The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (74 page)

“Let’s hear it for Mr. Price-Wolinski!” someone shouted and the inmates all cheered.

“He runs the culinary program,” Mo explained. “He’s awesome. Everyone loves him.”

En route to the buffet line, I felt someone grab my shoulder and turned to see who it was. “Good to see you, Caelum,” Ralph said. “I’ve got a fair amount of table-hopping to do first, but I hope we get a chance to talk a little later on. We’ve got some serious catching up to do.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Nice job today, by the way.”

He deflected the compliment by turning to Maureen. “This gal’s one of my mainstays. Didn’t she do a great job with that reading?”

As he walked away, Maureen noted that his comment was typical. “He does all the work and gives everyone else the credit.”

We got in line, Velvet first, then Mo, then me. Maureen picked up her Styrofoam plate, then dropped it on the floor. She turned abruptly, her hand reaching out for me. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m seeing double.”

I opened my mouth to ask her if she wanted to sit down for a minute, but she screamed out in pain. “Oh, my god! My head! It hurts! It
hurts
!”

Her eyes rolled back. Her legs buckled, and she fell backward against Velvet. “Mom?” Velvet screamed. “Mom!”

A female officer kept insisting that I was not allowed to ride with her to the hospital. “Sir, I understand your situation, but this is a security issue. You’re going to have to follow behind in your own vehicle.”

When I attempted to climb up into the ambulance anyway, two of her male counterparts grabbed me and pulled me back. “Get the fuck away from me!” I yelled, trying without success to yank myself free. “That’s my wife! I need to be with her!” Still fighting against their hold, I watched the ambulance, alarm blaring, speed away.

Cerebral aneurysm, the autopsy report would later conclude. She died en route to the hospital.

Where would I go?
I had asked Jerry Martineau the day I dug up the babies and he advised me to get away. Didn’t matter where I ended up, he said. At the wheel, I could think about where I’d been. I would know where I was when I got there. And so I had grabbed Lizzy’s story and gone.

From Route 32, I’d picked up 6–West to I–84. In Hartford, I got onto I–91 heading north. Passed Springfield and Northampton and drove into the Berkshires. “Mountains,” some people call those hills, but they’ve never lived in the shadow of the Rockies. At White River Junction, I’d had to make a choice. Québec? Burlington? To avoid the rigmarole of border patrol, I chose the latter and eased into the flow of traffic on I–89 North. It was getting dark and I was getting tired as I approached the sign for Montpelier. I put on my blinker and exited. Got a room, a bottle of screw-top red wine, and a pizza. Took off my pants, ate, drank, and read about the final decades of Lizzy’s life. About how both her husband’s dying mistress and her narcissistic son had dumped their daughters on the old girl’s doorstep. About how, as busy and as tired as she was, she’d taken on the task of sheltering them both. And between the lines of Lizzy’s letters and diary entries, in her troubled silence, I read about how she had loved and inspired one of those girls and had failed the other. Elizabeth Hutchinson Popper was a complicated and thorny ancestor,
more admirable than loveable, and somewhere in the middle of my reading that night, I began to connect the dots between my formidable forebear and my less than formidable stepmother. At the cliff’s edge of a bleak and lonely future, Rosemary Sullivan had defied her austere father, taken a leap of faith, and cast her lot with a troubled man she’d met at a dance hall—a man whose infant son had needed a mother. My father, for all his flaws and failures, had done that at least: had gone looking for and found me a decent and dutiful mother…. Like Lizzy, Rosemary had been driven more by duty than love. And because of this, she had stayed after my father abdicated—had lived with and tolerated the in-laws who tolerated her so that I might have, if not my father, a reliable grandfather and a loving aunt….

I thought about the newspaper account of my kidnapping—that long-ago day when Mary Agnes and whichever man she’d manipulated into driving the getaway car had trespassed once more on Quirk property and snatched the three-year-old boy she’d birthed and then abandoned. Mary Agnes had only wanted to borrow me for the day, as it had turned out. At dusk, she had delivered me to a public place and left my life once more. In the hours between my disappearance and reappearance—those hours when I had been “the absent boy,” the missing child who might well have been harmed or even killed—Rosemary must have been in the same kind of terrifying free fall as the Columbine families when they gathered at Leawood Elementary School on that worst of days, waiting to hear if their missing children had been murdered. Rosemary must have prayed to—begged—her god for a happy ending. And then, at sunset, she’d gotten one. There I was, unharmed on a picnic table at the Frosty Ranch, wearing the dungarees and Hopalong Cassidy shirt she’d dressed me in that morning. There I was, transfixed by a praying mantis that someone—who else but Mary Agnes?—had imprisoned inside a mayonnaise jar on my behalf….

