by Wally Lamb
She studied my face for a few seconds. “I’d rather not discuss it, please,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s premature. Our recommendation isn’t due for several days, and I’m still very much in the process of observing your brother—the daily effects that time and his medication are having. And please keep in mind that our unit recommendation is only that. A recommendation. The Review Board will make the final decision.”
“But which way are you leaning?”
“I’m not leaning,” she said. “As I’ve just said, I’m reserving judgment.” She held my gaze. “We’ll talk next Tuesday, then. We have a great deal to talk about.”
When she opened the office door, Ralph Drinkwater was standing there.
“Maintenance,” he said.
“Yes, yes. Come in, please.”
I caught the flicker of shock on Ralph’s face when he saw me, replaced almost immediately by that look of indifference he’d perfected all the way back in grammar school. That you-can’t-touch-me look. He entered the office, a stepladder hooked against his shoulder, a fluorescent light tube in his other hand.
I could tell Doc Patel hadn’t made the connection—didn’t realize that this was the same guy we had talked about two sessions ago: the guy who Leo Blood and I had fed to the state cops to get ourselves off the hook. It was one of those Twilight Zone moments: me, my shrink, and Ralph all standing there in Sheffer’s little office.
Dr. Patel closed the door behind her. Ralph and I were alone.
“Hey, Ralph,” I said. “How you doing?”
No answer.
“This . . . this office is like Grand Central Station today. Long time no see.”
He unfolded the stepladder without looking at me. He’d always been good at that: making me feel invisible.
“I . . . uh . . . I saw you a couple weeks ago,” I said. “That night they brought my brother in? I was gonna say something to you then, but I was pretty worked up about things. About Thomas getting admitted here. . . . Which was why I didn’t say anything. Recognized you right away, though. You look good. . . . So, uh, how’s it going?”
“It’s going,” he said. He climbed two or three steps up the ladder. Squinted at the bad fluorescent tube. Granted, it had been one of the scummier things I’d ever done in my life—me and Leo bagging Ralph to save our own asses—but twenty years had gone by.
“So I saw in the paper where the Wequonnocs won their case, huh? Got that recognition from the federal government after all? Congratulations.”
He disengaged the bad light. Didn’t answer me.
“You involved with that much? Tribal politics? All those plans for the big casino out there? That resort thing?”
No answer.
“I saw . . . saw the architect’s drawings in the Record last week. Pretty impressive. God, if that thing actually flies, it’s going to be huge.”
“It’ll fly,” he said.
I reached out to take the dead light tube from him, but he ignored my outstretched hand. Climbed down the ladder and leaned it against the wall instead.
“I heard you guys got foreign investors interested, right? Malaysians, is it?”
“Yes.” He climbed the ladder again, new bulb in hand. He’d always been a man of few words, but this was ridiculous. This qualified as ball-busting.
He installed the new tube, then came down from the ladder and flicked the switch. The room lit up, brighter than was necessary.
He folded the ladder. Jotted something down on a form. “Hey, Ralph?” I said. “You see my brother much?”
He looked over at me, expressionless, his eyes as gray and noncommittal as the moon. “Yeah, I see him.”
“Is he . . . are they treating him okay? In your opinion. I haven’t seen him since that first night. They won’t let me see him until I get some stupid security clearance.”
“Well, that won’t be a problem,” he said. “Will it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your record must be white-boy white.” The two of us stood there, neither of us saying anything. I was the first to look away.
“He’s okay,” Ralph finally said.
“Is he?” I swallowed hard. “They teasing him a lot? Picking on him?”
“Some,” he said.
“I wonder . . . I was wondering if you could do me a favor? Just until my security thing comes through?”
His eyes narrowed. One side of his mouth lifted into a smirk.
“Just . . . if I could just give you my number at home and . . . let’s say you see something you think I might want to know about. Anything. In terms of him being mistreated or . . . This, uh . . . his social worker he has is good. I’m not saying otherwise. She’s real good. But if, you know, you happen to see something that the medical staff wouldn’t necessarily catch—if someone’s bothering him or anything . . . God, this is hard.”
