The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (136 page)

“
He works over there, you know. At Hatch.
”

“
Who?
”

“
Ralph Drinkwater. He’s on the maintenance staff.
”

“
Is he?
”

“
I’ve run into him down there. The night Thomas was admitted. He had an accident, pissed himself. And guess who shows up with the mop?
”

“
How did you feel when you saw Ralph?
”

“
How did I
feel
? Oh, I guess I felt . . . like a good, red-blooded American.
”

“
Yes? Explain, please.
”

“
Keep them damn minorities down, boys. Put ’em on the cleanup crew. Survival of the fittest.
”

“
You’re being ironic, yes?
”

“
You know much about American history, Doc? What we did to the Indians? The slaves?
”

“
I’m afraid I’m not grasping your point, Dominick.
”

“
My point is: who the hell do you
think
those three white cops were going to believe that night—a couple of white kids or the dope-peddling black Indian? The radical queer? I mean, you got to hand it to Leo. It was a little over the top, maybe, but it worked. Right? I mean, stoned or not, it was a brilliant defense.
”

“
And so, when you saw Ralph here at Hatch, you felt . . . ?
”

“
I don’t know. There was a lot going on that night. . . . I felt bad, I guess.
”

“
Can you be more specific, please? What does ‘bad’ mean?
”

“
Guilty. I felt guilty as sin. . . . We just fed him to the cops.
”

“
Ah. Interesting.
”

“
What is?
”

“
That’s the second time you’ve used that word today.
”

“
What word? ‘Guilty’?
”

“
’Sin.’
”

“
Yeah? So?
”

“
Do you recall the context of your other reference to sin?
”

“
No.
”

“
You said that when you emerged from the pond, you realized that one cannot swim away from one’s sins.
”

“
Yeah? And?
”

“
I merely note that you described your swim almost as an attempt at purification. And now, this second reference to guilt and sin. I’m just struck by your religious—
”

“
It’s just a figure of speech. ‘Guilty of sin’: people say it all the time.
”

“
Are you angry?
”

“
No, I just . . . I think you’re confusing me with the
other
Birdsey brother.
”

“
No, no. I assure you. I know the difference between—
”

“
Look, Ma! Two hands!
”

“
Dominick, sit down, please.
”

“
I don’t want to sit down! I just . . . You know something? Let me clue you in to something. When you go to lift your kid—your beautiful little baby girl—out of the bassinet some morning and . . . and she’s . . . Well, never mind. Just don’t start confusing me with my one-handed Holy-Roller brother. I don’t
do
religion, okay? I gave up on God a long time ago. . . . I was just some stupid, mixed-up kid up there at that pond that morning. I was hot and tired and . . .
“

“
Take my hands, please, Dominick. That’s it. Now, look at me. That’s right. Good. I want to assure you, my friend, that I do not confuse you and your brother. I am quite aware of the distinctions between you. All right?
”

“
I—
”

“
I only ask this: that, during this process, you try not to disown your insights.
”

“
My insights? Have I had any insights yet?
”

“
Yes! And more will come in time. Be patient, Dominick. They’re coming. Do you, by any chance, know who Bhagirath was? In Hindu legend?
”

“
Who?
”

“
Bhagirath. He brought the Ganges from heaven to earth.
”

“
Yeah? Neat trick. What was he—a civil engineer?
”

“
Of sorts, I suppose. You see, Bhagirath had a mission. He needed to cleanse the honor of his ancestors because they had been cursed. Burned to cinders. So he routed the river from the feet of Brahma, the Creator, through the tangled locks of Shiva, the Destroyer, and thus to earth. It was his gift. The holy river. And that is why orthodox Hindus bathe there: to cleanse themselves of their imperfections. To wash away their ancestors’ sins.
”

“
Uh-huh.
”

“
Keep thinking back, Dominick. Keep remembering.
”

“
I just . . . It’s painful. I don’t see the point.
”

“
The point is this: that the stream of memory may lead you to the river of understanding. And understanding, in turn, may be a tributary to the river of forgiveness. Perhaps, Dominick, you have yet to emerge fully from the pond where you swam that morning so long ago. And perhaps, when you do, you will no longer look into the water and see the reflection of a son of a bitch.
”

1969–1970

The next day, Dessa and I drove out to the Falls to talk. We made up. Made love.

On Monday morning, I quit the Public Works so I wouldn’t have to face Ralph. Walked into Lou Clukey’s office and told him I needed to leave earlier than I’d figured because of school. Leo had quit, too, Lou said. At least I’d come in and told him in person. On the way out of the yard, I ran right into Ralph. He acted embarrassed, not angry. If the cops were going to haul him in for questioning, they hadn’t done it yet.

“Well,” I said. “It’s been real.” I held out my hand for him to shake.

“It’s been real,” Ralph repeated. And he grasped and shook the dirty hand of betrayal. The white boy’s hand.

The weekend before school started, Dessa came over to the house with her sister. Thomas and I were out on the front porch, shucking corn for supper. Angie plopped herself down next to my brother and started teasing him.
Flirting
with him. Then and forever engaged in a
one-sided competition with her big sister, Angie had decided on the spot that if Dessa wanted me, what she wanted was the closest facsimile. It was Angie who suggested the four of us drive down to Ocean Beach to play miniature golf. On the way home, Angie and Thomas started making out in the backseat. In a way, it was kind of funny: Thomas getting the moves slapped on him. And, if the rearview mirror didn’t lie, responding. Acting normal for once in his life. Acting human. . . . It was funny, but it
wasn’t
funny, either. Thomas’s behavior was always a wild card. And Dessa’s little sister was just plain wild.

