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

  I threw my cards down on the bed and got up, walked toward the door. “Hey, where you going?” Menza protested. “We’re in the middle of a game?”

  “You win,” I said. “All of you. I fucking forfeit.”

  For the rest of that afternoon, those guys blasted “The Monster Mash” nonstop on Moynihan’s stereo. Put the speaker in the doorway and filled up the hallway with the sound of that friggin’ song. Sang the Addams Family theme when Thomas and I went downstairs to supper, complete with finger-snapping. It passed; that kind of ball-busting usually does. But the nickname they’d given Thomas stuck. From that afternoon on, he was “Lurch” to all the guys in Crandall Hall.

  When I wasn’t arguing with Thomas or defending him in some half-assed way, I was spending my time with my face in the books or slumped in front of our Royal typewriter, hunting-and-pecking my way through some paper that was almost due. The noises I made while I was studying became an issue: the clacking of the typewriter keys, the squeak of the highlighter across the page, even the crinkling of cellophane if I got myself a snack from the machine in the basement. I began studying in the library as much as possible. I hated the sight of Thomas’s scowling face, the squirt-squirt of his nose spray, and those faraway sighs of his in the dark in the middle of the night. He was going to flunk out if he didn’t wake up—break Ma’s heart and make Ray hit the roof. He could end up getting his head blown off in Nam. But I was goddamned if I was going to make him study—if I was going to throw him over my shoulder and carry him to his classes.

  Somewhere near the end of second semester, Thomas got notification from the freshman dean about his academics. The letter advised my brother to make an appointment with his office as soon as possible. Instead, Thomas began a frenzy of makeup work. “I can pull this off, Dominick,” he told me. “What are you looking at me like that for? I can.” He went to professors’ offices and pleaded for extensions and incompletes. He kept our hot-plate coils glowing orange and threw cup after cup of coffee down his throat. A kid on the second floor sold him some speed so that he could cram night and day for his upcoming exams. He was popping No-Doz like they were M&Ms. Thomas put so much shit into his system that he burst blood vessels in both his eyes.

  One afternoon I came back to our room and found him sobbing on my bed. “Don’t be mad at me, Dominick,” he kept repeating. “Just don’t be mad. Please.” It was the way Thomas had begged Ray when we were kids—when Thomas had triggered one of Ray’s rampages.

  Our whole room was pulled apart; there were papers and shit all over the floor. Over on my desk was a screwdriver and a rock and a hammer and our typewriter. The case had been cracked up the middle, a six-inch piece broken right off.

  I told him he’d better fucking explain what was going on.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Just don’t be mad at me.”

  He had finally written an overdue English paper, he told me, and then had gone to type it and not been able to find his key. He’d waited and waited and waited for me—he never knew where I was anymore. He might as well not even have a roommate. After a while, he’d panicked, convincing himself that I’d taken the key and hidden it from him because I wanted him to fail. I wanted him to flunk out. Why did I even lock the stupid typewriter, anyway? Why did it always have to be locked?

  “Because guys in this dorm steal,” I said.

  “Then they’d steal the whole thing!” he sobbed. “It’s portable!”

  When the lock on the typewriter case wouldn’t give, no matter what he tried, Thomas had gone outside and gotten the rock and busted it open. It had seemed like the best thing to do until he did it. Then, right after that, he remembered where he’d hidden the key at the beginning of the semester: in his extra soap dish up on the top shelf, the one he never used. Would I please, please just type his paper for him? He’d straighten out, buy a new case for the typewriter. The paper was due at 9:00 o’clock the next morning. He couldn’t type because his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He was too nervous to concentrate. The “w” and the “s” on our typewriter weren’t working now, but he’d gone down to O’Brien’s room and O’Brien said we could borrow his typewriter. The paper itself had come out pretty good, he thought. But his English teacher wouldn’t give an inch. If he got it there at 9:01, she probably wouldn’t even accept it. She was out to get him.

  I could have whaled into him for what he’d done—for what he had failed to do all year long. But as angry as I was, I felt scared, too—scared of those blotches of blood in his eyes and the tremors in his hands, the revved-up way he was talking.

