All American Boy (27 page)

Wally laughs. “No. She can't help me. I've given up on her.”

“Well, you can't let your father decide your life. He'll have you marching off to World War III. When you graduate you should go to a college of your choice.”

“I want to go to acting school. I want to be an actor.”

“A regular Montgomery Clift,” Zandy says, smirking, settling down into his beanbag and lighting a joint.

Bertrand is at the dining room table practicing his magic act. A green parakeet is perched on his finger and Bertrand is trying to entice him to dive into a top hat filled with birdseed. “I'm hoping to land a job,” Bertrand says, “with Ringling Brothers.”

“That might be the best thing for you, too, babe,” Zandy says, winking over at Wally. “Run off and join the circus.”

“I will,” Wally tells him, “if you come with me.”

He catches the gleam in Zandy's eye. No, Zandy's not handsome. His face is craggy, scarred with pocks. His beard isn't trimmed very well and his eyebrows are starting to grow a little wild. But when he smiles, his eyes light with such fire, and they dazzle Wally. When they share that look between them, Wally doesn't feel fourteen years old. He feels grown-up, ageless, a wise old man. His cock stirs in his jeans.

Later, they make love, in the orchards again, kissing each other so hard that their teeth clink against each other. Zandy runs his tongue down over Wally's chin to the hollow of his throat and all the way down his goose-pimply, concave chest to his belly button. Wally's cock is aiming at the moon. Zandy swallows it with one noisy gulp. The boy shoots hard, sending tremors all through his body. Zandy swallows every drop.

Zandy's cock isn't always as hard as Wally's. In fact, it's often soft, a fat brown stub. When he wants to fuck Wally he has to tug at it for a long time in his hand, greased up with Vaseline. Then he sticks it in Wally fast, as if he's afraid it will go soft again. Wally knows if he put his mouth on Zandy's cock it might stay harder longer, but it's the one thing he hasn't been able to bring himself to do, and he wonders why.

“Are you in love with him?” Missy asked one night, after Zandy had fallen asleep, snoring like a bear in his chair.

“Yes,” Wally answered.

She smiled indulgently. “Do you know what that even means?”

Wally bristled. “Of course I do. Aren't you in love with Bertrand?”

“We've been together sixteen years. Do you think you and Zandy will be together that long?”

“Why not?”

She sighed, running her hand through his hair. “You're right. Why not indeed?”

Am I in love with him?

Do I even know what that means?

Of course he does.

“Someday,” Zandy's telling him, holding his hand as they walk through the orchard, the june bugs chirping all around them on this late summer night, “someday the world is going to be very different.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it's true. Someday, babe, we'll be able to hold hands anywhere, not just here, hidden in the woods.”

That doesn't seem to matter to Wally. Before he met Zandy he'd felt so alone. Now he can't imagine things any better than this. He
likes
being in the orchards with Zandy. If they
never
leave these sweet-smelling trees he wouldn't mind. Not one bit.

Except, he thinks, the city
does
sound exciting. And in the city he can be an actor. Like Montgomery Clift. Zandy told him Clift was gay, just like they are.
Gay
—Wally repeats the word in his head—
just like they are
.

“We're going to be a free people someday, Wally,” Zandy is saying. “They got a dyke elected up in Boston. And we kicked Anita Bryant's ass down in Florida. It's our time, babe. You just watch.

It's gonna be
grand
.”

Wally smiles. “When can you take me to the city?”

“One of these days. I promise.”

“And we can stay out all night and dance until dawn?”

Zandy kisses the top of Wally's head. “Yeah. We can do that.”

“It's gonna be
grand
,” Wally echoes, and he rests his head against Zandy's shoulder as they walk through the trees.

16

REGINA, FROM FOUR TO SIX

It's 4:00 on Friday afternoon, and Regina Christina Gunderson realizes she's alone.

She's typing a letter for Mayor Winslow to the federal government regarding Social Security. The mayor doesn't understand what it's all about. Neither does Regina.

She listens to the girls in the office talking. “Whatcha making for supper tonight, Betty?”

