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

“Well, all right, suppose he were.”

  “So then what?” I said. “What happens after the fifteen days?”

  She said Unit Two’s evaluation team would file a report with the probate judge. She’d have input into it. And Dr. Patel, and Dr. Chase, and the head nurse of the unit. The recommendation would be that he should be discharged, or transferred to another facility, or kept here under the jurisdiction of the Review Board.

  “Okay, let’s say the judge hands him over to this Review Board. What do they do?”

  “They commit him.”

  “Where?”

  “Here, I said. At Hatch.”

  “For how long?”

  Her eyes fell away from mine. “For a year.”

  “A year!”

  Her hands flew up in defense. “Don’t kill the messenger, paisano. He’d be here for a year, and then his case would come up for annual review.”

  I sat there, slumped in the chair, my arms bracketed around my chest. “A year,” I said again. “How the hell am I supposed to look him in the eye when I see him today and say, ‘Okay, Thomas, here’s the deal. They got you for the next 15 days and maybe for the 365 days after that’? How am I supposed to tell him that?”

  “Dominick?” Sheffer said. “That’s another thing.”

  “What is?”

  “Visiting. You can’t see him yet.”

  Visits were restricted, she said, because of the maximum-security status. Thomas and she would work up a list of potential visitors—up to five people. A security check would have to be run on everybody on the list. We’d have to wait until we were notified. It would take about two weeks to get clearance.

  “Two weeks? In two weeks, he’ll be out of here!”

  She reminded me that that was not a given. Suggested I lower my voice a little.

  “So you’re saying that for two weeks, he just twists in the wind down here. He can’t even see his own brother? Jesus, that’s great. He probably will be suicidal by then.”

  She shrugged an apology. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” she said. “Except fill in the gaps as much as possible. Act as your liaison.” She smiled. “Which I’ll be very happy to do. You can call me whenever you want to. Whenever you need to. You guys can communicate through me until your clearance comes through.”

  I nodded, resigned. I felt suddenly, profoundly, sleepy.

  She spent the rest of the time describing Thomas’s surroundings, his daily routine: what the rooms were like, how they ran things at mealtimes, how patients had access to computers and arts and crafts and college extension programs. I couldn’t really listen. In the past thirty-six hours, I’d spent all my anger and outrage. I was running on empty.

  On our way out, we bumped into this Dr. Patel. Middle-aged woman: salt-and-pepper hair rolled into a bun, orange sari underneath her lab coat. “A pleasure,” she said, extending her hand. Dr. Patel said she was in the “information-gathering stage” of her treatment of my brother. She’d call me after she’d read through all his records and she and Thomas had had two or three sessions. Perhaps I would be willing to share some personal insights that might augment his medical history?

  Sheffer escorted me back toward the main entrance; it felt like I was sleepwalking. “I’ll go in and see him right after you leave,” she promised. “I’ll tell him you were down here trying to visit him. Anything else you want me to tell him for you?”

  “What?”

  “You know something? You look like you need to get some serious sleep. I asked you if there was anything you wanted me to tell your brother for you.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “You want me to tell him you love him?”

  I looked at her. Looked away. “He knows I love him,” I said.

  Sheffer shook her head and sighed. “What is it with you guys and the ‘L’ word, anyway?” she said.

  She was overstepping her ground again, but I was too tired to resist. “All right, fine,” I said. “Tell him.”

  We shook hands. She told me to call her anytime. Asked me where I was headed.

  “Where am I headed now?” I shrugged. “Home, I guess. I guess I’ll just go home and disconnect the phone and crash. You’re right. I haven’t slept for shit.”

  “Oh,” she said. She looked around, waved to the guard at the door, and spoke a little lower. “I thought maybe you were going to check things out at the doctor’s.”

  “What for? You told me Ehlers isn’t even his doctor anymore. That it’s out of my hands.”

  “I didn’t mean Dr. Ehlers,” she said. “I meant a medical doctor. Get those bruises of yours looked at. Have a few pictures taken while you’re still swollen.”

  I looked at her, my face a question.

  “In case, you know, you needed some documentation. A little leverage for later on. A bargaining tool with the state of Connecticut. . . . Of course, you didn’t get that idea from a company gal like me. I’d never suggest something like that.”

