The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (269 page)

“Yeah, they got him and the girlfriend a couple of months after it happened. They had tried pulling the same deal in Boston, up on Beacon Hill. That was their specialty: preying on temporary residents, people who’d sublet. They’d pass themselves off as brother-and-sister housecleaners helping out their sick mother. But the couple in Boston was smarter than I was. Got suspicious and notified the cops. They caught them in the act, hauling out antiques.”

“Put them away, I hope.”

“Yeah, he just got sentenced a few months ago. She made a deal with the prosecutor. Testified against him and got off with a lighter sentence. He was the one they really wanted to nail, which they did. He got twenty-five years.”

“And you get the rest of your life to live with what he did to you, huh? They should have put the son of a bitch away for good.”

“Yeah, well . . .”

“You testify?” I tell him I did. “And how’d that go?”

“It was . . . challenging. Having to face him in court.”

“Couldn’t they have videotaped you instead?”

“Nope. Law says he had the right to face his accuser.”

“Was the bastard able to look you in the eye?”

“On and off, yeah.” Jesus, Larry, keep
your
eyes on the road, will you? “Not when the prosecutor had me describe my ordeal after the attack. The fact that they had to put me in a medical-induced coma until the cranial swelling went down. Open up my back so they could get the bone fragments out. They delayed the trial for over two years because I couldn’t remember a lot of it at first. But as time went by, more and more of it came back. So between my testimony and the girlfriend’s . . .”

“And what about your paralysis? They think the rehab’s going to help you get the hell out of that chair eventually?”

“Afraid not. The blow I took injured me above the ninth thoracic vertebra. T-nine, they call it. So that left me with what they call a ‘complete’ SCI.”

“What’s an SCI?”

“Spinal cord injury.” I forget that not everyone’s as well versed in the lingo as I’ve gotten to be. “There was an outside chance during the first several months that I might regain some of what I lost. But as time went on, it became less and less likely. So what you see is what I got. There are some experimental treatments that they’re trying to develop—stem cell transplants, something called ‘spine cooling.’ So maybe somewhere down the line.”

“Yeah, especially with Obama at the wheel. Right? Wasn’t Bush against stem cell research?”

“Uh-huh. But federal funding’s still pretty limited from what I’ve read. I haven’t given up hope, but I’m not holding my breath either.”

“Well, I got to hand it to you, Doc. If it was me, I doubt I’d be as good-natured about it as you are.”

I chuckle. “Yeah, well, you should have seen me the first year or so. Nobody accused me of being good-natured back then. And not just about the paralysis, either. Brain injuries can land you in some pretty dark places. Mine sure as hell did.”

“Huh.” He stops talking after that. It’s something I’ve noticed since the paralysis: you mention depression and it’s a conversation killer. Not like when I was in practice. The college kids I saw were always talking about how depressed they were—wallowing in it, some of them. Well, I’ve done a fair amount of wallowing, too. That first year, especially. I think back to those early tests they did to see if there was any chance that my bladder and bowel function, sexual function, might be coming back. Those pinprick tests to see if I had any feeling in my anus, my penis.
Feel anything just then?

No.

How about now?

No, nothing.

God, that first year—the worst year of my life. The headaches, the mood swings. My speech was slurred, my memory was compromised. I’d get frustrated because of the disorientation, so then I’d get depressed. Combative. The medical staff, the rehab folks, even the poor janitors who’d come in to mop the floor: whoever would show up in my room wouldn’t know from one hour to the next if they were going to have to deal with an ogre or a sad sack. Or Rip Van Winkle. I’d go into deep sleeps sometimes that they’d have to wake me up out of. Then I’d get pissed when they did. Tell them to get the hell out of my room. Leave me alone so that I could get back to sleep. Dream that I could still walk, still run even. I haven’t had those kind of dreams for a while now, come to think of it. Guess you’d call that resignation.

But I was lucky, in a way. When they did those initial CT scans up in Boston, they found out that when he clobbered me over the head, my brain had collided with the wall of my skull, but there were no bone fragments floating around in there. If there had been, they would have had to crack open my noggin to get them out. So I caught a break there. . . .

