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

  “Your stepfather? Yes?”

  “Well, he, uh . . . he’s had more time on his hands. Got laid off in December. Happy holidays from the big guys down at Electric Boat. He gives that company almost forty years of his life and then, just before his pension maxes out, they hand him his walking papers. They keep promising they’re going to call the old guys back, but they won’t.”

  Dr. Patel nodded sympathetically.

  “So anyway, he’s had more time lately. Drove me back and forth to the doctor’s the first couple of months, down to physical therapy. I even had him doing my grocery shopping for a while there. Before I started driving again. Kind of funny, isn’t it?”

  “What is funny, Dominick?”

  “Well, if you’d told me a year ago that Ray Birdsey was going to be my chauffeur, my personal errand boy . . .” I stood up. Walked back over to the window.

  “I find your terminology interesting,” Dr. Patel said.

  I turned and faced her. “What do you mean?”

  “Your comment just now about Ray. By helping you during your time of need, has he been serving as your ‘personal errand boy’ or as your father? Despite his past failures, I mean. Despite biology. Fathers do that, yes? Come to their sons’ aid in times of need?”

  She checked the tea again, pronounced it ready. You had to watch Doc Patel—had to put up your dukes even before the tea was poured. In a couple of months, I’d kind of forgotten how to play D with her.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Which of the books that I recommended did you read?”

  “Oh, well, I didn’t . . . I just kind of skimmed them. That Hero with a Thousand Faces thing and . . . what’s that one by the guy you studied with in Chicago?”

  “Dr. Bettelheim?”

  “Yeah. That Freud-meets-Little-Red-Riding-Hood thing of his.”

  She laughed. “Otherwise known as The Uses of Enchantment. And did you discover any?”

  “Any . . . ?”

  “Uses for enchantment?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Cinderella’s lost slipper’s really about castration anxiety; the beanstalk Jack’s climbing up is really his Oedipus complex. It was kind of interesting, I guess, but . . .”

  “But what?” She was watching me with mischievous eyes. Had I actually committed to four more sessions, or had we just talked about it?

  “I guess . . . I think maybe we ought to just let fairy tales be fairy tales, you know? Instead of turning them into these deep, dark . . . performing all these psychological autopsies on them. You know?” I sat there, not looking at her, picking away at a loose thread on my sweatshirt.

  Dr. Patel told me she used to tease Dr. Bettelheim about that same thing. “I would say, ‘Be careful, Bruno, or the magical little imps nestled in these ancient tales will become frightened and retreat back to the forest of antiquity.’ But, of course, I could say that to him because I had such high regard for his work. It freed me to play the imp myself, you see.”

  I shrugged, sipped some tea. “Yeah, well, you and me probably read that book of his on two entirely different levels. . . . It was interesting, though. Thanks.”

  She asked no further questions, made no observation. Just watched me sit there, unraveling the end of my sweatshirt sleeve.

  “You, uh . . . you know what I started reading this morning? Speaking of autopsies? This thing my grandfather wrote. My mother’s father.”

  “Yes? Your grandfather was an author, Dominick?”

  “Huh? Oh, no. . . . This was just some private thing. His personal history, or whatever. We never knew him, Thomas and me—he died before we were even born. But, he, uh . . . he dictated this whole big long thing—his life story—how he came over here from Italy, etcetera, etcetera. Well, dictated part of it, I guess, and wrote the rest of it. Rented one of those Dictaphone things, hired a stenographer. This Italian guy who’d come over after the war. He’d worked in the courts or something.”

  Angelo Nardi, I thought: my chief suspect in the case of the missing father. Not that I was going to get into my theory with Doc Patel.

  “He, uh . . . he died right after he finished it, I guess. According to my mother. He was up in the backyard, reading it over, and when Ma went outside to check on him, he was just sitting there, his mouth gaping open—dead, from a stroke. She said the manuscript pages were blowing all over the yard. . . . Life’s a bitch, right? Works all summer long on that thing and then just keels over.”

