Beaming Sonny Home Read online

  “What’s the clincher?” Mattie asked. She opened her eyeglasses case and took out her reading glasses, and now they rode low on the bridge of her nose. Rita was at the wall phone, her finger running down Mattie’s cardboard sheet of frequently called numbers.

  “He says we can’t afford two car payments,” said Rita, “and that the Buick goes. He’s at home making up a ‘For Sale’ sign now.”

  “You don’t need two automobiles,” said Mattie. She put her finger on a brownish piece that was hiding among the blue pieces, scooted it back into the right pile, where it belonged, the earth of the Holy Land.

  “You always take his side on everything,” said Rita. “I suppose if Henry come and told you he wanted to move to Caribou and sell life insurance, you’d tell him it was a good idea?” She had found the number she wanted and now she was punching out the digits angrily.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with Henry selling life insurance in Caribou,” said Mattie. She fitted a piece of blue flower into its rightful spot. She still couldn’t find the darn eyeball. “Henry’d look good in a suit, carrying a big shiny briefcase full of important papers. I can see him now.”

  “Henry couldn’t sell whores in a lumber camp,” said Rita. “Pauline? Pauline, it’s Rita. I hope I didn’t wake you up, but I’m all out of blush and eye shadow and I need to place an order pronto.” Marlene and Gracie came out of the bathroom looking like they’d had a flour fight.

  “You’re almost out of cold cream, Mama,” Marlene announced. Her two blue eyes peered from her white face like glassy buttons. Jesus should be so lucky.

  “And order me a tube of lipstick, something red,” Rita said into the phone. She plunked the receiver back onto the cradle. “That’ll show him,” she said. Mattie could feel Gracie peering over her shoulder at the puzzle pieces.

  “That looks like the piece of shawl that’s missing,” said Gracie, and pointed a fingernail at a bright red chunk of puzzle.

  “If I want help, I’ll ask for it,” Mattie said calmly. “I ain’t color-blind.” She studied the blue pile from over the tops of her glasses, the heap of potential flowers.

  “I suppose we should stay up for the eleven o’clock news,” Marlene said, “in case our crazy brother has something new to say.”

  “I’m gonna look cute rattling around in that damn pickup,” said Rita.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Gracie asked.

  “Never mind,” said Rita. Now Marlene’s white face was peering over Mattie’s shoulder at the puzzle pieces. Would they ever go home, back to where they belonged?

  “Remember the Christmas we worked nonstop to put that picture of the Last Supper together?” Rita asked. “We were gonna glue it and then give it to Mama to hang on the wall?” Mattie pretended not to hear, but Marlene and Gracie nodded.

  “And all we needed was one piece to finish it,” Marlene added, “the brown piece that was Judas’s money bag.” Mattie remembered the incident painfully. That had been the very day she’d scooted the whole puzzle into her woodstove after the argument over Judas’s religious leanings took place.

  “Speaking of money bags,” said Mattie, “did I hear you just place an Avon order, Rita? I thought you told me Henry said to tighten your belt.” But it didn’t work. Rita was off and running, Sonny’s shortcomings too enjoyable a feast for her to walk away from the table.

  “We thought we’d lost that piece for good,” Rita plowed on.

  “What’s Henry gonna say about another makeup order?” Mattie wondered aloud.

  “We vacuumed the whole house and then I even emptied them damn vacuum bags and searched through all that mess,” said Marlene.

  “Remember how we thought the dog had chewed it up?” Rita wanted to know. Her sisters nodded. “And the whole time we searched for it, Sonny was sitting at the kitchen table watching us, drinking a can of beer and watching.”

  “Look, there’s the piece of shawl I been hunting for,” Mattie announced. “Now if I could just find that blasted eyeball.”

