I Know This Much Is True

by Wally Lamb

  He was asleep before I finished the first page. He slept through the night and at 8:45 the next morning was still sleeping. I walked across campus and handed his teacher the late paper. Assuming I was Thomas, she gave me a dirty look and said she hoped I had learned a lesson about personal management. Maybe in the future, I wouldn’t be so quick to inconvenience people.

  I wouldn’t, I said. I definitely wouldn’t.

  When I got back to our dorm, I stood, bewildered, before our broken typewriter case—passed my finger over its sharp, smashed edge. Turned and stood there, studying my brother as he slept, mouth agape, his eyes shifting behind the lids.

  At the end of second semester, the university put my brother on academic probation.

  9

  “Come in, come in,” she said, standing up from her computer. “I’m Lisa Sheffer.”

  Flat-top haircut, Star Trek sweatshirt, little earrings all the way up one ear: whatever I’d expected, she wasn’t it. Five-one, five-two at the most. She probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet.

  “Dominick Birdsey,” I said. She had a handshake like a vise grip.

  I thanked her for her message the night before and started rambling about my brother, telling her his history, about how his being there was a big mistake. Sheffer put her hand up, traffic cop style. “Could you just hold on a minute?” she said. “I need to enter some information about another patient before I forget. Have a seat. This should take like two seconds.”

  It was fair, I guess. We’d made a 10:00 appointment; the wall clock above her head said 9:51. My eyes bounced from that flat-top to the mounds of paperwork on her desk to a carved wooden bird with its head cocked to the side. Overhead, a fluorescent light buzzed like a mosquito.

  “You get used to one program and the next thing you know the computer nerds up in Hartford change it on you,” she said. “They have these workshops whenever they update the software, like they’re doing you a favor. I go to the office manager, ‘Excuse me? I’ve got a kid in after-school day care and an Escort that’s already living on borrowed time. Why can’t I just use the stuff I’m used to?’ But no-ooo.”

  The phone rang. “Uh-huh,” she kept telling the person on the other end. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” I got up and walked to the window—wired glass, two-foot square. Why would anyone want to work at this place?

  Outside was a recreation area—a pitiful excuse for one, anyway. Couple of picnic tables chained to a cement floor, a rusty basketball hoop. A small group of patients was being herded out there, each guy squinting as he hit the sun. No sign of Thomas.

  “So your real name’s Domenico, right?” Sheffer said. She was off the phone, back at her computer.

  “Only on paper,” I said. “How’d you know that?”

  She said she’d seen it somewhere in my brother’s records.

  I nodded—told her I’d been named after my grandfather. Had she seen our birth certificates or something? Thomas and me listed under Ma’s maiden name?

  “And your brother says you’re a housepainter, right?”

  “Yup.” Jesus, was this appointment about Thomas or me?

  “You give free estimates?”

  “Uh . . . yeah. I do. So how about my brother?”

  She clicked away a little more on her keyboard. Looked up. “Domenico was my grandfather’s name, too,” she said. “That’s why it popped out at me. Domenico Parlapiano. How’s that for a mouthful?”

  I sat back down again, drumming my fingers against the sides of my chair. Impatience wasn’t going to get me what I needed, I reminded myself. What Thomas needed. That stupid wooden bird of hers looked like it was staring right at me.

  “So is Sheffer your married name?” I said.

  She looked up at me. Shook her head. “My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Italian. Ever had spaghetti and matzo balls?” I just looked at her, no reaction. “I’m kidding, Domenico,” she said. “It was a joke. Hey, you want a candy bar?”

  “Candy?”

  “Dollar a bar. Fund-raiser for my daughter’s Midget Football cheering squad.” She stuck out her tongue, made a face. “I’ve got almond, peanut butter, and crunch.”

  I hadn’t yet ruled out the possibility that she might have some say in Thomas’s situation. “Yeah, all right. Sure. Almond, I guess.” I stood up and fished out a buck.

  I was still wearing those drawstring pants—those skull-and-crossbone things. I caught Sheffer smiling at them. “Cool pants,” she said, and I looked away, embarrassed.

