All American Boy (32 page)

“She's not off with Kyle,” Regina says, still feeling defiant. “She'll be back. She said she was coming back.”

Walter's shaking his head. “I
saw
her yesterday, Mother. She was clearly going off with someone.”

“And what makes you so sure it was Kyle?”

Walter sighs.

“Kyle is
not
with her,” Regina says. “Luz is a good girl. She's free now of Kyle. I made sure of that.”

Walter looks at her, his eyebrows lowered. “What do you mean you made sure of it?”

“I just mean—” Regina put her hand to her forehead. “Oh, I don't know what I mean. I get so confused.”

“Well, I've had as much of this as I can take. I'm leaving now, Mother. I'm going to do what I came back to Brown's Mill to do, and then I'm getting the hell out of here.”

He turns to leave. That's when they spot the police car pull into the driveway.

“We'll need the boy to make a statement and press charges,” Officer Garafolo told them.

He had sat in her living room, right there on her couch, and his boots had tracked grime all across her gold shag carpet. He wore a blue uniform, tight around his bulging belly and overweight thighs, and Regina remembers how shiny his badge was. His boots, too: as shiny as Robert's had been, before he left the navy and went to work at Schaefer's Shoes.

“Of
course
we'll press charges,” Robert had replied, his lips thin and white. “The man's a pervert. A danger to every child in Brown's Mill.”

Regina watched her husband closely. His face looked different than she'd ever seen it before. Pulled and pinched, white and tense. His fingers were clawed inward. He paced back and forth like a dog in a pen, looking over his shoulder constantly. He let his breath out in short tiny wheezes.

Officer Garafolo nodded. “If you press charges against him, we can have his sorry ass thrown in jail, Captain Day. I promise you that.”

“I want him
put away
,” Robert shrilled, and for a moment Regina didn't know who he meant—the pervert or Walter—because his eyes had darted ferociously over at their son.

Walter was sitting on a chair opposite the policeman. Unlike his father, he was completely still. He stared at the floor, his hands clasped and dropped between his legs. He looked so small, even though he was fifteen now.

“May I make you some tea?” Regina asked Officer Garafolo.

“No, thank you, ma'am.”

Her husband glanced at her with annoyance, then turned his attention back to the policeman. “I want you to go over there now and get him. Get that pervert before he can molest any other children.”

“I'd like the boy to come down to the station first and give his statement. Can he do that?”

“Of course he can.”

Walter didn't stir.

“Tell him you can, Wally!” Robert shouted.

The boy's eyes flickered up from the floor. He met his father's gaze. “I can do it,” he said, and it was a voice Regina didn't recognize.

“Let's go then,” Robert said.

The policeman stood. Walter stood, too, though his eyes were back to the floor. He walked slowly behind his father and Officer Garafolo, passing his mother without saying a word. She reached out to touch his shoulder but pulled her hand back at the last moment. No one said anything else as they went through the door. Regina watched as the light came on as the police car backed out of the driveway, carrying her husband and her son.

Then she got out the vacuum to clean up the dirt the policeman had left behind.

“Mrs. Day?” Officer Garafolo is coming up the walk. “May I speak with you, please?”

Walter looks from her to the policeman.

“Of course,” Regina says, and hurries to let him in. Garafolo enters, and his eyes come to rest on Walter. They all stand awkwardly in the foyer. “You remember my son, Walter?” Regina asks.

The policeman nods. “Sure. How you doin'?”

“Is this about my cousin again?” Walter asks.

The policeman nods. “Just following up.” He turns to Regina. “I understand a navy investigator was here?”

Walter looks sharply at Regina. “You didn't tell me about this, Mother.”

“No, I—” Regina begins twiddling a button on her blouse. “He was a very nice young man. He said he was going to find Luz for me.”

“Luz?” Garafolo asks. “You mean Luz Vargas, the girlfriend?”

“She was staying here,” Walter says. “But she's taken off, leaving her brother behind.”

