I Know This Much Is True

by Wally Lamb

  We glared at each other for a couple of seconds. “I’m not saying I have a problem with it,” I said. “All I’m saying is that it’s a waste of time admitting him. Because as soon as you talk to his doctor, he’s going to tell you this is a mistake.”

  “This way, sir,” he said.

  The security station was around the next corner. Behind the tinted window glass were two more guards, a bank of black-and-white security TVs, an open cabinet with rows of keys and cuffs and Texas belts. Next to the station on one side was a conference room and a couple of offices. On the other side was a john, a utility closet, more offices. The hallway on both sides was blocked off by double-locked steel doors.

  “You got a phone in there?” I asked, nodding toward the security station. “Just tell one of those guys to call Dr. Willis Ehlers and see if Thomas Birdsey is supposed to be here. Call him at home. You guys must have a directory for the doctors, right? Go ahead. He won’t mind.”

  “Dr. Ehlers doesn’t treat patients at Hatch,” Fatso said. “He’s not on staff here.”

  “Fine! That’s my point!” I said. “His patients are over at Settle. Which is exactly where my brother belongs.”

  Robocop leafed through some paperwork clipped to a clipboard. “According to this, he’s been reassigned,” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘reassigned’? Reassigned by who?”

  “I’m not free to give you that information, sir,” he said. “Either his new doctor will notify you or you can make an appointment and talk to the social worker assigned to his case.”

  “Excuse me,” Thomas said, addressing Robocop. “Do you happen to know a Dr. Ahamed, the assistant superintendent of this entire hospital complex?”

  “Thomas,” I said, “just keep your shirt on. Let me handle this. All right?”

  “Dr. Ahamed?” Robocop said. “Yeah, I know who he is. Why?”

  Thomas’s chin was thrust forward. His whole body was shaking. “Because you’re going to be in big trouble tomorrow morning if Dr. Ahamed goes to his office and doesn’t find his Wall Street Journal and his corn muffin!” He was shouting now, shuddering. “I wouldn’t want to be you when he finds out who’s holding me here against my will!”

  Fatso waved “come here” fingers at one of the guards behind the glass.

  “Take it easy, take it easy,” I told Thomas. I reminded him that he’d lost track of time—that he’d been away from the coffee cart for five days already while he was recuperating at Shanley. “And anyway, I’m sure those two helpers of yours are holding down the fort,” I said. “What are their names again? I forget.”

  “Bruce and Barbara!” he shouted. “You think they can handle things without me there! That’s a laugh!” Only he wasn’t laughing; he was sobbing.

  “Everything copacetic out here?” the third guard asked, approaching us.

  “Jesus! Jesus!” my brother cried. Fear flashed on his face, and then there was a splattering sound on the concrete floor. Thomas was pissing himself.

  Fatso went to call maintenance.

  “I’m sorry, Dominick,” Thomas said. “I couldn’t help it.” A dark, wet stain covered the front of his pants.

  I told him it was okay. That it happens. That it was no big deal. Then I turned to Robocop. “Here’s the bottom line,” I said. “I’m not leaving until I get him out of here and he’s getting out tonight, understand? So someone had better call the goddamned doctor.”

  Behind the window, Fatso spoke into a phone. “Call my brother’s doctor!” I shouted in at him. “Dr. Willis Ehlers! Please!”

  Robocop told me to keep my voice down. “The doctors are only called in after hours when there’s an emergency,” he told me.

  “This is an emergency,” I said, waving my thumb in the direction of my brother. “This is an emergency in the making. The poor guy isn’t even allowed to take a leak and you think I’m leaving him here with you fucking Nazis?”

  I saw the muscles in his jaw tighten. Saw him look at the other guard. “Sir,” the new guard said, “the patients’ relatives don’t determine what constitutes an emergency. The medical staff does.”

  I told myself to calm down—that busting Robocop’s jaw was a luxury my brother couldn’t afford. I’d probably already sabotaged things with that Nazi comment. “All right,” I said. “Let me just speak to a nurse then. There’s got to be a head nurse on duty, right?”

  “The nurses at Hatch have no contact with family members, sir,” the other guard said. “It’s policy. If you have questions or concerns, you should call tomorrow and make an appointment with the social worker assigned to your brother’s case.”