  She reached into a desk drawer and handed me the candy bar. No wedding ring. Early thirties, I figured. “I’ll be right with you, Domenico,” she said. “Let me just shut my mouth and figure out one last thing and we’ll be ready to roll.”

  “Dominick,” I mumbled. “My name’s Dominick.”

  There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she said. A janitor entered, emptied a wastebasket.

  “Hey, Smitty,” Sheffer said. “Do me a favor, will you? Throw this computer in the Dumpster for me. Simplify my life by about a thousand percent.”

  “You got it, Lisa!” he said. He looked over at me, smiling a little too eagerly. “Hello, there, sir,” he said.

  I nodded. Looked away.

  “Hey, Lisa? You got any more of those candy bars?”

  “You haven’t paid me for the other ones yet, Smitty,” Sheffer said. “You already owe me four dollars.”

  “Oh, okay. How much are they?”

  “Dollar apiece. Same as the other days.”

  “Oh.” He looked long-faced. Stood there, waiting. Sheffer let out a sigh.

  “Okay, okay, here,” she said, tossing him one. He was already eating his candy before he was out the door.

  “It’s a losing proposition trying to raise money at this place,” Sheffer said, smiling. “These fund-raisers are going to bankrupt me.”

  I asked her how old her kid was.

  “Jesse? She’s seven. How about you? Any kids?”

  Any kids? That casual question was always a sock in the gut. “No,” I said. “No kids.” The denial was easier than the truth: that we’d had a little girl, Dessa and me. Had had her and then lost her. She would have been seven now, too.

  Outside the door, there was a commotion—someone with a high-pitched voice screaming about toilet paper. “I’m not saying that!” the voice said. “All I’m saying is, when I defecate, I like to pull my own toilet paper off the toilet paper roll instead of having someone standing there handing it to me. I don’t need a valet, thank you very much. And don’t tell me I wipe it on the walls because I don’t wipe it on the walls.”

  Sheffer rolled her eyes. Got up and opened the door. “Excuse me, Ozzie, but would you keep it down, please? I have someone in my office and we’re having a little—”

  “Up yours, Ms. Sheffer!”

  When I looked out there, the voice materialized as a middle-aged bald guy, gaunt and scabby, his hospital johnny hanging open in the back. An aide was with him—a white guy in dreadlocks. “I told him to keep his voice down, Lisa,” he said.

  “It’s all right, Andy. Hey, Andy, you want to do me a favor? If you see Dr. Patel on the floor, would you tell her Thomas Birdsey’s brother is here? Maybe she can stop down and meet him if she has a second.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “Come on, Ozzie. Let’s go.”

  “Don’t touch me!” Ozzie protested. “What do you think this is—the petting zoo?”

  Sheffer shook her head and closed the door again. “Sorry. Things can get a little surreal around here,” she said.

  I got up and went back to that little window. Hard to believe: that Angela would be seven by now. This goofball social worker disarmed me a little with her candy bars, her spaghetti and matzo balls. Knocked me off center. The jury was still out on this one.

  Outside in the courtyard, the inmates were lining up in front of a guy in a cowboy hat. One by one, he was lighting their smokes. This was recreation? Everyone just sitting on the picnic ta
bles, wearing their army camouflage and smoking? The only exercise I saw was one skinny black guy, dribbling a basketball without taking any shots. Thunk, thunk, thunk: he looked completely stoned. Probably zoned out on Thorazine, I figured. And he was the active one.

  “Hey, tell me something,” I said. “How come half those guys out there are wearing camouflage? Is that the hot fashion around this place?”

  She stood up from her chair and looked out, cracked a smile. “Unit Four,” she said. “About half the population on that ward are Vietnam casualties.”

  “That guy from Mystic’s down here, right? The one who mistook his family for the Viet Cong?”

  “I can’t really discuss other cases,” she said. “But not all of these vets have criminal records; a lot of them are just here because the VA hospitals are overcrowded and because so many other programs have gone down the tubes. Got to put them somewhere, right? Vietnam: the war that keeps on giving.”

  “And now we’re gearing up for another one,” I said.

