I Know This Much Is True (43 page)

Her hands went into the air, palms up. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Give me a couple of minutes, will you? I just need to go to the ladies’ room for a second.”

After the door closed behind her, Dr. Patel asked me if I was all right.

I told her I’d live.

f

I Know[264-339] 7/24/02 12:45 PM Page 282

282

WALLY LAMB

“Which do you want first?” Sheffer asked us. “The bad news or the good?”

“The bad,” I said and, simultaneously, Dr. Patel said, “The good.”

Sheffer said the probate judge had decided to drop the criminal charge against my brother. The weapon thing. The bad news—

potentially
bad, anyway
—
was that Thomas had been released to the custody of the Psychiatric Security Review Board.

“The law-and-order guys, right?” I said. “The ones that want to lock up everyone and throw away the key?”

“Not everyone, Domenico. But the headline-grabbers do tend to have a built-in disadvantage.” She looked over at Dr. Patel. “In
my
opinion, anyway.”

“But Lisa,” Dr. Patel said, “Mr. Birdsey’s case is quite different from some of the other high-profile cases that have come before the Board. There’s no criminal charge, no victim.”

“Arguable,” Sheffer said. “The other people in the library that day were terrified, right? Afraid for their safety? Doesn’t that make
them
victims? They could argue that.”

I thought of Mrs. Fenneck’s appearance at my front door—that librarian telling me how she hadn’t been able to eat or sleep since.

“
Who
could argue it?” I said.

“The Review Board. Or how about this: that Thomas was both perpetrator
and
victim. They could say they need to commit him long term to keep him safe from himself. Which may be a perfectly valid point. The weird part—the thing that worries me, frankly—is that they’ve already scheduled his hearing. Know when it is? The thirty-first.”

“The thirty-first of
October
?” Dr. Patel said.

Sheffer nodded. “Trick or treat, kids.”

“But that’s next week, Lisa,” Patel said. “His medication will have barely had time to stabilize him by then. He’ll have been back on his neuroleptics less than three weeks.”

“Not to mention that the fifteen-day observation period will be up
that day.
”

I Know[264-339] 7/24/02 12:45 PM Page 283

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE

283

“Ridiculous,” Dr. Patel said. “How are they proposing to use our recommendations if we don’t even have time to observe him and write them up?”

Sheffer said the judge wouldn’t even
listen
to her argument about postponement. “Ironic, isn’t it?” she said. “I’m usually complaining about how
in
efficient the judicial system is, but in this case, it’s the efficiency that scares me. Why are they being so
expe-dient
?”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “If this is some kind of bag job—if they’re trying to rush this through so they can sentence him to this rathole for another whole year—I’m going to raise holy hell.”

“You know, Domenico,” Sheffer said. “Hatch might
be
the most appropriate place for Thomas. Or it might
not
be. That’s the point: it’s just too soon to call it. But I’ll be honest with you: if you show up at the hearing ‘raising holy hell,’ that may just be your best shot at getting him out of here. At least it’ll make a statement: that he’s got family that cares. That his family might be willing to shoulder some of the responsibility. They might hear that, if you put it right.

It all depends.”

“Depends on what?”

She looked over at Dr. Patel. “I don’t know. On politics, maybe.

On who—if anyone—might be pulling from the opposite direction.”

When I got up to go, Dr. Patel asked me if I’d wait for a minute while she returned the tape recorder to her office. She’d see me to the front entrance, she said. She’d only be a minute.

Sheffer went over to her filing cabinet. She was wearing a tan suit and little matching high heels. Dressed up like that, she looked even
more
like a pip-squeak.

“Where’s your sneakers?” I asked her.

“Excuse me?”

“Your high-tops. I almost didn’t recognize you in your lady lawyer disguise.”

I Know[264-339] 7/24/02 12:45 PM Page 284

284

WALLY LAMB

She rolled her eyes. “You’ve gotta dress the part for these conservative judges. Nothing wilder than Sandra Day O’Connor. You see the lengths I go to?”

“I’m starting to,” I said. Caught her eye. “Thanks.”

“I just hope it works,” she said. “Rough session today?”

“What?”

