All American Boy (14 page)

“Goddamn it, Mother,” Wally growls. “Make up your mind.”

She's studying the ground carefully, as if she's looking for something. The grass is sparse and gray here, old earth already hardening for winter.

“I'm sure it was here,” she's mumbling to herself.

“It was
right here
, Mother,” Wally tells her, the impatience chipping away at his voice. “Your rock garden. It was right here until you stopped tending to it and let the grass grow over it. Crabgrass crowded out whatever was left. Daffodils and tulips kept pushing up anyway but you had me cut them down with the lawnmower.” He glares at her. “
Remember
?”

He throws his bags of soil at her feet. He's pissed at her for making him do this ridiculous errand. Pissed at her for being so crazy. Pissed at her for giving up on her rock garden all those years ago. But most of all he's pissed at her for making him cut down those plucky flowers that kept on rising through the grass, determined to bloom even if she had stopped tending to them, stopped caring about them, indifferent to their future.

I'm not like him, Mommy. I'm like you
.

Watching from a distance away are a dark-haired, wide-eyed girl who clutches her little retarded brother in front of her. Kyle's girlfriend. Barely out of high school by the look of her. Wally didn't ask why she was still hanging around. He didn't want to get dragged into any more of his mother's life than he already had.

Dee's opening up the bags of dirt with his hands. “Where do you want it, Mrs. Day?” he asks.

“Oh, spread it out, all over this area,” she says, near tears, wringing her hands. “Just cover this
entire
area heavy with soil.”

Wally stares over at her. “Mother, this isn't for any rock garden, is it?”

“Oh, Walter, I almost forgot. There's one more favor I need.”

“What now?”

“Your Uncle Axel. He's dying. Would you take me by the hospital so I can say good-bye?”

Wally's momentarily speechless. “Mother,” he finally says, “you really
have
lost all sense, haven't you? I have no desire to go see that goddamn son of a—”

“
Here?
” Dee is calling, dragging in the last bag of dirt.

“Oh, yes, dear, right there.” Wally's mother smiles. “What a nice young man, he is, Walter. Is he a friend of yours from the city?”

Wally can't even frame his words. He strides away from his mother and over to Dee. “Just dump the dirt,” he says. “Spread it out and then let's get the hell out of here. I don't know what she's going to start asking me next.”

He hadn't come home to see his mother.

She's irrelevant to his life now. Completely irrelevant. There's nothing left to work out with her. He rarely even thought of her anymore. She had forfeited any place in his life a long time ago—that day when he was eleven years old, in fact, when he'd asked her for help and she had refused him—and Wally was long past grieving over the fact.

Like you wanted to be a singer. Please help me, Mom! Please!

No, he hadn't returned to Brown's Mill because of his mother. Why would he do that?

He'd come back to see Zandy, to make it right.

“So were you in love with him?” Dee asks him, when they're done with the dirt. “Alexander Reefy?”

They're eating cheeseburgers and french fries at the Big Boy restaurant on Main Street. The fries are piping hot, straight from the fryer, and Dee burns the roof of his mouth eating too fast.

“
In
love?” Wally considers the idea. “I don't know. But I loved him. I know that much. In fact, that's the only thing that's entirely clear to me.” He looks over at the boy wolfing down the fries. “You eat as if you haven't had a meal in a week.”

“I've seen that girl before,” Dee tells him. Wally has to shake his head at the way the kid's mind jumps around …

“What girl?” Wally asks.

“That Puerto Rican girl at your mother's. Luz something.”

“Yeah?”

Dee nods, biting into his burger. A big drop of grease seeps out onto his plate. “Yeah, she was a senior when I was a freshman. She got expelled for selling crack.”

“Well, now I understand what she and Kyle had in common.”

“She was one of those bad girls. You know, tough. Hard.”

Wally shrugs. “She looked sweet to me. But you never know.”

“I saw her yesterday at the drugstore having this huge fight with some guy. She was swearing and spitting and everything.”

“What did this guy look like?”

“Just a guy.”

“Like how old?”

“I don't know.
Old
.” Dee looks up at Wally and grins. “Maybe your age.”

