The Hour I First Believed. Wally Lamb
back to Colorado didn’t get her what she wanted, father-wise. She went over to their house three or four times at the beginning. She’d get all dressed up, buy them gifts. I chose not to go with her. The thing was, I didn’t trust myself. Figured seeing Daddy Dearest might trigger something, and I’d go off on the guy. Coldcock him or something. It’s not like I didn’t have a history. Maureen would always come back from those visits saying she’d had a good time, or that their house was beautiful, or that their granddaughter, Amber, was so adorable. She’d be down, though—in a slump for the next few days. Sometimes, I’d eavesdrop when she called them. Maureen would small-talk with Evelyn for a while and then ask to speak to her father. He’d oblige her—come to the phone maybe half the time. And when he did, it made me sad to hear Mo doing most of the talking. He never called her. Neither did Evelyn. Or Cheryl, the half-sister. Somewhere during our second year out there, Maureen stopped calling, too. It was hard for her, as it had been hard for me. I knew a thing or two about abdicating fathers.
BUT ANYWAY, THAT FRIDAY NIGHT? In our Colorado living room? Homicide ended on its usual note of moral ambiguity, Van Morrison’s “Slim Slow Slider” faded to silence, and the news came on. There was relative calm in the world that night. Nothing you’d stay glued to your recliner over. No sign of the trouble those two rage-filled little motherfuckers were planning. Channel Nine had a convenience-store stickup in Lakewood, an environmental protest in Fort Collins. There was the usual numbing news from Kosovo. Get up, I kept telling myself. Go to her. Instead, I’d stuck around for the Sox and Celtics scores, checked in with the Weather Channel for the national temperatures. We’d been out there for four years by then, and I was still keeping tabs on Connecticut weather.
Still, I meant to go up to her. I was going to. But the news led into Letterman, and since James Brown was the musical guest, I decided to open a beer and catch that soulful old reprobate, too. Should I add the Godfather of Soul to my masterworks list, I wondered. And if so, who should I bump?…
My eyes cracked open some time after three. I looked around until I recognized the room. Got up, got the dogs taken care of and the downstairs locked up. Went up there.
Our bedroom was lit by dying candlelight and aromatic with ginger. Wax had dribbled down the front of the bureau and cooled. Carapaced the carpet. Maureen was scowling in her sleep. She’d drunk both of the wines.
I dropped my clothes beside our bed and got in next to her. She rolled onto her side, away. Moondance, I thought. No, Astral Weeks. And in the midst of my indecision, I suddenly saw the long view of my inconsequential life: Mouseketeer, farm kid, failed husband, mediocre teacher. Forty-fucking-eight years old, and what had I accomplished? What had I come to know?
IN THE AFTERMATH, I’D LEARN that he lied to me on two counts that afternoon at Blackjack Pizza. First, he hadn’t been as anti-prom as he let on; he’d asked a couple of girls and been refused. As was his habit when one of his peers displeased or slighted him, he’d gone home, grabbed a marking pen, and X-ed out their faces in his yearbook. Second, he was not headed for the Marines. The Rocky Mountain News would report that the antidepressant he was taking for obsessive-compulsive disorder had disqualified him. The recruiter had dropped by his home and delivered the news on Thursday, the night before I’d bought that pizza. His buddy had made plans to go to the University of Arizona, though; he and his dad had driven there a few weeks earlier and chosen his dorm room. Had that been part of the deceit? Had he been playing both fantasy baseball and fantasy future? Playing his parents along with everyone else? His computer offered no clues; they confiscated it within the first few hours, but he’d erased the hard drive the night before.
Over and over, for years now, I have returned to that Friday night: when I can’t sleep, when I can, when the steel door slides open and I walk toward her, Maureen looking sad-eyed and straggly-haired, in her maroon T-shirt and pocketless jeans. Mo’s one of the victims you’ve never read about in the Columbine coverage, or seen interviewed on the Today show or Good Morning America. One of the collaterally damaged.