  I got him calmed down. Heated him a can of soup. Yeah, I’d type the stupid paper, I told him. I had him lie down and told him to not say one friggin’ word about the noise O’Brien’s typewriter was making. I began.

  It was an essay about the theme of alienation in modern literature—a patchwork of Cliff Notes and bullshit that contained no specifics and made hardly any sense. Its rambling sentences went off in a dozen different directions and never came back; the handwriting was almost unrecognizable as Thomas’s. That paper scared me more, even, than his behavior. But I typed what he’d written, fixing up things here and there and hoping against hope that his teacher would find something coherent in what he’d put together.

  He was asleep before I finished the first page. He slept through the night and at 8:45 the next morning was still sleeping. I walked across campus and handed his teacher the late paper. Assuming I was Thomas, she gave me a dirty look and said she hoped I had learned a lesson about personal management. Maybe in the future, I wouldn’t be so quick to inconvenience people.

  I wouldn’t, I said. I definitely wouldn’t.

  When I got back to our dorm, I stood, bewildered, before our broken typewriter case—passed my finger over its sharp, smashed edge. Turned and stood there, studying my brother as he slept, mouth agape, his eyes shifting behind the lids.

  At the end of second semester, the university put my brother on academic probation.

  9

  “Come in, come in,” she said, standing up from her computer. “I’m Lisa Sheffer.”

  Flat-top haircut, Star Trek sweatshirt, little earrings all the way up one ear: whatever I’d expected, she wasn’t it. Five-one, five-two at the most. She probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet.

  “Dominick Birdsey,” I said. She had a handshake like a vise grip.

  I thanked her for her message the night before and started rambling about my brother, telling her his history, about how his being there was a big mistake. Sheffer put her hand up, traffic cop style. “Could you just hold on a minute?” she said. “I need to enter some information about another patient before I forget. Have a seat. This should take like two seconds.”

  It was fair, I guess. We’d made a 10:00 appointment; the wall clock above her head said 9:51. My eyes bounced from that flat-top to the mounds of paperwork on her desk to a carved wooden bird with its head cocked to the side. Overhead, a fluorescent light buzzed like a mosquito.

  “You get used to one program and the next thing you know the computer nerds up in Hartford change it on you,” she said. “They have these workshops whenever they update the software, like they’re doing you a favor. I go to the office manager, ‘Excuse me? I’ve got a kid in after-school day care and an Escort that’s already living on borrowed time. Why can’t I just use the stuff I’m used to?’ But no-ooo.”

  The phone rang. “Uh-huh,” she kept telling the person on the other end. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” I got up and walked to the window—wired glass, two-foot square. Why would anyone want to work at this place?

  Outside was a recreation area—a pitiful excuse for one, anyway. Couple of picnic tables chained to a cement floor, a rusty basketball hoop. A small group of patients was being herded out there, each guy squinting as he hit the sun. No sign of Thomas.

  “So your real name’s Domenico, right?” Sheffer said. She was off the phone, back at her computer.

  “Only on
paper,” I said. “How’d you know that?”

  She said she’d seen it somewhere in my brother’s records.

  I nodded—told her I’d been named after my grandfather. Had she seen our birth certificates or something? Thomas and me listed under Ma’s maiden name?

  “And your brother says you’re a housepainter, right?”

  “Yup.” Jesus, was this appointment about Thomas or me?

  “You give free estimates?”

  “Uh . . . yeah. I do. So how about my brother?”

  She clicked away a little more on her keyboard. Looked up. “Domenico was my grandfather’s name, too,” she said. “That’s why it popped out at me. Domenico Parlapiano. How’s that for a mouthful?”

  I sat back down again, drumming my fingers against the sides of my chair. Impatience wasn’t going to get me what I needed, I reminded myself. What Thomas needed. That stupid wooden bird of hers looked like it was staring right at me.

  “So is Sheffer your married name?” I said.