  She shook her head, disgusted. “They make it sound so noble, don’t they? ‘Operation Desert Shield.’ It’s like the whole country’s decided to have selective amnesia. Yea, rah-rah, America! Here we go again.”

  Now her clock said 10:07. We were supposed to be seven minutes into my appointment and she was still hunting-and-pecking on her keyboard and treating me to her political opinions. “That’s what my brother was trying to do in the library,” I said. “Stop the war before it gets started.” She looked over at me. Nodded.

  Out in the courtyard, the guy in the cowboy hat was entertaining the troops. You could tell without a scorecard which patients were his pets and which ones weren’t. “Who’s the cowboy out there?” I said.

  “Hmm?” She looked out. “Oh, that’s Duane. He’s one of the FTSs.”

  “One of the whats? Jesus, I couldn’t keep all these initials straight.”

  “Forensic Treatment Specialists. One of the psych aides. He’s quite a character.”

  “So what do you got, pyromaniacs at this place? Nobody can light their own cigarettes?”

  She didn’t answer. “Okay! Wait a minute. Here we go,” she said. She turned to me, beaming. “I was trying to transfer data by hitting the ‘shift’ key instead of ‘control.’ That’s what you had to do with the other program. Hit the ‘shift’ key. I hate computers, don’t you? I mean, who invented them, anyway? Who’s responsible? Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone; we know that. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Whoever invented the computer is probably afraid to show his face.”

  Outside, that basketball stopped thunking. The office was suddenly quiet. “So, anyway,” I said. “About my brother?”

  She nodded, shifted in her chair, opened his file. “Have a seat,” she said.

  She started talking hospital talk: Thomas had been admitted on a “fifteen-day paper.” When the observation period was up, his case would go before probate and then most likely to the PSRB.

  “Look,” I told her. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything—you’re the first human being I’ve run into at this place—but number one, don’t sit here talking initials at me, and number two, don’t give me any ‘fifteen-day paper’ because I’m getting him out of here today.”

  “Hey, how about if you don’t take that tone, okay?” she said. “Calm down.”

  “I’ll calm down once this runaround’s over with. All you need to do is get ahold of his doctor. Dr. Willis Ehlers. He’ll verify that my brother doesn’t belong here. That this is someone’s screwup and he belongs over at Settle.”

  She shook her head. “Ehlers isn’t his doctor anymore, Dominick. They’ve reassigned him.”

  “Who’s reassigned him?”

  She flipped through his papers. “Looks like it floated down from the gods. The state commissioner’s office in Hartford.”

  She slid some papers across the desk, tapped her finger at some honcho’s signature. “Why from Hartford?” I said. “What’s Hartford got to do with it?”

  “I can’t say for sure. Don’t quote me on this, but my guess is that your brother’s a political appointee.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  She looked up at the ceiling. Puffed out her cheeks. “Shut up, Sheffer,” she advised herself.

  “No,” I said. “Come on. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know for sure, okay?” she said. “I haven’t heard anything, through the grapevine or officially, so this is strictly theory, okay? But usually when Hartford gets involved in something like this, it’s about damage control. We’re fairly autonomous out here otherwise. My guess is that it’s Jimmy Lane fallout. I’m not 100 percent positive, but I’m pretty sure. But like I said, don’t quote me.”

  I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.

  “It’s not all bad news, though,” she said. “His new psychiatrist is Dr. Chase—it could be worse—and his psychologist is Dr. Patel, which is very cool. I have a lot of respect for—”

  “His doctor is Dr. Ehlers,” I said. “Ehlers has been treating my brother for the past four years—successfully, for the most part.”

  “Successfully?” she said. “He cut off his hand, Domenico.”

  “Because he stopped taking his medication, that’s why,” I snapped. I wasn’t taking any crap from this scrawny little—. “Okay, maybe Ehlers should have been on top of it. But I should have been, too. We all missed it. We were all asleep at the wheel.”

  “This is none of my business,” she said. “But I can see already that you take an awful lot of this on yourself. Compared to most patients’ siblings, I mean. What is that, a twin thing?”

