I Know This Much Is True

by Wally Lamb

  Old Grand Dad, Canadian Club, Cutty Sark: I walked back to the living room cradling the bottles. Leo was wiping down the last of the glasses with his handkerchief. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I only blew my nose on this thing once today.”

  I just looked at him.

  “I’m kidding, Birdsey. It’s a joke.”

  Sam Jacobs and Mr. Anthony saw us setting things up and approached, magnetized by the booze. “Ice?” Leo asked me.

  Out in the kitchen, Angie, Vera Jacobs, and Mrs. Anthony were bustling around like June Taylor dancers. I had to smile. Men had booze; women had food to fix.

  “We’ve got everything under control, sweetheart,” Mrs. Anthony told me. “You just go out there and relax. We’ll be ready in five minutes.”

  She was wearing one of my mother’s aprons—that faded, flowered, snaps-at-the-shoulder smock thing you’d always see on Ma when you went over there. It was strange seeing Ma’s apron again.

  The room darkened. I saw Thomas hanging from that tree—the noose. Felt his dead weight fall as I cut him down, slung him over my shoulders.

  Angie stood there, in front of me, staring. “Uh . . . what’d you say?”

  “Serving spoons?” she repeated. “Do you have any idea where your mom would have kept her serving spoons?”

  I stood there, stupefied. Serving spoons?

  “They’re in the hutch.” Ray walked past me and yanked open a middle drawer—handed Angie a bouquet of big spoons.

  “I, uh . . . Ray? I put some liquor out.”

  He ignored me. Walked over by the windows and stood there—his back to the women and me. “Ray? You hear me? I put out a bottle of rye and some—”

  “Put out whatever you want,” he snapped.

  Fuck you, I thought. This is your victory party, too, you bastard. You were the team captain. Remember?

  “Dominick?” Angie said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.” I yanked opened the freezer, banged ice cubes into a bowl.

  Back in the living room, the men were standing around in a half-circle, kibbitzing. “Pension-wise, we probably should’ve stuck it out a couple more years,” Sam Jacobs was saying. “But it gets to you, you know? It’s like working at a goddamned ghost town down there. And once they close the Settle building, forget about it.”

  I tried to follow the conversation, but my mind kept floating away. You get cancer, it’s like a wakeup call. . . . Not too much cream, now, Dominick. One nice-sized squirt and that’s it. Save the rest for supper. . . . Nobody else’s business . . .

  “Of course, it’s a whole different operation down there now,” Sam said. “Everything’s premixed, prepackaged. If you can open up a foil bag, you’re a cook, for Christ’s sake.”

  Leo handed me a Scotch. “Drink this and shut up about it,” he said. Ray walked in from the kitchen. Walked over to us.

  “Hey, Pop, you limping a little there?” Leo asked him. “What’s the matter with your foot?”

  Nothing was the matter with it, Ray said. It was just lettin’ him know it was there, that was all. If Leo wanted to climb into the ring and go a few rounds, Ray would be glad to knock him on his ass, free of charge. Foot or no foot.

  “Macho Camacho,” Leo laughed. “What are you drinking, Pop?”

  “Nothin’,” Ray said. “Milk of magnesia.”

  “Down in Boca Raton?” Sam Jacobs was saying. “Where my son is? They ain’t even heard the word recession.”

  Leo reminded everyone that it wasn’t over in Three Rivers until the fat lady sang—that if all the predictions were true about the casino, the Wequonnocs were probably going to end up saving the scalps of every goddamned paleface that Electric Boat laid off.

  “That’s a bunch of bullshit!” Mr. Anthony chimed in. “They must be smoking something funny in their peace pipe down there if they think New Yorkers are gonna come all the way up here to the boondocks when they got Atlantic City.” He told us not to get him started on the Indians. “Any of you guys slaughter their ancestors?” he said. “I know I didn’t. Why the hell should you and me have to pay taxes if they’re getting a free ride?”

  Benign old Mr. Anthony: what was he so hot under the collar for?

  “Because for two or three centuries, we fucked over their ancestors,” I said.

  Everyone stopped, looked at me. No one gave me an argument, though. The dead guy’s poor twin brother. I probably could have gotten away with saying anything that day.