“Your brother’s session? You looked a little shell-shocked when I barged in here. Which I apologize for, by the way.”

I shrugged. Looked away from her. “No problem,” I mumbled.

When Dr. Patel returned, she took my arm and walked me back through Hatch’s liver-colored corridors. Past the guard station, up to the metal detector at the front entrance. Under the halogen glare, her gold and tangerine–colored sari was almost too much to take.

“It was difficult for you today,” she said. Gave my arm a squeeze.

“And yet, I hope, productive.”

I told her I was sorry.

“Yes? Sorry for what, Dominick?”

“For losing it. For screaming. All those four-letter words I was letting rip back there.”

She shook her head vigorously. “Your reactions—your insights—have been very helpful to me, Dominick. Perhaps they’ll prove crucial in the long run. One never knows. I think, however, that we should discontinue the practice of having you listen to the tapes of your brother’s sessions.”

“
Why?
I thought you said it helped.”

“It does. But one brother’s treatment should not put another brother at risk.”

“Look, if I can help him . . . I
want
to help him. If you can learn things.”

She reached for my hand. Squeezed it. “I learned something very useful today,” she said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I learned that there are
two
young men lost in the woods. Not one. Two.”

I Know[264-339] 7/24/02 12:45 PM Page 285

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE

285

She gave me one of those half-smiles of hers—one of those non-committal jobs. “I may never find one of the young men,” she said.

“He has been gone so long. The odds, I’m afraid, may be against it.

But as for the other, I may have better luck. The other young man may be calling me.”

I Know[264-339] 7/24/02 12:45 PM Page 286

18

f

1969

The summer Thomas and I worked for the Three Rivers Public Works was also the summer of Woodstock, Chappaquiddick, and Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind.” Ray was so thrilled that we were about to beat the Russians to the moon that he went down to Abram’s Appliance Store the week before the launch and traded in our old black-and-white Emerson TV for a new cabinet-model color Sylvania. He said he didn’t care for himself, but he wanted my brother, Ma, and me to be able to see history being made on a TV

where the picture didn’t roll whenever it felt like it and make everyone look like a bunch of pinheads.

Ray spent that whole first week jumping out of his chair to re-adjust his tint and contrast buttons; none of the rest of us was allowed to adjust the color on the new set. He must have been trying to get his money’s worth, I guess, because he always made the picture ridiculously bright—so vivid it seemed obscene. He’d fiddle with those little knobs until the NBC peacock’s tail feathers bled into each other and the field at Yankee Stadium turned psychedelic
286

I Know[264-339] 7/24/02 12:45 PM Page 287

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE

287

lime green. Newscasters’ complexions glowed like jack-o’-lanterns.

On the big night of the moon landing, I was on Ray’s shit list because I’d made plans with Leo Blood to drive down to Easterly Beach. “One of the biggest moments in American history and you’re going to some dance hall?” he asked.

“That’s the beauty of America, Ray,” I said. “It’s a free country.”

The wisecrack was one I could afford to spend in the wake of Ray’s tantrum with the pickle jars. For several days, he’d acted sub-dued with Ma. Indulgent, even. With Thomas, too, who had walked barefoot into the kitchen the morning after Ray’s jar-smashing and stepped directly onto the one jagged shard my mother’s cleanup had missed. The one-inch piece of glass had lodged itself so firmly into the heel of Thomas’s foot that neither Ma nor I had wanted to extract it. Instead, we hustled Thomas to the emergency room, where an intern poked and prodded and removed the glass. Thomas passed out during his ordeal. The gash had required both inside and outside stitches. By the time we got back home, Ray had returned from work and cleaned up the blood that trailed from the kitchen through the house and down the front stairs. He waited for us at the front door, pale and shaken. “What the hell happened?” he said. The three of us let him wait for an answer until Thomas had negotiated the cement stairs with his crutches.

More than anything, the new TV was Ray’s unspoken apology.

And my going out on the night of the moon landing was my way of saying thanks but no thanks.

“They serve alcohol at this place you’re going to?” he asked, passing me as I waited at the front door for Leo to show.

“I can’t get into a place that serves alcohol,” I said. “They card you at the door.”

