“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.”
“Aw, Mama.”
“That’s how it woulda been without this man.”
“Mama, please.” The brother broke into a whine. “Can we just talk about this? Just you and me, huh, please?”
“Way I remember, Louie-Louie, even you didn’t want to listen to those letters. Even you didn’t want nothin to do with your brother.”
*
Aw, my basementarians. You know how those ‘60s relics see Good Guys versus Bad? You know how they see, say, an argument between a man and woman? The way they see Good versus Bad, it’s totally a fairy-tale. Like, a big burly Gl grunt and a wispy weak peasant woman. Or like, a Southern sheriff in a shirt too small for his chest and a grandma on her first Freedom March, wizened but brave.
Oh see. They blind, these ‘60s guys. They soundin like a baby.
Kit had at last let go of his glass. He’d retreated towards the door; he knew a family squabble when he heard one. The mother was showing her sharper corners again. Her glare imperial, her gestures sober, Mrs. Rebes backed her remaining son towards the kitchen archway. When she snatched the glossy magazines from his hand (“You insultin this man bringin this trash, this man run an honest paper”), Kit may have glimpsed a bright flyer from Alcoholics Anonymous. But Louie-Louie wasn’t going to get his mom to look at any flyers. Not today. The big kid was teetering backwards, having trouble on the extension cords. His chest and shoulders had shrunk. No, the squabble was no mystery — and Kit’s side had won already. The mother worked fast. Kit had been sprung already, given an excuse to go, and it had happened without his putting in a word in his own defense. He’d only emptied his soft white-boy hands and drifted once more into the cold by the doorway out. Cold, on his back: the worm.