The Hour I First Believed

by Wally Lamb

  We’d gone over our allotted time, so her next patient was sitting in the waiting room—Dominick Birdsey, a guy I’d known since grade school. It was a little weird for both of us. “Hey, how’s it going?”

  “Good. Great. You?”

  “Going okay. Good to see you, man.”

  “Yeah, you, too.”

  Passing what had to have been his black BMW on the way to my car—ours were the only two in the lot—I smiled, shook my head. If we were both doing so goddamned great, why were we both seeing a shrink? Guess life wasn’t happily-ever-after even when you were a casino millionaire. Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch….

  Back home, Moze’s truck was gone and all the upstairs lights were off. Velvet must have gone out, too.

  I fed the cat, poured myself a drink. I would have preferred scotch but I was drinking vodka now—the low-end stuff. Junior was billing me seventy-five bucks an hour so that I could keep what was already mine.

  I re-microwaved the rest of the pizza I’d microwaved the night before.

  Washed my supper plate.

  Poured myself another couple of inches of rot-gut and sat down at the computer. I Googled “vicarious traumatization.” It said pretty much what Doc Patel had said. Should have saved myself the money I’d handed over to her. Googled “Ganesha.” The son of Parvati the Destroyer and Shiva the Restorer…. His big belly is “a pitcher of prosperity.”…He is propitiated at the commencement of important work. I backed out of Google and checked my e-mail.

  From: janis.mick@tulane.edu

  To: caelumq@aol.com

  Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2006

  Subject: Great News!

  Caelum,

  I got the most exciting news today! A few days ago, I emailed Amanda, my adviser from Tulane, to tell her about your family’s archives. She called me this afternoon and we talked for over an hour. She’s invited me to submit a proposal for a paper at a huge Women’s Studies conference in San Francisco next February. (Luckily for me, she’s on the selection committee!) Amanda thinks I should focus on Lizzy Popper. She thinks Lizzy would be a great subject for a thesis project, and that it could maybe even be enough for a book! It will be a TON of work for me to pull it all together by February, but I am SO EXCITED. Moze is taking me out to dinner to celebrate and we’ve invited Velvet, too. We wanted you to come, but we didn’t know where you were. If you get back in time, come join us (Asian Bistro, 6:30 reservation). Caelum, none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for your generosity. I can’t say enough how grateful I am to you. Tell you more tomorrow. Are we running in the morning? If so, see you then.

  From: studlysicilian@snet.net

  To: caelumq@aol.com

  Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2006

  Subject: my search may be over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Quirks—your not gonna fucken believe this. I go to the auto show this afternoon, okay? And me & this guy who kinda looks like one of those long beard dudes from ZZ Top—we’re both checkin out the Mustangs. So we start shootin the shit and guess what. This guy’s a contractor, okay, and this sheetrocker he use to use had a heart attack and died a few months ago & GUESS WHAT! He (the dead guy) owned a 4 BARREL, 289-CUBE, 1965 PHOENICIAN YELLOW ‘STANG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Dude, how freaky is that? I been checkin eBay and the Yellow Mustang Registry for eight, nine years thinkin if I’m lucky one might show up in Idaho or Arizona or someplace. And now here’s my DREAM MACHINE only 25 miles away in Easterly Fucken Rhode Island!! Little Rhody, Man!! I was trying to act casual, like I might be interested might not, and meanwhile I’m so excited I’m practicly shootin off in my shorts. I know I know, probably shouldnt get my hopes up until I see the car. Lonnys gonna check with the guys wife and get back to me but he heard she probably wants to sell it. SHE BETTER!! Dude, I been blastin’ my old Beach Boys and Jan & Dean tapes ever since i got home. U and me are goin’ cruisin’, mutha fucka!! Later, Al.

  Half in the bag, I clicked on reply and e-mailed him back.

  From: caelumq@aol.com

  To: studlysicilian@snet.net

  Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2006

  Subject: my search may be over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Asshole,

  Beware! He who goes questing for what he wants may discover, along the way, what he needs.

  chapter twenty-four

  DEVIN, A DOMINO’S PIZZA DELIVERER, identified with Hermes, the Greek god who dispatched messages from Olympus on his winged feet. “Also, he’s the dude who invented the lyre and I play electric guitar.”

