The Hour I First Believed

by Wally Lamb

  Mo reminded me that she had asked about Moses, not Janis.

  “Oh,” I said. “Right. Well, let’s see. Says he dropped out of high school to work on a shrimp boat. Smart guy, though. He knows carpentry, electrical, plumbing. Says he started sculpting about four or five years ago. On the side at first, but then he caught a break when Frommer’s New Orleans listed his studio in its ‘Shopping A to Z’ chapter. Says he made ‘beaucoup bucks’ in 2004 and the first half of 2005. But of course, that’s over now. When they evacuated, he took his molds and equipment, but none of his stock. Says he lost a couple hundred sculptures.”

  Mo looked impatient. “I meant, what does he look like? If these people are living in my home, I’d at least like to be able to picture them.”

  Our home, I thought. My family’s home. The one we might lose in a lawsuit because of you. “Tall,” I said. “Burly. Black hair, goatee.” I described Moze’s African facial features and his pale blue eyes. “Croatian on his father’s side, he says. Haitian Creole on his mother’s. Rhymes, now that I think of it.”

  “What?”

  “Haitian, Croatian.”

  Mo didn’t return my smile. “So she’s pretty?”

  Because I knew better than to say so, I shrugged. “More like…perky. I feel bad for them, you know? All they took with them when they left were…What is it, Maureen? Something bothering you?”

  She gave me one of those never-mind shakes of the head.

  “Is it about them staying at the house? Because as soon as they get their bearings—”

  She shook her head. “There’s a new second-shift CO in our unit,” she said. “A transfer. Officer Sibley.”

  “Yeah? He harassing you or something?” I could feel my body clench.

  She said no, that Sibley was one of the more reasonable ones. “It’s not rational. It’s just that…he reminds me of…”

  “Which one?”

  “Harris.” I nodded. Waited. “I had a flashback yesterday. It’s okay, though. It only lasted a minute. Hey, I’m in prison. I’m supposed to suffer.”

  I reached across the table and took her hands in mine. “You taking your meds?” She said they’d told her in Med Line that they couldn’t dispense any more of her antianxiety medication until Woody okayed it. “Well, that’s not a problem, is it? He knows your history. If you’re having flashbacks, then—”

  “The earliest appointment I could get is October,” she said.

  “That’s unacceptable. Did you explain it was an emergency?”

  It wasn’t an emergency, she said. “Sibley doesn’t even really look that much like him. It’s just that he’s short and wiry and…”

  “And what?”

  “The way he smiles. He was smiling that day, Caelum. They both were. Like it was all a big joke.” She closed her eyes and shuddered.

  “Maureen, look at me,” I said. I squeezed her hands and spoke slowly, deliberately. “Rational or not, the fear is real. Right?”

  She looked at me in a way I couldn’t read.

  “So we need to do something about it. Don’t we?”

  She just sat there, staring through me.

  “So I’m going to call Woody and let him know what’s going on. Insist that he see you, or at least write you a prescription. And in the meantime—”

  She shook her head emphatically. “Don’t call. I’ll handle it. I’ll speak to my unit manager.”

  “Will you? Because I don’t like hearing this ‘I’m in prison, I’m supposed to suffer’ stuff. I don’t want you to hit the skids in here.”

  “Can we please just change the subject?” she said.

  “Mo, I just want to make sure—”

  The CO’s microphone clicked on. Tap, tap, tap through the amp sitting on that elevated desk of hers. “Table D, seat three. Handholding during visits is not permitted.” I looked up at the reprimanding officer: a black woman with auburn dreadlocks, red lipstick, red talons like Edward-fuckin’-Scissorhands. I held her gaze for maybe two or three seconds longer than I should have, then released Maureen’s hands and raised my own, palms up. I was suddenly aware of how quiet the room had gotten, all the jibber-jabberers having stopped talking to stare at the wicked handholders, the visiting-room criminals.

  Mo’s face was flushed. Her hands were trembling. “What?” I said.

  “Nothing. It’s just that they’re going to hassle me now. After the visit, when they strip-search me…. Or maybe they won’t. Never mind. Tell me more about these Micks.”