I just wish to Christ I’d gotten up the stairs that night. Made love to her. Held her in my arms and made her feel safe. Because time was almost up. They’d bought their guns, taped their farewell videos, finalized their plans. They’d worked their last shift together at Blackjack—had made and sold me that pizza that, piece by piece, Mo and I had lifted out of the box and eaten. Chaos was coming, and it would drive us both so deeply into the maze that we’d wander among the corpses, lost to each other for years. Yet there Maureen was on that long-ago night, up in our bed, waiting for me.
Get up those stairs! I want to scream to my clueless April-seventeenth-of-nineteen-ninety-nine self. Hold her! Make her feel safe! Because time was running out. Their first shots were eighty hours away.
Chapter Two
ON SATURDAY MORNING, I AWOKE to the sound of whimpering. Eyes closed, I groped. Felt, on my left, Maureen’s hipbone. On my right, fur. I’d swum up from sleep on my back, the sheet knotted around my ankles, a hard-on tent-poling the front of my boxers. I cracked open my eyes and looked into the eyes of the perp. The whimperer: Sophie. Her muzzle rested against the mattress. Her face was a foot from mine. I blinked; she blinked. I sighed; she sighed. The plea in her eyes was readable: Get up. Feed me. Love me the most.
Sophie was the needier of our two mutts—mother and son golden retrievers we’d brought with us from Connecticut. Soph had gotten neurotic as she aged—whiny, fixated on food, and, out of nowhere, possessive of me. I’d grab Maureen by the kitchen sink or in the bathroom, give her a smooch, and Sophie would appear at our feet, head-butting her away. It was funny but creepy, too, like living with a canine version of what’s-her-name in Fatal Attraction. Not Meryl Streep. The other one. Cruella De Vil.
Maureen’s arm swung back. “Mmph,” she said. Her hand found me, her fingertips skidding across my throat. I rolled toward her and hitched my chin over her shoulder. Placed my stiffness against her. “Hey, toots,” I whispered.
“Bad breath,” she mumbled back, stuffing her pillow between us. Sophie’s whimper became a guttural grunt. Yoo hoo. Remember me?
The clock radio said 7:06. The wineglasses on the wicker tray by the window said I’d failed Maureen the night before. Sophie’s wet nose poked my wrist. “Yeah, yeah, wait a minute,” I muttered. Swung my feet to the floor and padded toward the bathroom, Sophie following. Chet groaned and stretched, wagged his tail, and joined the pissing party. You almost never saw that dog without a grin on his face.
Mid-leak, Maureen came in, a wineglass stem in each fist. She dumped the dregs with so much determination that wine spattered on the wall.
“Hey,” I said. “What do you say I give the dogs a quick run, then we go someplace for breakfast?”
She rinsed the glasses, kept me waiting. “Can’t,” she finally said.
“You can’t, or you’d rather not eat eggs with a shithead like me?”
No forgiving smile. No look in my direction. She grabbed a washcloth, wiped the glasses so hard they squeaked. “I’m taking Velvet to breakfast.”
I stood there, nodding. Touché.
In that system of signals Mo and I had worked out with Dr. Patel, there was no shorthand for “I’m sorry.” You were obliged to speak those two words. But the mention of Maureen’s breakfast buddy short-circuited any contrition I’d been generating.
Mo’s field was gerontology, but after we moved out West and she took the school nurse’s job, she found she enjoyed working with the high school kids. She liked the needy ones, particularly. “Just give them an aspirin and send them back to class,” I kept advising her. Instead, she’d help them with their math, counsel them on their love lives, give them rides and lunch money. I’d warned Mo to observe boundaries with Velvet, especially. Velvet Hoon was like a Cape Cod undertow: if you weren’t careful, she’d pull you in deeper than you meant to go. I spoke from experience.
I pulled on my sweats, laced up my running shoes. If she wanted to spend her weekend morning with a dysfunctional sixteen-year-old instead of