Beaming Sonny Home Page 9

  “Willard dyed his hair orange,” said Marlene. “It’s green because Rita’s trying to get it back to its natural color.”

  “Whatever,” said Mattie. “It ain’t easy. I got my own child troubles, so I’m one who can talk.”

  “Are you still wanting to go down to Bangor?” Marlene asked. “Not that I’ve changed my mind about taking you. I’m just curious.” Mattie already knew that. So were her two sisters curious. They were curious as cats, the three of them.

  “Sure, I still want to go,” Mattie lied. “Why wouldn’t I want to go? That’s my son in that trailer. If only I’d learned to drive a car back when I was a girl, I’d go ahead and drive on down there. But a lot of women in my generation never learned to drive. You didn’t need a driver’s license to get around a kitchen.” She began to rock, a slow, mellow rocking, and the kind of motion that puts babies to sleep.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” said Marlene. She had fitted the blouse about the back of a chair so that it wouldn’t wrinkle, and now she was ironing a cotton skirt. “And I suppose I’ll end up going to my grave filled with guilt if this Sonny thing has a bad ending, but, Mama, I can’t let them television people make fools out of all of us. Imagine what would happen if they found out Sonny’s mother was in the crowd. And they would, you know. That’s what you’d be going down there for, to talk Sonny out of that trailer. No, I’m sorry. Someone has to look out for your best interests and Sonny ain’t the one to do it.” She waved a hand in the air, as if to say she was finished with the whole thing. Mattie felt anger rising in her blood, in her face, up the backs of her arms, her neck. She had to pucker her mouth to keep it shut, to keep it from saying, “Oh yeah, Miss Know-It-All? Well, listen to this news bulletin. Listen to this ’cause it ain’t no teaser. Sonny himself called and told me not to come down or I’d be hiring someone right now to take me. Your very own brother made that decision because he felt it’d be best for me to stay put. Sonny Gifford’s calling the shots this time out of the chute, so you girls, you Pac Monsters, can just keep your noses out of it. And when it’s over, Sonny and me are gonna celebrate. My teeth are soaking as I speak.” But she said nothing. She rose, left the rocker swaying behind her, and went on out to the porch.

  “I’m sorry,” Marlene was saying above the hiss of the iron, “but that’s just how I feel about it.” Mattie let the screen door slam.

  Out on the porch a cool breeze was swaying the hanging plants. With darkness moving in swiftly, the St. Francis of Assisi birdbath was now just a silhouette on the front lawn, the way Sonny was lately, from behind his trailer window, the outline of better days. Mattie could see a rosy glow above the top of Pauline Plunkett’s garage, evidence that Pauline was burning trash in the big rusted drum that sat out there by the swing set. Or she was roasting hot dogs with the kids now that summer had surely come. How Pauline found time to do things with her children was a wonderment to Mattie, but the family always seemed to be involved in some activity during the moments when Pauline wasn’t in the cafeteria at school, or peddling Avon up and down the Mattagash road.

  Mattie was just about to inspect the hanging plants for dead leaves when she saw movement at the upper end of her porch, a hand rise in the shadowy night, and then the orange glow of a cigarette tip. Mattie put her own hand up to her mouth.

  “Who is it?” she asked. Maybe Elmer Fennelson had taken an evening walk and felt like chatting a bit. After all, Mattie hadn’t seen him in almost three days, and that wasn’t like Elmer.

  “It’s Henry,” a dull voice said, and then the cigarette tip glowed orange again. Mattie could see now that it was, indeed, her son-in-law Henry Plunkett, Pauline’s brother, sitting there on her evening porch, his back leaning against her house.

  “And here I thought those three girls would be the reason my poor old heart finally blew up,” said Mattie, “and instead I find you out here, Henry, like some kind of outhouse hound. Why ain’t you home? That’s where Rita is, believe it or not.” Henry flicked his cigarette out into the night. It rolled like an orange comet, spinning, and then disappeared beyond the birdbath.

  “I’ll expect you to find that butt as you’re leaving,” Mattie said, “and take it with you. That ain’t no parking lot, Henry. It’s my front lawn.” Henry unrolled the two legs he had pulled up to his body, stretched them out good. Mattie could see that he was wearing his mill boots, the big heavy brown ones that protected his toes with a steel tip.