  “What you’re reading is a transcription of your grandfather’s oral history, then?”

  “Yeah, partly. Oral and written. I remember my mother said he fired the stenographer about halfway through. Wrote the rest himself. It was all in Italian; I had it translated. . . . It’s part oral history, part written, and about seventy-five percent bullshit.”

  She asked me what I meant by that.

  “Oh. I don’t know. . . . He had a pretty good idea of himself.”

  “Explain, please?”

  “It’s . . . well, the whole thing—what I read so far, anyway—it keeps going on and on about how great he is. Compared to everyone else in his village, compared to his two brothers. . . . I didn’t even know this thing existed until, maybe, four or five months before my mother died. I went over there to visit her one afternoon and she just gives it to me, out of the blue. This big, bulky thing she’d been keeping in a strongbox. It’s over a hundred pages. . . . She was pretty sick by then—that day she gave it to me. She said I could share it with Thomas—that he could read it if he wanted to—but it was me she wanted to give it to.”

  “Her father’s story? Why you?”

  “I don’t know, really. I didn’t ask her. . . . ‘The Story of a Great Man from Humble Beginnings.’ I got this big idea that I was going to have it translated for her. Give it to her as a present. Have it translated and bound into a book, or whatever, so that, you know, she could read her father’s history before she died.”

  “She had never read it?”

  “No. She said she knew some Sicilian, but not enough to read it page by page. But anyway, I got this big idea. Hired a translator and everything.”

  “What a lovely gesture,” Dr. Patel said. “Your mother must have been very pleased to receive her gift.”

  “She didn’t receive it. The translation took much longer than I figured it would. And then she got worse. She went downhill pretty fast near the end. . . . And then the damn thing got lost.”

  “Lost? The manuscript?”

  “Well, not lost, exactly. It’s a long story.” I was damned if I was going to get into Nedra Frank with her—the way she’d suddenly reappeared in her cowgirl outfit, at the foot of my hospital bed, like one of my morphine nightmares. Thunk! She’d practically aimed Domenico’s goddamned manuscript at my busted foot.

  “Just as well, though,” I said. “That Ma never read it. Now that I’m finally getting around to reading the thing myself, I don’t think I would have given it to her anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . well, for one thing, he bad-mouthed her pretty bad in it.”

  “Your mother? Why do you—?”

  “Right in the middle of dictating his big life story? Talking about what a great man he is—how all the ‘sons of Italy’ should follow his example? He starts crabbing about what a nuisance she is. Calls her ‘rabbit-face.’ ‘Cracked jug.’ Says how she’s so homely, she can’t get a husband. Can’t give him any grandchildren the way she’s supposed to. . . . Rabbit-face: what did he think? That she wanted to be born with that cleft lip? That it was her fault or something? . . . And the pitiful thing is, she worshipped the guy. When we were kids? Thomas and me? It was always, ‘Papa said this, Papa did that.’ . . . I don’t know. I’m glad she never read it, actually. It just would have hurt her feelings, reading that shit.”

  “Dominick?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You seem very tense. Why do you think—?”

  “You know what his whole reason for writing it
was? Did I tell you that? So that young Italian boys could read about him and get . . . inspired or whatever. You can just tell what a pompous asshole he was. Keeps going on and on about how ‘special’ he is. What a martyr he is because of what he’s had to put up with from everyone who’s less perfect than he is.”

  “In what respect did your grandfather feel he was special?”

  “In every respect. Intelligence-wise, morality-wise. He sees himself as God’s chosen . . .”

  “Why did you stop just now, Dominick? What are you thinking about?”

  What I was thinking about was Thomas. God’s Chosen One, Part II. But I dodged the bullet. “I don’t know. I’m not that far into it—fifteen, twenty pages. I probably won’t even finish it.”

  “Dominick? Tell me about your grandfather’s ‘closeness to God.’ “

  “Hmm? Oh, he . . . back in Italy? When he was a boy? He claims in this thing that some statue in their village started crying tears. And that he—Domenico—was the first one to see it.”