  Ibrahim zeroed in on Icarus, likening his fall from the sky to the September 11 victims’ suicidal leaps from the top floors of the World Trade Center towers. Those remembered images haunted him, Ibrahim wrote, as did the terrorists’ actions. His essay spoke of what it was like to be an Arab and a practicing Muslim in post–9/11 America: the presumption of guilt by others, the assumption of an unearned guilt of which he could not rid himself.

  “The first time I stuck that needle in my vein, it was like opening my own personal Pandora’s box,” Kahlúa wrote. By special arrangement with the halfway house where she was completing the last months of her sentence, she was delivered to and retrieved from Oceanside Community College in an unmarked van.

  Glum, withdrawn Private First Class Kareem Kendricks, home from Walter Reed Hospital, likened Iraq to Hades, himself to Sisyphus. “I’ll be alright for a few day’s and think I’m gaining on it than have a nightmare or a daymare that sets me back. For example, the other day I was reading my little daughter this book Green Eggs and Ham. I must of stopped right in the middle and didn’t even realize it because the next thing I knew I heard her saying ‘Mommy, I keep telling Daddy to turn the page and he won’t do it.’ Right in the middle of that silly story, I was back there, in that gunner, on the day I lost my right hand and my best buddy lost his life. Iraq is my rock that I have to keep pushing up this big hill called Moving On and every day it rolls back down to the bottom again and I have to start all over.”

  Littered with syntactical and grammatical errors, they were the best papers they’d written all term, and they triggered the class’s most worthwhile discussion. It was almost time to wrap things up when Kyle, a quiet boy in a backwards baseball cap—a near-nonpresence in the class until that moment—asked me, point blank, “What’s yours, Professor Quirk?”

  “My…?”

  “Myth?”

  They waited. Watched me.

  The fact was, I had done their assignment—in my head, during my ride from Oceanside CC to Quirk CI—had, in fact, come up with not one but two resonant myths. But I spared them our Columbine connection: Maureen’s having become lost in the labyrinth and my own failure to slay the monster and rescue her, or to rescue Morgan Seaberry from her. They all looked so wide-eyed and expectant that they might have been my children to keep safe.

  I came out from behind my desk, pulled up a chair and sat closer to them. I looked first at Private Kendricks. “Mine’s about Hades, too,” I said. I scanned their faces. “Orpheus and Eurydice. You guys remember that one?”

  Devin spoke. “That’s the one where the dude goes down to Hell to get his wife back. Then he forgets he’s not supposed to look back at her while she’s following him out, so she has to stay.”

  On a less unusual day, I might have corrected him: reminded him that Hell was a Christian concept, different from the Ancient Greeks’ netherworld. But on that day, I nodded, let it go. “My wife’s in prison,” I said.

  The slouchers sat up. Several students leaned forward.

  “And…when I visit her? I’ve got this thing—this superstition, I guess it is…. They’ve got a rule down there: inmates stay seated when visiting time’s over. They don’t get dismissed until after everyone’s company has cleared out. And so at the end of a visit, when I get up to go? I’ve got this thing where I tell myself not to look back at her. That if I let myself look over my shoulder, take another glimpse, she’s going to stay stuck in there. She’ll never g
et out.”

  There was commotion out in the hallway, the changing of classes. But in our classroom, no one moved.

  When Marisol raised her hand, I figured I knew what was coming: What had Mo done? Why was she in prison? “Yes?” I said.

  “What’s your wife’s name?”

  “Her name? Maureen. Why?”

  “Because I’m going to pray for her,” she said.

  Tunisia nodded. “My mom’s a minister,” she said. “I’m gonna ax her to ax our congregation to pray for her, too.”

  I nodded, smiled. “Well, we’d better wrap up,” I said. “Good class today. Remember that Joseph Campbell essay for next time. Check your syllabus.”

  “Is there going to be a quiz?”

  I smiled, lifted my eyebrows. “You never can tell.”