  “I gotta talk to you about something,” said Henry. He sounded almost like the boy Mattie remembered from his childhood, the first Mattagash youngster to attempt a Grit newspaper route in Mattagash and St. Leonard. Henry Plunkett had wanted the baseball mitt that Grit promised for so many newspapers sold. But his sales had slipped, and so did his dream of the baseball mitt. But Henry had always been the kind of kid to give something a try. And most times he had succeeded. But the man hadn’t been quite so successful, what with marrying Rita and now losing his job at the mill.

  “What’s the matter?” Mattie asked. She had come to the edge of the porch where Henry sat and, with a noticeable grunt, had lowered herself down to a sitting position.

  “You don’t move as easy as you used to,” said Henry. “Now would be the perfect time for me to raid your garden.” Mattie smiled. It was true that Henry and two other boys had once sneaked into her garden, when they were nine or ten years old, and attempted to make off with an armload of cucumbers and a pocketful of pea pods. Spying them, Mattie had leaped from the back porch and broken into an easy stride right at their heels.

  “I’d say I caught up to you back then in about thirty seconds,” Mattie said, thinking. “What would you say?”

  “Oh,” said Henry. “I remember you being a little faster than that.” She had waltzed all three of them back to the porch, where they emptied their hands and pockets. And for the rest of the day, rather than having Mattie tell their parents about the theft, they had weeded and watered the immense garden.

  “Well, you can steal all you want out of my garden this year,” said Mattie. “Just help yourself.”

  “I gotta find me some work to do,” Henry said quickly, ending this talk about childhood thievery and gardens. Mattie fell into pace with him, knowing he had a hard time sticking words to his emotions, as most Mattagash men did. Although Sonny wasn’t one of them. Sonny was a born talker, even if most of what came out of his mouth was sweet talk.

  “I know you, Henry Plunkett,” said Mattie. “And I know Pauline and the rest of your family. You’re a family of workers. I know this ain’t been easy on you.” Henry took a toothpick out of his pocket and stuck it in one corner of his mouth. The toothpick jerked as he slowly chewed on it. Henry and his toothpicks. Mattie even bought him four boxes for a dollar one Christmas. She wrapped them all up in shiny red paper and stuck a big gold bow on the top. It was supposed to be a joke, but Henry was moved by the gift. “This is great,” he had said, almost tearfully. “We’re always out at the house and Rita never remembers to buy any.” He had even carried a box around in his pocket, as though it were a pack of cigarettes.

  “I picked this up in Watertown today,” Henry said, and took something out of his shirt pocket. It was a brochure, which he handed to Mattie. She could tell by looking at it that Henry had already folded and unfolded it many times. “You, Too, Can Sell Life Insurance,” the heading promised in dark letters. An 800 number would put any interested parties in touch with an agent representing Mutual Liberty Insurance. On-the-job training would take eight weeks.

  “I already dialed that 800 number,” said Henry. “The closest agent is in Caribou. I’d have all the area north of Caribou to myself.” Mattie said nothing. Henry selling life insurance. Sonny holed up in a pin-striped trailer. What next? She handed the brochure back, treating it with a certain respect.

  “What’s Rita say about this?” Mattie asked.

  “Rita says I couldn’t sell whor
es in a lumber camp,” said Henry. Mattie nodded sympathetically. It was true. Henry couldn’t sell whores in a lumber camp. Henry couldn’t even sell Grit.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go jumping to a conclusion if I were you,” Mattie said finally. “There’s no telling when the mill is gonna start hiring again. And where would you be if the foreman called to say so? Running around in a suit and tie somewhere north of Caribou? How’d we ever track you down, sweetie, if you were out selling life insurance to the multitude?” Henry sighed and pushed a big hand, a big Plunkett hand, through his wiry hair. He was a tired man. The mill job aside, just living with Rita could age a human.

  “You know as well as I do that there ain’t no multitude north of Caribou,” said Henry. “That’s another drawback for me selling insurance. That and the fact that I’ll have to move away from Mattagash.”

