The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (27 page)

So instead, I went to the door and opened it. The dogs bounded in, rushed past us and into the living room. Evelyn let out a satisfying little shriek. Five minutes later, they were in their Mercedes and on their way.

I taped Amber’s pictures to the door of our refrigerator. Made us cheese omelets for supper.

“Thanks, Cae,” Mo said.

“Yeah, I’m a whiz with eggs, aren’t I?”

“I mean, for not letting her push me into doing that interview.”

“No problem,” I said. I showed her the Disney cruise brochure.

She read through it, shaking her head. “They’d probably have to straitjacket me by the second day. Put me in a padded cabin.”

“Yeah, and all the psych aides would be Disney characters.” I got up to clear the table. Stopped to look at her. “Hey,” I said.

“What?”

“You smiled.”

Later, undressing for bed, I noticed glitter on the tops of my shoes. Bent down to brush it off, then stopped. Left it there. When I closed my eyes, I saw Velvet Hoon—that glittery eye shadow she’d wear sometimes, the sparkles in her blue crew cut. Velvet was long gone from Littleton by now, I figured. Maybe she was the smart one.

THE YEAR MAUREEN AND
I started at Columbine was also the year that an extensive remodeling of the school was completed. The sunlit commons area was new, and directly above it, the library and media center. To accommodate the expansion, construction workers had bulldozed the existing student parking lot, lowering it by eight feet. But rather than truck away the excavated earth, they’d mounded it behind the school, creating what the kids soon dubbed “Rebel Hill.” That first year, Andy Kirby and I made the mound part of the training course for our cross-country kids. It was steep enough to sled down in winter, and private enough on its far side for kids to toke up or make out. From the crest, you could see all the way to Boulder. In the aftermath of the killings, mourners trudged to the top of Rebel Hill to visit the crosses.

Maureen saw three doctors that first month. Dr. Strickland, a pretty, young M.D. at the open-on-weekends clinic, was sympathetic when Mo discussed her anxiety about going back to work. But the waiting room was full, and the clinic was “down a doc,” as Dr. Strickland put it.

“How are you sleeping?” she asked.

Mo told her she couldn’t get more than two or three hours at a time.

“Do you
have
to finish the school year? Is it a contractual thing?”

Mo gave me the look:
you
answer her. “We both feel it’s better if she tries to confront her fears instead of giving in to them,” I said. The doctor’s eyes jumped back and forth between us.

There was a soft knock, a nurse in the doorway. “I’ve got a broken nose in room D,” she said. “Hemorrhaging pretty badly.”

Dr. Strickland said she’d be right there. She scrawled two prescriptions for Maureen: Restoril for sleep—one at bedtime, a second if she woke up in the middle of the night—and Xanax to “take the edge off” during the day. Ten tablets of each. “To tide you over until you see your regular doctor,” she said.

It was Brian Anderson, a junior at Columbine, who’d contacted Greg Zanis about the crosses. Zanis, a carpenter from Illinois, had made it his mission to build and plant crucifixes to commemorate the lives of murder victims. Whether by fate or accident or the hand of God, Brian Anderson had been spared twice on the morning of the murders—first at the west entryway when Eric Harris fired at him and Patti Nielson, the teacher on hall duty, and minutes later in the library, where Brian and Patti, both wounded by shrapnel, had run for safety. Zanis promised Brian he’d come. A few days later, he and his son drove the sixteen hours to Littleton. Brian was waiting for them on Rebel Hill. Without fanfare or media attention, they erected the crosses—fifteen of them, not thirteen. Then Zanis and his boy got back in their truck and headed home.

Maureen’s Xanax ran out on day three of her five-day supply, but luckily, Dr. Quinones had a cancellation. “At your checkup last February, you weighed a hundred and ten,” he noted. “That’s an ideal weight for you, Maureen. I’m concerned that you’re down to ninety-six.”

“She won’t eat,” I said.

“I
can’t
eat, okay?” Mo snapped. “I’m nauseous all the time. And it doesn’t help that you’re always nagging me about eating.”

Dr. Quinones asked her if she’d gotten her period that month.

“I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you mean,” she scoffed.

He shuffled through the papers in Mo’s folder. “Oh, yes, yes. Tubal ligation. I’d forgotten. So what do you feel is making you nauseous?”

“I don’t know. Living?”

Quinones’s gaze turned from Mo to me, then back again. He sat down beside her, lowered his voice. “Are you having thoughts about suicide?”

She shook her head.

“Feeling depressed?”

“Afraid,” she said. “I’m always afraid.”

I told Quinones she was nervous about returning to school. “I keep trying to tell her it’ll be good for her, you know? See the kids. Focus on the day-to-day stuff.”