  “Sonny had that piece in his pocket,” Rita said. “It wasn’t until Mama did the wash the next Monday and was cleaning his pockets that it fell out on the floor. Do you remember that, Mama?” Mattie was still staring at the puzzle, pretending to be unconcerned, all during this current persecution of Sonny, but she was listening to every word. If only Gracie hadn’t been visiting that day, sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of pop and gossiping up the whole town, Mattie would’ve been the only one to lay eyes on that brown piece of puzzle. But it seemed as though the minute Mattie got her old wringer washer out into the middle of the floor, one of the daughters dropped off a kid, or came to borrow a stick of margarine, or stopped by to look under the cake plate lid. “What do you suppose this is?” Mattie had asked. She had wanted to get Gracie’s mind off Sonny that day, too, because Gracie had started in again on why did Mattie still do Sonny’s wash. “But Sonny’s a man,” Mattie had said. “What’s a man know about bleach?” Gracie had shaken her head. “Oh, but they can learn, Mama. We’re finding out all kinds of things about men these days, things they been pretending they can’t do for years. It’s all out of the bag now. Let Sonny do his own wash.” This was a few years before Gracie would come to take those women’s studies courses and learn that men weren’t good for anything, much less doing the laundry. Women like Gracie had been gearing up for such nonsense all their lives. So Mattie had gone ahead and pulled the pockets of Sonny’s jeans inside out to check for quarters, or those matchbook covers he was forever writing a girl’s phone number on, and that’s when the piece of puzzle fell out. “What’s this here?” Mattie had asked, hoping Gracie would forget all about men trying to get the stains out of their Fruit of the Looms. Hoping Gracie would just shut up and leave Mattie to her wash. Mattie had held up the little brown piece of puzzle, only to hear Gracie gasp. Mattie had thought about that day over the years, thought about how Sonny chose that money bag piece, chose the thirteen pieces of silver to carry around in his own pocket. It didn’t hurt a person to want to be rich, did it? When a child is poor and has to live in a country with people who are rich, what does it do to that child’s mind? Those were the kinds of questions Mattie wished those women’s magazines Gracie loved would ask, followed by the answers, instead of whether or not men were capable of using Downy fabric softener in an intelligent manner. And yet what had she done? She had held that piece of puzzle up, under the glare of the kitchen light, under the glare of Gracie’s pointed little nose. And, Judas that she was, she had betrayed Sonny in doing so, had sold him for a few seconds of peace and quiet.

  “Well, I gotta go put on my pj’s and cold cream,” said Rita. She plunked her pop bottle down on the counter, grabbed her purse off the kitchen table, and disappeared into the little bathroom.

  “Why is she gonna have to ride around in the pickup?” Marlene asked.

  Mattie shrugged. “Beats me,” she said.

  “That looks like a piece of his sandal,” said Marlene, pointing at the brown pile.

  “And I think that might be the yellow center in that flower in the corner,” said Gracie.

  Mattie stood and began replacing the piles into their plastic bowls.

  “Well, if you didn’t want any help, why didn’t you say so?” Marlene asked. “Honestly, Mama, you can be so childish in your old age.”

  Mattie piled the bowls onto the puzzle itself and lifted the sheet. She carried it gently to the sofa, knelt on the floor, and then scooted it underneath and out of sight.

  “I don’t expect to come into this house one day soon and find that some elf has pulled this puzzle out to work on it,” she said. She put her glasses back in their case on the kitchen table and went down the hall to her bedroom.

  “Have you ever?” she heard Gracie ask Marlene.

