*
The mother was some time answering his knock. She wore a house robe and sweater, no church getup, and he couldn’t get a decent grip on her viny hand.
“Why you frownin so, Missah Viddich? Ain’t you happy, be seein my home?”
Her sweater was a cardigan, roped at the neck with plastic beads. She had the same Native American touches as her son, the model’s cheekbones and lemon-wedge eyes.
“Missah Viddich, oh see. I’m glad I got all that frownin on my side.”
She noticed the frowning but not the bruises.
“I’m happy to be here,” Kit told her. “I am, really.”
“It’s a house of the Spirit, Missah Viddich. I got me the Spirit, in this house.”
“Please, Mrs. Rebes — I’m not a mister, okay? I’m just Kit.”
“Kit, oh course now, sure. Course.”
She took another long moment with his face, his bruises.
“Huh. See now girl, this here’s Kit. Kit. Well listen, Kit, why don’t we have ourselves a drop?”
“A drop? A drink?” He got his hands back in his pockets. “Mrs. Rebes, what I’ve got to tell you …” Aw, what had he been doing, back there on the stairway, on the MTA? Why didn’t he have more than the faintest notion of what to say?
“This isn’t going to be easy,” he finished lamely.
Her smile: a fish-like embittered swallowing that stretched her pouchy lower face into something squarish.
“A little drop’s just the thing, then,” she said. “Little drop, sure. Be good for those bruises too.”
She moved away, motioning him in.
A flimsy person, perhaps forty-five, drifting off in slippers. Kit suffered a chilly recollection of the smoke-ghosts he’d seen from the T. The front room here looked too busy for this tired counterwoman. Busy as a heap of dry kindling. The heart of the space was a drinker’s setup: soundless TV, padded rocker, dusty blanket, dusty lamp, and a half-empty bottle of Catawba Pink. Beyond that, a hip-high radiator hissed and ticked. Its valve was bent, spraying steam. The glow of the standing lamp actually diffracted into an indoor rainbow. A half-crescent of faint yellows and reds shimmered there, above the radiator’s shoulder. Also the curtain in that corner couldn’t keep still. The material was threaded with glitter, like a Hare Krishna wrap, so as the curtain rose and fell it sent sparks through the steam rainbow. Ghosts in every medium.
Kit, struggling to firm up his thinking, made a silent survey of the stereo equipment. Components from different systems, the stuff was top of the line. The tuner had a good dozen controls. The eight-track player had a toggle for boosting the bass. Now what sort of a violation was that? If a boy goes breaking and entering and the mother lets him keep his swag at home?
Plus: a fraying plaid sofa and a vinyl beanbag sitter patched with duct tape. A ‘50s-style clock set in a helmsman’s wheel, way too large for the place (looked like it belonged on the Wood’s Hole Ferry). Though meant for the wall, it sat propped in one corner. Not that the mother had neglected the walls. Everywhere hung posters and cards and calendar cut-offs. Like mother, like son: the subjects couldn’t have been more different — Mrs. Rebes went in for religious stuff — but the decoration was every bit as compulsive and garish as in Junior’s closet. Zia Mirini might have wanted a couple of these pieces, like the portrait of Martin Luther King. He had a halo of Memphis motel neon. Kit also found a call for making King’s birthday a holiday.
Every scrap and stick was dusty, brittle, dry. The whole place could burst into flames at the first wrong-way spark. And extension cords littered the floor. Stringy brown cords from Woolworth’s made clumsy double x’s with whiplike orange models from Roto Rooter. A cord even ran out the room’s farther archway, into the cheese-colored kitchen. Kit couldn’t find the outlet.
“Thass right, take a good look.”
Mrs. Rebes waited before him, holding out a drink.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Nothin to apologize for, Missah Viddich. Kit. Ain’t no one else ever cared to take a look.”
He accepted the glass, a formal stemmed piece.
“I try to keep it pretty in here, see. All the colors, oh see.” She’d resumed her square smile. “Can’t blame a mama with two boys to raise if she tryin to keep some colors, the place they call home.”
Two boys. “How’s, ah, how’s the brother taking it, Mrs. Rebes? Does he come by, ever? Does he help out?”
“Oh.” She drifted back to the Catawba Pink. “Louie-Louie, you know. He still a baby.”
They drank. Sitting, the mother rocked with head back, murmuring a hymn-like melody that Kit might have recognized.
“My Junior,” she said, or sang. “Finally found me a man who cares about my Junior.”
Her eyes were shut but the skin of the lids rippled. Her eyes moved, seeing nonetheless. Kit thought of the psychic in Brookline, the woman Bette had visited.
“Preacher told me I’d find someone,” she sang. “Preacher told me, there’d come someone see my boy for a hero.”
“Have you been talking with your preacher?” Kit asked.
“Oh now. Ain’t today Sunday?”
“But you’re seeing him, ah, on a regular basis? You’ve got some support?”
“Got me the best support of all, Kit. Got me the Spirit.”
“Yes. That’s, that’s good.” He tried to find a comfortable place on the sofa. “But you do have, ah, people to talk to? You do have friends or people at the shop?”
“At the shop? Hoo, now. Half the time ain’t nobody even over there but those itty-bitty college girls come in all dressed in black.”
He got a deeper swallow of the sweet liquor. The reminder of his wife, her and her psychic, had only thrown him off that much more. His thinking had half-fallen into the worn grooves of speeches he’d prepared — not for this mother — but for Bette.
“Missah Viddich, Kit. You know I already got this talkin-to from the preacher. You didn’ come here, now, just to give me this talkin-to?”
Bette there’s nothing I can do with the paper … nothing with the paper or on TV or in front of some kind of Grand Jury investigation … that’s not going to prove anything Bette … that’s not me.
*
He wound up hearing about Junior’s funeral. About the plans, rather. The mother’s church was hard-line, a House of Zion, but the preacher was a true Christian. He’d accept the prodigal into his house. “We got some folks kinda high-tone in the congregation, you know,” the mother said. “Some folks think they superstars. Got Afros on they heads but don’t know they black in their heads.”
Still, the funeral would have to wait. For now the state couldn’t release Junior’s body.
“Police.” Sour-faced, she drained her glass. “Police come and told me.”
“They need his body?”
“My boy dead, and even that ain’t enough for ‘em. They want his bones too.”
Kit touched his neck.
“Oh see, they want an autopsy. They got some kinda investigation goin.”
“I realize that,” Kit said. “They’ll probably have, ah, I realize there’s going to be …”