All American Boy (16 page)

“That foster kid of yours …” he says.

She smiles. “Have some cake. You went to bed before I could slice you a piece.” It's gingerbread and banana. Wally takes a bite. It's good. Everything she makes is good.

“I told you Donald was smitten,” Missy says.

“Well, I just had to kick him out of my bed.”

“Such willpower.”

“Why does everyone assume it's such an act of will not to sleep with a teenager? He's skinny. He's got acne on his chin. His hair looks like a Halloween pumpkin.”

Miss Aletha laughs. “You were just like him.”

Wally grins in response. “Yeah, I suppose I did turn into a real derelict there for a while, didn't I? At least I didn't dye my hair.”

“You were always a good boy, Wally.”

“Please. You sound like my mother.”

“Is she as confused as you feared?”

“More. She asked me to take her to see Uncle Axel.”

“Not that
monster
you would stay with when you were little?”

“The very same. She wants to say good-bye to him. He's dying.”

Miss Aletha clears off his empty plate from the table and sets it in the sink.

Wally sighs. “I still can't believe I came back here, that I'm dealing with bullshit like bringing dirt for her rock garden and taking her to see Uncle Axel.”

Missy comes up behind him and strokes his hair. “Sometimes we have to go back. Sometimes the past just doesn't stay where you want it to.”

He closes his eyes and enjoys the feel of her hand in his hair. “My father,” he says.

“What about your father?”

“He's the one I should be seeing. He's the one. He's what really fucked me up.”

Miss Aletha sits back down beside him.

“Something bad happened to my father,” Wally says. “I thought of that again when I saw his stone in the cemetery and his naval rank wasn't inscribed there. I never knew what happened. I don't think my mother did, either. One day he just came home for good, never to return to his ship, and he was miserable.”

“He couldn't have been a very happy man to do the things he did.”

“It must have been money-related. He must have been embezzling or something like that. They don't care about sex scandals in the military. Unless it's a
gay
scandal, of course.” He laughs. “Hey, maybe good old Dad was taking it up the butt out there on the ship. After all, they were gone months at a time. It would explain why he was so fixated on his faggot son.”

“I suspect your father's unhappiness went back a long time before that …”

“All I know is he was miserable after it happened. Not that he was such a prince before that, but after he came home for good, he was nasty. He drank a lot. Bullied my mother. Hit me whenever he felt like it.”

He lets go of her hand and gets to his feet, walking over to the window. He looks out at the dark silhouette of the abandoned factory next door, standing forlorn in the swamp.

“You know, my grandfather was in the navy, too. I was supposed to follow. I imagine my father felt a lot of pressure when he was a kid and so he then put pressure on me. And so it goes.”

Missy has risen, too, walking up behind him. She slips her arms around his waist and rests her cheek against his back.

“My parents had expectations of me, too,” she tells him. “They expected me to be a
boy
. At least you made good on that much.”

Wally manages a smile. “Guess everyone is pressured one way or another.”

“It's how we respond that counts. Bertrand used to say, ‘I yam what I yam, and whatever I'm meant to be, that's how I'll turnip.' Get it?
Yam? Turnip?
”

“That Bertrand had a way with words,” Wally says, smiling harder now.

“He sure did. Now
his
father was a great showman. He was with Barnum and Bailey for years. He expected Bertrand would follow, but poor Bertrand could never even get a rabbit out of a hat, though he was always trying. Remember all his magic tricks?”

“I remember.”

“So we all have pressures. We all have expectations to either live up to or say ‘no thanks' to.” She sighs. “Like your mother. She must have had her own pressures, too.”

Wally shrugs. “If she did, I don't know about them. All I really know about my mother's life is that she went off to the city to become a singer before she married my father, but she failed.”

“She must carry around a great deal of disappointment then.”

“Yeah. She must.” He laughs bitterly. “Both of them, disappointed and miserable, and the result is me.” He thinks of Dee. “Ah, the legacy we inherit.”

