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

  It’s after nine on that March evening when Jasmine knocks on my office door. I’ve just finished my paperwork and am ready to go home. “Come in.”

  I don’t recognize her at first. She looks different. It’s her hair, I guess. It’s longer than it was the previous semester, and lighter—honey-colored instead of dark brown. She’s in tears and shaking badly. Her winter coat’s flapping open, and she’s wearing a red V-neck sweater underneath. She’s pacing, speaking so rapidly that I’m not getting half of what she’s saying. I stand. Go over and close the door, then lock it at her request. “Have a seat,” I say, but she says no, she’s too nervous to sit. She goes over to the window and takes a furtive peek out at the quad below. When I ask her to tell me again what has her so upset, she says, “Not what. Who.”

  Her ex-fiancé has been scaring her, she says. Stalking her. He won’t return the key to her apartment she gave him. Last week, she went home and there he was. And tonight, as she walked toward her car in the student lot, she saw his car a few parking spaces away from hers. Saw him sitting there with the lights off and the motor running. She panicked and ran back toward the Psych Services building and saw the light on in my office.

  When I ask her if she wants some water, she nods, and so I grab one of the plastic cups in my desk drawer and tell her I’ll be right back. At the doorway, I look to my right, my left. The hallway’s empty. I fill the cup from the drinking fountain and bring it back to her. She’s taken her coat off now and has sat down after all. “Thanks,” she says when I hand her the water.

  She drinks it too fast and water dribbles down her front. The sweater she’s wearing fits tightly across her breasts. She brushes the water off her skirt and takes another sip. Her fingernails are painted deep red. Her oversize hoop earrings rock back and forth. Were her breasts always this size? It seems as if half the young women on campus these days have gotten implants. Earlier that day, when one of my patients told me she felt her new breasts were helping her with her self-esteem issues, I was at a loss about how to respond. I could almost hear a whole generation of feminists sighing in defeat.

  When I ask Jasmine if she’s considered taking out a restraining order against him, she shakes her head. She just keeps hoping he’ll get involved with someone else and leave her alone. But when she saw his car out there—or what might have been his car, she’s not even sure now—she panicked.

  “Maybe you should call campus police,” I tell her. “And if I were you, I’d definitely have your locks changed.” When she asks how she would go about doing that, I suggest she look online and call a locksmith.

  “Oh, right,” she says. “Duh.” She’ll do both of those things, she says, but right now all she wants is to go back to her apartment, dead-bolt the door and put the safety chain on, and try to get some sleep. She can leave her car here overnight and get it tomorrow. Could I please give her a ride home?

  I nod, pack up my briefcase. At the door, I look both ways before entering the hallway. “Let’s go,” I say. She follows me out. Walks down the hallway behind me.

  En route to her apartment, I try to distract her by asking how her semester is going. “Better,” she says. The evaluation I gave her the semester before upset her at first, she tells me, but she’s come to see it as useful criticism. She’s grateful. She’ll be applying soon for an internship. There are a couple of places in Boston that look good. Can I write her a recommendation?

  Her work was poor, but maybe it’s improved. I’ll ask some of my colleagues, see if that’s the case. “I might be able to do that for you,” I say. “But let’s just get you home safely. Take one thing at a time.”

  When I pull up in front of her building, she asks me if I’d like to come in. I decline, but when she asks if I’d please come in for a few minutes—she’s still feeling shaky and doesn’t want to enter her apartment alone—I say okay. When we’re inside, she tells me to have a seat. I watch her go from room to room, checking, I guess, to make sure the ex-boyfriend isn’t hiding anywhere. She returns from the kitchen holding a bottle of white wine in one hand and, in the other, a fifth of Captain Jack. “I have this and this,” she says. “Which would you like?

  Neither, I say. I really have to be getting home.

  “Please, Dr. Oh.”

  I nod. Point to the whiskey. “Just a short one.”

  There’s Coke in the fridge, she says. Do I want a Jack and Coke?

