Beaming Sonny Home (21 page)

“Do you suppose I should tell him about Sonny's Le Mans Birth Method?” Rita now wondered. “It
was
pretty funny when you think of it. There I was, in the middle of labor pains and no one to drive me to the hospital but Sonny. Then he gets that Pontiac Le Mans of his going so fast I'm afraid I'm gonna have a heart attack instead of a baby. We fly up to the emergency door of the hospital at about eighty miles an hour and Sonny stomps on the brake. My water breaks and water is running down my legs.”

“Oh, be quiet, Rita,” said Marlene. “You never thought the Le Mans Birth Method was funny until that producer called.”

Mattie carefully lifted the cardboard with
Easter
Rising
on it and carried it out to the kitchen table. The girls would be busy now, too busy to care about picture puzzles. She reached into her apron pocket and found the eyeball piece. She leaned down to the sad face in the picture, the hair touching the shoulders, like Sonny's own hair—what Rita called hippie hair—and she eased the blue piece of eye gently into the glaring socket. It fit perfectly. Now Jesus looked up at her with two full, serene eyes. There was a great kindness in them, Mattie noticed, now that they were complete. A kindness mixed with that rain cloud of suffering. But everyone who knows life knows that rain cloud. It hangs over all heads.

“There, precious,” Mattie said to the calm face on the cardboard before her. “Now you can see what kind of mess you left us in.”

She found her homemade sweater hanging on her bedroom doorknob where Gracie had left it earlier. And Lester's suitcase, still sitting like a patient dog in the bedroom closet. She carried the suitcase quietly, back down the narrow hallway of Lester's little Spruce Goose, and out into the kitchen, past her pots and pans hanging from their hooks behind her good old stove with the old-fashioned burners. The girls had now gathered like grackles in front of the television set, waiting for even more follow-up announcements and dispatches and bulletins and reports. Waiting for more calls from producers. Mattie could see Roberta, back in the big black recliner, her face pale with emotion. She had loved her uncle Sonny. Once, he had driven Robbie and her girlfriends all the way to the Fort Fairfield County Fair, when no one else would, and he had paid for them all to ride the big Ferris wheel, until they were reeling with the dizziness and happiness of life. Now Roberta's dizziness was caused by another of life's elements, a baby, a child, another soul to join the planet, to get counted in the census books of Mattagash, Maine. That was all the more reason that Sonny's kindness would become a warm blanket to her, down through the years of Roberta's life, a sweet memory. Looking now at her granddaughter, at the small oval face, Mattie could almost envision Robbie as an old woman, an old woman leaning on a rake and overseeing her yearly garden. “That was my uncle Sonny I'm talking about,” she could hear the aged Roberta saying to some child, her own grandchild, maybe. “He was always bringing us kids candy, and surprises, and taking us for rides in his convertible. One year, he even took us all the way down to the Fort Fairfield County Fair, when no one else would, and we rode that big Ferris wheel until we were dizzy with life.” Mattie saw this picture movie before her face, watched it unreel as surely as if it had just taken place. She had looked ahead to Roberta's future, with some kind of twenty-twenty vision that sometimes comes on the heels of tragedy. Sonny would live on, kind of the way a yearly garden lives on. There was still hope, Mattie could tell, still a reason for human beings to push forward. Peter Laforest would make Roberta a good husband. He'd never be president of the Watertown Savings and Loan, much less the president of the United States. He'd never own a department store, or a yacht, or one of those little airplanes sportsmen flew into Maine's lakes with pontoons for feet. He'd never fly to Paris on that fast-flying jet, the Concorde. He'd never play golf with bankers, smoke rich cigars from Cuba, go to some island for a winter tan. But he would get a steady paycheck each week, and he would hand that steady paycheck over to his wife, Roberta, so that there would be food and clothing and warmth for his family. And, in the night, he would rise, mumbling and tired from a hard day's work, he would rise to comfort one of his children who had cried out in the darkness, in the terror of a dream. He would wipe a thousand snotty noses, mop up a million tears in his career as someone's father. And every now and then, catching the softness of his wife's face as she sat on the sofa and watched television, he would bring her a cup of tea for no reason at all, other than that he felt a
need
to do so, the push of love. And when the time came for Peter Laforest to take his place in some graveyard, maybe the Mattagash Catholic graveyard, down by that clutch of pine trees that lines the old meadow,
Sonny's
graveyard, there would be no mistresses in the crowd wearing black and weeping. There would be just his family and friends, and they would cry over the loss of him, because in losing Peter Laforest, his family would lose a great earthly treasure. Mattie saw all this, and then the movie of Roberta's life faded away.

