Beaming Sonny Home (9 page)

“This here is one of them little dogs of the French persuasion,” Sonny said. He held the thin-nosed poodle up for all to see. The poodle glared out at the cameras and the people scattering about. Sonny raised its right paw and waved at the world. Mattie watched as the poodle turned toward Sonny and began licking, struggling to get closer to his face. She'd said it a million times, and she'd say it again: When it came to old people, little kids, and animals, no one was better than Sonny Gifford. It was that
in-between group
that always gave Sonny trouble.

“I got news for you, sister mine,” said Gracie. “We're
already
the laughingstock.”

“And could you send in one of them rawhide chew bones?” Sonny was asking. “The small size?”

Why ain't you doing a puzzle tonight, Mama?” Marlene asked. Rita and Gracie had driven home in their separate automobiles to take inventory of what was happening in their own houses. Rita had suspected for some time now that Willard was smoking pot, ever since he died his hair orange. “It just don't strike me as the act of a straight-thinking child,” Rita had noted. Of course, ever since Willard had been a baby, he had never struck Mattie as a “straight-thinking child.” But that was Rita's business. Mattie had her own motherly woes. So did Gracie, who was convinced that Roberta was sneaking her fiancé up to her bedroom for a little premarital romp.

“Not in my house,” Gracie had said of the romp.

“Not in my
lifetime,”
Rita had said of Willard's suspected marijuana use.

Then, like two policemen, they had climbed into their vehicles and barreled toward their possible emergencies. Mattie wished they'd just stay in those houses, where they belonged. She wasn't an invalid, for crying out loud. She wasn't even
old
when you thought about it. She was sixty-six. The world was full of people that age and older who were running countries, heading up major corporations, inventing things. There was a grandmother in her late fifties who had even given birth. Mattie wasn't old by many standards, but she
felt
old. She sometimes woke up in the core of the night to troubling tickles, little aches roaming up and down her legs, her varicose veins pumping away. And the skin of her neck! When did it happen that she leaned in close to the mirror one morning a couple of years ago and was absolutely staggered to find a whole parcel of fat dangling from beneath her chin, like the crop of a chicken. She hated to touch it when she washed her neck, all those mornings after Lester had died. It was as if he was laughing at her somewhere, watching that bag quiver beneath her chin and knowing full well he was the one who gave it to her. Knowing full well that bag was loaded with every lie he'd ever told her, every dream she'd ever left behind, back in her youth, back in those high-heeled shoes she'd worn to her wedding and then never again. Married life with Lester had hurt the minute she walked toward it that Augusty day in church, hurt bodily. And she had had a chance. The minister had said so. If anyone has any cause that these two people not be joined together, say so now. But only the corns on her feet cried out, and all the rest, all those traitors, had stood with dead tongues in their mouths and said nothing.

Marlene had turned the television set off, finally, and now Mattie sat in her rocker, rereading that day's paper.

“Has Henry called you?” Marlene asked. She had set up the ironing board in the kitchen, in order to iron a blouse, and now the room was filled with the fresh smell of pressed cotton. The starchy aroma reminded Mattie of all those shirts, the blue cotton shirts Lester had loved dearly in his lifetime, blue that showcased his flirty brown eyes. She wondered how many of them she had smoothed and steamed to perfection. She wondered how many of them Martha Monihan had unbuttoned.

“Why would Henry call
me?”
Mattie asked. “He's married to Rita.” She was studying the photograph of the house trailer in the
Bangor Daily News
: Then she reread the paragraph describing Sonny's personality, his general outlook and philosophy on life, given by the neighbor. “He's a one-man party in full swing,” the neighbor said. Mattie supposed that until they tracked down Sonny's
estranged
wife, this Sheila Bumphrey woman, no one in Bangor would be able to offer reporters much more information on Sonny than that he was a “one-man party” originally from Mattagash, Maine. And maybe even Sheila didn't know much more than that, depending on what Sonny had told her. Mattie could say one thing for most Mattagashers: They might be spiteful and mean among themselves, but they rarely turned in one of their own, especially if it was to some government group. Mattagashers were suspicious of the government and any organization that reeked of union. Newspaper and television people were no exception. Their pushiness put them on the outs immediately. Sonny's identity was safe for the moment.