“Leftover corned beef,” Betty answers. “What about you?”

“Oh, I don't know,” Ruth says. “Maybe chicken. I just don't know. Elmer's always so picky.”

It's 4:01 and Regina, slowly nodding her head over her typewriter, realizes she's alone.

“Regina,” comes the voice of Mayor Winslow from his inner office. “Any letters that need to be signed before I leave?”

“Yes, sir,” she says, getting up from her desk, pushing back her chair on its little wheels. She shakes the letter free from its carbon, watching transfixed as it's caught by a draft and hangs suspended in the air for a moment before fluttering aimlessly to the floor.

“There's just this one, sir,” Regina says.

She walks into his office and hands him the letter over his enormous mahogany desk. His eyes drop down the page and he scrawls his signature. Regina notices his pink scalp through his thin white hair as he leans over to sign his name. Mayor Winslow is a very pink man.

It's been three weeks since he'd hired her. Regina had stood meekly in front of his desk, hoping for a job, holding a note from her high school typing teacher, who was a second cousin of his. All around them that day had been dozens of girls, all of them knocking on office doors at City Hall. So many birds, Mayor Winslow had observed with a grin—with no guarantee that the doves would be picked out from the pigeons.

“My cousin says here that you just got out of the hospital,” he said, looking up at her from the note.

“It was a spa. A health spa.”

The mayor glances back down at the note. “The Valley Institute.” He returns his gaze to Regina. “And how long were you there for?”

Regina felt her face burn. “About a year.”

“Did you go there after your sister died, Regina?”

Everyone in Brown's Mill knew about Rocky and how she died. The accident had happened up on Eagle Hill and there had been a large photograph on the
Reminder
's front page. Lots of mangled metal and broken glass. Rocky's car had plunged down an embankment, bursting into flames.

“No, sir,” Regina says. “She died while I was there.”

“I see. But you're better now?”

“Oh, yes, much better. The spa did wonders for me.”

Mayor Winslow set down the note and looked up at her. “And so pretty too,” he said, smiling, his face glowing very pink.

He gave her the job.

Now he's holding the letter he's just signed between two pudgy fingers, one with a shiny gold wedding band contrasting against the pink. For a moment Regina is still, intent on counting the little white hairs that grow from his knuckles. And then she smiles, blushing, taking the letter and wishing the mayor a good night.

“You have a good night too, Regina. And a lovely weekend.” He plays with his wedding band as he speaks. “Do you need a ride home, Regina? I'm happy to drive you.”

“Oh, thank you, but I'm meeting a girlfriend. We're having dinner.”

He smiles. “Some other time then.”

Regina just smiles. “Yes. Some other time.”

Aunt Selma had found her a place to live in Dogtown. Mormor would have been appalled had she still been alive—Dogtown was filled with Eye-talians and blacks—but it was the cheapest place Aunt Selma could find. “We can't keep supporting you forever,” Aunt Selma said. “You're going to have to get a job.”

Regina sits back down at her desk.

“Frank wants me to do a pot roast,” Ruth is saying. “As if I want to work all day and then come home to make a pot roast!”

“Tell him if he wants pot roast,
he
should make it,” Betty says.

“It would taste like shoe leather.”

“So he'd learn.”

The girls laugh.

Regina stares at her typewriter. She's been meaning to clean the keys all week. All her
o
's and
p
's keep getting filled in with ink. It's an old Royal typewriter, heavy and black, not unlike the one she'd learned on back in high school. Her typing teacher, Mayor Winslow's cousin, was an old woman with orange hair named Miss Hemm. She was the first person Regina went to see when she got out of the spa, because she remembered Miss Hemm fondly and there was no one else to go see now that Rocky was dead. Regina had lovely memories of Miss Hemm, sitting in her typing classroom in the late afternoons, when the sun slanted its rays through the tall windows and spilled out across the old hardwood floors in sharp, diagonal lines. Miss Hemm would allow Regina to come into the school and practice on the typewriter.

