The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (141 page)

I grabbed my keys. The dump, paint thinner, Halloween candy . . . what else? what else? Oh, yeah. Pick up my suit at the dry cleaner’s. Had to look my best for those dipsticks on the Security Review Board the next day—had to look as sane and conservative as possible. God, I’d be glad when
that
thing was over. Which reminded me: I needed to bring my notes to that meeting with Sheffer. She wanted us to review our arguments one more time. Jesus Christ, man. This was starting to feel like
L.A. Law.
But I was going to
make
those honchos on the Review Board listen to me. I was getting him the hell out of there. . . .

Yeah, and then what? If they sprung him from Hatch and wouldn’t readmit him to Settle, what were we going to do then?

I locked the door behind me. Frost again last night, damn it. These cold nights were no good for outside painting.

The truck started on the third try. Better let it run a few minutes, I figured. Painting Plus had wrapped up their outside season two weeks ago. Of course, Danny Labanara didn’t have a crazy brother complicating his life every two seconds. Labanara’s brother pinch-hit for him during July and August.

My eyes scanned the courtyard. The frost had browned the
lawn, killed off those scraggly plants that passed for landscaping here at Condo Heaven. It was a joke the way we had to shell out to the association for groundskeeping. If I had more time or energy, I’d be all over them about that. Of course, if Dessa and I were still together, I’d still be over at our old place, doing my own goddamned yard work. Doing it
right.

Joy had overstuffed the garbage cans again, I noticed. Why didn’t she just issue
invitations
to the goddamned raccoons?
Come and get it, guys!
That was the thing about Joy: you’d tell her to do something, and she’d say okay, yeah, she’d do it, and then she
wouldn’t.
She had zilch for follow-through. . . . I hadn’t said anything yet to Joy about what Sheffer and I had talked about: the possibility that Thomas might land back here with us. Cross
that
bridge when I came to it, I figured. . . . Ah, screw it. I had to go to the dump, anyway. Might as well just throw the damn garbage bags in back and take ’em with me. Better than waking up at 2:00
A.M.
and listening to those goddamned scavenging raccoons.

I swung bags one and two into the truck bed. Bag three busted open at the seam, midflight. Motherfucking cheap bags! I needed
this
? Scooping up the junk mail and dead salad, my eye caught something else: a blue pamphlet.

Directions for a home pregnancy test? In
our
garbage?

I sifted around a little more in the wreckage. Found a plastic tray, cardboard pieces from the ripped-up box.
Pregnancy
test?

I got in the truck. Drove toward the hardware store. Did I have those notes for the meeting with Sheffer? Had I remembered my dry-cleaning receipt? . . . How could she think she was pregnant? False alarm, maybe—missed period or something? Miraculous vasectomy reversal? I’d had myself “fixed” back when I was still with Dessa—had been shooting blanks the whole time I’d been with Joy. Not that
she
knew. I’d never told her. It was partly a not-wanting-to-get-into-it thing: the baby’s death, the divorce. Partly a male ego thing, too, I guess. When we started going out, she was twenty-three and I was thirty-eight. What was I supposed to say to her? I’m fifteen years older than you, and, oh yeah, I’m sterile, too. . . .

By the time I came out of my stupor—looked around to see where I was—I’d overshot the hardware store by half a mile. I was way the hell over past the cinemas and Bedding Barn. Hey, wake up, man. Earth to Birdsey.

I sat in Sheffer’s office, twiddling my thumbs and waiting as usual.

Lisa Sheffer: psychiatric social worker and queen of the unexpected emergency. I liked Sheffer—I was grateful and everything—but this whole routine was getting pretty old. Check in at the gate, get your parking pass, check in with security, go through the metal detector, get escorted down to her office by some stone-faced guard, and then just
sit
there and wait for her. I was going to say something this time—soon as she started up with some excuse.

I heard voices outside in the rec area. Went over to the window. It was those camouflage guys this morning—the Vietnam burn- outs. Unit Six. Jesus God, I was starting to recognize the different units. . . . Fucking Nam, man. Some of those guys looked like old men. Didn’t recognize the aide. Where’d they get this one from—
Big Time Wrestling
?