“Sixteen days left to go, is it?” the doctor asked. The Quinoneses had twins at Columbine—sophomores, a boy and a girl. They were both in my honors class.

“Eighteen,” I said. “But Chatfield’s going to be a whole different environment. It’s not like she’s going to have to walk back into—”

“Yesterday?” she blurted. “We were just driving
past
Chatfield, and I had a flashback.”

“A short one, though,” I said. “Less than a minute, and she was back.”

“Right, Caelum, and for the rest of the day, I was scared to death that I was going to get another one.” She turned to the doctor. “He doesn’t realize how they wipe me out.”

“Yes I do, Mo. Sure I do.”

“We had to go to the superintendent’s office?” she said. “To get our pictures taken for the security badges they’re making us wear. And first of all, I was a nervous wreck because it was so crowded. Then everyone kept coming up to me, asking about it. And I got so flustered. I couldn’t remember anyone’s name—people I’ve worked with for years now—and I kept saying, ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t talk
about it.’ And they kept talking anyway. And I wanted to scream, ‘Shut up! Just shut up !‘”

“I tried to run interference for her,” I said. “But, you know. Word’s gotten out about where she was. People mean well, but—”

“And then in line? For the ID pictures? That flash kept going off, and it was making me nervous. I can’t explain it, but I was afraid to have my picture taken—have that thing flash in my face. And I had to keep leaving the line and rushing to the rest room because I thought I was going to vomit.”

“Did you?” Quinones asked.

“No. I got a splitting headache, though. It lasted for the rest of the day.”

“But, Doc,” I said. “Don’t you think if she confronts it—gets through those first couple of days at Chatfield—she’ll be better off in the long run? Not have it hanging over her all summer?”

Instead of answering me, Quinones asked if I wouldn’t mind stepping out to the waiting room so that he could chat one-to-one with Maureen. It took me back a little. What did he have to tell her that he couldn’t say in front of me? “What do you think, Mo?” I said. “Would you prefer I stay?”

She shook her head.

So I left. Sat out with the stale
Newsweeks
and
Entertainment Weeklys
for a good fifteen minutes, and when finally I was called in from exile, Quinones told me that Maureen had decided to take a leave of absence for the remainder of the school year. He endorsed that decision, he said, and would write the school board a letter that it was medically advisable. He said Maureen also needed me to know that, although she certainly appreciated all I was doing to help her recover, she sometimes found my efforts and my advice overwhelming.

When I looked over at her, she looked down. Spoke to her fidgeting hands. “You hover,” she said.

“Hover?”

“You don’t need to follow me around from room to room, okay? Ask me twenty times an hour if there’s anything you can get for me. Because there’s nothing you could go and get me that’s going to make it go away.”

“I know that, Mo. All I’m trying to do is—”

“And I don’t need you to keep telling me that going back to work will be good for me.” Here, she finally did look at me. “Because you don’t know what’s good for me any more than I do, Caelum. So stop acting like you’ve read the instructional manual on what I need.” I suddenly noticed the box of tissues on her lap. She must have been crying before, but now she was dry-eyed and pissed off. Her chest was heaving like she was short of breath.

Apropos of nothing, I told the doctor I’d been in Connecticut during the shootings. It came out like a confession.
Bless me, Doctor, for I have sinned.

He said something about crises always coming at inconvenient times.

“And in my own defense?” I said. “Yesterday? When we were grocery shopping? We couldn’t find the bread crumbs, okay? Thought maybe we’d already passed them. So I backtracked. Left her alone for maybe three or four minutes at the most. And when I got back to her, she was freaking out.”

“Freaking out how?” Quinones asked.

“Crying, muttering. This kid stocking shelves is just standing there, staring at her. So I get her calmed down, right? And when I do, she starts reaming me out for leaving her alone. And now I hear she doesn’t want me to
hover?”
When I looked over at her, I realized, suddenly, how hollow-cheeked she’d gotten. How gray she looked. “She’s right, though,” I said. “There
is
no step-by-step to follow with something like this. Because what happened to her was so …” Defeat overtook my defensiveness. I was suddenly so tired. “Maureen,” I said. “What you went through overwhelms me. And I’m so, so sorry it happened to you. And that I wasn’t there to … and all I want … all
I’m trying to do—and hey, I guess I’m doing a lousy job of it—but Mo, I’m just trying to be part of the solution, you know? Not part of the problem.”

She nodded. Didn’t look at me. Didn’t smile.

Quinones reached over and cupped my shoulder. “You
are
part of the solution, Caelum. An important part. She just needs a little more breathing room. And a little more time to heal before she tries going back to work.”