“Brat,” Wally says. “Was he white? Puerto Rican?”

“White.”

“Did it seem like he was her boyfriend?”

“I dunno. She was just mad. Really mad.” He looks over at Wally. “Why do you want to know?”

“Actually, I don't,” Wally says.

Dee finishes his burger. “When I was a kid,” he says, taking a sip of Coke through his straw, “my mom used to bring me here to the Big Boy every Thursday.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Dee nods. “It would be after the prayer meetings at the church. We'd get the hot fudge brownie sundae. It was the fucking best sundae you'd ever want to get, man. Really moist cake with like
scalding
hot fudge and truly excellent mint-chocolate-chip ice cream. Fuckin' orgasmic.” He sneers. “But then my stepfather found out and put an end to our little Thursday night visits.”

“Why was that?”

“It wasn't Christian. It was indulgent.”

“So the fundies don't like hot fudge sundaes either? What
do
they like?”

“Jesus. They like Jesus.”

Wally laughs. He watches the boy as he pours ketchup on the last of the fries. Dee's spiked up his orange hair, exposing his brown roots in little clusters. At least he washed off the mascara, for which Wally is grateful. The hair, the three pendants around the neck, and the six chains hooked to his belt loop are already drawing enough attention.

“Do you miss them at all?” Wally asks. “Your family?”

Dee shrugs. “My mom sometimes. But she's too weird now. Has been ever since she married Leo. I miss my brother Jed. He's only nine. No, wait, he's ten now.” He bites into his cheeseburger. “Poor kid. I can only imagine what they're doing to him.”

“When did you tell them you were gay?”

Dee makes a face. “I don't use terms like gay. Gay is so your generation. I'm queer. Or, actually,
nonheterosexual
.”

Wally smiles, restraining himself from sarcasm. “Okay, then when did you tell them you were nonheterosexual?”

“Like I
had
to tell them? Just look at me.”

“Point taken,” Wally says.

“When I bleached my hair the first time, my stepfather just knew. It was like, okay, so the kid's a faggot. Next stop: Faith Healers Inc.”

“So who was this guy you had sex with at eleven?”

“Some teenager in my neighborhood. A basketball player at school. He was very hot. I know you think I had no idea what I was doing, but I
wanted
him. You can believe it or not, but it's true. I went after him. I got him to wrestle me in his backyard and then we started fooling around.”

Wally doesn't like the fact that story turns him on.
The kid was eleven, for God's sake
, he thinks.
At least I'd hit puberty when I started with Zandy
.

But it was the same, wasn't it? Wally had gone after Zandy, like Dee had gone after the basketball player. It wasn't the other way around. Wally had rung Zandy's doorbell and—

“It was no big deal,” Dee's saying.

Wally looks at him. “Of
course
it was a big deal. Whether you initiated it or not, the kid should've—”

Dee's grinning. “Should've
what
? Said no?”

“How old was he?”

“I think seventeen.”

“Yeah, he should've said no. He should've known better.”

Wally hates that he wants to ask what the basketball player looked like, hates that he wants to know what they did. Sucking? Fucking? What did Dee mean by “fooling around”?

“I figured everything out early,” Dee says. He's got ketchup on his chin but doesn't seem aware of it.

“Everything?” Wally asks.

“Well,
nearly
everything. I watched
The Real World
. I knew I was the queer kid. So what?”

“Wipe your chin,” Wally says finally.

The boy obeys. They sit there quietly for a while, Wally trying to erase the image of Dee and the basketball player wrestling around in the grass from his mind.

“So what's your favorite movie?” Dee asks.

“
The Wizard of Oz
.”

The boy smirks. “Like I said. You're casebook gay.”

“Well, then, I'll go you one even further.
Saturday Night Fever
.”

Dee laughs. “I never even saw that. Seems so lame.”

“Lots of gay code. It sent me over the edge when I was your age.”

“I guess that's how I felt about
Beautiful Thing
. You seen that?”

Wally nods. “Two boys in love.”

“It changed my life.”

