The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin'

by Lamb, Wally

  “Alphonse.”

  “I couldn’t find a pen,” she said. “We never have enough pens in this house.” She stood up and, teetering, carried her meal to the sink. With her hand, she pushed it into the drain. Hit the garbage disposal switch. “Put the faucet on,” I reminded her. Waited. “Hey, wake up! Put the faucet on!”

  She pivoted. Screamed, “Don’t yell at me!”

  “I’m not. I … you run it without the water on, the motor burns out.”

  “I know that! I forgot!”

  Well, it was as good a time as any, I figured. “How many of those tranquilizers you take today?”

  Two, she said. Why?

  “Because ever since I got home, you’ve been acting so tranquil, I’m wondering if you have a pulse. And by the way, it’s you who’s yelling, not me. How many’d you really take?”

  She reminded me that she was a nurse with pharmacological training. Only trouble was, she had a little trouble pronouncing “pharmacological.”

  “You call that shrink yet?”

  She stared at me for several seconds. “He’s going to e-mail you.”

  “He? I thought Dr. Cid was a she.”

  “Alphonse.” She said she was going to bed.

  “Yeah? Why’s that?” I called after her. “So you can go up there, take another couple of those goofballs?”

  I hadn’t checked my e-mail since before the killings. Hadn’t even turned the computer on. There were thirty-something unopened messages, most of them spam. The “I Love You” message was there: that computer virus I’d read about and I remembered, luckily, not to open it. There were three or four missives from my cyberbuddies—postings about our greatest-records-of-the-rock-era lists. I’d missed the deadline. Well, so what? It all seemed so stupid to me now: bunch of bored baby boomers trying to recapture their rock’n’roll youth. I block-deleted everything but Alphonse’s message.

  From:studlysicilian@snet.net

  To:caelumq@aol.com

  Sent: Monday, May 3, 1999

  Subject: Farm Trouble

  QUIRKY—JErry martineau called me @ the bakery this a.m. Wanted your #. Called back this afternoon. Sez a woman answered, but when he told her it was the Three Rivers P.D. she hung up on him, then alls he got was busy signals. Needs YOU to call HIM about something that happened out at your aunts place. They got a call last nite @ the station, had to send a cruiser out there. Your guy Ulisees (or however the fk u spell his name) caught some kids partying down @ that little building where the orchard was. He called the cops but then decided to take matters into his own hand, Went after ‘em with a 2-by-4. Jerry sez he was shit-faced. Swung and missed, but one of the kids shoved him & he fell back on the cement floor & cut his head open. Kids were gone by the time the cops got there. They called the EMTs, got him to the hospital & stitched him up. Martineau sez he’s ok, no concusion but he’s worried the kids will come back and U. will do something stupid. Sorry to add to your shit but i thought you better know. Let me know if you want me to do anything. Hey, Maureen sounded kind of out of it when i called. (Hope she’s not reading this.) She alright? Anyways, call Martineau. Later.

  Alphonse

  P.S. eBay had a 65 ‘Stang listed last week. Had the 4-barrel & the sweet 289 but it was a white ragtop. i was gonna bid, but came to my sensses. And anyways, the seller was all the way out in North Dafuckin’kota. My sweet Phoenician Yellow’s out there somewheres. Patients is a virtue, right Q? Didn’t you always used to say that? Or as that my mother, i get you 2 mixed up because you both wear your nylons rolled down to your ankles when it get’s hot, ha ha. Speaking of, Ma called last nite to complain about my pop because after there bocce game, he & his cronies went to Hooters for lunch, i said Ma, once a dog always a dog and she goes That’s not funny Alphonso, and if I ever hear that you’ve been to one of those places, I’ll get on a plane and go up there and swat you a good one. Good ole Ma. She was asking how you were doing. Sez her & her rosary circle are saying novenas for everyone out in Littleton. So your all set!

