I Know This Much Is True

by Wally Lamb

  “Call me by my code name, I said. Mr. Y.”

  “Mr. Y? Yes?”

  “You secure these tapes. Right?”

  “Yes, yes. This has come up several times already. The tapes are—”

  “Do you really think they’d put me under house arrest and then not watch my every move? Not sit there waiting for me to slip up?”

  “Whom do you mean?”

  “Never mind. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

  “I want to assure you, Mr. Birdsey, that we are in a completely safe environment. As your doctor—your ally—I have taken all necessary precautions to assure your safety.”

  Pause. “Indira Gandhi was assassinated, wasn’t she?”

  “The prime minister? Yes, she was. Now, since our time together is precious, let’s talk a little about—”

  “Killed and cremated. Whoosh! Don’t tell me the CIA didn’t have a hand in that one. . . . Maybe it has something to do with the blood vessels.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why I remember better when I smoke. It probably has to do with the way the nicotine affects the flow of blood to the brain. Not all truths are scientific. Go try and prove a miracle in some chemistry laboratory, Mrs. Gandhi. Go analyze God’s DNA.”

  “You’re quite safe here, Mr. Birdsey. Quite safe.”

  “Can I have a cigarette?”

  On the tape, I heard the sliding open of a drawer, the flick-flick-flick of a lighter.

  I had to smile. “Thomas, one; Doc Patel, nothing,” I said.

  She nodded. “Your brother is a talented manipulator, Dominick. I suppose it’s what twenty years of institutionalization will teach you.”

  “Hey, if he was out in the real world, jerking people around would be a valuable skill. Right?”

  “Yes? You think so? That’s an interesting perspective.” She was always doing that: turning some flip remark of mine into a revealing observation. You had to watch it with Dr. Patel, even if you were only the patient’s brother.

  We were in Lisa Sheffer’s office at Hatch, not the doc’s. Sheffer had arranged the powwow that morning after she’d gotten an unexpected phone call from the office of the probate court. There’d been a change of plans. The judge was reviewing my brother’s case that day instead of waiting for the end of the fifteen-day observation period. The move was premature and unanticipated—“fishy,” in Sheffer’s words. We’d planned to meet in her office at four o’clock that afternoon to discuss the outcome—Lisa, Dr. Patel, and me. Since Sheffer was running late, the doc had suggested we listen to the tape of Thomas’s latest session while we waited. My brother had mentioned several things she said she’d be interested in getting my reaction to. But, she’d warned me, some of what he’d said might be upsetting. I’d shrugged. Reassured her I could take it—that I’d heard it all at this point.

  On the tape, Thomas exhaled.

  “Mr. Birdsey, the last time we spoke, you mentioned that your stepfather was sometimes abusive to your mother. Do you remember?”

  “One of these days, Alice. Pow! Right in the kisser!”

  “Is he quoting your stepfather there, Dominick?” Dr. Patel asked.

  I shook my head. “Jackie Gleason.”

  Her face went blank. She stopped the tape.

  “The Honeymooners. It was a TV show.” No lightbulb yet. “This guy—this comedian named Jackie Gleason—he used to say that to his wife. On the show. ‘One of these days, Alice. Pow! Right in the kisser!’”

  “Yes? Excuse me. What is the kisser?”

  “The kisser? The mouth.”

  “Ah, the mouth. Yes, yes. And this was a comedy? About a man who struck his wife in the mouth?”

  “He never actually . . . it’s, uh . . . you’re taking it out of context.”

  “I see,” she said. She kept looking at me. I wasn’t sure why my face felt hot.

  “Was your father physically abusive to your mother, Mr. Birdsey? Or was it more in the nature of—”

  “It was not a pretty picture.”

  “Will you elaborate, please?”

  No response.

  “Mr. Birdsey? What was ‘unpretty’ about it?”

  “He used to use her like a punching bag, that’s what. He’d sock her in the jaw. Kick her. Slam her against the wall. He used to make us watch.”

  “Us?”

