Beaming Sonny Home Read online

  “Did Sonny tell you he’d bought a house trailer?” Rita asked. She was leaning forward on the hassock, peering at the TV. Mattie knew that Rita hated to learn interesting gossip from other folks, much less Channel 4.

  “It’s a pretty color, ain’t it?” Marlene conceded.

  “He always did have good taste,” Mattie noted.

  “Don’t you two have ears?” Gracie asked. “That house trailer belongs to his estranged wife. He ain’t got a bit of business in there. That’s just the way Charlie acted when me and him got divorced, turning up whenever he pleased. Charlie and Sonny have one thing in common, if you ask me. Their thinking mechanism is dangling between their legs.”

  “Did they say the names of the hostages yet?” Rita asked. She was putting on her shoes, lacing them up.

  “If Wolf Blitzer would shut up for a minute,” said Mattie, nodding at Gracie, “maybe I could hear the television well enough to answer that.” Donna was now saying that names of the hostages would be released when their families had been notified. The police chief was attempting another telephone conversation with Sonny. And it was hoped by the reporters that more background information would be unearthed on Sonny Gifford, the man. All that was known currently was what neighbors at the trailer park had to offer. With a promise to keep viewers updated as to the current hostage situation in Bangor, the station then went to a story about sewer leakage in Portland.

  Mattie felt drained, as though someone had stood her on her head and poured her entire heart and soul out of her body. This was big, this newest adventure of Sonny’s. And he’d be on his own this time.

  “Well, it’s just a matter of time now,” said Rita, “and the jig will be up. Wait till they find out we’re his family.”

  “You gonna start giving press conferences?” Marlene asked. “You been practicing all your life.”

  Rita stopped lacing and stared at her sister. “I hate to say this,” she said anyway, “but there’s a room in hell with your name on it.” She picked up her purse, slung the strap over her shoulder. Her leather jacket squeaked when she moved.

  “Nice talk for a member of the Born Again Club,” said Marlene.

  “A real hot room,” Rita added. “A regular sauna.” Mattie waved her hands before her face, the way she always did when her children were acting up, which they’d all been prone to do throughout their growing-up years. Although, listening to her daughters day after day, “growing-up years” hardly seemed the correct phrase. “Getting-bigger years” would be more like it.

  “We gotta drive down there tonight,” Mattie said. “We gotta let Sonny know that we’ll help him.”

  “What do you mean, ‘we’?” asked Marlene. “You got a mouse in your pocket?”

  “This’ll work out on its own, Mama,” said Rita. “There’s no need for us to turn up in Bangor and rile the waters even more. You know Sonny. He can’t keep his mind on a task for very long. He’ll be ready to come out by morning and it’ll all be over. Besides, he’s got a phone in there and he knows your number. He can call if he needs to.” Mattie thought of Pauline Plunkett, with her tired face. Pauline would drive her. Out of the goodness of her heart, Pauline would do it. But Mattie couldn’t add to Pauline’s worries.

  “Let’s go,” Gracie told Rita. “Marlene’ll come with me so you two can’t fight over religion. All I need to do is feed the cat and grab a couple things.” She stored the ankle weights on the floor near Mattie’s magazine rack.

  “And I need to see that Henry and the boys can find something for supper,” Rita said.

  “Now, don’t be dragging half the junk in your house over here,” Marlene said. “All we really need is pajamas and cold cream, and Mama’s got plenty of cold cream.” Mattie was staring at the stored ankle weights and listening to this conversation. Her name had been invoked, so it must have something to do with her. But pajamas? Cold cream?

  “I’ll just see that Henry and the boys are okay with the buttons on my new microwave,” said Rita, “and then I’ll grab my old flannel nightgown and I’ll be back in a jiffy.” She went out and slammed the door to Mattie’s house.

  “What’s this all about?” Mattie asked the two remaining daughters. Marlene was waiting at the door while Gracie pulled jeans on over the purple tights she’d worn to do her exercises.

  “We can’t leave you alone here tonight, Mama,” said Marlene. “Not with Sonny still holed up in that trailer.”