  Then Mrs. Anthony was at the kitchen door. “Okay, everybody! Come and eat! Dominick, honey? Ray? Why don’t you fellas start?”

  The others put down their drinks and drifted out to the kitchen. “You all right, Dominick?” Leo asked me.

  I shrugged.

  “Come on. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  “In a minute,” I said. “You go in.”

  I was thinking about Ralph: how he had and hadn’t shown up for Thomas’s funeral. How, back when we were on that work crew, he had climbed up into that tree—had stood on that branch that lurched out over the waterspill, rocking it, flirting with his sister’s fall. . . . He’d been getting fucked by white guys his whole life, and still, he’d stuck his neck out for my brother down there. Down at Hatch. He could have shut his mouth, looked the other way, ignored that memo. . . . Why shouldn’t he cash in, now, down at that casino? I hope Ralph ended up rolling in untaxed revenue.

  I drained my drink. Poured myself another one. Stood there, on the verge of tears.

  “Here,” Sheffer said. “Mangia.”

  She handed me a plate of food. Invited me to come and sit with Doc Patel and her, over on the stairs. So I followed her over there. The three of us sat and ate.

  “This is difficult, yes, Dominick?” Dr. Patel said.

  “I can handle it,” I said. “Thanks for coming. Both of you. I know you’re busy.”

  “Has it sunk in yet?” Sheffer asked me.

  I shrugged. Told her it had and it hadn’t. “Yesterday? I called up the monument place about getting the date put on his headstone? And the woman asked me if I could stop by next Tuesday afternoon to sign the paperwork—if that would work? And I go, ‘Yeah, that’ll work.’ And then I catch myself thinking about how close that place is to the hospital—about how maybe, while I’m down that way, I can swing by and visit him.”

  Dr. Patel smiled. “Grief is a gradual process,” she said. “Two steps forward, one step back.” The three of us sat there, nodding.

  With everyone feeding their faces, the house got quiet again. Too quiet. I looked across the room at Ray. He was sitting by himself, not eating, just waiting for everyone to get the hell out of there. There was a grayish cast to his face; man, he looked like shit.

  I figured folks would leave after they’d eaten, but they didn’t. Everyone sat around, stood around, hovering around the subject of Thomas’s death without actually landing there. Mr. and Mrs. Anthony told stories about my brother and me: the time I’d pogo-sticked into their prize rosebush and then tried to repair the broken stems with masking tape. The time they’d taken us for ice cream and Thomas’s scoop had fallen off the cone and right into Mrs. Anthony’s open purse.

  “Oh, and they always found some excuse to visit me on Saturday morning when I did my baking,” Mrs. Anthony said. “This guy here was Mr. Chocolate Chip and his brother was Mr. Oatmeal Raisin. That was the only way I could tell them apart.” She had us reversed, but who was counting?

  Mr. Anthony told the story of the day our TV exploded. In my own memory, Mr. Anthony’s efforts to rescue my mother as she burst from our burning house had been a day late and a dollar short. Ma had already saved herself by the time he yanked her coat off, threw it on the ground, and started doing the Mexican hat dance on top of it. But in Mr. Anthony’s version, my mother was a flaming shish kebab and he was Indiana Jones. To hear Mr. Anthony tell it, he had saved the day. “Now, you were away that weekend as I recall, weren’t you, Ray?” he said.

&n
bsp; Everyone turned and faced my stepfather. My teammate. He nodded. “Bad picture tube was what it was,” he said. “At first they said they couldn’t do anything about it, but I raised holy hell. Got it replaced free of charge—upgraded to a cabinet model, too. Got the house cleaned and painted on top of it.”

  Jesus Christ, I thought. The three of us could have died in that fire, but all Ray remembered was the new picture tube. How he’d been the hero.

  I couldn’t take any more of this bullshit. This rewritten history. I got up, went out to the kitchen to check on coffee that didn’t need checking. Went outside to breathe. I stood on the back porch for a while, rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet. I saw Thomas, standing next to me out at the Falls that day—the afternoon I’d sprung him out of Hatch. The Lord is your savior, Dominick. Trust me. I enflesh the word of God. . . .

  Upstairs where?

  In the spare room. Playing their stupid game. They always play it there.

