The Hour I First Believed. Wally Lamb
Quirk, the kid who sucked at sports and walked around by himself during recess. The kid whose father was a drunk.
“Sure you can. I know you can.” And so I’d strained. Grunted. And the nut had given way.
POST-PROMS ARE BRIBES, REALLY: PARENTS and teachers induce their kids to party the night away at the school gym so that they won’t drink and drive. Kill themselves, their friends, their futures. The enticements that night included raffles, a deejay, a hypnotist, and nonstop food: burgers, pizzas, six-foot subs. I was put to work as a roving patroller in search of alcohol and, later, as an ice cream scooper at the make-your-own-sundae station.
They were together in the sundae line, I remember. I served them both. “One scoop? Two scoops?” Dylan had requested three, but Eric wanted just one, vanilla. I asked him if he thought they’d have a sundae line like this at boot camp. He shook his head. Half-smiled.
“When do you leave?” I said.
“July one.” In another sixty hours, he’d be lying dead in the midst of the chaos, half of his head blown away. And he knew it, too. It was in the videotape they left to be discovered. Their suicides were part of the plan.
There was one other thing that night. It happened during one of the raffles. The winner got free passes to Bandimere Speedway or Rock’n’Bowl or some such, and Dylan’s number got called. I was standing on the periphery. Saw the whole thing. Instead of saying, “That’s me,” or just walking up to get his prize, he showed Eric his ticket and the two of them high-fived. “Sieg Heil!” they shouted. A few of the other kids laughed; most just looked. “Assholes,” someone near me muttered. I considered taking the two of them aside, saying something about the inappropriateness of it. But it was late at night, late in the school year. I was a few hours away from my flight. I let it go.
God, that’s always the thing you have to decide with high school kids: what to make an issue of, what to let go. In the aftermath, in the middle of all those sleepless nights, I did plenty of soul-searching about that. We all did, I guess. Had it been preventable? Could those kids have been spared?…
I left the school a little after four a.m. Got my overnight bag out of the trunk and threw it onto the passenger seat next to me. Drove northeast toward a lightening sky. My eyes burned; my stomach felt like I’d swallowed fishhooks. As usual, Maureen had been right. I should have skipped the chaperoning detail and grabbed some sleep.
So why hadn’t I?
Punishment, maybe? Self-flagellation?
For what?
For having defaulted on her. For having sent Maureen to Hennie’s funeral the year before instead of going myself. They’d been common-law spouses for forty-something years, those two. She was depressed. She called me every Sunday night. It was my guilt that was flying me home…. And once I got there, then what? How bad off was this stroke going to leave her? How much of my summer was going to get gobbled up by Lolly’s “altered life”?
At Denver International, I opted for the garage instead of the Pike’s Peak shuttle lot, even though I’d pay through the nose for the convenience. The machine spat me a ticket. The arm lifted. At this hour, there were plenty of empty spaces.
I passed from the jaundiced lighting of the parking garage to the halogen glare of the walkway. Passed two porters, slumped on plastic chairs. Both glanced at my carry-on luggage, then blinked me away, as disinterested as sunning lizards. And right inside the terminal, who do I see but Velvet Hoon. Hard to miss a girl in a blue crew cut.
She was wearing a gray uniform, part of a cleaning crew. A hippie-looking guy with a gray beard was buffing the floor. A scrawny black woman was running a vacuum. Velvet had a squirt bottle and a cleaning cloth and was wiping down plastic chairs. I thought about the kids I’d just left at the post-prom party—their fun and games, their Gummy Bear sundaes and college plans. But, hey, Velvet was her own worst enemy. I walked a little faster, relieved that she didn’t see me. Better for both of us. I had to talk to Maureen again about not getting sucked into the black hole of Velvet’s needs. She’d just get used and abused. You can’t undo that kind of damage. You can’t.
No line at my airline counter. Just two attendants keeping each other company. They were both good-looking women. The buxom redhead was in her forties, the little blonde maybe two or three years out of high school. A phrase bubbled up from my college days, something Rocco Buzzi and I used to say about pretty girls: I wouldn’t throw her out of bed. Big Red took the lead.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Morning. I have an e-ticket. Last name’s Quirk.” Red nodded. Her fingers whizzed across her keyboard.
“Caelum Quirk?”
“Yes.”
“And your final destination today is Hartford-Springfield?”
“That’s right.”
The blonde squinted at the screen. “I never heard the name Caelum before,” she said. “Is it from the Bible?”
I shook my head. “Old family name.”
“Well, at least you weren’t named after some stupid song on the radio.”
I squinted to read her name tag: Layla. My eyes bounced over to Big Red’s, too: Vivian. That’s the tricky part about women and name tags: to read them is to check out the frontal real estate. Which I was doing when Vivian caught me. “Well,” I told Layla. “You could do worse than being named after a Clapton song.”
“Picture ID, sir?” Viv said.
I nodded. Fumbled for my wallet. Handed her my driver’s license. Layla asked me if I was traveling for business or pleasure.
“Neither,” I said. “Sick relative.” Freshman year, Rocco and I had had four classifications for the girls we scoped out from afar in the BU cafeteria: wouldn’t screw her blindfolded; would screw her blindfolded; wouldn’t throw her out of bed; and, for girls of the highest order, would screw her grandmother to screw her. Rocco and I were both virgins back then, of course—huddled together, eating our turkey à la king and room-temperature Jell-O and rating girls we were too chicken-shit to approach.
“My son’s sick, too,” Layla said. “Four ear infections in one year. Wanna see his picture?”
Viv’s nostrils flared. “I think what Mr. Quirk wants is to get to his gate,” she said. She gave me a professional smile. “This is her first day on the job.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “And actually, I’d like to see her son’s picture.”
Viv’s smile became a grimace. Layla produced her purse. Her son dangled from her key ring, in a little plastic frame. Nappy hair, coffee skin.
“He’s cute,” I said. “How old?”
Three, she said. His name was Shabbaz. Vivian asked if I was checking any bags with them today.
“Uh, no. I just have the one carry-on.”
“And has anyone asked you to hold anything for them since you entered airport property, sir?”
Only the heroin smuggler, Viv. “Uh, no. Nope.”
“And has the bag you’re carrying on board been in your possession at all times since you packed it?”
Pretty much, except when I left it with the Unabomber. “Uh-huh.”
She looked up, concerned. “What?”
Had I just said Unabomber? “Yes. Yes, it has.”
She nodded. “Aisle seat? Window seat?”
“Window, I guess. Better for sleeping.”
“Try sleeping when you’re a single mom,” Layla said. “Last night—”
“Well, then,” Viv interrupted. “You’re all set. Concourse B, gate thirty-six.” She