Beaming Sonny Home (2 page)

“Child,” Mattie said. “What kind of trouble is it?” Her mind had now come back to President Clinton, his soft voice, his deep concern for the country. Why were people so crazy these days? Drugs, that was why. And too many guns. She tried to picture Hillary, being brave for Chelsea, just as Jackie had been brave for Caroline and John-John. The world was an awful place, too awful to live in, if people could kill a president so easily. Mattie watched as Rita flung herself upon the television button, not bothering to search for the remote control, knowing that at Mattie's, the grandchildren were forever hiding it. Josh, who was Rita's younger and more heathenish child, had thrown it up onto the roof just the Sunday before. They found it only because Steven, who was
Marlene's
younger and more heathenish child, had tattled. Elmer Fennelson had been kind enough to come with his rickety ladder and retrieve the remote, along with an assortment of odds and ends that Mattie had been missing over the past year, including one blue, fluffy slipper.

“Is it the president?” Mattie heard herself ask. “Is it poor President Clinton?” He was such a nice, polite boy, one who had made his mother proud. Rita shook her head, and the loose hair still waiting to be permed bounced dramatically. Mattie was reminded of Gracie's childhood doll that Sonny had given a haircut, only to be interrupted before he finished the job.

“You're not going to believe what he's done now,” Rita said as she frantically punched at the channel numbers. This took Mattie by surprise. She didn't have to ask who
he
was. She knew. She knew by the tone of Rita's voice, by that same old jealous anger mixed with excitement, that Sonny was in the middle of some kind of limelight. Mattie had heard that tone many times, all through those blasted school-age years, when Sonny was interacting far too much with the teachers, the principal, the superintendent. Mattie had come to know a parcel of people very well through Sonny's misadventures. Now she wished she
had
planted a garden. It would offer her something to do. A little weeding could be good for the soul. Dear Lord, but what could the boy have done to get himself on TV?

“Sit down,” Rita was now saying, “because what Sonny done this time takes the cake.” Mattie found herself dropping down onto the sofa, her hand clasping her throat, as it always did in times of heavy stress. Over the years, Sonny Gifford had caused a great deal of that throat-clasping, Mattie hated to admit.

Rita was now on the phone.

“Gracie? Get over to Mama's place, and I mean
pronto
. You ain't gonna believe what your brother's done this time.
This
time
, he's outdone himself. Don't ask. Just pick up Marlene and get to hell over here.” Mattie tried to focus on the television screen before her. She hadn't heard Rita swear since she'd found Jesus at the Pentecostal church a few months earlier. All Rita had planned to do was drop by quickly and pick up a sweater she was borrowing from her friend Rachel Ann, a long-suffering Holy Roller, and before Rita left she'd been saved. She didn't need Rachel Ann's sweater after all. She had found the warmth of Jesus Christ, or so she told everyone who did and didn't care. She was wrapped up snug in the wool of the Lamb. But now here she was, swearing again. Mattie tried to listen to what the newsman on Channel 4 in Bangor was saying. The scene flicked to a trailer park as the camera focused on a single trailer, a white one with a nice red stripe running down its middle. Rita flung down the phone and then cranked up the volume on the television set.

“Sonny Gifford, of 15 Trenton Street, Bangor,” the voice was announcing. “Mr. Gifford is a white male, estimated to be in his midthirties.” Mattie looked up at Rita for an explanation.

“Has Sonny shot the president?” Mattie asked, her heart drumming fiercely. “Has Sonny shot that nice Mr. Clinton?” This would be one little fracas she wouldn't be able to get him out of, she knew that for certain. Not when Channel 4 had their nose in it.

“Sonny ain't smart enough to shoot a president,” Rita said. She dug into her enormous purse for a cigarette, which she lit in a hurry. Mattie had been under the impression that Jesus had told Rita to quit smoking, but then Jesus hadn't known about all of Rita's bad habits when he saved her. If he had, he might have let her go downstream instead.

“According to witnesses at the bank, Gifford led the two women to a waiting 1985 blue Ford pickup truck and then sped away to this trailer, at Marigold Drive Trailer Park. Neighbors have told police that the trailer belongs to Sheila Bumphrey Gifford, Sonny Gifford's estranged wife.” The picture was still on the house trailer. Mattie noticed a green-and-white lawn chair leaning against the small porch railing. A child's sand pail, the toy shovel peeking above the rim, was tilting out of a tiny pile of brownish dirt in the front yard. Then the picture flicked back to the newscaster's face, which was lined with professional concern.

