All American Boy Read Free

that? About my mind?”
    He glares at her. “What’s going on, Mother? Was Kyle in some sort of trouble?”
    â€œOh, he was always in trouble. You know that. He was a bad boy. He wasn’t like you, Walter. You were the good boy and he was the bad one. That’s what your poor Aunt Bernadette always said. You know that.”
    â€œNo, I don’t, Mom. I don’t remember anything about Brown’s Mill and really don’t care to.”
    His eye catches the framed photograph on the wall over the telephone set. The three of them. Mom, Dad, Wally. Wally is eight. He wears one of those big wide striped ties from the seventies. His father is in his navy uniform. Somber, angry, imperious, unsmiling.
    Yes, the spitting image.
    You were the good boy, Walter .
    â€œIt’s really upsetting the way that policeman keeps coming by here,” his mother is saying. “I’m at my wit’s end about it. All the questions. I don’t know what to do.”
    I lived here once . Wally has to repeat the thought to himself as he looks around the place. I lived here. In this house. For sixteen years .
    Here, in this very room, he watched Land of the Lost and Josie and the Pussycats every Saturday morning, reeling from a sugar buzz of Lucky Charms. Over there in the dining room he ate his mother’s turkey loaf and “Swedish goulash”—a mishmash of hamburger and Franco-American spaghetti that he’d loved so well. And in the bathroom, from the time he was twelve, he masturbated looking at pictures of bodybuilders in the ads in the back of Superman comic books.
    â€œAre you still in there, Wally?”
    His father would bang his fist against the door. Wally twitches a little, remembering.
    â€œJesus Christ, hurry up! What do you do in there anyway?”
    Ah, but his father would find out. Once, when the door wasn’t locked, Dad had caught him. He said nothing. He just grabbed the comic book from Wally’s hand, glared down at it, and tore it up savagely, leaving the pieces on the floor.
    â€œYou can stay here, Wally,” his mother is telling him. “Your room is still—”
    â€œThe same?” He laughs, looking over at her as she wrings her hands. “No, thank you, Mom. I’ve made other arrangements.”
    She looks hurt, but just for a moment. She’s too caught up with losing her mind to spare much time for him. And wasn’t that always the way?
    â€œI need your help, Walter. Please .”
    He sighs. “I can’t give you the kind of help you need, Mom. You need a professional.”
    â€œJust one small favor, Wally. That’s all I ask.”
    He studies her face. It, too, is the same. She’s seventy-three, but she could easily pass for twenty years younger. Her blond hair has faded to gray, yet her eyes are still fluorescent blue, her skin still creamy and smooth. Only her hands have aged: wrinkled and spotted, with the veins raised and purple.
    She implores him now with those hands. “One favor, Wally.”
    He looks at her. “What’s going on, Mother?”
    â€œI need your help.”
    â€œWhat kind of help?”
    â€œI need you to get rid of a crate for me.”
    He blinks. “A crate?”
    â€œYes. Take it down to the swamp in Dogtown. It’s too heavy for me to move. But I need to get rid of it as soon as possible.”
    Wally leans in close, studying her eyes.
    â€œWill you do it for me, Walter? Please?”
    â€œWhy should I do anything for you, Mother?” he whispers, only inches now from her face. “What did you ever do for me?”
    â€œPlease, Walter. Please.”
    He backs off. “Where is it? This crate?”
    â€œIn the basement, Walter. Behind the furnace.”
    In Wally’s last show, some moth-eaten musical touring upstate New York, he met an old woman. She was about his mother’s age, fair and pretty like her too. Her name was Cora, and