All American Boy (17 page)

Authors: William J. Mann

BOOK: All American Boy

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He doesn't like how she's dressed, and they're going out. Something important. A fund-raiser. That's what it is. A fundraiser for the Republican candidate forâoh, dear, what is he running for? What is his name? Robert hates it when she forgets important things like this.

“You'd forget your head if it wasn't attached to your shoulders, and sometimes I wonder even about that.”

“I'm sorry, Robert.”

“I asked you to get your hair done differently for tonight. And to wear something gay. You always dress so dowdily.” He huffed. “And for God's sake, wear some makeup,
please
. When you don't wear makeup you look like a ghost. You have no eyebrows, no eyelashes. Use a little mascara for a change, Regina. All the other men have wives who dress to impress. Make me proud to have you along.”

“I'll use a little eye shadow, Robert.”

“And please, above all, don't attempt any small talk. You're no good at it. Just smile and nod. Answer questions if you're asked but don't offer anything on your own. You always end up making me embarrassed when you try to talk.”

“Yes, Robert.”

“If you must say anything, talk about Wally. About his grades in school or something like that. Talk about Wally. Don't talk about yourself. Especially not that insipid story of you and your sister singing in the city.”

“Mrs. Day?”

Regina blinks.

It's Luz standing in front of her.

“Yes, dear?”

“Are you ready to go?”

There's a chill of winter in the air. Luz is wearing her usual blue jeans and white lacy blouse, covered only with a thin black leather jacket.

“It's rather nippy,” says Regina. “Let me get my sweater before we go.”

She heads down the hall. Hanging on a hook behind her bedroom door she finds her sweater. She pauses before slipping it on. Through the crack of the door she can see Luz in the living room, but the girl cannot see her. Regina watches. She enjoys watching Luz in little moments of the day like this, when she's unaware that she's being watched. She likes how pure Luz looks in those moments, how sweet, how good. Sometimes Luz will be combing her hair, or plucking her eyebrows, or picking out something from between her teeth. Regina finds it soothing to watch her. She could watch her all day long. Right now Luz is flaring her nostrils, filling her lungs with the air of Regina's house. It's sweet air, slightly cool and moist, cinnamon and mothballs and Lemon Pledge.

Regina watches as Luz looks around the room. The drapes, as usual, are drawn. Mormor's old lace doilies decorate polished mahogany tables. Blue crystal bowls, brought over from Sweden, harbor ancient pink candies. On the mantel, a gold clock with Roman numerals ticks hard under its glassâthe only sound in the house at the moment, except for Regina's own heartbeat, high in her ears.

She watches, mesmerized, as Luz's eyes chance upon Regina's purse on the table. It's open, just as Regina had left it. Even from here, Regina can see the thick roll of bills, their color almost glowing from the yawning mouth of the purse. She watches as Luz stands there, looking down at the purse.

There is a pause, a sudden cessation of all sound, a pause even the tick of the clock on the mantel seems to honor. Regina watches in utter silence, holding her breath. Luz's gaze remains fixated on the purse, the money glowing from inside.

And then, almost too fast for Regina even to see, the girl's hand darts out and into the purse. But then she freezes, stopped apparently by seeing the reflection of her face in the black patent-leather purse.

She gasps and withdraws her hand.

Regina moves out from behind the door.

“Here we are,” she says, coming around the corner, a white wool sweater draped over her shoulders. “This should be enough, don't you think?”

“What?”

“It's chilly, but not that cold.”

“Iâ” Luz stammers. “No. Not that cold.”

“Before you know it, it'll be winter.” Regina smiles. Her eyes settle on the purse. “Oh, there it is,” she says. She picks it up, inspects the roll of cash inside, then snaps it shut. “Shall we go?”

Luz takes a breath and smiles. “Yes, we'd better,” she says, “before it gets too dark.”