  She looked up at me. Shook her head. “My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Italian. Ever had spaghetti and matzo balls?” I just looked at her, no reaction. “I’m kidding, Domenico,” she said. “It was a joke. Hey, you want a candy bar?”

  “Candy?”

  “Dollar a bar. Fund-raiser for my daughter’s Midget Football cheering squad.” She stuck out her tongue, made a face. “I’ve got almond, peanut butter, and crunch.”

  I hadn’t yet ruled out the possibility that she might have some say in Thomas’s situation. “Yeah, all right. Sure. Almond, I guess.” I stood up and fished out a buck.

  I was still wearing those drawstring pants—those skull-and-crossbone things. I caught Sheffer smiling at them. “Cool pants,” she said, and I looked away, embarrassed.

  She reached into a desk drawer and handed me the candy bar. No wedding ring. Early thirties, I figured. “I’ll be right with you, Domenico,” she said. “Let me just shut my mouth and figure out one last thing and we’ll be ready to roll.”

  “Dominick,” I mumbled. “My name’s Dominick.”

  There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she said. A janitor entered, emptied a wastebasket.

  “Hey, Smitty,” Sheffer said. “Do me a favor, will you? Throw this computer in the Dumpster for me. Simplify my life by about a thousand percent.”

  “You got it, Lisa!” he said. He looked over at me, smiling a little too eagerly. “Hello, there, sir,” he said.

  I nodded. Looked away.

  “Hey, Lisa? You got any more of those candy bars?”

  “You haven’t paid me for the other ones yet, Smitty,” Sheffer said. “You already owe me four dollars.”

  “Oh, okay. How much are they?”

  “Dollar apiece. Same as the other days.”

  “Oh.” He looked long-faced. Stood there, waiting. Sheffer let out a sigh.

  “Okay, okay, here,” she said, tossing him one. He was already eating his candy before he was out the door.

  “It’s a losing proposition trying to raise money at this place,” Sheffer said, smiling. “These fund-raisers are going to bankrupt me.”

  I asked her how old her kid was.

  “Jesse? She’s seven. How about you? Any kids?”

  Any kids? That casual question was always a sock in the gut. “No,” I said. “No kids.” The denial was easier than the truth: that we’d had a little girl, Dessa and me. Had had her and then lost her. She would have been seven now, too.

  Outside the door, there was a commotion—someone with a high-pitched voice screaming about toilet paper. “I’m not saying that!” the voice said. “All I’m saying is, when I defecate, I like to pull my own toilet paper off the toilet paper roll instead of having someone standing there handing it to me. I don’t need a valet, thank you very much. And don’t tell me I wipe it on the walls because I don’t wipe it on the walls.”

  Sheffer rolled her eyes. Got up and opened the door. “Excuse me, Ozzie, but would you keep it down, please? I have someone in my office and we’re having a little—”

  “Up yours, Ms. Sheffer!”

  When I looked out there, the voice materialized as a middle-aged bald guy, gaunt and scabby, his hospital johnny hanging open in the back. An aide was with him—a white guy in dreadlocks. “I told him to keep his voice down, Lisa,” he said.

  “It’s all right, Andy. Hey, Andy, you want to do me a favor? If you see Dr. Patel on the floor, would you tell her Thomas Birdsey’s brother is here? Maybe she can stop down and meet him if she has a second.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “Come on, Ozzie. Let’s go.”

  “Don’t touch me!” Ozzie protested. “What do you think this is—the petting zoo?”

  Sheffer shook her head and closed the door again. “Sorry. Things can get a little surreal around here,” she said.

  I got up and went back to that little window. Hard to believe: that Angela would be seven by now. This goofball social worker disarmed me a little with her candy bars, her spaghetti and matzo balls. Knocked me off center. The jury was still out on this one.

  Outside in the courtyard, the inmates were lining up in front of a guy in a cowboy hat. One by one, he was lighting their smokes. This was recreation? Everyone just sitting on the picnic tables, wearing their army camouflage and smoking? The only exercise I saw was one skinny black guy, dribbling a basketball without taking any shots. Thunk, thunk, thunk: he looked completely stoned. Probably zoned out on Thorazine, I figured. And he was the active one.