  I would carry him my whole life after that night—shoulder the weight of him because of the way I’d betrayed him. Because of what I had and hadn’t done. But what now? Where did I go from here?

  Leo poked his head out the door. “Hey, asshole?” he said. “You want company?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Another drink?”

  “Nope.”

  He nodded. “Angie just tried calling her sister. No answer.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Seconds passed; neither of us spoke. “All right, man,” he finally said. “You come back in when you’re ready.”

  “Yup.”

  I walked up the cement stairs to the backyard—the place where my grandfather had finally retreated that summer. He’d wheeled his rented Dictaphone onto the porch for pickup, fired the stenographer. Abandoned his bullshit “guide for Italian youth” and gotten, at long last, down to business. Began, in earnest, the penance that priest had given him all those years before. . . . He’d started that thing when Ma was still a little girl. Finished it the day he died. Had made it a real buzzer-beater. . . . How old was Ma by then? That summer he wrote his confessione? Thirty-three, maybe? Thirty-four? She was a spinster in her father’s eyes. A “cracked jug” who had failed to give him grandsons. All those secrets they kept. He’d had no idea she was carrying my brother and me. . . . He’d cried out here as he wrote that thing, Ma had told me. She’d wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but she knew better than to disturb him out here in his “little bit of Sicily.” Knew better than to fuck with omertà. . . .

  I thought about Angelo Nardi, the stenographer that Papa had hired that summer. Had hired, and then fired, and then tried unsuccessfully to hire back again. Angelo Nardi, who might or might not be our long-lost father. Who else had been coming over here on a regular basis? “Dashing,” she had called him. He used to sit out in the kitchen with her. She’d make him coffee. . . . What had Angelo, the recent immigrant, made of my Papa’s strange conflicting need to both speak and hold his tongue? What had he thought of Papa’s timid, housebound daughter? Had he figured she’d be an easy lay along the way to something better—someone so naive that he could get in and out again before she’d even figured out what was going on? Or that, maybe, she deserved a little tenderness—a little something in her life other than service to Papa? Had it been an act of mercy? . . . In the shower that morning, getting ready for Thomas’s funeral, I’d made Angelo a merciful man. A kind man, not a creep. And I’d stood there, hot water sluicing over me, fantasizing about Angelo’s long-awaited return. . . . Saw him showing up at the cemetery later that morning—the father I had always waited for. I saw a dignified man, conservative suit and tie, snowy white hair. “I had to come, Dominick. I regret that I’ve missed your brother’s life, but I could not miss any more of yours. Forgive me, Dominick. I’m here for you now.” And I did—stood in that shower and forgave him immediately, on the spot. . . .

  Up there in my grandfather’s backyard, I let the tears come in earnest. Stood there and cried the way Papa had gone out there when he needed to cry. . . . When I was a kid, I had waited for the Rifleman, Sky King . . . a whole parade of “real” fathers to rescue me from Ray. And there I was—forty-one years old, an untwinned twin, now—and still looking for him. My old man. My perfect mystery dad.

  How pathetic was that, Dr. Patel? What hope was there for this guy?

  I saw Domenico out there, a younger man, clutching the dead son he had baptized with dishwater and olive oil. Saw my mother’s infant brother—her dead soul mate, her twin. . . . Dead babies, dead brothers. Dead marriages. What sense did any of it make?

  By the time I got back inside, Martineau had already left and Sheffer and Dr. Patel were putting on their coats. Doc Patel took me aside for a second. “See you Tuesday?” she whispered.

  “See you Tuesday.”

  I stood at the front door, watching the two of them walk down the stairs. They both turned around when they reached the front sidewalk. Waved. I waved back. Dessa passed them, on her way up.

  Dessa, on the stairs, coming toward me. . . . Dess.

  She looked upset: her about-to-cry face. Something had happened. She was carrying a pie. As she reached me, she put her free arm around me and squeezed. I closed my eyes and hugged her back. She was the first to pull away.

  “I was already in the car, leaving for the service,” she said. “And then I remembered this.” The pie, she meant; it levitated between us. When she’d gone back inside to get it, she said, the phone was ringing. “I wasn’t even going to answer it, Dominick, but then I just had a feeling. . . . It was my mother. She sounded dazed. She had just fallen.”

