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

  “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.”

  I took a step closer to her—to both of them.

  “Kind of funny, in a way, isn’t it? The big veteran of not just one war, but two. The guy who was always trying to toughen us up for the big bad world out there.” I turned to Ray; he was looking over my shoulder instead of facing me eye to eye. “You were fucking fearless against the Axis powers. Weren’t you, Ray? Kicked the Koreans’ butts, right? But, shit, man, that one-handed spook down at the forensic hospital: you were scared to death of that guy, weren’t you? . . . Hey! Look at me, Ray. I’m talking to you.”

  And he did look. I’ll give him that much: he met my gaze and held it.

  “I’d go down there, go through all that rigmarole—the metal detector, the escort down to the visiting room, all that maximum-security bullshit. Because, after all, he was such a fucking danger to society, right? . . . And he’d come in—they’d escort him into the visiting room—and he’d sit down, tell me what his day had been like. What he’d had for lunch. Who was trying to assassinate him that particular afternoon. And then, oh, usually within five minutes of our visit, he’d go, ‘How’s Ray doing? Why doesn’t Ray ever visit me? Is Ray mad at me?’”

  Ray closed his eyes. Swallowed. Stood there and took it.

  “I ran out of excuses for you, buddy,” I said. “There’s only so far one teammate can fake it for another, you know? . . . In seven months, Ray? Not once in seven months? Not even at Christmastime? Not so much as peace on earth, good will toward lunatics?”

  When he opened his eyes again, tears spilled out, down his sagging gray cheeks. I heard Leo start to say something, but my hands flew up in the direction of his voice, stopping him. My eyes found Leo’s.

  “I’m not saying I was any kind of hero. Believe me. I made my brother’s life miserable when we were kids. Miserable. . . . It’s what I used to live for, I was so jealous of him. His goodness. His sweetness. He was as sweet as Ma. . . . But that stump, man. That goddamned stump. That was my penance. . . . I’d sit there in that visitors’ room—and god, that place stunk; you’d get out of there and the smell of Hatch Forensic Institute would be on you for the rest of the day. In your clothes, in the upholstery of your car . . . I’d sit there, across from him, and say to myself, Don’t look at it, Dominick! Look at his eyes. Just look at his eyes. But I couldn’t help it. I always had to look at it because . . . because we’d helped him hack off that goddamned hand of his. Didn’t we, Ray? You and me? We were a team, right?”

  “Hey, Dominick?” Leo said. “Why don’t you and me go for a little—”

  “All those bad guys who were always after him: Noriega, the Ayatollah, the CIA. We were Noriega. Right, Ray? We were those Cuban assassins who
were out to whack him the way they’d whacked JFK. It wasn’t just his brain. His biochemistry. . . . It was us, Ray. We killed them both. Mrs. Calabash and Mrs. Floon. . . . We won, Ray. It’s V-J Day. This is our victory party.”

  “I did the best I could for that kid,” he said. “For both of you. . . . My conscience is clear. I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  I had to laugh. “Really, Ray? Your conscience is clear?” I caught sight of Mrs. Anthony’s bloodless face, her frightened eyes. “You want to hear some other stories about when we were kids, Mrs. Anthony? I’ll tell you some stories. Let’s see. There was the time Raymondo the Great here taped up Thomas’s hands with duct tape. Bound his hands together at the wrist, like he was a friggin’ prisoner of war. You know why? You know what his big offense was? He was chewing on his sleeves.” I held up my own hands—put on a demonstration two or three inches from her face. “I can still see him, crying into his supper—putting his face down into his plate like a dog so he could eat. Like a fuckin’ dog. Right, Ray? You and your conscience remember that night? . . .

  “And then, let’s see now, there was the time he caught him eating Halloween candy in church. Remember that fun day, Ray? Hey, let’s reopen that particular case because here’s some new evidence for you, buddy. You ready? You listening, Ray? I was the one who filled my pockets up before we left for church that day. I passed the candy to him, Ray. I’d been stuffing my face all during Mass. Right in front of you, man. You had the wrong twin, bud. You were always nailing the wrong guy.”

