Going All the Way (29 page)

Sonny went out taking pictures by himself the next day, feeling very proud and manly that he was getting off his ass and doing something constructive without anyone else's help or urging or companionship. He went to a little playground about a half-mile from his house, nearer to the old neighborhood he'd grown up in. There was a wading pool and swings and teeter-totters, and Sonny really got a kick out of watching the kids and getting what he thought were some good shots. He stopped off and had a cherry Coke at Binkley's Drugs on the way home, and came in hot and tired but feeling a nice satisfaction with himself. He even noticed a little stirring, an almost physical sense of the small, fluttery feeling of a kind of hope.

He walked in the den and found his mother wiping her eyes with a wet washcloth. Her face was pink and puffy.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

“That woman,” Mrs. Burns said. “I am going to give that woman a piece of my mind.”

“
What
woman?”

“Your
friend's
mother. That Casselman woman.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“That woman had the nerve to call me and go on and on about
you
being a bad influence on
him
. Can you beat that?
Her
son is just perfect, of course. God's gift to the universe. Innocent as a babe in arms. My foot, he is.
I
know what he is. And I know what he's done to
you
.”

“For God sake, we've been all through that stuff. It's none of your business.”

“Oh, I suppose it's
her
business, though?”

“No, it's not anyone's business.”

“I'd have gone to see that woman long before this, except I knew you'd hate me even more.”

“
Please
don't say that stuff. I don't hate you. I don't hate anyone. Please don't do something awful.”

“You see,” she started sobbing. “Whatever I do is awful.”

“I didn't say that!”

“You think it. You think I'm awful. My only son. When you were a little boy you loved me so, and now you hate me.”

“Stop it!” Sonny shouted. “Stop saying that stuff or I'll shoot myself! I swear to God I'll find a gun and shoot myself!”

Mrs. Burns began screaming. Then great, horrible sobs came out of her, as if her insides were being wrenched out. Great spots were exploding in Sonny's eyes, and he thought he was going to heave. He groped for the door and went outside, blinking as he propped one hand against a white square wooden pillar of the porch. He closed his eyes and tried to settle his mind.

Hi Diddle diddle

Cat with a fiddle

Cow jumped out into Noon

Little dog laughed to see the port

And the Prince ran away with a goon

He stood on the porch until he stopped shaking so bad and then went back inside. His mother was pressing the washcloth on her forehead, sniffling and breathing hard.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” said Sonny. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She managed a little smile that looked like it hurt. “I've got to fix my face. I've got to see that woman at six o'clock.”

There wasn't any way he could argue her out of it, so he insisted on going with her. He went upstairs and called Gunner from the little telephone alcove. Gunner had already talked to his own mother, and he sounded a hundred years old.

Mrs. Burns got all dolled up in a pink suit and matching pillbox hat. She looked like she was going to a PTA meeting. Maybe that's sort of what it was, except the children were grown. All they needed was a teacher to chair the meeting.

Gunner greeted them at the door, wearing a fatigue camouflage suit he'd brought home from the Army. Sonny wished he had one too, even though he knew that kind of camouflage wasn't going to help much. It was designed to keep you safe in jungles from enemy gooks, but it couldn't protect you from wild mothers. Nina Casselman was arranged on the couch, wearing one of her slinky silk-blouse-and-toreador outfits and the backless white heels, one of them dangling from the toes of a crossed leg. Sonny felt a flush of excitement and looked away. It seemed like betraying his own mother to get sexed up by her enemy-mother. Mrs. Burns sat down in an armchair and Sonny stood beside her, as if taking up a required position.

“Would you care to have something cold to drink, Mrs. Burns?” Gunner asked politely.

“I don't drink, thank you,” she said as curtly as possible.

“I meant a Coke or something. Orange juice?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

Gunner and his mother already had drinks themselves, and without even asking Sonny, Gunner brought him a martini strong enough to curl the hair on your chest.

Nina dipped a finger in her martini, sort of stirring it around, and said haughtily, “It's too bad this had to happen.”