  Good god, no. All I want is to get home, get something to eat. I squeezed in a patient at lunchtime, so all I’ve eaten since breakfast is a pack of peanuts from the vending machine. “Just some ice if you’ve got it.” She nods and, a few minutes later, returns with a Jack and Coke for herself and, for me, a tumbler three-quarters filled with whiskey, two little ice cubes floating at the top. Jesus, if I drank all this, it would knock me on my ass.

  She sits beside me on her green leather love seat. We sip our drinks. She tells me about her father’s defection and her miserable four years of high school, her dating history with the menacing ex-fiancé. Seth is ten years older than she, she says. He makes good money and has sophisticated tastes, and that was what appealed to her. She enjoyed going out with an adult for a change. In the two years they dated, he never hit her. His abuse was mostly just verbal.

  “That’s still abuse,” I say.

  She nods. Gets up and puts her iPod in the dock. Turns up the music.

  “Cassandra Wilson?” I ask.

  “Uh-huh. Do you like jazz?” I say I do. She says she does, too—that Seth took her to a number of jazz clubs when they were first going out and got her into it. We sit there in silence, listening to Wilson’s rendition of Chet Baker’s “Let’s Get Lost.” Jasmine thanks me for my help, says she feels better. “She’s got such a sexy voice, doesn’t she?” she says.

  “She does,” I say, but her comment is a red flag. The liquor and the music have shifted the mood, and I’ve just caught myself thinking about how beautiful she is. It’s time for me to go. She stands and says she’s going to fix herself another drink. Do I need mine refreshed? “No, no,” I say. “I really should be going.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Just wait a sec.”

  While she’s in the kitchen, I look down at my glass, surprised to see that I’ve drunk half of what she poured, something I hadn’t meant to do. I stand. Feel a little woozy. At the entrance to her kitchen, I open my mouth to say good-bye but instead ask her, does she mind if I get myself a little more ice?

  I’m reaching into the freezer when I feel her come up behind me. She slips one hand inside the back pocket of my jeans and begins massaging my neck with the other. Pulling free, I turn and face her. Her top is off. Her breasts are beautiful, her nipples rosy pink and erect. There’s a tattoo over the left one—a tiny blue dragonfly. “No, no, Jasmine,” I say, looking away. “You’re feeling confused right now. It’s understandable, but—”

  She says I should call her Jazzy. That’s what her friends call her, and we’re friends, aren’t we?

  I shake my head. “I’m your superior,” I say. “Look, you got really scared tonight. I can imagine how vulnerable you’re feeling, but we can’t . . . or I can’t—”

  “Can’t what?” she says, smiling. I can tell she’s tipsy.

  “Take advantage of your situation.”

  “I’m a consenting adult, Orion,” she says. “If you want, you can check my driver’s license.” She takes my hand and places it on her breast. Leans in and places her mouth against mine. She pushes my lips apart with her tongue and flicks it against my tongue.

  I put my hand on her shoulder to push her away, but she smells so good. She’s such a beautiful girl. I start returning her kisses, telling myself as I’m doing it that I have to stop. Have to get out of here right now since I haven’t gotten out already. She reaches down and cups her hand against my crotch, starts rubbing me there. And I let her. There’s my crucial mistake: I let her. For the past several minutes, I’ve been flirting with the edge of the cliff and no
w I’m falling off of it.

  “You’re getting hard,” she whispers. She unzips her skirt and shimmies. It drops to her ankles. She guides my hand to her pubis. She’s wet.

  My heart is pounding. My breathing is fast and shallow. And then my zipper’s down. She slips her hand through the slit in my shorts and wraps it around my cock. Starts running her finger around the ridge at the base of the head. God, it’s been so long. It feels so good. But I have to stop her or . . . “Hey, Jasmine? Jazzy? I . . .”

  “Shh,” she whispers. “Just enjoy it.”

  She laughs when I come. Withdraws her hand and looks at her semen-covered fingers. I tell her I’m sorry, ashamed of myself. Babble about how I’ve been separated from my wife for some time and am out of practice. That I hadn’t realized I was going to—

  “It’s okay, Orion. I’m a big girl. It’s fine.”

