The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (259 page)

I felt like a louse saying it, but it was him or me. “The flood,” I said. “About your mother and Gracie drowning.” He winced. Said maybe he’d better talk to her about it. I realized I’d made a tactical error. If he started asking her about a dream she hadn’t really had, he might get suspicious all over again. “I wouldn’t if I were you, Donny,” I said. “She’s okay. Why bring it up again?”

He looked relieved. “Yeah, you’re right. Look, man, I gotta pee something wicked.” And with that, he walked past me and headed down the hall to the bathroom, scratching his ass.

Back in our room, I took a bunch of deep breaths to stop myself from shaking. Then I punched myself in the chest five or six times, hard as I could, for being so goddamned careless.

Later, at breakfast, Donald told Annie he would read to her that night at bedtime. “Okay?” She looked back and forth between the two of us and nodded. He was good for his word. He read to her the next night, too. But after that, it was business as usual again. He wasn’t around, and neither was his old man. But yeah, that was the only time I ever came close to getting caught. After that, once I’d gotten what I’d gone into Annie’s room for, I always got right up, made sure the coast was clear, and left.

I don’t know. Maybe if Irma Cake had told my mother the
real
reason why she wasn’t going to babysit me anymore, I wouldn’t have had to spend the rest of my life cruising little girls. Or maybe if I
had
gotten caught messing around with Annie—gotten the shit beaten out of me and been kicked out—
that
might have stopped it. It didn’t stop, though, partly because I got so good at
not
getting caught, and partly because, along the way, I figured out how to use Annie’s and my secret to insure her silence. I began threatening her that if she told on me, I’d have to tell everyone about how Gracie had
really
died. “The cops left
me
alone because I saved everyone else, but that wouldn’t help you any if they knew the truth,” I assured her. “They’d throw you in jail with bad people and it would be really, really scary.” And so what we were doing went on for the next two years. I was a senior by then, and Donald was away at college on a scholar-athlete scholarship. Annie was seven.

The funny thing is, when Protective Services finally
did
pull her out of the house and place her with a foster family, it wasn’t because of me. It was because by then her father had turned himself into a hopeless lush. There was a DUI arrest, a disorderly conduct incident down at the Silver Rail. And when Chick started showing up for work drunk first thing in the morning, there were problems at the barbershop, too. He cut a customer so bad while he was shaving him that the guy had to get stitches. Word got out and the shop began to lose business. Another guy got up from the chair in the middle of his haircut because he smelled booze on Chick’s breath, and Chick followed him out of the shop and into the street, cursing him out. The last straw was when he took Uncle Brendan’s mynah bird out of his cage and, thinking it was funny, opened the door and let him loose. He kept insisting the bird would go off on a little toot and then come right back. He didn’t. Uncle Brendan fired him, and when Chick kept showing up for work anyway, good and soused, the cops got called. A few days later, they showed up at the house. Mrs. Dugas next door had called the station after she’d seen Annie walking hand in hand down the street with her father, Chick reeling from one side of the sidewalk to the other. He couldn’t even manage to sober up for the authorities’ interview, and I guess that was the nail in the coffin.

I went to school one morning and cut out at lunchtime. When I got home, there was a car I didn’t recognize parked in front of the house. Two people were in it, a guy behind the wheel and a woman in the passenger’s seat. Uncle Chick was out on the front step, crying his eyes out.

“What’s going on?” I said. “Where’s Annie?”

Uncle Chick pointed toward the street. That car was pulling away from the curb. As I ran out into the street, I saw Annie at the back window, her face contorted with pain and fear as a woman seated back there with her tried to make her turn around. I chased the car down the road until it disappeared around the corner. A few minutes later, we went back inside, Chick and me. He pulled out a bottle of rotgut, took a swig, and handed it to me. He kept blubbering, repeating the same thing over and over. “I failed her, Kent. I loved her so much, but I failed her.” After a while, I realized that he didn’t mean Annie. He meant Aunt Sunny. I felt bad for him but worse for myself. She was gone. I’d lost her. We
both
got shit-faced that afternoon.