  “And then there’s the biggest drawback of all,” Mattie reminded him.

  “What’s that?” Henry asked.

  “This time Rita’s right, Henry. Selling’s your short suit.” Henry said nothing for a time. He cleared his throat once, then twice. The toothpick began to work frantically.

  “I guess I’m gonna have to reconsider all this,” said Henry, “now that you’ve added your two cents.”

  “I had no intentions of putting up any money,” said Mattie. “It was you asked me. And I can’t lie to you, sweetheart. I just don’t see you going door to door with a briefcase full of papers and forms and talking about beneficiaries. That just ain’t you, Henry.”

  Henry kicked one boot against another and then reversed the action. Mattie could hear nighthawks circling about in the dusk overhead, searching out the early-evening insects. Gracie told her once that scientists had examined the stomach contents of nighthawks and discovered that one had eaten more than five hundred mosquitoes, another more than two thousand flying ants. This put the nighthawk high up on Mattie’s list of important birds. Now she could see them, filling up the overhead sky with their easy wing strokes, then shifting gears quickly into rapid winging.

  “There ain’t nothing to do in Mattagash if you ain’t working in the woods,” said Henry. “And no one’s hiring. So what am I supposed to do?”

  “You ain’t nearly as bad off as you think,” Mattie told him. “You ain’t as bad off as Pauline, with them five little kids, and Frank riddled with cancer. Now, that’s a tough ride. But you, Henry, you got yourself two growed boys who can find part-time work in Watertown, that is if Willard dyes his hair some color that befits an earthling.”

  “His hair is kind of a grassy color right now,” said Henry. “Rita’s still working on it.”

  “You got yourself a mobile home that’s all paid for,” Mattie continued. “You don’t need a pickup truck and that big Buick that Rita’s running around in, burning up tire rubber. Get rid of one or the other, Henry. And tell Rita she can’t buy no more clothes or Avon makeup until you’re back on your feet.” Henry scoffed at this last remark, the notion of Rita without her eyeliner, her eyebrow pencils, her gobs of creams, her lipsticks of every color, her eye shadows to match all her sweaters and blouses, summer and winter shades of liquid makeup.

  “That’d be like telling a porcupine to give up its quills,” Henry said. It was Mattie’s turn to scoff.

  “You know she’ll have to defy you in some way,” Mattie argued. “And she’ll do it by buying her makeup. Let her. Let her think she won that round of the battle. Pauline needs the extra money from them Avon products, so you’ll be helping your sister in a roundabout way. You’re getting enough unemployment benefits that you can survive if you tighten your belts over there just a bit. And before you know it, things’ll get better at the mill.” Henry said nothing for a long time. He sat looking up at the sky, as though he, too, saw the nighthawks circling up there, gulping up their quota of bugs.

  “Is Sonny out of jail yet?” Henry wanted to know. Mattie sighed.

  “Henry, do you and Rita ever talk? Do you ever turn on the television, sweetheart, and listen to the news? What planet do you live on, Henry Plunkett? Sonny’s not in jail. He’s in a house trailer. Don’t ask me why because I’m not in the mood.” Marlene opened the front door.

  “Mama?” she said. “You out here?” Mattie and Henry said nothing, their bodies blending into the shadows at the upper end of the porch. “Mama?” There was a stroke of silence as Marlene peered through the night, out at the St. Francis of Assisi birdbath, then down the road to Pauline’s house, where all the windows were shining with a bright yellow warmth. “Crazy old woman,” Marlene muttered and closed the door with a thud. Mattie giggled. She couldn’t help herself. There was something especially gleeful in catching her daughters with their true colors flying like flags. That all three hoped to headline in Mattie’s Last Will and Testament was an unspoken fact that floated like a bat over their heads. A vampire bat. How many times had they tried, alone or as a team, to edge Mattie toward talk of a will? “It’ll all just go to lawyers if you die without one,” Gracie had noted sadly. Well, there were days when Mattie would rather lawyers get what little she had to leave behind. Henry stirred in the dark beside her, stood up, and stretched.

  “Wasn’t that a lovely sound?” Mattie asked him. “The music of my daughter’s voice?”

