The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (244 page)

“Yup. The artist who painted these, as a matter of fact. Poor guy couldn’t sell any of his work in his lifetime and now they’re worth big bucks, according to Viveca.”

“Wait. Didn’t you just say she doesn’t know about them?”

“She doesn’t.”

I tell her about the day her mother and Viveca came to the house on their way to the Gardner Museum. About Viveca’s discovery of
The Cercus People
. “Read the back.”

She does. “And Joe J was . . . ?”

“The guy who painted all these. You see that big one leaning against the chair over there? The Garden of Eden painting? Look at Adam’s face. Now look at the men’s faces in some of the others. Notice anything?”

“It’s the same face,” she says.

“Right. Jones’s face, I’d be willing to bet. He paints the skin gray in a lot of them, but look at the facial features and the texture of the hair.”

“He was black?”

“Yes. Had a white woman living down there with them—him and his brother. Back then, of course, that would have rattled people’s cages.” She says that sounds more like the South than Connecticut. “Ha! Don’t kid yourself.”

She puts
The Cercus People
back on the bed. Scans the others. “They’re creepy but kind of cool, too,” she says. “Like scenes from dreams you have but can’t quite get the meaning of. I like how he distorts the figures—almost as if you were looking at them in a fun house mirror.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure that was intentional. He was self-taught, had had no training. Which is what Viveca specializes in, you know? Outsiders, primitive painters. I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head when she saw that painting we had. She’d been looking for works by Jones for years, she said. She wants to buy it from me, but I’ve held off selling it to her.”

“Why?”

“You want the truth? Because she wants it so badly.” I look away from her look of disapproval. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I
am
being childish.

“Are you going to let her know about all these other ones?”

“I don’t know yet. Haven’t decided.”

“But why did you bring them up here with you?”

I begin to gather them up, stack them. “Because the house is on the market. People traipsing in and out, walking the grounds. And then, with the wedding coming up, who knows who might be over there poking around?”

“Daddy, the wedding guests will be at Bella Linda. The only people who’ll be at the house are Mama, Marissa, and me.” I carry the stacks over to the other side of the room, lean them back against the wall. Turn and face her.

“But I’m sure Viveca will be over there with you guys. I just figured if I brought them up here with me, I wouldn’t have to deal with it.”

She gives me a skeptical look. “Daddy, I’m sure she’s not an art thief. Are you going to keep them? Sell them?”

I shrug. “Don’t know yet, honey. Hey, I thought you and I were going to the beach.”

Chapter Fifteen

Andrew Oh

C
asey-Lee’s in a pissy mood because she suggested we go to that new Japanese hibachi place for dinner and here we are at the Olive Garden instead. “Oh, I don’t really care, sugar,” she’d said when I picked her up. “We can go there if you want.” So we did and now she’s got an attitude. Well, it’s not going to get any better when I tell her I’m reconsidering my decision—that I might cancel our weekend plans and go back there after all. Use one of those tickets she sent. There’s a part of me that’s curious about this Viveca. The woman Mom changed her whole life for. But I don’t know. Maybe I should just stay put. Either way, I’d better make a decision pretty soon. Their wedding’s only four days away.

A waitress approaches—a pretty, dark-eyed Mexican. Nice, fleshy body. A C-cup, maybe. “Hi, folks. I’m Xan and I’ll be your server tonight. How y’all doin’?”

“We’re just fine,” I tell her. “How are you?”

“Great! Well, I’m a little nervous, actually. I’ve been shadowing another waitress all week. This is my first night going solo.” I ask her how it’s going. “So far so good,” she says. “Can I get y’all something to drink to start you off?”

I turn to Casey-Lee. “White wine?” She nods. “A glass of pinot grigio for the lady and a Lone Star for me.” Casey-Lee likes things traditional. Likes me to order for both of us.

“You got it,” the waitress says.

Casey’s off tonight. Fidgety. Going out in the middle of the week’s probably a mistake. She’s already told me she’s tired, and that she still has her lessons to plan for tomorrow, and things to cut out for some bulletin board she needs to put up before the school’s open house on Thursday. “Hey,” I say.

