The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (195 page)

“Your mother, Thomas, and you?”

I nodded. “We’d gone to the movies, I remember, and then over to the five-and-ten for sodas. And we were on our way back home, okay? On the bus. And . . . and this crazy guy gets on. Walks down the aisle and sits across from us. . . . Across from Thomas and me. He pushes in right next to my mother.”

“Go on, please, Dominick. You’re safe here. Let it go.”

“And he starts . . . feeling her. Touching her.
Sniffing
at her.”

“Be yourself on the bus for a moment. Are you afraid?”

“Yes.”

“Angry?”

“
Yes!
”

“What does your mother do, Dominick? The man is touching her and she—”

“Nothing! That’s what she does: nothing! She just sits there because she’s so . . . so
weak
and . . . “

Dr. Patel handed me the Kleenex box. “She doesn’t scream? She doesn’t get up and tell the bus driver?”

“No! And I
hated
that! . . . She was always so
afraid.
”

“On the bus. At home with Ray.”

“It wasn’t
fair
! I was just a
kid
!”

“What wasn’t fair, Dominick?”

“I had to defend all three of us. Myself, and
him,
and
her
. And even then . . . even when I did . . .” I was sobbing now; I couldn’t help it.

“And even then, although you protected her
and
your brother—fought
both
of their battles for them—even then, she loved your brother more than you?”

My head jerked up and down, up and down. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t stop wailing at the truth.

The boys have the muscles! The coaches have the brains!

The girls have the sexy legs so let’s play the game!

Sheffer’s daughter, Jesse, shook her pom-poms like she meant it. She’d befriended me even before I’d gotten both feet in the door. Within the first half-hour of my visit, I’d been brought down to the basement to see her gerbils, up to her room to see her Barbies. Now I was out on the driveway so I could see her Midget Football cheerleader moves. Sheffer and Monica stood flanking me while Jesse turned cartwheels. “My theory is that Olivia Newton-John went into labor the same day and they mixed up our babies in the nursery,”
Sheffer said, under her breath. “There’s just no other explanation.”

Monica was a rugged six-footer from Kittery. She and another woman ran a small home-repair business. Womyn’s Work, they called themselves.

“So how’s business?” I asked her, my chin pointing toward her pickup, parked in the driveway. Jesse had fallen, midcheer, and scraped her knee. She and her mom had gone inside for a Band-Aid. Monica held her arm out and gave a thumbs-down.

“Couple of years ago? When we started up? We figured that in
this
economy, everyone’s just holding on to what they’ve got—fixing things up instead of building new. But it’s been leaner than we figured it’d be. My partner and I are good—we’re
damn
good—but you’ve got to get past people’s biases.”

“Like what?” I said.

“Like, that you need a penis in order to swing a hammer or knock down a wall.” She laughed. “No offense, there,
hombre.
Lisa says you’re a housepainter?”

“Technically,” I said. “Maybe not much longer.”

“That’s what Lisa said.” She and her business partner were trying to diversify a little, she told me—pick up some landscaping work,
maybe
some painting jobs. They were going to decide at the end of the season whether or not they could keep the boat afloat. “If not, I can always go back to my paying job,” she said. “Systems analyst.
Bor
-ing.”

After dinner, Jesse had to give me
two
goodnight hugs before Monica piggybacked her up to bed, Sheffer trailing behind them with a stack of laundry. Monica came back down first.

“Jesse’s a cutie,” I said. “Miss Cheerleader, huh?”

“Miss Pain in the Butt, usually,” Monica said. “But she’s a good kid. Throws a baseball like a girl, though.”

I smiled. Asked her how she and Lisa had met.

At the women’s shelter over in Easterly, she said. She’d done some pro bono carpentry work for them the year before and ended up on their Board of Directors.

“Yeah? Is Lisa on the board, too?” I said.

Monica averted her eyes. “Nope. Hey, you want a beer?”

We went out to the kitchen. Shot the shit about the highs and lows of owning your own business. “Hey,” I said. “If I do decide to sell my painting equipment, would you be interested?” Monica said it depended on what it was, what kind of condition it was in, and how I felt about the installment plan. If they
did
start a painting sideline, they damn sure weren’t going to be able to afford new equipment.

I liked her. Liked being there that night. I had a much better time than I’d figured I would. It was after eleven by the time I even looked at my watch.

Sheffer walked me out to my car. She told me that when she was thirteen, her oldest brother had died of leukemia. “He was eight years older than me,” she said. “My hero, in a lot of ways. But, god, I can’t even
imagine
what it would be like to lose your twin.”

“It’s like . . . it’s like losing part of who
you
are. I don’t know. In a lot of ways, we were pretty different. Which was fine with me. Just the way I wanted it. But all my life, I’ve been . . . I’ve been
half
of something, you know? Something special—something kind of unique—even
with
all the complications.
Wow, look. Twins
. . . . And now, that specialness—that wholeness—it just doesn’t exist anymore. So it’s weird. Takes some getting used to. . . . Not that it was ever easy: being his brother. Even
before
he got sick. Doc Patel says I’m grieving for him—for Thomas—and for that, too. That wholeness.”

Sheffer reached over and took my hand.

“She says I’ve got
to get used to my new status. Survivor. Solitary twin.”

I asked Sheffer if she remembered the day they released him from Hatch. How she had tried to warn me not to let my arrogance get in the way of my brother’s safety.

