by Wally Lamb
“But it was an antiwar statement, Ray,” I said. “That was his whole point: he thought if he cut off his hand, Hussein and Bush would both stop and notice. Come to their senses. He thought he could short-circuit a war. It was heroic, in its own goofy way.”
“Heroic?” Ray said. He rolled down the window, spat, rolled it back up again. “Heroic? I’ve seen heroics, buddy boy. I’ve been there. Don’t you sit there and tell me this stunt he pulled was heroic!”
As a kid, I had had a recurring fantasy in which my biological father was Sky King, the adventuresome pilot on Saturday morning TV. After the worst times, the loudest shouting, I’d sometimes circle around the backyard, my arms swooping wildly at passing planes. Sky would spot me, I imagined—make an emergency landing, having located us at last: his long-lost wife, his twin sons. He’d help Ma and Thomas and me into the Songbird, then make Ray pay—punch him a couple of good ones, buzz him all the way down our street to make him sorry for the way he bullied us. The four of us would fly away. Later, somewhere around the time I began to sprout armpit hair and lift weights down in the cellar, I gave up on heroes and took to buzzing Ray myself, goading him in small ways—stepping, usually, on the line but not quite over it. I was still afraid of his anger but saw, now, how he punished weakness—pounced on it. Out of self-preservation, I hid my fear. Smirked at the dinner table, answered him in grudging single syllables, and learned how to look him back in the eye. Because Ray was a bully, I showed him as often as possible that Thomas was the weaker brother. Fed him Thomas to save myself.
When I pulled into the parking lot at Shanley Memorial, I put the brake on and kept the engine running. Ray got out of the truck. I just sat there, immobile, my legs as heavy as lead. I looked up at the sound of his Navy ring click-clicking against the glass.
“Aren’t you coming?” he asked me.
I rolled down the window. “You know what?” I said. “I felt the truck pulling a little while I was driving over here. I think one of the front tires is soft. I’m just going to go to the gas station and have them check it out.”
He scowled, glanced quickly at the tires. “I didn’t feel any pull,” he said.
“It won’t take long. He’s in room 210 West. I’ll see you up there.”
I watched him pass through the revolving door. Watched visitors and delivery men and a vendor in a Patriots jacket selling hot dogs from a cart. Punched the radio buttons, settling finally for a duet: Willie Nelson’s croon and Dylan’s nasal twang, together.
There’s a big aching hole in my chest now where my heart was
And a hole in the sky where God used to be
I don’t know how long I sat there.
I was just about to throw her in reverse and get the hell out of there—drive somewhere, anywhere—when my ex-wife rolled past me in her van and pulled in three spaces away. good earth potters it says on the side. It’s his van, I guess, not hers. From time to time, I’ve seen the two of them, Dessa and her live-in boyfriend, driving around town in that truck. Dessa runs a day care place. He’s the potter.
She got out of the truck holding a pot of chrysanthemums and one of those silver balloon things. The wind had picked up and that balloon was bobbing around like crazy. When I saw her, I was glad I’d put her name on the “approved visitors” list. I figured she might come. Dessa had always been good to my brother.
She was wearing jeans and a purple turtleneck and this short little jacket. She looked more like thirty than forty. She looked better than ever. She walked right past my truck without seeing me. It wasn’t until after she’d passed through the revolving door that I realized I’d been holding my breath.
Danny Mixx, the boyfriend’s name is. Don’t ask me what kind of a name Mixx is, or what nationality. He’s sort of the ex-hippie type: bib overalls, red hair that he wears in a braid that goes halfway down his back. I saw him in two braids once. . . . If you ask me, they’re a mismatch. He’s successful, I guess, not that I know anything about pottery. He’s won awards and shit. A while back, they did a story about him in Connecticut magazine. Dessa was in one of the pictures—in the background. Dessa’s sister Angie told me about it when I ran into her in the parking lot at ShopRite, and I went back in and bought a copy. That magazine hung around our house for over a month. See this woman? I kept imagining myself telling Joy. That’s her. She’s why I hold back. This is who’s between us. I looked at that picture of Dessa so many times that, after a while, the magazine opened to it automatically. Then, one day, it was gone. Thrown out with the trash. Recycled.
