Talking Heads (19 page)

Kit understood, he got the whole sorry picture—the boy made to sit and listen to whores who told him his old man was a stud, and the out-of-whack father who needed to hear it. “The man
paid
them to tell my Junior, you understand, Kit. That was how he got himself, you know.”

Kit had to stand. Underfoot the extension cords scrunched, calling to mind the winter sand on the Cottage beach, more bad news. By then Mrs. Rebes had begun speaking in falsetto. She was mimicking what the hookers used to tell Junior. “Little boy, you know your Daddy's a superstar? Little boy, your Daddy puts me into outer
space.
” Kit turned towards the cold windows and found himself surprised by the light behind the glass, the sounds of daytime from the street. The Krishna curtain glowed, and outside children called between the stoops:
Yo, Tay-shah
. It had felt like way past dark.

“Louie-Louie just a baby then,” the mother was saying, back in her normal voice. “Jesus, I thank you every day. That devil husband of mine left for Hollywood before he could get his claws into Louie-Louie.”

“Hollywood?” Kit asked.

“Where he goin to get himself more kinky white bitches than out there? That devil made for Hollywood.”

She went for the wine again. Kit, looking down on her now, saw the mechanicality of it. Screw-cap off, bottle up, bottle down, screw-cap on.

“Mrs. Rebes, please. Take it easy.”

“Take it easy?” The screw-cap must've made each drink seem like the last. “Kit, that man was the one behind everythin evil. What he did was the first beginnin of all the bad news.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No way to tell about him without gettin sick.”

“Sorry.”

Kit, shifting his wineglass, put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped as if he'd stabbed her. She came out of the chair, catapulted out, moving with more straightlimbed control than he'd have thought possible. She whipped around to face him, the cardigan flying off her shoulders. Her eyes flared.

“Don't you give me no pat on the back,” she said. “
Missah
. Missah Viddich. You better not be comin here just to give me some little ol pat on the back.”

Kit drew in his hands, closing them around his glass. A moment's silence was all it took to remember gripping the wrench, facing Junior.

“There been evil in my life, oh see. Evil in my boy's life, both my boys' life. Ain't
about
no pat on the back.”

He couldn't loosen his grip, couldn't lower his arms.

“Whatever story you think you gon get from me, it ain't shit if it ain't got the
evil.
”

*

Kit went backwards along the stereo units, eyeing the eight-tracks. Commodores, Tavares, Parliaments/Funkadelics. He kept going, slow-footed, around the sofa and back to his seat. The mother circled where she stood, watching. She was still spitting bile. “Whatever story you think you get from me, you better have the father my boy got. Father who got off on havin his own child watch.”

Stop it, Viddich. Kit, resettling into the sofa, caught a glimpse of the kitchen. The faded enamel was flagged with more cards and posters.

“My Junior couldn help himself,” the mother was saying. “Doin the white boys, he couldn help himself. Not with a father like he got.”

“Aw, Mrs. Rebes,” Kit said, “you shouldn't trust me with your story.”

She broke off, her square mouth ajar.

“You shouldn't,” Kit said. “I'm not the right one to hear it and I'm not the right one to tell everyone else.”

She made some response, soft-spoken. Kit wasn't looking. His eyes on the kitchen, he wondered how long it had been since either of them had eaten.

“I'm not like you,” he said, “and I'm not honest enough. Mrs. Rebes, I'm one of the landlords.”

Again he couldn't be sure what she said. Some kind of question, maybe
you a landlord?
Mostly he heard the radiator, tocking and hissing as it cranked up more heat under ill-fitting windows. And he still hadn't taken off his coat.

“My people are landlords,” he told her. “They own a lot of property, back in Minnesota.”

“Minne-sota?” He heard that. “Shoo. They even
got
trouble out there?”

Kit knew what she was doing: Mama fix, Mama comfort.

“They even got black people, out there?”

“Oh God. You're making me go through high school again.” He never could say “prep school,” silly reverse snobbery.

“How's that, Kit?”

“Hoo, boy.” He knew what she was doing, but he couldn't begin to say what he was doing. “In high school I did all this reading about, you know. About the black experience. I figured I had to catch up. Like
Nobody Knows My Name
, for instance, I think I read that six times.”
The time has come, God knows, for us to examine ourselves, but we can only do that if we can free ourselves from the myth of America
.

The mother made some new reassuring noise.

“Listen, Mrs. Rebes, that's not the half of it. In those days I wrote poetry. I wrote protest poetry.”

She poured another slow and echoing dollop of wine. Kit's heart grew baggier.

“Poetry,” he said. “It was lies, Mrs. Rebes. L-I-E-S.

“I grew up with my uncles,” he said. “My father died in Korea, his plane blew up. And Mrs. Rebes, you should see the ranch, my uncles' ranch. My mother and I lived in the Big House for twelve years and we hardly made a dent in the place. I'll tell you. If somebody was coming to the ranch for the first time, for instance we got a lot of sales reps from John Deere or International Harvester, and if they were stopping by for the first time—when my mother or I showed up, they'd look at us like, ‘Where'd
you
come from?' Think about it. Such a big well-oiled machine, Mom and I were practically invisible.”

“Your Daddy's plane just blew up?”

Her voice was a whisper, but the words were clear. She stood close, all of a sudden; her house robe almost brushed his tucked-together knees. When had that happened? Kit watched her refill his glass.