“Robbie?” Mattie said quietly to her granddaughter, who looked up, surprised to hear her name in the midst of such commotion. “Come here.” Robbie rose from the chair. She stepped over Gracie's Nikes and leggings and Rita's big purse. In the kitchen, Mattie pulled her granddaughter aside, away from the door to the living room.
The
living
room
. What a place to watch Sonny die.

“What are you doing with Grandpa's old suitcase?” Robbie asked.

“Listen, sweetie,” Mattie whispered. “I'm getting away from them Pac Monsters in there. So I gotta say this fast. You tell Peter Laforest not to worry about saving up that money for a down payment on a house trailer.”

“But, Granny,” Roberta said, trying to question this. Mattie stopped her by giving her a quick little shake that rattled her long earrings. Roberta fell silent again, her eyes full of deep concern, her face still tear-streaked.

“Just let me say this fast,” Mattie continued. “I'm giving you and Peter an early wedding present. I'm gonna get Elmer Fennelson to drive me to Watertown, maybe next week, and I'm gonna have that lawyer, that Mr. Ornstein, make it all up legal.”

“A wedding present?” Roberta asked. “Gran, you don't have to do that.”

“I know what I have to do and what I don't have to,” Mattie said. “Now listen. I'm giving you and Peter this house. It ain't a mansion, but it's a nice, comfortable little home. All Peter needs to do is fix a few shingles on the roof and them rickety back steps. And you could use a new water heater. I've been tempting fate each year by keeping the old one, but don't you two do that. Spend some of that down payment money you saved for fixing everything up perfect as you can. You got something alive inside you to worry about now. You got a baby to think about. Life is as good as you make it, Robbie. So take off them blinders that most folks wear and go at it headfirst.” Roberta seemed ready to cry again, but Mattie had no time for any such sentiment.

“Gracie's gonna be mad,” said Roberta. “You know she and Aunt Rita and Aunt Marlene all want to inherit the house. All three of them's gonna hit the roof.”

Mattie nodded. “I know,” she said. “That's why Peter needs to fix the shingles up there, so the roof will be good and sturdy when they hit it. And that's why I need to see a lawyer first thing next week.” She gave Roberta a big hug, and her granddaughter's small body curled into her own, thin and innocent and not really ready for babies and a husband and the rigors of Mattagash winters. Not ready for gossips whose tongues were already warped with whispery news of an early wedding, of a swelling stomach. Not ready for all those years to melt away, as they had for Mattie and Martha Monihan and poor dead Lester Gifford and Eliza Fennelson, just more years of the same, years of softball tournaments in which Peter and Roberta would stand back on the sidelines and watch Mattie's great-grandchildren play ball, years of school lunches, and beds being made up, and clothes being handed down, years of fireflies eating up those same summer nights, thousands of Christmas cards being sent out, millions and millions of snowflakes falling out of those same dark skies, billions of words of gossip flying about like locusts, zillions of gallons of water flowing past in that same old Mattagash River.
This
is what Mattie felt when she hugged her grandchild's little body. This is what she
knew.

“Gran,” said Robbie.

“Listen to me, child,” Mattie whispered. “You go on ahead and marry your best friend. And then you two fill up this little house with children and laughter and love, 'cause in its day, there ain't been a lot of the last two things. Now, let this be the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you. Don't let your Mattagash neighbors ruin your life with gossip. Don't you let them fine Christian souls, the ones who talk to God daily, destroy your happiness or your self-respect. And believe me when I tell you that they'll try to do it.” Mattie heard Roberta begin to cry, who knows why, over Sonny, over her grandmother giving her the house, over a shiver, maybe, a hint of all those years just lying ahead for no other reason than to be used up and thrown away. Mattie released Robbie from the hug and pushed her back at arm's length so that she could see into her eyes.