  Halfway toward the entrance, I turned around to look. She was still standing there. A jowl-faced guard and a metal detector stood between us. “See you later, Mr. Birdsey,” she called. Gave me a thumbs-up. “Shalom! Arrivederci!”

  10

  1962

  Thomas and I have been to three different states: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. Four, counting Connecticut.

  The only place we’ve ever been to in New Hampshire is Massabesic Lake. Ray took us fishing there last year. We stayed overnight in a wooden cabin, and all night long, mosquitoes kept bugging us. We didn’t catch any fish, either. Not one. The one thing I remember about that trip was this dead squirrel that someone had trapped inside a firebox. They’d put a bunch of rocks on top to keep him trapped in there. He was all huddled up in a corner, but you could tell he’d gone mental trying to get out. There was crusty black blood around his mouth and he stunk and bugs had eaten out his eyes. Ray lifted him out with a stick and flung him. He didn’t land all the way in the woods; he landed right on the edge. Thomas wanted to bury him and have a funeral, but Ray told him to stop the sissy stuff. All the time we were there, you could see that dead squirrel right out in plain sight. Whenever anyone mentions New Hampshire, that squirrel is always what I think of. I bet I’ve thought about that squirrel a million times.

  In less than half an hour, we’ll be in a new state, New York, because we’re on our sixth-grade field trip to the Statue of Liberty and Radio City Music Hall. We’re riding in a coach bus with cushioned seats and a bathroom in the back. We’re still in Connecticut: Bridgeport. Eddie Otero says Bridgeport’s close to the New York border. Otero has cousins who live in the Bronx, and this is the same way they go when they go to his cousins’. We’ve been riding almost two hours. I’m sitting in the way-way-back seat with Otero and Channy Harrington. Thomas is midway up the aisle. He got stuck sitting with Eugene Savitsky, this weird kid in our class who’s fat and always talks about the planets and geology and weather. Mrs. Hanka let us pick our seatmates. Thomas and Channy both picked me, and I picked Channy. No one picked Eugene. At recess last week, Billy Moon asked Eugene to name five football teams and he couldn’t name any. Not one.

  My brother and I have been waiting for this trip a long time, but for different reasons. Thomas wants to see the Radio City Easter show. Ma went once; she said the religious part was so beautiful, it made her cry. It sounds boring to me; it sounds like church. I can’t wait to get to New York because then I’ll have visited four states and because I have spending money—thirty-seven dollars I earned from shoveling snow and walking Mrs. Pusateri’s dog and helping Ray on weekends. Last weekend, Ray and I installed a tool cabinet in his truck. Ray let me do some of the drilling and tighten the screws. It’s always me who Ray asks to help him, not Thomas. “Handy Andy” he calls me. He calls my brother “Charlie Ten Thumbs.” Come to think of it, I was thinking about that squirrel up at Massabesic Lake when we were working on the tool cabinet, too—how a squirrel might get caught in there
. Get trapped.

  They show you a movie with the Easter show. The one we’re seeing is The Music Man. Mrs. Hanka—we call her “Muriel Baby” behind her back—she saw The Music Man when it was a play instead of a movie. She brought in her record of all the songs and made us listen to it. Everybody was laughing because it was so corny. Eddie Otero started making pig snorts. Then three or four other kids started doing it. Muriel Baby got so hurt, she stopped the record and looked for a minute like she was going to cry. She told us that if she hadn’t already bought the Radio City tickets, she’d cancel our whole trip. She gave us this big speech about how if we didn’t care about anything, then she didn’t care either. Then she did something weird. She turned off all the lights and went to the closet behind her desk and put on her coat. She just sat there. No social studies like we usually have. No nothing. Nobody said anything. All of us just sat there, nobody saying a word, until the intercom started calling the bus runs at 2:55. Like I said, it was weird. Creepy. The next day, everyone behaved, even Otero.

  We might be able to go to a souvenir shop in Times Square if there’s time. If it’s the same one Marie Sexton from our class thinks it is, they have a whole aisle that’s nothing but joke gifts: snapping packs of gum, whoopie cushions, ice cubes with flies inside, fake vomit. When I asked Ma how much I could spend on the trip, she told me to ask Ray. He said five dollars, but I’ve brought thirty-seven: a ten, a five, and twenty-two ones. I might spend just a little of it, or I might spend the whole thing if I feel like it. Why shouldn’t I? It’s my money, not his.