He handed her a slip of paper on which he’d written the name and number of a psychiatrist he recommended, Dr. Sandra Cid. “She and I were in med school together,” he said. “I think she can help you. Will you call her?”

Mo said she would.

“And in the meantime, I want you to begin to take charge, like we talked about. Plenty of rest. A little bit of exercise and fresh air to fight the lassitude.” He produced a sample four-pack of Boost. “And two cans of this a day, minimum. In
addition
to your meals, not instead of them. Agreed?”

She nodded.

“Okay, then. Good. Are we done?”

“What about my prescriptions?” Maureen said.

“Oh, right. We were going to get back to that, weren’t we? You feel it’s helped you?”

She nodded. “I’m sleeping better with the Restoril. Not great, but better. And the Xanax
really
helps.”

“All right, then. Dr. Cid may want to try you on something else after she’s assessed things, but we can stay with these for the time being. The sleep medication’s fine. And the Xanax: you’ve been taking two a day?” Three a day, I thought to myself, but I kept my mouth shut. “Why don’t I write you scripts for thirty of each, and we’ll see where we are in two weeks? Make an appointment with Blanca on the way out.” He stood, opened the door for us. “Hang in there, you two. And Maureen? You’re a very brave woman.”

Skip the platitudes, I wanted to say. Instead, I thanked him, pumped his hand. When he went to hug Maureen, she took a backward step.

Blanca Quinones was the doctor’s wife as well as his receptionist. I asked her how the kids were doing. “Catalina’s chafing at the bit to go back, be with her friends,” she said. “Miss Social Butterfly. But she thinks it’s an outrage they have to finish the year at Chatfield, their biggest sports rival.”

“Yea rah rah,” Maureen mumbled. She released a weird little laugh.

“How about Clemente?” I said. Catalina was your classic over-achiever; her brother was quieter, more of a loner.

“Clemente doesn’t say much. Stays up in his room and reads, plays his video games. I think he’s anxious about going back. Last couple days, he’s been asking me about home-schooling.”

“Where were they?” I asked. We all did that now: spoke in shorthand about April the twentieth.

“Catalina was in gym, so she got right out. Clemente was in biology. Two doors down from where Mr. Sanders was. Thank God he didn’t have to see that. He kept calling me, so I knew he was okay. Thank God for cell phones. I tell you, though. It wasn’t until I saw him for myself, sitting on that stage over at Leawood School …” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry. I still get so emotional.”

Maureen sighed impatiently. “Is there a co-pay for today?” she said.

We stopped at the pharmacy on the way home. I went in; she stayed slumped in the car with the doors locked. I got her prescription, a case of Boost. At the register, there was a display of Panda licorice, the kind she likes. You don’t see it that many places, so I thought I’d surprise her. But back in the car, she made no mention of it. Fished through the bag and found the Xanax. Popped the cap, placed one on her tongue, and swallowed. “Aren’t you supposed to take those one in the morning, one at night?” I said.

“So?” she said.

“So it’s two in the afternoon. They’re not M&Ms.”

“This is just what I mean by hovering.”

NEXT MORNING, THE HEADLINE IN
the
Rocky Mountain News
said, “Dad Cuts Down Killers’ Crosses.” The reporters had caught up with Zanis, the press-shy carpenter. He said he’d included Dylan and Eric in his tribute because they’d had family, too—parents who suffered and grieved for
their
lost children, no matter the terrible circumstances. But Danny Rohrbough’s dad wasn’t having it. With his slain son’s grandfather and stepfather, he’d climbed Rebel Hill, knocked down the killers’ crosses, and carried them away. “Took them to a better place,” was the way he’d put it.

“You see this?” I asked her, holding up the article.

She squinted at it. Walked out of the kitchen and back upstairs. She’d had two or three bites of an English muffin, a little juice, and, at best, a third of a can of Boost. The afternoon before, she’d called Dr. Cid and gotten her answering service. “No, no message,” I’d heard her say.

I read the rest of the article. Sat there, wondering if the Harrises and the Klebolds had read it, too. Bad as it was for the other parents, it had to be even more of a nightmare, in some ways, for them.

Oh, yeah? Then maybe they should have paid more attention to what their kids were up to. There had to be all kinds of warning signs.

But didn’t Zanis have a point? Weren’t Eric and Dylan victims, too?

Of?

Mental illness? Video games? Who knew? And let’s face it, we
did
sometimes look away from the bullying. Let it go when the athletes cut the cafeteria line. Gave the wiseguys in the hallway a dirty look but kept going. You’ve got to choose your battles, I used to tell myself. You’re a teacher, not a security guard. But maybe if …