“And nothing coded about it. All right there, out in the open.”

Dee takes the last fry, then pauses with it halfway to his mouth. “You want it?”

“You take it,” Wally says. “You can handle the carbs better than I can.”

The boy happily chomps away. “So is your mother a total freak show?”

Wally shrugs. “Yeah. I guess she is.”

“What was up with that dirt?”

“Who knows?” Wally doesn't want to talk about his mother. He changes the subject. “But what about
your
parents? Don't you have
any
contact with them?”

Dee shakes his head. “Nope. Not since Leo hit me. All communication goes through my state caseworker.”

“Who placed you with Miss Aletha.”

“Yeah, she's a certified foster parent.”

Wally smiles. Missy had found her calling. Roses and runaways.

“So fuck my family,” Dee is saying. “Just because we share some chromosomes doesn't mean I have any obligation to them.” He pauses. “Except maybe Jed. Someday, when I'm old enough, I'm going back to rescue him.”

“And you have gay friends?” Wally asks. “Peers?”

“Well, some. Nobody here in Brown's Mill, but there's a Gay-Straight Alliance over in Mayville, and Missy takes me.”

Wally rests his chin on his hand and leans in to look at the boy. “Is that where you met your boyfriend?”

“I don't have a boyfriend,” Dee says, almost defensively.

“Then who's the guy you took to your junior prom?”

“Oh, him. Well, that's over now. He graduated.”

“How long did you date?”

“I dunno.” Dee seems uncomfortable with the topic. “Not long.”

“How long is not long?”

“About nine days.” He rolls his eyes. “I think we just wanted to say we went to the prom together. Kind of, to make a statement.”

Wally laughs.

“So what do you say?” Dee asks, after sucking down the last of his Coke and making that sound with his straw against the bottom of the glass. “You want to go back to Missy's and fool around?”

Wally pulls back in his seat but keeps his eyes on the kid. “What makes you think I'd do that?”

“You find me attractive, don't you?”

The power thing again. The kid assumes that just because he's sixteen and lean and nubile he's irresistible. Well, Wally won't give him the satisfaction. “I suppose so,” he says, half-shrugging. “Not really my type though.”

“Oh, come on. Like it's every day you get a sixteen-year-old propositioning you. And not only that, you've got permission from his guardian. You know Missy wants it to happen. So why not? Won't it be a great story for your big-city gym-boy friends?”

Wally narrows his eyes at him. “So is this cocky wiseass persona just a way of occupying the time until you grow up?”

Dee's right back at him, not losing a beat. “Possibly. And maybe your obvious fascination with me is simply your own regret for not being more
like
me when you were my age.”

They sit staring at each other, neither blinking, until the waitress comes by and clears off their plates.

I
watched
The Real World. I
knew I was the queer kid
.

How had Wally known?

It had been from the boys in his class at St. John the Baptist that Wally first heard about Alexander Reefy, the strange, bearded man who lived in a little red brick house behind the boarded-up factories in Dogtown. He was a homo. That meant he liked men. Alexander Reefy liked men the way most guys liked girls. He did
sexual
stuff with other men, like touching their dicks and kissing them right on the lips. And everybody knew it, because he always kept his front porch light glowing, which was a sign that he was free and available. Wally's classmates had all the facts. The story had been passed down from the older kids: Alexander Reefy left his front porch light on so that men would know to come by.
Just watch
, Wally's friends insisted: men went in and out of that house all the time. The light would go off for the duration, then flick back on after the guy had left.

That front porch light became an obsession for Wally. A light on a house he had never seen, owned by a man whose face he had never glimpsed, but whose name conjured up images that consumed his thoughts and his dreams.

Alexander Reefy.

It was a cold November morning, and Wally and Freddie Piatrowski and Michael Marino had decided to skip class. Eighth grade was a waste of time, merely treading water before high school. Freddie had cigarettes and a stash of his father's porno magazines in his backpack. Sitting behind one of the abandoned factories, Wally smoked a Camel, though he hated the taste. But as he looked through the magazines Freddie passed to him, he realized he hated the big fleshy knockers of the women even more.