  Last night when Ma was making our lunches for the trip, she told us that when we ride on the Staten Island ferry, we’ll see the exact same view her father saw when he first came to this country in 1901: the harbor, the Statue of Liberty, the New York skyline. Ma’s always talking about her father. Papa, Papa, blah blah blah. At first, she wasn’t going to let us put our soda cans in the freezer overnight. “What if they explode?” she said, but I got her to give in. You can always get what you want from Ma if Ray’s at work. Right now, the sodas are in our lunch bags, in the rack above our heads. I just checked mine. It’s half-melted. By lunchtime, it’ll be melted all the way but still cold. In other words, perfect. Channy Harrington did the same thing with his soda. It was his idea. He says kids always do that with their sodas out in California. Channy’s father is one of the big bosses down at Electric Boat. When I visit over at Channy’s house, Ray says I’m “hobnobbing.” You can tell he likes me going over there, though. The Harringtons have a housekeeper and a built-in swimming pool and a baseball-pitching machine for Channy and his older brothers. You can put it on three different speeds. The fastest speed goes seventy miles an hour. Sometimes the housekeeper makes us after-school snacks: oatmeal cookies, potato chips with onion dip, peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff sandwiches. Thomas has never been invited to Channy’s house. He says he’s sick of hearing all the time about that housekeeper and her stupid sandwiches and Channy’s stupid pitching machine.

  Eugene Savitsky is giving my brother a lecture on how things break the sound barrier. He’s so jazzed up on the topic, you can hear him over everybody else. We’re not just going to the Statue of Liberty; we’re going inside it. They have stairs that go right to the top. Eddie Otero says he’s going to climb down the nose and hang out there like he’s the Statue of Liberty’s booger. He would, too. Otero’s insane.

  Muriel Baby comes to the back of the bus and makes us stop singing “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” It’s inappropriate for us to be singing about alcohol on a school trip, she says. We should know better. While she’s warmed up, she yells at Marty Overturf for eating his lunch already when it isn’t even 9:15 in the morning yet. What does she care? It’s his lunch, not hers.

  Channy Harrington’s the only boy in our class who already shaves. Every single girl in our school is in love with Channy, just about. Debbie Chase asked him to sit with her on the bus ride to New York, but Mrs. Hanka told her no boy-girl combinations. When Channy transferred to our school last November, he was automatically popular, even on the first day. He has swimming and basketball trophies from his old school on a shelf in his bedroom. Channy says everyone in California has outdoor swimming pools, even poor people. His older brother, Clay, plays baseball in college. He’s being scouted by the Cardinals.

  Now Eugene is blabbing away to my brother about the planets. Uranus this, Uranus that. Out of the blue, Otero yells, “Hey, Savitsky! Stop talking about your asshole!” The whole bus looks back at us and cracks up. Muriel Baby stands up from her seat at the front of the bus, scowls back in our direction, and then sits down again. The bus driver keeps staring at us in his rearview mirror. What’s he looking at? His job is to drive the bus, not give us dirty looks. “That dipshit driver should take a picture,” Channy says. “It’d last longer.”

  Our seats are right next to that little bathroom. Mostly it’s the girls who have to use it. Otero and Channy and I say wiseguy things to them as they go in and out. “Don’t fall in now. . . . Don’t do anything in there we wouldn’t do.” We crack each other up. Channy’s been to Radio City before. Twice. He says when they open the doors, we should rush to the front seats so that when the Rockettes do their high kicks, we can see some good “crotch shots.” Even though it’s Channy who says it, Susan Gillis turns around and gives me a dirty look, and I go, real snotty, “What are you looking at?” Susan’s mother was supposed to be our chaperone for this trip, but she came down with the mumps. Now Susan’s acting like she’s the chaperone. “You better stop talking like that,” she says.

  “Like what?” I go.

  “Like what you just said about the Rockettes.”

  “Make us,” I say.

  “You’re already made and what a mess.”