“Kent honey, why didn’t you
tell
me how bad he had gotten?” my mother asked me the night I moved back home.

“Yeah, I guess I should have,” I mumbled. The reason I hadn’t told her was because if she butted in, I figured, it might mess up what I had going with Annie. But now I’d lost her anyway. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I guess I was in mourning. It was as if she’d died, and I had the same half-sad, half-angry feeling I’d had after Aunt Sunny and Gracie drowned.

Despite Mom’s bugging me about going back to my old school to finish senior year, I refused. Got my G.E.D. instead. “Same thing,” I told her.

“No it’s not, Kent,” she said. “You’re my only child. I had my heart set on going to your high school graduation.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll get over it.”

Worried about her brother, Mom called him two or three times a week. He was usually smashed. He said the people who’d placed Annie in foster care wouldn’t tell him where she was. The deal was, he had to get help with his drinking and prove that he had maintained sobriety for a year before they’d let him see her. When Mom called them to get an address, they wouldn’t tell her either. Annie was doing fine, was all they’d say; she was adjusting to her new family and her new school. She had joined the Brownies.

Mom wrote to Donald at college every once in a while. She’d put five or ten bucks in the envelope to help him out. Whenever she left the letters on the counter for me to mail, I’d open them, swipe the cash, and glue the envelope shut again. Whenever
I’d
ask her for money, she’d say no, that I should go look for a job instead of moping around the house all day. The only time Donald ever wrote her back, he said that he hadn’t had any contact with his sister either. Later on, we found out that that was a lie. The authorities had determined that Goody Two-shoes was a positive influence in Annie’s life. That pissed me off royally. Who’d taken care of her for two years while he was off every night doing his thing? Me, that’s who. But as usual, I didn’t count.

Mom and I drove over to Three Rivers three or four times to see Uncle Chick, but those visits got to be too hard on her. Either he wasn’t around after he said he would be, or else he
was
home, drunk as a skunk. He told her he
couldn’t
get sober—that he needed booze to get through his day, given everything and everybody he’d lost. I understood what he meant. For the first couple of months after I moved back, I hardly ever left the house. I just sat around, thinking about what Annie’s face had looked like at that back window as they were driving her away.

I finally did get a job, as a fry cook at KFC. I hated it. Hated my boss, Millie. Hated that, no matter how many showers I took, I could never quite get rid of the fried chicken stink on me. The only one of my coworkers I got along with was this woman in her twenties named Karin. She was married, but her husband was a sailor who was out to sea half the time. Karin started flirting with me, but I thought that was all it was until she showed me otherwise. It was during the midafternoon slowdown. Millie had gone to the bank to make a deposit, and both of our coworkers had gone outside to grab a smoke. Karin took me by the hand and led me into the employees’ bathroom. Then she locked the door, got down on her knees, and blew me. Ten minutes later, I was back at my station flouring chicken legs.

After that little encounter, Karin started inviting me over to her house to listen to music and shit. There was always beer in her fridge, and her husband had a pretty cool stereo. I’d play stink finger with her until she got off. Then I’d fuck her. It was weird, I guess; any other guy would have kept a situation like that going for as long as he could, but I wasn’t any other guy. I was me. Karin was way more into it than I was, and after a while I started telling her I was too busy to go over there. I was more interested in some of the little girls who’d come in with their parents to pick up their chicken dinners than I was in Karin. Nothing ever happened on that front, though. After I’d been working there for six months or so, I quit.

I tried community college for a while. That was where I met Rosemary, a single mom who had a young daughter named Serena. Rosemary had a night class Tuesdays and Thursdays, which was when I’d babysit. Serena was my first little girl since Annie. I was twenty-one; she was nine. She cooperated at first, but then she started balking. Said she was going to tell her mother. Figuring I’d better beat feet before the cops got involved, I raided the envelope where my mom was stashing her Christmas Club money. I threw some of my things together and got on the first bus that pulled into the depot. Got off at Worcester, Mass.

