The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (118 page)

Silence.

“
Mr. Birdsey? Did you hear me?
”

“
What?
”

“
Yesterday, near the end of our session, we were—
”

“
Can I have a cigarette?
”

“
Smoking is bad for your health, Mr. Birdsey. And for mine, too, since I’m in the room with you. I’d rather you didn’t get into the habit of having cigarettes every time we sit down to talk.
”

“
You didn’t mind yesterday. You lit the first one for me.
”

“
Yesterday was an exception. We were making some progress and—
”

“
I
think
better when I smoke. I
remember
better.
”

“
I don’t quite see how that’s possible, Mr. Birdsey. Physiologically speaking. Let’s move on, please. With regard to your stepfather, do you suppose—
”

“
Do you believe in reincarnation?
”

A pause. “
Mr. Birdsey, I discuss neither my religious beliefs nor my
personal life with patients. It’s my policy. It’s not relevant to what we’re trying to accomplish.
”

“
Well, I want a cigarette. That’s
my
policy
.”

“
And how do you justify that in terms of your religious conviction, Mr. Birdsey? I’m curious about that. If, as the Bible says, the body is a temple, then—
”

“
Don’t call me that.
”

“
Excuse me?
”

“
Call me by my code name. Especially if this is on tape. I’m vulnerable enough already.
”

“
Shall I call you Thomas then? You said during one of our earlier sessions that you prefer the more formal ‘Mr. Birdsey,’ but perhaps now that we’ve established a—
”

“
Call me by my code name, I said. Mr. Y.
”

“
Mr. Y? Yes?
”

“
You secure these tapes. Right?
”

“
Yes, yes. This has come up several times already. The tapes are—
”

“
Do you really think they’d put me under house arrest and then
not
watch my every move?
Not
sit there waiting for me to slip up?
”

“
Whom do you mean?
”

“
Never mind. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.
”

“
I want to assure you, Mr. Birdsey, that we are in a completely safe environment. As your doctor—your ally—I have taken all necessary precautions to assure your safety.
”

Pause. “
Indira Gandhi was assassinated, wasn’t she?
”

“
The prime minister? Yes, she was. Now, since our time together is precious, let’s talk a little about—
”

“
Killed and cremated. Whoosh! Don’t tell me the CIA didn’t have a hand in
that
one. . . . Maybe it has something to do with the blood vessels.
”

“
Excuse me?
”

“
Why I remember better when I smoke. It probably has to do with the way the nicotine affects the flow of blood to the brain. Not all truths are scientific. Go try and prove a miracle in some chemistry laboratory, Mrs. Gandhi. Go analyze God’s DNA.
”

“
You’re quite safe here, Mr. Birdsey. Quite safe.
”

“
Can I have a cigarette?
”

On the tape, I heard the sliding open of a drawer, the flick-flick-flick of a lighter.

I had to smile. “Thomas, one; Doc Patel, nothing,” I said.

She nodded. “Your brother is a talented manipulator, Dominick. I suppose it’s what twenty years of institutionalization will teach you.”

“Hey, if he was out in the real world, jerking people around would be a valuable skill. Right?”

“Yes? You think so? That’s an interesting perspective.” She was always doing that: turning some flip remark of mine into a revealing observation. You had to watch it with Dr. Patel, even if you were only the patient’s brother.

We were in Lisa Sheffer’s office at Hatch, not the doc’s. Sheffer had arranged the powwow that morning after she’d gotten an unexpected phone call from the office of the probate court. There’d been a change of plans. The judge was reviewing my brother’s case that day instead of waiting for the end of the fifteen-day observation period. The move was premature and unanticipated—“fishy,” in Sheffer’s words. We’d planned to meet in her office at four o’clock that afternoon to discuss the outcome—Lisa, Dr. Patel, and me. Since Sheffer was running late, the doc had suggested we listen to the tape of Thomas’s latest session while we waited. My brother had mentioned several things she said she’d be interested in getting my reaction to.
But,
she’d warned me, some of what he’d said might be upsetting. I’d shrugged. Reassured her I could take it—that I’d heard it all at this point.