She would be happy here. Wouldn't she? I could make it nice for her and Jorge. I could cook for them, sew for them, tell bedtime stories to Jorge, the way I once told them to Walter
â¦

“Mother, tell me the one about Jack and the giant again.”

That had been Walter's favorite. Oh, she had invented all sorts of things, adding to the old fable every time she told it. Jack grew another beanstalk after chopping down the first and this time he took his little sister Rocky up with him, and they met the giant's wife, who was not mean at all, but a lovely lady, just oversized, and she had all these magical fairy princesses living with her â¦

Jorge would love that story. Regina was excited to tell it to him. Maybe tonight.

Yes, they'll be happy here. Regina's
certain
of it.

Luz will never want to go.

Ahead of them the grocery store is very bright: yellow windows embedded into a gray, overcast day. Regina discovers her sweater is not, after all, enough to keep her warm, so Luz insists she wear her leather jacket. The old woman laughs as she tremulously slides her arm down one sleeve, then the other, zippers jingling. “My, my,” she says, more to herself than to Luz.

Orange leaves, caught in a new wind, scamper after them as they walk.

Inside the store, Jorge runs ahead to the candy aisle. Under the bright lights, Regina fills the carriage as Luz pushes. “I just need enough to keep us going for another week,” Regina says. Eggs. Skim milk. Toilet paper. Polident. Swanson's frozen dinners. Orange tea. Graham crackers. She says hello to a few people who recognize her. One red-haired woman with whiskers on her chin asks if she's heard anything from Kyle.

“No,” says Regina, “not a thing.” And they exchange rueful smiles.

At the checkout line, Regina hands Luz the roll of money that was in her purse, then takes Jorge by the hand to go sit on the bench in the front of the store. Her ankles hurt if she stands too long waiting in line.

“Gum?” Jorge asks, indicating the gumball machines.

“Oh. Of course, dear.” Regina unsnaps her purse, scrounges around at the bottom for some change, and hands Jorge a few quarters and dimes. He scampers off.

From her spot on the bench, Regina watches as the clerk, a teenaged girl with acne, rings up $37.27. She watches as Luz pulls two hundred-dollar bills from the roll. Regina's certain that's what it was: two hundreds. Not two twenties but two hundreds. She may have arthritis in her legs, but her eyesight is perfect. The doctor had confirmed it yesterday. She sees very clearly as Luz gingerly folds one of the hundreds into her palm, and hands the other one to the clerk.

“Don't you have anything smaller?” the girl with the acne asks.

“What?”

The clerk licks her lips. “Something smaller. Like two twenties, maybe?”

“Oh,” Luz says, and Regina can see the girl's fingers are trembling. “Okay.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the roll again, peeling off two twenties this time. “Here you go.”

Regina watches as the second hundred-dollar bill is also crumbled into Luz's sweaty palm. There are two of them in there now. Regina's certain of it. The clerk gives Luz the change from the two twenties. Luz thrusts it all down into the pocket of her jeans.

She'll be happy living here, won't she?

No, she'll want to leave. Go to the city. That's what she'll want
.

That's what Rocky wanted
.

What I wanted
.

Luz carries the bag of groceries over to Regina, the paper crunching against her breasts. Regina tilts her head and smiles up at her.

“Thank you, Luz,” she says.

“Come on, Jorge,” Luz calls, and her voice sounds different.

They walk home through a flurry of furious leaves.

In the kitchen, Regina makes a pot of tea while Luz puts the groceries away.

“Luz, dear,” she says quietly, just as the kettle begins to whistle in a long, high screech.

“Yes?”

“You forgot to give me my change.”

Outside the wind whoops against the side of the house.

“Oh.” Luz's breath comes out in a stutter. “I'm sorry.” She fumbles in her pocket and pulls out the roll of bills, along with two crumpled ones and some coins. She plunks it all down onto the table. A penny, very shiny, rolls to the floor. Luz stoops and picks it up.

