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

  I held her gaze ten, fifteen seconds more. “You’d better go,” I finally said. “Your friend Violetta needs you.”

  Her drunken, frightened eyes jumped from my face to the bedroom door, then back again. “My friend Violetta is buried in Palermo,” she said—a little too loudly. “I just told you. It is a sin to mock the souls of the dead.”

  I took her arm and whispered some advice into her ear. “You’re a fine one,” I said, “to talk to me about sins against the dead!”

  40

  Sheffer was late, as usual. Why was one o’clock always 1:10 or 1:15 with that woman? Why was 11 A.M. always 11:20, with some excuse attached?

  Okay, cool your jets, Birdsey, I told myself. You bite her head off as soon as she walks in the door, you won’t get what you need.

  Get him tested. . . . Keep my name out of it.

  Drinkwater’s phone call had kept me up all night. Just my brother’s paranoid delusions—right, Sheffer? He’s “perfectly safe” all right. Except for one minor detail: he might be infected. Someone down here at this fucking place might have given him AIDS.

  I’ll take care of him for you, Ma. I promise. You can go now, Ma. . . .

  Face it, Birdsey: you were asleep at the wheel. You let them lull you. Cut back your visits, stopped calling to check on him. . . . And when you did visit, you only half-listened to his horror stories: how they were poisoning him, programming him, coming into his cell in the middle of the night. . . . Oh Jesus, don’t let him have HIV on top of everything else. Don’t let that test be positive. . . .

  I knew one thing: I was getting him examined independently, whether they liked it or not. I didn’t trust any of these clowns anymore. I wasn’t taking anyone’s word.

  Okay, chill out. Think about something else. . . . I reached over, snagged the newspaper on Sheffer’s desk.

  POST–GULF WAR OIL PRICES DROPPING. . . . How can we kill people for the sake of cheap oil, Dominick? How can we justify that? . . . king beating: tapes show l.a.p.d. “levity.” . . . He’s safe here, Dominick. Unit Two’s the best. Sheffer had said it so often, so convincingly, that I’d bought the line. And now look what had happened.

  What might have happened, I reminded myself. His test could come back negative.

  I saw my sorry-ass reflection in Sheffer’s computer monitor. Saw, whether I liked it or not, my grandfather. . . . Why the hell had I picked up Domenico’s history the night before—read the one goddamned thing guaranteed to extend my insomnia—make me feel even worse? . . . A painter vomits and shits himself to death, a rabbit gets hacked in half and doubles itself. . . . So your wife and her friend were fugitives, Old Man? My grandmother was a murderer? Is that what’s wrong with us?

  And what about his other suspicion—that Ma was really the Irishman’s daughter? If that was true, then Domenico wasn’t even my grandfather, right? Mine or Thomas’s. We beat the rap. . . . Only it didn’t wash. How could she have given birth to twins with different fathers? If I wasn’t his grandson, why had I grown to look like those sepia-tinted pictures of him—those pictures Ma had gone back into the burning house to save?

  One thing was coming clear: the reason why he’d treated Ma like crap. “Rabbit-face,” “cracked jug”: if you disowned your own daughter—convinced yourself she was somebody else’s—then you could make her your personal whipping girl, right? Punish her for her mother’s sins. . . . Right, Old Man? Was that why you went down to that store where she worked and made her eat a cigarette? Shoved her face into a plate of fried eggs? . . . My guess was that “Papa” had shoved his daughter around plenty. He’d beaten his wife, hadn’t he? His own mother back in Sicily? Why would he have spared a harelipped daughter he didn’t even claim?

  No wonder Ma was afraid of her own shadow. No wonder she’d never been able to stand up to Ray. . . . She’d let history repeat itself when she married Ray Birdsey, that much was clear. I tell you one thing, buddy boy! If you were my flesh and blood . . . No kid of mine would ever . . . That prick had spent a lifetime disclaiming us.

  BOMBING OF IRAQ “NEAR-APOCALYPTIC.” “A United Nations report says the U.S.–led allied bombing campaign had wrought ‘near-apocalyptic’ results upon the infrastructure of what had been, until January of 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now, most means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq has been relegated to a preindustrial age, but with all the disabilities of postindustrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology. In terms of human casualties . . .”