In Worcester, I bunked at the Y and got a job as a janitor there. It was a pretty sweet setup, actually. When the little kids—the Guppies or whatever—were in the locker room with their moms, I’d invent excuses for why I had to go in there and get something or check on something. They caught on, though, and I got fired. From there, I rented a room at a flophouse downtown and picked up a job at Ace Hardware. They assigned me to the warehouse at first, and that sorta sucked, but then they taught me how to use the key-making machine. I’d be out back shelving Sheetrock or lugging bags of sodium crystals, and it would come over the loudspeaker. “Kent to keys, please. Kent Kelly to keys.” I’d go inside the store, warm up a little, give my muscles a rest while I was cutting someone a key. One afternoon I made myself a pass key that got me into other tenants’ rooms over at the flophouse where I was living now. It was just petty theft: cigarettes, spare change, half-bottles of booze. Nobody at that place had much worth stealing. I was one of the ones they questioned after the manager started getting complaints, but I thought fast and told them I’d seen this junkie down the hall coming out of rooms where she didn’t belong. Daisy, her name was. She was a pain in the ass, always knocking on guys’ doors to bum smokes or offer sex for money, as if you’d
want
to pay to put your dipstick into that skanky snatch. They must have believed me that she was the thief because they kicked her out. The way I figured it, I was doing the place a public service.

It was depressing living there, though. Lonely. Sundays, when the hardware store was closed, were the worst. I’d lie on my bed and start wondering about how Mom was doing. I’d think about my father who, after he moved to Cincinnati, had called me a grand total of twice. Then I’d think about when I was living with the O’Days, helping Aunt Sunny in the kitchen, hanging out with Uncle Chick. And about the night of the flood. I’d start wondering about Annie—how she was doing now, whether some guy at her foster home might be messing with her. I’d fantasize about finding out who he was and beating him to an inch of his life. Rescuing her. It was fucked-up, I guess: me feeling protective of her, considering some of the shit I’d done. . . .

One Sunday, I went downstairs to the pay phone and called my mother to let her know that I was still alive. She cried at first. Then she started bugging me about where I was. “Please, Kent. What if I got sick and needed to get ahold of you?”

“I’d find out,” I assured her, although I didn’t know how I would.

“Well, where am I supposed to send your mail then? You’ve got two or three things from the college and—”

“Just throw it out. I’m not going back there.”

“Are you sure, Kent? Maybe you should think about it some more.’’

“Throw it
out
,” I repeated.

“Well, okay, honey, but there’s other mail, too. There’s something here from the Motor Vehicle. It may be your license renewal.”

I told her to throw that away, too—that where I was I got around by bus. To change the subject, I asked her how Uncle Chick was doing. Not good, she said. He’d gone from bad to worse. “So they haven’t let him see Annie yet?” No, she said. And they still hadn’t given her any information either, other than to say she was doing fine. I looked down at my ragged, bloody finger. Until then, I hadn’t realized that I’d been tearing at the skin around the cuticle. “Well, take care, Mom. I gotta go.” When she started in about whether or not I was coming home for Thanksgiving, I pretended I was the operator cutting in to say time was up.

“Stop it, Kent. That’s
you
,” she said.

I hung up. Went outside and walked around for a couple of hours, past all the vacant storefronts, all the shifty-eyed spooks sitting on benches and leaning against the decaying buildings of beautiful downtown Worcester.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Annie Oh

I
’m getting ready for bed when Viveca calls, wanting to discuss the evening we’ve just had—our “rehearsal dinner” without a rehearsal. For Viveca, this is typical. Whenever we come back from an evening out and get into bed, she likes to spoon with the lights out and do a postmortem. But tonight I’m here and she’s over there at Bella Linda—in the bridal suite by herself per Orion’s wishes.

“Well, they’re just wonderful, Anna,” she says. “All three of them. And so different from one another—three unique and interesting individuals. You must have been a marvelous mother.”

Far from it, I think. But my kids have turned out okay in spite of me.