“Sonny's robbed a bank!” Mattie cried, but Rita waved her cigarette.

“Sonny's too lazy to rob a bank,” said Rita. “That involves weeks of planning. I'm telling you, this stunt takes the cake.” The screen now showed a man and woman standing in front of a gray-colored bank, their hands waving, their fingers pointing frantically. Mattie could see the words
Bangor
Savings
and
Loan
just above their heads.

“He just sort of appeared out of nowhere,” the woman was saying. “He said he had a gun and, well, I didn't look. I just covered my eyes.”

“Gun?” asked Mattie. What was Sonny doing sporting a gun? Sonny hated guns, had never even fired BBs as a boy.

“He told us he had no intention of hurting anyone,” the man said. He had a big round nose, bigger even than Elmer Fennelson's. “He picked two young women out of the line and they had no choice but to go with him.” Well, it would be like Sonny to choose women. He had always been a ladies' man.

“Have you ever?” asked Rita. “Is this not the worst yet?” Mattie strained forward in her chair. She still couldn't understand what was happening. Sonny hadn't shot anyone. Sonny hadn't robbed a bank. So what was he doing in a bank claiming he had a gun?

“Tell me what he's done,” Mattie warned her daughter, “before I slap you.”

“Listen,” Rita cautioned. She cranked the volume button higher.

“The suspect has given no statement as to why he took the two female hostages or what his plans are now that he's barricaded himself inside his estranged wife's trailer, Police Chief Patrick Melon has told reporters. Bangor police are in the process of setting up telephone communication with Mr. Gifford at this time.”

“My God,” said Mattie. “Hostages?”

“Didn't I tell you it would take the cake?” Rita wanted to know. “This is a lot worse than when he set fire to the American Legion Hall.” Did Rita have to remember
everything?
Couldn't she focus once in a while on something
good
Sonny had done? Hadn't he gone back himself, the very next day, and helped rake up all the rubble left behind after the Legion Hall burned down? And besides, everyone in town was glad it had burned. It had been an eyesore for a good many years and someone's kid was bound, sooner or later, to fall through the rickety floor.

“Hostages,” Mattie said again, and her mind played with the word. Hostages were usually nabbed in strange parts of the world, by terrorists and governments run by folks in the Middle East who wore dish towels on their heads. But
hostages
in Bangor, Maine? Taken by her only male child, Sonny Gifford? Mattie's heart fluttered again, in that way Sonny Gifford could make it flutter.

Marlene and Gracie roared into the driveway. Mattie hoped they hadn't mown down the cement birdbath she had set out on the lawn just that morning, in the middle of her pansy bed. It was a little statue of St. Francis, holding a bowl in his hands which Mattie had filled with water for the birds. Marlene was first into the house, Gracie on her heels. They both flung their purses upon the sofa.

“I had no more than hung up the phone from talking to you,” Gracie said excitedly, “when Denise Craft come banging on my door with the news.” Rita offered her a cigarette. Marlene helped herself to one, too. They lit up. Smoke rose into the air. It looked to Mattie like some church ritual, with incense and all, a ceremony of sorts. And in a way, it was. Her daughters had always been at their best when Sonny was at his worst. No wedding, no funeral, no high school graduation had ever given them pleasure such as they got from their brother's wrongdoings.

“It ain't done me a bit of good to have quit smoking five years ago,” Mattie said, “with the three of you puffing away like chimneys here in my house. That's what they call secondhand smoke.” Marlene had turned her empty Coke can into an ashtray and now all three daughters were batting their cigarettes against the small opening. And it hadn't helped to hide all her ashtrays either. She was forever emptying soggy cigarette butts out of pop cans, thanks to one or all of her daughters. But the girls were too excited to care about secondhand smoke, not when there was firsthand smoke on the television screen. Mattie tried to think of Sonny. Who could she call this time? Even if her husband, Lester, was still alive, which he wasn't, thank God, he had never seen anything worth helping out in Sonny. Not like Mattie did. When Lester died, five years earlier, Mattie had decided she wanted to live as long as she could, now that she was single again. And so she had given up her beloved Salem Menthols. How could she have known her big, grown daughters would go on ahead and kill her with secondhand smoke? She had four hundred dollars in her savings account. She would get Marlene to drive her to Watertown and she would withdraw it. Marlene had the smallest mouth of the three girls. It was
big
, but it was still the
smallest
. The last time Sonny had needed money in a hurry, Marlene had driven Mattie down to the bank, and as far as Mattie could tell, Marlene had kept quiet about the whole thing.

