The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin'

by Lamb, Wally

  She was soft-spoken and plump—one of those sixty-something women with the dyed black hair, the colorful suits and scarves. Mexican, maybe? Puerto Rican? She poured us each a paper cone of water from her water cooler and invited Mo into the inner sanctum.

  The walls of her waiting room were decorated with framed color photographs—seascapes, most of them, pencil-signed by an Edgardo Cid. Her husband, I figured. Ten minutes after they’d disappeared, Dr. Cid reappeared at the doorway. “Mr. Quirk?”

  “Caelum,” I said.

  “So noted. Maureen is feeling anxious. She’d like it if you could join us.”

  “Sure,” I said, springing like a jack-in-the-box from my chair. “Whatever she needs.” My anger about the elevators had dissipated like fog.

  Mo was trembling badly. I sat beside her on a sea-green couch and took her hand, stroked the back of it. “Sorry I was a jerk before,” I murmured.

  “You were frustrated,” she said. “Hey, I’m frustrating.”

  Dr. Cid waited for an opening. “Maureen was just sharing with me that, in addition to the fear that’s always with her, and the sadness about the children, she wrestles with constant anger, too.”

  I nodded. Waited.

  Mo turned to me. “I have to tell you something. Yesterday? When I let the dogs back in? Chet had been digging, and he tracked mud all over the house. And I got so mad, I grabbed the yardstick and … started beating him. I couldn’t stop. Then the yardstick broke, and I beat him some more with the broken piece. And he snapped at me. Bared his teeth.”

  I told Dr. Cid it was completely out of character—that Maureen was the type who shooed flies out the window rather than use the fly swatter.

  Dr. Cid asked Mo if she could identify the source of her anger.

  Me, I thought. She’s always mad at me.

  “Them.”

  “The murderers?”

  “They stole my life.” She glanced at me. “Our lives.” I said what I’d been saying for three weeks: that it was temporary. That it took time. That she was going to get her bearings.

  “Will I, Caelum? And how do you know that? Did you gaze into your crystal ball?” The doctor looked back and forth between us.

  “That’s new, too,” I said. “I used to be the smart-ass.”

  Dr. Cid offered me a smile. “Sarcasm is a suit of armor,” she said. She asked Maureen if she would please describe a typical day.

  “A ‘typical’ day?”

  “Since the trauma, I mean. Walk me through it. You wake up in the morning and …?”

  “And I lie there. Not wanting to get out of bed.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to face whatever’s going to clobber me. A flashback, or a memory, or some horrible new thing about it in the newspaper. And then … and then I tell myself, ‘Okay, maybe today’s the day you’re going to get up, get dressed, and not let it overwhelm you. Maybe today’s the day you start moving past it.’”

  It was the first I’d heard of these pep talks. “That’s good, Mo,” I said. “See? You’re beginning to fight it.”

  Dr. Cid asked if she could interject. “It sounds to me, Maureen, that even before your feet touch the floor, you’re putting enormous pressure on yourself. Setting yourself up for failure, I think, because trauma is not really something you can wish away with ‘maybes.’ You have to learn how to manage it. Develop coping strategies you can use when these difficult moments present themselves. That’s how you’re going to heal, Maureen. But please, go on. What happens when you get out of bed?”

  Maureen sighed. “I get up. Go into the bathroom. And I’ll be washing my face, or brushing my teeth and … I’ll start remembering things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Gunfire. Breaking glass.”

  “So it’s mostly sounds you remember?”

  “Smells, too,” I said. “The other day? The bottom of one of our garbage barrels had rotted out? So I said, ‘Come on. Let’s drive over to Home Depot, get another barrel.’ And she didn’t want to go, but I was like, ‘Just take a ride with me. You can’t stay cooped up in here.’ And so we went. And while we were looking for the garbage barrels, we passed the lumber section. And the smell of the lumber, the raw wood …”

  “It smelled like the inside of the cabinet,” she said.

  “She got nauseous. Dizzy.”

  “And for the rest of the day, I had a bad headache. And I felt so …”

  “Anxious?”