On the tape, Thomas exhaled.

“
Mr. Birdsey, the last time we spoke, you mentioned that your stepfather was sometimes abusive to your mother. Do you remember?
”

“
One of these days, Alice. Pow! Right in the kisser!
”

“Is he quoting your stepfather there, Dominick?” Dr. Patel asked.

I shook my head. “Jackie Gleason.”

Her face went blank. She stopped the tape.

“
The Honeymooners.
It was a TV show.” No lightbulb yet. “This guy—this comedian named Jackie Gleason—he used to say that to his wife. On the show. ‘One of these days, Alice. Pow! Right in the kisser!’”

“Yes? Excuse me. What is the kisser?”

“The kisser? The mouth.”

“Ah, the mouth. Yes, yes. And this was a comedy? About a man who struck his wife in the mouth?”

“He never actually . . . it’s, uh . . . you’re taking it out of context.”

“I see,” she said. She kept looking at me. I wasn’t sure why my face felt hot.

“
Was your father physically abusive to your mother, Mr. Birdsey? Or was it more in the nature of—
”

“
It was not a pretty picture
.”

“
Will you elaborate, please?
”

No response.

“
Mr. Birdsey? What was ‘unpretty’ about it?
”

“
He used to use her like a punching bag, that’s what. He’d sock her in the jaw. Kick her. Slam her against the wall. He used to make us watch.
”

“
Us?
”

“
My brother and me.
”

“That’s complete bullshit,” I said.

Dr. Patel hit the “stop” button. “Yes? You’re saying it never happened?”

“No!”

“
One time we were sitting there eating dinner, the four of us, and Ray just reached over and elbowed her, right in the face. For no reason. Just because he felt like it, that’s all. He broke her nose.
”

I wrapped my arms around my chest. Shook my head. “Never happened,” I told the ceiling.

“You’re sure?”

“My stepfather breaks my mother’s nose and I wouldn’t remember it?”

“
He used to rape her, too. Right in front of us.
”

“Jesus God. Does he really—”

“
You watched this, Mr. Birdsey?
”

“
Plenty of times. He made us.
”

“
Let me make sure I understand. You’re saying your stepfather used to rape your mother and insist that you and your brother watch?
”

“
He’d pull us out of bed in the middle of the night sometimes. Drag us down the hallway to their bedroom and—
”

“That is complete—”

“
—push her nightgown up and just attack her.
”

“
And you and Dominick witnessed this?
”

“
We had to. We had to just sit there and shut up. My mother would beg him to let us leave, but he’d tell her to shut up or he’d cut our throats. And then, after he was finished with his business, he’d say, ‘There, this is what the world is really like, you two. Might as well get used to it.’ He was always trying to toughen us up. Sometimes he’d make us . . .
”

He kept rambling. I sat there, trying not to listen. I read the wording on Sheffer’s framed diploma. Studied the little area where paint was peeling off her ceiling. Picked away so thoroughly at a dried paint splatter on the knee of my jeans that I poked a hole in the cloth. Hadn’t Thomas made Ma suffer enough while she was alive without bringing her back from the dead so Ray could rape her? In
front
of us, for Christ’s sake? God, I hated Thomas.
Hated
him.

“Dominick?”

That’s when it dawned on me: she’d stopped the tape. “Yes?”

“I said, you look pale.”

“I’m all right. I’m fine.”

“Perhaps that’s enough for today. Maybe we could—”

I straightened my spine. Managed to look her in the eye. “Can I ask you something? Is he trying to con you with this crap or does he really think it happened?”

“I believe he thinks it happened. And you say it did
not
happen. Correct?”

“That Ray raped my mother and we had ringside seats? Gee whiz, now, let me think.” I got up, walked over to the barred window.
Looked out onto that sorry-ass recreation area with its rusted basketball hoop, its picnic tables that looked like they’d been gnawed on the ends. How could Sheffer work here? How could
any
of them work at this place—listening all day long to this kind of crap—and not go nuts themselves? I turned and faced her. “You know what
I
think? You want
my
opinion? I think he’s bullshitting you. He knows that if he gives you a good horror story, you’ll call it ‘progress’ and let him smoke. You said it yourself: he’s a good manipulator. You’re being manipulated.”