He just stood there, expressionless.
“I know . . . I know you don’t owe me any favors, Ralph. Okay? I know that. That was a shitty thing we did to you at the end of that summer. I know that, man. I’ve felt like crap about it ever since, for whatever it’s worth to you.”
“Nothin’, cuz,” he said. “It ain’t worth nothin’.”
“Okay,” I said. “Too little, too late. I know. . . . But if you could just . . . If I could just give you my phone number.”
I grabbed a blank sheet of paper from a pad on Sheffer’s desk and scrawled my number on it. The numerals came out shaky. He looked at my outstretched hand.
“They won’t let me see him, man. The guy’s my brother and they’re all telling me . . . If you could just keep an eye out for him. I know you’re busy, man, but if you see anything. If you could just take my number and . . .”
But he wouldn’t take it. I tossed the paper back onto Sheffer’s desk. “Yeah, well, thanks, anyway,” I said. “Thanks a heap, Ralph. Thanks for nothing.”
His chin pointed toward the window. “Out there,” he said.
“What?”
“You said you want to see him? He’s out there now. His unit just went on their rec break.”
It took a second to sink in. Slowly, hesitantly, I walked over to the barred window. There was Thomas.
He was seated by himself at the end of a picnic table bench. He looked pale, puffy. His hand—the stump—was tucked inside his jacket sleeve. He was smoking fast, inhaling every couple of seconds.
There were nine or ten of them out there, most of them just standing around and smoking, same as Thomas. Two young guys—one black, one Spanish—were kicking around a hackey sack. Neither of them looked crazy—not even dangerous. The psych aide on duty was that same guy in the cowboy hat I’d seen before. He and a few of the patients were laughing and talking, leaning against the side of the building.
No one was bothering Thomas. But no one was bothering with him, either. Even here at Hatch, he was the odd man out.
I turned away from the window. Caught Ralph watching me watch my brother. “God, he looks awful,” I said.
Ralph said nothing.
“You read about him in the paper? What he did?”
“Yep.”
When I looked back, Thomas was stubbing out his cigarette. He reached into his jacket pocket for another. Stood up and walked over to the cowboy to get it lit. But Tex was too busy holding court to acknowledge Thomas’s existence and Thomas was too mousy to speak up. He just stood there, waiting, his stump tucked into the opposite armpit. Another guy approached Tex, got his cigarette lit. I knew that son of a bitch saw Thomas standing there—he couldn’t miss. But he made him wait. Made him stand there, silently, and beg.
Goddamned bully, I thought. Don’t fuck with his head. Just light his fucking cigarette.
“What’s the deal on that aide out there?” I said. “The guy who thinks he’s John Wayne?” But when I turned around, I saw that Ralph had left the office.
It was a relief, though—finally seeing Thomas.
Even in this state. Even with a barred window and a security clearance between us. You look out for a guy all his life, you can’t not look out for him.
He was paunchier around the middle, maybe seven or eight pounds heavier than he’d been. He’d always walked a lot before this, both when he was living at Settle and at Horizon House downtown. But here at Hatch, “recreation” meant smoking. Or standing there with your unlit cigarette, waiting to smoke. There were bags under his eyes. His head kept jerking slightly. The medication, probably. I’d noticed when he’d gotten up and walked over toward Tex that his medication shuffle was back. Thomas hated the way he felt when they overmedicated him. I made a mental note to call Dr. Chase. Be the squeaky wheel on his behalf again. I knew the spiel.
He was wearing gray prison-issue, white socks, and those sorry-ass brown wingtip shoes of his. Tongues out, no laces. All their shoes were like that. Sheffer had told me they take their shoelaces away so no one can use them as a weapon. A garrote. Nice place. Real peaceful environment.
The hackey sack went flying past Thomas’s face. He flinched. Dropped his cigarette. The Spanish kid scooped it up and handed it back to him. Said something. Thomas didn’t seem to answer him. Then the kid walks behind Thomas and chucks the hackey sack right at him. It ricocheted off his back. I flinched, same as Thomas. Tex glanced over there for half a second. Went back to his conversation with his pets.