  “You want to know what the probate judge said the day I adopted you two?” Ray said. It was me he addressed—looked me right in the eye; I’ll give the son of a bitch that much. “He said I was a good man, that’s what. That there probably wasn’t one man in a thousand who’d take on what I was taking on. Not one of you, but two. Two of you. . . . I’m not saying I didn’t make mistakes. That I couldn’t have done things different. But you can march down to that goddamned courthouse and read those words if you want to, buddy boy! March 19, 1955. Probate Court of Three Rivers, Connecticut. Because His Honor Judge Harold T. Adams told his secretary he wanted it written right into the court record! That I was a good man. That not one man in a thousand—”

  Let . . . me . . . out . . . of . . . here! PLEASE . . . let . . . me . . . out!

  “Yeah, well, Judge Harold T. Adams . . .” Now I was crying; now it was me sobbing in front of the whole frigging world. “Judge Harold T. Adams would have been real proud of you that night you locked him in the coat closet. Wouldn’t he, Ray? . . . That night she came downstairs with her arm wobbling at the wrong angle. That was quite a night. Eh, Ray? Your conscience clear about that one, too?”

  He told me I could go to hell. Retreated through the living room. Slam! The kitchen. Slam! His car started, peeled out, jack-rabbited down Hollyhock Avenue.

  I looked around the room, caught my breath, searched from face to bewildered face. “Uh, okay, who wants more coffee?” I said. “Leo? Mr. Anthony? Mrs. Anthony?”

  Leo, Angie, Dessa, and I were the last ones there. Just like old times, I thought: the way the four of us, back when we were newlyweds, used to go over to each other’s apartments on Friday nights. Play cards, listen to music, drink beer. The others started picking up plates, half-empty drink glasses. I went out to the kitchen, opened Ray’s refrigerator. Opened four of his beers. “No, thanks,” they all said.

  “Come on. I already opened them. Have a beer.”

  “No, really.”

  Nobody but me wanted one. I couldn’t give a beer away.

  Angie said she and Leo had to leave—had to pick up the kids. Shannon was at softball practice, Amber was at her friend’s. “Bring ’em back over,” I said. “There’s enough leftovers to feed about fifty kids. I haven’t seen those two in months.” They exchanged a look. Angie stumbled through some half-baked excuse about why they couldn’t. Leo said he’d call me the next day, and they left.

  I sat down at the kitchen table, amidst all the uneaten desserts. Started shredding the label off my beer bottle. Dessa was standing at the sink, wiping dishes. “You seen the kids lately?” I asked. “Amber and Shannon?”

  She said she’d taken them to the mall the Saturday before.

  “I never see them anymore. What is it? Is it their schedules or is it me?”

  I sat there, waiting, pick-pick-picking at that label. “It’s your brother,” she said.

  “My brother? What about my brother?”

  She came over and sat at the table, sat across from me. “Last fall? When he cut off his hand? Amber kind of freaked out about it. She kept seeing you do it. To your hand. And it just . . . it kept getting worse and worse. Leo hasn’t wanted to say anything to you. He knew you’d feel bad.”

  “What got worse and worse? What do you mean?”

  “Amber started developing all these phobias: afraid to go to sleep, afraid to ride the school bus. It’ll be like midnight, one or two in the morning some nights, and she’s still awake. And then when she finally does get to sleep, she keeps waking up again. Two or three times a night, sometimes. They’re taking her to a specialist now.”

  I closed my eyes—waited out the urge to cry for them both: my niece, my brother.

  “Give her some time, Dominick. She’ll come around. The kids love you. You know that. It’s just that for now . . . “

  I held my beer bottle over a perfectly good plate of cream puffs. Flattened them, one by one, watched the pudding ooze out and off the edge of the plate. “Schizophrenia,” I said. “The gift that keeps on giving.”

  Dessa asked me where I thought Ray had driven off to.