  Desert Storm, Rodney King: the front page told the same old story, over and over and over. Might made right—whoever had the “smart” bombs, the billy clubs. . . . Duck and cover, Thomas! You want mercy? Forget about God. God’s a picture from the five-and-ten hanging up on Ma’s bedroom wall. Pray to the oppressor, man. . . . I’m sorry, Ray. I won’t do it again. I’m sorry. . . . The never-ending soundtrack from Hollyhock Avenue. The both of them over there—my mother, my brother—crying and begging the tyrant for mercy. . . . HEAVY RAINS EXPECTED THROUGH WEEKEND. . . .

  Well, I tell you what, Ma: I may have been asleep at the wheel for the past couple of months, but I’m wide awake now. I’m getting him out of here if I have to drive up to Hartford and pound on the governor’s front door. If I have to torch this fucking place.

  SINGER ERIC CLAPTON’S SON, 4, DIES IN FALL. . . .

  Sheffer’s door swung open. “Hey, paisano. Sorry I’m late,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had. First thing this morning, my daughter says—”

  I held up my hand to shut her up. “I want my brother tested for HIV,” I said.

  She stopped in her tracks. “Any, uh . . . any particular reason?”

  I’d promised Drinkwater three times during our five-minute phone conversation the night before that I’d keep his name out of it. So I shrugged back at her. Just to be on the safe side, I said. Whenever I visited Thomas, he complained about sexual assaults.

  “We’ve gone over all this,” she said. “Remember? Those are delusions. Homosexual panics.” She sat down at her desk. “When he starts off on that track, the best way to handle him is—”

  “I don’t want him handled,” I said. “I want him tested.”

  “The wards are monitored day and night, Dominick. If there’s any prison rape going on, it’s in his head. Let it go.”

  I told her I could make the request through Dr. Chase if she preferred. Or through her supervisor. What was her name again?

  “Dr. Farber,” Sheffer said. She and Farber had a meeting scheduled for later that afternoon. If I really insisted, she could broach the subject with her then—let me know in the next couple of days what Farber had said.

  “If the meeting’s this afternoon, why can’t you let me know later this afternoon?”

  She clenched up a little. They had just added three new patients to her caseload, she said; her monthlies were two days overdue; her daughter had woken up that morning with an ear infection. If she could get back to me later that day, she would do that. If she couldn’t, I would just have to wait. She was dancing as fast as she could. “And anyway,” she said, “I already know what Dr. Farber’s going to say. If they started letting patients’ families call the shots on medical testing, it would open up the floodgates.”

  My brain ricocheted like a pinball; I was forming the idea as I spoke. “You been . . . you been following that mess out in Los Angeles, Sheffer? The way the cops beat that black guy to a pulp out there? . . . You seen the videotape of that?”

  “Yeah,” she said. I watched her try to figure out where I was going.

  “Pretty brutal, huh? Man, they savaged that guy.” My adrenaline was pumping; my sneakers were tapping against the floor, a thousand beats a minute. “Public’s probably not in much of a mood to tolerate brutality-in-uniform right now, huh?”

  She waited.

  “Remember . . . you remember that night last October when they checked my brother in down here
? The way that guard roughed me up? You witnessed that, didn’t you? Popped your head out the door right in the middle of things?”

  Sheffer’s face looked neutral—official. She neither confirmed nor denied.

  “I followed your advice, by the way. Remember? You told me to have myself examined. And I did. Went down to the clinic. Had them take pictures and everything. That was good advice you gave me, Sheffer. To get things documented. Get proof.”

  She glanced up at the intercom on her wall. “What’s your point?” she said.

  “I just made my point, paisana,” I said. “Tell Dr. Farber I want Thomas tested.”

  At about five that afternoon, I received a call from the office of Dr. Richard Hume. Hume was Farber’s supervisor’s supervisor, if I had the food chain right. It was Hume who’d chaired the Security Board hearing that had sentenced my brother. His secretary asked me if I’d please hold. You had to love the power boys: they called you, then made you sit and wait for the privilege of talking to them.