  “They just called from the unit,” Fatso said. “We ready to rock ‘n’ roll?”

  Robocop nodded. “Tell them to come and get him. We can finish admittance down in the ward. I’ve about had it with the Doublemint Twin here.”

  Fatso talked into his radio. Thomas started mumbling scripture.

  “Mr. Birdsey, he’s going to be admitted to the unit now,” Mercado said. “Come on. We have to go.”

  “But nobody’s listening!” I said. “This whole thing is just some administrative screwup or something. He belongs at Settle.”

  “Look, bud,” the older escort said. “He may belong at Settle, but he sure in hell isn’t going there tonight. Maybe that’s where he’s going first thing tomorrow, but I can guarantee you that tonight he’s staying here.”

  “Come on, Mr. Birdsey,” Mercado said to me. “You can’t do anything until tomorrow. We’ll give you a ride back to Shanley. You parked in the big lot or the one in back?”

  “I’m not going anywhere until we get this thing straightened out!” I said. When he grabbed me by the arm, I yanked it back.

  “They’re nailing me to the cross!” Thomas shouted.

  I ran over to Robocop. “How about that social worker? Is that social worker here?” My heart was pumping like a jackhammer.

  “No, sir, she is not here. Only the unit nurses and the FTSs are here after regular hours.”

  “What are they? What are the FTSs?”

  “Forensic Treatment Specialists,” Fatso answered. He winked at the older of the two escorts. “When I started working here, we called ’em ‘bughouse aides.’ Nowadays everybody’s got a fancy title. Looky here, for instance.”

  He pointed to a guy approaching with a bucket and mop. I knew him: Ralph Drinkwater. “Ralphie here used to be a janitor. Now we call him an ‘operations engineer.’ Right, Ralphie?” Ignoring him, as impassive as ever, Ralph began to mop up my brother’s urine.

  The escort’s chuckle put Fatso in a good mood. “She is here tonight, though, Steve,” he told Robocop. “She came in to catch up on some of her paperwork. I checked her in when you were on dinner break.”

  “Who?” I said. “Who’s here?”

  “Ms. Sheffer.”

  “Who’s that? Who’s Ms. Sheffer?”

  “The social worker for Unit Two.”

  “The social worker’s here? Let me speak to her then!”

  “You can’t,” Robocop said. “It’s after hours. You’ll have to make an appointment like everyone else.”

  The steel doors opened. Two aides approached. This was getting more and more surreal. “Hey, how you doing, Ralph?” I said. “Listen, talk some sense into . . .” He looked right through me.

  “Come on, Mr. Birdsey,” Mercado said. “We’ve got to get going.”

  “Then go then!” I told him. “I’m not going anywhere until I see the social worker!” I turned toward the aides. “Don’t touch him! You just . . . just don’t even touch him!”

  An office door opened; a head poked out from behind it. “Does somebody need to see me?”

  “Not tonight!” Robocop shouted. “He can make an appointment. It can wait.”

  “Is that the social worker? Are you the social worker who—”

  “Tomorrow!” Robocop shouted at her. “Close your door! We got a situation here!”

  �
�Dominick!” Thomas screamed. The aides had taken hold of him, one guy on each side.

  “Get your hands off of him!” I shouted. Robocop and Mercado and his partner held me back. Fatso and the other guard came running. “Get your fucking hands off of me, you fucking Nazi goons!” I bucked and struggled to get free.

  “Close that door!” Robocop yelled.

  In the middle of the scuffle, I saw the social worker’s door close. Saw the aides unlock the steel doors and hustle my brother into the ward. “They’re nailing me to the cross, Dominick!” Thomas screamed. “They’re nailing me to the cross!”

  The doors slammed shut behind them.

  Robocop wrenched my arm back, slammed me up against the wall. “This one’s crazier than the other one, for Christ’s sake,” he said.

  “Take your motherfucking hands off me!” I screamed, spitting and straining and trying to pull away. Mercado and Fatso and the other escort held me back. The third guard came running out from behind the glass office. Robocop leaned his knee in toward my groin—no pain, just the promise of it. Just the pressure.

  “You get off on this or something?” I said. “Feeling guys up while you’re frisking them? Give you a cheap thrill, does it?”

