Beaming Sonny Home Page 8

  Mattie went into the kitchen, caught up the teakettle on her way to the sink, and filled it with water. She didn’t want tea, but her geraniums needed a drink and a teakettle’s spout was long and perfect for watering plants.

  “Besides,” Mattie heard Gracie saying to Marlene, “Richard only visits real fat women. I just got this ten to lose.”

  “Wait until ‘Wipe Out’ starts playing,” Marlene warned. “It’ll make that ten pounds feel like forty.”

  Mattie let the geraniums drink until water appeared above the soil, as well as in the little catch dish that sat beneath the pot.

  “Good heavens,” said Mattie. “I’m gonna drown you poor things if I don’t start concentrating on what I’m doing.” But she could still hear Sonny’s voice, that soft curl in every word he chose, the whisper of a large laugh just lying between the lines. What was gonna happen to her son?

  At six o’clock, Donna, the reporter, opened the Channel 4 News with a teaser promising that even newer developments were ahead with Sonny Gifford, who was still holed up in his estranged wife’s house trailer. Mattie noticed that there were more cameras than ever milling about the street in front of the trailer, more people trying to look important.

  “What does estranged mean?” Mattie asked any of her daughters.

  “It means she can’t wait to get legally divorced,” Gracie explained. “Believe me, I been there.”

  “Separated, Mama,” said Marlene. “It means they’re separated but ain’t divorced yet.” Mattie nodded. It was all so strange these days, anyway. Marriages weren’t taken any more seriously than signing up for a night class, or putting a winter coat on layaway. It wasn’t long term, like the old days. In the old days, marriages were like wars. You were in for the duration. But what could Mattie say against the new way? She knew damn well that if someone had waved a divorce in her face back when she first caught Lester Gifford in bed with another woman, a Mattagash woman at that, she’d have snapped that paper up in a minute. But no one got a divorce back then. A few people chose not to live together, but they stayed married. What was a Mattagash woman going to do with a bevy of little children, little ducks, tagging along behind her and no way to feed them? There weren’t any jobs in Mattagash back then for women. There weren’t any now. Now Gracie was taking all those courses at the college in order to construct a new life for herself, and Charlie was paying her alimony. Mattie wondered what Lester would’ve said about alimony. If she hadn’t had that falling-out with Martha, she could go on over some afternoon and ask Lester that very question through the miracles of the Ouija board. WOULD YOU HAVE GIVEN ME ALIMONY MONEY IF I’D DIVORCED YOU? YOO-HOO, LESTER GIFFORD? YOU THERE, OR DO YOU HAVE SOME LITTLE ANGEL PRESSED TO HER BACK ON A SOFT CLOUD SOMEWHERE, HER LITTLE WINGS PRIED WIDE OPEN?

  After the commercial, Donna was back, her eyes bright with excitement as she recounted the events of the past twenty-seven hours: John Lennon’s appearance on Sonny’s TV, the wine cooler commercial, the line of people at the bank, the controversy over whether Sonny carried a real gun, the dog, the whole shebang.

  “And now, Dan,” Donna said, staring the camera straight in its eye, “there have been more developments in this very unusual story.” Mattie kept her attention on the trailer, which sat above Donna’s right shoulder. A dozen or so policemen stood guard along a yellow plastic ribbon, which was now encircling the trailer’s front lawn, and that’s where the newspeople had been herded, like obedient cattle. “According to Police Chief Melon,” Donna continued, “Mr. Gifford has demanded that he speak directly to the press.” Dan’s voice flooded the picture now, as though he were a kindly god.

  “And is Chief Melon willing to go along with this, Donna?” he asked. Donna’s face scrunched up with deep concern.

  “Dan, we believe that the chief of police is willing to do just about anything to see this unfortunate incident resolved peacefully, with both women safely out of the trailer and Mr. Gifford taken into custody and then perhaps held for psychiatric observation.”

  “It’s about time,” said Rita.

  “Why are the police letting him talk to newspeople, anyway?” Marlene wanted to know. Mattie smiled. She’d bet a million dollars if she had it that Sonny had refused to talk privately over the phone and had insisted on some attention being paid to him. How else could he let Sheila Bumphrey Gifford know his heart was breaking? How else could he let her see his handsome face again, let her remember just what she was giving up?