Regina holds out her old knotted hand. Luz places the penny in her palm. “Thank you, dear.” The old woman picks up the roll of money and returns it uncounted to her purse.

She's not unaware of how shaky Luz seems.

“I need to pay the man for the wood, you know,” Regina tells her. “He's coming by with a delivery next week.”

“The â¦ wood?”

“Oh, yes. My wood-burning stove in the basement.” Regina smiles. “I love that old stove in the wintertime. My husband built a grate into the living room so we could bring the heat from the basement up here. It helps keep costs down in the winter. Electric heat can be so expensive all by itself.”

Luz nods.

“Yes,” Regina muses, opening her eyes. “Pretty soon I'll have to load up the stove and set it blazing again.”

Luz pushes her hand into her pocket. Regina watches the girl's fingers make a pattern in the denim as they clutch what's inside.

“Mrs. Day, IâI'm going to go lie down. I have a headache.”

“Oh, you poor dear. May I get you some tea?”

“No, thank you. I'll just go lie down.”

“You poor child,” Regina says again. “You do that. Maybe take a little nap. You look positively deathly.”

Luz doesn't come out of her room for the rest of the day. Regina sits on the couch in her darkened living room, staring up at the family portrait from so long ago. She can hear Jorge outside, laughing and talking to himself.

“All of the Days were bad. Except for Robert and my son. All of the rest were bad, especially Kyle.”

Right here. Right on this couch
.

This is where she killed him.

“Bad stock. Oh, so very bad. What could I do but do what I did?”

But where is he? Where is his body?

Why can't I remember?

It was like this once before, when she couldn't make her mind work, when thoughts escaped her, when parts of her life slipped out from her grasp. She was living with Rocky and she couldn't remember how she'd hurt herself, how all the blood got on the floor. She rambled on about vampires and strange men who touched her in the night, but no one believed her, and next Regina knew she was in that place, that horrible place where she saw Howard Greer in the day room dressed as a girl. She had screamed when she saw that, screamed her lungs out.

I'm afraid I might be losing my mind
, she had told Walter.

If it happened before, why not again?

Regina covers her face with her hands and starts to cry.

“And now Luz will go,” she whimpers. “She doesn't want to stay here. She took the money so she can go to the city. That's what she wants, to go to the city, like Rocky did.” She removes her hands and stares back up at the portrait. “Like
you
did, Walter. She'll go to the city like you did and I'll never see her again. Never!”

She's staring up into Walter's eight-year-old eyes.

“Why couldn't you have been a girl?” she asks. “If I had had a daughter instead of a son, nothing bad would have happened.”

She stands, drying her eyes with her sleeve. She walks over to her puzzle table. She's almost done with it. It's taken her two weeks. She'll finish it tonight, perhaps. She'll put it all together and gaze down at the complete Taj Mahal, then break it apart, putting all the pieces back in their box. Then she'll start another.

But the Taj Mahal lies in pieces scattered across the table and on the floor below. All her work, broken apart.

She hears a snicker behind her. She turns.

It's Jorge. Dirty-faced, shoes untied.

“Jorge! Did you do this?”

He nods.

She stoops, retrieving the pieces from the floor.

“Well, then you're just going to have to help me put it back together.” Her knees crack as she stands back up, placing the puzzle pieces on the table. Jorge instantly takes them and finds how they fit, assembling a whole section in seconds.

Regina smiles. “You're good at puzzles, Jorge.”

She sits down on the chair and the boy crawls up into her lap.

“So
very
good at puzzles,” she says.

He kisses her cheek. His breath still smells like peanut butter.

“Jorge,” she says.

The boy's simple brown eyes look into hers.

“How would you like to help me solve another puzzle?”

He nods.

“There's a treasure hidden in this house and I need you to help me find it. Can you do it, Jorge? Can you find the treasure hidden in this house?”

Jorge's eyes gleam.

THE CORD OF LOVE

The phone is cradled between his chin and shoulder.