I Know This Much Is True

by Wally Lamb

  I wanted to keep them safe from him; I wanted them caught. Ray stood there, waiting. “Upstairs,” I said.

  “Upstairs where?”

  “In the spare room. They’re playing their stupid game. They always play it there.”

  “O Gentlest Heart of Jesus, have mercy on the soul of Thy departed servant, Thomas,” Father LaVie said. “Be not severe in Thy judgment but let some drops of Thy Precious Blood fall upon the devouring flames. O Merciful Savior, send Thy Angels to conduct Thy departed servant, Thomas, to a place of light, and peace. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithfully departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.”

  “Amen,” we all said. “Amen.”

  The noon siren blew. False Teeth stepped forward. “This concludes our graveside service, but at this point in time, the family of Thomas Birdsey would like to invite you to the home of Mr. Raymond Birdsey, 68 Hollyhock Avenue, for a luncheon and a continuation of fellowship and remembrance of the deceased.”

  I had driven over to Ray’s that morning like I’d promised—had vacuumed, set everything up. He was already up and out of the house. No note, nothing. He’d brought metal folding chairs down from the attic—that was it. The guy from Franco’s delivered the food while I was there: Fiesta Party Platters number 4, 6, and 7, enough to feed a turnout six or seven times what we were going to get. I realized, as soon as I saw those trays, how ridiculously I’d overordered. . . .

  Ray and I stood a moment longer at the coffin than the others. Neither of us spoke. From the corner of my eye, I saw Ray’s fist reach out, hang in the air above Thomas’s casket, knock softly against it. Once, twice, three times. Then he walked away.

  I couldn’t think of any profound farewells for my brother. How do you say goodbye to a polished box? To the half of yourself that’s about to be covered over with dirt? I’m sorry, Thomas. I was mean because I was jealous. I’m sorry.

  Back by the cars, people shook my hand, hugged me. Told me I’d been a good brother—that now I could take care of myself. As if, now, everything was over. As if his being put in the ground meant I wasn’t going to keep carrying his corpse. Angie said she had talked to Dessa that morning—that Dess had said she was coming. I shrugged, smiled. “Guess she remembered she had to wash her hair or something.”

  Father LaVie approached me. Father George Carlin. I thanked him, slipped him the fifty bucks I’d remembered to put in my pocket that morning. Two twenties and a ten, curled up as tight as a joint. From my nervousness. From my hands needing to do something during that service. I should have put the money in an envelope or something. Should have uncurled it, at least. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble for you to get here,” I said.

  “No trouble at all,” he told me. “No trouble whatsoever. We men of leisure have flexible schedules, you know.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “You retired?” Which, asking him, was a big mistake. He was one of those needy guys—one of those ask-him-one-question-and-he-volunteers-his-whole-life-story types. Semiretired, he said; he’d just recently relocated in Connecticut after twenty-three years out in Saginaw, Michigan. Great Lakes country. God’s country. Had I ever been out in that neck of the woods?

  I hadn’t been, I said. No. What was Three Rivers? Godless country?

  “I’m a cancer survivor,” he said.

  “Yeah? No kidding?” My eyes darted around for Leo—for anyone who might get this priest away from me.

  It had been exactly a year ago—a year to the day—since the doctors had found a tumor in his groin, he said. Malignant, inoperable, the size of an orange. They’d advised him to get his things in order. Had given him six months to a year. So he’d resigned his parish and come home to be with his mother, who was eighty-eight but sharp as a tack.

  People were always doing that, I thought: comparing tumors to citrus fruit.

  But then, he said, a miracle. A medical mystery. He’d refused chemo, special diets, etcetera, etcetera; he’d accepted his disease as God’s will. But to everyone’s surprise, his tumor had started shrinking all on its own—had gotten smaller and smaller with each examination. Had diminished, in nine months’ time, down to nothing at all. It had baffled all the test-takers and technicians, he said. “But doctors are Doubting Thomases. There’s mystery in the world. Either you accept that or you don’t.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Wow.” Where the fuck was Leo?

  Cancer had enhanced his life, Father LaVie said—had challenged his complacency. Had, as a “for instance,” made him much more sympathetic to AIDS sufferers, and to the poor, and to the oppressed. To people who fought against bigotry. To bigots.