“I ask because Henry called here today while you were out walking,” said Marlene. “He wants to talk to you about something.”

Mattie folded the paper so as not to crease the picture and laid it on the floor beside her rocker. She would wait until the girls weren't looking and she'd take her scissors and snip out the article on Sonny.

“Henry needs to find the blueprints to his life,” said Mattie. “That's all that's wrong with him.”

“Henry Plunkett's problem,” said Marlene, “is that he can never decide which side of the road he wants to drive on, his side or Rita's side. He's been straddling the white line since they got married.” She flipped over the blouse she was ironing so that she could press the back of the collar. Steam hissed out of the holes in the iron. “The government ought to give him a pension for his years of service to Rita.”

“Don't be putting your sister down when she's not here to defend herself,” said Mattie. “And thank God that she ain't. All I need tonight, after reading about Sonny in the paper, is another fight between you two.”

“Rita says Henry worries too much about money,” said Marlene.

“And Henry says Rita worries too much about Willard,” said Mattie. “So there you have it.”

“I can't say I blame her for worrying about Willard,” Marlene said. “Everybody in town knows that Willard's book of Green Stamps is only half-full.”

“Raising a child ain't easy, Marlene,” said Mattie. “You should know that, what with the trouble you've had with Steven.” Marlene started to protest, but Mattie held up a hand. “I know, I know,” said Mattie. “You say that teacher had no business leaving the keys in her car in the first place. I heard it a million times. But what it all boils down to is the same thing. It wasn't easy being a mother years ago, and now it's worse. Now we got things like drugs and green hair dye out there on the market.”

“Willard dyed his hair
orange,”
said Marlene. “It's
green
because Rita's trying to get it back to its natural color.”

“Whatever,” said Mattie. “It ain't easy. I got my own child troubles, so I'm one who can talk.”

“Are you still wanting to go down to Bangor?” Marlene asked. “Not that I've changed my mind about taking you. I'm just curious.” Mattie already knew that. So were her two sisters curious. They were curious as cats, the three of them.

“Sure, I still want to go,” Mattie lied. “Why wouldn't I want to go? That's my son in that trailer. If only I'd learned to drive a car back when I was a girl, I'd go ahead and drive on down there. But a lot of women in my generation never learned to drive. You didn't need a driver's license to get around a kitchen.” She began to rock, a slow, mellow rocking, and the kind of motion that puts babies to sleep.

“Well, I'm sorry,” said Marlene. She had fitted the blouse about the back of a chair so that it wouldn't wrinkle, and now she was ironing a cotton skirt. “And I suppose I'll end up going to my grave filled with guilt if this Sonny thing has a bad ending, but, Mama, I can't let them television people make fools out of all of us. Imagine what would happen if they found out Sonny's mother was in the crowd. And they would, you know. That's what you'd be going down there for, to talk Sonny out of that trailer. No, I'm sorry. Someone has to look out for your best interests and Sonny ain't the one to do it.” She waved a hand in the air, as if to say she was finished with the whole thing. Mattie felt anger rising in her blood, in her face, up the backs of her arms, her neck. She had to pucker her mouth to keep it shut, to keep it from saying,
“Oh yeah, Miss Know-It-All? Well, listen to this news bulletin. Listen to this
'
cause
it
ain't no teaser. Sonny himself called and told me not to come down or I'd be hiring someone right now to take me. Your very own brother made that decision because he felt it'd be best for me to stay put. Sonny Gifford's calling the shots this time out of the chute, so you girls, you Pac Monsters, can just keep your noses out of it. And when it's over, Sonny and me are gonna celebrate. My teeth are soaking as I speak.”
But she said nothing. She rose, left the rocker swaying behind her, and went on out to the porch.

“I'm sorry,” Marlene was saying above the hiss of the iron, “but that's just how I feel about it.” Mattie let the screen door slam.

Out on the porch a cool breeze was swaying the hanging plants. With darkness moving in swiftly, the St. Francis of Assisi birdbath was now just a silhouette on the front lawn, the way Sonny was lately, from behind his trailer window, the outline of better days. Mattie could see a rosy glow above the top of Pauline Plunkett's garage, evidence that Pauline was burning trash in the big rusted drum that sat out there by the swing set. Or she was roasting hot dogs with the kids now that summer had surely come. How Pauline found time to do things with her children was a wonderment to Mattie, but the family always seemed to be involved in some activity during the moments when Pauline wasn't in the cafeteria at school, or peddling Avon up and down the Mattagash road.