Stay calm, I told myself. Her period was just late or something. Used to happen to Dessa some months, back when we were trying to get pregnant: we’d get our hopes up and then, bam, she’d wake up with it. She’d have just been a little late. . . . Jesus, I had to get
focused.
Had to think about the hearing. Over at the dump, I’d thrown my empty paint cans in the wrong recycling bin. “You need something in the nature of supplies this morning, Dominick?” Johnny over at Willard’s had said. “Or’d you just come into the store to lean on my counter and meditate?”

Was she cheating on me—was that it? I was no picnic, either, I reminded myself, especially lately. I’d never cheated on her, though. Never cheated on Dessa, either.
Never.
It was just a false alarm, I assured myself. What’s the matter, Birdsey? You don’t have
enough
to worry about?

I reached over and grabbed the phone book on Sheffer’s desk. Batteson, Batteson.

Russell A. Batteson, Ob-Gyn. . . .

Outside, the camouflage guys started lining up to come back in. All day long at this sorry place: herd ’em out, herd ’em back in. Some of these Vietnam casualties would have made out better if they’d just stepped on a land mine or something. . . . If that pregnancy test had come out negative, why was an ob-gyn’s office calling her? What was she trying to hide from me?

Yeah, well, you haven’t exactly been Mr. Open Communication, either, I reminded myself. You’ve committed a sin of omission or two. She was already on the pill when we started making love—had told me that first night—and so I’d just shut my mouth about the vasectomy. Kept the status quo instead of getting into any of that past history stuff. Joy didn’t even know I’d been a teacher until almost a year after she’d moved in with me. Someone at work told her—Amy someone. She’d been in my homeroom.

What had Dr. Patel said that time? That my rushing into another relationship after Dessa was like applying a fresh coat over peeling paint. A
housepainting
metaphor—custom-made for the guy in the hot seat. . . . Hey, Joy never
asked
about my marriage, either. She could have asked. We’d discussed the possibility of kids a total of one time. We’d both agreed neither of us was interested. Period. End of subject. “No kids” was one of her assets. One of the big reasons why I’d asked her to move in with me.

Sheffer’s entrance into the office made me jump. She was hyper—all nervous energy. Which did I want first, she said—the good news or the bad? The good, I told her.

“Your security clearance came through. You can see him.”

“I can? When?”

“Today. As soon as we finish our meeting. I’ll call security, and we’ll meet him in the visiting room. All right?”

I nodded. Told her thanks. Gave her a jerky little smile. “What’s the bad news?”

“The unit team took our vote this morning. It’s not really ‘bad’ news. It’s not good
or
bad. It’s neutral.”

I tilted my head. Waited.

Things had gone pretty much along the lines she thought they would, Sheffer said. Dr. Chase and Dr. Diederich had voted to recommend Thomas’s retention at Hatch. She and Janet Coffey—the head nurse—had voted for his release to a nonforensic facility. “But here’s the part I
didn’t
see coming,” she said. “Dr. Patel abstained.”

“Abstained?
Why?
”

“I don’t know why. I don’t really get it myself. She said she was professionally obliged not to go into it.”

“But that’s stupid. That’s just throwing her vote away.” I got up. Sat down again. “So it’s a hung jury then? Man, this
sucks
!”

Sheffer reminded me their team was just advisory, anyway. “Just the lowly medical professionals who have actually
worked
with the patient.” The Review Board was the real jury, she said. She told me the team had decided to write up the vote as is—explain that they were split, with one abstention. So there’d be no clear recommendation either way.

“Then they’ll go with what the two shrinks want, right? Aren’t the doctors’ opinions going to overrule yours and the nurse’s?” Her finger tapped against her lip. She said if it weren’t a sexist world—if male doctors didn’t still sit up on Mount Olympus—then she’d say no. But, unfortunately, I was probably right.

“I’ll talk to Dr. Patel,” I said. “I’ll get her to
un-
abstain.”

Sheffer shook her head. “It’s a done deal,
paisano.
I know you’re disappointed, but think about it: it could have been worse. It could have been a 3-to-2 recommendation to retain him here. With the political pressure from the state and a vote like that, Hatch would have been a foregone conclusion. At least we still have one last chance to lobby for his release tomorrow. Let’s
go
for it.”

