The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (194 page)

Mrs. Fenneck sent me a card—the librarian who’d called 911 that day and then shown up at the condo. Asking for forgiveness or dispensation or whatever the hell it was she’d wanted me to dispense that day. “My husband passed away a month ago,” she wrote now. “I pray for your loss and ask you to pray for mine. I’m glad your brother has finally found peace.” Well, peace be with you, too, Mrs.
Fenneck. Peace on earth, good will toward widows and librarians.
Thank you for your kindness at this difficult time. Much appreciated.

I didn’t recognize the address on the card at the bottom of the pile, but I sure as hell knew the handwriting. It turned out not to be a sympathy card; it was a birth announcement. Tyffanie Rose. Six pounds, seven ounces. Eighteen inches long.

California hadn’t worked out for them, Joy wrote. They had moved back East again—to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Thad had once been stationed. He was working as a masseur at a “wellness” clinic now; she was waitressing at a Mexican restaurant. Things weren’t going that great between them. It was pretty complicated. She had some decisions to make. Tyffanie was an easy baby, though—six weeks old and already sleeping through the night. “I’ve screwed up almost everything in my whole life, Dominick,” Joy wrote. “Tyffanie’s the one thing I managed to do right.”

She’d enclosed a picture—one of those shots they take in the hospital that prove once and for all that we’re related to the apes. Tyffanie Rose: dopey name, cutesy spelling. Typical. I studied the wrinkly little twerp, wished her good luck. She was going to need it with those two washouts for parents. . . . What were you supposed to
do
with pictures like that, anyway? Throw ’em out? Stuff ’em in a drawer someplace? Little Miss Monkey Face there had nothing at all to do with me, despite the fact that her mother had tried to trick me into thinking I was her father. Toss it, I told myself. I got up, got halfway over to the wastebasket, and then changed my mind. Shoved her into my shirt pocket because I couldn’t think what else to do. Sat back down to my assembly line.

I stamped all the cards I’d written, put the stack over by the phone. “Call State Department of Education!” I scrawled on one of the extras. Put it on the top of the pile to remind myself.

I went into the living room and flopped onto the couch. Reached for the remote. I’d mail the cards first thing in the morning. Emily Post and Dr. Patel would both be happier than pigs in shit. At least I’d accomplished that much—could cross
one
thing off my list.

Seinfeld
. . .
The Simpsons
. . . the Sox. Boston was playing New
York that night. Clemens was on the mound. Butter-butt. Big overpaid baby. Baseball’s nothing but a three-hour waste of time. . . . Yeah, but the sympathy cards are done, I reminded myself; you’ve
earned
seven or eight innings’ worth of down time. . . .

By the time I woke up, the late news was on: Rajiv Gandhi burning on a funeral pyre, Queen Elizabeth knighting Norman Schwarzkopf for having done such a bang-up job of killing Iraqis. And then, something closer to the bone: Duane Taylor being led down the courthouse steps.

He’d been arraigned that morning on 115 counts, the reporter said. The charges ranged from the aggravated sexual assault of eleven mentally unstable patients to racketeering—the consistent, methodical, and ongoing use of a state facility in the conducting of criminal activities. From the look of things, Taylor had fully recovered from his garroting, but there was nothing left of that cocky attitude I’d seen down at Hatch: him out there in that recreation yard in his cowboy hat, the big man who held the cigarette lighter and the ring of keys. He could get life if convicted, the reporter said, but the case was tricky—reliant on unreliable witnesses. When Dr. Yup had examined my brother, she’d found inconclusive evidence. But I was goddamned if I was giving Taylor the benefit of the doubt. Burn in hell, I told that hollow-cheeked motherfucker as they led him, handcuffed, into the backseat of a cruiser. Die forever.

I deadened the set, killed the lights in the kitchen. Went into my bedroom thinking I’d never get to sleep—not with a dozing session already under my belt and freakin’ Duane Taylor on my mind. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and flopped belly-down onto my bed. Lay there in the dark, thinking about those things still on my list: call Jankowski about the power washer, call the State Board of Ed.

Doc Patel was right, I knew that: grief or no grief, I had to get on with it.

Call Ray.

Finish my grandfather’s book. . . .