Mattie was just about to inspect the hanging plants for dead leaves when she saw movement at the upper end of her porch, a hand rise in the shadowy night, and then the orange glow of a cigarette tip. Mattie put her own hand up to her mouth.

“Who is it?” she asked. Maybe Elmer Fennelson had taken an evening walk and felt like chatting a bit. After all, Mattie hadn't seen him in almost three days, and that wasn't like Elmer.

“It's Henry,” a dull voice said, and then the cigarette tip glowed orange again. Mattie could see now that it was, indeed, her son-in-law Henry Plunkett, Pauline's brother, sitting there on her evening porch, his back leaning against her house.

“And here I thought those three girls would be the reason my poor old heart finally blew up,” said Mattie, “and instead I find you out here, Henry, like some kind of outhouse hound. Why ain't you home? That's where Rita is, believe it or not.” Henry flicked his cigarette out into the night. It rolled like an orange comet, spinning, and then disappeared beyond the birdbath.

“I'll expect you to find that butt as you're leaving,” Mattie said, “and take it with you. That ain't no parking lot, Henry. It's my front lawn.” Henry unrolled the two legs he had pulled up to his body, stretched them out good. Mattie could see that he was wearing his mill boots, the big heavy brown ones that protected his toes with a steel tip.

“I gotta talk to you about something,” said Henry. He sounded almost like the boy Mattie remembered from his childhood, the first Mattagash youngster to attempt a
Grit
newspaper route in Mattagash and St. Leonard. Henry Plunkett had wanted the baseball mitt that
Grit
promised for so many newspapers sold. But his sales had slipped, and so did his dream of the baseball mitt. But Henry had always been the kind of kid to give something a try. And most times he had succeeded. But the
man
hadn't been quite so successful, what with marrying Rita and now losing his job at the mill.

“What's the matter?” Mattie asked. She had come to the edge of the porch where Henry sat and, with a noticeable grunt, had lowered herself down to a sitting position.

“You don't move as easy as you used to,” said Henry. “Now would be the perfect time for me to raid your garden.” Mattie smiled. It was true that Henry and two other boys had once sneaked into her garden, when they were nine or ten years old, and attempted to make off with an armload of cucumbers and a pocketful of pea pods. Spying them, Mattie had leaped from the back porch and broken into an easy stride right at their heels.

“I'd say I caught up to you back then in about thirty seconds,” Mattie said, thinking. “What would you say?”

“Oh,” said Henry. “I remember you being a little faster than that.” She had waltzed all three of them back to the porch, where they emptied their hands and pockets. And for the rest of the day, rather than having Mattie tell their parents about the theft, they had weeded and watered the immense garden.

“Well, you can steal all you want out of my garden this year,” said Mattie. “Just help yourself.”

“I gotta find me some work to do,” Henry said quickly, ending this talk about childhood thievery and gardens. Mattie fell into pace with him, knowing he had a hard time sticking words to his emotions, as most Mattagash men did. Although Sonny wasn't one of them. Sonny was a born talker, even if most of what came out of his mouth was sweet talk.

“I know you, Henry Plunkett,” said Mattie. “And I know Pauline and the rest of your family. You're a family of workers. I know this ain't been easy on you.” Henry took a toothpick out of his pocket and stuck it in one corner of his mouth. The toothpick jerked as he slowly chewed on it. Henry and his toothpicks. Mattie even bought him four boxes for a dollar one Christmas. She wrapped them all up in shiny red paper and stuck a big gold bow on the top. It was supposed to be a joke, but Henry was moved by the gift. “This is great,” he had said, almost tearfully. “We're always out at the house and Rita never remembers to buy any.” He had even carried a box around in his pocket, as though it were a pack of cigarettes.

“I picked this up in Watertown today,” Henry said, and took something out of his shirt pocket. It was a brochure, which he handed to Mattie. She could tell by looking at it that Henry had already folded and unfolded it many times. “You, Too, Can Sell Life Insurance,” the heading promised in dark letters. An 800 number would put any interested parties in touch with an agent representing Mutual Liberty Insurance. On-the-job training would take eight weeks.