The Hour I First Believed

by Wally Lamb

  Mo said she would.

  “And in the meantime, I want you to begin to take charge, like we talked about. Plenty of rest. A little bit of exercise and fresh air to fight the lassitude.” He produced a sample four-pack of Boost. “And two cans of this a day, minimum. In addition to your meals, not instead of them. Agreed?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, then. Good. Are we done?”

  “What about my prescriptions?” Maureen said.

  “Oh, right. We were going to get back to that, weren’t we? You feel it’s helped you?”

  She nodded. “I’m sleeping better with the Restoril. Not great, but better. And the Xanax really helps.”

  “All right, then. Dr. Cid may want to try you on something else after she’s assessed things, but we can stay with these for the time being. The sleep medication’s fine. And the Xanax: you’ve been taking two a day?” Three a day, I thought to myself, but I kept my mouth shut. “Why don’t I write you scripts for thirty of each, and we’ll see where we are in two weeks? Make an appointment with Blanca on the way out.” He stood, opened the door for us. “Hang in there, you two. And Maureen? You’re a very brave woman.”

  Skip the platitudes, I wanted to say. Instead, I thanked him, pumped his hand. When he went to hug Maureen, she took a backward step.

  Blanca Quinones was the doctor’s wife as well as his receptionist. I asked her how the kids were doing. “Catalina’s chafing at the bit to go back, be with her friends,” she said. “Miss Social Butterfly. But she thinks it’s an outrage they have to finish the year at Chatfield, their biggest sports rival.”

  “Yea rah rah,” Maureen mumbled. She released a weird little laugh.

  “How about Clemente?” I said. Catalina was your classic overachiever; her brother was quieter, more of a loner.

  “Clemente doesn’t say much. Stays up in his room and reads, plays his video games. I think he’s anxious about going back. Last couple days, he’s been asking me about home-schooling.”

  “Where were they?” I asked. We all did that now: spoke in shorthand about April the twentieth.

  “Catalina was in gym, so she got right out. Clemente was in biology. Two doors down from where Mr. Sanders was. Thank God he didn’t have to see that. He kept calling me, so I knew he was okay. Thank God for cell phones. I tell you, though. It wasn’t until I saw him for myself, sitting on that stage over at Leawood School…” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry. I still get so emotional.”

  Maureen sighed impatiently. “Is there a co-pay for today?” she said.

  We stopped at the pharmacy on the way home. I went in; she stayed slumped in the car with the doors locked. I got her prescription, a case of Boost. At the register, there was a display of Panda licorice, the kind she likes. You don’t see it that many places, so I thought I’d surprise her. But back in the car, she made no mention of it. Fished through the bag and found the Xanax. Popped the cap, placed one on her tongue, and swallowed. “Aren’t you supposed to take those one in the morning, one at night?” I said.

  “So?” she said.

  “So it’s two in the afternoon. They’re not M&Ms.”

  “This is just what I mean by hovering.”

  NEXT MORNING, THE HEADLINE IN the Rocky Mountain News said, “Dad Cuts Down Killers’ Crosses.” The reporters had caught up with Zanis, the press-shy carpenter. He said he’d included Dylan and Eric in his tribute because they’d had family, too—parents who suffered and grieved for their lost children, no matter the terrible circumstances. But Danny Rohrbough’s dad wasn’t having it. With his slain son’s grandfather and stepfather, he’d climbed Rebel Hill, knocked down the killers’ crosses, and carried them away. “Took them to a better place,” was the way he’d put it.

  “You see this?” I asked her, holding up the article.

  She squinted at it. Walked out of the kitchen and back upstairs. She’d had two or three bites of an English muffin, a little juice, and, at best, a third of a can of Boost. The afternoon before, she’d called Dr. Cid and gotten her answering service. “No, no message,” I’d heard her say.

  I read the rest of the article. Sat there, wondering if the Harrises and the Klebolds had read it, too. Bad as it was for the other parents, it had to be even more of a nightmare, in some ways, for them.

  Oh, yeah? Then maybe they should have paid more attention to what their kids were up to. There had to be all kinds of warning signs.

  But didn’t Zanis have a point? Weren’t Eric and Dylan victims, too?