“Hey what?”

“You look very pretty tonight. Is that a new dress?”

She rolls her eyes. Says I asked her that the last time she wore it.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “By the way, you look handsome in that shirt. When I was in Brooks Brothers, I couldn’t decide between the blue check and the green check. But I’m glad I went with the green. It’s a great color for you.”

“Well shucks, darlin’. That’s mahty nice of you to say so.” She cracks a smile. Gets a kick out of it when I talk Texan to her. I reach across the table and take her hand in mine. “So how are things going with your new class?”

She makes a face. Says she wishes she was still teaching third grade. “Kindergarteners are still such babies at the beginning of the year. I had two of them crying today because they missed their mothers and another who wet her pants. And that boy I was telling you about? Jett?”

“The one with the ‘alternative’ parents?”

“Uh-huh. He kicked another child while they were in line at the drinking fountain. A
girl
, no less. Epiphany, and she’s as sweet as they come and hadn’t done a thing to provoke him. When she started crying, he stood there denying it, and I told him I’d seen him do it with my own eyes. He’s going to be trouble, that one. And when I called home and talked to his mother, she was like, ‘Did he have something sugary for snack? Because sugar makes him ornery.’ Instead of, ‘We’ll give him a consequence’ or ‘Did he hurt that poor little girl?’ ”

“Did he?”

“Just her feelings,” she says. “But that’s bad enough. I mean, last week Jett’s mom complained because I was having her son recite the Pledge of Allegiance along with the other children, but now it’s okay for him to assault another child because the room mother brought in Apple Newtons and Hi-C? I can just imagine what
she’s
gonna bring in when it’s her week to be room mother. Tofu, probably. Edamambo or whatever they call it. Like
that’d
go over big with the children.”

“Crazy, huh?”

“Meet the mother halfway, Marian said. Have him stand with the others but just not recite the pledge. So what can I do? She’s the principal. I just wish she wasn’t so wishy-washy. I been thinking more and more about getting my master’s in administration instead of reading. I tell you one thing. If
I
was in charge at that school, things would be different. I’d back my teachers, not tell them to bend over backward to please the parents. I mean, if she doesn’t want me to teach her son to show some respect for the flag, maybe she should homeschool him out at that organic farm thing they’re part of. But anyway, that’s enough about school. How was your day?” I open my mouth to tell her, but notice that she’s looking over my shoulder. “Oh . . . my . . .
Lord
,” she says.

“What?”

“There’s Miss Bascomb, my old earth science teacher.”

I turn to see who she’s looking at. “The woman in the red dress?”

“No, the next table over.” I spot two heavy-set women, both of them in jeans and orange T-shirts, matching close-cropped gray hair. They’re drinking Lone Stars, too. “Well, I guess I owe my girlfriend Janisse an apology. She always used to insist that Miss Bascomb was one of
those
.”

One of those lesbians, she means. It feels like a gut shot. Like she’s slamming my mother, even though she’s probably not even making the connection. “Got your gaydar up, huh?” I say.

“I used to tell her, ‘Janisse, just because she wears pants all the time and has posters of the Cowboys and the Spurs all over her classroom, that doesn’t prove a thing. Maybe she’s just a sports fan. Maybe skirts make her look too hippy.’ And Janisse would go, ‘Girl, you’re just naïve. She’s got a
softball
trophy on her bookcase. Drives a
muscle
car for crying out loud.’ Whenever Janisse had to go to her room for extra help, she’d make me go with her even though I was getting straight A’s in science. She was afraid Miss Bascomb would try and recruit her.” Okay, that’s enough, I feel like saying. But what the hell am I getting so defensive about?
She’s
not the one who’s connecting the dots between those two dykes over there and my mom.
I
am. It’s
my
problem.

Our drinks arrive, and when the waitress goes to put down Casey’s wine, she spills a little on her. “Sweet Jesus, look what you just did!” she says, loud enough so that the people at the next table look over. Casey’s sopping at the spill like she’s gotten half the glass dumped on her instead of just a little dribble. The waitress apologizes and rushes off to get her some extra napkins. “It’s okay,” I assure Casey. “White wine’s not going to leave a stain.”