  “Domenico? You were named after your grandfather, then?”

  I nodded. “Guilty. Anyway, I guess because of this statue thing, they earmarked him to become a priest. Took up a collection in the village, sent him away to get educated. Then things got screwed up. He had this younger brother—”

  Brother problems, I thought, suddenly. We had that much in common, Papa and I.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t like the guy very much. All his I’m- better-than-this-one, I’m-better-than-that-one crap. He’s—what’s the word?—grandiose. . . . But, you know, it’s kind of interesting from a family history perspective or whatever. All the immigration stuff. How he established himself once he got here. It fills in some of the blanks.”

  “Yes? Tell me about that.”

  “Well, there’s this one guy he mentions named Drinkwater—Nabby Drinkwater. They worked in the mill together—this Drinkwater guy and my grandfather. And it’s weird because, well, because Thomas and I worked one summer with Ralph Drinkwater. Remember? We talked about that once: that summer when Thomas started falling apart? When we were all on that work crew. Gotta be the same family, right? Wequonnoc Indians named Drinkwater? . . . So, that’s kind of interesting: the coincidences. Seeing how his generation and ours . . .”

  Dr. Patel stared at me for a second or two more than I felt comfortable with, then jotted something down on the little pad in her lap.

  “What’d I just say?” She cocked her head a little. “You just wrote down something.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Well? Did I just say something incredibly revealing, or am I boring you so much that you’re working on your grocery list, or what? What did you write down?”

  “I wrote the word grandiose.”

  “Yeah? Why?”

  “I believe I mentioned earlier that, before you came here today, I was reviewing our past sessions. And I was struck, just now, by your use of the word grandiose.”

  “Yeah? Why? Because housepainters don’t usually use three-syllable words?”

  “No. Because you’ve used that word in here before. Do you recall the context?”

  I shook my head.

  “In connection with your brother. You were making the point, quite validly, that there was grandiosity in your brother’s position.”

  “His ‘position’ on what?”

  “His belief that God had somehow singled him out as His instrument in the prevention of conflict between the United States and Iraq. That God had ‘chosen’ him. And now, using the same word—grandiose—you’ve just told me that your maternal grandfather felt similarly ‘chosen.’ So, I found that interesting. Worthy of further exploration, perhaps.”

  I shifted in my seat. “Yeah, but . . . Thomas never even read this thing of my grandfather’s. He couldn’t possibly have gotten the idea from Domenico. If that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “I’m not ‘getting at’ anything, Dominick,” she said. “I’m merely recording observations. Looking for patterns that we may or may not wish to examine later.”

  “During the big autopsy?”

  “Ah,” she said. “Now that’s the third time you’ve used that word. May I inquire about your use of the metaphor, Dominick? If you see our work together here as an ‘autopsy,’ who, may I ask, is our corpse?”

  “I just—”

  “It’s the key ingredient, is it not? The body of the deceased? So tell me: whose cadaver are we examining?”

  “What . . . what are you being sarcastic for?”

  “You misinterpret me. I’m neither working on my shopping list nor being sarcastic. Answer my question, please. Our cadaver is . . . ?”

  “My grandfather?”

  I could tell from her expression that it wasn’t the answer she was looking for.

  “My brother? . . . Me?”

  She smiled as serenely as Shiva. “It was your metaphor, Dominick. Not mine. May I ask you something else, as long as we are discussing the subject of grandiosity? Do you feel the word—grandiose—in any way describes you?”

  “Me?” It made me laugh. “Joe Shmoe? I don’t think so. . . . Far as I know, Jesus never asked me to stop a war. No statue’s ever cried tears for my benefit.”

  “And yet, earlier, you described yourself as fate’s test case. Likened your trials and tribulations to those of Job, who, of course, is legendary because of the way God tested his faith. So, I was just wondering. . . . More tea?”

  She told me I should keep reading—that books were mirrors, reflective in sometimes unpredictable ways. What the hell had she meant—was I grandiose? Where had that little zinger come from?