“I grew up with my uncles,” he said. “Not that they weren't good to me, my uncles.”

His gullet was tightening. Ordinarily, tears would be coming. “They were good guys, sure. My uncles taught me everything, anything I asked, and God knows I was always asking. I was always after someone about giving me a lesson, Mrs. Rebes.” He eased his throat open with a long drink.

“But I remember him bringing my mom flowers,” he said. “My father I mean. My mom says there's no way I could, but I do. I do. I remember a kind of beach-blue orchid, I mean a blue like you find sometimes in the stones on a beach. Aw, I know what that sounds like, I know blue is blue—but you never forget your first honest-to-God orchids, Mrs. Rebes. Your first orchids, the smell, the color, you never forget. It's like when you learned to read. It's like the first time you read something and you know you got what was in there, and you know nobody helped you and it was the truth.”

He drank. There was a feathery touch at his hairline, the mother fingering his stitches.

“See, that was my father, bringing flowers,” Kit went on. “My uncles would never bring flowers. They were good, oh sure, they were both good guys and one of them always had women around. But this kind of thing we're talking about now, this kind of sweetness bringing flowers, that wasn't them.”

The woman murmured something, over his head. About time she noticed he was hurt.

“You know there's a picture in one of the albums,” he said, “a shot of my mother and father holding a bunch of orchids. Arm in arm, over these bright fresh black-and-white orchids. It's ah, it's a very professional shot.

“And I realize the mind can play tricks on you, Mrs. Rebes. I know what a photo can do. I realize it might be the reason I remember the orchids, even the color, the blue. It could all be because of the photo. Hoo, boy. But I'll tell you, Mrs. Rebes, those two loved each other. My mother, my father. They loved each other, that's the whole truth, and it doesn't matter if there's a photo. It doesn't matter how the mind can play tricks on you. I mean, my father was an ace.”

Kit, the glass at his lips, found himself sucking air. The thing was empty and the mother was poised to pour again.

“Seven confirmed kills between September and January, listen, the man was an
ace.
” He used the glass to put an exclamation point; the mother couldn't reach it. “He was in the same squadron as Ted Williams. Ted Williams, Mrs. Rebes.”

What was that thumping, out in the building's stairwell?

“Nobody shot him down, my father,” Kit said. “Those old Sabres, you know, they could be temperamental. It just blew up in mid-air. You better believe I know all about it, I've read every one of his letters. Every night he wrote home, and for a while there I think I had every one of them memorized.”

Was that just somebody coming upstairs? Some man, in boots, stomping upstairs?

“A war hero in love,” Kit looked towards the door. “That was my father. A war hero with orchids in his hand.”

Of course: the heavy tread came to halt outside the Rebes doorway. Kit flashed on motorcycle boots, a cop, a warrant.

“A man,” Kit began, but then the door opened and he was on his feet, once more making fists around his glass. Aw, come on. What kind of trouble was he expecting? The newcomer had a key—he was huge, but he had a key. Even the guy's biker boots looked small on him. His fatigue jacket was open, his shirt collar open, and he went around bareheaded despite the weather. He had a kinky beard and a lot of hair. Just standing there he made the pinups on the walls flutter.

“What the hey's going on here, Mama?”

Mama? The newcomer's eyes were young, quick, worried.

“Who's the boyfriend, Mama?”

Once more Kit didn't hear the mother. It took energy enough to catch up with the change of mood—to yank his mind out of a cloud of fragments over Korea and instead get a fix on this baby brother, this Louie-Louie. The man had a good forty pounds on Junior. He had the Caribbean blood, the father's side of the family. The beard was Castro. So was the shirt-stretching chest, the cinnamon-butter skin. Beside her younger son, the mother seemed to darken.

“You the reporter.” Louie-Louie met Kit's stare.

The mother made introductions, but Kit didn't offer his hand. Anyway the brother's hands were full. He'd come in carrying a bundle of magazines, four or five slick things that caught the glare. Reading material for the invalid?

“The reporter, yeah,” he said. “So what you going to do for us?”

It must have dumped another spoonful of gall into Junior's stew, growing up with a baby brother twice his size.

“You hear me, man? You told
our story
, you dig?” At least Louie-Louie hadn't been drinking; his breath smelled of gum. “This is my family, man, the people I love, you dig? And you used us. You used us for your own gain.”

“Oh Louie-Louie,” the mother said. “You got no right.”

“You got our story, man, and now what do we get?”

“Oh see, how you talk. You know he din even use our real names.”

“You think you can just come in and get our story and then take off, man? That the way you reporters think?”

How many times did Kit have to hear this question? Leo, Junior, Zia, Bette—now Louie-Louie—how many times?

“You come in and get what you want and then you scoot. That the way it works?”

“Oh see. Oh
Luis
. I'm afraid I'm goin to have to apologize now. Louie-Louie, you soundin like a baby.”

“Mama why—why don't you understand? This guy ain't no friend of ours.”

“Missah Viddich, I do apologize.” She went on staring up her son, without so much as a glance at Kit. “You goin to have to excuse us now, Missah Viddich.”

“Ma-ma. This guy, he ain't
no kind
of friend, you dig? I still can't believe you gave him the letters.”

“Those letters would've stayed in a closet without this man. Junior's letters would have stayed in a closet, and Junior would've stayed in a closet. My boy was a hero and nobody would've never knowed.”