  “Thula? She all right?”

  I reached over, pushed away her tears. She nodded. “I’m sorry, Dominick. I couldn’t find Daddy. I knew Angie would be at the service. I didn’t know what to do. . . . We thought she might have broken her ankle, but it was just a bad sprain. It took forever to get it X-rayed. At lunchtime, that whole staff over there just picks up and . . .”

  “Take it easy,” I said. “You’re here now.” I handed her my handkerchief. “Here.”

  “My mother has a housekeeper, but of course, nobody can clean her house like she can. She’s been having dizzy spells for weeks now and not bothering to tell anyone. She was up on a stool, cleaning light fixtures, and she started getting dizzy. . . . I loved Thomas, Dominick. I really wanted to be there.”

  I brought her inside, took her pie out to the kitchen. When I got back to the living room, she was filling in Angie and Leo on Thula’s tumble.

  I just stood there and looked at her. White blouse, black pants and jacket, red scarf. Her hair had a little more silver in it than the last time I’d seen her. God, she was beautiful. . . . She’d planned to come; it was just circumstances. I could take her out to the cemetery later on if she wanted. It would be better that way, actually—taking her out there. Just us.

  I looked over at Leo. Realized he’d been standing there, watching me watch my wife. Neither of us looked away from each other. You see, my eyes told him. This is how strong it is—this is how much I still love her.

  “Hey, here she is,” Ray said.

  He was on the staircase, coming down. Leo was right—he was limping a little. I could see it now. “How’s my little girl?” he said.

  Dessa smiled. Walked toward him. “Hi, Ray.”

  Dessa had never been crazy about Ray, but she’d always been good to him. Decent. “He’s just insecure, Dominick,” she’d tell me when I bitched about him. “He’s not a monster.”

  “Yes, he is,” I’d tell her. “Trust me.”

  Now I stood there, watching him reach the bottom of the stairs. Watching the two of them embrace. At the front door, she’d given me a one-armed hug with a pie in her hand. But now she just stood there, letting Ray hang on for dear life. Okay, I thought. That’s enough. Time’s up.

  Then Ray was crying. Sobbing. In front of witnesses. . . . I’d never seen him cry like that. Not even when Ma died
. Never. Defense! I wanted to shout at him—remind him what he’d taught me. Defense!

  I got the fuck out of there. Had to head for the kitchen before my head exploded. My heart raced; I started to shake the way I shook when Thomas and I were kids—when Ray was gearing up for one of his tirades.

  And then, suddenly, I knew something: that it hadn’t been an accident out there. That Thomas had faced the Falls that morning and made a deliberate decision. For one crystal-clear second or two, I was my brother. Saying: Okay, that’s enough. I’ve had it. It’s over. And I stepped forward, just like Thomas had. Pushed open the door that led back into the living room. Launched into wherever my free fall was about to take me.

  “It’s his guilt,” I announced. “That’s why he’s crying. He bullied him to death. We both did.”

  I wasn’t screaming or anything; I was that undertaker out at the cemetery: The family of Thomas Birdsey wishes to announce that his brother and stepfather are as guilty as sin. Everyone turned and looked at me: the Jacobses, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony, Leo and Angie. Free fall was probably going to hurt like hell when I hit bottom, but goddamn if the ride down wasn’t a rush.

  “Isn’t that right, Ray?” I asked him. I took a step toward him; he and Dessa let each other go. “We were teammates, you and me. Remember? The Birdsey wars. A fight to the finish.”

  I’d stopped his blubbering cold. He stood there, glaring at me with the kind of contempt he’d usually reserved for Thomas. What goes on in this house stays in this house! And I glared back, thinking, Fuck you, Ray. Fuck the way she had to run around the house closing all the windows when you were about to blow, and that bullshit story about how she broke her arm falling down the stairs, and that bullshit that all the doctors were spouting about how schizophrenia had nothing at all to do with the way he was treated when he was a kid. Fuck our family secrets, Ray. Welcome to the big showdown.

  “Dominick?” Dessa said. And I turned to her. Pleaded my case to her.

  “You want to know how many times he visited him while he was down there? At Hatch? I’ll tell you how many. Zero. Zip.”