Still, those dark, ugly depressions I kept falling into: that was tough. And not just for me, either. Poor Annie. She was the one who took the brunt of those moods of mine. Just married, and instead of being in New York with Viveca on the weekends, she’d drive up to Boston and stay with me. And not just weekends, either. Sometimes she’d come up on a Wednesday or a Thursday and stay until the following Monday. When the kids visited, I’d try and fake it for their sake. Act positive. But it was taxing, putting on those performances. And after they left, I’d take it out on their mother. Let her have it with both barrels sometimes, as if she was the one who had come at me with that goddamned vacuum cleaner.

I think back to the worst time, the one I’m most ashamed of. It was before Ariane had decided to move back and have the baby here. Before Andrew had made the decision not to re-up. Thanks to Annie, the house had been made handicap-accessible so that I could finally leave that goddamned rehab place I hated and move back home. The ramp outside, the bathroom and kitchen rails, the chair lift so that I could get upstairs, sleep in my room again. Annie’d let her own work go. Had lived back at the house for weeks while she researched equipment, got estimates, hired a contractor and supervised the installations. She was doing my bills, too. Dealing with those arrogant insurance pricks so that I wouldn’t have to. Sometimes she’d be on the phone with them for an hour or more. Cajoling them, demanding that they cover this or that, writing letters when they said they wouldn’t. Those first two years, she was more like my wife again than my
ex
-wife. She was great to do all that. You’d have thought I’d be grateful. And I
was
grateful when my head was clear. When those dark clouds of gloom would part for an hour or an afternoon and I’d show her a little appreciation. . . .

The fight started the afternoon she got back from dropping Andrew off at the airport. He had come in from Fort Hood for a long weekend. Had called me earlier that week and said he needed to talk to me.
I know you’re dealing with all of your own shit, Dad, but if I don’t talk to someone, my head’s going to explode.
But then, once he was here, he kept
not
telling me and I kept waiting. In fairness, others were around: his mother, my aide, a couple of my old colleagues from the college who had stopped by to see how I was doing. I could tell that something was seriously wrong with Andrew. He’d lost weight. He seemed distracted, edgy. Had trouble making eye contact with both Annie and me. I thought it was odd that he kept going out to the backyard, wandering down the path. . . .

And then, the day he was going back—a couple of hours before it was time for him to head to the airport, time was running out. Carla had left for the day, Ariane was at work, and Annie had gone off to pick up some groceries. It was finally just the two of us. He was sitting slumped in front of the TV, staring at a Celtics game. I told him to turn it off and tell me what the hell was going on—to say what he had flown across the country to say. He looked at me for the next several seconds. Then he aimed the remote and turned off the TV. “When Mom was a little girl?” he began. “After she lost her mother and sister in that flood they were in? You know that cousin who saved her?”

“Uh-huh. I can’t remember his name, but—”

“Kent,” he said.

“That’s right. Kent. What about him?” I waited.

“I’m going to . . . I have to tell you about something Mom told me the day of the wedding. And about something no one else knows about. Something I did that day. And I’m . . . Don’t stop me, okay? Because I have to get this all out and I don’t . . . Just don’t stop me until I’m finished. Okay?”

I nodded. Sat there listening in disbelief.

When he was done, the two of us had just sat there, Andrew sobbing with his hand over his mouth, me trying to get my head around everything he’d just confessed and, at the same time, looking at his suffering, wracking my compromised brain to think of something—anything—to say that might take away his pain. . . .

“Dad, it’s like this living nightmare that never lets go of me. I’ll be at the barracks, in the shower or lying in bed, and I’ll start thinking about it: how I killed him and got away with it. Up to this point, anyway. But it could still happen. Someone might put two and two together and . . . It’s just so not who I ever thought I’d be, Dad. A killer, a murderer.”

I want to interrupt him, object to what he’s saying about himself, but how can I refute it? There’s a body hidden down in back inside that well. My son has taken a life.

