The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (30 page)

I was blunt. Told the doctor I thought Mo was taking too much Xanax.

“But they
help
me,” Mo insisted. She was on the verge of tears.

“In the short run, yes,” Dr. Cid said. “Because numbness is preferable to confronting the fear, and the anger, and the ferocious memories. But in the long run, they could do quite a lot of harm. Numbness will arrest your ability to get past your illness to the other side. The truth is, Maureen, you’ve been misprescribed. Xanax can be useful in treating
chronic
sufferes of PTSD. But at this stage, one of the SSRIs would be a much better choice for you.”

Maureen crossed her arms over her chest and sighed in disgust. I asked the doctor what SSRIs were.

“Selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it? They’re in the family of antidepressants—not magic pills, certainly, but they should help to quell Maureen’s flashbacks, and make her memories less debilitating. That ‘wave’ will most likely shrink to a less daunting size. And, unlike the Xanax she’s taking, these medications are nonaddictive.” She turned to Mo. “Maureen? I’d like to start you on Zoloft. Twenty-five milligrams a day for the first week, fifty for the second. We can go up to two hundred a day if we need to, but I’d prefer to err on the side of caution for now. You’ll need to be patient, though. This medication will take a while to build up in your system, so you won’t feel the benefits immediately. Understand?”

Mo scowled, said nothing.

“When
will
it kick in?” I asked.

“Two to three weeks, and she’ll start feeling the benefits. Oh, and about the police investigation? Going back into the school and getting inside that cabinet? Absolutely not. It may be helpful to them, but it could be very harmful to Maureen. It could very likely retraumatize her. Whether or not Maureen chooses to work with me, I’ll be happy to write a letter to that effect, based on our conversation today.
Just call the office tomorrow and leave me a name and address so I’ll know where to send it.”

I wrote her a check; she handed me a receipt. She said the insurance companies were sometimes reluctant to reimburse for PTSD, but that given the high profile of the Columbine shootings, she imagined it would not be a problem. She reached behind her and patted her desktop until her hand located her appointment book. “Shall we schedule our next session then, or would you rather go home and talk it over?”

Simultaneously, Mo said, “Talk it over,” and I said, “Schedule it.”

We left with the Zoloft prescription and instructions on how to wean her off the Xanax. Descending the seven flights of stairs to the lobby, we said nothing to each other. We were silent, too, in the parking garage, and in the line of traffic that inched toward the highway entrance ramp. It wasn’t until I’d accelerated to sixty-five or seventy, that I turned to her. “I feel hopeful,” I said. “She really knows her stuff.”

“She’s a quack,” Maureen said.

“No, she’s not. Why do you say that?”

“That whole thing about riding the waves in Cuba,” she said. “I felt like saying, ‘What about undertow, you stupid idiot? What if a wave sucks you under? ’ … And hypnosis. Why not voodoo? Maybe I could chant some spells and drink chicken blood.”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “You’re way off on this.”

“Why? Because I’m crazy?”

“No one’s saying you’re crazy, Maureen.”

“That’s grounds for a divorce, right? When your wife’s insane.”

The hope I’d been feeling drained out of me like engine oil. I let a mile or two go by. “What’s this really about?” I said. “The fact that she’s taking you off the Xanax?”

“Fuck you, Caleum,” she said. “Fuck … you.”

The kids and I limped through the rest of the school year. I didn’t give exams. And because my grade book was still locked up at Columbine, I had them write down the grades they thought they deserved, and those were pretty much the grades I gave them. (Well, I adjusted for inflation in the case of three or four optimists.) Lindsay Peek never returned after that first day. Rather than give her an incomplete, I gave her a B and let it go at that. On the last day, after the kids left, I filled a couple of cardboard cartons with my stuff. Grabbed Mrs. Boyle’s bottle of Fantastik and cleaned all her desktops for her. I’d gotten her a box of chocolates, too. Left them on her desk, with a note thanking her for sharing her space with me. She’d been a pain in the ass about leaving promptly, but she was a nice lady. Baked cookies for the kids and me. Twice.

Graduation at the Amphitheater was a tearjerker—and, of course, a media event. No avoiding it. Isaiah Shoels’s family didn’t go to the ceremony, but the Townsends were there. Lauren’s older brothers and sisters accepted her diploma. Dylan and Eric would have graduated, too, but there was no mention of them. I choked up when the kids who’d been injured received their diplomas: Jeanna Park with her arm in a sling that matched her graduation gown, Lisa Kreutz in her wheelchair. Val Schnurr had taken nine bullets, but you’d have never guessed it from her triumphant walk across that stage.

It was customary for a lot of the Columbine faculty to go out together after graduation—go to a bar and toast the school year just ended and the beginning of summer vacation. But that night, no one even mentioned going out. We all just got in our cars and went home.

The downstairs lights were off, the dogs wandering around outside like orphans. I figured she must have forgotten they were still out
when she went to bed. The downstairs TV was on, and so was one of the burners on the stove—a blue ring of flame heating nothing. The message machine was blinking.

Beep.
“Hello? Mr. Quirk? This is Ulysses Pappinikou calling. I got your number from the guy at the bakery. I just wanted to tell ya that if you can find it in your heart to—”

I hit “skip.” Didn’t have the strength.

Beep.
“Hi, there! This is Cyndi Pixley from Century Twenty-One returning Maureen Quirk’s call? Sure, I’d love to come out there and do a walk-through and an appraisal. You just call me tomorrow, and we’ll set up a time. And thanks! Can’t wait to meet you!” I recognized the name—Cyndi Pixley’s perky face showed up every week in the real estate circular. Mo had called her?

