The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (152 page)

She smiled. Nodded. “Look,” she said, “you
know
we’ll take good care of him, right? Dr. Patel, Dr. Chase, me—the whole staff. And you have your security clearance now. You can visit him. He’ll stabilize, Dominick. I
know
he will.”

I smiled. Told her I’d see about getting her the Purple Heart for that bruise. She waved me off. Picked up the present from Dr. Patel and handed it to me. “Here,” she said. “Aren’t you going to open this?”

I unwrapped the package, lifted off the top of the box. Took the small soapstone statue out of its tissue paper nest—a four-inch version of the one in her office.

“I like her smile,” Sheffer said.

“It’s not a her,” I told her. “It’s a he. Shiva. The god of destruction.”

She looked at me funny. “Destruction?”

Dr. Patel had enclosed a card. “
Dear Dominick, I give you Shiva the dancing god in hopes that you will soon be on your feet and dancing
past your pain. Do you remember Shiva’s message
?
With destruction comes renovation. Be well.
”

Sheffer was on her way out the door when Joy arrived. I introduced them. Saw Joy take in Sheffer’s bib overalls, her smooshed-down hat. It was a little odd—how instantly Sheffer’s cocky humor evaporated in Joy’s presence. She seemed almost to sink into those overalls of hers.

“Who’s the hippie chick?” Joy asked.

“Thomas’s social worker.”

I filled Joy in on the Board meeting, Thomas’s sentence down at Hatch. She looked as pretty as ever, Joy—but pale. Frail, even. Whipped. When I started telling her about Thomas’s interview, she bent and kissed my forehead, my nose, my lips. “I love you, Dominick,” she said. And my throat constricted. I could not say it back.

Between the stress she’d been feeling about me and the nausea from the baby, Joy said, she hadn’t been able to sleep or eat or do much of anything but hug the toilet all day. I’d made her so paranoid earlier about drinking Slim-Fast that she’d called the doctor’s office and talked to the nurse practitioner. He’d told her not to worry about it—that the baby took what it needed first. The fetus was her body’s first priority right now, he’d said, and her body knew it. She should just take it easy and try not to worry. The nausea would pass. Little babies were tougher than she thought.

I flashed on Angela, the way she’d looked that morning—fists clenched, blood-flecked foam at her mouth. . . .

“I still can’t quite believe it,” Joy said. “
Me.
A
mother
.”

We talked about what was in store for the next several months—the pregnancy, my injuries, my business. Lying there, speculating about worst-case scenarios, was driving me crazy, I said. And when I dozed off, I had these hallucinations.

“Like what?” she said.

“Never mind. You don’t even want to know.”

Joy told me she’d packed me a bag of toiletries, and then had
rushed out of the house, forgetting everything. She’d visit again that evening, she said. Was there anything else I needed? I described the place in my desk where I kept my insurance policies for the business. My health insurance policy, too. It was all together. Could she bring that stuff? It was driving me nuts, just lying there, thinking my insurance might not cover this.

Sure, she said. She’d bring it. Anything else?

I shook my head. Started to cry again, goddamn it.

Everything was going to be okay, she said.
Really
. I should try not to focus on my leg or on my brother. Why couldn’t I just focus on the
baby
—the fact that I was going to be a
father
. She touched my hip cautiously, testing it like it was something hot from the oven.

Maybe none of it mattered anymore, I thought. Maybe I could just go
with
the exhaustion instead of fighting it. Give in to it. That was how people drowned, wasn’t it? They just stopped fighting. Just relaxed and gave themselves over to the water. . . . Maybe that’s what Thomas was doing down there at Hatch, too. He’d taken the news stoically, Sheffer said. It was funny, really: ironic. All our lives,
he’d
been the crybaby and
I’d
been the tough guy. The guy who didn’t let his guard down. Cross Dominick Birdsey and he might blow up at you, might come out swinging—but you were never going to see him cry like that pansy-ass brother of his. . . . But ever since I’d fallen off Rood’s roof—had come bubbling back up from hell or wherever it was that the morphine had taken me—all’s I could
do
was cry. Now
I
was the crybaby and
Thomas
was the stoic. Gets locked up in maximum-security hell for a year and takes it with a
stiff upper lip. I had to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Joy said.