  After class, four or five of them stayed behind to talk with me. Nothing out of the ordinary there, but this time it wasn’t to challenge a grade or offer an excuse about why an assignment hadn’t been done. This time, the ones who stayed wanted to tell me they had people in prison, too. Hipolito’s dad, Cheyenne’s brother. Plus Kahlúa, who had done time at Quirk CI herself, as had her alcoholic mother. “How you think I got the name Kahlúa?” she said.

  “Could’ve been worse,” someone noted. “She could have named you Jello Shot.”

  “Fuzzy Navel.”

  “Saki Bomb.”

  It felt nice, you know? Hanging with them for a few minutes, sharing a laugh, a little of the pain. Even Private Kendricks had smiled. And those papers they’d written—not just the poignant ones, but all of them, even the one by fleet-footed Hermes with his pepperoni pizzas. It reminded me that they were more than just their scholarly shortcomings and gripes about the workload. Each had a history, a set of problems. Each, for better or worse, was anchored to a family. That assignment, that class, buoyed me a little. And I don’t know, maybe it buoyed a few of them, too.

  But if I arrived at the prison that afternoon feeling pretty good about things, Mo put the brakes on that. Approaching her, I was struck with how distracted and pale she looked. I kissed her and sat down, trying to read the jumpiness in her eyes, the ragged skin and dried blood around her cuticles.

  “I didn’t think you were coming,” she said.

  “No? Why not?”

  She shrugged. “You were here on Sunday.”

  “And today’s Thursday,” I said. “I would have come Tuesday, but Velvet told me she was visiting you, so I figured you were all set.” No response. “You two have a good visit?”

  She shook her head. “All she could talk about was Mr. and Mrs. Wonderful. How she loves working on his stupid gargoyle statues, how easy she is to talk to. Oh, and I heard how you cooked pancakes for everyone last Sunday. Sounds like you four are quite the happy little family over there.”

  “They’re my tenants, Maureen. They pay rent, they have kitchen privileges. Sometimes we share a meal.” It pissed me off the way she rolled her eyes. “What’s the bug up your ass?” I said, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer. Had she found out somehow about what had happened up at Bushnell Park? Was my desire for Janis readable?

  Camille had been reassigned to a different tier, Mo said. No prior notice, no explanation. Just a guard at the door throwing Camille a couple of garbage bags and telling her to pack. Mo was just leaving to go to her NarcAnon group. When she returned an hour later, a new woman was sitting on Camille’s bunk—Irina, a Russian immigrant, who had a chip on her shoulder a mile wide. She coughed constantly; Mo said; she had kept her up all night with that cough. In the morning, as the two stood side by side at the bathroom sinks, Mo had advised Irina to put in a request to go to Medical and have herself checked out. Irina had misinterpreted her concern as criticism and launched into a profanity-laced invective. A third inmate—a “drama addict” named Iesha—had jumped in, calling Mo “Miss High and Mighty” and accusing her of thinking she was better than everyone else.

  Mo had tried to explain that she was worried about Irina’s health. That she was a nurse.

  “Used to be a nurse, maybe!” Iesha had screamed. “Now you’re just a jailhouse ’ho like the rest of us!” A guard who’d heard the shouting barged in, threatening disciplinary tickets for the three of them. For the rest of the morning, Irina had paced their cell, mumbling in Russian, coughing and spitting phlegm on the floor and the walls.

  At lunchtime, there’d been a second incident, Mo said. She and Camille had located each other in the chow hall and sat together. On their way out, they’d been stopped by CO Moorhead. The pepper shaker was missing from the table where they’d been eating, and Moorhead accused Mo and Camille of having stolen it. When they denied it, she’d ordered them into the restroom to be strip-searched. Camille had given her some lip about it, and Moorhead had retaliated by humiliating her during the search, shoving her plastic-gloved fingers deep into Camille’s vagina and leaving them there for several seconds “while she stood there, smirking.”

