I Know This Much Is True

by Wally Lamb

  The only place we’ve ever been to in New Hampshire is Massabesic Lake. Ray took us fishing there last year. We stayed overnight in a wooden cabin, and all night long, mosquitoes kept bugging us. We didn’t catch any fish, either. Not one. The one thing I remember about that trip was this dead squirrel that someone had trapped inside a firebox. They’d put a bunch of rocks on top to keep him trapped in there. He was all huddled up in a corner, but you could tell he’d gone mental trying to get out. There was crusty black blood around his mouth and he stunk and bugs had eaten out his eyes. Ray lifted him out with a stick and flung him. He didn’t land all the way in the woods; he landed right on the edge. Thomas wanted to bury him and have a funeral, but Ray told him to stop the sissy stuff. All the time we were there, you could see that dead squirrel right out in plain sight. Whenever anyone mentions New Hampshire, that squirrel is always what I think of. I bet I’ve thought about that squirrel a million times.

  In less than half an hour, we’ll be in a new state, New York, because we’re on our sixth-grade field trip to the Statue of Liberty and Radio City Music Hall. We’re riding in a coach bus with cushioned seats and a bathroom in the back. We’re still in Connecticut: Bridgeport. Eddie Otero says Bridgeport’s close to the New York border. Otero has cousins who live in the Bronx, and this is the same way they go when they go to his cousins’. We’ve been riding almost two hours. I’m sitting in the way-way-back seat with Otero and Channy Harrington. Thomas is midway up the aisle. He got stuck sitting with Eugene Savitsky, this weird kid in our class who’s fat and always talks about the planets and geology and weather. Mrs. Hanka let us pick our seatmates. Thomas and Channy both picked me, and I picked Channy. No one picked Eugene. At recess last week, Billy Moon asked Eugene to name five football teams and he couldn’t name any. Not one.

  My brother and I have been waiting for this trip a long time, but for different reasons. Thomas wants to see the Radio City Easter show. Ma went once; she said the religious part was so beautiful, it made her cry. It sounds boring to me; it sounds like church. I can’t wait to get to New York because then I’ll have visited four states and because I have spending money—thirty-seven dollars I earned from shoveling snow and walking Mrs. Pusateri’s dog and helping Ray on weekends. Last weekend, Ray and I installed a tool cabinet in his truck. Ray let me do some of the drilling and tighten the screws. It’s always me who Ray asks to help him, not Thomas. “Handy Andy” he calls me. He calls my brother “Charlie Ten Thumbs.” Come to think of it, I was thinking about that squirrel up at Massabesic Lake when we were working on the tool cabinet, too—how a squirrel might get caught in there. Get trapped.

  They show you a movie with the Easter show. The one we’re seeing is The Music Man. Mrs. Hanka—we call her “Muriel Baby” behind her back—she saw The Music Man when it was a play instead of a movie. She brought in her record of all the songs and made us listen to it. Everybody was laughing because it was so corny. Eddie Otero started making pig snorts. Then three or four other kids started doing it. Muriel Baby got so hurt, she stopped the record and looked for a minute like she was going to cry. She told us that if she hadn’t already bought the Radio City tickets, she’d cancel our whole trip. She gave us this big speech about how if we didn’t care about anything, then she didn’t care either. Then she did something weird. She turned off all the lights and went to the closet behind her desk and put on her coat. She just sat there. No social studies like we usually have. No nothing. Nobody said anything. All of us just sat there, nobody saying a word, until the intercom started calling the bus runs at 2:55. Like I said, it was weird. Creepy. The next day, everyone behaved, even Otero.

  We might be able to go to a souvenir shop in Times Square if there’s time. If it’s the same one Marie Sexton from our class thinks it is, they have a whole aisle that’s nothing but joke gifts: snapping packs of gum, whoopie cushions, ice cubes with flies inside, fake vomit. When I asked Ma how much I could spend on the trip, she told me to ask Ray. He said five dollars, but I’ve brought thirty-seven: a ten, a five, and twenty-two ones. I might spend just a little of it, or I might spend the whole thing if I feel like it. Why shouldn’t I? It’s my money, not his.

