The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (103 page)

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!
”

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.