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

  “Yeah, but Gary just called me. A bunch of us are going to ride our bikes down to the field to play baseball. I need to get my glove.”

  “Not now, Andrew!”

  “Yeah, but I need it now, or else I’m going to get there after they choose up.”

  Shaking her head, she gets up and goes to the big box where he keeps his sports stuff. Instead of tossing him his glove, she hurls it at him. It hits him in the face.

  “Ow! Jesus Christ, Mom. You didn’t have to nail me with it.”

  “What did I tell you about that ‘Jesus Christ’ stuff? Now go! Get out!”

  She glares at him as he takes the stairs. When the door at the top slams, she turns back to me. “Any questions?”

  I ask her why I can’t trust men anymore.

  “Because males have a kind of built-in instinct that females can trigger once they get their period. A kind of sexual radar. Animals, humans: all males. You remember how we sometimes had to keep Missy in the house before we got her spayed? How all those male dogs would congregate in the yard and wait for her to come out?”

  “Yeah, but . . . ?” I don’t get the connection.

  “And do you remember what happened that time when Missy got out and that boxer down the street jumped on top of her and started humping her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well? You know what rape is, don’t you? . . .”

  God, why did she have to put it that way? Scare me like that? Males were horny, dangerous dogs: that was her message. I remember going upstairs to my room with that booklet she gave me, my hands trembling as I turned the pages. I didn’t calm down until Cindy Soucy told me what her mother had said: that once a man and a woman fell in love and got married, sex was a beautiful part of their life together, not just the way that babies got started. . . .

  It’s so weird the way life turns out. For me, at least, maybe not for Cindy. Until she tried to “friend” me on Facebook last month, I hadn’t heard from her in years. I’m too busy for social networking, I told myself. Told Marissa, too, when she tried to “friend” me. From what people who are on Facebook say, it’s a colossal waste of time, but what I don’t get is why they’re always on it anyway. . . . You should never put yourself in a situation where you’re alone with a boy or a man. Did Mama decide she was a lesbian after she met Viveca, or was she always one? And if she was, why did she marry Daddy? . . .

  I’m nervous about meeting Viveca. I want her to like me, and I really want to like her—to show her that I’m cool now about her and Mama’s marriage. Marissa’s always saying that Viveca’s awesome, but that time when I asked her why, all she talked about was their shopping trips, and how Viveca has taken her to the Plaza Hotel for tea. Last month when Rissa got all spastic because Jimmy Choo was on the guest list for the wedding and I asked her who he was, she was like, “Oh my god, Ariane, what planet do you live on?” It wasn’t until after we’d hung up that I thought of what I should have said: that I pretty much live on Planet Soup Kitchen, where the needs are a little more basic than the need for designer shoes. I didn’t dare pack my Birkenstocks when I was getting ready for this trip, which was ridiculous now that I think of it. I live in Berkeley, for Christ’s sake! It’s not that I’m intimidated by my little sister, but from everything she’s said, and from the pictures I’ve seen, Viveca seems so chic and glamorous. I guess I just don’t want her to look down on me: Annie’s shlumpy older daughter. The fat one. No one to share her life with, no prospects on the horizon. . . . I wonder what Mama has told Viveca about me. Does she know how angry I was at first when I found out about their affair? Does she know I’m fat? At my last ob-gyn appointment, my weight had gone up to one seventy-seven—my high school weight. And I’m bound to gain a lot more in the upcoming months. God, I just hope I don’t go over two hundred. That would be more than I’ve ever weighed. I think back to that conversation I once heard my mother and father having about me when they thought I was out of earshot. . . .

  “I mean it, Annie. I want you to get off her about her weight. Half the girls who come into my office are obsessed about it. They were chubby as kids and now they’re anorexic, some of them. I don’t want her to think her value depends on what the scale says. It’s unhealthy.”

  “So you want her to keep gaining until she develops diabetes? Because that’s unhealthy, too. And what about her social life?”

  “Her social life is fine. She’s got friends.”

  “And don’t you think she’d like a boyfriend? You know boys that age. Their eyes slide right past the girls who are overweight.”

