Beep!
“This is Dr. Batteson’s office calling for Joy Hanks. Please call our office at your earliest convenience. Thanks.”
Beep!
“Dominick? It’s Leo. Hey, guess what? You know that part I auditioned for? The slasher flick? I got it! They start filming middle of next month down in Jersey. That’s film, Birdseed. I’m going to be in a goddamned movie!”
As he babbled, I made a list in my head: go to the dump; get paint thinner; get Halloween candy; 11:00 A.M. meeting with Sheffer. Joy had been promising for days to get trick-or-treat stuff. She’d pulled the same thing last Halloween. Then, when the doorbell started ringing, I’d had to make a mad dash—pay double at the convenience store.
Over on the kitchen counter, Leo’s voice was asking about racquetball. “Thursday or Friday, if either of them’s good. You got that hearing thing for your brother tomorrow, right? Give me a ring.”
Beep!
“Hello? Hello? . . . Yes, this is Ruth Rood calling for . . . Hello? Mr. Birdsey? . . . Oh. I thought I heard you pick up.” She was talking in slo-mo, slurring her words. God, I’d hate to see what her liver looked like. “Henry and I were wondering why you weren’t at the house today. You said you’d be here, so we were expecting you.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Henry’s very discouraged. He says the scaffolding in his office window is starting to make him feel like a prisoner in his own house. He can’t even work, he’s so despondent. Please call. Please.”
I picked up the phone, flipped through the Rolodex. Too bad, Morticia. I’ve had one or two other things on my mind—like trying to get my brother out of goddamned actual prison, not scaffolding prison. Henry ought to check in down at Hatch if he really wanted to feel “despondent.”
She picked up on the first ring, her voice as sober as 7:00 A.M. “Oh,” she said. “Yes. I was expecting a call back from Henry’s doctor.”
I skipped the apology for the no-show the day before and told her I’d try to make it over to their place that afternoon. “They’re saying rain later today. What I’ll do is, I’ll pull the shutters off and bring ’em back after they’re scraped and painted. That way I can work no matter what the weather’s doing. Make up a little lost time. Tell Henry I should be ready to prime by the end of the week, Monday at the latest. He feeling okay?”
Pause. “Why do you ask?”
“You, uh, you just said you were waiting for the doctor to call back.” She gave me that line again about Henry being despondent. Too much booze and too much time on his hands, that was his problem. “I’ll try and give you half a day tomorrow,” I said. “Best I can do. There’s this thing I have to get to tomorrow afternoon. I’ll probably work all day Saturday at your place, though. I’ll let you go now in case his doctor’s trying to call.”
Shit. If I ever finished that job—ever kissed this painting season goodbye—then maybe there was a god after all.
What was the call for Joy? I’d forgotten already. I hit the “save” button. Hit “messages.” Jotted, “JOY: Call Dr. Batteson.” Who was Dr. Batteson? Not another one of those holistic guys, I hoped. The last one of those quacks she and her buddy Thad had gone to had soaked her for three hundred bucks’ worth of “herbal” medicines. . . . Thad. The Duchess. There was another one with too much time on his hands. Why couldn’t she have girlfriends like every other woman?
I dialed Leo’s number. Whether I had time to play racquetball or not, the idea of smashing something against four walls was starting to appeal to me. I drummed my fingers on the countertop and waited out the kids’ cutesy singing message. God, I hate that: the way some people’s machines hold you hostage.
“Leo: racquetball: yes,” I told the machine. “The hearing’s at four o’clock tomorrow. How about early Friday morning? I can have Joy reserve us a court.” I started to hang up, then stopped. “Hey, good news about your movie. I knew you when, Hollywood. Later.”
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.”
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.
When the guard brought him in, Thomas stood hesitantly at the door, taking me in in small, shy glimpses. There were dark raccoonlike circles under his eyes. Those jerky movements his head was making—the ones I’d noticed when I’d seen him out there in the recreation area—they were more pronounced up close. “Hey, buddy,” I said. Stood up. “How you doing?”
His bottom lip trembled. He looked away. “Lousy,” he said.