They live out on Route 162, Dessa and him—the old Troger farm, about half a mile past Shea’s apple orchard. You should see that house: it’s all peeling to shit, mildew problem on the north side. The place is practically crying out for a power-washing and a couple coats of paint, but I guess they have other priorities. The other day, while I was putting gas in the truck, I caught myself in the middle of this fantasy where Dessa hires me to paint that house and, right in the middle of my work, she waves me down from the ladder and we go inside and make love. She tells me she still loves me, that she’s made a mistake. . . . By the time that little pipe dream was over, I had pumped myself nineteen dollars’ worth of gas, which was a little complicated because all I had in my wallet at the time was a ten-dollar bill and no credit card.
Dan the Man converted their barn into a studio and built his own wood-fired kiln out in the field next to it. I kept track of his progress. When they first moved there, I used to find all kinds of excuses to drive out onto 162, which, all it is is the slow way to Hewett City. More masochism than curiosity, I guess—me doing that. One time, he was out there in just his cutoffs, painting their mailbox these jazzy psychedelic pinks and blues and yellows. “Constantine/Mixx,” it said the next time I drove by. Blue skies and puffy clouds and a sun with a face on it: happily-ever-after painted onto a mailbox. I hadn’t known she’d gone back to her maiden name. Reading that mailbox hurt somewhere in the vicinity of a swift kick to the groin.
Dessa had parked just three spaces away. I cut the engine, got out of the truck, and went over to that van. Inside on the dashboard was a pair of women’s sunglasses, an Indigo Girls cassette, and a grungy-looking coffee mug with the Three Stooges on the side. “Nyuk nyuk nyuk,” it said. The guy’s a prize-winning potter in Connecticut magazine and she has to drink her coffee out of that thing? Sadie, Dessa’s black Lab, was asleep in the sun on the passenger’s seat.
“Hey, girl,” I said, rapping on the window. “Hey, Sadie.”
I’d given that crazy dog to Dessa for Christmas—when? ’79, maybe? ’80? As a pup, she’d chewed everything in sight, including our coffee table legs and half my socks and underwear and even the hose of my brand-new compressor. Goofus, I called her. She used to drive me crazy. Now, roused from sleep, she looked up at me with milky eyes. Her black face was flecked with gray. “What’s up, Goofus?” I said to her through the glass. No recognition whatsoever.
By the time Dessa came out again, I was back in my truck. At first, I wasn’t going to say anything, but then I rolled down my window. “Hey!” I gave the horn a little tap. It made her jump.
“Dominick,” her lips said. She smiled.
When I got out of the truck, she took my hands in hers and squeezed them. Came a step closer and gave me a hug. I placed my hand on the small of her back, tentative and unsure. We’d been together sixteen years—sixteen years, man—and there I was, touching her as awkward as a kid at a school dance.
“How you doing?” I said. Her curly black hair was pulled back, one or two wiry gray strands boinging in the breeze. Being that close to her was pain and pleasure both.
“I’m okay,” she said. “But, God, Dominick—how are you doing?”
I blew out a breath, nodded at the hospital’s upper windows. “About as well as you’d expect, I guess. Especially now that he’s become Freak of the Week.”
She pressed her lips together, shook her head. “It was on the news again a
ll day yesterday,” she said. “They just won’t let it rest, will they?”
“Guy from the Enquirer called last night. Offered us three hundred bucks for a recent picture of him, a thousand for one of him without the hand.”
“Inquiring minds want to know,” she said, smiling sadly.
“Inquiring minds can go fuck themselves.” She reached out and touched my arm.
“He seemed pretty good just now, though, Dominick. Considering. Better than I expected. Thanks for putting my name on the visitors’ list.”