“They better,” he said. “I catch you doing something you’re not supposed to be doing and I’ll make your ass bleed.”

Like you made his foot bleed, you son of a bitch, I thought.

Leo’s horn finally honked somewhere after the landing of the
Eagle
but before Armstrong’s descent to the moon. He no longer drove his mother’s Biscayne. Now Leo tooled around in his own car, I Know[264-339] 7/24/02 12:45 PM Page 288

288

WALLY LAMB

a ’66 Skylark convertible, cobalt blue, with a V-8, four on the floor, and a built-in eight-track with rear reverb speakers. He’d gotten a good deal on it because the engine leaked oil and the convertible top was stuck down, more or less permanently. He kept a case of Quaker State, a plastic sheet, and a stack of bath towels in the trunk for emergencies.

Leo drove the convertible fast and recklessly, which appealed to me, especially that night. Neil Armstrong and company may have torn through the heavens, but Leo and I were tearing down Route 22

with the Stones on the tape deck and a wall of oxygen rushing against us. I felt like I could breathe again. We drank beers all the way down there, chucking the cans out on the side of the road as we flew. Fuck Ray and fuck the moon and the astronauts, too. We were cooking.

Leo wanted to check out two clubs, the Blue Sands and a new place called the Dial-Tone Lounge. “We’re gonna get us some action, tonight, Birdsey Boy,” he called over to me. “I can feel it underneath the old loincloth.”

“The old loincloth?” I laughed. Leo let go of the steering wheel and beat his chest. Then he grabbed the wheel again, stood up straight, and yelled like Tarzan. The Skylark weaved and wobbled onto the shoulder and back again.

In the Blue Sands parking lot, Leo handed me a bogus majority card and told me to memorize my name and birthday and to look the guy at the door right in the eye. Don’t ask me why I still remember this, but I was Charles Crookshank, born January 19, 1947.

“Where do you get these things, anyway?” I asked Leo.

“It’s a kit. You send away.”

The guy posted at the door looked like something out of
Planet
of the Apes.
He studied our IDs with his flashlight, then shone the light right in our faces, pretty much killing off the idea of eye contact. “So,” Leo said. “How about this moon landing stuff? Pretty wild, eh?”

The gatekeeper ignored Leo and looked at me. “You got a driver’s license or some other form of identification, Mr. Crookshank?”

he asked.

I Know[264-339] 7/24/02 12:45 PM Page 289

I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE

289

“Funny you should mention that,” Leo intervened. “We’re both from Manhattan, see? With all the buses and subways there, we just never bothered to get licenses. You don’t really need them in New York.”

“Wasn’t that you who just drove in? In the Buick with Connecticut plates?”

“Yes, it was. Very observant,” Leo laughed. “We borrowed my sister’s car.”

The guy took another look at Leo’s fake ID and asked him when his birthday was. Leo got the day right but messed up on the month. “Hit the road, you two,” the Ape Man said.

“That’s fine, my man,” Leo told him. “Peace, brother. And may I congratulate you on this great career you got going for yourself.

There’s an awful lot of guys would
love
to be at the top of the heap like you, collecting soggy dollar bills and stamping people’s hands at a bar as scuzzy as this one.” We had to run back to the Skylark and hop over the doors, King Kong lumbering across the parking lot after us.

At the Dial-Tone Lounge, those same phony IDs got us in, no sweat. All the tables at the Dial-Tone were numbered in neon and came equipped with telephones. The gimmick was: you could scope out some chick, then call up her table and flirt for a few minutes while she and her girlfriends checked out all the guys and tried to match the conversation to the moving lips.

There were more guys than girls at the Dial-Tone. The place was crawling with sailors from the submarine base over in Groton. Most of the squids wore tie-dye and love beads and bell-bottom jeans—by

’69 it was bad for your sex life to look military—but the accents and haircuts gave them away. Leo and I managed to snag the last table, a two-seater stuck in the corner behind a couple of squids. One was a tall, skinny doofus and the other a squat fire hydrant with eyes. “Just what we needed,” Leo mumbled as we sat down. “Popeye and Bluto blocking our view.”