  Mo shook her head. “Defeated. I mean, Home Depot has nothing to do with what I went through, but it’s like … everything’s a landmine field. Which is why I don’t want to leave the house.”

  “But there are trip wires there, too,” I said.

  Dr. Cid asked Mo to describe some of the other auditory memories that made her feel defeated.

  She closed her eyes. I watched her hands dance and fidget in her lap. “Their laughing and whooping while they were shooting them…. The way the kids were wailing. Begging for their lives.” She was struggling. Being so brave. “And the fire alarm. It just kept screaming, you know? All the time I was hiding inside the … I remember thinking at one point, well, if they find me and kill me, I won’t have to hear that alarm anymore.”

  We sat there in silence, the three of us.

  It was Dr. Cid who finally spoke. “Maureen, when you remember these terrible sounds, what effect does it have on you?”

  “It’s like … there’s this wave coming toward me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. And then it reaches me, crashes over me and … and I’m done for another day. I just give up. Give in to it. Because how do you stop a wave?”

  “You don’t,” Dr. Cid said. “And you’re wise to recognize your powerlessness to do so. But what you can do is learn how to negotiate this wave. Work within the context of its inevitability.” When she was a little girl living in Cuba, she said, her older brothers taught her how to manage the surf. She learned that, as a wave approached, she needed, first of all, to calculate whether it was going to break over her, or pass by her and then crest. If the latter was the case, she could spring upward and bob above the swell. Or, she could make her body rigid and lean into the curl. Ride the wave in to the shore, and then stand, adjust her swimsuit, and return again to deeper water. But if the wave was about to break against her, she said, the best plan was to face it head-on. Take a gulp of air and stick her head right into it. Better that than to be battered by it, lifted off her feet and sent tumbling and choking on sea water.

  Maureen rolled her eyes. “Well, if I ever go swimming in Cuba, I guess I’ll know what to do.”

  “Mo, stop it,” I said. “She means—”

  But Dr. Cid put her hand up like a traffic cop. “Maureen’s an intelligent woman,” she said. “I think she understands the metaphor. And if she needs to resist it, that’s okay, too.”

  We had been booked for a double session, and near the end of those hundred minutes, Dr. Cid shared her conclusions with us. Maureen’s symptoms indicated that she was certainly suffering from acute-phase posttraumatic stress disorder. If they were to continue working together, her goal would be to help Maureen manage her stressors so that she could avoid advancing to chronic PTSD. “This needn’t be a life sentence,” she said. “For either of you.”

  I asked her to describe what Mo’s treatment would be like.

  “A mix,” she said. “Talk therapy, instruction in relaxation techniques, medication. And perhaps, down the line, a session or two with an Ericksonian hypnotherapist.”

  Maureen shook her head emphatically. “I am not having anyone hypnotize me.”

  “So noted,” Dr. Cid said. “But that’s a common misconception about hypnosis: that someone else does it to you. In actuality, all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. Now let’s talk about medication.”

  I was blunt. Told the doctor I thought Mo was taking too much Xanax.

  “But they help me,” Mo insisted. She was on the verge of tears.

  �
�In the short run, yes,” Dr. Cid said. “Because numbness is preferable to confronting the fear, and the anger, and the ferocious memories. But in the long run, they could do quite a lot of harm. Numbness will arrest your ability to get past your illness to the other side. The truth is, Maureen, you’ve been misprescribed. Xanax can be useful in treating chronic sufferes of PTSD. But at this stage, one of the SSRIs would be a much better choice for you.”

  Maureen crossed her arms over her chest and sighed in disgust. I asked the doctor what SSRIs were.

  “Selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it? They’re in the family of antidepressants—not magic pills, certainly, but they should help to quell Maureen’s flashbacks, and make her memories less debilitating. That ‘wave’ will most likely shrink to a less daunting size. And, unlike the Xanax she’s taking, these medications are nonaddictive.” She turned to Mo. “Maureen? I’d like to start you on Zoloft. Twenty-five milligrams a day for the first week, fifty for the second. We can go up to two hundred a day if we need to, but I’d prefer to err on the side of caution for now. You’ll need to be patient, though. This medication will take a while to build up in your system, so you won’t feel the benefits immediately. Understand?”