  “She’s doing just fine, Annie. I mean it. You keep harping on her weight and she’s going to develop a complex about it.”

  Too late, Daddy, I think. I already had developed a complex about it, and I fed it daily. And Mama was right. I did want a boyfriend back then. I still do. Sipping the last of my ginger ale, I look past Dolly at the clouds we’re flying over. It looks like a thick covering of snow—as if you could step out onto it and those clouds would hold you. Last week there was another suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge. The third this year, the paper said. When Daddy told me one of his college kids killed himself this past year—a boy he’d been treating for depression—I could tell from the shakiness in his voice how hard he was taking it. Was that why he resigned so abruptly? Maybe. But that doesn’t explain why he wants to sell our house now, too. To get away from the memories, maybe—to pack up and move on. . . .

  I think Mama and Daddy will be okay with my decision, once I tell them both. Get that part over with. I’m pretty sure Daddy won’t have a problem with it. He didn’t know his father, but he turned out fine. And yes, I’ll explain to them if I have to, I am younger than most of the women who get pregnant this way. And maybe the right guy could still come along. But I don’t want to keep playing the wait-and-hope game until I’m forty. What if my eggs are too old by then? The chances for birth defects are a lot greater for older moms. And yes, there’s always adoption if you want to gamble on the genetic cocktail of two strangers. At least this way, I was able to read the donors’ histories. Weed out some of the potential for problems. It’s not foolproof; I know that. And they pay these guys to do what they do—about a hundred dollars, I’ve heard. So I guess they could lie on their forms if they needed the money. Well, I’m going to love this child, no matter who he or she turns out to be. But being a single mother is going to be challenging enough without increasing the chances of raising a kid with special needs. . . .

  The flight attendant comes by with her plastic bag and we deposit our refuse. The ginger ale must have worked, I guess, because my stomach feels more settled. I give up on Home from the Hospital, and when I slip the book back in my bag, I see the red folder in there. Take it out. I’m not sure why I brought it with me, or for that matter, why I didn’t shred what’s in it once I made my decision. It’s innocuous-looking, though; as long as I hold it close to myself, neither of my seatmates will be able to read what’s in there: the photocopied fact sheets of my prospective donors. For the millionth time, I look over the forms of the two I narrowed it down to. Should I have picked number 251 instead of number 311? Brown hair and eyes, five foot nine, no history of cancer in his family, college educated, no alcohol or drug issues other than “recreational use of marijuana, occasional.” He was the one I thought I was going with. Then at the last minute, I picked number 311 instead: Brazilian ethnicity, two years of college instead of four, a mother who died at forty-six. The reason listed isn’t cancer or heart disease. “Boating accident” it says. I look at the math I did in the margin of his fact sheet; he was only thirteen when he lost her. Why did I change my mind? Was it because I felt sorry for him, this motherless boy who’s now almost thirty? Well, whatever the reason, it’s a done deal. Number 311 has fathered the life that’s growing inside me—this child I already love who will give me a purpose besides feeding the poor, and who will love me no matter how much I weigh. . . .

  Of course Axel would hav
e been my first choice. Okay, stop it, I tell myself. Don’t go there again. But I do. After we passed the first anniversary of our being together, I began to think—hope—that everything was finally going to work out for me. For us. We’d get married, have kids; it wasn’t the perfect life I’d planned with Cindy way back in middle school, but it was close enough. So I didn’t see it coming the night he took me to that Thai restaurant and started talking about how it wasn’t me; it was him. How he still cared about me and hoped we could stay friends. How many times had I heard that line? I’d started sobbing, humiliating myself in front of the other diners. Humiliated myself a second time when I went to him three months later and asked if he’d please just impregnate me, no strings, no obligations. I’d begged him not to answer me right then and there, to just think about giving me his sperm if he couldn’t give me anything more than that. I can still see him sitting there, shaking his head and probably thinking how glad he was to have gotten himself out of his relationship with this desperate, pathetic woman. . . .