I reached under my bed and felt for it in the dark: Domenico’s manuscript. “The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings
.”
Once I finished that thing, I’d have a fuckin’ bonfire out in the backyard. Good riddance, you pompous motherfucker.

Mother fucker. “Motherfucker,” I said. In the dark, out loud.

Faced, for the first time, why I had not been able to bring myself to finish Domenico’s story.

Because I was afraid, that was why.

Afraid that, by the end, he might have spoken the truth. Spelled it out in black and white. . . . Was
that
why she’d never been able to tell us? Had he taken advantage of his harelipped daughter’s weakness, her innocence? . . . Was our father
not
the dashing stenographer but our own grandfather?

I lay there at the entrance of the black hole, feeling its pull. . . . Was that it, Ma? Had you been too weak to say no to him? Had Thomas and I been conceived in evil?

Sometime later on that night—after the shaking had subsided, after I was able to move voluntarily again—I rolled over in the dark. I heard a soft crinkling under me and reached over, turned on the light. Fished inside my shirt pocket. . . .

I squinted at her—Tyffanie Rose. Little Miss Monkey Face. I brought the picture to my lips and kissed it.

I put it over on my nightstand for safekeeping and turned the light off again. Lay there smiling, for some reason, in the dark.

The following morning, I drove to the post office and mailed those cards. Drove down to the beach and stood there, watching the waves, the seagulls. On my way home again, I drove right past the exit for Three Rivers. Drove all the way up to Hartford and pulled, spur of the moment, into that Cinema 1-through-500 place off of I-84. Sat there, in the dark, watching Bruce Willis and his testosterone save the free world. Again. Balls to the walls, man. Might made right. . . . Bomb those Iraqis. Hog-tie the black man, beat him with billy clubs. Make a fist and show your wife who’s the boss. . . .

I drove home again. Faced the phone.

Beep.
“Dominick? It’s Leo. Hey, I was wondering if you were ready to let me beat your ass in some racquetball yet? Or are you still pussying around about that foot of yours? That excuse is getting old, Birdsey. Let me know.”

Beep.
“This is your old man calling. You home yet? Give me a jingle, will ya?” Will do, Ray. Mind if I wait until hell freezes over first?

Beep
. “Hey, Dominick. This is Lisa Sheffer. Just wanted to let you know I’ve been thinking about you. . . . Just wondering, basically, how you’re doing. So call me. Okay?”

Beep.
“Ray Birdsey. Four-fifteen
P.M.
You home yet?”

I’m canceling our Friday appointment, Dominick. Call me after you’ve accomplished the things on your list. . . .

Jankowski’s wife told me she’d ask him, but she doubted he was still interested. He’d bought a power washer on Monday from some outfit in Cumberland, Rhode Island.

The third woman they referred me to at the State Department of Education was able to answer my questions about reinstatement. I’d need to take a refresher course, she said, and then take a test, and then have three classroom observations by a state-trained evaluator.

Forget about it, I told myself. The writing’s on the wall. You’re a housepainter.

Domenico’s manuscript stayed under the bed.

I’d call Ray the
next
day, I told myself. I’d already accomplished
plenty
. I turned the TV on, turned it off again. Reached over for the Rolodex.

Shea, Sherwin-Williams, Sheffer . . .

She’d been thinking about me a lot, she said. I had been
such
a good brother. She just wanted to make sure I wasn’t beating myself up about things.

I thanked her—told her I hadn’t KO’d myself
just
yet. I decided to skip the counterargument I
could
have given her about what a good brother I’d been.

She wanted to know what else was new—what I’d been up to.

Not much, I said. I was trying to decide whether or not to sell my business.

“Really?” she said. “You don’t feel like painting houses anymore?”

“I don’t feel like falling off roofs anymore.”

Somewhere during the conversation, I figured out something:
Sheffer
felt guilty. She’d been beating her
self
up. It had been her idea to put Thomas in Hope House, the place he’d wandered away from that night. When they’d sprung him so unexpectedly from Hatch, Sheffer had made an issue of how the group home would be a much safer temporary environment for him than my place.

“Look, Lisa,” I said. “I want you to know something, okay? Nobody’s blaming you for anything. You did everything you could for him and
then
some—up to and including getting whacked in the face at that hearing. We’d
all
be a bunch of geniuses if we had hindsight ahead of time.”