“It most certainly will, Andrew. Do you realize how delicate silk is? That’s what I hate about these chain restaurants. It’s not only that the food is so-so, but the service is unprofessional.” In other words, this never would have happened if we’d gone to that hibachi place.

“She’s new,” I remind her. “She’s nervous.”

“Oh, then I guess that gives her the right to slop whatever she wants on her customers. Well, there goes
her
fifteen percent tip.”

When Xan returns with more napkins—a stack of them—Casey instructs her to make sure she reports the spill to her manager. “I’ll try and treat the stain when I get home, but if it doesn’t come out, I’ll have to bring it to the dry cleaner’s and give y’all the bill.”

Xan yes ma’ams her. Apologizes again. She asks if we need a few more minutes or we’re ready to order. “Babe? You know what you want?”

She slaps her menu shut. “Just a Caesar salad,” she tells me.

“Appetizer- or entrée-size, ma’am?” the waitress asks, short-circuiting Casey’s preferred ordering process.

“What?”

“Did you want the smaller Caesar or—”

“That’s all I’m having. A Caeser salad, dressing on the side.”

“Yes, ma’am. Dinner size then. Did you want anchovies on that?”

Casey shoots her a look like she’s an imbecile. “No, I do
not
, thank you.”

“Okay. Got it. And you, sir?” I order the seafood ravioli, Alfredo sauce instead of marinara. “Good choice,” she says. “That’s my favorite dish on the whole menu. Any appetizers for you guys?” Ooh, boy. She’s just hit another nerve. Casey hates it when people refer to women as “guys.” Blames the “feministas” for the fact that everyone does that now. I’ve heard her pal, Dr. Laura, use that word, which is probably where she got it. Casey thinks that woman walks on water.

“What do you think, babe?” I ask her. “You feel like splitting an order of calamari?”

“Those deep-fried rubber band thingies? I don’t
think
so.” Now I’m an imbecile, too.

I sneak the waitress an apologetic look. “Guess not,” I tell her.

“Okay then. I’ll put this right in for you guys.” Ouch.

When she walks away, Casey-Lee starts in about fried food and fatty sauces. “You keep eating like that and you’ll have a coronary by the time you’re forty. Why do you think Daddy had to get that triple bypass last year? Clogged arteries from eating the same kind of thing you just ordered.”

Plus the fact that Daddy’s fifty or sixty pounds overweight and twice my age. And I doubt all those bourbon and branch waters are all that good for his ticker either. “I did a six-mile run this morning,” I tell her. “I’m guessing my heart can handle a little cream sauce every once in a while.”

“Fine,” she says. “What do I know? I’d just like to be your wife, Andrew. Not your widow.”

Yup, bad idea: a midweek meal. “You should have just told me if you were too busy to go out tonight. You seem so stressed-out.”

“I’m fine,” she insists. “I
wanted
to see you. We’ve gotta eat, don’t we?” She sips her wine. I drink my beer. “So what was your day like?” she asks again. Maybe this time she’ll let me answer.

Crazy, I tell her. “We got six new patients on the ward that I had to do intakes for. They’re just back from Afghanistan. Got deployed over there for the troop surge.”

“Oh, you mean the troop surge our ‘antiwar’ president ordered?” She makes little quotation marks with her fingers when she says “antiwar.” “Maybe now he realizes what poor George W was up against.”

What George W created and Obama inherited, I feel like saying. Although I’ve let her assume otherwise, I voted for Obama last year. Not that I’m too happy with the way he’s been handling things so far. The economy, the wars. “A couple of these new guys we got had to be medevaced out of there,” I tell her. “They’re in bad shape. Some of the worst I’ve seen.”

“The worst how? Physically?”

“One of them, yeah. He’s got a TBI. A gunner, twenty-one years old. Took shrapnel in his head and his neck. He’s already had three operations. Brain surgery, facial reconstruction. Poor guy doesn’t even remember the day he got hit.”