  Now a policeman was lifting the ribbon so that Donna and what appeared to be a few other reporters could duck under. Donna began a brisk walk across the lawn, headed toward the trailer, her cameraman trailing behind like a well-trained dog. Mattie could see that four of the policemen had positioned themselves about the tiny front porch. Another seemed to be talking to the window of the trailer’s door. His hands were motioning, his head occasionally nodding. He turned to face the crowd.

  “Don’t go up on the porch,” Mattie could hear the policeman warning the press.

  “No one but press is allowed in the yard,” a booming voice declared from offscreen. Donna was saying something about family members having come by to ask about their loved ones. Now, with a gesture of importance, she pushed her way into the group of other reporters. The cameraman followed as the camera noted the three small steps leading up to the front porch. Then the eye of the camera zoomed in and waited on the screened window of the door. The policeman made a gesture.

  “It looks as if we’re ready to begin, Dan,” Donna said. Microphones surged upward in the air. Mattie counted seven. And then she saw Sonny’s perfect silhouette on the other side of his estranged wife’s screen door. He looked taller than she remembered him, but that might have been the netting of the screen working up a trick, or a shadow that changed the outlook of things. All that really mattered was that he seemed okay, talking above the pain of his broken heart.

  “I’m gonna lift this screen,” Sonny was saying, “but you cops make sure you don’t try something you saw on TV last week. Remember I got a gun in here and it’s pointed at two innocent females.” The screen slid up out of sight, like an eyelid disappearing, and then there was Sonny’s handsome face as he squinted out into the eye of the camera. He was prettier than any movie star Mattie had ever seen, and that included Gary Cooper, whose picture she had kept over her teenaged bed until she married Lester.

  “He’s got himself a nice tan,” said Mattie. “Funny how you girls always burned but Sonny could get himself a tan while standing on his head.”

  “He’s stupid enough to stand on his head to get a tan,” said Rita. “I’ll give him that much.”

  “He probably worked on his pickup one afternoon when the sun was out,” Gracie said. “I doubt he’s been working in construction, or a real job.”

  “Mr. Gifford,” Donna’s voice said from offscreen. Her hand was still in the picture, holding her microphone. Mattie could see other microphones appearing near Donna’s own. “Can you give us a statement as to why you’ve taken these two women hostage?” Sonny thought a bit about this. Donna waited.

  “The way I see it,” Sonny said, and then paused. Rita and Gracie sighed in chorus, but Mattie smiled. Even as a child, Sonny had had a flair about him, a penchant for a little drama. He knew how to work an audience, and that’s why he’d always had so many girlfriends. And now the whole state of Maine was waiting to hear his answer. Maybe even other parts of America, too, judging from the number of microphones. Sonny cleared his throat again and then spat a little jet of spittle out through his teeth, spat it down toward his feet. It disappeared like a tiny comet trailing foam.

  “Gross,” said Rita.

  “Billy Plunkett taught him how to do that,” Gracie said. “One day on the school bus. There was spit all over the floor of the bus. Patty Fennelson slipped and fell.”

  “Clam up!” said Mattie.

  “The way I
see it,” Sonny was saying now. A thick silence engulfed Mattie and the girls. They bent forward, perching birds, and waited. “The way I see it,” Sonny said again, “this is one small step for Sonny Gifford, but one giant leap for welfare recipients everywhere.”

  “What is it that you expect the city of Bangor to do for welfare recipients, Mr. Gifford?” Donna asked. “Or is this a statement which you’re directing all the way toward Washington, to President Clinton, perhaps?” Sonny seemed to like the notion of that. He smiled broadly.

  “I can’t believe they’re interviewing him like he’s important,” said Rita, “instead of the petty criminal he in fact is.” Mattie kicked the toe of Rita’s sneaker, a command to silence.