  “Yes you can,” said Mattie. She’d just been thinking how nice it would be to have a little peace and quiet before she tried to sleep, a square of silence in which she could think this Sonny thing out. Having the girls around was like holding a cup of marbles up to your ears and shaking it.

  “Now, Mama, think sensible,” said Gracie. “When they find out who Sonny is, there’s gonna be people calling us up nonstop and maybe even showing up on the front porch. How are you gonna handle that?” Mattie thought about this question.

  “I guess the same way I handled that house fire when you four kids were just babies,” Mattie told her daughter. “And I got you all out safe, in the middle of the night, mind you, and even come back inside and saved Grannie’s old Bible.”

  “This ain’t the same thing, Mama,” said Marlene, shaking her head with impatience.

  “Or the time Rita almost drowned in the river and I pulled her out and gave her mouth-to-mouth, even though I’d only seen it done on TV,” said Mattie. “I just covered her mouth with my own and saved her life. I suspect that’s the way I’ll handle this latest thing.”

  “I got to admit that was a feat,” said Marlene. “Covering Rita’s mouth would be like trying to put a piece of Scotch tape over the Grand Canyon.”

  “Now, Mama, that’s nonsense,” Gracie began, but Mattie stopped her.

  “Or the time we were supposed to evacuate during that spring flood, and Lester was God only knows where and we were here alone, up on the top floor, waiting for the water to go back down. I’d say I handled that one pretty good.” Marlene and Gracie glanced at each other, exchanged a look that indicated to Mattie that they knew everything and she knew very little.

  “But, Mama, sweetie,” said Gracie. “This is a whole lot different than a drowning, or a fire, or even a springtime flood. This is television, Mama.” Mattie waited for a few seconds before she said anything. She tried hard to think of what it all meant, what the implications were in such a mess as Sonny was now wallowing. Would she need a new dress? Maybe she should have her hair done, some of those French curls that Lola Monihan liked to pile on the top of a client’s head and lacquer with hair spray until they were as stiff as plastic flowers. Then Mattie hated herself for even thinking such vain thoughts when Sonny was in so much pain. And she knew darn well, just by the sound of Sonny’s voice, that he was in deep pain. His heart was hurting him an awful lot. Maybe he did care about children starving. He always had the kindest thoughts about old people and animals. But something else was going on inside that son of hers. Something that no doubt had to do with this Sheila woman he had married, a woman with kids from another marriage, a woman Mattie had yet to meet. “I love this one, Mama,” Sonny had told her over the phone just six months earlier, when he called to say that he and Sheila Bumphrey had gotten married. “This one’s gonna be the last one,” Sonny had predicted. He had never said such words before, and Mattie had no doubt that he meant them. She looked at Marlene, then at Gracie.

  “If you stay here,” Mattie said, “you’ll need to go out on the porch to smoke. I mean it. That’s just the way it’ll have to be.”

  “For heaven’s sake, you treat us like we’re still in high school,” Gracie protested.

  “Well,” said Mattie, “I wonder why.”