  “What do you want to know?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Anything. What’s she getting her Ph.D. in?”

  “I told you,” I said.

  “Tell me again.”

  “Women’s studies.”

  chapter nineteen

  Friday morning September 17, 1886

  My Dear Lillian,

  Please excuse my hideous penmanship today. I am writing these words aboard the early train bound for Hartford from the Union depot. We were to have traveled from New Haven yesterday and spent last night at the home of Grandmother’s friend from the War, Reverend Twichell. Then, the deluge! Thiseavenly torrents morning there are dark clouds and muddy roads but no more H. The newspaper reports that this day’s ceremony will proceed, rain or shine, but that the parade may be sacrificed. However, on this matter, I have sanguine spirits and feel the sun will shine and the marchers will march.

  Sister, we travel with the hordes this matin! All seats are taken (two by Grandmother and me) and fifty or more passengers stand shoulder to shoulder in the aisle. Most are men, and so there is jostling, coarse talk, hearty laughter, and huffing and puffing. Tobacco smoke hangs so thick in the air that, a moment ago, the conductor, calling for tickets, emerged from the fog like the ghost of Hamlet’s father!

  Like Grandmother and me, most of our fellow sojourners appear bound for today’s dedication of the Memorial Arch. Many former soldiers and Naval veterans are aboard, dressed in the uniforms they wore more than twenty years ago. A few of these aged warriors cut a dashing figure, but most have frost in their beards and bellies that strain the buttons of their jackets. There is a one-legged veteran across the aisle and down from us and two others whose sleeves hang empty. At the New Haven station, I saw a darkie with a shadowy hole where an eye should have been. “I wish that man had thought of others and worn a patch,” I remarked, innocently enough, but Her Majesty pounced and pontificated. “If he was good enough to sacrifice an eye to help preserve the Union, then I should think you might be generous enough to sacrifice a bit of comfort to see him, or else look away.” Honestly, Lil, I find the Old Girl’s righteousness so very dreary.

  When we boarded, Grandmother said she was amused to think that some of the veterans might be wearing the very uniforms sewn by the Ladies Soldiers’ Relief Society. I asked her what that organization might be and was surprised by the answer. After the defeat at Fort Sumter, it seems, our grandmère directed two hundred women from New London and Three Rivers Junction in the making of uniforms, bandages, and compresses for the First Connecticut company. I was well aware of her battlefield nursing, her letter-writing to the mothers of wounded soldiers, and her coaxing of the injured back to health with nourishing beef teas and wine jellies. I had not, however, heard about this earlier shepherding of seamstresses and bandage-makers for the good of the Union. She is full of surprises, our grandam!

  As ever, dear Sis, I struggle with two minds about Grandmother. Here, seated beside me, is the esteemed Elizabeth Hutchinson Popper, brave abolitionist, valiant battlefield nurse, and tireless champion of orphans and fallen women. But here also is the cold woman who has yet to remember her granddaughter’s fifteenth birthday, now eleven days past. Madame Buzon and the girls at the school remembered, gifting me with a lovely cut glass cologne bottle, a Chinese box, a pair of five-button scallop-top kid gloves, and a volume of poems by Christina Rossetti. My flesh and blood relation, however, has forgotten me. Had Lizzie Popper been in charge during the time o
f the Biblical flood, she might well have led all of God’s creatures onto the ark, two by two, then closed the door against the torrent and floated away, having forgotten her poor granddaughter at the pier!

  Overheard just now amongst the veterans: If the rain holds off and the parade proceeds as planned, two guns will be fired at the east end of Bushnell Park. That will be the signal for the bands and regiments to assemble. On the matter of marching, what will be will be. I suppose I can most certainly live without a parade. Our dinner engagement for this evening is a different matter. If that were snatched away, I should probably die from disappointment! I am most curious to see the Clemens manse, which I am having trouble imagining. Reverend Twichell has described the house to Grandmother as being “one third riverboat, one third cathedral, and one third cuckoo clock.” This I shall have to see for myself.