  “Look,” I said. “Do you think we can cut to the chase here? How much time do we have left, anyway?”

  She consulted the clock, cocked strategically at an angle so that the patient couldn’t read it. “About thirty-five minutes,” she said.

  “Because, no offense, I didn’t come here just to have a book discussion.”

  She nodded. “Why did you come, Dominick? Tell me.”

  I told her about seeing Rood’s face in the attic window.

  About Joy’s pregnancy—the way she’d tried to pass me off as the father of her kid.

  About the night I’d faced myself in the medicine cabinet mirror.

  Dr. Patel asked me if I had continued to have suicidal thoughts since that night—if I had continued to plan ways in which I might end my life. I shook my head. Told her that the worst despair had passed—that I’d weathered it.

  “You’re sure?”

  I nodded. I was sure, too. I wasn’t bullshitting her. That night had scared me enough so that I’d stepped back from the ledge and stayed there. Had started thinking, okay, maybe there is life beyond . . . beyond . . .

  I fished Joy’s cassette out of my jacket pocket, and the little cassette player I’d brought along. I told Dr. Patel about the night at the hospital when I’d awakened and found the Duchess standing there. “The gutless bastard was trying to sneak it onto my nightstand and get the hell out of there,” I said. “He was pretty good at sneaking. He was an expert. Only I woke up. Ruined his little getaway. Listen to this.”

  I hit “play.” Studied her as she listened to Joy’s confession.

  When I finished, she sighed. “What your girlfriend did was a terrible betrayal,” she said. “Obviously, she is a deeply troubled young woman. And yet . . .” She seemed stumped for a moment. Lost in thought. “And yet, Dominick, like you and me—like all of us, really—she is struggling. Working, I think, to develop some insight. To become a better person. Which is not to dismiss what she did—not at all. Tell me, how did you feel a moment ago—while you were listening again to her words?”

  “I just . . . I don’t know. I’ve listened to that damn tape so many times now, I don’t . . . I guess I’m numb.”

  “Why did you want to play the tape for me instead of just telling me about it?”

  “I just . . . I wanted you to hear what they d
id to me. I mean, taking the most intimate thing that two people can do together and . . . I just wanted you to hear it in her own words.”

  “So, you are not so much interested in exploring your feelings about Joy’s betrayal. Or the failure of your relationship. You are merely giving me a tour of the museum.”

  “The museum? . . . I don’t follow you.”

  “Your museum of pain. Your sanctuary of justifiable indignation.”

  “I, uh . . .”

  “We all superintend such a place, I suppose,” she said, “although some of us are more painstaking curators than others. That is the category in which I would certainly put you, Dominick. You are a meticulous steward of the pain and injustices people have visited upon you. Or, if you prefer, we could call you a scrupulous coroner.”

  “What . . . what do you mean? Curator of my—”

  “Well, let’s see. There is the monument to your having suffered a shared childhood with Thomas. And the frequently revisited exhibit of your stepfather’s many injustices. And, of course, the pièce de résistance: your shrine to your ex-wife.”

  “Uh . . . ?”

  “And now, this most recent acquisition. This tape which you have brought for me to listen to—which, as you say, you have listened to many, many times yourself. So many times, it has made you numb.” She took another sip of tea, smiling benignly. “The Dominick Birdsey Museum of Injustice and Misery,” she said. “Open year-round.”

  For the remainder of the hour, I was polite. Terse. I was damned if I was going to give her what she wanted: some truth-revealing tantrum, some anger-stoked baring of my soul so that we could dissect me the way her friend, what’s-his-face, had dissected all those fairy tales. She was sneaky, really. Devious. First she tricks me into promising I’ll come for four more sessions, then she whacks me between the eyes with a two-by-four.

  She walked me to the door. Her advice, she said, was to keep reading my grandfather’s transcripted story. Whatever I felt about him personally, he had given me a gift—something that very few ancestors who predeceased their descendants ever gave.