  3

  When her four children had been at home, and Lester was still alive enough to chase women, Mattie had considered the house a tiny mushroom of a thing, too cramp
ed and narrow to offer privacy. There was always the sound of someone’s conversation in the air, the smell of someone’s perfume or cologne, the sight of someone’s shoes, or stockings, or schoolbooks scattered about on floors and chairs. There was even the indelicate smell of someone’s private doings emanating from the closet-sized bathroom, mixing sometimes with the aroma of onions, or freshly baked cookies. But then, opening onto the kitchen as it did, the bathroom was only one of Lester’s many architectural flops. Even the three bedrooms, meant to sleep a family of six, seemed more likely to have been designed to hold shelves of hatboxes, or Christmas decorations, a sewing machine, maybe. But Lester Gifford had always thought small, except when it came to female breasts. After Rita and Marlene and Gracie had married, Mattie had indeed turned their bedroom into a perfect little sewing room, and she had replaced the bed—which Gracie had paid for with potato harvest money and therefore taken with her—with a pullout sofa. When the girls had lived in it, it had been a room with wall-to-wall beds, what with the bunk beds in which Marlene and Rita had slept pushing up against Gracie’s full-size. One of the girls could’ve put a twin bed in Sonny’s room and slept there, where there would have been more space, but there seemed to be something socially wrong with this notion that only teenagers could understand. But they had survived those crowded, sardine years and then, one day, they were all gone, and Mattie was left with a house full of beds. She finally called up Rita one day, since she was the oldest, and offered to give her the bunk beds for her boys. “I’m gonna have a sewing room if it kills me,” Mattie had told Rita. “Come get the beds if you want them.” This had caused a commotion with Marlene, who felt she should have the bunk beds for her boys. Mattie was just about to take Lester’s chain saw to the beds, then give one to each daughter, regardless of how lopsided they turned out, when she thought of her sister Elsa, who had so many big bedrooms and even more little grandchildren. That had shut the daughters up for good. Mattie hadn’t seen either of them for two blissful weeks. But what she would remember more sharply about the bunk bed incident were the words she had used, idly, on the phone that day to Rita: I’m gonna have a sewing room if it kills me. As it turned out, it had killed Lester instead, his heart exploding in his chest when he bent to lift up his end of the bunk beds, Mattie hoisting the other end as Elsa waited outside in her pickup truck, the tailgate down. All Mattie could do, as she stood with the phone hugging her ear, waiting for the Watertown Emergency number to answer and watching Lester’s contorted face, was to pray he would tell her he was sorry, once and for all, sorry for the cheating, sorry for the long evenings when she’d sat up alone in the dark, waiting for him to come home, the sounds of their sleeping children the only rattling noises in the tiny mushroom of a house, a house made larger by Lester’s absence. She had stood there with the phone pressed to her ear as though it were a plastic seashell, all the unhappy years of her marriage echoing again in her eardrums, washing up in the coils of her memory. But Lester had simply clutched his heart, that organ he had given to so many women in his day, given it so freely and so often that he had worn the sucker out. Mattie had had a good mind to hang up the phone. “Let one of your women call the ambulance for you and your used-up old heart,” she had wanted to say. But she could tell by the gray color seeping into Lester Gifford’s face, the slack way in which his muscles had relaxed, the little string of drool that was lacing down his chin, that his heart was making its last big move. His heart was dancing its last tango. And the house had become even larger once Lester danced on.

  Now here it was full of daughters again, all chattering and gossipy, like the grackles Mattie had watched that morning under her clothesline. The girls had returned with their arms filled with nightgowns and magazines and Marlene’s VCR, in case anyone was up for a rental movie after the eleven o’clock news. But at eleven Donna, the small, tight-faced little reporter, had nothing new to tell her viewers. The news clip was a rerun. With no adrenaline pumping now to keep them awake, the girls decided to turn in. Gracie pulled the sofa bed out in the sewing room and claimed it as her territory.

  “After all, this was my room last,” she told her sisters, “for five whole years after you two left home.” Mattie tried to imagine this. Rita and Marlene, once again sharing a room they had never learned to share as children, or as teenagers. In fact, those two had never learned to share anything. How many times in their growing-up years had they squabbled over which one would get those little onions in the bottom of the mixed pickles jar? Or which one would get those bright red cherries, scattered here and there among a can of fruit cocktail? It had gotten to the point where Mattie had to stop buying those products. And she had forbidden anyone in the family to purchase a single box of Cracker Jacks. God only knew what kind of war a real prize could create. Now Rita and Marlene would again be sharing a bed in Sonny’s old room.

