Six O’Clock News

Wanda had the baby in 1951. She was 20 years old and living in two rooms above a hardware store. The father had gone away before the baby came. She never said much about him. When people asked, she said he was from out of town.

She named the boy James Lewis. On his first birthday, she bought him a little cake from the bakery and set it on the kitchen table. A neighbour with a Kodak Brownie took a picture of him sitting beside it. In the picture, he looked tired. Wanda was smiling, though not much.

She worked days at a laundry and cleaned a doctor’s office twice a week. The apartment had a chrome kitchen table and a refrigerator that rattled at night. She kept everything clean. The windows, the sink, the knobs on the stove. She believed a clean house meant a person was doing all right.

When Jimmy started school, the other kids called him Jimmy Lewis. Sometimes they asked why he had no dad but two first names. He laughed along with them. He was good at running and pretty good at baseball. He brought home spelling tests with red marks on them and laid them on the table while Wanda made supper.

“How’d you do?” she’d ask.

“All right, I guess.”

She’d look at the paper. “You could do better than this.”

He’d take it back and put it in his room.

There was a closet in the hallway that Wanda kept locked. Jimmy knew there were old papers in there, and a diary with a little brass clasp. When he was 10, he found the key in the drawer beside the stove. He opened the closet and looked at what was inside. A man’s photograph. Some letters tied with string. The diary.

He didn’t understand everything he read. He understood enough to know that his mother had been somebody else before he was born.

He read about a man who said he’d come back, and another entry that said he wasn’t coming back after all on account of getting married and starting a family with somebody else. There were things written in the diary that made Jimmy feel ashamed, though he couldn’t have said why. He put everything where it had been and locked the door.

That night Wanda made meat loaf. She stood at the sink washing dishes while Jimmy sat at the table doing his homework.

“Did you get into that closet?” she asked.

He looked up.

“No.”

She kept washing a plate in her hands. “I don’t want you messing around with old things.”

“I didn’t.”

She dried her hands and came over to him. She stood behind his chair and put her hand on his shoulder. He could smell the dish soap on her skin.

“You know I love you,” she said.

He nodded.

“I’ve done the best I could.”

“I know.”

She went back to the sink.

The years went by. Wanda got older. Jimmy got taller. He took a job at a gas station after school. He didn’t bring girls home. He went out some nights and came back late, and Wanda waited up for him in the living room with the television on low.

She’d ask where he’d been. He’d look at the floor.

In the spring, the doctor told Wanda she had to start taking better care of herself. He gave her some pills and told her to rest more. She put the pills in the kitchen cabinet and kept working.

Jimmy saw her sitting at the table one morning with her head in her hands.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t look so good.”

He poured himself a glass of milk. He wanted to say something that would make things better, but he couldn’t think what it was. He had the feeling that if he stayed there long enough, she would tell him something. She didn’t.

On a Tuesday evening in October, he came home and found her asleep in her chair. The television was showing a man talking about the weather. He turned it off. Wanda opened her eyes.

“You’re home,” she said.

“Yes.”

She reached for his hand. He let her hold it.

“Stay a while,” she said.

“I’ve got to go out.”

She nodded, as if she’d expected this. He stood there, looking at her. Then he went to his room and shut the door.

Later, he took the key from the drawer beside the stove. He went into the closet and opened the diary. He read the same pages again. He looked at the photograph of the man. The man had dark hair and a cigarette in his hand. He looked like somebody who knew where he was going.

Jimmy put the photograph in his pocket.

He walked through town after dark. The streets were nearly empty. At the corner by the bus station, a man asked him for a cigarette. Jimmy said he didn’t smoke. He kept walking. He passed the schoolyard where he’d played as a boy. The swings moved a little in the wind. The man looked vaguely familiar.

At home, Wanda had gone to bed. Her door was open. He could hear her breathing from the hallway.

He went into the kitchen and stood by the refrigerator. It made its old rattling sound. On the table was a plate with a piece of meat loaf covered in wax paper. Beside it was a note.

Jimmy, there’s food here. Please eat something.

He sat down. He took the photograph out of his pocket and laid it beside the plate.

He thought about calling somebody, but there was no one to call. He thought about going upstairs and asking his mother what had happened, and why she’d kept the photograph, and whether she’d ever loved the man.

He folded the note and put it in his pocket.

The next evening, people were coming home from work when the police cars went past. A woman standing in front of the grocery store said she’d heard a shot. Somebody else said it had happened near the bus station. By six o’clock, everyone seemed to know something, though nobody knew exactly what.

Wanda was standing in the kitchen when the news came on. She’d been waiting for Jimmy to come home. The announcer spoke in the same voice he used for the weather and the school closings.

A young man had been killed downtown.

The camera showed the street. The sidewalk. A pair of shoes beside a dark stain. Someone had covered the body, but the camera lingered on the pavement.

Wanda sat down.

She didn’t cry. She watched the screen as if the picture might change if she kept looking at it. The announcer moved on to a story about a fire on the other side of town and then to the forecast for tomorrow. It was probably going to rain.

The kitchen was clean. The dishes were put away. The refrigerator rattled. The rattle sounded like words. The words sounded like “c’mon, baby, spend the night with me, c’mon, baby, spend the night with me.”

Where do words go after they’re said, Wanda wondered.

When the telephone rang, she let it ring until it stopped.