It became a game: whip the hackey sack at Thomas. Get a reaction. The black kid snuck up behind him, hobbling around like Igor, yanking his hand up inside his sleeve. Someone else stood in front of Thomas, mimicking the way he was holding his cigarette. Tex kept ignoring the obvious. Then the hackey sack beaned him off the back of the head. “Goddamn it!” I said. “Hey!”
I heard a bell ring out there. Tex talked into a radio. They started lining up to come back in. A guard ran a portable metal detector up and down each guy before passing him through. Thomas was last in line. “I’m getting you out of here, Thomas,” I whispered to him through the bars, the wired glass. “Hang in there, man. I’m getting you out.”
I paced around Sheffer’s little cubicle. Sat down. Got back up again. I looked over at her desk. That’s when I realized it: the slip of paper with my phone number on it was gone. Drinkwater had taken it.
Sheffer burst back into the office, all apologies. “I walk down the hall around here and crises just pop out at me. I’m like a crisis magnet, Domenico. Hey, yippee! They fixed my light.”
I sat down. Should I tell her I’d seen him? Keep my mouth shut?
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get back to business.” She started up again about how getting Thomas out was a long shot—how she didn’t want to understate that.
I tuned out. Saw him the way he’d looked a few minutes ago: standing there with his unlit cigarette. I realized Sheffer’s voice had stopped. “Uh . . . what?” I said.
His case had come up for discussion at their unit meeting that morning, Sheffer repeated. They were split right down the middle on what to recommend. “As of today, anyway,” she said. “But we still have six more days before our report’s due.”
“Aren’t there five of you?” I said. “How can you be split down the middle?”
“One team member hasn’t voiced an opinion yet.”
“Dr. Patel,” I said.
Sheffer said she couldn’t go into specifics. In a week, the vote might be altogether different, anyway, she said. “You see, Domenico. It’s not just a matter of getting him out of Hatch. It’s where he’s going to go if he does get out. Placement-wise, it’s tough. With all the downsizing going on in mental health, there just aren’t as many options as there were before.”
“There’s Settle,” I said. “That’s where he should have gone in the first place. Back to Settle.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it again.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“Just say it.”
She told me the rumor flying around was that the state might be closing Settle—as early as March was what she’d heard.
“Okay, put him there until March then. That gives him, what? Five months? In five months, he might be back on track.”
“Yeah, but if they’re phasing out the population there, why would they take new admissions? Even short-term ones? That’s not what they’re doing.”
“What about . . . what about a group home then? Couldn’t he live in a supervised group home? That’s worked for him in the past.”
“Has it?” She reminded me that he’d been living at Horizon when he stopped taking his meds and went to the library and lopped off his hand. And group homes were facing another round of cutbacks, too, she said. Staffs there were already like skeleton crews, compared to the way those homes had been supervised five or six years ago. That meant patient-residents had to be fairly self-sufficient—a category my brother didn’t exactly fall into in his present state. “That leaves a place like Settle, which is on shaky ground. Or a place like Hatch, which isn’t. Or . . .” She stopped.
“Or what?” I said.
“Or releasing him to the custody of his family.”
I skipped a beat or two. Took in what she’d just said. “If . . . if that’s what we have to do, then we’ll do it. Because one way or the other, he’s getting out of here.”
She shook her head and smiled. “Just like that, eh, paisano? You’re going to monitor his meds, supervise his hygiene, chauffeur him back and forth to therapy a couple times a day. Oh, and don’t forget to safety-proof your whole place. Lock up all the knives, etcetera, etcetera.”
“That’s not funny,” I said.
“No,” she said. “It’s not. How are you going to paint houses? Park him at the curb? Put a pair of overalls on him and make him your foreman?”
I told her to do me a favor and skip the sarcasm.
“But come on, Dominick,” she said. “Let’s do a reality check. You’ve got a life. How’s your wife going to—”
“I don’t have a wife,” I said. “I have a girlfriend.”
