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

  Which is not to say there’s trouble between us in bed. We’re still okay in that department, Joy and me. We’re fine. It’s not off the chart the way it was at first in those Ramadas and Best Westerns, but it’s still pretty damn satisfactory. It’s work sometimes, though. On my part. It’s probably stress—my brother and the business and shit. Joy’s always telling me to get down to the club and work out more. She’s always trying to get me to get a massage from her buddy, the Duchess. “He’s a genius,” she told me once. “His fingers, his rhythm—you can feel him actually drawing the tension out of you.”

  “That’s just what I’m afraid of,” I said.

  “Stop it,” she said. “You’re just being homophobic.”

  “Yeah, well,” I told her, “whatever.” That time we went over to their house for dinner? Thad and Aaron’s house? . . . Aaron’s somewhere around my age. They live over on Skyview Terrace in one of those glass-walled contemporaries that look out onto the river. Land of the big bucks out there, folks; land of the high-altitude tax brackets. Skyview Terrace used to be part of the old mill complex, and before that, it was part of the Wequonnoc reservation lands. We used to fish out there sometimes before they developed it—Leo and me, Thomas and me. You should see the views of the river, especially in early June when everything’s just come out—the leaves on the trees and the mountain laurel. You look out there and you can almost believe in God.

  Aaron’s an architect. He’s the one with the Porsche and the deed to the house. On the way over there that night, we had to stop at two package stores before we found this twenty-four-dollar bottle of special wine that Thad said would go perfectly with what he was making: scallops in cream sauce with those stupid duchess potatoes. The theory was that Aaron and I were supposed to have something in common because of our age and because we were both “in the building industry.” I had to laugh at that one. An architect and a housepainter are both in the building industry the same way Roger Clemens and the guy who sells the Fenway franks are both part of the Red Sox organization. That dinner lasted forever. I sat there all night, drinking Danish beer and listening to Aaron talk about jazz fusion and mutual funds. Trying to be cool about all this gay art they had hanging up all over the place. Joy and Thad spent the whole night gossiping about people they knew from work. Joy says Thad wants to phase out his massage therapy and get into the catering business. Aaron will put up the money if it’s what he really wants to do, Joy says, but first Thad has to learn the business: marketing and management courses, not just the fun stuff like mixology. Thad told Joy that when he opens his business, he wants her to be his bartender. Joy says she’s never had a girlfriend she could trust as much as she trusts Thad. She says she can tell him things she can’t even tell me. Which is sort of scary, because she tells me plenty. Miss Openness. Miss Finger Fucks Herself on Interstate I-84 and Eats Guys’ Fingernails.

  Joy has this idea that, once she gets all her debts paid off, we can start saving and buy a house and get married. Live in one of those places in the real estate books. “I’m fifteen years older than you,” I told her one time. “I stopped believing in somewhere-over-the-rainbow a long time ago. I’m damaged goods.”

  “I’m damaged goods, too!” she said, cheerfully, like it was some happy coincidence—me and her discovering we had the same birthday or something. . . .

  I changed my mind, did the dishes after all. Put away the pans. Passive-aggressive: what’s the point?

  Joy keeps her distance from Thomas; she’s afraid of him, I know that much. She was afraid of him before he cut off his hand—right from the beginning. When she first moved in with me, I used to bring him over to the house on Sunday afternoons. Dessa and I had always done that, and then, after the divorce, I’d kept it up. It was a pattern, a ritual. Joy didn’t say anything about it one way or the other for a while. She was on her best behavior. Then one Sunday morning—we’d been together for about six months by then—she asked me out of the clear blue not to go get him.

  “But he always comes over on Sunday,” I said. “He expects me.”

  “Well, I just thought it would be nice for once to spend the whole Sunday alone—just you and me. Just call and tell him you’re sick or something. Please?”

  We were both naked together in the bathroom when she said it, I remember. We’d just had some pretty intense sex and I was about to grab a shower. Before Joy, I didn’t even know they made women who liked that much of it.