  Mr. Twichell says that Mr. and Mrs. Clemens’s eldest daughter, Susy, will dine with us, as will his own daughter, Harmony. This was Mrs. Clemens’s idea, says Mr. Twichell, as she imagined I should feel more at home with dinner companions closer to my own age. It was a most thoughtful consideration. To think, Sister, in twelve hours I shall be at table in a house next door to greatness. Perhaps I will even get a glimpse of Greatness Herself as she strolls past a window! Grandmère says I mustn’t go on and on about Mrs. Stowe tonight in the presence of Mr. Clemens, who is also a writer of some note. To be sure, Mark Twain’s books are amusing, but Mrs. Stowe’s works are sublime.

  Do you love reading, Lillian? Which authors play the strings of your heart? Here are my favorite authors and poets at present: Shakespeare, Mrs. Stowe, Robert Browning, and Christina Rossetti. Grandmother disapproves of the last name on my list. Elizabeth Popper’s sympathies for darkies and fallen women most certainly do not extend to mystical poets or tellers of fairie stories. Last night, she picked up my book of Miss Rossetti’s poems and examined it like a damning piece of evidence. “That Buzon woman will turn you into a Papist before she’s through with you,” she mumbled. I quickly informed Grandmère that Christina Rossetti is an Anglican, not a Catholic, but, of course, no apology was offered. Of course, she never misses a chance to disparage Madame Buzon and the finishing school. It is so tedious to have to hear this steady stream of remarks, and all because my tuition is paid for by the mysterious Miss Urso. This reminds me—I owe my benefactress my yearly letter of appreciative thanks. Some day I shall meet in person this famous traveling violinist, and when I do I shall plague her with questions about our mère et père. She knew them both.

  Sister, I do find Christina Rossetti’s verse quite extraordinary. Her “Goblin Market” is my particular favorite. In this mysterious poem, two sisters are tempted and must resist the ripe and luscious melons, gooseberries, peaches, and figs of a band of goblin fruitmongers. “Come buy! Come buy!” they call, and the food looks and smells as delectable as the apple offered to Eve in the Garden. One sister forbears; the other succumbs, selling a lock of her golden hair for a taste of the goblins’ wicked harvest. She eats and falls into depravity. It is the stronger sister who must save her by confronting the demon peddlers, resisting temptation, and securing the antidote. I have committed portions of the poem to memory and here are the final lines:

  For there is no friend like a sister

  In calm or stormy weather;

  To cheer one on the tedious way,

  To fetch one if one goes astray,

  To lift one if one totters down,

  To strengthen whilst one stands.

  Would t strength for you, Lil—that sister to fetch you from your miserable fate!

  Oh, and now I must tell you about a rude young man aboard this train—a tall, strapping fellow of perhaps twenty-eight or -nine who stands facing me in the crowded aisle. He has a swarthy complexion and a prominent nose and is wearing a shabby coat with frayed sleeves and a missing button. He looks foreign-born to me, but from where he originates I could not say. Wherever it is, they must not teach common courtesy. Each time I look up from this page, I catch his eyes leaving me. It is most vexing. Grandmother has her packet of letters from Reverend Twichell in her lap and has begun dozing in the midst of rereading them. If I could do so without waking her, I would give this lout some sharp words and do not think I would not. Look elsewhere, please, Mister Tatty Suit!

  Overheard just now: a quarrel between husband and wife. Their seats are directly behind ours. It is quite dreadful to listen to, but also quite impossible not to listen. He accuses her of sloth, slovenliness, and discombobulation; she murmurs limp objections and teary excuses. “Go to grass, then, why don’t you!” he has just shouted, in a sharp voice for all to hear. She makes no answer except a whimper. I have a mind to stand, turn and face this brute, and inform him that if his better half were indeed dead and buried, at least her ears would fill with dirt and she would no longer have to listen to the likes of him!

  And now Grandmother has begun to snore, spilling Mr. Twichell’s letters from her lap. I suppose I should wake her for propriety’s sake, but who but I on this noisy train can hear her?

  Of course, I remain furious that Grandmother is not to be seated today on the dignitaries’ platform and lauded for her good works during the War as Reverend Twichell had earlier promised would be the case. Colonel Bissell’s complaint that it would “dilute” the dedication ceremony to have a woman on the platform alongside senators, judges, and distinguished military heroes is most infuriating. I should like to know who brought this Bissell into the world if not a woman!