  Mattie stood in the kitchen and listened to the same old tune that made up her daughters’ voices, that continual whine about “Sonny this” and “Sonny that,” a record stuck in time. She didn’t like the idea of them being in there, enemies that they were of Sonny. The only times that room had been used in years was when Sonny turned up unannounced with a pillowcase full of dirty clothes. Or when a grandchild or two thought that staying at Grandma’s house would be an adventure. Mowing the lawn once or twice, or washing a few pots and pans in the sink, had turned that adventure into hellish boredom. But Mattie didn’t care. She hadn’t fledged all four of her own chicks only to raise grandchicks. Now Rita and Marlene were camping in Sonny’s room, inspecting the posters of scantily clad women he’d pinned to the wall, the Louis L’Amour paperbacks he kept stacked on the dresser, the baseball Sonny had caught that autumny day at Fenway Park. “Hit by none other than Mr. Rico Petrocelli himself,” Sonny often noted. There were several colorful beer cans, the names of which were alien to Mattie, that had been collected by Sonny on a trip to Texas, during his first and last truck-driving experience. There were pictures of the dogs he had owned and loved in his boyhood days: Cody, his first German shepherd, and Tip-Top, one of the many German shepherds to follow, who had a round black spot on his head. And finally, some teddy bears Sonny had won at the Maine State Fair by throwing softballs at milk cans. And a deck of playing cards on which more young women sported an unspeakable amount of cleavage.

  “I can’t believe Mama keeps them posters up on the wall,” Mattie heard Marlene say. “Not to mention these cards. Just take a look at the jack of diamonds, if you dare.” Mattie was fixing herself a tall glass of vinegar and water, which was supposed to shrink her varicose veins. Ordinarily, she would have this drink with her supper, but she’d forgotten it, thanks to all the commotion on Channel 4. The spoon made loud clinking sounds as she stirred. She wanted to send a little Morse code into Sonny’s bedroom. Get the hell out of Sonny’s stuff, the spoon said. She wanted Sonny’s stuff there, and that’s why she left it just as he liked to find it.

  “My taillights hadn’t disappeared around the bend,” Rita was now saying, “before Mama had all my stuff packed into boxes. But Sonny could’ve left a live alligator in here and she’d still be feeding it hamburger.” Mattie let the spoon fall into the sink, a metallic clunk.

  “I can take a hint, Mama,” Rita shouted out. “But you know yourself it’s true. While you were packing my stuff, the tin cans were still bouncing behind my wedding car.”

  Mattie took her glass of vinegar and water and went in to find her daughters. Gracie had now joined them, standing before a poster of Cindy Crawford.

  “You’d think she’d be embarrassed,” Gracie said. “It’s bubbleheads like this who make it so hard on all us women.”

  Rita took one look at Mattie’s glass and then threw her face into a twisted frown. “How can you drink that stuff?” she asked. “You’re gonna turn into a walking douche bag.”

  “Thanks,” said Mattie. This was nice talk from a born-again Christian. B.A. is how Rita referred to it. “
It’s true I ain’t been to college like my sister Gracie,” Rita liked to tell folks, “but I got my B.A. when I got born again.” Rita’s being born the first time had almost killed Mattie, a breach birth, and only a midwife to help out. But they had both lived, mother and child, sometimes even to regret it. Mattie was just glad she didn’t have to be there with a towel on her forehead and old Mrs. Hart between her legs when Rita was born that second time. Once was enough, thank you very much.

  “This sure brings back memories,” said Marlene, “you know, when we were all home here, one big family.” She picked up the Rico Petrocelli ball and rolled it a few times across the palm of her hand.

  “Put that back,” said Mattie. “It’s very valuable.”

  “One big dysfunctional family,” Gracie added. “By the way, the jack of diamonds is nothing. Have you seen the queen of hearts? She looks just like a young, naked Doris Day.” Mattie took the playing cards from Gracie, opened Sonny’s top dresser drawer, and dropped them inside.

  “Dysfunctional family, pish posh,” said Marlene. “You been taking too damn many college courses, Gracie, you know that? Who the hell ain’t dysfunctional these days? When the Kennedys straighten out, then maybe the rest of us should worry.”

  “All I remember, personally,” said Rita, “was the sheer hell of that last spring before I finally married Henry and got out of this nuthouse for good.”

  “The spring of 1970,” said Marlene, “when Sonny was at his craziest.” Mattie had moved to Sonny’s bedroom window and lifted the curtain. How many times had she come in at night to tuck him in, only to find just the outline of him, the black outline of a boy against the window, his cowlick sticking up like a little periscope, his chin resting in his hands? “I’m looking for the Big Dipper,” is what he told her on those starry nights, all those years ago.