  “They got bigots out in God’s country?” I said.

  He laughed. “Indeed they do. I’m afraid bigotry is everywhere.” But back to his cancer, he said. It had clarified things for him. Humbled him. Reminded him that the Good Lord’s challenges—hard as they were sometimes to bear—were also opportunities. “I’d lived an entire adult life of religious contemplation,” he said, “and it still did that for me.”

  Shut up, I’d wanted to scream at him. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

  Ray was already in the limo, tapping his foot, itching to get the hell out of there. He slid over; I got in. False Teeth closed my door for me. Part of the package, I guess: chauffeur service to and from, with the Grim Reaper at the wheel.

  We rolled through the cemetery. Passed my grandfather’s ornate tombstone, a groundskeeper on a tractor, a guy sitting in his Jeep with the motor running. We rode through the iron gates and back onto Boswell Avenue.

  “I wonder who planted those tulips,” I said, half to myself, half to Ray. “What do you want to bet it was Dessa?”

  “It was me,” Ray said.

  Neither of us said anything for several seconds. “When’d you do that?”

  “This morning.” Which explained where he’d been when I’d gone over there to help him get the house ready.

  “Yeah, well. . . . I just hope we don’t get another frost.”

  He put his hands on his knees, turned away from me, and looked out the side window. In the silence that followed, it dawned on me who the guy in the Jeep had been: Ralph Drinkwater. Ralph had shown up after all—had stayed apart from things but been there. I looked out the window on my side. Wiped the wet out of my eyes.

  “We get another frost, I’ll just go over there and plant some more,” Ray said.

  False Teeth drove us through Three Rivers instead of skirting around it on the parkway. We passed the construction site for the new casino, the state hospital, the McDonald’s where, four days earlier, Thomas had gotten his Happy Meal. We rode over the Sachem River Bridge and through the middle of town.

  “Remember when I used to take you kids there?” Ray said.

  “Hmm?” I glanced past him and out the window on his side. We were passing a computer store that had been, once upon a time, the Paradise Bakery. After church on Sunday, Ray would drop Ma back at the house so she could start Sunday dinner. Then he’d drive Thomas and me to the Paradise Bakery and buy us crullers. Then he’d take us to Wequonnoc Park.

  “The park, too,” I said. “We’d go to the bakery first and then over to the park.”

  He nodded. If I had blinked, I would have missed his smile. “You always wanted to play on the monkey bars and he always wanted to play on the seesaw,” Ray said. “I used to have to referee the two of you. Make you take turns.”

  What I remembered about those seesaw rides was the way Thomas would get mad at me, midride, and evacuate. Send me crashing back down to the ground. . . . It was sort of what his death felt like: fed up, fucked up, Thomas had just jumped off the goddamned seesaw. Had banged me back down to the ground where I sat, jarred. Stopped cold.

  The Paradise Bakery, Wequonnoc Park. . . . Was that how Ray was getting through this? Remembering all the fatherly things he had done? Denying the rest of it? Denying, even, that worst day—the day he and I had destroyed Mrs. Calabash and Mrs. Floon?

  T
hey’re upstairs.

  Upstairs where?

  In the spare room. They’re playing their stupid game. They always play it there.

  He’d sloshed through the mess on the kitchen floor as if it wasn’t even there. Tracked soupy, floury footprints from the back of the house to the front. He tiptoed, I remember. Up the stairs, down the hallway toward the spare room. Had he suspected something about them? Why else would he have tiptoed? . . .

  He banged open the door. Raided them like the vice squad. From down below, I heard screaming, wailing—Ma’s tea set getting smashed against the wall. It was Thomas he went after, not Ma. A goddamned girl! . . . No son of mine! Ma’s arm got broken because she stood in his way—came between his rage and Thomas.

  “Run, honey! Run!” I remember her shrieking. All three of us screamed and wailed—my brother and mother upstairs and me below. Then Thomas was at the top of the landing, heading down toward me. Run! Run!

  Ray caught him halfway down. Grabbed him by the back of his shirt, lifting him, choking him, batting him in the head. Now get down there! Get down these fucking stairs!