  Reverend Twichell agrees that this is a most grievous slight. The poor man has made numerous efforts to reverse the dedication committee’s decision, but ultimately he is bound by the wishes of the majority. Grandmother dismisses the fuss, of course. She may have broken with the Society of Friends years ago, but she has retained her Quaker modesty along with her Quaker speech and dress. She has written Mr. Twichell that she is content to stand in the shadows rather than bask in the sun. Better, says she, to procure her precious letters of support from these influential men than to sit amongst them and be glorified with no useful outcome. Mr. Twichell wrote back that if anyone might persuade these movers and shakers to consider the plight of our state’s fallen women, it is she. Grandmother chuckled when she read his words to me: “Whosoever wishes to spur Connecticut’s lawmakers to action for their cause would do well to save themselves the trip to Hartford and send the little Quaker lady in their stead.”

  To be sure, Sister, I do not dispute that the “little Quaker lady” is a woman of numerous achievements. Still, she can at times be a most irksome grandmother and traveling companion. Here is a fine and dandy example. At the Union depot before we boarded, I picked up a discarded newspaper from the bench beside me and happened to turn first to the advertisements. I saw that the Bee Hive department store was offering, free of charge to every purchaser, a beautiful colored engraving of the new Memorial Arch. The notice promised that those Bee Hive shoppers who secured one would possess “not a worthless picture, but one worthy of a place upon the walls of any household.” I passed the paper to Madame and remarked that I should like one of those pictures as a souvenir of the day. She eyed the page suspiciously and then asked in an accusing voice if I was drawn to the engraving of the arch or to the black Ottoman silks and indigo dress velvets on sale at the Bee Hive. (If Grandmother had her wish, I would mimic her and wear the Quaker cap and shawl and speak in “thees” and “thous,” I suppose.) Rather than defend myself, or suggest that a few yards of velvet might make a suitable birthday gift for a granddaughter who had been forgotten, I changed the subject.

  “I see from the newspaper that thirty thousand visitors are expected in Hartford today,” I stated. “And that these will be joined by another thirty thousand city residents along the parade route if weather permits. I have never seen such a throng as sixty thousand.”

  A drop in the bucket,” she snapped. “In the war, six hundred thousand fell—ten times that many.”

  �
��Mon dieu, Grandmère!” I replied, more to plague her than to practice my French. (She says my French-speaking makes me sound like a Catholic.) Grandmother has suffered dyspepsia and insomnia these past few days, and so I have been made to suffer her dismissals and criticisms. Did you know, Lillian, that, according to Grandmère, I am too affected, too hasty to pass judgment on others, too covetous, and “too modern for my petticoats”? This latter charge was launched in response to my simple voicing of a desire to try bicyle-riding. “Thou had best travel the road of the true woman and not the modern one,” she advised. “Bicycle-riding can damage thy reproductive capacity.” I promptly informed her that I wanted neither husband nor babes, a statement to which her only answer was a frown and a shaking of her head. This proves, dear Sis, that despite her many virtues, the old girl is a hypocrite. Was it not she who went on and on about Mrs. Sedgewick’s “splendid” novel, Married or Single? The story advances the idea—drearily, in my view—that a woman might be as happy in one state as the other. I disagree. Happy to be single, miserable to be married, if you should ask me!

  And here he goes again, the bad-mannered lout with the jumping eyes. I have caught him, too, peeking at my words to you, which he is trying to read upside down. Have I mentioned, Lil, that Sir Wandering Eye has a mass of unruly black hair which he has tried (unsuccessfully) to tame with a pound or more of pomade? That large head of his smells so wretchedly sweet that if I closed my eyes, I should think I was lying in an apple orchard amidst the rotting drops. Perhaps he would have better luck with axle grease! And now, the impudent fellow stares down at this page. Well, I shall fix him then.

  SIR, YOU ARE RUDE BEYOND ALL REASON. KINDLY PLACE YOUR EYES ELSEWHERE OR I SHALL BE FORCED TO COMPLAIN TO THE CONDUCTOR!