  Last night when Ma was making our lunches for the trip, she told us that when we ride on the Staten Island ferry, we’ll see the exact same view her father saw when he first came to this country in 1901: the harbor, the Statue of Liberty, the New York skyline. Ma’s always talking about her father. Papa, Papa, blah blah blah. At first, she wasn’t going to let us put our soda cans in the freezer overnight. “What if they explode?” she said, but I got her to give in. You can always get what you want from Ma if Ray’s at work. Right now, the sodas are in our lunch bags, in the rack above our heads. I just checked mine. It’s half-melted. By lunchtime, it’ll be melted all the way but still cold. In other words, perfect. Channy Harrington did the same thing with his soda. It was his idea. He says kids always do that with their sodas out in California. Channy’s father is one of the big bosses down at Electric Boat. When I visit over at Channy’s house, Ray says I’m “hobnobbing.” You can tell he likes me going over there, though. The Harringtons have a housekeeper and a built-in swimming pool and a baseball-pitching machine for Channy and his older brothers. You can put it on three different speeds. The fastest speed goes seventy miles an hour. Sometimes the housekeeper makes us after-school snacks: oatmeal cookies, potato chips with onion dip, peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwiches. Thomas has never been invited to Channy’s house. He says he’s sick of hearing all the time about that housekeeper and her stupid sandwiches and Channy’s stupid pitching machine.

  Eugene Savitsky is giving my brother a lecture on how things break the sound barrier. He’s so jazzed up on the topic, you can hear him over everybody else. We’re not just going to the Statue of Liberty; we’re going inside it. They have stairs that go right to the top. Eddie Otero says he’s going to climb down the nose and hang out there like he’s the Statue of Liberty’s booger. He would, too. Otero’s insane.

  Muriel Baby comes to the back of the bus and makes us stop singing “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” It’s inappropriate for us to be singing about alcohol on a school trip, she says. We should know better. While she’s warmed up, she yells at Marty Overturf for eating his lunch already when it isn’t even 9:15 in the morning yet. What does she care? It’s his lunch, not hers.

  Channy Harrington’s the only boy in our class who already shaves. Every single girl in our school is in love with Channy, just about. Debbie Chase asked him to sit with her on the bus ride to New York, but Mrs. Hanka told her no boy-girl combinations. When Channy transferred to our school last November, he was automatically popular, even on the first day. He has swimming and basketball trophies from his old school on a shelf in his bedroom. Channy says everyone in California has outdoor swimming pools, even poor people. His older brother, Clay, plays baseball in college. He’s being scouted by the Cardinals.

  Now Eugene is blabbing away to my brother about the planets. Uranus this, Uranus that. Out of the blue, Otero yells, “Hey, Savitsky! Stop talking about your asshole!” The whole bus looks back at us and cracks up. Muriel Baby stands up from her seat at the front of the bus, scowls back in our direction, and then sits down again. The bus driver keeps staring at us in his rearview mirror. What’s he looking at? His job is to drive the bus, not give us dirty looks. “That dipshit driver should take a picture,” Channy says. “It’d last longer.”

  Our seats are right next to that little bathroom. Mostly it’s the girls who have to use it. Otero and Channy and I say wiseguy things to them as they go in and out. “Don’t fall in now. . . . Don’t do anything in there we wouldn’t do.” We crack each other up. Channy’s been to Radio City before. Twice. He says when they open the doors, we should rush to the front seats so that when the Rockettes do their high kicks, we can see some good “crotch shots.” Even though it’s Channy who says it, Susan Gillis turns around and gives me a dirty look, a
nd I go, real snotty, “What are you looking at?” Susan’s mother was supposed to be our chaperone for this trip, but she came down with the mumps. Now Susan’s acting like she’s the chaperone. “You better stop talking like that,” she says.

  “Like what?” I go.

  “Like what you just said about the Rockettes.”

  “Make us,” I say.

  “You’re already made and what a mess.”

  It’s not like Mrs. Hanka’s going to let us sit wherever we want to when we get to Radio City, anyway. She’ll make us all sit together in the same row, like babies, and I bet you any amount of money she plops right down next to Otero. Last week we had the word incorrigible on our vocabulary list and Muriel Baby used Otero as an example.