“Want to do mine when you're done?”

Regina looks up. Betty's standing over her, watching Regina pick at the caked ink in her typewriter keys with a straight pin.

“Sure,” Regina says. “I'd be happy—”

“I'm only kidding, sweetie,” Betty says, covering her typewriter. “I'm heading out of here early. Got to stop at the market and get something to go with the corned beef.”

Ruth is putting on her coat. “Any plans for the weekend?”

Betty nods. “Heading into the city to see Elmer's sister and her kids.”

“Oh, that'll be nice.”

Regina's listening with one ear, still picking at her keys, feeling a sense of revenge as she pops out the offending soot. Soon her
o
's will be clean, her
p
's sharp.

“I remember during the war,” Betty's saying, pulling on her coat, “we were stuck here in Brown's Mill all the time. No chance for holiday weekends. Funny how quiet things are now that the boys are home. Thought it'd be just the opposite.”

Regina dabs the cleaning fluid over her keys and watches it soak into the black grime.

“Well, I'm off,” Betty says. She walks around to the front of Regina's desk. “Your letters all finished?”

Regina nods.

“Stick around until he's through, okay? Don't leave until he's gone.”

“Okay,” Regina agrees. “Have a nice weekend.”

Betty starts to say, “You too,” but Ruth runs up to her with one last item of business.

It's 4:30 and Regina tries not to think about being alone.

Last Saturday she took a walk past the house where she'd lived as a little girl. Someone had painted it green and put a fence around it. But Mama's cherry tree was still out in front, bigger now than Regina remembered it. From the sidewalk she could still see the initials she'd carved there when she was eight, the year Mama died. She'd used a nail file to carve her initials in a heart with those of Dennis Appleby, a boy one grade ahead of her. Dennis parted his hair down the middle, and Regina thought he was very sophisticated. She never told Dennis that she liked him, didn't so much as even give him a clue, not even when they were in high school and they sat next to each other in the cafeteria and Dennis sometimes carried her books for her.

And then she heard he'd been killed over the North Atlantic early in the war.

Better that than to live without arms like—what was his name? The soldier who took her out in the city. Who sat there applauding her when she sang—what song was it? There are so many things Regina can no longer remember. But she remembers Dennis Appleby and her mother's cherry tree.

“They really aren't cherries,” Regina reminded herself, standing in front of the house that used to be hers and now was painted green.

“No, Gina, you can't eat them,” her mother told her, long ago, when she was five, maybe six. “They're not cherries. I just
call
it my cherry tree. They're crab apples. And you can't eat them.”

Regina remembered her mother's fingers, softly probing inside her mouth, gently removing the bits of bitter crab apple. She'd put four into her mouth, picking them up from the grass where they lay scattered prettily under the tree. Regina had made a face, maybe a sound, and her mother, kneeling in the dirt planting geraniums, had come running.

They went into the house and Mama had poured her some milk.

“Here, Gina, drink. That'll get rid of the taste.”

“Mama,” she said after she'd drained the glass, white foam on her upper lip, “they really aren't cherries?”

“No, honey,” her mother said, with a sudden sadness, putting her arms around her. “They really aren't cherries.”

A pink hand is suddenly splayed on her desk. Regina looks up to see the mayor smiling at her. She makes a little gasp.

“Regina, the very best of weekends to you.”

She shifts uncomfortably.

“And to you, sir.”

“Are you sure I can't offer you a ride?”

“Yes, thank you. I'm meeting a girlfriend.”

“All right, then.”

He strides out into the hall. Regina can hear his footsteps echoing down the long, deep corridor for a full minute. Then he reaches the stairwell and is gone.

“We can close up shop now,” Ruth says.

Regina covers her typewriter.

“It looks like rain,” Ruth's saying, looking out the window. “Did you bring an umbrella?”

“No. It was sunny this morning.”

“Yes, I know. What strange weather we've been having.”

Ruth slips into the mayor's office and comes back carrying a large black umbrella. “Here,” she says, thrusting it at Regina. “Use his.”