She shrugged. “Wife, girlfriend. You guys live together?”
I nodded.
“Well, then, how’s that going to affect her? And you two as a couple?”
“We’ll work it out,” I said.
“Yeah? You sure? Is she a saint or something?”
But I suddenly saw it: Thomas moving in, Joy moving out—exiting the same as Dessa. And then what? An empty mattress to roll around on all night. My crazy brother across the table at breakfast. Even if we weren’t a perfect fit—Joy and me—she was a warm body to lie next to at night. A life preserver to hold on to out in the deep. What would I have if she left? Thomas, that’s what. My anchor. My shadow. Thomas and Dominick: the Birdsey twins, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen.
“That’s why Rubina—Dr. Patel—is riding the fence, I think,” Sheffer said. “She’s reluctant to put the burden of your brother back onto your shoulders. She mentioned something about that at the meeting—about how the family’s best interests have to be factored in. How did she put it? That the good of the patient and his family are intertwined.”
I was furious. Patel had no right to take what I’d said in that private office and use it against my brother. It had been a mistake seeing her—going over to that office of hers and spilling my guts out about the past. I could take care of myself. He was supposed to be her patient, not me. It was his best interest that mattered. She was going to hear from me on this one. She was going to hear loud and clear.
“I’ll talk to her,” I said. “I’ll get her over to our side.”
Sheffer’s eyes widened. “Don’t you dare tell her I’ve been sharing all this information with you!” she said. “No shit, Domenico. You could get me in big trouble. Those unit meetings are confidential. And, anyway, she’s a strong woman. She’s going to make up her own mind; you’re not going to ‘talk her into’ anything. But whatever she decides on the rec
ommendation—even if we come out on opposite conclusions—I trust her judgment. I respect her. She’s fair, Dominick.”
“Yeah, well, don’t respect her too much,” I said.
She cocked her head. Her face was a question.
“Did you know that I’m seeing her?”
“Professionally?”
I nodded. Looked away for a second. Looked back. I hadn’t even told Joy I was seeing a shrink. Why was I playing true confessions with Sheffer?
“Dr. Patel would never share information like that,” she said. “But I’m glad, Domenico. I think it’s a good thing that you’re seeing her. I think it’s great.”
“Not if it’s a conflict of interest, it isn’t. Not if it keeps my brother locked up here because she’s advocating for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what I’ve been doing, basically, is going to her office over on Division Street and pissing and moaning about all the ways my brother has screwed up my life. Digging up ancient history—all this shit from our childhood and from the year he first cracked up. Dredging up all this stuff that should have just stayed buried.”
“Well,” she said. “That’s what therapy is. Right?”
“But if she’s recommending he be admitted here long term because it’s better for me—because I happen to have been through the wringer—”
“She wouldn’t do that, Dominick. Whatever her decision—I mean, sure, she’s going to look at the big picture, yes—but she’s not going to deliberately choose something that’s detrimental to Thomas. He’s her patient. She’s not going to choose one of you over the other.”
No? Why not? Everyone else had—our whole lives. Nobody’s ever chosen Thomas. Not Ray, not the kids in school. Nobody except Ma.
“Dominick, you need to calm down a little. Chill out about all this. Because I’ll tell you one thing. If you lose it this way at the Review Board hearing, you’re not going to help anyone. Okay?”
She waited. I looked back at her. Nodded.
“And one other thing. Are you listening? Because I really need you to listen to this. This place isn’t quite the hellhole you keep saying it is. We had a tag sale a while back, you know? Sold off the torture chamber and the leg irons and hot pincers. All right? Every time you say something like how this is such a ‘hellhole’ and a ‘snake pit,’ it dismisses what we try to do here all day long, day in, day out. What I try to do. Okay? . . . I’m in a healing profession by choice, okay? . . . And I wouldn’t stay here if I didn’t believe in the work this facility is doing. I’d like to think I’m not that much of a masochist. So don’t write this place off when you haven’t even walked through the wards yet. All right, Domenico?”