  “Why don’t you send the three of them home?” Henry asked. He selected a fresh toothpick from his pocket. “I never understood why a strong woman like you lets the three of them get away with so much.”

  Mattie’s eyes could no longer see the nighthawks. They had blended into the twilight sky, disappeared except for the nasal-sounding pee-ik, pee-ah.

  “I wasn’t a good mother to them,” Mattie finally answered. “That’s why.”

  “You wasn’t a bad one, either,” said Henry.

  “Not being a bad mother ain’t much better than not being a good one,” said Mattie. “I don’t know why that’s true, but it is.” Henry adjusted his toothpick.

  “You ever hit one of them?” he asked.

  “No,” said Mattie. “Maybe I should’ve.”

  “You ever leave them alone when they was little?”

  Mattie shook her head. “No,” she said.

  “Was their supper always waiting for them when they come home from school?”

  “I spent a few days in bed with pneumonia,” said Mattie. “But I got Eleanor Ryan to come cook for us.”

  “Them girls ever look in their closets and not have clean clothes to wear?” Henry kept on.

  “They always had clean clothes,” Mattie conceded. “Clean and ironed clothes.”

  “You ever steal money from them?”

  “You know better than that.”

  “Then I think you been a pretty damn good mother, old girl. Even if you are crazy, like Marlene says.” With that, Henry Plunkett ambled off across Mattie’s lawn. Just before he reached the St. Francis of Assisi birdbath, he stopped, looked toward the western sky.

  “Speaking of planets,” said Henry, “that there’s Venus.” He pointed at a huge, sparkling ornament in the sky, what Mattie thought to be a brilliant star. “And that there,” he said as he spun around and pointed to the south, “is Jupiter. You can see four moons with a steady pair of binoculars.” He put the life insurance brochure in his hip pocket and went on.

  “Mind my birdbath,” Mattie warned.

  “Birds taking a bath,” Henry muttered as he sidestepped St. Francis.

  “Henry?” Mattie asked. He stopped and turned. The light from the living room window caught his weary face in its beam. “I been thinking, Henry. Maybe you could sell whores in a lumber camp.” Henry smiled. Then he disappeared into the shadows of night. Mattie heard his boot heels hit the tar. Overhead, the soft music of the swooping nighthawks, pee-ik, pee-ah, was still playing. Mattie looked up at the Mattagash sky where Jupiter and Venus were peering down at her, two bright eyes. Then she watched th
e orange glow of Henry’s cigarette bouncing about in the dark until it disappeared.

  8

  Mattie had put on her nightgown and slippers and was sitting at the kitchen table with her puzzle when Rita drove up to the door in her big Buick. Marlene and Gracie were in the bathroom brushing their teeth and plastering their faces with cold cream. Mattie had decided that if she waited for her daughters to leave before she took the Easter Rising puzzle out again, she’d never get it finished. Besides, there was something in what Henry Plunkett, her son-in-law, had said that gave her a bit of a boost. Maybe she hadn’t been the best mother, but she hadn’t been the worst, as Henry had mentioned. And while it was common knowledge that Mattie Gifford worshiped her boy, Sonny, it didn’t seem that any of her daughters stopped long enough to consider that maybe their own mother didn’t think the world of them, too. That maybe their own mother would have preferred to have Pauline as a daughter. Ignorance was bliss, so Mattie pulled the puzzle out, took all the little plastic bowls she kept the separated pieces in, and dumped them on the table. She was looking for the blue eyeball when Rita came in and threw her purse on the table, scattering the reds of the clothing Jesus was wearing.

  “You ain’t gonna believe what Henry Plunkett come home and said to me,” Rita announced. Mattie pushed a finger through the blue pieces, passing over sky, and flower petal, and background water to search for the eye piece.

  “No,” she said, as it was obvious that Rita was waiting. “I probably won’t believe it.”

  “He told me we gotta tighten our belts,” said Rita. She was getting herself a pop from the fridge. “He said the kids need to look for a summer job in Watertown and that I can’t buy no more clothes and makeup until he’s working again. And listen to the clincher.” She had opened her pop with a loud fizz and now she paused to take a big drink of it.