Instead of answering her, I rubbed at the tears. Blew my nose. What had Felice said? Believe in fate? Go with the flow? Maybe
that
was the big cosmic joke: you could spend your whole life banging your head against the wall and all it boiled down to was fortune-cookie philosophy.
Go with the flow
. Which, come to think of it, was what people did when they drowned. . . .

“It’s
not
going to be okay,” I told Joy.

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not. I’m never going to fix anything. And even if I could, I’m just too tired. I can’t do it anymore, Joy. All’s I want to do is wave the white flag. Take the damn water into my lungs.”

She looked confused. “It’s the drugs they’re giving you,” she said. “Narcotics are depressants, right? They’re bringing you way down.”

I saw Rood up there in his attic window. Shook my head. “I think . . . I think when I went off that roof, something else busted up besides my foot and my leg and my ankle. Something that all the surgery and physical therapy in the world aren’t going to fix. . . . I’m just tired, Joy. I don’t want to keep fighting anymore.”

It was the medication, she said again.

“It’s
not
the medication. It’s
me
.”

Lying around and feeling sorry for themselves never helped anybody, she told me. I should think about the
baby.

I hadn’t planned on getting into it. I’d planned on shutting my mouth—maybe until after the kid was born, or after I couldn’t take it anymore. Or maybe for the rest of my life. I hadn’t been sure
how
it was going to play out. But I suddenly knew I was just too tired to keep up the game. Knew right then and there that I couldn’t do it.

“I know the baby’s not mine,” I said.

She looked more bewildered than surprised. “What do you mean, not yours? Of course it’s yours, Dominick. What are you talking about?”

“It can’t be. I’m sterile. I got a vasectomy back when I was married.”

She blinked. Sat there. “What?”

“I never told you about it. My wife . . . Dessa and I . . . we had a kid. A little girl. Her name was Angela. She died.”

“Dominick,” Joy said. “Stop it. Why are you doing this?”

“I
should
have told you. I
know
I should have told you, but . . .”

I asked her if she remembered that time when we’d discussed kids—way back, right near the beginning. We’d both said we weren’t interested. “So I just . . . I told myself that it wasn’t even an issue.
Convinced myself that I didn’t have to get into it because you didn’t want babies anyway. That I could just let you keep taking your birth control pills and . . . But I see now that it was the same as lying. Keeping it from you. You’re not the only one who’s been dishonest. We’ve both been lying to each other. I’m not even mad, really. God, the way I’ve been treating you the past couple months. . . . I mean, I
was
mad. When I first found out about it? I was ready to come out punching.”

“It’s this medication they’re giving you,” she said. “It’s making you think strange.”

“You remember that night you got arrested for stealing? And you were saying how, now that everything was out in the open, that it was a
good
thing, not a
bad
thing? That things were going to be better than ever between us? And I told you not to get your hopes up. Remember, Joy? I told you I was damaged goods. You remember me telling you that? . . . That’s what I was talking about, I guess. The baby. What it did to my wife and me. I don’t know, Joy. It damages you. When you have a baby and you get to know her for three weeks and then she . . . just
dies.
I’m not trying to make excuses. I just . . . That’s what I meant when I said I was damaged goods. So I . . . I went and got a vasectomy. I can’t have kids, Joy. Whoever the father of your baby is, it’s not me.”

She just sat there, blinking. Looking at me strange.

“And . . . and I’m not even mad. I’m sad, Joy. I’m just real sad, because . . . because I was never really going to be able to give you a fair shake. You and me, I mean. I see that now. I
used
you. I’m damaged goods. But now I’m too tired to . . . I can’t fake it anymore, Joy. I can’t keep playing whatever game it is we’ve been playing.
I can’t.
”

She blinked. Laughed. “Stop it, okay? You’re wrecking everything. This is
your
baby. Mine and yours. You’re going to get better, and we’re going to have this baby, and buy a house and . . . Who
else’s
would it be, Dominick? I don’t even know what you’re
talking
about.”

We both just sat there, looking at each other.

“Honest!” she said. “Honest to God!”

