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.”
*
Zia see, my basement boys and girls. Zia see what makes the guy a tourist. Our Scandie pseudo. What he was, was back in the ’60s. A believer.
Makes him a tourist, yeah. Makes him like something out of a wax museum. Because it’s about the ’70s, these days. We prefer a different brand of trouble, in the ’70s. We don’t buy that Movement guff, times they are a-changin’. We don’t believe the believer. When it comes to counterculture, we’ve got a better idea.
None of that, Viddich. None of that now, and no crying either. Ain’t about no crying. Yesterday on the bus from Woods Hole, he’d still been crying, hiding in the Trailways lavatory, whimpering first Junior’s name and then his wife’s. But today in the mother’s easy-to-burn living room, it was out of the question. The woman was three-quarters drunk, yes, but the rest of her had loaded up on even stronger stuff — on lofty dreams and bloody murder. Back at the coffee shop where she worked, back when Kit had been trying to pump her for information, she’d looked so helpless, string-fingered. Now he was the helpless. Fingers knotted and all eyes.
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.”
Those Movement bozos, I mean, talk about living in the demimonde. Did you ever catch their “sins of flesh” act? Did you ever hear them talk about sex? Or try to talk about it, anyway. Whenever they tried to talk S-E-X (couldn’t say the word by its name, oh see), in fact they talked L–I-E-S. L–I-E-S, my boys and girls. They were about as trustworthy as the Father in the confession booth — the one with his hand inside his robe. Old Martin Luther King himself, oh see, he tomcatted around. Preached the brotherhood and chased the sisterhood. Like the Father in the confession booth, breathing heavy and asking about your nastiest secrets.
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.