  They lost their balance. Toppled the rest of the way together, landing in a pile at the bottom. I’m sorry, Ray! Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me, Ray!

  Thomas lay flat on his back, pinned beneath him, and I watched Ray grab him by the wrists, wave Thomas’s white-gloved hands in front of his face. These are what little girls wear! You understand! What are you—a goddamned little girl? He kept snapping his wrists—making Thomas slap himself in the face with his own white-gloved hands. Over and over, again and again and again.

  I wanted to scream at him to leave my brother alone! Wanted to kick Ray and punch him and yank him away from Thomas. But I was afraid—paralyzed by his anger.

  Ray got up, out of breath, and pulled Thomas, bucking and screaming, toward the front hall closet. He yanked open the door and shoved him in there. Thomas landed hard in a pile of boots, rubbers, umbrellas. Ray slammed the door. Locked it. Shouted over Thomas’s screaming that he had better think long and hard about what he’d been doing up there. And when I get good and goddamned ready to let you out, you’d better walk out like a goddamned boy! You understand me? He gave the door a kick, then went out to the parlor to cool off and watch TV.

  Jesus, he kept muttering, over and over. Jesus, Jesus. . . .

  At the top of the stairs, Ma’s wailing quieted to a whimper. She was clutching her broken arm as she came down, sideways, her shoulder blades scraping against the stairway wall. “What’s this?” she asked me in a tiny, quivering voice, and I followed her eyes to the footprints—the mess that Ray and I had tracked from the kitchen through the whole downstairs. Ma followed the footprints out to the kitchen. When she saw the mess I had made, she turned back and looked for me—looked me in the eye. She just stood there, looking at me. Her fist went slowly to her mouth; her whole body was trembling.

  They had to take a cab to the hospital because Ray’s car was on the fritz. They were gone for hours. Ray’s orders to me when they left were to clean up the kitchen, clean the footprints off of the rug, and not let my brother out.

  I began as soon as they rode away. Sopped the soupy mess off the floor with towels, washed it with Spic and Span. Mopped, washed again, mopped, scrubbed and vacuumed the living room rug. There were cream splatters everywhere—no matter how many times I wiped the kitchen walls and counters. After my third mopping, the floor still felt sticky beneath my feet.

  They were gone for hours—gone so long that, illogically or not, I was afraid that Ray had kidnapped our mother. That they were gone for good. Had left us.

  Thomas screamed at first—Let . . . me . . . out . . . of . . . here! PLEASE . . . let . . . me . . . out! Then he whimpered. Then he got so quiet that I thought he might have died in there—that Ray might have killed him. From the other side of the door, I sat and spoke to him, sang to him. And when I ran out of songs, words, I read aloud from that week’s TV Guide. “Donna and Mary Stone organize a mother-and-daughter fashion show. . . . Luke and Kate plan a surprise birthday party for Grandpa Amos. . . . Frontier scout Flint McCullough is kidnapped by hostile Comanches.”

  Thomas wouldn’t answer me. He wouldn’t say a thing.

  They came back a little after ten. They had a pizza. Ma’s arm was in a cast. When Ray unlocked the closet, Thomas emerged, staggering like a drunk, his eyes dazed, his face still swollen from crying. “Can I go to bed now?” was all he said.

  “Don’t you want some pizza pie?” Ray asked him.

  “No, thank you.”

  Was that the night that triggered it—set into motion whatever had blossomed in Thomas’s brain? Biochemistry, biogenetics: none of the articles I’d read—none of the experts I had listened to—had ever been able to explain why Thomas had gotten the disease and I hadn’t. Had we given it to him—my mother and Ray and me? . . .

  “Lot of traffic today, huh?” False Teeth said. He kept taking glimpses at me in his rearview mirror. Waiting for an answer.

  “Uh, what?” I said. “Traffic? Yeah.”

  “Of course, from what I hear, we ain’t seen nothing yet.” He glanced at the road, then back in the rearview. “You want to see traffic? Wait’ll that casino opens up. This town’ll be bumper to bumper.”

  Ray shifted in his seat. Folded his arms across his chest and sighed. . . .