It was kind of ridiculous, really—they’ve got that visiting room set up like a boardroom: heavy upholstered chairs, this long table about ten feet long and five feet wide. Like we were a bunch of bankers or something. Sheffer invited Thomas to come in and take a seat. When she asked the guard if he could wait outside—give the three of us a little privacy—he shook his head. “You know better than that,” he said. He listed the visiting rules: Thomas had to stay seated on one side of the table and Sheffer and I had to sit on the other side. No hand-shaking, hugging, or physical contact of any kind. I recognized the guard; he was one of the ones who’d been on duty that first night—not Robocop. One of the others. He pulled out a chair for Thomas and told him to sit.
Thomas clomp-clomped over to the table in his laceless wingtip shoes. I recalled the sight of those damned things riding through the metal detector the night he was admitted. They’d taken away his Bible but let him keep his wingtips.
He sat down across from us, his elbows on the table, hand and stump facing me. I tried to make myself look at it, but my eyes bounced away. “So you’re lousy?” I said. “Why are you lousy, Thomas?”
Half a minute went by. “Ralph Drinkwater’s a janitor here,” he said.
I told him, yeah, I’d seen Ralph—both that first night and then again last week when he fixed a light in Sheffer’s office. “Looks pretty much the same, doesn’t he?” I said. “Hasn’t even changed that much after all these years. . . . You look good, too, Thomas.”
He gave me a belittling snicker.
“No, you do. Considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Well, you know. Your hand. This place. . . . They treating you okay here?”
The sigh he let out sounded like defeat itself. “I’m thinking of having myself declared a corporation,” he said.
“A what?”
“A corporation. It’s for my protection. I’ve been reading about it. If I incorporate myself, I’ll be safeguarded. If someone tried to sue me.”
“Why would anyone want to sue you?”
He turned to Sheffer. “Can I have a cigarette?” he asked. When she shook her head, he got miffed. “Why not? They have ashtrays in here, don’t they? Why can’t I smoke if they have ashtrays?”
“Well, for one thing,” she said, “I’ve given up smoking and I don’t want to be tempted. And for another thing—”
“They don’t let you walk the grounds here,” he said, cutting her off midsentence. Addressing me again. “The food is disgusting.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Shit on a shingle, huh?”
His hand moved to his mouth—covered it up the exact same way Ma was always covering up her cleft lip. “They served rice and beans for lunch yesterday,” he said. “And wheat bread and canned pineapple. There was a dead beetle in my rice and beans.”
Sheffer asked him if he’d told anyone about it—if he’d let them know so that they could get him another serving. He shook his head. “Well, if something like that happens again, how could you handle the problem?” she asked him. “What could you do for yourself to make the situation better?”
Ignoring her, he addressed me. “Remember when we used to take walks on the grounds on Sunday afternoons? You and Dessa and me?”
“I was thinking about that today. You two always used to stop and read the gravestones at the Indian cemetery.”
“And you used to take off your shoes and socks and wade into the river,” I said. He seemed to drift off when I said that. “Hey, speaking about the Indians,” I said. “You hear about the Wequonnocs? They won that court case. So I guess they’re going ahead with that big casino now. Over at the reservation.” I’d waited two weeks to see him—talk to him—and now all I could do was make small talk. “Going to be huge, I guess, the way they’re talking. Las Vegas II.”
Thomas closed his eyes. His lips moved slightly. “And he showed me a river of the water of life,” he said. “Clear as crystal, coming forth from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” He stopped. Scratched his neck with his stump. I looked away.
“How’s your . . . ?” I said, then stopped myself, stymied by what to call it. His wound? His sacrifice? “You adjusting okay? Getting used to using your other hand?”
He asked me if I could do him a favor.
“What?”
Could I go down to the river—the spot where he and I and Dessa used to walk? Could I get a jar and fill it up with river water and bring it back to him? Behind him, the guard shook his head no.
“Why?” I said. “What do you want it for?”
“I want to wash with it,” he said. “I think if I wash with the water from the river, it might help to heal my infection. Purify me. I’m unclean.”
“Unclean?” I said. “What do you mean?” In the silence that followed, I forced my eyes down to his self-mutilation. The scar tissue was pink and shiny, as soft-looking as a newborn’s. As soft as Angela’s skin had been. I blinked hard—felt an involuntary tightening in my groin and stomach. “It looks pretty good now,” I said.