  Mo scowled, said nothing.

  “When will it kick in?” I asked.

  “Two to three weeks, and she’ll start feeling the benefits. Oh, and about the police investigation? Going back into the school and getting inside that cabinet? Absolutely not. It may be helpful to them, but it could be very harmful to Maureen. It could very likely retraumatize her. Whether or not Maureen chooses to work with me, I’ll be happy to write a letter to that effect, based on our conversation today. Just call the office tomorrow and leave me a name and address so I’ll know where to send it.”

  I wrote her a check; she handed me a receipt. She said the insurance companies were sometimes reluctant to reimburse for PTSD, but that given the high profile of the Columbine shootings, she imagined it would not be a problem. She reached behind her and patted her desktop until her hand located her appointment book. “Shall we schedule our next session then, or would you rather go home and talk it over?”

  Simultaneously, Mo said, “Talk it over,” and I said, “Schedule it.”

  We left with the Zoloft prescription and instructions on how to wean her off the Xanax. Descending the seven flights of stairs to the lobby, we said nothing to each other. We were silent, too, in the parking garage, and in the line of traffic that inched toward the highway entrance ramp. It wasn’t until I’d accelerated to sixty-five or seventy, that I turned to her. “I feel hopeful,” I said. “She really knows her stuff.”

  “She’s a quack,” Maureen said.

  “No, she’s not. Why do you say that?”

  “That whole thing about riding the waves in Cuba,” she said. “I felt like saying, ‘What about undertow, you stupid idiot? What if a wave sucks you under? ’ … And hypnosis. Why not voodoo? Maybe I could chant some spells and drink chicken blood.”

  “Uh-uh,” I said. “You’re way off on this.”

  “Why? Because I’m crazy?”

  “No one’s saying you’re crazy, Maureen.”

  “That’s grounds for a divorce, right? When your wife’s insane.”

  The hope I’d been feeling drained out of me like engine oil. I let a mile or two go by. “What’s this really about?” I said. “The fact that she’s taking you off the Xanax?”

  “Fuck you, Caleum,” she said. “Fuck … you.”

  From: studlysicilian@snet.net

  To: caelumq@aol.com

  Sent: Monday, May 14, 1999

  Subject: That cat is PSYCO!!!

  QUIRKY: The good news is that i’m not going to sue you. The bad news is that i could. First i went over and got the keys from Ullises. He was crying, shaking like a leaf and going on and on about how you trusted him and he let you down, i didn’t know what to say so i said he could stop by the bakery and we’d give him coffee on the house whenevr he wanted it. Then i went over to your aunts to get the cat. My afternoon counter girl Yvette—you met her, the freaky-lookin one with the nice boobies (36-Ds I’d guesstimate). Her and her mother rescue cats. They already got like 12 of them but she said she’d take it. So i go out to your aunt’s and first of all i can’t find the stupid cat. Then i find it but i can’t catch it. Then finally i corner it out on that closed-in porch where all the file cabinets are. Grab the thing by the scruff of the neck and it starts fightin back like Mike Tyson. Scratched me up bad. Then i’m driving over to Yvettes trailer park and the cats howling so loud i can’t even hear myself think. So we stop at a light and it finally shuts up and so i go Nice kitty. And the fucker takes a leap, sinks all 4s into my leg and bites me on the knee. When we get there, Yvette’s mother goes Oh, poor thing was just scared, and i’m thinking here I am practically having to go to the emergency room and that cat’s the poor thing??! So you owe me bigtime Quirky. And now at the bakery they keep putting that Ted Nugent song YOU GIVE ME CAT SCRATCH FEVER on the tape player and i go ha ha very funny, keep it up and I’ll fire all your asses. But anyway Lollys cat is taken care of and I got the keys. Anything else you need?