Beep.
“Hi, Ma. It’s Velvet. Just thought I’d call and see how you were doin’. I’m in Louisiana. This town called Slidell. It’s near New Orleans. I got a job cleaning rooms at this skeezy motel. It’s—what? Wait a second, Mom, okay? … KEITH, PEACE
OUT!
I’M ON THE FUCKIN’ PHONE! … What? … Okay. Okay, I’m sorry. I’m
sorry,
Keith. Hey, Ma? I gotta go.”

Beep.

Well, whoever Keith was, he sounded like a creep. I went upstairs. She was in the bathroom, in her pajamas. She was studying her face in the mirror—opening and closing her mouth like a fish.

“Hey,” I said.

The prescription vial she’d been holding went flying. Pills rolled everywhere. “Jesus Christ! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“I wasn’t sneaking.”

“My nerves aren’t bad enough, Caelum? Is that it? You have to—”

“Mo, come on. I—”

“Asshole!” She was on her knees, snatching up the pills she’d spilled. I bent to help her. “No!” she said.
“I’ll
get them! Just get out!”

But I was already holding a Xanax between my thumb and index
finger. “You’re not supposed to be taking these anymore,” I said. I grabbed her wrist and pried her fingers apart. When the vial dropped from her hand, I snatched it before she could. Read the label. “Who’s Dr. Radwill?” I said.

THE NEXT MORNING, SHE WAS
sullen—and pissed as hell that I’d flushed her new supply down the toilet.

“You have no idea what this is like for me,” she said.

“No, Maureen, I guess I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stand aside and let you develop a drug addiction.”

She told me I could go to hell.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “And what’s this Cyndi Pixley stuff?”

She said she’d called Cyndi Pixley after Sergeant Cox and Detective Chin’s latest drop-by. Even after that letter from Dr. Cid, they were still putting pressure on her about that interview. Maybe if we moved away, she’d feel safer, less assaulted by it, day after day after day. She was pretty sure she would. The farmhouse was just sitting there, right? What was keeping us here?

“Our jobs,” I said. “Our house. Our friends.”

“What friends?”

I ignored the whack. “How about your family, then?” I said. “We moved back here so you could be nearer to your family.”

“My
father”
she said. “And he doesn’t give a shit about me.”

She played Velvet Hoon’s message over and over. “Why Louisiana?” she said. “And who’s Keith? She sounds afraid of him.”

“Velvet’s not your responsibility,” I reminded her.
“You’re
your responsibility.”

“You know what I wish? That they had spared one of those kids’ lives and killed me instead.”

I grabbed my car keys. “I can’t listen to this,” I said.

“Why not? Because that’s what you wish, too?”

A better man would have stayed and comforted her. Instead, I slammed the door. Revved the engine to drown out the sound of her sobbing in there. If I didn’t get the fuck away, my head was going to explode.

I drove around for a couple of hours, burning up half a tank of gas and thinking about the irony of it: me arguing in favor of staying put, and her arguing that we should move back to Connecticut. But that farm without Lolly was … what? A bunch of bad memories and a house full of junk. One headache after another, starting with that goddamned apple house.

Filling up at the Mobil station, I watched a cabbage butterfly flutter above a pot of yellow marigolds, then light on one of the flowers and flap its wings. Looked innocent enough, but maybe it was starting a domino effect—triggering a disaster in some other part of the world…. Maybe I’d sell the farm. Be rid of the burden of it.

A big-ass Jeep pulled up to the pump next to mine, blasting rap. Guy cut the engine, climbed out. One of those twenty-something guys with the requisite shaved head and earring, the tattooed forearms. I was trying to remember where I knew him from when he caught me looking. “What’s up?” he said.

“What’s up?” I said. Then I remembered. He’d stood and spoken at Pastor Pete’s grief counseling session. The substitute—the guy whose girlfriend had gotten pregnant. When the shooting started, he’d hidden in a stall in the staff bathroom. They’d banged open the door, rapped on the stall. “Yoo hoo! We know you’re in there!” At the grief meeting, he said he’d been unhappy about the baby at first, but then glad about it. Said he was going to be the best father he could be.

When I asked him how the pregnancy was going, he looked a little taken aback. “The grief counseling session at the church,” I explained.

“Oh. Right. She’s starting to show.” My pump clicked off. I hung
up the nozzle, screwed my gas cap back on. “You have kids?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“I’m scared,” he said.

It wasn’t the kind of thing you usually confessed to someone at the gas station, but what happened at Columbine had changed all of the rules. Turned everything upside down. I mean, look at me, telling Maureen we should stay in Colorado.

“Scared of what?” I said.

“Being a dad.”

“Not that I’m an expert,” I said. “But I think most prospective parents—”

He cut me off. “From what I read, they came from good homes. Had decent parents, enough money. Paper said the Klebolds had a swimming pool, a tennis court, a basketball court.” I nodded. Watched that cabbage butterfly float above his head, then land on his shoulder. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s cool to think about having a son. Taking him fishing, taking him to his first Nuggets game. But what if it’s born with all its fingers and toes, and her and I give him a good life, and, in spite of all that, he turns out to be …”

“A monster?”

He nodded. Noticed the butterfly and shooed it away.

“I guess you just do your best,” I said. “And realize that the rest is a crap shoot. But for what it’s worth, I’ve been teaching high school for a long time. Worked with a lot of untroubled kids and a lot of troubled ones. Those two were the only two monsters I ever came across. So the odds are with you.”

He nodded pensively.