  Of?

  Mental illness? Video games? Who knew? And let’s face it, we did sometimes look away from the bullying. Let it go when the athletes cut the cafeteria line. Gave the wiseguys in the hallway a dirty look but kept going. You’ve got to choose your battles, I used to tell myself. You’re a teacher, not a security guard. But maybe if…

  Bullshit. You said it yourself: kids get picked on all the time. But most of them don’t bring shotguns and propane bombs to school.

  I don’t know. Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe it all comes down to…what’d he call it? That guy on the plane? Sensitive dependence on initital conditions?

  Oh, this ought to be good. Go on.

  I don’t know. But maybe…if a butterfly’s wings can perturb the air and trigger a tornado half a world away, then maybe a spanking, or some small slight by a kindergarten teacher, or something a grandparent did could set something in motion. Travel through time and…

  And what?

  Trigger a massacre.

  So they’re off the hook then? Harris and Klebold and their parents? It was all just inevitable? It was chaos’s fault? That’s total bullshit. And if I remember right, didn’t that jerk on the plane claim that chaos bred life? Tell that to the parents of those kids they killed. Tell it to Dave Sanders’s widow. Hey, tell it to her up there! Because if she never gets over this, then they’ve taken her life, too. Haven’t they? So maybe, instead of making excuses for them, you should have grabbed a hammer and marched up Rebel Hill. Taken a few swings at those goddamned crosses yourself. It’s not like there isn’t precedent. Not like you haven’t swung a hammer before.

  It was a pipe wrench.

  So what? Same difference. Wouldn’t it have felt good to destroy those things? Wouldn’t it have felt like you were doing something?

  I got up from the table. Brought the newspaper into the study and put it on the pile. Newspapers, magazine articles, computer printouts: I wasn’t sure why I was saving everything. Maybe some day down the line, I’d go through it all and it would make sense. Maybe not. Maybe I should take it all outside and put a match to it. Watch all those pictures and words go up in flame.

  I went upstairs. She was taking a bath. Her Xanax was on her nightstand. I popped the lid, spilled the tablets onto my palm. Twenty-six. Don’t dog her, I reminded myself. Don’t mention the pills, or the Boost, or this Dr. Cid. Let her be in charge of it. Let her come around.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE SCHOOL RESUMED, I spent more hours awake than asleep. Although I’d been thousands of miles away on the morning of the murders, I could, during that long night, “see” the unfolding events as if, in my head, a camera had captured the morning like grainy surveillance video. Spliced together from articles and rumors, from TV reports and the things Maureen had said, it played soundlessly, over and over, and I tossed and turned and watched in dread….

  Eric’s gray Honda pulls in, comes to a stop in the juniors’ parking lot. Dylan’s old black BMW follows, proceeds to the west-side senior lot. Their cars flank the front and side entrances to the cafeteria. Their long black trench coats hide the shoulder straps they’ve cinched to themselves, their ammunition belts and holstered firearms. Each hefts a duffel bag that holds one of the propane bombs they’ve timed to explode during “A” lunch. I can read the sense of purpose on their faces. The wait is almost over. They’re about to answer the hundreds of injustices they’ve suffered in silence. People are going to be sorry they fucked with them…. Inside, Ma
ureen and Velvet leave the clinic, move down the corridor toward the commons, climb the stairs to the library…. Eric and Dylan wait at the top of the outside stairs. They’re ready. Psyched to shoot survivors as they flee the cafeteria explosions. But something’s wrong. Nothing explodes. No one’s fleeing. Eric stares at Rachel Scott and Richard Castaldo, eating their lunch on the grassy bank near the stairs. He raises his rifle…. In the caf, Dave Sanders directs kids away from the windows, herds them up the stairs to the library hallway…. In the upper west hallway, Brian Anderson runs toward the double glass exit doors. Patti Nielson is there, frowning at the two boys outside at the top of the stairs. They’re wearing costumes of some kind—one’s in a long black trench coat, the other is dressed like a militiaman. Fed up with these silly senior pranks, she moves to the door to tell them to knock it off. Eric sees Patti, smiles, takes aim. Glass and metal fly around her and Brian…. Outside, near the west entrance, Eric spots the patrol car, lights flashing, in the lot below. From inside the shattered doorway, he aims, fires. The officer fires back. Rachel Scott is dead, Richard Castaldo badly wounded. Danny Rohrbough lies facedown at the base of the stairs. Eric and Dylan enter the building….