“What's the story?” Gracie was asking. “What in the world is he up to?” Mattie stared at the television screen. The picture had become a commercial for some kind of deodorant. The room grew bluish-gray with cigarette smoke. Mattie closed her eyes.

“Nobody has any idea what's going on inside his head,” said Rita. She dropped her cigarette into the Coke can and it sizzled loudly. “According to the police chief, they're trying to set up communication with him.”

“Well, good luck to them,” said Marlene, “if they're hoping to find out what's going on in Sonny Gifford's head.” Thunder exploded in the distance and Mattie heard the grackles rise up outside in a great cluster of wings and clucking sounds. She tried to think reasonably. Had she brought in those sheets and pillowcases? They would be drenched in no time. Now the television screen was filled with actors who were afraid to lift their arms because they hadn't used Sure deodorant. Mattie studied them carefully, wondering what they had done with Sonny and the pin-striped trailer.

“Don't this latest stunt take the sponge cake?” Rita asked again.

That was how Mattie Gifford received the news that her only boy, Sonny Gifford, had taken two hostages and was holed up with them in a trailer, down in Bangor, Maine, five hours south of Mattagash. It was later that day, on the regular Channel 4 News program at six o'clock, that more information was disclosed about the hostage incident. It was announced at the beginning of the show that a phone conversation with Sonny Gifford, who had been inside the trailer for over two hours, at Marigold Drive Trailer Park, would be aired for the first time. Then the station had gone to a commercial.

“That's what they call a
teaser
,” Gracie said. She was doing her sit-ups in Mattie's living room, in front of the television set, because she hadn't had time to exercise before the urgent call from Rita arrived. Gracie had been saying all year long that she was going to take off twenty-five pounds before Christmas if she had to have a leg amputated in order to do so. Her only child, Roberta, had decided on a Christmas wedding, much to everyone's dismay. Folks in Mattagash, Maine, had seen plenty of Christmases come and go when Santa Claus couldn't find a rooftop on which to land his reindeer, thanks to a ton of fresh white snow. “We'll look cute wading about in high heels with the snow up to our asses,” Marlene had complained the day she heard the news. But Roberta was eighteen years old, and although she had just graduated from high school with a crisp, new diploma, it seemed to Mattie that the space between her granddaughter's ears was bigger and lonelier than ever. “I wanna be different from everyone else,” was what Roberta kept saying. “Oh, you're gonna be different all right,” Gracie had agreed. “You'll probably be the only bride in Mattagash history who rides up to the altar on a snowmobile.” Mattie had grown weary of hearing them argue.

“Fifty,” Gracie said, and sat up, legs spread before her on the carpet. Mattie noticed weights of some kind strapped about her daughter's ankles. What would they think of next? Marlene had gone out for two pizzas from the new pub in St. Leonard and she had brought back bags of potato chips and pretzels, as well as a few packs of cigarettes. Now Mattie's coffee table was covered with plates of cold pizza crusts and half-drunk Cokes with cigarette stubs bobbing somewhere down inside of them. There was so much smoke in the tiny living room that it reminded Mattie of the picture puzzle she had done a year earlier, the one called
Fog
in
the
Adirondacks
. The phone rang.

“One of you girls get that,” said Mattie. That was the seventh or eighth time in less than an hour that someone had called. Twice, whoever was on the other end had simply hung up. Mattie supposed they had phoned just to see if she was still alive, or if she had dropped dead of a heart attack upon learning that Sonny had gone off his rocker in a big way. Only two of the other calls had been from neighbors one would expect to telephone in times of a crisis, offering help. Pauline Plunkett and Wilma Hart. The remaining calls had come from folks brimming over with curiosity, excitement lacing their words as they tried to sound genuinely concerned. Ruby Craft had actually hyperventilated. But then, Ruby had become what they call “hysterically pregnant” when a flyboy from Loring Air Force Base had refused to marry her. She had even worn a smock for four months and then put a crib on layaway before her mother slapped her out of it. “That flyboy ain't nothing but a fly-by-night,” Ruby's mother had said.

“I hope this comes to some kind of a conclusion soon,” Rita was now saying to Marlene. “I gotta go home and cook Henry and the kids their supper.” Mattie scraped the cold crusts from one pizza plate off onto another, and again, and again, until one plate held all the crusts. She then stacked this plate onto the others and stood up.