  “Just you and me,” she repeated. She took my hand in her hand and slid my fingertips over her breasts, across her stomach, down to the stickiness we’d just made. Steam clouds rolled in the air around us. I’d already gotten the shower just the right temperature. “Please?” she said.

  “But he expects me, Joy. He waits for me. Sits out in the solarium with his jacket zipped up.”

  She let go of my hand and put herself against me—reached up under my balls and stroked me there. Smiled. Watched me blink. Watched me swallow. Good sex with Dessa was something we’d taught each other, but Joy came into the thing we had already knowing what would drive me crazy. Same things that had driven her two husbands crazy, I guess. And her uncle.

  “What about what I expect?” she said. “Doesn’t that count for anything?” Her finger kept stroking. In another ten seconds, she’d get whatever she wanted.

  I took her hand by the wrist and held it away from me. Stared at her. Waited.

  “It’s not . . . ,” she said.

  “It’s not what?”

  “It’s not that I don’t like him. I do like him, Dominick. He’s a nice guy, in his own weird way. But he scares me. The way he acts sometimes. The way he looks at me.”

  It was crap, what she was implying: that Thomas was eyeballing her. Lusting after her. I mean, most guys do. Joy’s a very good-looking woman. She gets her share of ogling. But with all the medication he’s taken over the years, my brother has about as much sex drive as a mannequin. “How does he look at you?” I said. “Give me the specifics.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It isn’t even really that. He just kind of gives me the creeps.”

  “He gives everybody the creeps,” I said. I was still squeezing her wrist. Squeezing it a little harder, even.

  “Yeah, but . . . well, part of it—I’m just trying to be honest, okay, Dominick? Don’t get mad, but . . . part of it is that you and he look so much alike. That’s what’s a little scary. Sometimes he seems like some weird version of you.”

  I kept looking at her until she looked away. Then I let go of her hand and stepped into the shower.

  “Hey, just forget it, okay?” she called in, over the hiss of the water. “Go ahead. Bring him over. I’ll deal with it. It’s my problem, not yours. I’m sorry, Dominick. Okay?”

  Her hand reached past the plastic curtain and inside for my hand. I stood there and watched it move, searching, like the grope of a blind person. I refused to grab it, to take her small, perfect hand in some soggy gesture that gave her permission to feel that way—to say what she’d just said about him.

  I wouldn’t give her that. I couldn’t. Which is probably, right there, why it’s never going to work with her and me.

  I picked up Thomas same as usual that day. Drove him all the way up to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., which he didn’t give a crap about seeing. Took him out to eat at a Red Lobster on the way home, where he spilled melted butter all over himself. Got back purposely late. I gave Joy the silent treatment for the next couple of days—treated her so shabbily that I ended up rooting for her instead of me. She doesn’t have it easy living with me. I know that. You try being the brother of a paranoid schizophrenic. See if it doesn’t royally fuck up your life. Your relationships.

  I stood there staring at the blinking message machine. Remembered the other phone messages—the ones I hadn’t listened to yet. Hit the button.

  Beep. “Good afternoon, Mr. Birdsey. This is Henry Rood again. It’s five o’clock, sir—the end of the w
orkday.” (He was slurring his words, had jumped the gun on cocktail hour again.) “Not that your workday ever began, Mr. Birdsey. At least not here it didn’t. I’m still waiting for you to return one of the five calls I’ve made to you now. I’m marking them down—all my attempts to communicate with you. I have a little pad here. Maybe I should just call the Better Business Bureau instead.”

  “Maybe you should just blow it out your ass,” I told the machine. I’d get to his freakin’ house when I got to it.

  Beep. “Uh, yeah, hello. My name is Lisa Sheffer. I’m trying to reach Dominick Birdsey? In regard to Thomas Birdsey? Your brother?”

  Here we go again, I thought. What illustrious organization are you with, honey? Hard Copy? Geraldo?