  I had to smile, thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Buzzi driving each other crazy down there in retirement heaven, same as they had at the Mama Mia all those years. Mrs. B must be approaching her one millionth novena by now—ought to get some kind of citation from the Vatican. I was working at the bakery when they voted in the Polish pope. She wasn’t too happy at first because they hadn’t picked an Italian, but within a month, she was gaga over the guy. Had his picture up all over the place at the bakery. And when he got shot? Man, the only time I ever saw Mrs. B in worse shape was when Rocco was dying…. So Ulysses was drinking again? I pictured him sitting forlornly at Lolly’s kitchen table a few weeks before, making his bullshit promises that he’d stay sober in exchange for the faith I was putting in him. Well, so much for the word of a lush…. And Maureen. Jesus Christ. Martineau calls on police business and she hangs up on him? I had to get her to that shrink—pick her up and carry her there if I had to. Had to count those pills before I went to sleep. Those things were just supposed to chill her out a little, help her get to sleep. Not turn her into something out of Night of the Living Dead.

  The dispatcher told me Captain Martineau was gone for the day. Would I like to speak to an officer on duty?

  “Captain?” I said. “When did Jerry make captain?”

  “First of the year, sir.” She said she wasn’t authorized to give out Captain Martineau’s home number. Did I wish to speak to an officer, or would I like the captain’s voice mail? Neither, I told her. Hung up and found his home number in the Internet white pages.

  “I’ll see if he can come to the phone,” his wife said. “Who should I say is calling?”

  “Tell him it’s one of the Four Horsemen.”

  “Excuse me?” His first wife, Connie, would’ve gotten it; she and Jerry had been together since high school. But this was wife number two, the assistant city planner he’d had the affair with.

  “One of the Four Horsemen,” I repeated. “He’ll know what I mean.” As in: he had a history before you came along, darlin’. I’d run into Connie in the dairy section of Big Y once. Her bitterness could have curdled the milk.

  Back in high school, Martineau and I had had two things in common: we both ran cross-country and track, and we both had fathers who’d committed suicide. (Not that either of us ever spoke about it.) Senior year, at the state meet, Jerry, Ralph Brazicki, Dominick Birdsey, and I broke the record in the four by eight hundred. The sports writer for the Daily Record dubbed us “the Four Horsemen,” and then everyone started calling us that. Last I knew, we still held the state record: 7:55. But “last I knew” was before we moved to Littleton.

  “Hello?”

  “So what do you say, Captain Martineau?” I began. “You want to get ahold of Birdsey and Brazicki, see if we can still pass off the baton without dropping it?” He laughed. Said these days he’d have to run with a wheelbarrow in front of him to carry his gut. I congratulated him on his promotion; he said he wasn’t sure if congrats or condolences were in order. “No, really,” I said. “You’ve given that town a lot of good years. You deserve it.”

  Martineau said my “buddy over at the bakery” had filled him in about my connection to Columbine. “You work in law enforcement for as long as I have, and you think you’ve seen it all,” he said. “Then something like this happens. I tell you one thing: I don’t envy that sheriff’s department out there. Investigation’s gotta be brutal, and then, on top of that, you got the press and the FBI and the politicians breathing down your neck. Not to mention a bunch of heartbroken parents. How’s the wife doing?”

  I clenched. “My wife? She’s hanging in there. Thanks for asking.”

  “That her I spoke to briefly when I called today?”

  “Uh, no,” I said. “No, she was out all day. Must have been the woman who cleans our house. She’s a little self-conscious about her English.”

  “Is she?”

  “Yeah. She is. Mexican. Lot of Mexicans out here.”
/>   “Here, too,” he said. “More and more. Come up to work at the casino. Mexicans, Haitians, Malaysians. It’s like the UN around here now. So I guess you heard you had some drop-in visitors out at your aunt’s place.”

  “And that my caretaker took matters into his own hands and ended up in the hospital.”

  Could have been worse, Jerry said.

  “You catch the little shitheads?”

  Not yet, he said. But his guys were making some inquiries, keeping their eyes open. Meanwhile, he wanted to avoid another confrontation. “We’ve had dealings with Mr. Pappanikou from time to time. He’s fine when he’s sober, but when he’s not, that’s a different story. And my philosophy is: Let’s prevent something from happening if we can, rather than cleaning up the mess after it’s happened. Last thing we want is for him to catch those kids out there again when he’s three sheets to the wind. Grab a shotgun, do something stupid.”

  My mind flew to those CNN pictures of Rachel and Danny, lying dead outside the school. “Jesus, no,” I said. “Look, I’m planning to get back this summer. Tear down their little clubhouse.”