  My “tape” stopped there. Rewound. Eric arrives in the parking lot. Dylan follows.…My mind wouldn’t let me see them shoot Dave Sanders, or the kids in the library, or Maureen, on her hands and knees, crawling inside that cabinet.

  In the morning, I filled the sink bowl with cold water. Stuck my face in. Came up for air. Bags under my bloodshot eyes, a twitch in my left eyelid: my face was wearing what a tough night it had been. Later, I shaved. Gelled my hair a little. My hands shook when I tried to get the Visine in. Visine tears dribbled down my cheeks instead of landing where they were supposed to. Maureen walked in, her hair askew. It was past noon, and she was still in her pajamas. She’d spent the morning watching some old black-and-white Bette Davis movie on TV. Staring at it, anyway. When I’d asked her what it was about, she couldn’t tell me.

  “Good luck,” she said.

  “Thanks. You sure you’re going to be okay here by yourself? Because you could always call—”

  “I’ll be okay,” she said.

  “I made you a sandwich. It’s in the fridge. Try to remember to call that shrink, okay?” I waited for a response that didn’t come. “Well,” I said. “At least while I’m at school, I won’t be hovering. Right?”

  She gave me a look: I have no idea what you mean.

  I FELT A LITTLE NAUSEOUS driving there. Lack of sleep didn’t help. And the fact that, at the red lights, that “tape” was still playing in my brain. The schedule felt way out of whack: hang around the house all morning, then get to work for one p.m. And parking was a pain. The Chatfield teachers were done at noon, but a lot of them had hung around. Several of us had to jump the berm and park on the lawn. And checking in with the security cop: that felt strange. Having him check through my briefcase, look back and forth between my ID badge and me. I couldn’t see why the faculty had to be treated like prospective bombers.

  My first class was my American lit sophomores—the honors kids. We were all feeling like strangers in a strange land, I think, but I couldn’t really address it while Mrs. Boyle was still in the room. Mrs. Boyle was the teacher whose classroom I was borrowing, and she was taking her sweet time getting her stuff together and leaving us alone. She was nice enough—had cleaned out one of her desk drawers for me and put up a bulletin board: “Welcome, Columbine. Chatfield stands with you.” Thirteen silver balloons thumbtacked to a blue background. But as far as blackboard space? She’d hogged over half of it and taken colored chalk and written, “Please SAVE! Please SAVE!” around the edges. So, you know, it didn’t leave a whole lot of space for me. And I like to sprawl a little when I’m using the board. When the kids get going during a discussion. You write down a little something of what each of them says. Legitimizes their comments, you know? Gets more kids participating. Now that I think of it, Mrs. Boyle looked like she’d been boiled: pink complexion, kind of sweaty. “Adios,” I said when she finally headed out the door. Her hand appeared over her shoulder and waved bye-bye. The sound of that door catch was music to my ears.

  I looked out at the kids. Smiled. Said it was good to see everybody. They were wearing their security badges, too—hung like pendants around their necks, per order of the superintendent’s office. Poor Lindsay Peek looked miserable—more gaunt than Maureen. She probably should have stayed home for the rest of the year, too. Had her work sent to her.

  “So,” I said. “Day one of our last eighteen. What do you guys want to do today?” No one responded. “You want to talk about it? Not talk about it?”

  “Not talk about it,” one of the boys in back said. It dawned on me that they’d taken seats in approximately the same places where they’d sat in my classroom.

  “Then shall we just get back to the book we were reading?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. What book were we reading?” Katrina said. A few kids laughed, several smiled. All year, she’d been the class smart-ass—never as funny as she thought she was. But I decided to play along.

  “What book?” I groaned. “Only Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck’s masterwork. How many of you have finished it?” About half the kids raised their hands. Several of the others reminded me that the police hadn’t let them retrieve their backpacks from the crime scene. Luzanne Bowers, a cop’s kid, said her dad had told her nobody was going to get their stuff back until July.