Angie and Thomas went out the next night, and then the next. The morning before we were due back at school, I stepped out of the shower and saw Thomas standing in front of the medicine cabinet mirror, shirtless, touching the hickeys Angie Constantine had sucked into his chest and neck. “Hey, listen, loverboy,” I said. “You do anything stupid—anything to mess up Dessa and me—and you’re a dead man. Understand?” Thomas just stared at me, bewildered, as if sex and girls and fratricide weren’t options on the planet where he came from. Then he went back to the mirror—touched his chest again, passed his fingers over his rose-colored bruises.

That night, I dreamed I was screwing Angie. “Don’t tell Dessa,” I kept begging her, mid-fuck. When she told me she wouldn’t, I hooked my chin over her shoulder and closed my eyes and we went at it something fierce. And when I opened my eyes again, there was my brother, watching us.

During our first week as dormmates, Leo and I spoke in grudging single syllables, then in guarded, self-conscious sentences, then normally again. I threw a twenty-dollar bill on his desk, partial payment for the damaged tapes, but not all of it. Neither of us apologized. Neither of us said much at all about our near-arrest by the state police and how we’d gotten out of it and how I’d lost it and almost busted his face in. We just let it lie. Let it get layered over with classes, loud music on the turntable, guys busting into the room for a bull session or a game of poker or pitch. Leo’s drama professor cast a better actor as Hamlet and gave Leo the part of Osric, court asshole, Elizabethan “Cool Jerk.” Leo had five or six
lines, maybe. Two or three sorry little scenes. Watching Leo in that performance—the costumer had outfitted him in checked tights, a floppy hat with a big plume—I forgave him for who he was: a buffoon, a bigmouth, a guy who couldn’t be trusted any
further than you could throw him.

Across campus, Thomas and his new roommate began their awkward adjustment to each other. Randall Deitz was a nice enough guy—one of those quiet, fade-into-the-woodwork types. “How’s it going with my brother?” I asked him one morning when I bumped into him on the way to class. I was afraid to hear his answer.

“Fair,” he said. “He’s
different.
”

Against the odds, Thomas’s relationship with Angie Constantine continued—went into overdrive, in fact. At the same time, killer classes and a leaking radiator on that piece-of-shit car I’d bought from Dell had temporarily downshifted Dessa’s and my relationship. Angie started driving up to UConn on weekends and sleeping over. (Deitz worked weekends at a pharmacy back home and was never around.) The Constantines were pissed. Big Gene threatened to fire Angie from her accountant trainee’s job down at the dealership if she didn’t start acting like the decent girl they’d brought her up to be. But Angie called her father’s bluff. Daddy’s disapproval was a big part of the appeal, see? A way to get herself noticed. In a way, she was just
using
my stupid brother. But part of me was relieved: Thomas was normal, I told myself. Normal enough to shack up on weekends, like anyone else.

One Sunday morning, Angie phoned Dessa up in Boston. This was it, she said. The real thing. She and Thomas were in love. Angie told Dess they might be getting engaged. And something else: she might be pregnant. It was okay, though. They
wanted
kids. Wanted a family as soon as possible. Dessa called me from Boston, in tears.

I waited until Angie’s car had left the dorm parking lot that afternoon, then barged into my brother’s room and reamed him out. He was already on academic probation, I reminded him—hanging on by a thread, and now
this
? Dessa and Angie’s parents were going to go apeshit when they found out. And what about Ma and Ray?
Wasn’t she on the pill? Hadn’t he even been using a rubber? How could he
be
so stupid? Thomas gave me that space alien look again, as if knocking up your girlfriend carried no complications whatsoever.

Then something weird happened. Thomas did something that Angie said she was never, ever going to talk about, not even to Dessa. Something that freaked her out. She broke up with him—dropped him cold—and started telling anyone who’d listen that my brother was “the weirdest guy on earth.”

She
did
talk about what had happened, eventually: blabbed it all over creation, once she got started, about how my brother had bought this book called
The Lives of the Martyred Saints
and become preoccupied with the descriptions of the saints’ bizarre and gory persecutions. He’d lie there naked on his bed, Angie said, and make her read aloud about the saints’ beatings and amputations and flesh burnings, their being pierced with arrows, gashed with hooks. She didn’t want to do it, she said—read him that stuff—but he’d
beg
her. So she’d read it, and he’d writhe and roll around, moaning and groaning. And then . . . and then he’d . . . well, you know. All by himself, on the bed, right in front of her. Without her even touching him. Angie said she’d done it twice—that he’d
pleaded
with her. He was just too weird for words. She wanted a
normal
boyfriend: someone who liked to dance and have fun and double with other couples.
There was no more talk about a baby. There had never
been
a baby, Angie told Dessa. She’d just been late; she’d just miscounted,
okay
? She didn’t care whether Miss Perfect believed her or not.

I introduced Angie to Leo a couple of months later. It was
Angie’s idea, not mine or Dessa’s. I promised I’d fix her up if she stopped telling the world about my brother. The funny part is, for better or worse, it’s been Angie and Leo ever since. They made it through two kids, two separations and reconciliations, Leo’s drug rehab, his little flings on the side. They’re an institution by now, Leo and Angie. But before that—for a month or so, way the hell back—it was Angie and my brother, hot and heavy. Hard to imagine now that it ever even happened—that it ever
could
have happened. It was one of life’s stranger twists, I guess. . . . Not that things didn’t get a whole lot stranger after that. Not that, by the fall of 1969, the whole fucking world wasn’t falling apart, anyway.

My Lai, the antiwar protests, the cops gunning down the Panthers. And then, one morning, a headline that hit closer to home. “Look at this, Birdsey!” Leo said, bursting into our room. He was waving a
Hartford Courant
in my face like a victory flag. “Jesus Christ!
Look!
”