“Your stepfather—”

“Look, my stepfather could be a first-class son of a bitch when he wanted to, okay? I’m the first guy to admit that. But he was a bully, not some inhuman . . . Jesus Christ, if we’d watched something like that, don’t you think we’d
both
be off the deep end by now? Him
and
me?”

“You seem angry.”

“Just answer me one thing, will you? Is psychology or psychiatry over in India twenty years behind the times or something?”

“Why do you ask that, Dominick?”

“Because . . . look, I don’t mean to insult you, but this technique you’re using is a little backward, isn’t it?”

“What technique do you mean?”

“All this family history crap. It’s like we’ve gone full circle or something.”

“Full circle? In what respect?”

“When he was first hospitalized,
way
the hell back, the doctors were always sniffing around this bad childhood stuff. Did he get spanked? How was he toilet-trained? Did she and Ray fight a lot? She used to come home from those sessions with his doctors and . . . she’d have to go upstairs and lie down. I’d hear her up in their bedroom, sobbing her head off.”

“Your mother? Why was that?”

More tea, Mrs. Floon?

Yes, thank you, Mrs. Calabash.

“Dominick?”

“Because . . . because they were always insinuating that somehow or another
she
had caused it. And it wasn’t . . .
fair.
”

“The doctors were suggesting your mother caused Thomas’s illness?”

“Which was complete crap.”

“Yes, of course it was. I’m not at all implying that—”

“I mean, first of all, this kid who she’s
devoted
to, who she’s run interference for all his life . . . first, he cracks up and they cart him off to the loony bin. Then she comes down and visits him every single
day
—has to take the fucking
bus
down there because Ray wouldn’t . . . because he was too ashamed to . . . and then the doctors have to slap this
guilt trip
on her on top of it? It wasn’t
fair
!”

“Dominick, nothing about your brother’s illness is ‘fair.’ If you look for fairness when it comes to schizophrenia, it will be a futile search. No patient or patient’s family
deserves
this affliction. And I’m certainly not trying to place guilt on anyone. I’m merely investigating—”

“Investigating his past. I
know
that! That’s what I’m saying. It’s what the shrinks were doing twenty years ago when this whole . . . when this nightmare first started. And then, later on, his other doctors—Ehlers and Bradbury and those guys—when
they
came along, it was like, ‘Oh, no, all that history stuff’s irrelevant. It has nothing to do with his upbringing; it’s all genetic. We don’t need to figure out the past. All we have to do is focus on the future: how to control his behavior with medication, how to teach him self-management.’ So, I’m just wondering why we’re back to picking apart the past. Is that what they’re still doing over in India?”

“I don’t know, Dominick. I’m not an expert on the current psychiatric practices of my native country. I haven’t lived there in over twenty-five years. Tell me. Are you uncomfortable about remembering the past?”

“Am
I
? No, I’m not
uncomfortable.
I just . . . I was just
wondering.
If it’s all just about genetics and finding the right chemical cocktail so he can go live in a group home somewhere, then—”

“Genetics and long-term maintenance are
certainly
both parts of
the whole treatment picture.
Integral
parts, Dominick. I’m not at all in disagreement with Dr. Ehlers and the others about that. And we’re learning new things all the time. Just this year, there have been some exciting developments. The approval of Clozapine for one. Now, at the present time, it doesn’t seem that your brother is likely to benefit from—”

“We’ve been over that. What’s the other thing?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said Clozapine or Clozaril or whatever it’s called for
one
thing. What’s the other thing?”

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that, actually. There’s some fascinating research just coming out of the National Institute of Mental Health. A study involving twins, as a matter of fact. They’ve been looking at the physical differences in the brains of schizophrenics and their healthy twins. Investigating the possibility that the abnormalities they’re seeing might be related to early viral infections or autoimmune disorders. I’ve been in touch with a Dr. Weinberger at the Institute. He’s very interested in you and your brother, as a matter of fact—about the possibility of getting MRIs of you both.”