“What?”
“Your . . . your wrist.”
“I meant my brain,” he said. “I think the water might heal my brain.”
I sat there, not saying anything. Wiped the tears out of my eyes. I probably could have counted on one hand the number of times over the years when Thomas had acknowledged his sickness like that—when he hadn’t taken the attitude that he was the reasonable one and the rest of us were crazy. They threw me: those out-of-nowhere moments when he seemed to have some inkling of his own sorry dilemma. That it wasn’t the Communists or the Iraqis or the CIA, but his own brain. Those little flickers of insight were almost worse than his Loony Toon business-as-usual. You’d see for just a second or two who was trapped inside there. Who Thomas might have been.
I looked over at the guard. “What’s the big deal?” I said. “If I brought him a jar of water?” The guy stood there, stiff-necked, his hands behind his back.
Sheffer said she could work on the request, but right now we needed to talk about the hearing.
“Has the war started yet?” Thomas asked me. “I keep trying to find out, and nobody will tell me. They’ve ordered a news blackout within a fifty-foot radius of me.”
Sheffer reminded him that they had discussed Desert Shield just that morning—that she updated him about the standoff whenever he asked her about it.
“Anyways, I doubt there’s even going to be a war,” I said. “Bush and Saddam are like two kids out in the schoolyard. Each of them’s just waiting for the other to back down. It’s all just bluff.”
Thomas scoffed. “Don’t be so naive,” he said.
Sheffer reminded us again that we needed to talk about the hearing.
“You see?” Thomas said. “They have orders to change the subject every time I mention the Persian Gulf. I’m at the center of a news blackout because of my mission.”
“Thomas?” Sheffer said. “You remember there’s a hearing tomorrow, right? That the Review Board is going to be meeting to decide—”
His exasperated sigh cut her off. “To decide if I can get out of here!” he shouted.
“That’s right,” Sheffer said. “Now, I’m going to be at the hearing. And Dominick and Dr. Patel. Maybe Dr. Chase. And you’re going to be there, too, Thomas.”
“I know that. You told me already.”
“Okay. So what we need to do is go over a few more things with you so that you’ll make a good impression with the Review Board. Okay?”
Thomas mumbled something about the Spanish Inquisition.
“What’s one of the things they’re probably going to ask you about tomorrow?” Sheffer asked. “Do you remember? The thing we were talking about yesterday and this morning?”
“My hand.”
“That’s right. And what are you going to say when they ask you about that?”
Thomas turned to me. “How’s Ray?”
“Thomas?” Sheffer said. “Stay focused. Answer my question, please. What are you going to tell the Board about why you removed your hand?”
We waited. He put his hand to his mouth and started smoking an imaginary cigarette. “Answer her question,” I said.
No comment.
“Thomas? Look, man, you want to get out of this place, don’t you? Maybe go back to Settle for a while? Back to your coffee wagon?”
“In the midst of the city street, on both sides of the river, was the tree of life,” he said. Closed his eyes. “Bearing twelve fruits, yielding its fruit according to each month, and the leaves for the healing of the nations.”
“Answer her question,” I said.
His eyes sprang open. “I am answering it!” he snapped. “I was following a Biblical dictate! I cut off my hand to heal the nations!”
I was beginning to lose it—beginning to feel that Sicilian temper Sheffer had warned me about. “Okay, listen,” I said. I pointed a thumb at Sheffer. “She and I have been working real hard to try and get you out of here, okay? Because we know how miserable you are here. . . . But if you start spouting this Bible stuff at that hearing tomorrow, instead of just answering their questions directly, you’re not going anywhere. You’re going to stay right here at Hatch. Okay? You understand? You’re just going to stay here and walk around without your shoelaces and eat beetles in your dinner or whatever.”
“Uh, Dominick?” Sheffer said.
“No, hold on. Let’s give it to him straight. You listening to me, Thomas? You’ve got to lay off that Bible bullshit and play it smart with these Review Board honchos. You understand me? If they ask you if you regret what you did in the library, you tell them, yes, you regret it, and if they say—”
“Whatever happened to Dessa, anyway?” he said.