That nurse came back into the room. Vonette. “Let’s see about that bag now,” she said. She took a look. Took my hand and felt for the pulse. Joy backed away from the bed. She looked shell-shocked. Scared. I hadn’t meant to scare her about Angela. I was sorry about that. But I couldn’t keep it up. I was too tired. I just wanted to sleep.

“Where’s your buddy?” Vonette asked me. “He didn’t go AWOL, did he?”

What? Leo? She nodded toward Steve Felice’s empty bed.

“Oh. . . . I don’t know. He’s probably out in the solarium.”

“Your BP seems a little high, hon,” Vonette said. “I’m going to come back and check it for you in another half hour or so. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She turned to Joy. “All right now, hon. If you don’t mind, I have to check his catheter and change his bag. I’m going to draw the curtain for a couple minutes and then you can get right back to your visit. All right?”

“All right,” Joy said. She smiled. Backed up another few steps. Vonette drew the curtain between us.

I had imagined some big showdown when I lowered the boom—lifted the lid off the fact that she’d been cheating on me. But it hadn’t been like that at all. I felt so sleepy.

“There now,” said Vonette. “You’re all set.”

When she pulled the curtain back again, Joy was gone.

Ray visited later that afternoon. That evening, too. Neither of us mentioned Joy. We didn’t say much at all, really—just sat and watched TV together. I dozed more than anything else. Leo and Angie came on Sunday afternoon, with a homemade poster from the kids. When Angie asked where Joy was, I shrugged. Said something about a cold.

Leo came back later by himself, carrying this three-ton fruit basket—something like a picture out of a magazine. The card said, “Best wishes for a speedy recovery. Fondly, Gene and Thula Constantine.” Fondly? Since when? Leo pulled off the cellophane for me. Ate one piece of fruit after another, practicing his hook shot with the waste
basket and the cores and peels and rinds. “Okay, where is she?” he finally said.

“Who?”

“Joy. Is she
really
sick?”

I shrugged. Yawned. Grabbed the chain bar and shifted my position a little. I told Leo I appreciated his visiting, but did he mind leaving now? I was tired. I wanted to sleep.

I was dozing in and out of
60 Minutes
when something woke me up. A shadow. I opened my eyes.

He was just standing there, watching me. The Duchess.

“What do
you
want?” I said.

He handed me my Walkman from the house. And a cassette. I didn’t get it.

“This is from Joy,” he said. “She wants you to listen to it.”

“Yeah? Why didn’t
she
come up and give it to me, then? Where’s
she
at?”

“In the car,” he said. “She explained everything on the tape. Just listen to it.”

He turned and left.

“That was a short visit,” Felice said.

“What?”

“Your friend there. He didn’t stay long.”

“My friend?”

Hi, Dominick. I’m, uh . . . I’ve been trying all day to write you a letter, but nothing’s coming out right. I never was a big one for putting things down on paper, so Thad said, “Why don’t you just make him a tape? Tell him what you need to say on a tape.” And I thought, yeah, maybe that’s a good idea, because I guess I have a lot of explaining to do. . . . I don’t know, Dominick. I guess if I wasn’t so ashamed of myself, I would have told you everything in person.

I . . . I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since I saw you yesterday afternoon. I was up all last night thinking about you and me, and where I’ve been in my life, and where I’m going. I have to admit that you blew me away when you told me the baby couldn’t be yours. I wanted it to be your baby, Dominick. Our baby. I just
wanted it to work out for us. When you used to say to me how you couldn’t give me a “happily ever after” life, I used to go to myself, yes he can. He just doesn’t know it yet. But I guess I was just fooling myself. As usual.

Ever since I was little, Dominick, I’ve had this Carol Brady picture of myself as this nice, pretty mom with a nice house and a husband who loves me, and we have real cute kids. Things in my life got unbelievably complicated, but that was really all I ever wanted. . . . I know I told you some of the stuff about my childhood, but there’s way more I never went into. It was hard. All my mom’s husbands and boyfriends . . . I’d just start getting used to things and then we’d move again. And my mom would always say, “Well, this is it. I finally found what I’ve been looking for,” and then the next thing you knew, we’d be moving again. Sometimes we moved so quick, I couldn’t even hand in my schoolbooks. Last night I counted all the different schools I went to by the time I graduated from high school. I came up with nine. I never counted them before last night. Nine schools by the time I was seventeen.