“Maybe that's why you came back,” Miss Aletha whispers. “To put an end to that legacy.”

Wally turns around to look at her.

“You can do it. I know you can. You can put an end to it if you want to.”

Their eyes hold.

“Make the choice, Wally. When does the cycle end? When does it finally end?”

And suddenly he's crying. She takes him in her arms, as she's done so many times, stroking his hair, shedding not one tear for herself, though both of them know she has just as much right to cry.

10

THE PURSE

Last night, Luz's grandfather died. Her father is blaming Luz, smashing empty whiskey bottles around the apartment and making Jorge cry. So their one-night sleepover at Regina's has quickly turned into two nights, and maybe more.

Maybe forever
, Regina thinks.

“Did you think my son was handsome, Luz, when he came in after my doctor's appointment this afternoon?” she asks.

The girl looks at her but doesn't offer her usual smile. “He's very handsome, Mrs. Day,” Luz says, though Regina thinks there isn't much enthusiasm in her voice.

Sitting at the small table in the living room, Regina dithers with a few pieces of her still-unfinished jigsaw of the Taj Mahal. Luz's uncertainty disturbs her. Walter had asked the girl some questions that Luz hadn't seemed to like. Oh, how much Regina was hoping that Walter and Luz would become friends. Wouldn't it be nice if all of them could live here together, happy and gay?

From the kitchen comes a bolt of energy, a tiny whirlwind spinning through the dining area into the living room, like that character from the cartoons Walter used to watch, the Tasmanian devil. It's Jorge, his cheeks and fingers covered with peanut butter. He's laughing about something, one of those invisible little experiences that only he can see or hear. Regina smiles. She enjoys having young people around. Young, happy, vibrant people filling up her house with happy words and big smiles.

Not the way it was with him. Not like Kyle
.

Regina's hand pauses as she is about to fit a piece into her puzzle.

Kyle
.

He's not buried in the yard
.

The thought had come to Regina when they were all out there with the dirt. He wasn't there—of course not, because she put his body in the shed. That's what she did with it. Wrapped him in that old tarp and stuffed him in the shed.

“Walter,” she had asked, “might I ask you one more favor?”

He wasn't listening to her. He was going on about her medications, which ones the doctor had given her, pinning up a list to the corkboard beside the telephone. “You've got to remember to take these,” he was saying. “Can you do that, Mother?”

“I can help her,” Luz had said, coming into the kitchen. “I can help her remember.”

Walter looked at her. Regina saw the look. It wasn't a good look. It was dark.

“How long are you expecting to stay here?” Walter asked the girl.

She stood her ground beside him, so small, barely coming up to his chin. “Just until I can find a job,” she told Walter.

“Luz is such a help to me around the house,” Regina offered.

Walter hadn't taken his eyes off the girl. “Who were you with at the drugstore the other day, Luz? Who was the guy you were fighting with?”

Regina had seen her lips purse tightly as Luz kept her eyes locked on Walter. “I wasn't at the drugstore,” she said.

“And no word from Kyle?” Walter asked, without missing a beat.

“None,” Luz replied, also without faltering.

Of course there had been no word from Kyle. He's in the shed, surely decomposing by now, starting to rot. He's in there crumpled beside some moldy bags of Hollytone, a big, dried, bloody gash in the side of his head.

“Missa Day.”

Regina blinks, lifting her eyes from her puzzle. Jorge is on the floor, looking through the comic books she had bought for him yesterday.
Archie's Joke Book. Richie Rich
. He's pointing at something in one of them. She has to strain her eyes to see.

“It's the Taj Mahal,” she says, smiling. “How very smart you are, Jorge. You've recognized it from my puzzle.”

The boy gives her a wide peanut-butter grin.

How much like Walter he is, sitting there with his comic books. Walter had prized his comics, inserting each issue into a plastic bag and carefully ordering it into his boxed collection, which he kept downstairs on shelves.