  ***

  The eleven o’clock news had carried just a recap of So
nny Gifford’s hostage-taking adventures. The girls were disappointed that nothing new had been offered concerning their brother’s shenanigans, no Sheila Bumphrey Gifford to turn up and deliver her own part in the movie. After they went to bed, Mattie crept back out to the living room and turned the television on, put the sound down. She would be able to see the set if she left her bedroom door open. Turning if off, leaving it black and quiet, seemed almost like abandoning Sonny in some way. And he had always been so afraid of the dark. Now, with the television’s round eye alert and watching, Mattie would be closer to her boy. She had said her prayers and then stood in the darkness at her window, looking out at the starry Mattagash night. This was a habit she had picked up during those years of Lester’s cheating, when only the sounds of the sleeping children and the ticking clock had kept her company. By the time she no longer cared where Lester Gifford might be, or who he might be with, Mattie had acquired the habit of spying on the quiet of the night. It was at moments like this that she could almost hear her neighbors, asleep and dreaming in their beds, their dogs snoring on all those front porches, their kids twitching with little nightmares. It was as if Mattagash itself was a big old clock that had run down for the night, its heartbeat still and steady until someone got up early and wound it all up again by being the first one to start a car, or a pickup, or a skidder. And then the mechanism of the clock would commence again, all whirring and ticking and tocking, folks eating and cutting wood and washing dishes and reading newspapers. Only at night, when the clock was still, could Mattie think of her neighbors with a kind of sisterly love. Even knowing that Lester was out there, dozing in one of those beds, his sleeping mouth popping little Os as he slept, even that knowledge didn’t bother her after a time. She heard a dog take up a rapid series of barks and wondered if it was Skunk, wondered where the hell Elmer Fennelson had been. She couldn’t remember a time in her whole life when she hadn’t seen Elmer for three days. And this was a time when she needed him most. Sonny and Elmer had been great friends down through the years. Elmer had been much kinder to Sonny than his own father had.

  Mattie couldn’t sleep. She tried first on her stomach, then her left side, then her right. The little aches were back again in her calves, tiny fingers of electricity. Maybe she should take up walking, like Gracie was pestering her to do. Maybe she should have her varicose veins cut and pulled out, as if they were old shoelaces you could throw away. It wasn’t a pretty thought, but Dorrie Fennelson had had it done. Dorrie even went through every detail of the operation for anyone who cared to listen. “They cut you here and here,” Dorrie liked to say, her dress pulled up and her meaty calf exposed to her audience. “And then they just pull them suckers out.”

  Mattie finally tossed off her comforter, for it felt too weighty on her skin. She lay on her back and pulled the top sheet up to her chin. And that’s when the memories started to arrive, those thoughts about Sonny’s upbringing that had plagued her for years. Was there such a thing as loving a child too much? Could too much affection kill or cripple a boy? Could too much devotion be a dangerous weight for a young man to carry? His sisters said he was lazy and good for nothing, but every time Mattie saw that Atlas person in those muscle-building ads, all she could say was, “There’s Sonny. Holding up the whole weight of the world and no one realizing it.” Memories floated down from off her bedroom ceiling, her personal thoughts that had wafted up there over the years and then bounced like balloons unable to get free. It was while lying on her back in bed, over all those lonesome years, that Mattie did her best thinking. Thoughts of Sonny. How to get Sonny out of trouble, how to set a fire beneath Sonny’s pants—which is what Lester said he needed—without burning the boy in the process. Now she remembered a time when Sonny’s fifth-grade teacher called her in for a little chat. At least that’s what the teacher had labeled it. “I’m worried about Sonny,” she told Mattie. “Can you come in for a little chat?” The little chat had gone on for well over an hour, with the teacher finally digging out pictures Sonny had drawn. “He mostly draws lighthouses on lonely islands, or silos standing in the middle of fields, beneath zigzags of lightning,” the teacher said, showing Mattie one lighthouse after another, putting silo after silo into her hand. In most of the lighthouse pictures, shark fins cut through the dark waters. “Ain’t that something,” Mattie noted with pride. “Sonny ain’t ever been to the ocean. I bet the others kids are drawing pictures of the river. Sonny’s got an imagination that won’t stop. Now, where’d he ever see a silo?” But the teacher didn’t view it that way. “It worries me,” she said. “And when we draw pictures of our family, this is what Sonny draws.” Then she handed Mattie a picture of a tiny house with five people all piled into one room. Well, that was Lester’s architectural spruce goose all right. In another room was a small stick character, all by itself. Above its head was written Sonny, with an arrow running down to point Sonny out. He’d even drawn in his cowlick. Sonny hiding out in one small room by himself. Well, that made good sense to Mattie. That’s all she ever wanted in that crazy shoe of a house, too, a little peace and relaxation. “I’d say this is a picture of some good logic,” Mattie said, handing the drawing back to the teacher. “Me and Sonny are of like minds. We both appreciate time alone to think.” And that had ended the little chat. Now Mattie thought about that drawing of Sonny’s family, with Sonny holed up alone in one room of the house, barricaded. And it seemed so prophetic to her now that she felt hysteria rise up in her chest and flood her very ability to breathe. Sonny barricaded against the world. It was true. It seemed that Sonny, for all of his life, had been pedaling a bicycle that took him nowhere, like the invisible bike Gracie pedaled during her exercises. Sonny’s legs might have been turning, but his body didn’t seem to ever get somewhere important. Or if it did, he always managed to turn a corner just before the final destination, like the time he almost got a job with Maine Parks and Recreation, like the time he almost signed up for continuing education classes, like the time he almost went into business with his cousin Milton, who now owned Gifford Auto Repair and was doing very well for himself. No, there was something in Sonny Gifford’s cards that made the ace of hearts jump out of a royal straight flush so that the ace of clubs could jump in.