  Then Desmond, the group home supervisor, said no, too. He and his Prader-Willi clients with their big, cumbersome bodies and almond-shaped eyes had been volunteering at Hope’s Table for a few years, and we’d become friends. Had gone out for coffee a few times. Desmond was divorced, no kids—his ex-wife’s decision more than his, he said. Because of their food issues, he would bring his Prader-Willi guys in after all the meals had been served and the guests had left. They’d wipe off the tables, sweep and mop the floor. I liked Desmond’s dry sense of humor, and the way he interacted with the guys he supervised. His “kids,” he called them, although some of them were in their thirties and forties. He always seemed so fatherly toward them—so unflappable, even the time he caught that one guy eating soap in the men’s room. He sure didn’t look unflappable at that Starbucks we went to when I asked him if he’d father my child. He looked shaken. Then, right after that, he stopped coming. He had called Cicely, not me, and told her they’d started volunteering someplace else. “I wonder why,” I said, even though I knew. . . .

  I can’t predict how my brother and sister are going to take my news. Marissa will either think it’s cool or that it’s weird. No one in the family but me knows about the abortion she had last year. I don’t judge her for making that decision. She wasn’t ready to have a child and, frankly, I’m not so sure she would have been a very good mother. But I will be. I want this baby as much as I’ve ever wanted anything in my life, and as sick as I’ve been, I haven’t regretted my decision for one second. I wonder if Marissa ever wishes she hadn’t terminated her pregnancy. Does she ever even think about what her life might be like now if she hadn’t? . . .

  I just hope Andrew’s not going to give me grief, now that he’s become Mr. Born Again. It’s weird how he’s done this turnaround. Andrew was always the rebellious one in the family. Who knows? Maybe he still is. Maybe all this “Lord and Savior” stuff he’s into now is his way of rebelling against growing up in a liberal household. The last time I talked to him, he was saying how great it is that he and Casey-Lee go to church with her family. Then he started complaining about how our parents put us at a disadvantage because they didn’t give us a religious foundation. I had to remind him that Mama used to bring us to Mass when we were little, and that it was he who raised such a stink about going to church that she finally gave up and let us stay home with Daddy on Sunday mornings. “Exactly,” he said. “She went to church and we got to stay home with the atheist. What kind of role-modeling was that?” I didn’t argue with him. I just changed the subject so I wouldn’t have to listen to his proselytizing. I still can’t tell if this Christian soapbox of his is his own idea, or his fiancée’s. Those couple of times they Skyped me, she hardly said a word, except to note that my brother and I look nothing alike. . . . And if Daddy didn’t believe there was a god, what was he supposed to do? Fake it? I wonder if Mama’s stopped going to Mass. Probably. Why would she keep going when the Catholic Church is so dead set against same-sex marriage? . . .

  I put away the red folder and pull the in-flight magazine out of the seat pocket. Sky Mall: it’s ridiculous. Who in the world would ever buy luggage and “wireless talking barbecue thermometers” while they’re on a plane? Well, somebody must, I guess. God, I’m so tired. I didn’t sleep for shit last night, and then I had to get up so early to catch my flight. I’m just going to close my eyes and rest. . . .

  I’m in the studio audience watching Mama. She’s a contestant on a game show—she and some other new brides. They’re sitting beside their husbands. For some reason, Mama’s gotten married to that detective on Law & Order: SVU—the one with the anger management issues. The host asks him what’s the one thing in Mama’s purse that people would be surprised to find in there. “A baby?” he says. Then Mama reaches into her purse and takes out a little pink plastic baby. And when she puts it in the palm of her hand, it starts moving, coming alive. . . .

  Whatever Dolly’s just said to me, I didn’t catch it. “I’m sorry. What?”

  She’s holding up her Denver Post and tapping her finger at a front-page picture of the president. “I asked you what you think of this guy?” she says.

  “Obama? I like him. He sure has inherited a mess, though.”

  “Uh-huh,” she says. End of subject. She must be a Republican. Well, so what? I like her. She’s a hoot. And anyway, I’ve been making an effort not to be judgmental about other people’s politics, as long as they don’t try and cram it down your throat like my brother does.

  “Sorry if I woke you up just then,” Dolly says. “Looks like you were taking a little catnap.”