  It’s not like Mrs. Hanka’s going to let us sit wherever we want to when we get to Radio City, anyway. She’ll make us all sit together in the same row, like babies, and I bet you any amount of money she plops right down next to Otero. Last week we had the word incorrigible on our vocabulary list and Muriel Baby used Otero as an example.

  I’ve been over to Channy’s house three times. The last time I was there, he told me he once saw all these women who were stark naked. At a beach in California where people don’t have to wear bathing suits if they don’t want to. Channy kept talking about the women’s “fur burgers.” At first, I didn’t know what he meant by fur burgers, but I kept my mouth shut. Later on, we snuck into his brother Trent’s room and Channy showed me Trent’s dirty magazines. That’s when I got it—what fur burgers were. I’d never seen any women naked before, not even in pictures. I never even knew they had hair down there, like men. It was Channy’s brother Clay who took Channy to that beach. Him and some of his friends from college. From his baseball team. Channy says California has lots of those kinds of beaches. He’s always talking about how much better California is than Connecticut. He says in his old classroom, all the desks had little buttons on the side and, at the end of the day, you just pushed the button and the desks disappeared into the floor. I’m pretty sure that’s a bunch of bull. Maybe that stuff about the beaches is, too. But maybe not. I haven’t even been to four states yet. What do I know?

  Thomas gets up from his seat, climbs over Eugene, and walks back toward us. Someone trips him accidentally on purpose and everyone laughs, Channy and Eddie Otero loudest of all. Thomas acts so retarded sometimes. I look out the window so that I don’t have to look at him.

  He opens the bathroom door. “Don’t get any on you,” Channy says.

  “If Althea comes down here, I’ll send her in for you,” Otero promises. He means Althea Ebbs, this big fat girl in our class who has BO and cries all the time. Thomas doesn’t answer them. I hear the bathroom door click shut. Hear him slide the bolt.

  Five minutes go by and he’s still in there. Then six or seven minutes. I heard him flush a long time ago. Marie Sexton and Bunny Borsa have both gotten out of their seats about a million times
to see if the john’s free. “Who’s in there?” Bunny asks us.

  “His brother,” Otero says, jabbing his thumb at me. “He’s taking a two-ton dump.”

  “Either that or he’s pulling his pud,” Channy jokes.

  They laugh when Bunny calls us dirty pigs.

  Then the door handle starts clicking back and forth like crazy. “Dominick?” It’s Thomas. “Dominick?”

  He’s locked himself in there. He can’t get out. I can hear the panic in his voice, in the frantic clicking of that door handle, the thump of his fists against the door. Channy and Otero are busting a gut.

  Marie Sexton and Susan and I start calling instructions to Thomas, but he’s either too scared or too spastic to follow them. “I’m going to get sick if I don’t get out of here!” he warns. That makes Otero and Channy laugh even harder.

  “Calm down,” I keep telling him. “Keep your voice down. You’re making it worse.”

  “It’s stuck! It won’t budge!”

  Five or six other kids are standing there now; everyone’s shouting orders at Thomas. Some of the girls are complaining that they really have to go. Mrs. Hanka starts down the aisle. In class, she likes my brother better than me. You can tell. Mr. Goody Two-shoes. Mr. Perfect. But now she’s mad at him. “To the left! Push it to the left!” she shouts, in the exasperated voice she usually saves for Otero or Althea Ebbs.

  I know it’s serious when the driver pulls over to the side of the highway and stops the bus. “Sit down! Sit down!” he’s yelling at everyone, elbowing his way down the aisle. I can’t believe it: my stupid, retarded brother is wrecking our entire trip to New York City.

  “Together! Move the handle and the bolt together!” the driver keeps screaming at the locked door. He takes off his uniform jacket and the back of his shirt is soaked in sweat. His face is the same color as rare roast beef. We’ve been on the side of the highway for fifteen minutes.

  “Let . . . me . . . out . . . of . . . here!” Thomas keeps shouting. “Please! Please! LET ME OUT!” His body keeps making thudding noises against the door. My stomach feels like I’m on this elevator that’s dropping way too fast. If I start crying in front of Channy and Otero, I don’t care what anyone says. I’m changing schools.