“Oh, Mama, leave those plates be,” said Gracie. “One of us will get them.” Mattie found this statement of particular interest. After all, each of her daughters had watched as she cleaned up the plates and none had so much as lifted an eyebrow, much less a finger, to help. Mattie fanned the air about her head, circulating it. She opened the front door and thumped one of Gracie's shoes against it to keep it open.

“It gets any smokier in here,” she said, “and the Mattagash Fire Department will pull up out front.” She had had to disconnect her smoke detector, just a month after she had bought and installed it, because her girls smoked too damn much and were forever setting it off. This was something her homeowner's insurance company didn't need to know, but to Mattie it was a sad statement of parental life.

The newscaster's face was back full-screen as Mattie returned from the kitchen, where she'd left the dishes in the sink. The girls were making such a ruckus that she couldn't catch a word he was saying.

“Shush!” Mattie shouted, and finally she could hear the words coming from her television set. The picture had flashed to the trailer park they had shown earlier, a reporter standing on the road out in front, a microphone in her hand. Hoards of people could now be seen in the background, some leaning on cars and looking like nosy neighbors, others milling about with an air of news team importance. Bangor policemen were busy keeping the tiny crowd back. Mattie couldn't help but feel a stab of pride. When Sonny gave a party, he gave a party.

“Police Chief Patrick Melon conducted the conversation with Mr. Gifford less than an hour ago, Dan,” the newswoman said. She looked to Mattie like some kind of peaked chihuahua.

“Donna, did Chief Melon say what state of mind Mr. Gifford is in?” the newsman back at the station asked. It looked to Mattie as though he might have a big wad of gum in his mouth. Maybe he chewed every time the camera switched to Donna, standing out in front of Marigold Drive Trailer Park.

“State of mind, my foot,” said Rita. “What would Sonny be doing with a state of mind this late in his life?”

“As might be expected, Dan,” the reporter answered, “the police are being very cautious at this time. As of yet, they have still made no contact with Mr. Gifford's ex-wife, the owner of this trailer.” She waved a thin arm behind her, at the trailer in question. “Police Chief Melon has released part of the phone conversation he had just an hour ago with Mr. Gifford, which contains an explanation, albeit a bizarre one, as to the events leading up to this hostage action.” The reporter's tiny nostrils flared, like the gills on Mattie's pet goldfish.
Dan
and
Donna
. It sounded like a dance team.

“Oh God, I'm gonna pee my pants,” Marlene said. “This is too much excitement for me, at least in a single day.”

“Don't this take the cake, though?” Rita wanted to know. And then Mattie heard Sonny's sweet voice, heard the voice of her baby boy coming from, of all places, the television. Her eyes watered.

“That's when the face of John Lennon appeared on my television set during a show on starvation in Africa,” Sonny's voice was saying, a tinny voice, being played off a tape. “And it was Mr. John Lennon himself who told me that the world's attention needed to focus upon them starving children. ‘You're a sorry human bean, Sonny Gifford,' that's what the face told me. ‘There you are, eating a large pizza, extra cheese, while much of the world's starving to death. Get your shit together, boy.'”

“You can't say
shit
on Channel Four, can you?” Gracie asked.

“I believe you can during emergency broadcasts,” said Marlene.

“Quiet!” Mattie pointed to the television. The picture had frozen on the trailer, with its red line slicing it in two, a long, red vein. A silhouette had appeared in the window of the front door and Mattie wondered if it was Sonny, looking out at the eye of the world. The phone conversation was still running.

“What are your plans at this point, Mr. Gifford?” the police chief was asking. “Can't you let the women go so we can talk, just the two of us, man to man? Maybe we can even get this John Lennon on the phone.” Inside Mattie's house her girls tittered.

“Where's that police chief been?” Marlene wanted to know.

“They got Johnny Cash on the phone to talk to Gary Gilmore, the night before he died,” Gracie reminded everyone, an assurance that, socially, it was okay.

“Friend, you ain't been keeping up with your musical history.” It was Sonny's voice. “Mr. Lennon was shot down by a low-life insect, just as the song says. But he appeared on my television screen long enough to tell me to make a little noise on behalf of the poor folks in this here world.”

“Why not let the hostages go?” the police chief asked again. “What do those two women have to do with world hunger?”