  I’ve been over to Channy’s house three times. The last time I was there, he told me he once saw all these women who were stark naked. At a beach in California where people don’t have to wear bathing suits if they don’t want to. Channy kept talking about the women’s “fur burgers.” At first, I didn’t know what he meant by fur burgers, but I kept my mouth shut. Later on, we snuck into his brother Trent’s room and Channy showed me Trent’s dirty magazines. That’s when I got it—what fur burgers were. I’d never seen any women naked before, not even in pictures. I never even knew they had hair down there, like men. It was Channy’s brother Clay who took Channy to that beach. Him and some of his friends from college. From his baseball team. Channy says California has lots of those kinds of beaches. He’s always talking about how much better California is than Connecticut. He says in his old classroom, all the desks had little buttons on the side and, at the end of the day, you just pushed the button and the desks disappeared into the floor. I’m pretty sure that’s a bunch of bull. Maybe that stuff about the beaches is, too. But maybe not. I haven’t even been to four states yet. What do I know?

  Thomas gets up from his seat, climbs over Eugene, and walks back toward us. Someone trips him accidentally on purpose and everyone laughs, Channy and Eddie Otero loudest of all. Thomas acts so retarded sometimes. I look out the window so that I don’t have to look at him.

  He opens the bathroom door. “Don’t get any on you,” Channy says.

  “If Althea comes down here, I’ll send her in for you,” Otero promises. He means Althea Ebbs, this big fat girl in our class who has BO and cries all the time. Thomas doesn’t answer them. I hear the bathroom door click shut. Hear him slide the bolt.

  Five minutes go by and he’s still in there. Then six or seven minutes. I heard him flush a long time ago. Marie Sexton and Bunny Borsa have both gotten out of their seats about a million times to see if the john’s free. “Who’s in there?” Bunny asks us.

  “His brother,” Otero says, jabbing his thumb at me. “He’s taking a two-ton dump.”

  “Either that or he’s pulling his pud,” Channy jokes.

  They laugh when Bunny calls us dirty pigs.

  Then the door handle starts clicking back and forth like crazy. “Dominick?” It’s Thomas. “Dominick?”

  He’s locked himself in there. He can’t get out. I can hear the panic in his voice, in the frantic clicking of that door handle, the thump of his fists against the door. Channy and Otero are busting a gut.

  Marie Sexton and Susan and I start calling instructions to Thomas, but he’s either too scared or too spastic to follow them. “I’m going to get sick if I don’t get out of here!” he warns. That makes Otero and Channy laugh even harder.

  “Calm down,” I keep telling him. “Keep your voice down. You’re making it worse.”

  “It’s stuck! It won’t budge!”

  Five or six other kids are standing there now; everyone’s shouting orders at Thomas. Some of the girls are complaining that they really have to go. Mrs. Hanka starts down the aisle. In class, she likes my brother better than me. You can tell. Mr. Goody Two-shoes. Mr. Perfect. But now she’s mad at him. “To the left! Push it to the left!” she shouts, in the exasperated voice she usually saves for Otero or Althea Ebbs.

  I know it’s serious when the driver pulls over to the side of the highway and stops the bus. “Sit down! Sit down!” he’s yelling at everyone, elbowing his way down the aisle. I can’t believe it: my stupid, retarded brother is wrecking our entire trip to New York City.

  “Together! Move the handle and the bolt together!” the driver keeps screaming at the locked door. He takes off his uniform jacket and the back of his shirt is soaked in sweat. His face is the same color as rare roast beef. We’ve been on the side of the highway for fifteen minutes.

  “Let . . . me . . . out . . . of . . . here!” Thomas keeps shouting. “Please! Please! LET ME OUT!” His body keeps making thudding noises against the door. My stomach feels like I’m on this elevator that’s dropping way too fast. If I start crying in front of Channy and Otero, I don’t care what anyone says. I’m changing schools.

  “Twelve years I’ve been driving these things,” the driver tells Mrs. Hanka. “And I bet I could count on one hand the number of times I forgot my tools.” He says we’ll have to get off at the next exit and get to a gas station. Maybe with a flatbar, he can jimmy the door open. Or maybe the gas station will have a drill he can use to unfreeze the bolts. If not, he’ll have to call the bus company and have someone drive down with the right tools.

  “Well, how long will that take?” Mrs. Hanka demands. “Our Radio City tickets are for the 2:30 P.M. show. We have to get on the ferry by 10:45 at the latest or we’ll miss the Statue of Liberty.”

  “I don’t know how long it’ll take, lady,” he says. “I can’t give you any guarantees.”