  “I ain’t quite had the opportunity to figure out what Mr. Lennon was trying to tell me,” Sonny answered truthfully. This was another fine point which Mattie had always appreciated in her boy. There might be a side to Sonny that would eat the Lord’s Last Supper, thinking it was cooked for him, and then ask Jesus for a doggie bag. But, regardless of what his sisters declared, the boy hardly ever lied. “When I figure it all out, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’ll be needing some supplies sent in, not to mention a few cans of dog food. And this may be a bit delicate for some of your listeners,” Sonny added, “but one of my guests—and I won’t say which one so as not to embarrass her publicly—will need a box of them little tampon things.” Someone tittered loudly behind Donna’s shoulder, and Mattie realized it must have been the cameraman. Donna turned and looked sharply beyond the camera, a quick warning.

  “Mr. Gifford, do you have any intention at this time of releasing your hostages?” a man standing next to Donna asked. He had the air about him of a big-city television reporter. Bigger-city-than-Bangor television. Sonny ignored the man’s question. But that was Sonny. He’d never bow to social pressure.

  “Mr. Gifford?” another reporter called out. This was a woman with a long, narrow face and curly brown hair. “Mr. Gifford, if you had to describe yourself in one sentence, what would it be?” Sonny cocked his head, his profile tipping on its side just a bit.

  “You might say that I’m Mattagash, Maine’s biggest underachiever,” Sonny announced.

  “He said a mouthful there,” said Marlene. Sometimes Mattie wished Sonny wouldn’t be so darn friendly with strangers, especially if they had microphones in their hands.

  “I was born on the Ides of March,” Sonny continued. “You ever heard of them?”

  “I thought he was born March fifteenth,” said Rita.

  More questions were thrown at Sonny, words all welded together in the excitement of competition. He finally held up his hand, silencing them.

  “Now,” said Sonny, “if you’ll excuse me for interrupting your questions, someone wants to say hello.” He disappeared from the window. Reporters scrambled about near the porch. Microphones bounced around in the air. Photographers pushed into the picture suddenly and onto Mattie’s television screen.

  “He’s gonna let one of the hostages say hello,” Gracie whispered. Mattie could almost feel the waves of tension washing all the way up from Bangor, drowning everyone who sat watching in Mattagash, Maine. She imagined her neighbors, up and down the twisty Mattagash road that followed the twisty Mattagash River, could hear their intakes of breath being sucked up into their chests, could imagine their eyes burning holes into a few dozen television screens. Sonny was back at the window with the poodle in his arms.

  “Oh God!” shouted Rita. “We’ll be the laughingstock of town!” Sonny looked into the camera and smiled his Sonny smile.

  “This here is one of them little dogs of the French persuasion,” Sonny said. He held the thin-nosed poodle up for all to see. The poodle glared out at the cameras and the people scattering about. Sonny raised its right paw and waved at the world. Mattie watched as the poodle turned toward Sonny and began licking, struggling to get closer to his face. She’d said it a million times, and she’d say it again: When it came to old people, little kids, and animals, no one was better than Sonny Gifford. It was that in-between group that always gave Sonny trouble.

  “I got news for you, sister mine,” said Gracie. “We’re already the laughingstock.”

  “And could you send in one of them rawhide chew bones?” Sonny was asking. “The small size?”

  7

  Why ain’t you doing a puzzle tonight, Mama?” Marlene asked. Rita and Gracie had driven home in their separate automobiles to take inventory of what was happening in their own houses. Rita had suspected for some time now that Willard was smoking pot, ever since he died his hair orange. “It just don’t strike me as the act of a straight-thinking child,” Rita had noted. Of course, ever since Willard had been a baby, he had never struck Mattie as a “straight-thinking child.” But that was Rita’s business. Mattie had her own motherly woes. So did Gracie, who was convinced that Roberta was sneaking her fiancé up to her bedroom for a little premarital romp.

  “Not in my house,” Gracie had said of the romp.

  “Not in my lifetime,” Rita had said of Willard’s suspected marijuana use.