“Well, that’s probably good. Right?”

“Maybe. But at least it’d give him a context, you know what I’m saying? Why he’s struggling to put sentences together. Come up with the names of simple objects on cards. Today when I was doing his assessment, I held up this one card with a picture of a banana on it. ‘I know what it is,’ he told me. ‘Give me a minute.’ But you should have seen the look of defeat on his face when he finally gave up. When I told him what it was, he started to cry. He’s probably never going to be a hundred percent.”

“That poor thing,” she says. “When I was volunteering at the V-A with my women’s fellowship last year, it broke my heart to see some of those boys. Bandaged heads, missing limbs. I know they have an important job to do over there, but still. I get down on my knees every single night and pray for them.”

See? She’s in a bitchy mood tonight, but she’s got a good heart.

Casey’s cell phone chimes inside her purse, and when she takes it out and reads the text message she’s just gotten, she says it’s from some woman on some committee she’s on—that she’d better respond. Watching her text her back, I recall the day I met Casey-Lee. She was sitting in the solarium, reading some Stephen King story to a couple of our walking wounded. Engaging those guys who would otherwise be sitting in their rooms, absorbed in their misery. Stephen King and a beautiful blonde paying attention to them: it probably did those soldiers more good than all the medication and talk therapy our team was providing. And then a few days later, when I walked into that church service hungover from the night before, there she was again. . . .

Casey believes that there’s no such thing as coincidence. That it was the Good Lord’s plan to bring us together. Which was why it hadn’t worked out with that
other
guy she’d almost gotten engaged to: the up-and-coming attorney her father had hand-picked for her. The first time I went over to their house, they still had a picture of him and Casey on their refrigerator: Waco’s answer to Barbie and Ken, they looked like. Not that I’m complaining about her looks. When she stopped me outside the church that day—surprised me by saying she recognized me from the hospital—and I took a chance and asked her out, I was shocked when she said yes. I’m
still
shocked, sometimes. I like it when we walk into a club or a restaurant and heads look up. . . . But more than once, I’ve imagined Big Daddy’s reaction after that first time I went over there.
His last name’s what, Casey-Lee? Oh? What kind of a name’s that? He got some chinky-Chinaman in him? What’s that? Irish and Eyetalian, too? Well, that boy’s a real mongrel then, idn’t he? . . . A soldier? Well, that’s fine, honey. I’ve got nothing but respect for the U.S. Army. You know that. But a nurse?
Kind of a nancy-pants career choice, don’t you think? And what can nurses make? Fifty thousand, maybe? Fifty-five tops?
That may be a decent salary for a woman. But for a man? A breadwinner? . . .
Yeah? Well, what’s that thing I heard at our last training? That one out of five of the ones coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq are suffering from some kind of mental illness? Sounds to me that mental health’s more of a growth industry than real estate lawyering, wouldn’t you say, Big Daddy? Not that I’m being fair. Just because I can
imagine
him saying that shit doesn’t mean he said it. I’m just glad they took that picture off their refrigerator, that’s all. And maybe Casey’s right. Maybe we
did
come together because of some divine plan. She brought me to Jesus, didn’t she? Helped to ground me in a spiritual life when I was flapping around in the wind? Getting wasted on beer and weed, wasting my time and money on porn. My sister can argue all she wants to about how it wasn’t our parents’ fault that none of us grew up godly, but we’d been raised to be skeptical about religion. Love thy neighbor, sure, but not because Jesus Christ said so. Support the Democrats because they work for the common good and Republicans are just out for themselves. But it’s not that black and white. Casey’s plenty charitable: reading to the walking wounded, volunteering with Big Sisters. Whenever she talks about that little girl she used to take places, she lights up. . . . My parents, my sisters: voting for Obama was a foregone conclusion for them, but not for me. I remember standing there in that voting booth at the base, looking at both those levers, still undecided. It was McCain’s cancer that finally convinced me to pull the lever for Obama. Palin was just too inexperienced. I couldn’t see her being a heartbeat away from the presidency.