  Alph

  The kids and I limped through the rest of the school year. I didn’t give exams. And because my grade book was still locked up at Columbine, I had them write down the grades they thought they deserved, and those were pretty much the grades I gave them. (Well, I adjusted for inflation in the case of three or four optimists.) Lindsay Peek never returned after that first day. Rather than give her an incomplete, I gave her a B and let it go at that. On the last day, after the kids left, I filled a couple of cardboard cartons with my stuff. Grabbed Mrs. Boyle’s bottle of Fantastik and cleaned all her desktops for her. I’d gotten her a box of chocolates, too. Left them on her desk, with a note thanking her for sharing her space with me. She’d been a pain in the ass about leaving promptly, but she was a nice lady. Baked cookies for the kids and me. Twice.

  Graduation at the Amphitheater was a tearjerker—and, of course, a media event. No avoiding it. Isaiah Shoels’s family didn’t go to the ceremony, but the Townsends were there. Lauren’s older brothers and sisters accepted her diploma. Dylan and Eric would have graduated, too, but there was no mention of them. I choked up when the kids who’d been injured received their diplomas: Jeanna Park with her arm in a sling that matched her graduation gown, Lisa Kreutz in her wheelchair. Val Schnurr had taken nine bullets, but you’d have never guessed it from her triumphant walk across that stage.

  It was customary for a lot of the Columbine faculty to go out together after graduation—go to a bar and toast the school year just ended and the beginning of summer vacation. But that night, no one even mentioned going out. We all just got in our cars and went home.

  The downstairs lights were off, the dogs wandering around outside like orphans. I figured she must have forgotten they were still out when she went to bed. The downstairs TV was on, and so was one of the burners on the stove—a blue ring of flame heating nothing. The message machine was blinking.

  Beep. “Hello? Mr. Quirk? This is Ulysses Pappinikou calling. I got your number from the guy at the bakery. I just wanted to tell ya that if you can find it in your heart to—”

  I hit “skip.” Didn’t have the strength.

  Beep. “Hi, there! This is Cyndi Pixley from Century Twenty-One returning Maureen Quirk’s call? Sure, I’d love to come out there and do a walk-through and an appraisal. You just call me tomorrow, and we’ll set up a time. And thanks! Can’t wait to meet you!” I recognized the name—Cyndi Pixley’s perky face showed up every week in the real estate circular. Mo had called her?

  Beep. “Hi, Ma. It’s Velvet. Just thought I’d call and see how you were doin’. I’m in Louisiana. This town called Slidell. It’s near New Orleans. I got a job cleaning rooms at this skeezy motel. It’s—what? Wait a second, Mom, okay? … KEITH, PEACE OUT! I’M ON THE FUCKIN’ PHONE! … What? … Okay. Okay, I�
�m sorry. I’m sorry, Keith. Hey, Ma? I gotta go.”

  Beep.

  Well, whoever Keith was, he sounded like a creep. I went upstairs. She was in the bathroom, in her pajamas. She was studying her face in the mirror—opening and closing her mouth like a fish.

  “Hey,” I said.

  The prescription vial she’d been holding went flying. Pills rolled everywhere. “Jesus Christ! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

  “I wasn’t sneaking.”

  “My nerves aren’t bad enough, Caelum? Is that it? You have to—”

  “Mo, come on. I—”

  “Asshole!” She was on her knees, snatching up the pills she’d spilled. I bent to help her. “No!” she said. “I’ll get them! Just get out!”

  But I was already holding a Xanax between my thumb and index finger. “You’re not supposed to be taking these anymore,” I said. I grabbed her wrist and pried her fingers apart. When the vial dropped from her hand, I snatched it before she could. Read the label. “Who’s Dr. Radwill?” I said.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, SHE WAS sullen—and pissed as hell that I’d flushed her new supply down the toilet.

  “You have no idea what this is like for me,” she said.

  “No, Maureen, I guess I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stand aside and let you develop a drug addiction.”

  She told me I could go to hell.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “And what’s this Cyndi Pixley stuff?”