bike in the Dairy Queen parking lot on Washington Street and snuck through backyards to get here. He came in through Josephine's back door. It was unlocked. The whole house is unlocked. Anybody could rob her blind.