“I agree with you there,” Mrs. Burns said. “If your son hadn't influenced Sonny the way he had—”

“My son,” said Nina, “is a leader, always has been. Frankly it's beyond me how he got mixed up with your son and his radical, antisocial ideas, but—”

“
My
son has always been a good boy, a normal person, until he met—
him—
that playboy with a beard.”

“He never had a beard before he got mixed up with
your
son.”

“That's ridiculous,” Gunner said.

“It's true,” Nina insisted.

“It doesn't have anything to do with anything,” Gunner said.

“No,” Sonny said. “It really doesn't.”

Neither of the mothers paid any attention.

“I can understand,” Nina continued, “how a boy like your son, who never pledged anything, who wasn't in any house at all in college much less a
good
house—I can understand how a bitter boy like that would be attracted by Jews and Communists, but—”

“Jews! It's your son who's out lalligagging around with a Jewish girl day and night, everyone knows about
that
, let me tell you—”

“My son was never involved with any Jew girl until he started running with
your
son and his crowd.”

“What crowd?” Sonny asked, startled at the notion of his being the leader of a crowd of any kind, which is what Nina made it sound like.

“There isn't any crowd, Nina,” Gunner said.

“Don't lie for him, he's got you all confused,” Nina said.

“I really don't have any crowd, Mrs. Casselman,” Sonny said.

“Don't try to brainwash
me
, young man!”

“Brainwash!” Mrs. Burns shouted. “My boy's the one who's been brainwashed. It's your son who has the communistic beard. My Sonny shaves, like a good American.”

“Of course!” Nina said. “He wants to be safe himself, he wants to talk
other
people into beards and let
them
take the consequences.”

“It's
my
goddam beard!” Gunner said. “Nobody talked me into it.”

“They have their ways,” Nina insisted. “You don't even know how they do it, how they talk you into doing their bidding.”

“Are you implying my Sonny is a Communist?” Mrs. Burns asked in a trembling voice.

“If the shoe fits, wear it,” Nina said. “If you lie down with dogs you come up with fleas.”

“You can say that again, but it's my son who got the fleas!” Mrs. Burns yelled.

“Please,” Sonny pleaded, looking helplessly at Gunner.

Gunner went to the middle of the room, pointing his hands at each mother, like a referee, and made an announcement.

“Listen,” he said. “I'll shave off the beard. Will that make everybody happy? Is that what it's all about?”

“It's what's on the inside that counts,” Mrs. Burns said, sobbing.

“It sure is, sister,” Nina said sharply. “And let me tell you—”

“Cut it, Nina, just cut it,” Gunner ordered. “I'm shaving the beard and that's all she wrote.”

Sonny put a hand on his mother's quaking shoulder and said firmly, “Come on, let's go. We have to go home.”

Sonny drove the car back while his mother sat sniffling and crying, leaning against her door as if she were trying to press so hard she'd fall out. When they got home she washed her face and had two aspirin and a Pepsi.

“Are you still going to see that boy, after what happened?”

“After what happened!” Sonny yelled. “What happened was you and his mother acted like crazy people, that's what happened!”

“See!” Mrs. Burns cried. “He's turning you against me, he's making you take his side!”

“Jesus Hannah Christ,” said Sonny. He was too tired to scream or even to argue. He went to his room and slammed the door, flopped on his bunk, and tried to shut his mind off.

Help me, God, God help me. I hate your ass, but help me if you can. Help me lie down beside the still waters
.

8

Shaving the beard off seemed to make Gunner look older—maybe just having the damn thing had aged him, what with all the crap he had to take about it. His cheeks looked hollower and whiter than before he had the beard, and his skin was a little raw, making him appear as if he'd just recovered from an illness. A couple days after the Great Mother Meeting, he picked up Sonny and they got a six-pack of Bud and went up to Crown Hill Cemetery, picking a high, shady spot where you could look out over the city and no one was likely to bother you. They just sat and sipped for a while without saying anything, and then Gunner started talking about how Marty's mother was hounding her about seeing so much of a
shaygetz
—that was the Jewish word for a guy who wasn't what Marty called “O.O.T.T.,” One of the Tribe—just as Gunner's mother was on his back about dating a Jewish girl.