Rosemary had told the newspaper reporter that, until its happy conclusion, that day had been “the most frightening of my life.”
Hadn’t it been her love for me, not her duty to me, that made it that? As anxious and limited as that love might have been, it had been love nonetheless. In that drab, nondescript Montpelier motel room, I had finally admitted to myself that, all along, I had
had
a mother’s love. And so I had closed Lizzy’s story and held it tight against my beating heart. Hugged that book as if it were Rosemary herself. At long last, I could fully return the embrace of the lonely woman who had stepped forward to mother a motherless boy.

In the morning, I showered and dressed, itchy to get the hell out of there. But should I go home? Keep driving in the opposite direction? In the motel office, while the desk clerk was printing out my receipt, my eyes fell upon a tourist brochure—an invitation to travelers to visit Barre, Vermont’s Rock of Ages Granite Quarry and the nearby Hope Cemetery, a graveyard filled with the funerary sculpture of the area’s artisans. Velvet’s grandfather had been one of them, I recalled. Back in my car, brochure against the steering wheel, I followed the map. Hope Cemetery: kind of oxymoronic, I remember thinking. What was so hopeful about being dead?

Fifteen minutes later, I drove through the gates, parked, and roamed.

They moved me, those strange and poignant stonecutters’ efforts to immortalize the dearly departed. In bas-relief, a woman materializes from the cigarette smoke of her brooding widower…. A man and woman hold hands while lying in beds that double as their coffins. Above them floats an inscription from the Song of Solomon:
Set me as a seal upon thine heart, for love is strong as death….
Some stonecutter with a sense of humor had freed a death angel from a slab of rock. There she sat, one leg across the other, chin resting in hand, looking impatient with the cluelessness of mortals….

I had no idea which works were Velvet’s grandfather’s, but as I headed back toward my car, I came upon a sculpture signed in stone by a name that sounded familiar: Colonni. When I looked up from that signature, I found myself standing before a life-sized gray granite Pandora, her arm raised in front of her face as if to shelter herself
from the wide-mouthed jar she has just opened—her gift from the vengeful gods. Too late, now, to undo what’s been done. Behind her, in bas-relief, Colonni had sculpted a quartet of human skulls, labeled “pain,” “war,” “pestilence,” “suffering”—the horrors she has just unleashed on humanity. Inside the jar, easily missable by the casual stroller through this garden of graves, was a sweet-faced infant wearing a necklace of flowers. The child, as my Quest in Literature students might have remembered, embodied the one thing that has not escaped from Pandora’s jar: hope. Above its head were carved these words:
By this, we dreamers cross to the other shore.

I drove out of Hope Cemetery and back onto the interconnecting roads that would bring me back home. En route, I thought about Maureen—how, hidden inside her dark womb in that cramped library cabinet, as she heard the pleas and screams, the taunts and explosions, she had mouthed her prayers to Mary. How she had scribbled onto the wood, in anticipation that I might somehow, some day, find them: her messages of hope and love.

I CHOSE CREMATION OVER BURIAL.
No calling hours, no funeral, no newspaper obituary. There were certain mandatory procedures to follow, certain services I was required to purchase. I handed my credit card to Victor Gamboa and told him to charge whatever it was I was supposed to pay for. I signed whatever paperwork he put in front of me.

In those first bitter days, I faltered. Drank too much. Ate too little. Didn’t bother to bathe or get dressed. Whenever Moses or Janis walked into the kitchen, I got up and left. One afternoon, from behind a window curtain, I watched the yellow Mustang come up the driveway, Alphonse at the wheel, his mother riding shotgun. Rather than answer the doorbell, I lay face down across my bed and waited them out. Later, at the front door, I found the things they’d left me: a mass card for Maureen, a potted plant, and one of Mrs. Buzzi’s ricotta
pies. I left the plant out in the cold, tossed the mass card onto a pile of unopened condolences, and dumped the pie in the garbage.

Velvet was hurting, too, I knew, but it was hard enough negotiating my own grief. I didn’t have the energy to take on hers. So I avoided her as much as possible, and she took the hint and avoided me. Until, that is, the afternoon she knocked at my bedroom door and asked if she could borrow some pictures of Maureen. What for, I wanted to know. So that she could make a collage, she said. I shook my head. Told her I didn’t want her cutting up Mo’s photos.

“I
won’t
cut them up,” she said. “I’ll get them copied at Staples and give them right back.”

“No,” I said again.

She stood there, as obstinate as ever. “Why not?”

Because in gathering together photos of Maureen, I would have to look at them. Confront, in those captured moments from her life, the kick to the groin her sudden death had been. Not that I explained that to Velvet.

“Because I said so.”

“Okay, fine. Whatever. You don’t have to be such a dick about it.” I saw that she was on the verge of tears and closed my door against them.

The next morning, when Moze came down to make coffee, he caught me dozing face-down against the kitchen table. I’d been up most of the night.

I raised my head and looked at him groggily. “Morning,” he said.