  He kneed me.

  One hard, quick jerk that dropped me to the floor. I think I blacked out for a minute, and when I came back, it took me a while to realize that the moaning and heaving I heard was coming from me, not my brother. The pain is something I can’t even try to describe.

  That’s when I knew what Thomas was up against. That’s when I felt it for myself: the spike against flesh, the hammer’s piercing thud.

  5

  1958

  Thomas and I are going to the movies with Ma—the Back-to-School Festival of Fun. We’re on the city bus. I get to pull the stop cord when we get to the five-and-ten because Thomas did it last time. The bus won’t stop at the show, only the five-and-ten.

  We have the nice bus driver today—the one who says, “Hey, whaddaya got in there?” and pulls candy out of your ears. Last time we came downtown, we got the grouchy driver with no thumb. Ma thinks maybe he lost it in the war or in a machine. She told me not to look at it if I was afraid of it, but I did look. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to but I did.

  Here’s the five-and-ten. Ma lifts me up and I pull the cord. “See you later, alligator!” the bus driver says when we get off. Ma smiles and puts her hand to her mouth, and Thomas says nothing. From the safety of the sidewalk, I yell, “After a while, crocodile!” The driver laughs. He makes his fingers into a “V” and slaps the bus doors shut.

  We walk over to the show. There’s a line at the ticket booth. The kids right in front of us are big kids. Wiseguys. “Well, next time, bring your birth certificate then!” the ticket lady yells. It’s the crippled lady. Sometimes she works inside at the candy counter and sometimes she sells the tickets. Her and this other lady switch around. Ma says the crippled lady got polio before they had polio shots. Maybe that’s why she’s always crabby.

  Inside, a bulgy-eyed man rips our tickets and gives Thomas and me our free back-to-school pencil boxes. With his pen, he makes an X on the back of our hands. “One to a customer,” he tells Ma. “I mark them so I can tell if some kid tries to pull a fast one.”

  I want to go all the way down in front, but Ma says no, it will hurt our eyes. She makes us stop halfway. Here’s how we’re sitting: first Thomas, then Ma, then me on the end. “Now, don’t open your pencil boxes,” Ma says.

  The man in charge is called the husher. He has a uniform and a flashlight, and he’s very, very tall. His job is to yell at kids when they put their feet on the seats in front of them. If they answer him back, he shines his flashlight right in their face.

  They show cartoons first: Daffy Duck, Sylvester and Tweety, Road Runner. Beep-beep! Beep-beep! On the radio, they said they were showing ten cartoons, but they don’t. They show eight. I’m only on my eighth finger when the Three Stooges come on.

  Ma doesn’t like the Three Stooges. When Moe pokes his fingers in Larry’s eyes, Ma leans over and whispers, “Don’t you ever try anything like that now.” Her voice in my ear tickles—makes me scrunch up my shoulder. In this one, the Three Stooges are bakers. They just finished decorating this fancy cake for a snotty rich lady, and she’s yelling at them. Then Larry slips and falls back against Curly and Curly bumps into the rich lady and she falls right into the cake! All three of us laugh—Thomas and Ma and me. From this side, you can’t even tell my mother has a funny lip. You can only tell from Thomas’s side.

  There are lots of bad kids here with no mothers or fathers. They’re talking loud and fooling around instead of watching the movie. “I tawt I taw a puddy cat!” one kid keeps yelling out, even though the cartoons are over. Every time he yells it, other kids laugh. Some boys in front have flattened their popcorn boxes and they’re throwing them up in the air. The boxes make shadows on the screen.

  “Can we get some popcorn?” I whisper to Ma.

  “No,” she whispers back.

  “Why not?”

  “Just watch the movie.”

  Thomas taps Ma’s arm and I lean over to listen. “Ma, I’m thinking about her again,” he says. “What should I do?”

  “Think about something else,” she says. “Watch the movie.”

  Thomas means Miss Higgins. In just one more week, we’ll be third-graders and Miss Higgins will be our new teacher. She’s the meanest teacher in our whole school. All summer long, Thomas has been getting stomachaches thinking about her.