“And now I’m going to be part of your family, too. Oh, you know what would be lovely? If we could convince the three of them to spend the holidays with us. Their father, too, if he was game. We could take them to the Met, to Rockefeller Center to see the tree. Radio City, even. That Christmas show they do there is tacky, but so what? It would be part of the fun.”

“Well, we’ll see. They might have plans of their own.”

“Yes, of course. It’s just that we’d have to make a reservation for Christmas dinner someplace before too long. The best restaurants get booked months in advance for the holidays. I can have Carolyn work on it. Make a reservation for the six of us. We can always adjust the number if we have to.”

“Okay, but first things first. Let’s get through tomorrow before we start planning for something three months from now.”

“No, no, you’re right. I’m getting ahead of myself. But I just love the idea of celebrating the holidays as a family. And, of course, the Christmas after this one, there’ll be your daughter’s little one to share it with.” It jolts me back to Ariane’s news. When she told us this afternoon, I just stood there, staring at her for several seconds, too stunned to react. “Won’t that be fun, sweetheart?”

“Yes, sure. But . . .” Inseminated by a man she’s never even seen? It seems so strange.

“But what?”

“No, it’s just that Ariane usually stays out there for Christmas. They do a big holiday meal at the place she runs, everything from soup to nuts, and she says the turnout is double what it is on a normal day.”

“Well, Anna, her priorities may change after her baby is born. She’s such a lovely girl. So earnest and socially conscious. Very Berkeley, that’s for sure.” My hand grips the phone a little tighter. Was that a put-down? “Tell me. How do you feel about becoming a grandmother?”

“I don’t really know yet,” I tell her. “With everything that’s going on, I haven’t had time to process it. But I guess I’m a little nervous about the way it’s happened. Ari says she researched the prospective donors, but still. It’s kind of like spinning a roulette wheel.”

“Well, you’ve always said how grounded and levelheaded she is. I’m sure it will all be fine. And anyway, it’s a different world these days. Women Ariane’s age have a lot more options than we did. Well, no. I take that back. Look at us. Tomorrow at this time we’ll be legally married. Happy?”

“Yes, of course.” And I am. But it’s been a long day and I’m exhausted. The clock on the bureau says twelve forty-five. I’ve got to get some sleep. Hector’s dropping Minnie back here at eight in the morning so that she can help out—cook breakfast, give our wedding clothes a pressing. I could do all of it myself, but I’ve hired her, after all. If I didn’t give her things to do, it would be like I was paying her a thousand dollars to attend our wedding.

“And how about that son of yours?” Viveca says. “He’s even more handsome in person than he is in pictures. Poor Lorenzo couldn’t keep his eyes off of him. I just hope it didn’t make Andrew uncomfortable. Has he always been that reserved and serious?”

“More so than he used to be. It’s probably his military training. And the kind of work he does—dealing with all those wounded soldiers coming back from the war.”

“Yes, I suppose. That must be terribly grim sometimes.” I’m relieved that she hasn’t seemed to pick up on the possibility that meeting her—seeing us as a couple—is what he may have been reserved and tense about. When Lorenzo made that toast and we kissed, I saw Andrew lock his jaw and look away. Saw Ariane reach over and touch the top of his hand.

“He’s nothing like Marissa, that’s for sure,” Viveca says. “
She
was certainly in rare form tonight.”

“Because she had too much to drink. When she and Lorenzo started doing those tequila shots and I suggested she’d had enough, she told me to stop acting so ‘momish.’ ”

“Well, it was a special occasion, after all. And she was fine. A little over-the-top near the end maybe, but nobody minded. Everyone got a kick out of those stories of hers about some of the auditions she’s been on. That imitation she did of the asthmatic casting director with the bad toupee was hilarious.”

To her, maybe. But I kept hearing desperation in those stories Marissa was telling—all those failed attempts to put herself out there. She worries me. I wonder if Orion noticed anything when she was visiting him.

“Well, it was a lovely evening,” Viveca says. “Just the kind of night I’d hoped for.” Really? I’d felt like I was walking on thin ice the whole time. “So, are you excited about our big day tomorrow?”