“I can’t eat, can’t sleep for shit. And sometimes when I finally do fall asleep, I dream about him. Dream he’s alive again, and I’m chasing him, catching up to him—not out in the woods where it happened, but down some street I don’t recognize. Or down the corridors of some strange hospital or school or something. . . . At work? I’ll be busy with a patient and it’ll just come over me. I’ll see him sitting out on the front steps that morning when I went back for the rings. See his head flopped to the side, that rock smeared with his blood. And they’ve started to notice—the docs I work with. I’ve gotten warnings from two different supervisors. Dr. Champy chewed me out when I got mixed up about the schedule and didn’t show up for my shift until after they called. He asked me if I had a drug problem—if that was what was wrong with me.
And Dr. Sanders wrote me up after I screwed up some patient’s meds. I’m becoming a liability at that place, Dad. I just don’t think I can hold it together anymore. I’m falling apart. I think I’m going to have to tell someone.”

And that’s when I finally think of something useful to say. “You just did tell someone, Andrew. You told your father. And I want you to promise me that you’re not going to tell anyone else. You hear me? Don’t you tell another fucking soul.”

He just sits there staring at me, not saying anything.

“When it starts getting to you, you’re going to pick up the phone and call me. Okay? If you can’t sleep, I don’t care what the hell time it is, you call me. If it hits you at work? You tell them you need to take a quick break, get yourself out of everyone else’s earshot, and dial my number. And I’ll answer it, I promise you. From now on, I’ll keep my cell with me at all times, no matter where I am. No matter what I’m doing. And when it rings, I’ll see that it’s you and pick up. Talk you back down from the ledge if you’re panicking. Okay? But you have to promise me, Andrew. Not another fucking soul. Not your supervisors, not some buddy of yours, not your mother or your sisters. And most of all, not the police. I’m the only one you should talk to about this. I need you to promise me that.”

Fifteen seconds go by, thirty. He’s trembling, crying again. And then finally, mercifully, he looks at me and nods. “Yeah, okay, Dad. I promise
. . . .”

Larry’s just said something up front. I don’t know what. “Don’t you think so, Doc?” He’s looking back at me, waiting for a response.

“Yup,” I tell him. “You’ve got that right. . . .”

Later that afternoon, while she’s driving him to the airport, it turns dark outside. Starts raining. It’s only three, four o’clock, but it gets as dark as dusk. And the weather inside my head has shifted, too. Those dark clouds have descended, and the fear I’ve been feeling for my son has curdled into anger. And Annie is who I’m angry with. What he did that day—the way he ran out of there to avenge her, the way he’s been suffering ever since—it all comes back to rest on her. It’s fucking pathological is what it is. The way she kept me in the dark all those years and then dumped it all out on him. Made our son her confessor. And now his life is ruined, and she’s the one who ruined it.

I’m at the front window, staring out at the rain, when I see her drive up. Hear the car door slam. She comes in, takes off her wet coat, shakes it out on the foyer floor. “Oh, hi,” she says. “I didn’t see you sitting there. Boy, it’s miserable out. You okay?”

“Yup.”

“He checked with the airline on our way up. His flight was on time, so I guess he’s off. I’m going to start supper now. Leftovers okay?”

“Yes.” I’m seething. Waiting.

“Orion, can you come in the kitchen with me while I’m getting things ready? I kind of want to talk to you about Andrew.” I tell her I want to talk with her, too. She’s just not going to like what I have to say.

When I wheel myself in there, she’s at the fridge, pulling things out. Her back is turned to me. “Something’s up with him,” she says. “I think he’s withholding something.”

It’s not funny—quite the opposite—but I laugh. “Well, he’s learned how to do that from the best, hasn’t he?”

She glances over her shoulder at me. “I don’t . . . What do you mean?”

“I mean that you’re the friggin’
queen
of withholding. All those secrets you were so good at keeping when we were married. The way your sister died that night, what your cousin did to you when you were a kid. Kind of made the whole marriage a sham, don’t you think?”

She stops what she’s doing. Turns around and faces me. “How did you—”

“Because he just told me how you vomited out all your ugly little secrets to him that day. Burdened him with all the dirty little things you never bothered to tell me about.”