  When Hume came on the line, he chatted with me like we were a couple of cronies down at the Elks Lodge. He was glad I’d raised my concern with Ms. Sheffer, he said. Inmates’ families were an integral part of the treatment team at Hatch; it was right there in black and white in the hospital’s mission statement. His feeling on this particular request, however—my request for an HIV test for my brother—was that it was unwarranted at this particular point in time. The Institute tested patients periodically, but on their own schedule. Dr. Hume said he hoped I could see things from the hospital’s position: that it was neither cost-effective nor a wise precedent for the administration to—”

  “I’ll pay for it,” I said. “I want it done by someone who’s not in-house, anyway. Not on the payroll down there. I’ll make all the arrangements and pick up the tab. Just tell me when I can bring someone in.”

  Dr. Hume said I didn’t understand. If they allowed patients’ families to dictate medical testing schedules, it could become a procedural nightmare. Thomas had been tested when he entered the hospital last October, he said. His next test would be—”

  “Who’s your boss?” I said.

  There was a pause on the other end. “Excuse me?”

  “Who do you answer to? Because I ain’t going away. Me or my pictures.”

  There was a pause. “Which pictures are those, Mr. Birdsey?”

  I couldn’t tell if he was in the dark about what I’d told Sheffer or just pretending he was. Couldn’t second-guess what Sheffer might have passed on. But I decided to go for broke. “The photographs of my black-and-blue groin,” I said. “My scrotum swollen up like a basketball. One of your goons down there roughed me up the night I checked my brother in. Kneed me a couple of good ones south of the equator. ‘Rodney Kinged’ me a little, I guess you could say. In front of witnesses.”

  I hadn’t thought any of this out yet—had just leapt without a net. But I was in it now. We were all in it—Sheffer, this talking head on the phone, my brother and me. “Got myself examined the day after it happened,” I said. “I wanted everything documented, you know what I’m saying? And now, Jesus, with all this stuff out there in L.A. The way people are feeling right now. . . . I just . . . I kind of figured you might want to okay that test for my brother. Spare yourself Excedrin headache number seven, you know?”

  No comment on the other end.

  “I mean, how’s one little test going to cause any ‘procedural nightmares,’ right? If everything checks out okay, I just go away. Me and my complaint.”

  Hume asked me if there was any particular reason why I felt an HIV test might be warranted. Drinkwater’s face flashed before me. Keep my name out of it.

  “My brother talks all the time about guys breaking into his cell at night,” I said. “It’s probably his paranoia—I realize that. I just want to—what do you call it?—err on the side of caution. Don’t you?”

  I waited out his big speech about State of Connecticut policy and Hatch’s unswerving concern for patients’ well-being. Thanked him for the call. Told him I’d be contacting my attorney.

  There was dead air for several seconds. “Well, you do what you have to do, Mr. Birdsey,” he finally said. “And we’ll do the same. Because unless I’m reading you incorrectly, what you’re doing here is attempting to bribe me. And if you think—”

  “Hey, look, Big Shot,” I said. “All I’m trying to do is defend a guy who can’t defend himself. A guy who doesn’t belong anywhere near that happy little funhouse you run down there. All I want to do is make sure no one down there has been butt-fucking my brother.”

  He hung up in my ear.

  I stood there, my heart pounding like a son of a bitch. Goddamn it, Birdsey! That was exactly the way not to—I lobbed the fucking phone across the room. Watched it bounce against the refrigerator door and clatter back across the floor. Land at my feet.

  Well, asshole, I told myself. You just did something. For better or worse, you just put something in motion.

  A couple of beers later, Hume’s secretary called back. The test I’d requested for my brother had been scheduled for Monday afternoon of the following week. Thomas’s physical would be conducted by hospital personnel, his blood screened by a representative of the Haynes Pathobiology Laboratory.

  I tried to think past the beer buzz I’d started. Hume was doing an about-face? Giving me a reasonable facsimile of what I wanted? The victory spooked me. “Why’d he change his mind?” I said.