“We're getting it from both ends,” Gunner said. “What a lot of shit.”

“Are you really serious about Marty?”

“‘Serious about?' What does that mean? How the hell do I know? I like to fuck her and I like to talk to her—that's a pretty rare combination, you know?”

“Hell, yes.”

“But we both have things to do. She doesn't want to get locked into a picket fence, like DeeDee's so hot to do. She's got her own stuff to do, her art. And I don't even know yet what the hell I've got to do. Except try to find out what it is.”

“Are you still going up to see the ad agency? In Chicago?”

“Yeh, I figure I owe 'em that. And myself, too. I really think I'll get on the GI Bill train, but I at least could tell 'em that, maybe they'd like the idea of a guy doing that before he settles into a regular job.”

“Yeh, right. Might as well keep it open.”

“The pay ain't hay, I'll tell you that. They were talking seven thousand as a starting salary.”

Sonny whistled and said, “Shit, that's as much as Biff Barkely makes over at the
Star
right now, and he's been with 'em—Jesus, maybe fifteen years.”

“You talked to him, huh? About a job there?”

“Yeh, but I don't know. He's kind of bitter, it seems like. He kind of encouraged me to go to New York or something, try the big guys.”

“Why not? You can always come back here, you might as well see what it's like in the big city. Hell, you could get the bill and do some work on the side.”

“Maybe. I guess maybe I ought to go talk to the guys at the V.A. About getting the bill.”

“Yeh, I was down there once, but I have to go back and get the forms and shit. I think I'm going to try to get into Columbia. I was talking to Marty about it.”

“Man, that'd be great. Having a girl there, right there in New York.”

“Yeh. New York.”

New York City
.

Just hearing the name or saying it to himself gave Sonny a kind of tingly feeling, exciting and scary at the same time. The flat, familiar town stretched out below seemed tamer but also safer. He just didn't know if he had what it took to survive in a real big city, much less the biggest and toughest of them all. Of course, if he had a friend there, a friend like Gunner, who'd make out anywhere in the world, it might be easier, might even be some fun.

“I've had it with Naptown, anyway,” Gunner said. “I know that much.”

“Maybe so,” said Sonny, who didn't really know.

They left the cemetery at dusk, the long straight rows of streetlights started coming on, laid out orderly and predictably, the way the city was. There was something dull but reassuring about it.

On the way home Gunner mentioned casually that Marty had a girl friend from college coming in for the weekend, and wondered if Sonny'd like to be fixed up with her. Marty said the girl was pretty sexy-looking and wasn't short on brains, either. Sonny said sure, very casual, just as if such opportunities came along all the time. Gunner said the date would be for Saturday night, and then if Sonny liked the girl, they could all do something on Sunday, too. If
he
liked the girl. Sonny could only think about whether the girl would like
him
. He didn't even know her but he was already worried.

Sonny tried to work himself into a casual mood as he got dressed for the date on Saturday night. In the shower he sang “Bye, Bye, Blackbird” at the top of his voice, and after he got out and dried he slapped Old Spice After Shave Lotion all over himself with stinky abandon. Casual him. Devil may care. But beneath the loud, jaunty singing and the smell of Old Spice, he was terrified by the thought that his date might really be a great sexy girl and he would ruin everything. He tried to comfort himself with the thought that she wouldn't really be smart or sexy at all and there wouldn't be anything to be nervous about. But it wasn't usual for a girl to describe another girl as “sexy-looking” to a guy she was fixing her up with. Marty, of course, was sophisticated, and there was the possibility she really meant it and the girl was really sexy-looking. There was always that possibility. You knew there was no possibility at all when a girl tried to fix you up with a friend and described her by saying she had “real personality” or, even worse, was “loads of fun.” If there was one thing Sonny couldn't stand, it was a girl who was “loads of fun.” That meant she was homely and plain and hated sex and tried to make up for it by talking a blue streak and faking a lot of laughs and suggesting “fun” things to do like why don't we all go to the zoo and feed peanuts to the polar bears. Girls who were loads of fun always loved to go to the zoo. You couldn't lay a hand on them in the fucking zoo.