  “He have a key to the farmhouse?”

  I said he did—that he went over and checked on things for me.

  “But that’s it? You didn’t give him permission to stay there? Because, according to my guys, that seems to be what he’s doing. And if he’s stumbling around drunk in there, he could start a fire, fall down the cellar stairs. I don’t mean to mind your business for you, Caelum, but I think you better get someone else to keep an eye on things for you.”

  I told him I’d get ahold of Alphonse, have him go out to Ulysses’s place and get the keys from him.

  “Well, you better tell him to wait till the weekend,” Jerry said. “I called in a favor from Bev Archibald over at Social Services, and she got Ulysses into Broadbrook on a five-day. Dry him out a little.”

  “That’s above and beyond the call,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Well, there’s a connection there. He and my dad went to high school together. Went down and enlisted right after high school. Fought in the Korean War.”

  “My father, too,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it? Who knows? Maybe Korea’s what messed all three of them up.” And there it was : the first mention either of us had ever made about our fathers’ having killed themselves.

  “Yeah, well …” I said.

  Jerry said I should give him a call when I got into town. “Maybe you and me and the wives can get together, go out to dinner or something.”

  Doubtful, I thought, unless she begins to pull out of it. “Sounds good,” I said. “Or maybe you and I could do some laps around the track. How’s our state record holding up?”

  “It’s not. Team from Storrs finally beat our time by one second. But we were on the books for what? Twenty-six years? Not too shabby.”

  I asked him if he ever heard from Brazicki or Birdsey.

  “Birdsey I see from time to time. Not too often. Probably too busy counting his casino millions. He’s a good guy, though. Writes us a nice check every year for the Policemen’s Benevolent fund. You know his brother died?”

  I told him my aunt had sent me the clipping. “Drowned, right?”

  “Yeah, that was a tough one…. I tell you one thing about that casino, though. They get some damn good entertainment down there. The wife and I have seen Travis Tritt, Dolly Parton, the Oakridge Boys.”

  “So I take it your heavy metal days are over?”

  “Yeah, and come to think of it, you never did give me back that Iron Butterfly album you borrowed.”

  I laughed. Told him I was pretty sure the statute of limitations was up on that one.

  “You know Brazicki became a priest?”

  “Ralphie? You’re shitting me. I thought he was one of the evil capitalists at Aetna.”

  “He was. Got the calling after Betsy died. Resigned, sold the house, the boat, their place at the Cape. His kids weren’t too happy about it, but what the hell. They’re both grown and married. He’s a prison chaplain. Says the inmates are a piece of cake compared to the sharks he used to have to deal with in business.”

  “Father Brazicki,” I said. “Well, what the fuck. He and I bought our first Trojans together at Liggett’s Drugstore. The afternoon of Kitty Vinsonhaler’s skinny-dipping party.”

  “The one her parents came home in the middle of?” Martineau said. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Yeah, that’d make a great story down at the station,” I said. “You scaling that fence butt-naked with Mr. Vinsonhaler in hot pursuit.”

  “Not to change the subject,” he said, “but I don’t think you ever gave me back my Grand Funk Railroad record, either.”

  After I hung up, I thought about the three of them: Jerry’s dad, my dad, Ulysses. “Messed up” was right. Mr. Martineau had put a gun to his head and Daddy had put himself in front of a moving train. Ulysses was taking the slow boat, but he was killing himself, same as the other two. His liver was probably liverwurst at this point…. I’d asked Mother about my father’s Korean War experiences a couple of times. Lolly, too. Both had said they didn’t know much themselves—that Daddy had always kept it to himself…. Anyway, I was lucky nothing worse had happened in that dustup between Ulysses and those kids. I couldn’t have taken another shooting. Maybe I shouldn’t wait until I got back. I could hire someone to tear down the apple house. Someone who might haul it away in exchange for the scrap lumber and the window casings. I could remove the floor myself. It’d feel good to swing a sledgehammer, take out my frustrations on a slab of concrete.

  No, she was out. Must have been the woman who cleans our house. She’s self-conscious about her English. Now why had I lied like that? Because she’s becoming an embarrassment.

  No, she’s not. I’m going to get her to that shrink. She’ll pull out of it.

