The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (11 page)

Daddy read me the funny papers. Then we played tic-tac-toe. He wasn’t paying attention, though. He kept tapping his foot and looking over at the record player cabinet. “Want to hear a record?” he said. I said yes, either
Bozo the Clown Under the Sea
or
Hopalong Cassidy and the Square Dance Holdup.
But Daddy said he felt like listening to music. “Where’s your checker set at?” he said. “Go get it and we’ll play some checkers.”

At first, I thought the checkerboard was up in my room. Then I remembered it was in the pantry drawer. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, Daddy was standing at the record player cabinet. Except the door on the other side was open—the side where Grandpa’s liquor’s at. Daddy took a big swig out of one of Grandpa’s bottles, and then another swig, and then he noticed me. He put the bottle back and cleared his throat. “They used to keep the records on this side,” he said. “Guess I got mixed up. Got a little thirsty, too, but that’s between me and you, buddy. Okay?” And I said okay.

Grandpa’s good at checkers, but Daddy stunk. Plus, he was playing that Dean Martin music so loud, I couldn’t concentrate. When Mother came back to the dining room to get the tablecloth, he said, “Rosemary Kathleen Sullivan, my wild Irish rose.”

Mother didn’t say anything. She bunched up the tablecloth kind of mad and tried to walk past Daddy, but he pushed his chair out so she couldn’t get by. Then he touched her hiney.

“Don’t!” she said. She got all red, and went the other way around the table, and banged open the kitchen door the way I’m not supposed to.

Daddy laughed and called into the kitchen. “Watch out, everyone! Rosemary’s got her Irish up.”

“It’s your turn,” I said. But instead of moving his man, he picked up one of mine and jumped a bunch of his own checkers. “You win,” he said. “Go play.” Over at the record player cabinet, he lifted the needle and dropped it down on that song about the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie. He went into the kitchen, whistling.

“Because I don’t
want
to dance with you, that’s why!” Mother said. Then Daddy said something, and Mother said, “You think I can’t smell it on you, Alden? You think I can’t recognize a lost cause when he’s standing in front of me?” Then there was some noises and a crash. The kitchen door banged open.

“Wanna play Crazy Eights?” I said.

At the parlor window, I watched him walk faster and faster, down the driveway and onto Bride Lake Road, taking swigs from Grandpa’s bottle.

Mother was sitting on a kitchen chair, crying. She had one regular cheek and one all-red one. The broken pieces of our soup bowl were on the table next to her. “Lolly told me this tureen was one of Great-Grandma Quirk’s wedding presents,” she said.

“Oh…. You want a glass of water?”

“His wild Irish rose. That’s a laugh! I was just the first girl he grabbed on the rebound.” Then she looked at me. “Don’t
you
ever be mean like Daddy.”

“Want some water?” I said again.

She nodded. I got her the water and she took a little sip. She kept touching the broken soup bowl. “My hands were wet from the dishes,” she said. “It slipped. It was an accident.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

She took another sip of her water. “How about a hug?” she said.

She put her arms around me. It was one of her stiff hugs, with the little pitty-pats on my back. “How come you never hug me back?” she said.

“I hug you back.”

“No, you don’t.”

MISS HOGAN? AT MY SCHOOL?
She used to be our second-grade teacher and now she’s our third-grade teacher, too, on account of she switched grades. And I’m glad, because Miss Hogan’s nice. Plus, she’s pretty. She drives a green Studebaker and likes cats instead of dogs. This one time, Penny Balocki in our class was teasing me and saying that I love Miss Hogan and want to marry her. I don’t, though. I like her, but I don’t
love
her. And anyways, she’s already
getting
married.

Miss Hogan’s fiancé, Mr. Foster, used to play football at Fordham University, and now he’s a cameraman at a television studio in New York City. Miss Hogan’s favorite TV show is
I’ve Got a Secret
because that’s the show where Mr. Foster works at. And you know what? When Mr. Foster visited us that time, Frieda Buntz raised her hand and said, “Can you and Miss Hogan kiss for us?” And she had to go stand in the cloakroom until recess.

One time, during vacation week, Mother let me stay up late and watch
I’ve Got a Secret.
One man’s secret was that he got struck by lightning and didn’t die. Another man had this long, long beard and his secret was that, at night, he slept with his whiskers
in
side the covers, not oatside. They guessed the whiskers guy, but not the lightning guy. Last year, one of our best milkers got struck by lightning. Dolly, her name was. And you know what the vet said? That Dolly’s heart
exploded.
Grandpa had to bulldoze her across the road and down into the gravel pit. All week long, vultures kept flying over our south field.