  “My brother and me.”

  “That’s complete bullshit,” I said.

  Dr. Patel hit the “stop” button. “Yes? You’re saying it never happened?”

  “No!”

  “One time we were sitting there eating dinner, the four of us, and Ray just reached over and elbowed her, right in the face. For no reason. Just because he felt like it, that’s all. He broke her nose.”

  I wrapped my arms around my chest. Shook my head. “Never happened,” I told the ceiling.

  “You’re sure?”

  “My stepfather breaks my mother’s nose and I wouldn’t remember it?”

  “He used to rape her, too. Right in front of us.”

  “Jesus God. Does he really—”

  “You watched this, Mr. Birdsey?”

  “Plenty of times. He made us.”

  “Let me make sure I understand. You’re saying your stepfather used to rape your mother and insist that you and your brother watch?”

  “He’d pull us out of bed in the middle of the night sometimes. Drag us down the hallway to their bedroom and—”

  “That is complete—”

  “—push her nightgown up and just attack her.”

  “And you and Dominick witnessed this?”

  “We had to. We had to just sit there and shut up. My mother would beg him to let us leave, but he’d tell her to shut up or he’d cut our throats. And then, after he was finished with his business, he’d say, ‘There, this is what the world is really like, you two. Might as well get used to it.’ He was always trying to toughen us up. Sometimes he’d make us . . .”

  He kept rambling. I sat there, trying not to listen. I read the wording on Sheffer’s framed diploma. Studied the little area where paint was peeling off her ceiling. Picked away so thoroughly at a dried paint splatter on the knee of my jeans that I poked a hole in the cloth. Hadn’t Thomas made Ma suffer enough while she was alive without bringing her back from the dead so Ray could rape her? In front of us, for Christ’s sake? God, I hated Thomas. Hated him.

  “Dominick?”

  That’s when it dawned on me: she’d stopped the tape. “Yes?”

  “I said, you look pale.”

  “I’m all right. I’m fine.”

  “Perhaps that’s enough for today. Maybe we could—”

  I straightened my spine. Managed to look her in the eye. “Can I ask you something? Is he trying to con you with this crap or does he really think it happened?”

  “I believe he thinks it happened. And you say it did not happen. Correct?”

  “That Ray raped my mother and we had ringside seats? Gee whiz, now, let me think.” I got up, walked over to the barred window. Looked out onto that sorry-ass recreation area with its rusted basketball hoop, its picnic tables that looked like they’d been gnawed on the ends. How could Sheffer work here? How could any of them work at this place—listening all day long to this kind of crap—and not go nuts themselves? I turned and faced her. “You know what I think? You want my opinion? I think he’s bullshitting you. He knows that if he gives you a good horror story, you’ll call it ‘progress’ and let him smoke. You said it yourself: he’s a good manipulator. You’re being manipulated.”

  “Your stepfather—”

  “Look, my stepfather could be a first-class son of a bitch when he wanted to, okay? I’m the first guy to admit that. But he was a bully, not some inhuman . . . Jesus Christ, if we’d watched something like that, don’t you think we’d both be off the deep end by now? Him and me?”

  “You seem angry.”

  “Just answer me one thing, will you? Is psychology or psychiatry over in I
ndia twenty years behind the times or something?”

  “Why do you ask that, Dominick?”

  “Because . . . look, I don’t mean to insult you, but this technique you’re using is a little backward, isn’t it?”

  “What technique do you mean?”

  “All this family history crap. It’s like we’ve gone full circle or something.”

  “Full circle? In what respect?”

  “When he was first hospitalized, way the hell back, the doctors were always sniffing around this bad childhood stuff. Did he get spanked? How was he toilet-trained? Did she and Ray fight a lot? She used to come home from those sessions with his doctors and . . . she’d have to go upstairs and lie down. I’d hear her up in their bedroom, sobbing her head off.”

  “Your mother? Why was that?”

  More tea, Mrs. Floon?

  Yes, thank you, Mrs. Calabash.