“Now go on back to the living room,” Mattie said, “and pretend you don't know where I am if someone asks.”

“Where you going?” Roberta wanted to know. She wiped her eyes and Mattie saw thin, stringy beads of mascara running beneath each lid. She remembered Sheila Bumphrey Gifford, the daughter-in-law she had never met. She hoped someone kind was with Sheila at that moment. She had seen this woman's face in the crowd. This wasn't Sonny's enemy. This was a woman who had loved him once, maybe still loved him. How could she
not
love him? He had never raised a hand to anyone in his life, male or female. “I'm not a fighter,” Sonny liked to say. “I'm a lover.” Granted, you could grow tired of Sonny Gifford, Mattie supposed, if you were a woman with children, a woman with a future plan. You could move on from him, even move away from him. But you couldn't hate him. Only his sisters seemed capable of that.

“I'm going to find my best friend,” Mattie answered. “I'm camping out for a spell. I'll be back when the smoke clears.”

“But what about Uncle Sonny?” Roberta wanted to know. Mattie stopped her questions.
What
about
the
funeral? How can you not be there? You're his mother.

“Henry Plunkett has got everything under control,” Mattie answered. “I couldn't leave my son's funeral in better hands. Now, as for showing up at the grave, even your uncle Sonny would skip that scene if he could. You can represent me. Kind of like them tag team wrestlers your uncle Sonny loved to watch. You tell him I said good-bye.”

Mattie went out the back door and let it close softly. On her front lawn she paused to give her best regards to St. Francis. She had thought to grab her little flashlight from off the counter and now she took it out of her sweater pocket and turned it on. St. Francis glared at her with blank, empty eyes indented in cement.

“Don't take any wooden nickels,” Mattie told him. She threw the beam of light before her, then followed it carefully. No need to fall into the ditch that stretched in front of her house, maybe break an ankle. Once on the road, she flicked the light off. Dark was coming on steadily and overhead the stars were glittering and bright. Gracie had told her once that Greek shepherds used to believe that the stars were little lamps. And some folks even thought they were shiny nails holding up the sky. And Gracie said that natives down in Central America believed that their heroes were up in heaven smoking cigars, and that the stars were the glowing tips. Like Henry Plunkett's earthly cigarettes. Mattie liked that story. She looked up at the sparkles hanging in the sky above her and wondered if Lester Gifford was smoking one of his favorite cigars. Maybe he was lighting up a second one and passing it to his boy, Sonny. Maybe the two of them could have that father-son talk they never found the time to have on earth. Maybe now there could be some peace between them.

Since Elmer's house lay west of hers, Mattie felt as if she were following Venus to get to him, the way those wise men followed their radiant star. She could hear the summer peepers creating a ruckus in the swamp, down in that marshy place where Sonny used to pick his irises. Jupiter rose above her left shoulder as she walked—dear Henry and his special knowledge of things—and somewhere up there, not too far away, the nighthawks were circling. Mattie could hear their soft, excited buzz. Just ahead, she saw Lola Monihan's house rise up out of the night like a mighty spaceship. The
Enterprise
, maybe. All the lights were blazing. Lola was most likely at the helm of her ship, answering the phone, sifting through the latest news about Sonny, keeping a sure eye on the television set. Mattie wondered what her own girls were doing just then and if they had discovered her gone. She smiled at the notion. “Don't you let them Pac Monster sisters of mine come down on you like cops on a doughnut, Mama,” Sonny had said. Well, she wouldn't. Sonny would be proud.

She clutched the suitcase close to her side as she reached Elmer's mailbox. In the early starlight, she could see that the box was open. She closed the creaking door and heard Skunk bark a response from inside the house. Elmer's kitchen light was on, a soft yellow square of warmth, like a patch of homemade quilt. Yellow instead of lavender. Mattie could see him there, at the kitchen table, his reading glasses perched on his nose. She would tell him quickly:
Pack
your
things
for
a
week. Pack Skunk some dog food. We'll take the honeymoon first and worry about the wedding later. I'm gonna teach you some stuff Henry taught me. I'm gonna point to the brightest star you ever laid your eyes on and say, “No, that's Jupiter, Elmer. And that there's Venus. They're planets, but ain't they pretty as any star you ever saw?”