“Yes. I’m nervous, though. I’ll be relieved once it’s over.”

There’s an uncomfortable pause on her end. “Not nervous as in, you’re having doubts, I hope,” she says.

“No, no, of course not.” But I’ve already had one failed marriage. How could I not have doubts? “It’s just . . . well, you know how I am. I’m just not comfortable being the center of attention.”

She laughs. “Not even at your openings! Remember when that art critic from the
Post
came up from Washington to see your first show? He kept telling you how marvelous your work was, and you kept apologizing for it.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Well, darling, it’s a bride’s prerogative to be nervous on the night before her wedding. I just hope you’ll be able to relax and enjoy yourself tomorrow. I have some Xanax with me. Maybe you should take one before things get under way tomorrow.”

“We’ll see,” I tell her. “Right now, I just need to get some sleep.”

“Of course you do. And I do, too.”

“Oh, and about the Jones painting? I was going to look around for it some more when we got back here, but I’m just too tired. I will tomorrow morning, though. Or I could just call Orion and ask him what he did with it.”

“No, don’t,” she says. “I don’t want him to think I’m hounding you about it. He’s probably dropped it off at an appraiser’s and that’s where it is. Don’t worry about it. Now go get some sleep.” She tells me she loves me, I tell her I love her, too, and we end our call.

I walk over to the bureau to put down my phone and, out of habit, check my messages before turning it off. Which is silly, really. Why would the kids be calling me when I’ve been with them all evening? I’ve had two missed calls, both from the same number. A 4-0-1 prefix. What is that, Rhode Island? It’s probably that same condo company that called me last week. Come for a free weekend in Newport, enjoy the beach and the mansions, and let us sell you a time-share. Damned pests. Didn’t cell phones used to be immune from those stupid robo-calls? . . . Orion’s kept the same framed photos on the bureau, I see. He and I on our anniversary cruise, the five of us on that whale watch we took. My eyes linger on the kids’ high school graduation portraits. God, they look so young. The lighting in the restaurant was dim tonight, but I think I saw some gray in Ariane’s hair. Orion’s mother went prematurely gray—she probably takes after her. . . . Andrew’s hairline has receded a bit, and his face is thinner than it was back then. Makes him look even more like—No! Don’t go there. Chase Kent out of your head or you’ll never get to sleep.

I put my hand on the lamp switch, ready to turn it off, then change my mind. There’s a stack of magazines on Orion’s bedside table. I’m keyed up. I’ll read until I get drowsy. I pick up a
New Yorker
and thumb through it. Find an article on Julian Schnabel. That will do.

I pull down the covers and climb into bed. Lie back on the same familiar mattress with its peaks and valleys. The same pearl gray sheets I’d lie against while he nuzzled me, kissed my neck and told me how much he loved me—the predictable preliminaries. I got pregnant with the twins at the first place we lived in, but Marissa was conceived here, in this bed. My mind wanders back to the way Ariane’s baby was conceived: in some fertility clinic office, by injection. Why couldn’t she have waited? Held out at least until she was in her midthirties? It wasn’t inevitable that no one else would come along. She gave up too soon. . . .

These pillows feel different—firm and spongy. Not nearly as comfortable as the goose down pillows we used to have. The kids told me tonight that he’s met someone up there on the Cape—a marine biologist who teaches at . . . where was it? The University of Rhode Island? They seemed to like her. Well, good. I’m glad for him. I’ve worried about Orion. I still don’t understand why he gave up his practice so suddenly, or why he’s decided to put the house on the market. Well, whatever. If he’s rebuilding his life, then good for him. I may have left Orion for Viveca, but I still care deeply about him. I glance over at the pictures on the bureau. We shared a life, for Christ’s sake. He’s the father of my children. Why wouldn’t I still love him?

I punch these stupid new pillows, trying to get more comfortable, but they’re unyielding. Why would he have kept everything else the same but gotten new pillows? It doesn’t make sense. Okay, stop it, Annie. Just read.