  “Never mind about me,” I said. “All I’m saying is that Ehlers has been better than most of them—has been consistent, anyway. Thomas feels safe with him. Comfortable. So I don’t care what anyone in Hartford wants. Just have this Dr. Chase or this Dr. . . . ?”

  “Dr. Patel.”

  “Have this Dr. Patel guy call up Ehlers so that I can get him out of here.”

  “Dr. Patel’s a woman,” she said.

  I closed my eyes. “Okay, fine, whatever,” I said. “That’s irrelevant.”

  “I’m just telling you. She’s Indian. Indian Indian, not American Indian.”

  I slapped my hand down on her desk. “Hey, what is it with this place?” I said. “Why doesn’t anyone listen? It’s a mistake. I don’t give a rat’s ass if Dr. Patel is from Mars or if she’s a man or a woman or a friggin’ three-headed extraterrestrial, okay? My brother’s getting stuck down at this sinkhole is someone’s stupid bureaucratic mistake.”

  She cocked her head just like that wooden bird on her desk. “Mistake how, Domenico?” she said. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “Because he always goes to Settle after an episode. He’s practically a fixture over there. He has a part-time job there.”

  She sat there, mute. Waiting.

  “And because . . .”

  “Yeah? Because what?”

  “Because right about now he must be scared out of his mind, okay? Look, the guy has no defenses. Zip. Zero. And it’s not a ‘twin thing.’ It’s . . . I’ve just always had to run interference for Thomas, okay? Putting him in this place is like throwing a rabbit in with the wolves.”

  She took a deep breath—let it out slowly, audibly. “Coffee and newspapers, right?”

  “What?”

  “His job? He was telling me about it. We talked for over an hour last night.”

  “Listen to me,” I said.

  “Oh, I’m listening. It sounds like I’m listening to myself talk, actually. My old self.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, nothing. Personal observation, that’s all. It’s irrelevant.” I just sat there, trying to figure out what the fuck she was talking about. “I was in a nine-year relationship with a substance abuser, that’s all. So I know all about running interference. Being someone else’s main line of defense. I call it the Don Quixote
complex. Makes you feel noble to defend the defenseless. Plus, it’s a great avoidance tactic. You don’t have to deal with your own stuff, right? But, listen, I’m way over the line here. I just thought I recognized a fellow Quixote, that’s all. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks for the free psychoanalysis,” I said. “But this is about my brother, not me. Or you.”

  “Ouch,” she said. “Fair enough. Really—I’m sorry. Let me give it to you straight, paisano. They’ve placed your brother in a forensic hospital because he’s seriously mentally ill and because he’s committed a serious crime.”

  “What crime? What’d he do? Interrupt a couple of old ladies during their afternoon reading? Get a little blood on the library rug? Look, I know what he did was bizarre. He gets totally fucked up when he’s not taking his medication. I’m not saying otherwise. But what ‘serious crime’ did he commit?”

  “Carrying a dangerous weapon.”

  “He wasn’t . . . he used it on himself ! “

  “Well,” she shrugged. “He counts. Right?”

  We sat there, staring at each other—two gunslingers, each waiting for the other to make a move. “He gets . . . he gets these religious delusions,” I said. “Thinks God’s handpicked him to save the world. . . . Hey, he’s got your politics. Feels the same way you do about this Persian Gulf thing. . . . He wanted to do something—make some sort of big sacrifice that would wake up Saddam Hussein and Bush. He says God directed him through the Bible. . . . He’s nuts, okay? He’s not a criminal.”

  “And here’s another way of looking at it,” she said. “He was brandishing a knife in a public building. He needs to be locked up so that decent people can walk the streets.”

  “Brandishing? What do you mean, brandishing?”

  Her hands flew into the air, palms outward. “Don’t get defensive, paisano. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. I’m Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public, reading about what happened in the paper. You see what I’m saying?”

  “But he wasn’t brandishing it. He wasn’t threatening anybody. He was sitting in a study carrel, minding his own business. Look, I know the guy. I know him better than anyone. I’m probably more dangerous than he is.”