  “No, no. Just resting my eyes.” But no, I must have been dozing because I was having that weird dream.

  “Well, why don’t I shut my trap and let you rest them some more?”

  Under his breath, but loud enough for us to hear, our other seatmate says, “Thank god for small favors.”

  Dolly turns to him. “Amen to that, sir. For all His blessings, large and small.” Looking at me, she mocks him by making a grouchy face.

  Closing my eyes again, I replay the dream. God, my dreams have been so strange lately. Where did that one come from? . . . Oh, I know. Part of it, anyway. The other night, nervous about this trip, I couldn’t get to sleep. I put on the TV, grabbed the remote, and landed on the Game Show Channel. They were showing that old program, The Newlywed Game. From the 1960s or 1970s, it looked like from the clothes and the hairstyles. First they asked the wives a bunch of questions. Then they brought back the husbands and had them guess what they’d said. A shiver runs through me when I think about that creepy, fetus-size toy baby coming alive. . . .

  The intercom clicks on. “Captain Moynihan again, folks. Wanted to tell you that we’ve begun our initial descent. We’ll be touching down in Boston in about another twenty minutes.”

  I’m disappointed that Andrew’s not coming to the wedding. I was really looking forward to seeing him. But it’s probably just as well. I wouldn’t want to look over at him while Mama and Viveca are exchanging their vows and see him scowling, clenching his jaw the way he does when he’s mad. The way he did that night at dinner when we were in high school—tenth grade, it was. Andrew was going through that phase where he acted like he couldn’t stand me. Like, suddenly, I was the bane of his existence instead of Marissa. It hurt, I remember. It was confusing. Was it because I’d gotten fat? Up until then, my brother and I had always been close. . . .

  “Just do me a favor, okay?” he says to me. He’s hunched over his meal, shoveling it in as if someone’s going to snatch his plate away if he doesn’t. “When you see me at school with my friends, don’t come over and start talking to me.” Earlier in the day, at lunchtime, I had committed the terrible sin of asking him if he had his house key because I wasn’t going home on the bus. I was going over to Cindy Soucy’s house so that she and I could work on our campaign posters. Cindy’s running for president of our class and I’m running for treasurer. Last yea
r I ran for the same office, but Beverly Bundy beat me. Beverly and I used to be friends in elementary school, but she’s really changed. Andrew’s told me that her boyfriend, Digger, has been bragging in the locker room lately about how, on weekends when her parents go out, she lets him come over and get into her pants. When I told Andrew it was none of my business, he rolled his eyes and called me Saint Ariane.

  “She’s your sister, for crying out loud,” Daddy says. “Why can’t she talk to you?”

  Because she’s fat, I think my brother’s about to say. Andrew’s been lifting weights since last summer and he’s getting muscular. He’s always walking around the house with his shirt off, admiring himself in whatever mirror he passes. Not me. I avoid mirrors, except to fix my hair. “Because she’s in honors classes with all the other brains,” he tells Dad.

  “So?” Daddy says. “You could be in those classes, too, if you spent as much time with your books as you do with your barbells.” Andrew was in honors algebra and honors earth science the year before. Mama and Daddy think the school dropped him down because his grades were just mediocre, but that wasn’t it. Andrew went to his guidance counselor and begged her to put him in easier classes.

  “Yeah, like I’d even want to,” Andrew tells Daddy. “I hate those honors kids. And so do all of my friends.”

  “And why is that, Andrew? Enlighten me, will you?” I look over at Mama. She’s staying out of this exchange, but I can see from her face that she’s mad.

  “Because they think they’re better than everyone else. And because they’re always sucking up to the teachers so they can get better grades.”

  Daddy nods toward me. “And that’s true of your sister? She gets A’s not because she works hard for them, but because she butters up her teachers? She thinks she’s better than—”

  “No, not her, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Nothing. Never mind. Just forget it.”

  Marissa chimes in. “The brains in my school act all stuck-up, too,” she tells Daddy. You’d never know it from the way she goes out of her way to bug Andrew, but she idolizes him. She’s told me that all her friends have crushes on him.