“At Palazzo Chupi, the converted West Village horse stable where artist and film director Julian Schnabel now resides with his . . .”
Three unique and interesting individuals
. She’s right. They are. I’m glad she likes them. And no, that comment she made about Berkeley wasn’t a dig. It was just an observation. . . .
Well, it was a special occasion, after all. And she was fine. A little over-the-top near the end maybe
. Was it just that, or does she have a drinking problem? She’s around alcohol all the time at that bar where she works. . . .
Has he always been that reserved and serious?
No, just the opposite in fact. I mean, he’s always had a temper, yes, but Andrew’s always had that playful side, too. I smile thinking about how he and Minnie’s son hit it off this afternoon—Andrew coming back down from the attic with his old Atari or PlayStation or whatever it is. Hooking it up to the TV so that he and Africa could play video games. Minnie’s son was in heaven. And so was Andrew, for that matter. The two of them whooping and hollering like they were
both
little kids. But then tonight, sitting across from Viveca, he seemed so . . . glum. But maybe it didn’t have anything to do with my marrying her. Maybe it
is
his work. Is he playful with his girlfriend? I hope so. I hope she makes him happy. I wish she had come out here with him. I’d have liked to see the two of them together. Then I’d know. . . . What did they say that woman’s name was—the one Orion’s seeing? Tracy? That’s a younger woman’s name. I can’t remember knowing any Tracys back when I was in school. That couldn’t have been
her
calling me from Rhode Island, could it? No. Why on earth would she be calling
me
? It’s those time-share people.

“At Palazzo Chupi, the converted West Village horse stable where artist and film director Julian Schnabel . . .” Ariane came up to bed when I did, but Marissa and Andrew were still downstairs. Did they remember to lock up? Orion told me a while back that there’d been a break-in three or four houses down the hill. He’d said whose house it was, but I didn’t recognize the name. I get up, open the bedroom door, look down the stairs. The front hall light is still on and I hear voices—the television, maybe? Did they forget to turn it off? I’d better go down and check.

Standing at the entrance to the living room, I look through the French doors at the two of them. Marissa’s fast asleep on the recliner, her head flopped back, her mouth wide open. Andrew’s slumped on the couch, watching TV. There are three or four beer bottles on the coffee table, and he’s holding another. After Minnie and Africa left for their motel, he went out and came back with two six-packs. I walk into the room and sit down beside him. “Hi, honey. What are you watching?”

“Movie,” he says, his eyes still on the TV.

I look over at Marissa. “Your sister’s dead to the world over there, I see. When did she conk out?”

“About five minutes after this thing started,” he says. “She got all excited when it came on, and the next thing I knew, she was in snooze mode.”

“Well, it’s been a long day. What’s the movie?”

“
Pulp Fiction
. I’m a big Tarantino fan.” He takes a swig of his beer.

“Quentin Tarantino. Right? I met him at Viveca’s gallery last year.”

He turns and looks at me. “Really?”

“Uh-huh. But there was a big, noisy crowd and he was talking so fast that I kept missing parts of what he was saying.” No reaction. “You’ll have to ask Viveca about him. She knows him better than I do. He’s bought some pieces from her.”

“Yeah? Anything of yours?”

“Oh, no. I doubt my work is his cup of tea. His movies are pretty violent, aren’t they?”

“Yup. That’s what I like about them.”

“Really?” No response. “So. Speaking of Viveca . . .”

His body clenches. He sips his beer. “What about her?”

“Did you . . . do you like her?”

He shrugs. “She’s okay, I guess. Why?”

“No reason. I was just wondering. You know, it means a lot to us that you’ve made the effort to come out for the wedding.”

“Does it?”

“Yes, we both appreciate it.”

“No problem.” And that ends that.

I nod toward the TV. “So what other ones has he done?”

“Tarantino?
Reservoir Dogs
is his best. And uh . . .
Kill Bill, Jackie Brown,
Natural Born Killers
.”

I tell him I saw that last one. “Part of it, anyway. I couldn’t take it, though. It was so brutal, I had to walk out.”