I snorted a little at that one. Yea, rah rah. Sheffer as head cheerleader.

She asked me if I’d gotten the letters. “All two of them,” I said, handing them over. Between us, we had approached twelve people about the possibility of writing letters to the Review Board advocating my brother’s release from Hatch. We’d gotten refusals from all but two. “I like this one,” Sheffer said, holding up the letter from Dessa.

“I can’t believe Dr. Ehlers reneged on us,” I said. “First he says he’ll write one. Then I go over to his office to pick it up and his receptionist says he’s changed his mind. You know what I think? I think someone from the state got to him—told him
not
to write the thing.”

Sheffer smiled. Told me I was starting to sound a little paranoid, like someone else she knew. I stared back at her, not laughing. “Okay, let’s focus on what we’ve
got
instead of what we didn’t get,” she said. “And we still need to put the finishing touches on
your
argument. Because I think that if anyone’s going to sway the Board, Domenico, it’s
you
who has the best shot.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. As long as that Sicilian temper of yours doesn’t flare up.”

I got up. Walked over to the window. “So what’s your gut feeling on this?” I said. “You think he’s going to get out of here?”

She told me we had done everything we could—that a lot of it depended on whether or not the Board was willing to check their baggage at the door and listen without prejudice. “We’ll just go in there and state our case point by point—everything we’ve gone over. Wait and see.”

“I’m worried about Thomas blowing it,” I said. “Does he
have
to be there?”

She nodded. “We’ve been over this already. Yes, he
has
to be there, and yes, he
has
to answer their questions.” She started to say something else, then caught herself.

“What?” I said. “What were you going to say just then?”

She didn’t want to worry me, she said, but Thomas had been acting a little schizy that morning—a little agitated. It was probably nothing, just an off morning.

I sat back down and faced her. “You didn’t answer my question before,” I said.

“What was your question?”

“Do you think they’re going to release him tomorrow?”

She shrugged. Told me not to bet the farm. “But, listen, Dominick. Worst-case scenario is that he stays here a year, his medication
stabilizes him, he gets good treatment. By next year’s annual review, not only is he much better, but the media’s off his trail, too—on to ‘sexier’ cases, as they say.”

I asked her if she wanted to know what the worst-case scenario was for me. “For me, it’s that one of the other fun guys you got down here sticks him in the ribs with a homemade knife or strangles him in the shower with someone’s missing shoelace.” I told her I stayed up nights thinking about shit like that.

She said I’d probably seen too many Alfred Hitchcock movies.

“Yeah? Is that right, Sheffer? Tell me something then. If this place is so goddamned safe and therapeutic or whatever—if everyone’s so goddamned on top of things around here—then let me ask you this.” I reached over and snatched her daughter’s picture off her desk, waved it at her. “Would you bring
her
down here? Let your little girl play down at Hatch for a day? Or a week? Or a whole freakin’
year,
until they were on to ‘sexier’ cases?”

She reached over to take the picture back.

“No, really,” I said, holding it away from her still. “Come on, Sheffer. Answer the question. Would you?”

“Stop being a jerk,” she said. She was getting pissed.

“What’s the matter? Your maternal instinct kicking in, is it? Well, let me tell you something.” I was near tears. I
was
acting like a jerk—I
knew
that. “Speaking of mothers, I promised mine—his
and
mine—I told her the day she died that I’d look out for him. Okay? That I’d make sure nothing happened to him. And that’s just a little hard to do in this place. . . . She’s just a little kid. Right? Your daughter? Well, listen, Sheffer. In a weird way—in ways I can’t even explain to you—Thomas is still a little kid, too. To me, anyway. It’s always been that way. I used to have to beat kids up in the schoolyard for messing with him—used to have to make kids pay when they made fun of him so they wouldn’t do it again. We’re . . . we’re identical twins, okay? He’s a part of me, Sheffer. So it
hurts,
okay? The thought of him being down at this place for another year and me not able
to make it safe for him—beat up the bad guys for him—it’s . . . it’s killing me.”

I handed her kid’s picture back to her. She put it in her desk drawer and closed it. We sat there, looking at each other.

She picked up the phone and dialed. Told security that she and I were ready to see Thomas Birdsey.