  The secretary said she knew nothing about it; she was merely passing along a message from “the boss.”

  “Then put ‘the boss’ back on,” I said. “I’ll ask him myself.”

  A minute or more later, she came back on the line. Dr. Hume had stepped away from his desk, she said. When I told her I’d hold until he “stepped back,” it was, oh, wait a minute. His attaché case wasn’t there. He must have already left for the day.

  “Then give him a message,” I said. “Tell him I’m bringing my own doctor for my brother’s test.”

  Why had he caved in? Was he running scared about something? I’d go over to the clinic first thing in the morning—try and talk to that Chinese doctor, Dr. Yup—the one who’d had friends killed in Tiananmen Square. She’d called what that guard had done to me “oppression.” I wanted Dr. Yup to examine my brother.

  Sheffer called the next afternoon, sounding shell-shocked. “Dominick?” she said. “Can you meet me later on today? Something’s come up.”

  “Is he hurt?” I said. “Did someone hurt him?”

  Uh-uh, she said; there was no new incident. But when I told her I could be down at Hatch in half an hour, she hesitated. Asked me if we could meet someplace else—someplace outside of Three Rivers, maybe. Her shift was over at four-thirty, she said. How about that little coffee place up across from the university? The Sugar Shack—did I know where that was? She could get there by, say, five-fifteen?

  Why was she suggesting someplace a half-hour drive away? I told her I’d be there. Asked her again if my brother was all right.

  Nothing bad had happened to him that day, she said. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure of anything anymore. She’d explain when she got there.

  The coffee I’d bought her when I got to the doughnut shop was stone cold by the time she finally walked in. She sat and gulped it anyway. She looked like hell.

  “How’s your daughter?” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Jesse? Why? What do you mean?”

  “Her ear infection?”

  “Oh. Better. The doctor put her on Amoxicillin. Thanks for asking.” She fished out a pack of cigarettes. “Can you smoke here?” she said. “Is that a sin at this place?” I pushed the little tinfoil ashtray over to her side of the table.

  I told her I was pretty sure I knew what she was going to tell me—that I’d figured it out on the drive up there. “He’s positive, right? They got nervous and jumped the gun on the test. He’s got it.”

  She shook her head. I was right about t
heir jumping the gun, she said; they’d done blood work on Thomas that afternoon. But the results weren’t in yet. They wouldn’t know anything until Monday morning.

  “So they’ll already have the results by the time he’s examined officially. Right?”

  She nodded. Picked up her coffee cup and started shredding it. “Dominick?” she said. “What I’m going to tell you may not even be about Thomas, okay? Not directly, anyway. And maybe not even indirectly. Just remember that.” Her face contorted a little, the same way Dessa’s did when she was struggling not to cry. She took a long drag off her cigarette. Exhaled. It was killing me, but I sat there and waited. Kept my mouth shut for once in my life.

  She asked me if I recalled a conversation we had had several months back about one of the psych aides down at Hatch—a guy named Duane Taylor. I’d commented about him the day I’d stood at her office window and watched Thomas out on recreation break. It was before my security clearance had come through—before I’d won the right to visit my brother face-to-face. Did I remember?

  I saw Thomas standing out in that rec area, waiting to get his cigarette lit while Duane Taylor entertained his pets. Ignored my brother’s existence. “Dude with the cowboy hat, right?” I said. Sheffer nodded.

  There’d been an assault at Hatch a week ago, she said. On the night shift. The administration had kept it so hushed up that most of the staff hadn’t even heard about it. “Which is pretty impressive, given our grapevine,” she said. “But this was top secret.”

  “Who got assaulted?” I said.

  “Duane Taylor. He was attacked from behind in the men’s bathroom in Unit Four—garroted with a wire and left for dead.”

  I waited. Sheffer looked up—met my eyes. “Taylor works days,” she said.

  He’d been rushed to Shanley Memorial and then helicoptered to Hartford Hospital. It had been touch and go for several days, but things were starting to look better for him. They weren’t sure yet about permanent damage: oxygen deprivation to the brain.