The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (117 page)

The fact that my stepfather worked third shift meant that he was home all day and had first dibs on the mail. I had two magazine subscriptions coming to the house back then,
Newsweek
and the
Sporting News.
It always bugged me that Ray got his hands all over
them before I did—bent back the pages, wrinkled up the covers, left them all over the place so’s I’d have to go looking for the things. At our house, mail was Ray’s property no matter whose name was on the envelope, and if you complained about it, it was
you
who was committing the federal offense.

One day in July, Thomas and I got home from work and found Ray sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a bottle of Moxie and waiting for us. “Well, well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t the two geniuses. Have a seat, fellas. I want to have a little chat with you guys.”

Ma was waiting, too, looking ashen, twisting a dish towel in her hands. She had made sweet cucumber pickles that day, a favorite of Thomas’s and mine. A row of canning jars was lined up on the counter. The kitchen smelled sweet and vinegary.

We sat. Ray turned to Thomas. “Suppose you explain
this
!” he said.

In his hand, he was crinkling Thomas’s tissue-paper grade report from UConn—all those D’s, F’s, and Incompletes my brother had said nothing about. Ray waved it back and forth like evidence. “What’s the story here, Einstein? You been taking a joy ride up there? First you flimflam me out of my hard-earned money and then you can’t even bother to study?”

“Come on now, Ray,” Ma said. “You said you’d give him a chance to explain.”

“That’s right, Suzie Q. And that’s
exactly
what I want to hear. His explanation. And it better be a good one.”

Thomas sat there, hands in his lap, eyes averted and brimming with tears. Like I said, Thomas never could defend himself. So Ray continued to bully him.

He himself had never been to college, Ray said, so maybe he was just stupid. But for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why he should keep throwing away his hard-earned money so that this clown sitting here across from him could make a joke out of his college education. What, exactly, was he paying for? Could either of us two Einstein college boys or our mother tell him
that
?

Thomas’s whole body shook. He could explain what had hap
pened, he said, but could he please just get a drink of water first?

No, he could
not
just get a drink of water first, Ray told him. He could tell them what the hell he’d been doing all year long instead of studying. Ray took a long sip of his Moxie and slammed the bottle back down on the table in a way that made me jump. Made all thirty of those college credits evaporate.

Thomas cleared his throat. “Well . . . ,” he began. His voice was loud one second, nearly inaudible the next; he explained in a rambling way that he had had a tough time adjusting to college. A hard time sleeping. “I was always so tired. And so
nervous.
I just couldn’t concentrate. . . . I kept trying and trying, but it was always so noisy there.”

“It was noisy?” Ray said. “
That’s
your excuse? That it was noisy?”

“Not
just
that. I felt. . . . It was a lot of things. I guess . . . I guess I was homesick.”

Ma took a step toward him, then stopped. Caught herself.

“Oh, gee whiz,” Ray mocked. “Mama’s poor little bunny rabbit was homesick.” Each time Thomas opened his mouth, he handed our stepfather more ammunition.

“I’m really sorry, Ray. I know I let you down. You, too, Ma. All I can say is that it’s not going to happen again.”

Ray leaned toward him. Got right in his face. “You’re goddamned right it isn’t, buddy boy. Not with
my
money.” He turned to Ma, jabbing a finger at her. “And not with yours, either, Suzie Q, just in case you’re getting any cockamamy ideas about getting another job. Maybe
you
don’t know a con game when you see it, but
I
sure as hell do. This guy’s going to stay home in September and
work
for a living.”

Thomas was silent for several long seconds. Then he told Ray that if he had another chance, he could get things under control.

“Oh, you could, eh?
How?
”

Thomas looked over at me. “Dominick goes to the library to study,” he said. “Maybe I could try that. Go study at the library with Dominick. And if some of the teachers could just give me a little extra help . . .”

I could tell by Thomas’s thickening voice, by the way his words
kept catching in his throat, that he was about to surrender to full-out sobbing—the kind of snorting, sore-throat wailing that Ray had been able to draw from him ever since we were kids. I wanted to save my brother from that. Didn’t want him to hand Ray that satisfaction. So I put my own neck on the chopping block.

“My GPA is 3.2, Ray,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong with that?”

He looked over at me. Took the bait. “Well, why don’t you tell me what a goddamned GPA
is
then, Mr. Smart Ass?” Ray said, turning to me. “After all, I only went as far as my third year of high school. I only fought in two wars, that’s all. I’m not a walking encyclopedia like you and Smarty Pants over there. I’m just the working stiff that puts food on the table.”

I stared him down. “It’s a grade point average,” I said. “Four points for an A, three for a B, two for a C. I made the dean’s list, Ray.”

“
I made the dean’s list, Ray,
” he mimicked back. “So who does that make you? King Farouk? Does that mean my shit stinks and yours doesn’t?”

“No. All it means is that I made the dean’s list.”

“Gee, that’s great, honey,” Ma said wearily. “Congratulations.”

Ray told her to shut her trap and stay out of it. He put down Thomas’s grade report and picked up mine, then proceeded to discredit my accomplishments one by one. B-plus in psychology? Big deal! That stuff was a bunch of happy horseshit as far as he was concerned. A-minus in probability? He didn’t even know what that was, for Christ’s sweet sake. He laughed with particular disdain at the A I had earned in art appreciation. “Kids your age are over there
dying
for their country, and you’re sittin’ in some nice little classroom, ‘appreciatin’ paintin’s on a wall? And
I’m
paying for it? I never heard of anything so goddamned pathetic.”

“So what is it you want, Ray?” I said. “You want the two of us to go over there and get our heads blown off by the Viet Cong? Is that what would make you happy?”

“Don’t say that, honey,” Ma said.