“Oh, Dominick,” she said. “Sometimes I run my mouth when I have no—”

“No, you were right,” I said. “I
was
arrogant. You think I didn’t get off on that little power arrangement we’d always had? Being the
strong
one? The twin who
didn’t
get the disease? . . . That’s something else Doc and I are working on—what to do with all this arrogance I’ve got left over. All this righteous indignation. It’s just sort of sitting there, parked and not doing anything. Like me, I guess.”

Sheffer took me in her arms and held me. Rocked me back and forth a little. It felt good to be held like that—held by someone who’d turned into my friend.

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Hey, by the way, I like your girlfriend. She may be buying my compressor.”

I was whipped when I got home. Left the kitchen lights off and headed straight to bed. Went out—
bam!
—like that.

But somewhere in the middle of the night, I woke up thirsty. Fumbled my way out to the kitchen for a glass of juice. The answering machine light was blinking red against the shiny surfaces of the toaster, the door of the microwave. Blink, blink, pause. Blink, blink, pause. I hadn’t noticed it before. I hit “play” and stood there.

The first caller was Joy. Had I gotten her note a while back? The picture she’d sent of Tyffanie? Was I at all interested in seeing the baby in person? If I was, I should give her a call. Maybe we could each drive halfway or something. She said her number slowly, then said it again.

The second message was from a Dr. Azzi. “Your father’s surgeon,” he said.

The operation had gone well; no surprises. He’d amputated just a little above the knee, which was what he’d figured. He was sorry he had missed me at the hospital but would be in touch the next morning. When he’d left the hospital at eight that evening, my father was still groggy but resting comfortably.

Above the knee? Amputated? What the hell was he talking about?

Dr. Azzi’s answering service told me he wasn’t to be called unless it was a medical emergency but that he sometimes called in for his messages before he retired for the evening. The woman said she’d tell him I had called.

Was
that
why Ray had kept calling me? Was
that
what that limp had been about?

Amputated. . . .

And maybe I’d have
known
what was going on if I’d just had the decency to call him back.

He’d planted tulips at Angela’s grave.

Bullied my brother and me our whole lives.

I had
humiliated
him that day of Thomas’s funeral.

He’d busted my mother’s arm. . . .

Somewhere in the middle of the night, I went into the bedroom. Flopped onto the bed and reached under there.

Pulled out Domenico’s manuscript.

I sat up. Opened it.

I would finish it, this time, no matter what the fuck it revealed. No matter who it told me I was. . . .

17 August 1949

And so, by digging that poor
bastardo
of a stained-glass painter out of his grave, I got what I wanted. I had my wife back and I had rid myself of that crazy goddamned Monkey. I had shown both of them the folly of fucking with Tempesta.

I made a new rule. Ignazia could sleep downstairs in the back bedroom during weeknights but was now expected to visit me upstairs in my bed on Saturday and Sunday. A little comfort once or twice a week in exchange for all I provided for her and the child wasn’t much to ask, I reminded her; in marriage, a wife gave as well as took. With a little care and common sense, she could perform her duty to me without putting a baby inside of herself. And if an accident resulted, then maybe it was God’s will. Maybe her heart was stronger than that
‘Mericano
doctor had said. You’ll probably end up an old gray-haired
nonna
with a dozen grandchildren trailing after you, I told her. God Almighty blessed family life. God provided.

She threatened to go to my friend Father Guglielmo and tell him about my new rule. “If you want me to keep your secrets about the Old Country,” I said, “then you had better keep the ones at this house, too. No squealing inside the confessional. And no
squealing, either, to
Signora
Tusia on the other side of the house or to that
dottore
who scared you away from me in the first place.” Furthermore, I said, I wanted no more idle chitter-chatter with her
‘Mericana
lady friends in the neighborhood. “They’ll look at that long face of yours and think you’re worse off than you are. Those women would like nothing better than to see trouble in an Italian home.
‘Mericani
are nice to your face and call you ‘dirty wop’ behind your back. They want us all to fail. They wait for that to happen.”

That overpriced Sears and Roebuck baby carriage stood idle in the front hallway. Ignazia obeyed my new rules, and the child grew, and our lives went on.

Around Three Rivers, I became busier than ever: zoning board, committee member for this, officer for that. I no longer saw Josephine Reynolds. Too busy. I advised families just over from the Old Country and
paisani
from the mill eager to move from the row houses owned by American Woolen and Textile to homes of their own. If I had charged for all the free advice I gave, I would have been a millionaire! This was the price I paid for being shrewd with my money and successful in life. Half of the town wanted directions from Domenico Tempesta about how to live life!

In the spring of 1924, I was voted
Il Presidente
of Sons of Italy. (Picture in the newspaper, page two. That burned me up a little. Graziadio had been
presidente
the year before and they’d put his fat puss on page one.) At American Woolen and Textile, some troublemakers came up from New Haven and there was talk of organizing a union for dyers. I didn’t like the looks of those goddamned outsiders; they put ideas in my workers’ heads. When Domenico Tempesta spoke out against the union, the plan fell apart. The agent, Baxter, bought me a bottle of whiskey and had the butcher deliver a dressed turkey to my home. (The meat was tough.) He had had a talk with his father-in-law, Baxter said; there was a plan in a year or two to promote me from dye house boss to nighttime supervisor of Plant Number 2.