“Morning.”

When I rose and started for my bedroom, he put his big body between me and my escape. I watched his eyes bounce from my unwashed hair to my week’s worth of beard growth before they settled on
my
eyes. “Look, man, I know it’s hard,” he said. “But you’ve gotta snap out of it.”

“You know it’s hard, Moze? How’s that? You ever lose a wife?”

“No, I haven’t. But I’ve lost a son. Lost a home. A city.”

I tried to outlast his gaze but couldn’t. “Back off,” I said.

He threw up his hands. “Yeah, okay, man. I’m just saying. But I guess you gotta go through whatever it is you gotta go through.” He walked over to the coffeemaker, filled his mug, and started for the back door.

“Hey,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. How’s your new guy working out? You know, the one whose family is suing me. The kid whose mother demanded that the judge max out her sentence.”

“He’s working out fine,” he said, over his shoulder. It pissed me off when he merely closed the door instead of slamming it.

Later that day, I stared at the ringing telephone instead of answering it. Stood there listening to Ralph Brazicki record his voicemail message. They were putting together a memorial service for Maureen over at the prison, he said. Would I come? I shook my head at the machine.

Two days later, Ralph left a second invitation. “She had a lot of friends here, Caelum, and they’d like to pay you their respects. Appreciate it if you’d get back to me.” When I didn’t, he showed up at the door.

“Mind if I come in?”

“Actually, yeah,” I said. “I do.”

He nodded. Stood there. “They keep asking me if you’re coming, Caelum. They
need
you to come.”

To get rid of him, I said I would.

“Okay then. Good. Great. Now before I go, can we pray together?”

By way of answering him, I laughed and closed the door.

In the few minutes of our exchange, he had kept looking at me funny. Curious to see what he’d seen, I went into the bathroom. Stood before the medicine cabinet mirror and cringed at the train wreck cringing back at me. At long last, I could see what everyone else had always seen: my resemblance to Alden Quirk the Third. It scared me shitless.

It didn’t happen all at once. I re-engaged with life in small increments, baby steps. I showered and shaved. Changed the sheets on my bed. Cleaned out Nancy’s litter box. In the midst of filing away some papers from the previous semester, I found myself holding the final exam I’d given my Quest in Literature class. The
Minotauromachia,
I saw clearly, was a struggle for dominance: the lurching Minotaur versus the little girl, her candle raised…. In those signals Mo and I had devised when we’d gone to Dr. Patel to save our marriage, a lit candle had meant,
I need you. Be with me. Love me.
But Mo had become the slain woman draped across the horse. The Christ figure was climbing out of the picture, and the two women in the window were as disengaged as the dead. My options were limited. I could either love the monster or the brave little girl….

“Here,” I said. “You wanted these?”

I watched Velvet’s delight as she looked through the photos I’d gathered for her: Maureen in elementary school, as a high school cheerleader, a nursing school graduate…. Mo and me on our wedding day. Mo with her arms around Lolly and Hennie at some Christmas past. With Sophie and Chet, running along the water’s edge at Long Nook Beach. “Thanks, dude,” Velvet said.

“No problem, dude. Sorry I was a jerk before.”

“That’s okay. I’m used to it.” She smiled. I smiled. “Sometimes I forget that she’s … something will happen, and I’ll go, ‘Oh, I have to tell Mom that.’ Then it hits me. Weird, huh?”

“No, it’s normal…. Probably the first time anyone’s ever used
that
word in connection with you, right?”

She flipped me a good-natured middle finger. “You want a hug?”

As we clung to each other, both of us crying for Mo, I thought about how far Velvet and I had traveled from
You want a blow job?

I told her about the memorial thing they were having over at the prison. “You want to go to it with me?”

She shrugged. Made a face.

“Yeah, okay. I understand…. I’d appreciate it if you did, though. I don’t particularly want to walk into that place by myself.”

“All right then,” she said. “I’ll go.”

“OH, HONEY, SHE WAS ALWAYS
talking about
you,”
Camille informed Velvet. “I think she thought of you as the daughter she never had.” Several of the others gathered around her nodded in agreement.

Velvet smiled. Said it almost inaudibly. “She was my mom.”

The warden gave a generic tribute to a woman he obviously had not known then made a hasty exit. But the deputy warden stayed, as did Mo’s unit manager and Woody the jailhouse shrink. It meant something to me that a few off-duty COs had shown up, too. “She never gave us no trouble,” one of them assured me. “Always acted like a lady.” It made me think of Lydia: how, in her bygone era, the restoration of ladylike behavior had been one of the prison’s primary goals for incarcerated women.

The music was celebratory, not sombre. Rosalie and Tabitha reprised “I’m So Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always.” When Ralph introduced the No Rehearsal Choir, he said they had belied their name and rehearsed all week. Their song, “O Happy Day,” rocked the house.