“Well,” said Sonny. Mattie leaned forward, toward the television, trying to peer into the house trailer on her screen, trying to see Sonny's handsome face. She had always been able to tell a lot about what was in her son's head when she could look into the blue pools of his eyes. “While I was listening to John Lennon talk about world hunger, the TV picture flicked to two women standing on a patio drinking wine coolers, with a great big dog looking on, so I took that as a sign. As you know, I got me two women in here, and the best I could find for a dog was one of them spindly assed poodles.”

“But
why?”
asked Mattie. Her hands had begun to tremble.
“Why
, Sonny?” she asked the television screen.

“Since when did Sonny Gifford ever need a
why?”
Gracie wanted to know. “Since day one, Sonny's only been interested in the
when
and the
where.”
Gracie was flat on her back now, pretending to bicycle, her weighted legs making circles in the air. Mattie wished her daughter was on a
real
bike so that all the pedaling would take her out the door and back down the road to her own house. Better yet, Mattie wished Gracie was on one of those bicycles built for three. That way, she could take her two sisters with her. But everyone in Mattagash knew that Gracie was a woman destined to visit. “If Gracie had been born Indian,” Sonny once noted, “they'd have named her Squaw Who Can't Find Her Tepee.”

“Did Sonny tell you he'd bought a house trailer?” Rita asked. She was leaning forward on the hassock, peering at the TV. Mattie knew that Rita hated to learn interesting gossip from other folks, much less Channel 4.

“It's a pretty color, ain't it?” Marlene conceded.

“He always did have good taste,” Mattie noted.

“Don't you two have ears?” Gracie asked. “That house trailer belongs to his estranged wife. He ain't got a bit of business in there. That's just the way Charlie acted when me and him got divorced, turning up whenever he pleased. Charlie and Sonny have one thing in common, if you ask me. Their thinking mechanism is dangling between their legs.”

“Did they say the names of the hostages yet?” Rita asked. She was putting on her shoes, lacing them up.

“If Wolf Blitzer would shut up for a minute,” said Mattie, nodding at Gracie, “maybe I could hear the television well enough to answer that.” Donna was now saying that names of the hostages would be released when their families had been notified. The police chief was attempting another telephone conversation with Sonny. And it was hoped by the reporters that more background information would be unearthed on Sonny Gifford, the man. All that was known currently was what neighbors at the trailer park had to offer. With a promise to keep viewers updated as to the current hostage situation in Bangor, the station then went to a story about sewer leakage in Portland.

Mattie felt drained, as though someone had stood her on her head and poured her entire heart and soul out of her body. This was big, this newest adventure of Sonny's. And he'd be on his own this time.

“Well, it's just a matter of time now,” said Rita, “and the jig will be up. Wait till they find out we're his family.”

“You gonna start giving press conferences?” Marlene asked. “You been practicing all your life.”

Rita stopped lacing and stared at her sister. “I hate to say this,” she said anyway, “but there's a room in hell with your name on it.” She picked up her purse, slung the strap over her shoulder. Her leather jacket squeaked when she moved.

“Nice talk for a member of the Born Again Club,” said Marlene.

“A real
hot
room,” Rita added. “A regular sauna.” Mattie waved her hands before her face, the way she always did when her children were acting up, which they'd all been prone to do throughout their growing-up years. Although, listening to her daughters day after day, “growing-up years” hardly seemed the correct phrase. “Getting-bigger years” would be more like it.

“We gotta drive down there tonight,” Mattie said. “We gotta let Sonny know that we'll help him.”

“What do you mean, ‘we'?” asked Marlene. “You got a mouse in your pocket?”

“This'll work out on its own, Mama,” said Rita. “There's no need for us to turn up in Bangor and rile the waters even more. You know Sonny. He can't keep his mind on a task for very long. He'll be ready to come out by morning and it'll all be over. Besides, he's got a phone in there and he knows your number. He can call if he needs to.” Mattie thought of Pauline Plunkett, with her tired face. Pauline would drive her. Out of the goodness of her heart, Pauline would do it. But Mattie couldn't add to Pauline's worries.

“Let's go,” Gracie told Rita. “Marlene'll come with me so you two can't fight over religion. All I need to do is feed the cat and grab a couple things.” She stored the ankle weights on the floor near Mattie's magazine rack.

“And
I
need to see that Henry and the boys can find something for supper,” Rita said.

“Now, don't be dragging half the junk in your house over here,” Marlene said. “All we really need is pajamas and cold cream, and Mama's got plenty of cold cream.” Mattie was staring at the stored ankle weights and listening to this conversation. Her name had been invoked, so it must have something to do with her. But
pajamas
?
Cold
cream?