I shrugged. Looked away. “No problem,” I said. “I just thought if you wanted to see him . . .”
“We had a nice little chat, and then he said he was tired. He seemed pretty peaceful.”
“It’s the Haldol,” I said.
“So how’s Ray doing with all this?”
I shrugged. “You probably know better than I do.” She gave me a quizzical look.
Sadie was up and slobbering against the driver’s side window. “I see this sorry excuse for a dog is still among the living,” I said. When Dessa unlocked the door, I reached in and patted Sadie’s belly the way she used to like. “So how’s Dan the Man?”
We lost eye contact on that one, but she answered me like he and I were old buddies. “Fine. Busy. It gets a little crazy for him from now until after Christmas. He just got back from Santa Fe. Took the top prize in a big juried show there.”
“Santa Fe, huh? You go out there with him?”
She shook her head. “The Museum of American Folk Art? In New York? They just took two of his pieces.” She reached up and rubbed her knuckles against my cheek. “God, you look exhausted, Dominick. Are you sleeping?”
I shrugged. “Enough. It’s just hard, you know?”
“You know who I keep thinking about through all this?” she said. “Your mother. The way she used to worry so much about him. This would have really clobbered her.”
I stroked Sadie’s back, scratched under her chin. “Yup. She would have had to say a couple billion novenas over this one,” I said.
Dessa reached out and fingered the sleeve of my jacket. She was always like that—tactile. Joy’s different—not a toucher unless we’re fucking or she’s looking to get fucked. Then her hands are everywhere. But Dessa’s touch is different. Something I had and lost.
“And the thing is, he meant well,” she said. “He wanted to stop a war from happening. How can someone cause so much pain when all he wants to do is help out the world?”
I didn’t answer her. There was no answer. The last thing I wanted to do was tear up like this right in front of her.
“Well,” she said.
“Hey, thanks again for coming. You didn’t have to, you know. You’re not under any obligation.”
“I wanted to come, Dominick. I love your brother. You know that.”
It overwhelmed me, her saying that. I couldn’t help it. I leaned over and tried to kiss her. She turned her head away. My lips hit her eyebrow, the bone underneath.
She climbed up into the van, gunned it a little more than necessary, and backed out of the parking space. Braked. Gave me a thumbs-up. I stood there, watching her drive off. Masochistic or not, I can’t stop loving her. I’m going to love Dessa forever.
The hospital lobby was decorated for Halloween: Hallmark witches and black and orange crepe-paper streamers, a pumpkin on the desk where you get the visitor’s passes. “Birdsey,” I told the woman. “Thomas Birdsey. Second floor.”
“Birdsey,” she repeated, typing the name into her computer. “Are you a relative?”
“Brother,” I said. She and I had gone through this same little ballet the past three days. I’m the identical twin of the guy who lopped his freakin’ hand off, I felt like screaming at her. The psycho you been reading about and hearing about on TV and squawking about with all your blue-haired friends. Just give me the freakin’ visitor’s pass.
“Here you go,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome entirely.”
Fuck you, lady.
Thomas was sleeping. Ray wasn’t there. The balloon Dessa had brought him bobbed around in the air current coming out of the baseboard. “You’ve got a friend,” it said. The little card was signed, “Love, Dessa and Danny.” Her handwriting and his. Cute.
Neither the nurse nor the aides had seen Ray, they said. So where the fuck was he? I waited for ten minutes, then left.
Back downstairs, I was a step or two off the elevator when someone called my name. Ray. He sat slumped in a waiting room chair. He looked small, lost in his coat.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“Nothing’s the matter. How’s the tire?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You see him? You been up there?”
He looked around to see if anyone was listening. Shook his head.
“Why not?”
His voice was a croak. “I don’t know. I got halfway up there and then I just changed my mind, that’s all. Come on. Let’s get out of here. Don’t make a federal case out of it.”
He stood up and walked toward the door. “Did you see Dessa?” I asked. “She was just here, visiting him.”
“I saw her,” he said. “She didn’t see me.”