“Don't you want your comic books, Walter?” Regina had asked, following her son to the door as he prepared to leave.

He grunted. “You ought to find a collector who'll buy them from you, Mother. You could make some money for yourself.”

“Oh, Walter, I could never do that. They're yours.”

His eyes narrowed at her. “She knows where Kyle is,” he said, nodding toward Luz in the living room. “She's in cahoots with him.”

“Oh, no, Walter, she doesn't know. She's glad he's gone. He was terrible to her, just terrible.”

Her son sighed. “Well, I suppose for now it's good you have someone to help you remember to take your medication. Just be careful, Mother. Keep your eyes open.”

He turned, his hand on the doorknob.

“One more favor, Walter?”

He looked back at her strangely.

“I was hoping you could board up the shed out back. You know, where we keep the rakes and the lawnmower.”

“Board it up?”

Regina eyed him intently. Her heart was pounding a little bit faster. “Yes. Board it up. You don't need to go inside. Just nail some boards over the door.”

Walter made a face in confusion. “But
why
?”

Regina twirled a button on her blouse. “Well, because, well—there are skunks that come around and get inside …”

“So just put a lock on the door. You don't need to board the thing up.”

“No, I want it boarded. Sealed shut. I've taken all the rakes and the mower out already. You can put those in the basement. I want the shed secured so no one is tempted to try to get inside. A child could get trapped in there, Walter. He could die if he got trapped in there!”

“I'll do it for you, Mrs. Day,” Luz had offered softly, coming up behind her.

She turned to the girl. “You
will
, Luz?”

“Yes.”

Walter eyed the girl.

“If your son can't do it for you,” she said, “I will.”

Regina saw the way Luz stood her ground, facing Walter. He just shook his head and left, saying nothing more, pulling the door shut behind him a little harder than was necessary.

Robert used to do the very same thing.

“You're a good girl, Luz,” Regina tells her now, looking up from her puzzle into Luz's soft dark eyes. “A very good girl.”

She can live here for as long as she wants. I can make dinner for her and Jorge, the way I used to make dinner for Rocky. I'll make dinner and lunch and breakfast, and we'll go to the movies, we'll take drives, we'll plant marigolds in my rock garden in the spring
…

She wakes in the morning to sunlight filling her room. She bounds out of bed with an energy she had forgotten she could muster. “Yes, marigolds in the spring,” Regina says out loud. “I'll make a pretty garden again, the way I used to.”

It's grocery day. Sitting in front of her mirror, she thinks maybe she'll wear a little lipstick to the market. Just a little touch of pink. Why not? She puckers up and rolls it on.

In the living room, she checks that the money for the groceries is in her purse. Yes, it's there, just as they gave it to her at the bank. A roll of hundreds and twenties.

“It's all done, Mrs. Day,” Luz says, startling her just a bit, coming up behind her. “I boarded the shed all up, just like you asked.”

“Oh, Luz, thank you so much.”

“But Mrs. Day, you know you
didn't
take out all the rakes as you said. I looked inside, just to make sure, and there were still several—”

“You looked
inside
the shed?”

“Yes. I took the rakes out and put them in the garage—”

“What did you see in the shed? Did you see anything in there?”

Luz looks at her with blank eyes. “Nothing. Other than the rakes and a few old bags, there was nothing in there at all.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing, Mrs. Day.”

Regina just stares at her.

“Anyway, it's all boarded over now, just as you wanted.”

Regina feels as if she might fall over. She grips the table next to her.

Where is he? Where
is
he?

I put him in the crate. Yes, that's where he is. Downstairs in the basement. The crate
…

No, Walter opened that crate. He wasn't there
.

Not buried in the backyard either. Not in the shed
…

Regina feels the house beginning to spin.

I think I may be losing my mind
.

“Mrs. Day?” Luz leans in close to look her directly in the eyes. “Are you ready to go to the grocery store?”

Regina doesn't answer, just stares into the girl's eyes.

“You can't do anything right,” Robert is telling her.