  Right. And Mrs. Buzzi’s novenas ought to be kicking in any minute, too. You two are going to live happily ever after, rise right up to heaven at the end of it all. Right?

  The phone rang. Was it Martineau calling back? Velvet Hoon?

  But it was Sergeant Cox, one of the investigators who’d interviewed Maureen a few weeks earlier in our living room. She said she was sorry to be calling back so late, but they were trying to firm up their schedule with the eyewitnesses. Had Mrs. Quirk and I had a chance to discuss their request?

  “What request?” I said.

  There was a pause. “She didn’t tell you about it?”

  Cox said she and Detective Chin had stopped by the house that afternoon. They’d explained to Mo that they’d been assigned to a team that was reconstructing a minute-by-minute time line of the events at the school, from 11:10 a.m., when Harris and Klebold arrived on campus, until the last person was evacuated from the building. “So basically, what we’re doing is piecing together a jigsaw puzzle from the evidence and the eyewitnesses. Or, in your wife’s case and a few of the others, earwitnesses. What we’re asking people to do is return with us to the school, pinpoint their exact location, and share their memories with us, as specifically as possible.” Memory could be unreliable, she said; the more people they could gather information from, the more accurate a composite picture they could develop.

  “And you’re saying she’d have to go back in there?”

  “Yes, sir. In Mrs. Quirk’s case, what we’ll do, what I’ll do, probably—most women and girls seem to feel more at ease with another female—so what I’ll do is get down on the floor with her. Have her get inside the cabinet and close the door. And then, while we’re sitting there, I’ll interview her. Record her recollections. We find that on-site interviews are effective in—”

  “Is it cleaned up?”

  “The crime scene? No, sir. Everything has to be left as is while the investigation is ongoing. With the exception of the bodies. We’ve put cards down where the victims were.”

  “But the blood, and the bullets and the glass …”

  “
Yes, sir. While the investigation’s under way.”

  “How many takers have you gotten for these interviews?”

  She said there were a few more people they still needed to reach, and a few that felt they had to decline, but that most of the eyewitnesses had agreed to assist them. “The kids have been super,” she said. “And we do appreciate that this is a lot to ask of people who’ve been through so much already. We’d spare folks if we could, but this is extremely important to our investigation. I can’t overemphasize how much.”

  “What did she say? When you asked her?”

  “Mrs. Quirk? Well, actually, sir, she seemed troubled.”

  “As in distracted? Unfocused?”

  “No, sir. Actually, she became quite agitated and told us to leave.” And then, I figured, she must have gone upstairs and popped two or three more Xanax. “Which is actually another reason why I’m calling this evening instead of waiting until morning,” Sergeant Cox said. “I wanted to find out how she’s doing. I’m a little surprised she didn’t tell you we’d stopped by.”

  I told Cox I’d talk it over with Maureen. Told myself there was no way in hell I was going to allow her to go back there. Fuck their investigation.

  Cox said the on-site interviews would take a week or more. She could put Maureen at the end of the schedule, and we could see how things went. I agreed to that, but made sure she knew that there was no commitment.

  I poured myself a scotch—a generous one. Went up there. Leaned against the door frame and watched her sleep. I found the prescription bottle hidden in her beaded purse—the fancy one she carried for dress-up occasions. I spilled the tablets into my cupped palm. Nineteen. She’d taken seven that day.

  * * *

  CALL SERGEANT COX’S REQUEST A double-edged sword. Maureen was terrified by the possibility of having to return to the library and crawl back inside that cabinet. But her terror was what finally motivated her to call Dr. Sandra Cid.

  Her office was in a high-rise in downtown Denver. We had trouble finding it, and then, once we did, trouble finding parking. We had an argument at the elevators in the lobby. “But we’re late,” I reminded her, and she reminded me that she couldn’t handle enclosed spaces. “Come on then!” I said, and slammed open the door to the stairwell. I started up the seven flights, two stairs at a time, with her shoes click-clacking behind me. There were windows at the landings and, late or not, Mo stopped at each of them. To gather herself, I realized later. To assure herself that, outside this metal and cinder-block chimney she was climbing, there was a world of daylight and normalcy. By the time I reached the seventh floor, my heart was jackhammering. Maureen was a mess. This Dr. Cid had better be good, I thought.