  “Hey, tell me something,” I said. “How come half those guys out there are wearing camouflage? Is that the hot fashion around this place?”

  She stood up from her chair and looked out, cracked a smile. “Unit Four,” she said. “About half the population on that ward are Vietnam casualties.”

  “That guy from Mystic’s down here, right? The one who mistook his family for the Viet Cong?”

  “I can’t really discuss other cases,” she said. “But not all of these vets have criminal records; a lot of them are just here because the VA hospitals are overcrowded and because so many other programs have gone down the tubes. Got to put them somewhere, right? Vietnam: the war that keeps on giving.”

  “And now we’re gearing up for another one,” I said.

  She shook her head, disgusted. “They make it sound so noble, don’t they? ‘Operation Desert Shield.’ It’s like the whole country’s decided to have selective amnesia. Yea, rah-rah, America! Here we go again.”

  Now her clock said 10:07. We were supposed to be seven minutes into my appointment and she was still hunting-and-pecking on her keyboard and treating me to her political opinions. “That’s what my brother was trying to do in the library,” I said. “Stop the war before it gets started.” She looked over at me. Nodded.

  Out in the courtyard, the guy in the cowboy hat was entertaining the troops. You could tell without a scorecard which patients were his pets and which ones weren’t. “Who’s the cowboy out there?” I said.

  “Hmm?” She looked out. “Oh, that’s Duane. He’s one of the FTSs.”

  “One of the whats? Jesus, I couldn’t keep all these initials straight.”

  “Forensic Treatment Specialists. One of the psych aides. He’s quite a character.”

  “So what do you got, pyromaniacs at this place? Nobody can light their own cigarettes?”

  She didn’t answer. “Okay! Wait a minute. Here we go,” she said. She turned to me, beaming. “I was trying to transfer data by hitting the ‘shift’ key instead of ‘control.’ That’s what you had to do with the other program. Hit the ‘shift’ key. I hate computers, don’t you? I mean, who invented them, anyway? Who’s responsible? Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone; we know that. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Whoever invented the computer is probably afraid to show his face.”

  Outside, that basketball stopped thunking. The office was suddenly quiet. “So, anyway,” I said. “About my brother?”

  She n
odded, shifted in her chair, opened his file. “Have a seat,” she said.

  She started talking hospital talk: Thomas had been admitted on a “fifteen-day paper.” When the observation period was up, his case would go before probate and then most likely to the PSRB.

  “Look,” I told her. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything—you’re the first human being I’ve run into at this place—but number one, don’t sit here talking initials at me, and number two, don’t give me any ‘fifteen-day paper’ because I’m getting him out of here today.”

  “Hey, how about if you don’t take that tone, okay?” she said. “Calm down.”

  “I’ll calm down once this runaround’s over with. All you need to do is get ahold of his doctor. Dr. Willis Ehlers. He’ll verify that my brother doesn’t belong here. That this is someone’s screwup and he belongs over at Settle.”

  She shook her head. “Ehlers isn’t his doctor anymore, Dominick. They’ve reassigned him.”

  “Who’s reassigned him?”

  She flipped through his papers. “Looks like it floated down from the gods. The state commissioner’s office in Hartford.”

  She slid some papers across the desk, tapped her finger at some honcho’s signature. “Why from Hartford?” I said. “What’s Hartford got to do with it?”

  “I can’t say for sure. Don’t quote me on this, but my guess is that your brother’s a political appointee.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  She looked up at the ceiling. Puffed out her cheeks. “Shut up, Sheffer,” she advised herself.

  “No,” I said. “Come on. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know for sure, okay?” she said. “I haven’t heard anything, through the grapevine or officially, so this is strictly theory, okay? But usually when Hartford gets involved in something like this, it’s about damage control. We’re fairly autonomous out here otherwise. My guess is that it’s Jimmy Lane fallout. I’m not 100 percent positive, but I’m pretty sure. But like I said, don’t quote me.”