“What? . . . You know what happened. We got a divorce. Now when they say something like—”
“Because your baby died,” he said. He turned to Sheffer. “They had a baby daughter and she died. My niece. I held her once. Dominick didn’t want me to hold her, but Dessa said I could.”
Which was bullshit. He’d never held her—had never even seen her. I looked over at Sheffer. Looked up at the ceiling, over at the goddamned guard. “Never mind about that now,” I said. “We need to talk about the hearing. Stop it.” I could feel Sheffer looking at me—pitying the father of a dead baby. “Listen . . . listen to Ms. Sheffer, now, okay? She’s going to tell you what to say and what not to say. So we can get you out of here.”
“Dessa came to see me when I was in the hospital,” he told Sheffer.
“Listen!”
“She loves me. I’m still her friend, whether she and Dominick are married or not.”
I stood up. Sat back down and strapped my hands across my chest. This was hopeless.
“Sure, she loves you,” Sheffer said. “Of course she does. She wrote a really nice letter to the Review Board about how she thinks you should be let out of here.”
“I’ll just tell them the truth,” Thomas said. “That I had to make a holy sacrifice to prevent Armageddon.” His face looked suddenly arrogant, clenched. His cheeks flushed. “It would have worked, too, if they hadn’t sequestered me like this. Silenced me. They’d probably be at the peace table right now if war wasn’t so profitable. When Jesus went into the temple . . . when Jesus went into the temple and . . .” His face contorted. He began to sob. “They torture me here!” he shouted.
The guard moved closer. Sheffer held up her hand.
“Who does?” I said. “Who tortures you? The voices?”
“You think putting insects in my food is the worst of it? Well, it isn’t! They hide snakes in my bed. Stick razor blades in my coffee. Push their elbows against my throat.”
“Who does?”
“I’m unclean, Dominick! They have keys! They rape me!”
“Okay,” I said. “All right. Calm down.”
“Sneak into my cell at night and rape me!” He pointed across the table at Sheffer. “She’s nice—she and Dr. Gandhi—but they have no idea what goes on behind their backs. At night. No one does. I’m public enemy number one because I have the power to stop this war. But they don’t want it stopped! They want me silenced!”
“Who does?”
“Use your head for once! Read Apocalypse!”
I stood up and started around that massive table toward him.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” the guard said. “Hospital requires you keep a distance of five feet from the patients while—”
Thomas stood; I took him in my arms. He fell against me, stiff as a two-by-four.
“Sir? I’m going to have to ask you—”
Sheffer got up. Stepped between the guard and the two of us.
“Maybe if I was incorporated,” Thomas sobbed. And I held him, rocked him in my arms until he was quiet. “I think if I was incorporated . . .”
I never did show up at the Roods’ that afternoon. I drove around and around and ended up at the Falls, watching the spilling water, my legs dangling over the edge of the cliff. Talking to that falling water like it was the Psychiatric Security Review Board, pulling one Rolling Rock after another out of the carton. What had Dr. Patel said? Something about the river of memory, the river of understanding. . . . What if we did beat the odds? Get him out of there at that hearing? What then? . . . Was Joy going to leave me? Was that it? Pack her bags and run off with whoever had knocked her up? It wasn’t perfect—Joy and me—it had never been perfect. But if she left me . . .
I drained another beer and dropped the bottle into the rushing river. Saw Penny Ann Drinkwater’s dead body tumble and fall. Saw Ma in her casket over at Fitzgerald’s Funeral Home. Saw Ray going up the stairs and down the hall to the spare room, his belt in hand, going after Thomas. . . .
By the time I got back to the condo, it was after eight. The lights were on. The Duchess’s car was parked out in front. Why didn’t that little faggot just pack his bags and come live with us? Why didn’t we just charge him rent, for Christ’s sake?
I unloaded the antifreeze, the paint thinner. Grabbed my notes for the hearing, my dry-cleaned suit. What was that on the front step?
A jack-o’-lantern, smiling out at nothing.
I considered hauling off and drop-kicking the fucker across the yard. Went inside instead.
“Hi, Dominick,” Joy said.
I clunked the stuff I was holding onto the kitchen counter. “Yup.”
“Hi, Dominick,” the Duchess chimed in. “Want some toasted pumpkin seeds?” He was pulling a cookie sheet from the oven. I walked past him without a word. Drop-kick him, too, if he didn’t stay the fuck away from me.