  Then, like two policemen, they had climbed into their vehicles and barreled toward their possible emergencies. Mattie wished they’d just stay in those houses, where they belonged. She wasn’t an invalid, for crying out loud. She wasn’t even old when you thought about it. She was sixty-six. The world was full of people that age and older who were running countries, heading up major corporations, inventing things. There was a grandmother in her late fifties who had even given birth. Mattie wasn’t old by many standards, but she felt old. She sometimes woke up in the core of the night to troubling tickles, little aches roaming up and down her legs, her varicose veins pumping away. And the skin of her neck! When did it happen that she leaned in close to the mirror one morning a couple of years ago and was absolutely staggered to find a whole parcel of fat dangling from beneath her chin, like the crop of a chicken. She hated to touch it when she washed her neck, all those mornings after Lester had died. It was as if he was laughing at her somewhere, watching that bag quiver beneath her chin and knowing full well he was the one who gave it to her. Knowing full well that bag was loaded with every lie he’d ever told her, every dream she’d ever left behind, back in her youth, back in those high-heeled shoes she’d worn to her wedding and then never again. Married life with Lester had hurt the minute she walked toward it that Augusty day in church, hurt bodily. And she had had a chance. The minister had said so. If anyone has any cause that these two people not be joined together, say so now. But only the corns on her feet cried out, and all the rest, all those traitors, had stood with dead tongues in their mouths and said nothing.

  Marlene had turned the television set off, finally, and now Mattie sat in her rocker, rereading that day’s paper.

  “Has Henry called you?” Marlene asked. She had set up the ironing board in the kitchen, in order to iron a blouse, and now the room was filled with the fresh smell of pressed cotton. The starchy aroma reminded Mattie of all those shirts, the blue cotton shirts Lester had loved dearly in his lifetime, blue that showcased his flirty brown eyes. She wondered how many of them she had smoothed and steamed to perfection. She wondered how many of them Martha Monihan had unbuttoned.

  “Why would Henry call me?” Mattie asked. “He’s married to Rita.” She was studying the photograph of the house trailer in the Bangor Daily News: Then she reread the paragraph describing Sonny’s personality, his general outlook and philosophy on life, given by the neighbor. “He’s a one-man party in full swing,” the neighbor said. Mattie supposed that until they tracked down Sonny’s estranged wife, this Sheila Bumphrey woman, no one in Bangor would be able to offer reporters much more information on Sonny than that he was a “one-man party” originally from Mattagash, Maine. And maybe even Sheila didn’t know much more than that, depending on what Sonny had told her. Mattie could say one thing for most Mattagashers: They
might be spiteful and mean among themselves, but they rarely turned in one of their own, especially if it was to some government group. Mattagashers were suspicious of the government and any organization that reeked of union. Newspaper and television people were no exception. Their pushiness put them on the outs immediately. Sonny’s identity was safe for the moment.

  “I ask because Henry called here today while you were out walking,” said Marlene. “He wants to talk to you about something.”

  Mattie folded the paper so as not to crease the picture and laid it on the floor beside her rocker. She would wait until the girls weren’t looking and she’d take her scissors and snip out the article on Sonny.

  “Henry needs to find the blueprints to his life,” said Mattie. “That’s all that’s wrong with him.”

  “Henry Plunkett’s problem,” said Marlene, “is that he can never decide which side of the road he wants to drive on, his side or Rita’s side. He’s been straddling the white line since they got married.” She flipped over the blouse she was ironing so that she could press the back of the collar. Steam hissed out of the holes in the iron. “The government ought to give him a pension for his years of service to Rita.”

  “Don’t be putting your sister down when she’s not here to defend herself,” said Mattie. “And thank God that she ain’t. All I need tonight, after reading about Sonny in the paper, is another fight between you two.”

  “Rita says Henry worries too much about money,” said Marlene.

  “And Henry says Rita worries too much about Willard,” said Mattie. “So there you have it.”

  “I can’t say I blame her for worrying about Willard,” Marlene said. “Everybody in town knows that Willard’s book of Green Stamps is only half-full.”

  “Raising a child ain’t easy, Marlene,” said Mattie. “You should know that, what with the trouble you’ve had with Steven.” Marlene started to protest, but Mattie held up a hand. “I know, I know,” said Mattie. “You say that teacher had no business leaving the keys in her car in the first place. I heard it a million times. But what it all boils down to is the same thing. It wasn’t easy being a mother years ago, and now it’s worse. Now we got things like drugs and green hair dye out there on the market.”