  Since her arrival at the prison, Maureen had tried her best to fly beneath the radar with the custody staff. But now Camille was preparing to file an incident report, and Mo, the only witness to the abuse, would be questioned. She’d have to tell the truth, she said—Moorhead had gone way over the line—but there would be retaliation. Moorhead’s crony, CO Tonelli, was “borderline psychotic,” according to Mo. Tonelli usually treated her like she was invisible, but that would change once she gave her statement. She was afraid, she said. She felt nauseous. “And it’s not going to do any good anyway. They’d never take an inmate’s word over a CO’s. God, I hate this place.” She began to cry.

  “You want me to say something?” I asked. “Call someone?”

  Her expression changed from dismay to contempt. “Like who, Caelum? Who would you call?”

  “I don’t know. Your unit manager? The warden? Hey, fuck it, I’ll call our state senator if I have to.”

  “Just stay out of it, Caelum. Just go home to your little family.”

  I took a breath. “You know what I do with the Micks’ rent check, Maureen? I deposit it in an account so that I can pay the lawyer who’s trying to make sure we don’t lose our goddamned house to your victim’s family. Okay?”

  She looked away, shaking her head in disgust.

  “Okay?” I repeated.

  She turned back, facing me with a vengeance. “The last thing I need right now is you guilt-tripping me!” Heads turned. Conversations around us came to a halt.

  To counteract her raised voice, I lowered my own. “I’m not guilt-tripping you,” I said. “I’m giving you a reality check.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “Just leave.”

  Without another word, I rose, walked across the room, and stopped at the metal door. The CO at the desk notified Big Brother that someone was leaving early. A few seconds later, the door slid open and I stepped through to the outside. I did not look back.

  HOME AGAIN, I FOUND MOSES in the kitchen, standing at the open refrigerator. “Getting myself one of those damn-Yankee beers you introduced me to,” he said. “You want one?”

  “Need one’s more like it,” I said.

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  I answered him with a shrug. Moze uncapped two Sam Adams and handed me one. “So how are things going with you?” I asked.

  “They’re going,” he said. “Web site’s done. Looks pretty decent. And I been talking to a couple of shipping companies. DHL’s offered me the best deal, so I’ll probably go with them. Me and Velvet started casting yesterday. She tell you?”

  I shook my head. “How’s that working out, anyway? She more of a help or a hindrance?”

  Moses smiled, swigged his beer. “Nah, she’s good, man. Got some rough edges, but she works hard. Comes by it naturally, maybe. She says her granddaddy was a sculptor.”

  I nodded. “Lived up in Barre, Vermont, and there’s a big granite quarry up there. He did cemetery statuary, mainly.”

  “Yeah, we got on the
Internet and she showed me some of his work. Pretty impressive. Velvet says she wants to try designing some gargoyles, so I told her maybe later on, after we got rolling, she could work up some sketches and we’d see. First things first, though. I want to get a hundred pieces poured and finished by the end of next week. I’m hoping to put the business online as soon’s I get back.”

  “Back from where?” I asked.

  “N’Orleans. Gotta go down, get our cat, check in with my cousins. They’re staying with friends, waiting on one of them FEMA trailers. Hey, you don’t have one of them cat caddies, do you? Last thing I need is Fat Harry getting between me and the brake pedal on the ride back.”

  I said there might be one up in the attic—that I’d look.

  “Appreciate that. When I was talking to my old cuz, he says, ‘You know what FEMA stands for, don’t you? Fix Everything My Ass.’”

  I nodded, smiled. Asked him how long he was going to be away.

  “About a week, give or take. Alphonse gave me the time off. Says he’ll have Tina do the daytime baking and take my night shift his damn self. Man, that ole boy’s been in such a good mood since he found that Mustang, I probably could have hit him up for the gas money as well’s the time off.”

  “So the widow’s going to sell it to him?”

  “Still hasn’t made up her mind, he says, but he thinks she’s leaning toward selling. Says she told him to stop calling and pestering her about it—that she’ll contact him once she decides. Kind of a goofball, that Alphonse, idn’t he?”

  I nodded. “A good-hearted goofball, though.”

  “Yeah, but shit, man. How many guys his age get jazzed up because PlayStation’s coming out with a new version of Grand Theft Auto?”

  “You’d understand if you met his parents,” I said. “His mother still sends him an Easter basket.”