  Fixing my pants, I make my way toward the door, mumbling assurances that nothing like what just happened has ever happened between me and a student before. She says it’s not necessary for me to apologize. I nod. Glance down at her hand and get the hell out of there.

  On the drive home, I grip the steering wheel to stop my hands from shaking. I try to unsee her breasts, the dragonfly tattoo. My mind’s ricocheting with shame, guilt, anger at myself. But she seduced me, right? I’m a big girl. It’s fine. But how many times have I counseled students who had slept with their professors and then come into my office shaken and confused? How many times have I tried to point out to these kids, guys as well as girls, that they’d been taken unfair advantage of ? Sometimes I’ll see one of the offending profs on campus and think, what a shit you are, what an abuse of power. And now I’ve joined their ranks.

  The next day, she e-mails me to thank me again for my help and to remind me that I promised to write her a recommendation, which I didn’t exactly do. The following Monday, there’s a Post-it note stuck to my office door. Reccomendation letter for Jasmine, it says and I stand there, stupidly, thinking: it’s one c, two m’s. How’s she supposed to go on, become a therapist, when she doesn’t even know that?

  For the next few weeks, nothing happens. I’m relieved not to run into Jasmine in the building or anywhere else on campus. I tell myself that it’s blown over; that it’s amounted to an embarrassing cautionary tale, that’s all. I’ll just never put myself in a situation like that again. But each time I try to write her that letter, I revisit my humiliation. I’ve started it half a dozen times. Look, stop torturing yourself, I tell the tortured face in the bathroom mirror. Just finish her goddamned letter and be done with it. So she gets an internship someplace? Let her inadequacies catch up to her there. And if she squeaks by, so what? The profession’s already got plenty of incompetent shrinks. What’s one more? But instead, I look up her schedule to see which of my colleagues are supervising her now. When I seek them out, they’re universally negative about Jasmine’s work. Did I actually promise her I’d write her a recommendation, or had I only said I’d consider doing it?

  She e-mails me to ask if I have her letter yet. I e-mail back to say I haven’t. In her return e-mail, she asks me if I can get it done in the next few days because her applications are coming due. She’ll stop by my office to pick it up. And when she does come by, I tell her I’ve talked to some of her other profs and have had to reconsider. “I think it would be a mistake for you to apply,” I say. “At least for now.” She frowns. Asks why. “Because these internships tend to throw you into the deep end of the pool. I just don’t think your work is strong enough yet. If I were you, I’d reconsider.” She glares at me for several seconds, then turns and leaves.

  The next day, Muriel summons me to her office to tell me we have a problem. “We?” I say. . . .

  When I wake up in the dark, I don’t know where I am. I rise too quickly, stumbling and bumping into unfamiliar furniture. My movements make the lights go on. I squint and sit back down, waiting for the seasickness to pass. For several seconds, I’m confused and scared.

  After I’ve oriented myself—realized I’m at Viveca’s beach house—I recall the dream I just had: Annie and I are sitting on the couch in our Three Rivers living room, holding hands in the middle of some crisis. Maya Angelou is sitting across from us, consoling us. “Our thoughts and prayers are with you at this difficult time,” she says. Is one of our kids hurt? Has one of them died?

  Annie, sobbing, turns to me. “Is it because of me?” she asks.

  “No,” I say. “It’s something I did.” I turn back to Maya Angelou. “Right?” But she’s become Obama.

  “We’re doing all we can,” he says.

  At daybreak, I rise and go outside. I’m still wearing what I wore yesterday during my long drive here, what I slept in on that sofa. I need coffee, need a shave and some mouthwash, but there’s another need I have to see to first. On my way to the car, I’m stopped by the sound of the ocean in the distance—the same sound I heard when I placed Ariane’s nautilus shell against my ear and knew this was the place where I had to be. A gull calls. A small brown rabbit scurries from the clearing into the woods. Something rustles behind the bushes, sight unseen. I can smell the ocean as well as hear it.