In the bedroom, I flopped facedown on the mattress. Rolled over. Started reading through my notes on the hearing. Joy came in and closed the door behind her.
“Okay, Dominick,” she said. “I know you have a lot on your mind with that hearing thingy tomorrow. But that doesn’t give you the right to walk in and be totally rude to my friends.”
“Get him out of here,” I said.
“Why should I? This is my house, too, you know? If I want to relax after work and have my friends over—”
I sent my notes flying across the bedroom, papers fluttering to the floor. Stood up. Should I tell her I’d seen her little pregnancy test? Have our little showdown right then and there? I was tempted—still buzzed enough from those beers out at the Falls to start something. But I needed to save my energy for the hearing. Get into this at a later date. I walked past her. Went into the bathroom to take a leak. When I came back in the bedroom, she hadn’t moved.
“I’m sick of it,” she said. “I’m sick of you being this big martyr all the time.”
“Look,” I said. “I know you couldn’t give a flying fuck about whether he stays down there at that place and rots. I know that. I accept that. But I got an obligation, okay? Now, I need to go over these papers—prepare for tomorrow. Then I need to eat something. Some real food, I mean, not toasted pumpkin seeds. Then I need to get some sleep. So just get your little boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever he is out of here.”
She stood there, hands on her hips, chin jutting out. “If you have so much to prepare, why have you been drinking?” she said. “You smell like a brewery. Is drinking beer part of your ‘preparation’?”
“Get him out of here,” I repeated.
“How about what I need? Do you ever think about what I need, Dominick?”
“I mean it, Joy. Get him out before I go out there and fucking throw him out.”
She stood up, glaring at me. Walked to the door and slammed it behind her. Out in the kitchen, there was mumbling between them. Then the TV went dead. Then, in this order, I heard: back door, car doors, ignition.
“Joy?” I got off the bed, opened the door. “Joy?”
The message machine was blinking. Once, twice. I hit the button.
“Mr. Birdsey? This is Ruth Rood again. I—” I reached over and fast-forwarded. Let up my finger in the middle of Sheffer’s voice.
“Okay, then. End of sermon. See you tomorrow. Get some sleep.”
I went back in the bedroom, flopped back on the bed, my face to the ceiling.
“They rape me, Dominick. They come in at night and rape me!”
“This is Dr. Batteson’s office calling for Joy Hanks.”
I let the tears drip down the sides of my face. Let my sobbing shake the bed.
Somewhere during the night, I dreamt that Dessa was doing me, slipping my cock in and out of her mouth. She hadn’t left me, then? We were still together? Then, the sweet rush of release. I woke up, coming.
Saw Joy’s head move away. Saw Joy reach up and tuck her bangs behind her ear.
I lay there, catching my breath, letting the spasms die away.
Joy pulled tissues from the box on her nightstand. Started cleaning us up.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she whispered back. “Did that feel nice? I wanted to make you feel nice.”
I reached over for her, but she took my hand and led it away from her. Parked it back on the mattress. Sometimes, with Joy, sex wasn’t so much something we shared together, but a service she performed. She turned on the table lamp. Traced and retraced the line of my eyebrow with her finger.
“I saw him this afternoon,” I said.
“Saw who?”
“My brother.”
“You did? So the security thing came through? . . . How is he?”
Same as he always is, I told her. Sick. Crazy.
“Dominick?” she said. “I have something to tell you. Something big. I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure, and now I am sure. . . . God, the last thing I wanted tonight was for us to get into a fight.”
I let time go by—half a minute or more. She was leaving me, right? She was leaving me for the baby’s father. What was the hum job for? Going-away present? Something to remember her by?
“What is it?” I said.
“I’m pregnant.” She took my hand. “We made a baby, Dominick. You and me.”
She talked about her symptoms, the home pregnancy test, what they’d told her at the doctor’s. She talked and talked. At first, she didn’t think she wanted it, she said, but now she did. She said she thought we’d make good parents. That maybe we could start looking at houses. . . .
I reached over and turned off the light. In those few seconds of absolute darkness—before my eyes adjusted—it felt like we were in some place more open and wide than our bedroom. Like we were falling together, somewhere in space.