All American Boy by William J. Mann Read Free Book Online Page B

house covered in ivy. When she wasn’t working at her diner on Main Street, she would be in her living room listening to Stella Dallas on the radio. A few days after they learned about the baby, Regina and Rocky went with their mother to see Mormor. Mama was being very quiet, and she’d scolded them on the way over, something she didn’t often do.
    â€œBehave at your grandmother’s, please,” she said. “Don’t get her upset. Just be good girls.”
    Mormor meant mother’s mother in Swedish. When Mama was a girl, she had lived in the big old house on Oak Avenue with Mormor and Aunt Selma. That was back in the days when they all had just come over from Sweden to live in Brown’s Mill. Regina didn’t remember anyone ever talking about a man named Morfar , or mother’s father. It was always just Mormor.
    To Regina, Mormor seemed enormous. She was tall and wide and had two silver balls of hair on her head, one on top of the other. There were only a few teeth left in her mouth, so she never smiled. Mormor had arthritis in her legs, so she didn’t walk around much. She just sat in her chair listening to the radio. If anyone asked her about her legs, which sometimes swelled to the size of tree stumps, she would say they had gotten so bad from all the years she had to stand waiting on customers at Britta’s Lunch. Everybody used to go to Britta’s for Mormor’s Swedish meatballs and grilled sardine sandwiches. Mama has shown them where it was, in the place where Henry’s Diner now stood, and told them how she used to work in the kitchen when she was little, peeling apples from the local orchards for Mormor’s pies.
    â€œNow, please, girls,” Mama said when they got to Mormor’s house. “Stay outside and be good. Promise?”
    Regina and Rocky promised. They were glad to not go inside. They much preferred Mormor’s yard to the dusty echoes of her big house. Mormor had tall oak trees, knotting into each other as they crosshatched the sky, and birdhouses of all shapes and sizes, and beautiful roses growing on a trellis. Regina especially loved the roses. They were big and full, red and pink and yellow. It smelled so wonderful near the rose trellis. It smelled almost as nice as Mama’s dressing table at home, with her powders and puffs and old perfume bottles.
    But Mormor’s voice had drifted across the afternoon. “How could you let this happen?” Their grandmother’s words were deep and thick and angry in her guttural Swedish accent. “You foolish, foolish girl. As if the two you already have aren’t enough to feed and clothe!”
    The girls said nothing to each other. They just stood in front of the rose trellis, smelling the beautiful flowers.
    â€œListen to the hum,” Regina whispered.
    The girls drew closer to the trellis. Behind the vines, dozens of bees droned their monotonous song. A few flew out, and the girls jumped back.
    â€œI wish I had one of those roses to put in my hair,” Regina said, and she reached in, pricking her hand on the thorns. She pulled back in pain, shaking the trellis, and a dozen bees swarmed angrily out at her.
    â€œThat’s God punishing you, Gina,” Rocky lectured her crying sister. “You almost killed Mormor’s roses.”
    â€œI just wanted one.”
    Rocky shook her head. “It’s just like the robins, Regina. You touch one, you kill them all.”
    At the mention of the robins, Regina started to cry harder. For several seconds Rocky just stood there, watching her. Finally she put her arms around her sister and held her close, kissing the blood off her fingers.
    â€œYou’ve got to call an ambulance,” Mama whispered in the night. “I’ve hurt myself.”
    Regina stood in the doorway. Her mother was on the floor, next to her bed, its linens draped over the side, as if she’d tugged on them, trying to get up. Now she