  I shrugged. Told her I didn’t particularly give a damn where he went.

  “You know what his worst offense has always been?” she said. I looked at her. Waited. “Not being your real father.”

  She stood up and went back to the sink.

  I told her she was wrong—that that wasn’t the worst of it. Not by a long shot.

  “Yes it is,” she said. “You’d forgive him for all the rest of it before you’d forgive him for that.”

  She stayed. Helped me with the rest of the cleanup. “Really,” I kept telling her. “You don’t have to do this.” She ignored me, of course; whether she admitted it or not, Dessa could be as stubborn as her mother. But I was glad she stayed. I was grateful.

  “I have to use the bathroom,” she said. “Then I have to go.”

  Back to their peeling farmhouse with that jazzy mailbox, I thought. Back to him.

  I was looking through Ma’s photo album when she came back down the stairs. I’d taken it out of the china closet to shove Jerry Martineau’s basketball picture in there and then gotten lost in the old photographs. And when I patted the sofa, she surprised me. Sat down beside me.

  We leafed through the book together: Thomas and me with Mamie Eisenhower; Domenico in a two-piece bathing suit at Ocean Beach. . . . I opened my mouth to tell Dessa about how I’d been reading the Old Man’s “history,” and then changed my mind. I was whipped; it was complicated. She’d already had enough of Dominick and Company.

  “I’m worried about you,” she said. I kept turning pages. Thomas and me in Junior Midshipmen; Thomas, Ray, and me at the New York World’s Fair . . .

  I told her I’d be okay—that, in some ways, Thomas’s death felt like a reprieve. That I wasn’t sorry I’d nailed Ray in front of witnesses.

  “Well, you’re bound to have all kinds of conflicting emotions right now, Dominick,” she said. “You really need to talk to someone.”

  I asked her if she was volunteering for the job.

  “You know what I mean. A counselor. A therapist.”

  I told her I was way ahead of her. Filled her in on Dr. Patel.

  She nodded. Reached over and took my hand. “What made you start going?”

  I flipped another page of Ma’s book. Shrugged. “Him being locked up at Hatch, I guess. That maximum-security stuff: it w
as eating me alive. I guess it was like that front hall closet all over again. . . . At first, I was just going there to fill her in on his history. Give her some background on our happy little childhood here at Happy Valley. And then . . . I don’t know, things just shifted. She said to me one afternoon that Thomas and I were like two guys lost in the woods or something. She said she thought she could help me get out of the woods. So we started working on my shit.”

  “And how’s it going?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “She was here earlier; you missed her. She’s pretty terrific, actually. Doesn’t take much shit off of me. . . . We been . . . we been working on anger management. I don’t think she’d have been too thrilled at my little showdown with Ray.”

  Dessa said that at least, these days, my anger seemed to be hitting the target I was aiming for. I looked over at her. Studied her face. Nodded.

  “I’m glad you’re seeing someone,” she said. “You and Thomas had a pretty complex relationship. You’ve spent an enormous amount of emotional energy on Thomas. Your whole life. Now, you’re going to have to take all of that energy and . . . reinvest it, I guess. It’s bound to be a complicated process.”

  “Sounds like shrink talk,” I said. “What are you trying to do? Cut Doc Patel out of the action?”

  She was serious, she said. She’d hate to see me deal with Thomas’s death by not dealing with it—have my anger boomerang back in a hundred other ways. Or dodge the pain—quit the process when the going got tough.

  “When it gets tough?” I said. “You saying it gets more brutal than this?”

  She shook her head. “What I’m saying, Slugger, is that it’s a big step for you—therapy. I’m proud of you.”

  Slugger: she hadn’t called me that in years. I asked her how she was doing.

  She looked away. Looked back again. Fair, she said.

  “Yeah? Just fair? What’s the matter?”

  Oh, Thomas’s death, mainly, she said. She’d really loved my brother. He’d had to struggle so hard. She was grieving, too. And now her mother—those dizzy spells.