We were almost out the door when I noticed he was still holding the visitor’s pass. “Your pass,” I said. “You forgot to hand in your pass.”
“The hell with it,” he said, stuffing it into his jacket pocket.
Halfway home, Ray regained his composure—became Mr. Tough Guy again. “You know what the trouble always was with that kid?” he said. “It was all that namby-pamby stuff. . . . All that ‘Thomas my little bunny rabbit’ stuff she used to say to him all the time. With you, it was different. You went your own way. You could handle yourself. . . . Jesus, I remember the two of you out on the ballfield in Little League. You two guys were like night and day. Jesus, that kid was pitiful out there on that field, even for the farm system.”
I shook my head a little but kept my mouth shut. That was Ray’s theory? That Thomas had cut off his hand because he sucked at baseball? Where did you even begin with Ray?
“If she’d have just let me raise him the way he should have been raised, instead of running interference for him all the time, maybe he never would have landed down below in the first place. ‘It’s a tough world,’ I used to tell her. ‘He’s got to be toughened up.’ “
“Hey, Ray,” I said. “He’s a paranoid schizophrenic because of his biochemistry and the frontal lobes of his brain and all that shit Dr. Reynolds went over with us that time. It wasn’t Ma’s fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”
“I’m not saying it was her fault,” he snapped. “She was a good woman. She did her best by both of you two, and don’t you forget it!”
And you’re a hypocrite and a bully and a horse’s ass, I wanted to snap back. Wanted to pull over to the side of the road and yank him right out of the goddamned truck and speed away. Because if anyone had fucked up Thomas when he was a kid, it was Ray. These days they called Ray’s kind of “toughening up” child abuse.
We rode the next couple of miles in silence.
“Want one?” he said. We were stopped for a red light on Boswell Avenue. His shaking hand held out an open roll of Life Savers, butterscotch. He’d probably sucked a million of those things since he gave up cigarettes. That had really gotten me: how he was the one who’d smoked like a chimney all those years and she was the one who died of cancer.
“No thanks,” I said.
“You sure?”
“Yup.” Neither of us spoke for the rest of the way back. When I pulled up in front of the house, he asked me if I wanted to come in, have a sandwich with him.
“No thanks,” I said again. “I’ve got to get to work.”
“Where?”
“That big Victorian on Gillette Street. Professor’s house.”
“Still?”
“Yeah, still. That goddamned place has more gingerbread
on it than a bakery. I ought to have my head examined for taking that job at the end of the season.” Not to mention that it had rained four days last week. Not to mention that my goddamned brother had complicated things just a little bit.
“You want some help with it? I can give you some time tomorrow. Thursday, too, if you want. I don’t go back to work until Friday.”
Ray’s help was the last thing I needed. The only other time he’d helped me, he’d spent more time giving unsolicited advice than painting. Telling me how to run my own business. “I’ll get it done,” I said.
Maybe I wouldn’t even go over to Gillette Street that afternoon. Maybe I’d just go home and smoke a joint, watch CNN. Find out if either Bush or Saddam Insane had fired the first shot. Not answer the phone. . . . That morning at breakfast, Joy and I had fought about whether or not to disconnect the damn thing. I’d accused her of getting off on all the attention—talking with all those media assholes.
“Well, screw you, Dominick!” she’d fired back. “You think this is easy on me? You think I like everyone looking at me weird because I happen to be living with his brother?”
“Hey, how’d you like to get the looks I’m getting?” I said. “How’d you like to be his brother? His friggin’ look-alike?” The two of us stood there, shouting at each other. Having a pity contest. You think Dessa would have ever pulled that shit? You think Joy would have ever gotten her ass over to the hospital and visited him like Dess had done?
Ray got out of the truck and walked toward the house. I backed down the driveway. Braked. “Hey?” I called. “You okay?” He stopped in his tracks. Nodded. “Don’t talk to any of those reporters or TV jerks if they call. Or if they come over here. Just tell ’em, ‘No comment.’ “