  I pull that second duffel bag from the backseat of my car. Open the trunk and grab the box of rocks that’s in there. Yesterday before I left, I walked around the property, picking up nine or ten of them for my private ceremony. I place the rocks, one by one, into the duffel bag. It already contains my license to practice psychology, the university awards I’ve received, my farewell pen and pencil set, and the mushy, now-melted top of Annie’s and my twenty-fifth anniversary cake. There are photographs in there, too: Annie and me on that cruise we took to the Virgin Islands; the two of us seated with Muriel Clapp and her husband at some social function. . . .

  Well, some of what you’re saying jibes with what Jasmine contends, Orion, but there are crucial differences in your stories, too.

  I’m not telling you a story, Muriel. I’m telling you the truth. What did she say?

  That she went to your office that night because she was afraid for her safety and she thought she could trust you. That you drove her home and, when you got there, you asked her if she had anything to drink. That you more or less invited yourself in.

  That’s a lie. She asked me to come in and have that drink.

  But you were inside her apartment?

  I was. Because she said she was afraid to go in there alone. Her boyfriend wouldn’t give her back her key and . . . I said no at first, Muriel, but then . . .

  Did you seduce her?

  No, what happened was—

  How many drinks did you have while you were there, Orion?

  One. And granted, she’d poured it with a heavy hand, but . . . one drink. That was it. Look, the bottom line is that she’s lying about who seduced who. I swear to god. What happened was—

  Did you ejaculate in her presence? Just tell me that.

  When I get to Long Nook Beach, I park, get out of the car, grab the duffel bag. I walk the path to the top and look out at the rolling ocean, the surf crashing at the water’s edge below. It’s somewhere between high and low tide. Something down there is lying half in and half out of the water. The surf washes over it and then retreats. I climb down the steep dune path and walk toward it.

  It’s a dead seal. Its organs have been eaten away. The frozen grimace on its face is the same as Jesus’s as he looks up toward a heaven, a Father, that doesn’t really exist. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? . . . That letter? The one I wrote Francis Oh, the father who’d wanted nothing to do with me? Who had died instead of facing me? That’s in the duffel bag, too. Unopened, with the word deceased scrawled across the front of the envelope. I should have gotten rid of that thing long ago.

  Standing beside this dead, devoured seal, I rear back and hurl the bag, as far as I can, into the gray-green water. I watch it sink. Then I jimmy my wedding ring back and forth until it slips over the knuckle and off my finger. I fling
it into the sea. Am I crying? Laughing? Both?

  Who am I, now that I’ve thrown my life into the ocean? Who will I be?

  Chapter Nine

  Annie Oh

  Hurrying toward my studio with the wine-stained bridal dresses, I pass the grocery store where that hostile Korean boy works. I stop, turn around, and rush in. He’s there, behind the counter. “Hey!” I say. “Spray starch!”

  “Aisle four,” he says without looking up from his magazine. I throw the dresses onto his counter and race to aisle four. Grab the three cans on the shelf and hurry back to him.

  “Do you have more in back?” He shrugs. “Then go look. It’s urgent.” He doesn’t budge; he just sits on his stool and stares at me. “Goddamnit! Move!” He flips over his magazine and heads toward the back room. Lucky for him, he’s hurrying. Leaning on the counter, my elbows on the dresses, I call to him. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got!”

  The spray starch, twenty-four cans to the box, plus the three I’ve already grabbed off the shelf, comes to sixty-nine dollars. I dash over to the ATM machine in aisle one, do what the screen says, and grab the hundred dollars that come shooting out. I’m feeling frenzied. I need to get to the studio and start. I put four twenties on the counter and tell him to keep the change. Then I give him the remaining twenty, too. “Here,” I say. “Buy yourself something pretty.”

  Carrying the dresses and the starch, I run toward the studio without even bothering to look at what people have left out on the sidewalk. In my head, I’m inventorying the storehouse of accumulated stuff that’s waiting for me to use: mannequins and tailor’s dummies, rubber hands and rubber hearts, a bolt of pink net, a bust of Medusa. A couple of blocks before I get to my destination, I catch myself mumbling an old prayer I learned in parochial school.

  Hail holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,

  Our life, our sweetness, and our hope.