  “I’m a social worker at Hatch Forensic Institute and I’ve been assigned to him, or he’s been assigned to me, or whatever. . . . I know you were pretty upset tonight when you came in with him, and I just thought you might want to talk to me? Have me walk you through the procedures down here or whatever? You can give me a call if you want to. I’m going to be in my office until about ten o’clock tonight.” I looked up at the clock. Fuck! It was twenty after ten. “Or, you can call me tomorrow. Relax, now. Okay? Okay.”

  End of message. Shit! If I had just listened to the whole goddamned tape as soon as I got home. . . .

  But the voice spoke again.

  “I, um, I just talked to him. We just had a nice talk. He’s okay. He’s fine, under the circumstances. Really. I know you had a bad . . . sometimes some of the guards here can get a little . . . well, he’s okay. Your brother. Inside the unit, it’s not like, you know, a torture chamber or anything. It’s really a pretty humane place, for the most part. I just thought it might help if you knew that after what happened tonight. Okay? . . . They’ve got him on one-to-one observation in a room right across from the nurses’ station. Which is good, right? And the nurse who’s on tonight is super. I know her. . . . So, anyway, just relax. And like I said, call me if you want to. So, uh . . . well, no. That’s it, I guess. Bye.”

  I tried calling her back. Maybe she’d stayed later than she’d planned. But there was no answer.

  I went into the living room and stood there, channel-flipping. Lisa Sheffer: at least she sounded somewhat human. I paced. Went into the bathroom and popped another of Joy’s pills. The codeine was either working or it wasn’t working—I wasn’t sure. I was still sore down there below the belt, but it was like, who gives a shit? Which I guess meant that it was working. . . .

  I woke up from a dream where I was apologizing to Connie Chung for something. Begging her to forgive me. To give me the key so that I could unlock my brother. “La chiave,” she said. “Say it. La chiave.”

  When I opened my eyes, Joy was sitting on the couch next to me. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi. . . . What’s up?”

  She ran her fingers through my hair. “He looks like a little boy when he first wakes up, doesn’t he?” she said. At first, I didn’t know who she was talking to, or if I was still dreaming or what. Then I saw him. The Duchess. He was sitting across the room on her overstuffed futon, smiling at me. They both had drinks in their hands. Cream drinks.

  “How are you?” Joy said.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “I’m good.”

  “Good,” she said. She put her hand to my face. Stroked my cheek with her shoplifter’s fingers. They were damp from her drink. Damp and cold.

  7

  Thomas and I meander along the edge of the pond, stopping whenever we see flat stones. Skimming stones. Thomas stoops. He’s found a good one. “Watch this,” he says, and lets it fly. The stone hops the water’s surface six, seven, eight . . .

  A sound distracts me—a chattering noise—a monkey! It’s high up on a branch in the big tree behind us, partly visible and partly hidden by the fluttering silver bottoms of leaves. “Dominick!” Thomas says. “Watch!” He hurls another stone. Eight, nine, ten, eleven. . . . I look back up in the tree. Now the monkey is an old woman. She sits, cackling, scrutinizing us. . . . Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

  “Yeah, wait a minute, wait a minute,” I grumbled at the clock radio. My hand flailed, found the button. Silence. Lying there, half-awake, half-asleep, I suddenly remembered the night before: Thomas in leg chains, the sound of his screaming as they led him into the locked ward. His being at Hatch dropped onto my back like an anvil.

  The bedroom was cold. Should have started the furnace by now. I reached down and grabbed the blanket, pulled it up to my neck.

  Was he already awake down there? Maybe he and I were waking up at the same exact second. We’d had that telepathy thing off and on our whole lives—had shared each other’s life in ways that only twins can. Answering each other’s questions, sometimes before the other one even asked. That time in seventh grade when I broke my arm in gym class and Thomas felt the pain on the other side of the school. Or that summer Ray rented the cottage at Oxoboxo Lake—that game Thomas and I used to play where we’d psyche each other out: jump off the dock and see if we’d both thought of the same kind of dive to do. . . . The week before, even. I mean, hey, I didn’t know he was over at the library, lopping his hand off because of Kuwait, but I knew something was wrong. I’d been agitated all that morning—dropped a can of paint, something I never do. And when that cruiser was coming down Gillette Street, riding toward the Roods’ house, the first thing I thought was: Thomas.