“Interesting,” says Garafolo.

“What have you found out about Kyle?” Walter asks impatiently.

“Can we sit down?”

“Of course,” Regina says. “May I make you some tea, Officer?”

“No, thank you, ma'am.”

She watches as he strides into the living room and settles down on the couch. No grime, no mud, this time. The shag carpet is long gone, replaced by a brown-sugar berber. The man from Grant's who'd installed it told her that the nylon-olefin construction promised long-lasting stain resistance and exceptional durability. So far it's held up very well, and it's been, what? Twelve years? It's outlasted Grant's, in fact, which went out of business.

Walter sits opposite the policeman. “Look,” he says, “you keep coming by here asking my mother about Kyle. What more can she tell you? She's told you everything she knows.”

“Well, I've got Uncle Sam asking lots of questions.” He looks over at Regina, who sits in the rocking chair. “This Lieutenant Bennett seems to think Kyle blew out of town to avoid being charged with assault.”

“That sounds like Kyle,” Walter says.

“Well,” Garafolo acknowledges, “he
does
have a record of assault right here in Brown's Mill. And I've suspected all along that the girlfriend knows more than she's saying.”

“So go after her,” Wally says. “I saw her yesterday at CVS. She had suitcases in the backseat of Kyle's car. She was clearly heading out of town.”

“Do you know where she was going, Mrs. Day?”

“To the city. She's going to become a model.”

“Isn't it the navy's job to find out what happened to one of their guys?” Walter stands suddenly, looking over at Officer Garafolo in a very strange way, as if he's challenging him. Regina watches her son in fascination. He has exactly the same glint in his eye Robert would sometimes get, when he was angry and was going to show someone he meant business. “I
mean
,” Walter is saying, “it's one of their boys who's gone missing. Isn't it up to
them
to find him?”

“Maybe he's not missing,” Garafolo says, holding Walter's gaze. “Maybe he's dead. And if somebody killed him here in Brown's Mill, well, then it's
my
job to find out who.”

“
Dead
?” Walter seems outraged, infuriated. “You think he's
dead
?”

The policeman shrugs, looking over at Regina. “What do you think, Mrs. Day?”

She twiddles the button at her throat but doesn't speak.

He was lying right there on the couch. Right where you're sitting. I came in from the garden and picked up the hoe and smashed it down into his head. The hoe or the shovel. Or maybe the rake. I smashed it down into his head once, then again, then I think a third time as he tried to get up. He staggered into the coffee table. He died right there and there was a lot of blood
.

“He had a lot of enemies in this town,” Garafolo says when Regina doesn't answer. “I suspect he was dealing drugs. There are a lot of scenarios I could come up with.”

And then I dragged his body out of the living room and down to the basement where I put him in a crate
—
no, not a crate
—
in the shed
—
I dragged him out the door and put him in the shed
—
no, no, no, the shed is empty. The shed is empty. The shed is empty
…

Garafolo lets out a sigh and stands. “Well, if you remember anything, or if you hear from the girlfriend, please let me know.” He trains his eye on Regina. “Do you mind if I just look around a bit, Mrs. Day?”

Walter moves up behind him quickly. “You have a search warrant?”

The policeman smiles pleasantly. “I just wanted to look around. If the lady says no, I'll leave.”

“I'm not sure what you're looking for,” Regina says. “You've already looked around several times before.”

“Yeah,” Walter says. “I think enough is enough. You ought to go.”

The policeman levels his eyes with her son's. “Okay, whatever you say.” He pauses, still holding Walter's gaze. “So, buddy. You ever get your life straightened out?”

Walter frowns. “What do you mean by that?”

Regina is watching them, but her mind is somewhere else.

Where is he? Where is Kyle?

“Just that I remember all that drama from way back …”

Why must I always be so fearful of phantoms hiding somewhere in my house?

“Yeah, well, thanks for asking,” Walter is saying, “I got it straightened out just fine.”