She said Dr. Patel had told her basically the same thing. She’d started seeing Dr. Patel, by the way. Professionally. Not to be nosy, but was
I
still seeing her?

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Off and on.” So much for confidentiality.

Sheffer advised me to discuss my decision about the painting business with Dr. Patel—that she might be able to help me “objectify” my options. Social worker talk.

“I
have
talked about it with her,” I said.

“And?”

“She thinks I should pack it in. Go back to teaching.” Sheffer said she could picture me in front of a high school class.

I could, too—that was the problem: I kept seeing those two little tough cookies I’d stood behind at Subway. Kept remembering those students’ faces that day I’d cried in front of them. That day I’d left my classroom and never gone back. Diana Montague, Randy Cleveland, Josie Tarbox. Those kids must all be in their midtwenties by now. Out of college, into adult lives. Kids of their own, now, some of them. “Yeah, well,” I told Sheffer. “I may sell the business, I may not. I’m still weighing my options. But anyway, I’m grateful for everything you did for my brother. I mean it, Lisa. Thanks.”

“Hey, you know what?” she said. “Would you like to get together sometime? Come over for dinner? I can make you my Jewish-Italian specialty: spaghetti and matzoh balls?” I started stammering something about appreciating the invitation
but
—

“I’m not asking you
out,
” she said. “If that’s what you think. I’m asking you
over
.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well. . . .”

“I’m not hitting on you,
paisano.
Honest. I’m gay, Dominick.”

“Oh. Right. I didn’t think . . . I mean, I don’t have a problem with . . . You
are
?”

She suggested we start over. “Hello, Dominick? This is Lisa Sheffer. You want to come over some night for supper? Meet my daughter and my partner, Monica?”

I didn’t know what else to say, so I said okay. Asked her what I could bring.

“Bottle of chianti and a bottle of Mogen David,” she said. “We’ll mix ’em.”

“They were so much alike,” I said. “In some ways,
they
were more like identical twins than he and I were.”

“Thomas and your mother? Yes? Explain, please.”

Over the phone, I’d told her what I had and hadn’t acomplished on my list. She’d given me bonus points for having made dinner plans with Sheffer—for having “engaged outwardly” instead of continuing my “love affair with inertia.” Her Majesty had granted me a two o’clock appointment.

“I don’t know. They were both so gentle. So defenseless. . . . Every year she’d go to parent-teacher conferences and come back and we’d be like, ‘What did she say? What did the teacher say?’ And every year, one teacher after the next, it’d be the same thing: how smart
I
was, how sweet
he
was. That was always the word they used: Thomas was so ‘sweet.’ And he was, too. He just
was
. But . . .”

“Yes? Go on.”

“He was
weak
. Just like she was. . . . I had to take care of both of them. And I think . . .”

She waited several seconds. “You think what, Dominick?”

“I think . . . oh, man, this is hard . . . I think that was why she loved him more. Because both of them were so goddamned powerless. . . . It was like they were soul mates or something.”

Dr. Patel sipped her tea. Waited.

“Do you think . . . ?” I stopped, stymied by how to put it. My hands started to shake.

“What is it, Dominick? Ask me.”

“No, I was just thinking yesterday that maybe
that’s
how she got pregnant. . . . I mean, it would explain a lot. Wouldn’t it?”

Doc Patel said she wasn’t following me.

“She was always so scared to death of everything. So powerless. So I was thinking: maybe she got raped.”

“Raped by . . . ?”

“I don’t know. By some stranger. Maybe our father was just some miscellaneous son of a bitch who grabbed her, pulled her into a dark alley someplace, and . . .”

I stood up, went over by the window. Rocked back and forth on my heels.

“It’s not like she would have fought back or anything. I
know
she wouldn’t have. She probably didn’t even know what sex was until . . . She probably wouldn’t even have known what he was doing.”

“No? You think not?”

I looked out the window. The river was moving fast. The trees were budding. In another week or two, those unfolding leaves would obscure Doc Patel’s view of the water. I turned back and faced her. “This one time? We were pretty young, Thomas and me—seven or eight, maybe. And we were on the city bus: the three of us.”