  “Dominick?”

  “Because . . . because they were always insinuating that somehow or another she had caused it. And it wasn’t . . . fair.”

  “The doctors were suggesting your mother caused Thomas’s illness?”

  “Which was complete crap.”

  “Yes, of course it was. I’m not at all implying that—”

  “I mean, first of all, this kid who she’s devoted to, who she’s run interference for all his life . . . first, he cracks up and they cart him off to the loony bin. Then she comes down and visits him every single day—has to take the fucking bus down there because Ray wouldn’t . . . because he was too ashamed to . . . and then the doctors have to slap this guilt trip on her on top of it? It wasn’t fair!”

  “Dominick, nothing about your brother’s illness is ‘fair.’ If you look for fairness when it comes to schizophrenia, it will be a futile search. No patient or patient’s family deserves this affliction. And I’m certainly not trying to place guilt on anyone. I’m merely investigating—”

  “Investigating his past. I know that! That’s what I’m saying. It’s what the shrinks were doing twenty years ago when this whole . . . when this nightmare first started. And then, later on, his other doctors—Ehlers and Bradbury and those guys—when they came along, it was like, ‘Oh, no, all that history stuff’s irrelevant. It has nothing to do with his upbringing; it’s all genetic. We don’t need to figure out the past. All we have to do is focus on the future: how to control his behavior with medication, how to teach him self-management.’ So, I’m just wondering why we’re back to picking apart the past. Is that what they’re still doing over in India?”

  “I don’t know, Dominick. I’m not an expert on the current psychiatric practices of my native country. I haven’t lived there in over twenty-five years. Tell me. Are you uncomfortable about remembering the past?”

  “Am I? No, I’m not uncomfortable. I just . . . I was just wondering. If it’s all just about genetics and finding the right chemical cocktail so he can go live in a group home somewhere, then—”

  “Genetics and long-term maintenance are certainly both parts of the whole treatment picture. Integral parts, Dominick. I’m not at all in disagreement with Dr. Ehlers and the others about that. And we’re learning new things all the time. Just this year, there have been some exciting developments. The approval of Clozapine for one. Now, at the present time, it doesn’t seem that your brother is likely to benefit from—”

  “We’ve been over that. What’s the other thing?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said Clozapine or Clozaril or whatever it’s called for one thing. What’s the other thing?”

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that, actually. There’s some fascinating research just coming out of the National Institute of Mental Health. A study involving twins, as a matter of fact. They’ve been looking at the physical differences in the brains of schizophrenics and their healthy twins. Investigating the possibility that the abnormalities they’re seeing might be related to early viral infections or autoimmune disorders. I’ve been in touch with a Dr. Weinberger at the Institute. He’s very interested in you and your brother, as a matter of fact—about the possibility of getting MRIs of you both.”

  “MRIs? Are those the things that—?”

  “They’re pictures of the body’s soft tissues. Pictures of your brains, in this case. The procedure is completely noninvasive. Completely painless.”

  “We’re not lab rats,” I said.

  “No, you’re not, Dominick. And I am not a mad scientist. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, is Dr. Weinberger. I’m not suggesting this is something we should pursue right now. Down the road, perhaps. I only mention it to reassure you.”

  “Reassure me about what?”

  “That I’m not twenty years behind the time. Despite the fact I am Indian by birth.”

  I looked away. “All I’m saying. . . . I just don’t see why you’re spending all this time. . . . If it’s all about brain abnormalities and these MRI things, then what’s all this taping and talking about ancient history supposed to accomplish?”

  “I’m not sure, Dominick. I’m merely probing—trying to get a fuller picture. Let me put it this way: when he was nineteen years old, a young man walked into the woods and became lost. I have merely gone to the woods to try to find him. Others may be flying helicopters above, analyzing data—using more state-of-the-art methods. But as for me, I’m on foot. Calling out the young man’s name and listening for some response. I can’t give you any guarantees about what I’ll find. If, indeed, I find anything helpful at all. The process is trial-and-error.”