  Ma had gone upstairs to tuck Thomas in, to go to bed herself, and Ray and I had sat at the kitchen table, eating pizza pie.

  “She fell,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your mother. She tripped and fell on the stairs bringing laundry down. Landed the wrong way. You understand?”

  I looked at him. Waited.

  “What goes on in this house is nobody else’s business,” he said. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the top of the table. “You understand me?” he asked again.

  I nodded.

  “All right then,” he said. “Good. Things just got a little out of hand tonight, that’s all. Just forget about it. This kind of thing happens in every family.”

  Did it? I tried to picture the kids in my class being dragged, kicking and screaming, down the stairs. Ladling soup onto the kitchen floor.

  “And if those two ever play that game again—if you ever get wind of that again. Well . . .” He stood up. Went over to the sink. “But they’re not going to play it anymore. It’s not going to ever come up again. . . . But if it does, you come to me. Okay?”

  I asked Ray if I could go to bed, please.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. Sure, Ray. I’ll sacrifice them to you. Survival of the fittest.

  “Good,” he said, nodding his approval. He lit a cigarette. “Good. Because you and I are on a team, all right? We’re buddies, you and me. We stick together. Right?”

  I nodded. Looked at the hand he was offering. Shook it.

  And I climbed the stairs knowing, somehow, that in my two-man struggle, Thomas would always win: that Ma would always love him more than she loved me. That Ray would always hate him more than he hated me. Like it or not, we were two teams. Thomas and Ma versus Ray and me. Survival of the fittest. . . .

  And now, here we sat in the back of the undertaker’s limousine. The winning team—the victors in our good suits, riding away from the cemetery. No fingerprints. No autopsies. They were both in the ground now. Mrs. Calabash and Mrs. Floon. . . .

  Back at Hollyhock Avenue, people milled around the kitchen, the living room, talking in hushed voices. What was that—respect for the dead? Fear that normal speaking voices might wake him up again? Across the room, I watched Sheffer and Dr. Patel approach Ray—introduce themselves, engage him in a little polite conversation. They did most of the work; Ray just stood there, nodding at whatever they said. He couldn’t look at them. Far as I knew, he had never returned any of their phone calls. He’d never visited Thomas once down at Hatch; I knew that for a fact. In seven months, not once, because believe me, I checked the l
og book every goddamned time. So let him stand there and squirm a little. Let him feel guilty about it. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.

  Jerry Martineau came over, handed me a manila envelope. “What’s this?” I said.

  “Look.”

  I had to smile when I opened it: an old picture of our high school basketball team. Martineau said he’d gone looking for it that morning—that he wanted me to have it. It was a candid shot taken in the middle of some game. Our senior year, I figured—my muttonchop sideburns era. The first string was out on the court, passing by in a blur, but for some reason, the photographer had focused on Martineau and me, warming the bench as usual.

  “Hey, how come Coach doesn’t have Havlicek and West in the game?” I said.

  Martineau laughed. Reminded me that we did get in the game sometimes: usually the last thirty seconds of every lopsided victory. “Look at what a beanpole I was back then,” he said. “I remember I used to come home from practice, eat two or three sandwiches, and then sit down and eat a big dinner. Snack all night. Those were the days, eh, Dominick? Other day, Karen buys me a pair of dress pants, size thirty-eight waist. Isn’t that sad? And to be honest with you, they’re a little snug. . . . But look.”

  I followed his finger to a spot near the top of the picture. “What?” I said.

  Then I saw him: my brother. He was seated in the middle of the Pep Squad section, his mouth wide open in mid-yell. My real brother, I thought. Unsick Thomas. . . .

  More tea, Mrs. Calabash?

  Yes, thank you, Mrs. Floon.

  A hand clamped onto my shoulder. “Hey, Dominick?” Leo whispered. “You think Pop’s got any hootch in the house? Some of these old geezers’d probably appreciate a drink.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Right.” I looked around for Ray, but he’d left the room. “There’s some glasses in that cabinet there,” I said. “Get those out. I’ll go see what he’s got.”

  Jesus, I hadn’t even thought about booze. But Leo was right. Most guys like a drink when they come back from a cemetery—a chaser to help them swallow down the sight of a casket over an open grave.