  “I’m sorry, Dominick!” Thomas screams from behind the door. “I’m sorry!”

  The bus gets off at the next exit and is crawling through traffic on some main street. Eugene Savitsky has gotten up and come to the back of the bus. He stands there, picking at his seat and staring at the locked bathroom door like it’s a science problem. “Have him push the bolt the opposite way,” he tells me. “Have him push it to the right instead of the left.”

  “It doesn’t go to the right,” someone says.

  “But just tell him. Maybe he’s mixed up.”

  “Push it to the right,” I tell Thomas.

  The bolt thunks. The door squeaks open.

  Thomas emerges to the sound of hoots and applause. He’s so pale, his skin looks blue. At first, he smiles. Then his face crumples up. He begins to cry.

  I feel bad for him. And mad. And humiliated. Kids are looking at me, too, not just at Thomas. The Birdsey brothers: identical twin retards. I’d like to punch that smirk off of Channy Harrington’s rich little stupid face. Bust Eddie Otero’s big, fat Spic nose.

  The bus driver turns around in an empty parking lot and heads back toward the interstate. Mrs. Hanka reassigns seats. Now Thomas and I sit together up front and Otero has to sit with Eugene Savitsky. Channy and Debbie Chase and Yvette Magritte are giggling together in the back.

  For the rest of that whole, long day, Thomas acts really out of it. At the Statue of Liberty, he tells Mrs. Hanka he feels too scared to go up inside. She makes me stay down with him. Some guy in a uniform comes over and yells at me for chucking gravel into the water. After that, my brother and I sit on a wall, looking out at the harbor. “Just think,” Thomas says, finally breaking the silence. “This is exactly what our grandfather saw the day he first came over from Italy.”

  “Would you do me a favor?” I tell him. “Would you just shut the fuck up?” I’ve never said “fuck” out loud before. Saying it feels good. I feel as mad, as mean, as Ray.

  I spend all my money. At Radio City, I buy a three-dollar deluxe souvenir book that I don’t even really want. At that novelty shop in Times Square—it is the same one Marie thought it was—I buy a back scratcher, a Roger Maris & Mickey Mantle plaque, a rubber tarantula, a puddle of plastic vomit. At the restaurant on the way home, I order shrimp cocktail, a T-bone steak, and Dutch apple pie à la mode. Channy and Otero eat their hamburgers at a booth
with Debbie and Yvette. I get stuck at a table with fat, stupid Eugene Savitsky and my stupid, ugly brother. Eugene orders liver and onions. All Thomas has is chicken noodle soup and saltines.

  Channy’s brother Trent gives Thomas and me a ride home. It had been arranged before—Channy’s idea. Channy and Trent sit up front and Thomas and I sit in back. Channy doesn’t say two words to either of us. He talks to his brother, turns the radio up loud, mentions something about someone they knew in stupid California. I know I’m never going over to Channy’s house again—that the Harringtons’ housekeeper has already made me the last of those peanut butter and fluff sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I’ve taken my last swing at those machine-hurled pitches.

  “How was your trip?” Ma asks us when we get home.

  “Pretty good,” Thomas says. “I really liked the Easter show. It was nice.” He says nothing about locking himself in the bathroom. I say nothing either.

  “And how about you, Dominick?” Ma goes. “Did you have a good time?”

  I’ve left my deluxe souvenir program on the bus. Someone has sat on my back scratcher and broken it. Of the thirty-seven dollars I brought with me, I have only eighty-three cents left. For a second or more, I’m on the verge of tears. Then I’m all right again. “It was boring,” I tell my mother. “It stunk, just like everything always stinks.”

  That night, I dream I’m trapped in a small, dark cave in a woods I don’t recognize. It’s pitch dark. I bang and cry for help and when, at last, I discover a way out, I realize I’ve not been trapped in a cave after all, but inside the Statue of Liberty.

  11

  It was musical chairs and months-old Newsweeks at the medical clinic. In the hour I waited, I put up with the sneaky peeks and sidelong glances of everyone who wanted to check out that library lunatic’s duplicate. One teenage girl out and out stared at my two hands. The receptionist who gave me the insurance forms to sign jerked her hand away when I reached for her pen. After my name was called, I cooled my jets in the examining room for another fifteen or twenty minutes. Then I told my story to Dr. Judy Yup.