  “Yeah, well, as far as I can see, it’s just a big fat waste of time.”

  “Thank you for your opinion.”

  I shifted in my chair. Looked up at the clock. “God, where the hell’s Sheffer, anyway? You’d think if she was going to be this late, she’d call or something.”

  “Perhaps a phone wasn’t available to her. Perhaps she’s on her way back now.”

  “Look, I don’t mean to insult you. I know you mean well.”

  “You don’t insult me, Dominick. You are merely expressing your opinion. Which is fine. Which is lovely.” She smiled.

  I sat back down. “All right, go ahead,” I said. “Play the rest of it then.”

  “The tape? You’re sure?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Mr. Birdsey, you said during our last session that your stepfather was abusive not only to your mother but to you and Dominick as well. Let’s explore that a little.”

  “Let’s not and say we did.”

  Another flick of the cigarette lighter. The sound of Thomas inhaling, exhaling.

  “Did your stepfather hit you, Mr. Birdsey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Frequently or infrequently?”

  “Frequently.”

  “Infrequently,” I said, correcting him.

  “He used to take his belt off and hit me with it.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere he felt like it. In the kitchen. Out in the garage.”

  “No, I mean where on your person did he strike you? Where on your body?”

  “My legs, my arms, my behind. . . . One time he hit me across the face with his belt and the buckle chipped my tooth. Here. Right here. See that little chip?”

  I pointed an incriminating finger at the tape recorder, Perry Mason style. “Okay, right there,” I said. “Thomas chipped that tooth during a sledding accident. We were sledding over at Cow Barn Hill and Thomas hit his mouth on a metal runner.”

  “He never hit Dominick the way he hit me.”

  “No?”

  “No. He always picked on Thomas Dirt.”

  “Thomas Dirt? Why do you refer to yourself in that manner, please?”

  “I’m not referring to myself. I’m Mr. Y.”

  I felt the blood rush to my face. Felt Patel watching me. She stopped the tape. “Is that accurate, Dominick?” she asked. “Was Thomas singled out?”

  I cleared my throat. “Uh . . . what?”

 
; “When your stepfather abused or bullied your brother, were you usually spared?”

  “I don’t know. . . . Sometimes.” I watched the fists on my knees tighten, relax, tighten. “I guess.”

  The old guilty relief: being the one not screamed at, not yanked by the arm or whacked in the head. “The thing is . . . the thing is, I wasn’t always pushing Ray’s buttons like Thomas was. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. You had to be there.”

  “Take me there, then, Dominick. Help me to understand.”

  “It’s no deep, dark . . . I just knew when to shut up.”

  “Yes?”

  “And Thomas . . . he just never knew how to play defense, you know? I mean, you should have seen him at contact sports. He just didn’t get it. And, in a way, it was . . . it was the same with Ray.”

  “Can you explain what you mean, Dominick?”

  “You had to play defense with Ray. Know when to bluff, when to get out of his way. . . .”

  “Yes, go on. This is helpful.”

  “When to stand up to him, too. Ray respected that: when you drew the line, fought back. When you showed him you had the balls to . . . the nerve . . . I just . . . God, why is this so hard?”

  “Why is what so hard?”

  I couldn’t answer her. If I answered her, I might start to cry.

  “Dominick, what are you feeling right now?”

  “What am I feeling? I don’t know. Nothing. I’m just . . .”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “No!”

  “Angry?”

  “I just . . . that’s just the way it was with Ray. You just had to play defense.”

  I suddenly saw and heard Ray—red-faced, goading, an inch or two from my face. Driving against me toward the basket he and I had bolted over the garage one Saturday morning. “De-fense! De-fense! What’s the matter, sissy girl? You want to play basketball or go inside and play with your paper dollies?”

  “Mr. Birdsey, why do you think your stepfather was more harsh with you than he was with your brother?”

  “I don’t think why. I know why. He was jealous of me.”

  “Yes? What made him jealous?”

  “Because he realized that God had special plans for me.”