Ray leaned forward and took hold of me by the front of my T-shirt. Pulled me up to a standing position. “Don’t you
dare
talk to me like that, buddy boy,” he said. “Understand? I don’t care how many A’s you got on your lousy—”

“Let go of me, Ray,” I said.

“You hear me? Huh?”

My T-shirt twisted a little in his grip. Cut into the back of my neck. “I said, let go of my fuckin’ shirt.”

“All right, you two,” Ma said. “Come on now. This isn’t necessary. Calm down.”

“Calm down?” Ray said. He let go, shoving me backward so that I lost my balance, fell against one of the kitchen chairs. “You want me to calm down, Connie? Okay, I’ll calm down. Let me show you how calm I can get.”

Ray took Ma by the arm and walked her over to the counter where her pickles were. He grabbed one of the jars and flung it like a grenade against the refrigerator door. Grabbed another. It smashed on the floor in front of Thomas. A third smashed against a leg of the kitchen table. By the time he’d finished, the floor was littered with broken glass and pickles and rivers of juice—the ruins of my mother’s day.

I wanted to kill the bastard. Imagined picking up one of those jagged pieces of glass and going after him with it. Sinking it into his heart. But I just stood there, terrified.

“How’s
that
for calm, honey bunch?” Ray asked Ma. He was red-faced, short of breath. “How do you like
them
apples? Huh?”

Ma went for the broom and the mop, but Ray told her to stay put and to shut her big trap for once in her life. He had something to say to all three of us and all he wanted us to do was shut up and listen.

Thomas and I were
both
a couple of pantywaists, he said, and as far as he was concerned, it was all Ma’s fault. We were Suzy and Betty Pinkus, the little college mama’s boys, hiding behind her apron strings instead of doing what was right. Neither of us gave a good god
damn
about our country—about
anything
except ourselves. Did we think he
had
wanted
to go over there and fight the Krauts? Did we think he
wanted
to put his life on the line a few years later in Korea? Men did what they
had
to do, not what they
wanted
to do. Our mother had spoiled us rotten—had treated us like a couple of crown princes. The two of us were nothing but take, take, take. We’d been like that our whole fucking lives and he was sick of it. We could go plumb to hell if we thought
he
was going to keep shelling out. He was
finished
with that bullshit.

It was futile to defend yourself when Ray went full-tilt into one of his rages. Whatever shots you got in weren’t worth what he’d come back at you with—weren’t worth the toll it took on Ma. The best thing you could do was cut your losses. Relax your face of any emotion. Play defense.

That was something I always understood and Thomas never did. That afternoon, my brother sat there, sobbing and apologizing, as if enough tears and “I’m sorrys” would make him love us. Or at least stop hating us. Ray railed on, backing up and slamming into him again and again, one verbal collision after another. Just witnessing it was enough to make me puke.

I headed for the back door, sloshing through pickle juice, crunching glass underneath my work boots with every step. “Get back here! Who told you this was—?”

I slammed the door behind me.

I was in a jog by the time I got to the end of Hollyhock Avenue, clomping up the hill to Summit Street and then through the woods. I stumbled past a family having a picnic and a teenage couple swapping spit by the edge of Rosemark’s Pond. Went crashing into the water, boots and work clothes and all.

Breathed deeply in and out, in and out.

Went under.

I got home sometime around midnight, I guess—well after Ray had gone to work and Thomas had gone to bed. The kitchen floor had been cleaned of glass and pickles. The supper dishes were dry on the rack, my meal Saran-wrapped on a plate in the refrigerator. I was
sitting at the table, eating and reading the paper when I heard my mother on the stairs.

She smelled like the lilac dusting powder I gave her every Christmas—the only thing she ever claimed she needed. She was wearing a housecoat I’d never seen before—a colorful, flowery one. Her toenails were painted pink.

“I don’t know how you boys can eat cold spaghetti like that,” she said. “Why don’t you let me heat that up for you?”

“It’s fine,” I said.

She sat down at the table across from me. “Honey?” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Yup.”

“Well, you don’t look all right. You look like the wreck of the
Hesperus.
”

“I hate him, Ma,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, you don’t, Dominick.”

“Yes, I do. I
hate
him.”

She got up and turned her back on me, started putting away the dishes. “You hate his temper, not him. Boys don’t hate their fathers.”

“He’s not my father.”

“Yes, he is, Dominick.”

“The only thing that makes him my father is some stupid piece of paper he signed. What kind of father would bully his son the way he bullied Thomas tonight? What kind of father wants his sons to go off to war and get wasted?”

“He didn’t say that, Dominick. Don’t put words in his mouth. He loves you boys.”

“He can’t stand us and you know it. He resents everything about us. He’s been that way all our lives.”

She shook her head again. “The thing about your father is. . . . Well, I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but he didn’t have it easy when he was a kid.”

“Don’t keep calling him my father. He’s
not
my father.”

“He didn’t have much of a home life, Dominick. His mother was a no-good tramp. He doesn’t talk about it much, but I think that
when his temper goes off like that, it just all comes back at him.”

“Is our
real
father alive?” I said. “Did he croak or something? Just
tell
me!”

She looked me in the eye for a second, and then looked away. Put her hand over her cleft lip. “All I’m saying, honey, is that these kinds of problems pop up in every family. Not just ours. Now do me a favor and don’t walk around here with bare feet. I think I got all that glass, but sometimes you miss a piece. Just be careful, honey. Okay?”

“Who
is
he, Ma?” I said. “Who’s our father?”

She stood there a while longer. Gave me a weak smile. “Well, good night,” she said. “Get some sleep now. Watch out for that glass. Okay?”

“
Mr. Birdsey, tell me about your stepfather
.”