  I heard the shower stop, the curtain swish open. The clock said 5:55. She does that all the time on her early days, the mornings when she teaches aerobics: gets up before the alarm and then forgets to shut the damn thing off. . . . When Joy and I were first going out, I used to go down there and take that class. The “A.M. Executive Stretch,” it’s called. She gives you a good workout—makes it worth the effort. It was the locker room afterwards I couldn’t take. All these suit-and-tie types hooking their socks back up to their garters and speculating about Joy’s cup size, about what kind of a workout she gave in bed. They didn’t know I was the boyfriend—didn’t know me from a hole in the wall. When I finally called one of them on it—this pencil-necked insurance honcho who was worse than the others—he complained to the manager about me. Joy said maybe it would be better if I didn’t come to that class. It’s part of the con down there, see? Guys are supposed to fantasize about the instructors. It’s good for business.

  I sat up in bed and swung my legs onto the floor. Oh, man, I was sore. There was no way I was going to paint today. I was probably going to have to take Ray up on his offer—have him give me a hand with Rood’s house, no matter what it cost me, sanity-wise. Now I wished I’d called Ray the night before to tell him about Thomas. About Hatch.

  I made a mental list: Call Ray. Call Rood. Call Thomas’s doctor. Call that social worker. What was her name? Lisa something. A real rookie from the sound of her message on the machine, but at least she was a starting point. I’d find out who her superior was and cut to the chase. Talk to the biggest mucky-muck I could find down there. I wanted to have some answers by the time I saw my brother. Wanted to be able to say to Thomas, okay, look, here’s the deal: we’re getting you out of here by such-and-such.

  The bathroom door opened, steam clouds chasing Joy out like an entourage. It’s no wonder the ceiling in there’s a mildew factory. “Leave the door open if you’re going to run the water so hot,” I tell her. She says she can’t because of that stupid movie Psycho.

  Psychos: that’s who they’d thrown my brother in with down there. A bunch of violent psychopaths. If Thomas had so much as a mark on him by the time I got him out of there, I’d sue their asses off. Make them pay in spades.

  Joy touched my shoulder when she walked by me. Took off her towel. I liked watching her get ready like this, first thing in the morning. Before the phone rang. Before either of us opened our mouths and blew it. She liked me watching her, too. The morning performance. The reverse striptease. Dessa was always kind of shy about getting dressed around me—used to always hust
le into her clothes over near our closet. Joy’s the opposite.

  She squirted cream onto her hand and began rubbing her neck, her breasts, the insides of her legs. Joy’s pubic hair’s this neat, perfect triangle. Light brown, silky to the touch, not coarse like Dessa’s. She gets it bikini-waxed down at the health club. They have the world’s shittiest medical plan down there—no prescription rider, no dental plan—but you can get unlimited time in the tanning booths. Get your bush trimmed for free. I watched her shimmy into her leotard—the zebra stripe one with that black thong thing to make sure your eye travels down to the right place. Sore balls or not, I was starting to come to attention. I’m like a dog around Joy. She can just walk into the room. . . .

  That’s what they count on down at that club where she works: that guys are dogs. That everyone’s just their bodies. Joy’s taken these seminars in something called “client maximization,” which is corporate-talk for “screw the customer.” Take that zebra-striped leotard, for instance: they make the employees wear the same stuff they sell in that little overpriced boutique of theirs. Here’s the theory: some fat chick goes in there, coughs up forty or fifty bucks for one of those leotard-and-thong numbers, and comes out of the locker room thinking she looks like Joy. Client maximization: give me a break. You know who owns the Hardbodies chain? United Foods.

  “Hi,” Joy said.

  “Hi.”

  “How you feeling?”