  “I finished it,” Travis said. “What was up with that ending? Her baby dies, so they put it in a box and send it down the river?”

  “Like Moses. Right, Mr. Quirk?” Luzanne asked. “One of those biblical illusions we were talking about before?”

  I nodded. “Allusions,” I said. I wrote the word on the board.

  “Yeah, but why did she breast-feed that starving dude?”

  “Duh-uh,” Katrina said. “Because he was starving.”

  “Yeah, but come on. That was gross.”

  “Not as gross as going to school at Chatfield,” Charissa said. Several kids mumbled in agreement.

  “Hey, it’s not all bad,” Malcolm said. “We get to sleep in in the morning. And has anyone checked out their vending machines? They got Yoo-Hoo!”

  Lynette said she hated that the media was there. “Can’t they just leave us alone on our first day back?” I suggested that their first day back was the story. Catalina Quinones said she saw Katie Couric out front—off-camera, eating a yogurt like a normal person. When she waved, Katie had waved back.

  “Big hairy deal,” Alex said.

  “Well, maybe it is for me, since I want to be a TV journalist,” Catalina retorted. Delbert said he’d seen “that CNN dude. One of the main ones. I forget his name.” Charissa complained that she couldn’t ever turn on TV anymore without seeing Mr. DeAngelis being interviewed by somebody. If we asked her, she said, he should remember he was a high school principal, not some big TV star. Plus, he had a big, fat pumpkin head. She just wanted to say that, too.

  “Can I say something?” Jenny Henderson asked. She looked upset. Looked over at the silver balloons on Mrs. Boyle’s bulletin board. “Lauren Townsend lived on my street? And I always…she was like a role model for me? Because she was so smart? But she was like really, really nice, too.” The rest of us looked at her. Waited. “That’s all I wanted to say. Just that Lauren was an awesome person.”

  “Thanks, Jen,” I said.

  Kyle Velasquez had rocked, too, Charlie told us. He and Kyle had bet ten dollars on the Super Bowl in January and Kyle had won. They’d gone to DQ and Charlie had paid off his bet in Blizzards. “Dude, trust me,” Charlie told us. “That dude could eat ice cream!”

  Melanie said she’d been in the lunch line once and didn’t have enough money. “And the cafeteria lady had already rung me up and she was all like, ‘Well, what did you take that for if you can’t pay for it?’ And then this kid behind me? He tapped me on the shoulder and
handed me a dollar. He didn’t even know me or anything. I didn’t know his name. And then? After everything happened?…It was that kid, Danny Mauser.”

  I nodded. Smiled. “Anyone else?”

  Delbert’s hand went up. “How’s Mrs. Quirk?”

  The question rattled me. I felt my face redden.

  “How is she? She’s fine. Why?”

  “She was in the library. Right?”

  Involuntarily, I looked over at Lindsay. She was staring straight ahead. Chewing on her hair. I looked back at Delbert. “She was, yes,” I said. “She’s okay, though. She’ll be back next year.”

  “My friend Eli was in the library,” Annie said. “He’s changing schools.” I saw four or five kids sneak peeks at Lindsay. From the looks of it, some of them knew where she’d been, some didn’t.

  Clemente Quinones’s hand shot into the air. It surprised me; unlike his sister, he rarely spoke in class. “In the book?” he said. “When Rose of Sharon bares her breast? Isn’t that from the Bible, too?”

  “No, it’s from Playboy,” Katrina quipped.

  I gave her a look, but Clemente ignored her. “Isn’t it like ‘the milk of human kindness’ or whatever?” he said.

  “Well, that phrase is from Shakespeare,” I said. “Macbeth. You guys will read it next year. But you’re right, Clemente. That’s exactly what Rose of Sharon is offering the starving man. Think about it. Her husband’s ditched her, her baby’s just died. But she unbuttons her dress and offers a stranger the milk of human kindness. The gift of hope.”

  On the other side of the room, Lindsay Peek burst into tears.

  It was Jesse who went to her. Put her arm around her. Lindsay clung to her like she was drowning. She was shaking violently. Making a gurgling sound.

  “Linds?” I said. “Do you need a pass to the nurse?” She didn’t answer.