  And then, with balloons coming off the ceiling everywhere she turned her eyes, Mattie remembered that cold winter when Sonny had painted an entire scene that Jack Frost had left behind on the windowpane. He had taken his watercolors and turned Jack’s white trees into beautiful sweeping green ones, above brown-bark trunks. Right on the window glass, those flowery swirls of frost had become red and yellow and blue blossoms, magnificent things in the heart of a winter’s day. And then Sonny had bordered the whole scene with a fernlike border of brilliant green. “Come see what Sonny done!” Rita had burst into the kitchen and announced. Mattie had opened the door to Sonny’s bedroom and just stood there in her slippers and stared, so stunned was she to see this magnificent scene. She should have punished him, there was no doubt about that, because he knew better than to paint on any of the walls or furniture. She never did tell him to leave the windows alone, however, and she retained this thought as she stood with her mouth open and let her eye trace the swooping lines, drink in all the mischievous color. She had had no idea, none whatsoever, that Sonny Gifford was capable of such artwork. And her heart swelled with pride to learn of it now. “You ain’t mad, Mama?” he had asked. “No, I ain’t mad, son,” Mattie told him. That was when Rita and Marlene and Gracie flew into the room, like little snowbirds, and stopped dead in their tracks before Sonny’s masterpiece. “Ain’t you gonna punish him, Mama?” Those were the very words out of Rita’s and Marlene’s mouths, at the same time, little stereos, as they stood there breathless and winded. “You gonna punish him good, Mama?” they wanted to know. Mattie had simply pushed them out of the bedroom, had closed the door on Sonny and his work. God and all his angels knew that when the sun hit that masterpiece, it was gonna be the most colored mess of shit you eve
r laid your eyes on, but for a while, for an hour or two, she and Sonny could look at it in peace, could imagine it was a place where they both lived, happily, maybe even ever after. “If we painted on the window,” Rita had noted, her lip flopping downward like the tongue of a shoe, “you’d have a fit.” Mattie could merely nod. Maybe she had never been in a fancy museum in her life, but she knew art when she saw it. And Sonny had created art. If the girls had painted on the window, it would’ve been garbage. When had the battle started between Mattie and the girls, with Sonny caught in the middle? Between her and Lester, with Sonny caught in that same damaging hub? When did they trap themselves into their jobs of attacking Sonny? When did she, his mother, take up her career of defending him? Because now it had come to seem to Mattie that they were all hostages, she and her daughters, Lester, all of Mattagash. They were hostage to one way of life or another, one crazy notion or another that they’d each hung on to all their lives. It was the individual ear of corn dangling in front of each of them that led them onward, led them blindly up the path to the Protestant graveyard on the hill overlooking the Mattagash River, or onward to the Catholic graveyard down by that clutch of pine trees near the old meadow. The girls were hostage to hating Sonny, mindful of his every mistake. And Mattie was hostage to loving him, despite the wildest blunder he ever made. Keeping this thought in mind, Sonny suddenly seemed to be the only one who was free, the one who never opened the door expected of him, too interested was he in the shiny knobs on all those other doors. And here Mattie was, holed up in her own little house, holed up while her daughters kept on trying to brainwash her about Sonny, changing her mind almost, talking talking talking at her until there was no place left in her head to think.