I’ve
got a secret. Someone in our grade keeps spitting in the drinking fountain in the main hallway, and Miss Hogan thinks it’s Thomas Birdsey, but it’s not. It’s me. Last week, our whole class wasn’t allowed to get a drink until someone admitted they were the spitter. And everyone got madder and madder at Thomas because he wouldn’t admit it. Even
I
was mad at him, because I was thirsty and I kind of forgot
who the
real
secret spitter was. Then Thomas made a load in his pants, the way he used to in first grade, and the office made his mother come get him. Our whole classroom stunk, and Miss Hogan had to send for Mr. Zadzilko, and we all went outside and played dodgeball. Dominick Birdsey had to stop playing, though, because he was whipping the ball too hard and hitting people’s faces. And after? When we came back in the building? Miss Hogan let us all get drinks. In the hallway, Mr. Zadzilko always looks at me, and I want to say, What are
you
looking at, Mr. Big Fat Glasses Face? I don’t, though. I just look away.

You know what? I stole something once. Mother and I were at Lu’s Luncheonette, buying Rolaids for Mother’s ulcer. And while Mother and Lu were talking at the cash register, I just picked a Devil Dog off the rack and put it in my coat pocket. I
kind of
thought I was going to get caught, except I didn’t. I don’t even like Devil Dogs that much; I like Hostess cupcakes better. I didn’t eat it. I just kept reaching inside my pocket and poking it with my finger. It got squishy, and the cellophane broke. And the next morning, I mailed it in the mailbox in front of our school.

Sometimes, when I try to hand in my paper early, Miss Hogan goes, “It’s not a race, Caelum. Go back to your desk and check your work.” If I check my work and I’m
still
waiting and waiting, that’s when I have to take the pass and go help Mr. Zadzilko. After Mr. Mc-Cully picked Mother to be head teller, now she always has to stay late at the bank because of her extra responsibilities. She won’t let me go on the bus, because Aunt Lolly’s already working at the prison when I get home and Grandpa’s getting ready for milking. But she doesn’t pick me up until way after all the other kids go home. She had to talk to Miss Anderson about letting me stay and wait, and Miss Anderson lets me because Mother’s divorced. Sometimes, I get to stay in our room with Miss Hogan, but sometimes I have to go be Mr. Zadzilko’s helper.

He has me clap erasers, or empty the wastebaskets into the big
barrel in the hallway, or wipe down blackboards with the big sponge. One time, after an assembly, I had to go to the auditorium and help him fold all the folding chairs. We stacked them on these flat carts that have wheels. You know where all the folding chairs go? Under the stage. This door I never even noticed before opens, and the chairs roll in on the carts and stay there until the next assembly.

After the United Nations assembly was when Mr. Mpipi got fired. After he did his dance. First, Miss Anderson gave a speech about the UN. Then the fourth graders sang “Around the World in Eighty Days.” Then some lady who went on a trip to China showed us her China slides. Dominick Birdsey started tickling me, and Miss Hogan made us sit between her and Miss Anderson. The China lady talked so long that the projector melted one of her slides, and some of the sixth-graders started clapping.

Mr. Mpipi came on near the end. He walked out on the stage, and instead of his janitor clothes, he was wearing this big red cape and no shoes. He told everyone how the Bushmen hunted jackals, and prayed to their praying mantis god, and he talked their clicking talk. The sixth-graders started being rude. It’s okay if you laugh
with
someone, but it’s bad if you laugh
at
them. Mr. Mpipi thought everyone was laughing
with
him, so he started laughing, too—his squealy laugh—and that made things worse. Miss Anderson had to stand up and give the sixth-graders a dirty look.

Mr. Mpipi said he was going to show us two Bushman dances, the Dance of the Great Hunger and the Dance of Love. But he wasn’t going to stop in between, he said. One dance was just going to turn into the other one. “Because what does all of us
hunger for?”
he asked. No one in the audience said anything. Mr. Mpipi waited, and then finally he said the answer himself. “We hunger for love!”