  Thomas opens his pencil box even though we’re not supposed to. He starts chewing on one of his brand-new pencils like it’s corn on the cob. The last time Ray caught Thomas putting stuff in his mouth, he said, “One of these days I’m going to get a roll of EB green tape and tape up your hands. See if that cures you! See how you like them apples!”

  I open my pencil box, too. If Thomas can, then so can I. I bend and bend my eraser to see how far I can bend it, and it boings out of my hand and into the dark.

  “See!” Ma says. “What did I tell you?”

  She says I can’t look for it under the seats because it’s too filthy down there and because it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. One time when Ma was a little girl, she went to the show and saw a rat under her seat. It was at a different movie theater than this one. They tore it down. People used to call it the “scratch house” because the seats had fleas.

  Down in front, someone yells a naughty word. Another kid screams. Ping! Something hits the back of my seat.

  “Hey! Cut it out down there!” a voice yells. I look back. It’s not the husher. It’s Bulgy Eyes, the man who gave us our pencil boxes. Ma says those bad kids better behave because he sounds like he really means business. She says Bulgy Eyes is the boss even though the husher is bigger. Now Thomas has his eraser in his mouth. He’s sucking on it. Slurp, slurp, slurp. “What are you doing that for?” I say. He says he’s cleaning it. Which is stupid. It’s already clean. It’s brand new.

  The Three Stooges are over and Francis the Talking Mule comes on. Francis Goes to West Point. Ma says West Point’s a school. . . . You know what? Last year, at our school, a dog snuck in. He came running into our classroom during spelling and knocked over the easel. All the kids were laughing and saying, “Here, boy! Here, boy!” and Miss Henault made us flip our spelling papers over and put our heads on our desks to calm down. That dog came right up our row. He was tan and white and had a smiley face, and he smelled a little like a sewer. He had a collar on, though, so he must have belonged to somebody. When Mr. Grymkowski pulled him out of our room, he was choking him and that dog made a noise like gak-gak-gak.

  Ping! Ping! Ma says don’t turn around or we might get hit in the eye. She says someone should complain to the manager before someone gets hurt. Ping! We’re cowboys. Bad guys are shooting at us.

  My new favorite cowboy show is The Rifleman. I used to like Cheyenne the best, but now I like Th
e Rifleman. Lucas McCain can fire his rifle in three-tenths of a second. Plus he’s nice to his son, Mark McCain. Lucas has to raise Mark all on his own because his wife died. Ray says Lucas McCain used to play baseball before he became a cowboy. For the Chicago Cubs. “He couldn’t hit the ball, and now he can’t act, either, and he’s probably a goddamned millionaire,” Ray said. If you say “damn,” it’s a venial sin, but if you say “goddamn,” then it’s a mortal sin. That’s what the nun told us in catechism. She said every time you sin, it makes a little dirty mark on your soul, and people like Khrushchev and Jayne Mansfield have jet-black souls.

  I’m not really paying attention to this movie. I’m watching those bad kids instead—the ones up in front. Popcorn boxes swoop in the dark like bats. Someone yells another bad word. The “P” word. Piss. . . . Sometimes bats come out on our street when it’s getting dark. They look like birds but they’re not. They trick you. Ping!

  “Piss on you, too!” some kid shouts.

  A girl laughs a shrieky laugh.

  “I tawt I taw a puddy cat!”

  The lights come on even though the movie’s still playing. “Hey!” everyone starts going. “Hey!” Then the movie stops.

  Bulgy Eyes and the husher walk down the aisle and up on the stage, and Bulgy Eyes starts yelling at us. Ma’s scared. Her hand taps against her mouth like it does when Ray yells. With the lights on, I can see the bad kids better. I see Lonnie Peck and Ralph Drinkwater from our school. Last summer, Lonnie spit on the playground instructor and got kicked off playground for a whole week. He used to come anyway and stand outside and spit at us through the fence. We were supposed to just ignore him. Penny Ann Drinkwater’s up in front, too, sitting by herself. Her and Ralph are twins, like Thomas and me, but Penny Ann stayed back. Ralph’s going to be in fourth, but she’s going to be in our class. She has to have Miss Higgins twice. Penny Ann’s a big baby. She cries every single recess. The Drinkwaters and us are the only twins in our whole school. They’re colored kids.