I dragged him downstairs and
—

Dear God! I dragged him downstairs
—
I did! I dragged him downstairs!

Walter has gotten so close to the policeman that it looks as if he might punch him. “And you know what, Garafolo?” he's saying. “I'm still a big, flaming, cocksucking homo.”

“Dear God,” Regina says, and she faints, dead away, onto the floor.

When Regina was a girl, living with Papa, there was a man who lived in the attic apartment of their building on Pleasant Street. His name was John Neumann. He was about fifty years old and had never married. Papa called him an old Jew fairy, but whenever Papa would go out it was to Mr. Neumann that he'd send Regina and Rocky to stay. Papa said that Mr. Neumann was the one man in Brown's Mill he could trust with his two sweet, pretty, young daughters. He'd wink when he told friends that. Regina never understood what that wink meant, but she knew she liked Mr. Neumann very much.

“Are you all right, Regina?” he would ask her, every time they stayed with him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she'd insist. “I'm fine.”

It was early one Saturday morning and they'd been there all night. Papa hadn't come home. He was supposed to have been gone just an hour but he never showed up to collect them. So Mr. Neumann had fixed them each a bed of blankets and pillows on his living room floor. In the morning he made them corn flakes and rye toast with raspberry jam.

“She's
not
all right,” Rocky told Mr. Neumann.

All night Regina had been crying. She wasn't sure why. She'd just started to cry around 2:00 a.m. and had kept on crying straight until dawn.

“What troubles you, Regina?” Mr. Neumann asked her.

“I was just afraid I was alone.”

“But Rocky was right there next to you. And I was in the other room.”

“I know.”

Mr. Neumann had looked so sad sitting there across the table from her. “Maybe you should talk to one of your teachers.”

“
Tell him
,” Rocky urged, kicking her sister under the table.

“I'm
fine
,” Regina insisted.

“She's not fine,” Rocky said.

Mr. Neumann just continued looking sadly at her.

It was around that time that the people came and took them away from Papa for a while, sending them to stay with Aunt Selma and Uncle Axel. Regina can't remember how old she was then. Ten, eleven, twelve. Maybe thirteen. So much of their time with Papa is a vague blur to her. But she knows they didn't stay long with Aunt Selma. It was a problem of school districts, she thinks: Aunt Selma and Uncle Axel lived too far outside town and there was no way of getting them to school. So they went back to live with Papa, and there they stayed until they ran away to the city to become famous.

“And we would have been, too—”

“Would have been what, Mrs. Day?”

Regina blinks. Officer Garafolo's big bushy mustache is twitching in her face.

She's on the couch. Walter sits beside her.

“Are you all right, Mother?”

“Did I faint? Oh, dear, how silly of me.”

Walter's looking down at her. She can't tell what he's thinking. He seems annoyed. Or concerned. Or maybe a little guilty. Then he moves his eyes over to the policeman.

“She's on some new medications,” he says.

Regina watches as her son stands and walks with Garafolo toward the door. They're whispering about something, hard, angry whispers, but she can't hear what they're saying. Still, she can tell that Walter is defending her, coming to her defense, standing between her and that fat, smelly policeman and his unending questions, questions that have made her feel as if she was losing her mind.

That's why I called him. That's why I called Walter and asked him to come home
.

Because he's my son. Because sons take care of their mothers
.

That is, if mothers take care of them.

Did she take care of her son?

He was my responsibility. Did I take care of him?

Of course she had. She made him Swedish goulash for dinner. She bought him school clothes and comic books. She made him that witch's costume, even though Robert was so opposed to the idea. She washed Walter's underwear, even when it was fouled with blood and other things she could barely allow herself to imagine. She let him watch that vampire soap opera even though Bernadette insisted it could warp his mind. She let Walter do whatever he wanted, and every night before he went to bed, she always made sure he brushed his teeth.

Of
course
she took care of him.

“Mother,” Walter says, sitting back down beside her again once the policeman is gone. “Maybe it's time you told me about Kyle.”