He untied his cape and dropped it on the floor, and all’s he was wearing was this kind of diaper thing. I saw Miss Anderson and Miss Hogan look at each other, and Miss Anderson said, “Good God in Heaven.” Mr. Mpipi was shouting and yipping and doing this weird,
shaky dance. He had a big potbelly and a big behind, and the sixth-graders were laughing so hard, they were falling off their chairs. Then someone yelled, “Shake it, Sambo!” Mr. Mpipi kept dancing, so I don’t think he even heard it, but Miss Andersen walked over and started flicking the auditorium lights on and off. Then she went up on the stage, handed Mr. Mpipi his cape, and said the assembly was over. “Everyone except the sixth-graders should proceed in an orderly fashion back to their rooms,” she said.

Later, during silent reading, Miss Hogan had me bring a note down to Miss Anderson’s office. Her door was closed, but I could hear Mr. Mpipi in there. He was saying, “But
why
I’m fired, Mrs. Principal? Please say the
why?
”

When the teachers are around, Mr. Zadzilko’s all nice to me. He calls me his best helper, and his junior janitor, and stuff. When it’s just him and me, he calls me “Dirty Boy,” and he keeps flicking his finger at me down there. “That’s to remind you that if you ever blab about certain secrets you and me got, I’ll tell everyone that Little Dirty Boy likes to look at his teachers’ twats.” And I think that means their girdles.

I killed something once. One of our chickens—the brown speckled one with the broken beak and the pecked-at head. “Nervous Nellie,” Grandpa always used to call her. He says a fox probably got her, but it didn’t. The other chickens were out front, pecking at the dirt, and she was all by herself behind the barn. I never liked her—never liked to look at that broken beak. At first, I was just tossing pebbles to bother her. Then I tossed a rock. Then I
threw
a rock, hard as I could, and it bounced off the barn and beaned her on the head. It looked funny at first, the way she just dropped, but then I realized she was dead and I got sad. She had blood coming out her eye. When I picked her up, she felt limp, like the rag doll Great-Grandma Lydia always wants me to hold and kiss. “Hold my baby,” she always says. “Kiss my Lillian.” Mother says Great-Grandma Lydia has cracks in her brain, and that’s what makes her crazy. The cracks are because she’s so old. All
day long, she laughs at nothing and wants me to kiss her dolly. When Nervous Nellie died? I said a Hail Mary for her and buried her under some mucky leaves by the brook. Mother says God has a different heaven for animals than the one for people, but there’s no hell for animals, on account of animals don’t commit sins.

If Daddy steps one foot onto our farm, Grandpa’s getting him arrested for trespassing. Mother says I can’t tell anyone at school because that’s private information. Private information is like a secret, and trespassing’s when you step on someone’s private property and wreck things—like when those bad teenagers wrecked the Quirk family. At school, during morning exercises, we always say something about bad people who trespass against us. It’s in either the Pledge of Allegiance or the Lord’s Prayer. I always get those two mixed up. You know what? Miss Hogan’s picked me to lead morning exercises twice this year, and some kids haven’t even done it once.

“Tell him he can go to hell!” Grandpa said, that time the phone rang at supper, and Aunt Lolly answered it. It was Daddy.

“He just wants to apologize to you, Pop,” Aunt Lolly said. “Why don’t you let him apologize?” The phone in her hand was shaking, and Grandpa let out a big breath and got up from the table.

“Apologize for what?” I asked Mother, but she shushed me.

“Here, give me that thing,” Grandpa said.

Mother leaned toward me and whispered. “For what he did when you two went downtown to buy your present.”

“What is it, Alden?” Grandpa said. I could hear Daddy’s little voice coming out of the telephone, except not what he was saying. “Yep,” Grandpa kept saying. “Yep … Yep.” Then he said, “You know how I end each day, Alden? I go upstairs. Kiss my poor, dear mother goodnight—make sure she’s quiet and comfortable. Then I take my bath. Then, before I climb into bed, I get down on my two bad knees and pray to God that my beloved Catherine, who gave her life to bring you into this world, is resting peacefully in heaven. And
do you want to know what else I pray for, Alden? I pray that your son doesn’t grow up to be a no-good bum like his father.”

Then I
could
hear what Daddy was saying. “But just
listen
to me. Okay, Pop? Can you please just
listen
to me?”

Grandpa said something about a broken record and hung up in the middle of Daddy’s talking. He looked over at Aunt Lolly. “There,” he said. “You
satisfied?”
Aunt Lolly didn’t say anything, but she was almost-crying-looking.