“You hear me?”
“What?”
“I said, what do you need a new cocktail dress for?”
“I don’t need a new cocktail dress,” she said. “Why would I need a new cocktail dress when we never go anywhere?”
I let that one fly by. Knew better than to strike at the remark. We were both fly-fishing this morning. She went over to the closet. Started putting on her warm-up suit, available at the Hardbodies boutique, no doubt.
“So why’d you order it then?”
She wouldn’t look at me. We find the defendant guilty of something. Of what?
“I just wanted to see how it looked on me. Okay, Dominick? You can do that, you know. Order something in your size. Take it home and try it on, and then bring it back. It’s not against the law.”
“I’m not saying it is. But isn’t it kind of a waste of everyone’s time if you know you’re not going to buy it anyway?”
She answered me by not answering. By walking into the kitchen.
It hurt to put on underwear. Jeans? Forget it. I found those drawstring pants she’d gotten me a while back and put them on—those jazzy things with the skulls and crossbones all over them. I’d never really worn those stupid things. Not out, anyway. At least they were nice and loose. . . . I could probably have that guard’s job if I wanted to pursue it. If I wanted to check in with a doctor and a lawyer. Which I didn’t have either the time or the energy for—not with everything else that was going on. Fuck it.
Joy was painting her toenails at the kitchen table. I hate when she does that: puts her feet up right where we eat. It wouldn’t occur to her in a hundred years to grab a sponge afterwards.
“Nice pants,” she said. Smart-mouthed it.
“Well, you got them for me. Didn’t you?”
“Yeah, back when they were in style.”
I put some coffee on. I’d given up caffeine the year before—felt better, slept better. Then I’d started up again—back in the summertime, when all that Kuwait stuff had started. It was all Thomas would talk about: those Biblical prophesies that were going to come true, all that Armageddon crap. That’s a pattern with Thomas when he’s starting to spiral down—he latches on to one thing and he won’t let go. Won’t give it a rest. Perseveration, the doctors call it. . . . A while back it was abortion. Then it was the hostages and the Ayatollah. Now it’s the Persian Gulf. You want to scream at him, “Just shut up!” But he won’t shut up. He can’t. He perseverates. . . .
Joy’s and the Duchess’s cream drink glasses were still in the sink from the night before. She does that all the time—leaves things soaking in the sink until I break down and wash them. I’ll promise myself I’m not going to do it this time and then I’ll do it. It’s just easier than letting it torture me. The broiler pan’s the worst. She’d let that broiler pan sit and soak till Judgment Day.
I leaned against the counter and read the headlines while I waited for the coffee. I didn’t know if Joy was speaking to me or not. Didn’t pursue it, either. Who gave a fuck? OIL PRICES CLOSE AT RECORD HIGH AS U.S.-IRAQ SHOWDOWN LOOMS. . . . WEQUONNOC TRIBE GRANTED FEDERAL RECOGNITION. . . . DAVID SOUTER WINS SENATE APPROVAL.
“Oh, great,” I said aloud. “Just what this country needs: Barney Fife sitting on the Supreme Court.”
“Who?” Joy says.
“Barney Fife. Don Knotts.”
“Oh,” she said. “You mean Mr. Furley?”
“Mr. Furley?”
“On Three’s Company. Jack’s landlord. After the Ropers left.” I stood there, looking at her. Looked back at the newspaper. Joy and me: we were like two people trying to communicate from opposite rims of the Grand Canyon.
The coffeemaker gurgled its grand finale. I went over and poured myself a cup. Joy doesn’t usually read the paper because she says it’s too depressing. She doesn’t drink coffee, either. She has the exact same thing for breakfast every morning: herb tea, vitamins, and a frosted strawberry Pop Tart. Go figure.
IVANA TRUMP FILES FOR DIVORCE. . . . IS COMMUNISM FAILING? . . . REDS CAN’T COMBAT BREAM’S TWO-RUN HOMER. Oh, man, I would love to see Pittsburgh make it to the Series. Love to see it come down to the Pirates versus the Sox—Doug Drabek going against Clemens. Leo had a connection in the box office up at Fenway. Maybe if Boston made it back to the Series, we could go up there and scream our freakin’ heads off the way we used to. . . .
I caught myself: Thomas was locked up in a maximum-security psych hospital and here I was, worrying about baseball playoffs. Thinking about the freakin’ Red Sox instead of my own goddamned brother.
“So what does Ray say?” Joy asked.
“About what?”
She capped the nail polish bottle. Fanned her toes with a grocery store circular. “About him being transferred to Hatch.”
Him: that was what she always called my brother. Not Thomas. Him. In the five days he was lying over there at Shanley Memorial after he cut off his hand, she didn’t bother to go see him once. It had never even come up as a possibility. Even Ray had done better than that. Even Ray had at least made it as far as the visitors’ lounge. “He doesn’t say anything about it,” I said. “Because I haven’t told him yet.”
“Well, call him, Dominick,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be all on your shoulders all the time. He’s his father.”
“He’s his stepfather,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t share some of the burden. You don’t have to be the big hero all the time. You take on too much.”
“The big hero”: that was a joke. When was the last time some asshole guard kneed Superman in the gonads? “I’m not trying to be the big hero,” I said. “It’s just that—it’s just . . . hey, forget it, okay? It’s a little too complicated for 6:00 A.M.”
“No, tell me,” she said. “Talk about it, Dominick. Complicated how?” She was just sitting there, looking at me. Actually listening for a change.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve always been the one who had to look out for him. Not that I ever signed up for the job, believe me. . . . The year I went away to college? That was supposed to be my big chance. My big run for freedom. . . . Except it didn’t exactly work out that way.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, my mother . . .”
I followed Joy’s eyes down to my hands. Realized I’d been sitting there, shredding the package her Pop Tart had come in. That I’d made a little pile of foil strips without even noticing. “Shit,” I said, laughing. “Get help from Ray? Ray was one of the guys I had to keep him safe from.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. All that’s ancient history. . . . Ray could be brutal with Thomas sometimes. I mean, he took aim at me plenty of times, too, but I never got blasted as bad as Thomas did.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know why not. Because I made all-stars in Little League and Thomas quit in the middle of the season? Because I used to hang around and watch Ray change the oil in his car? I could never figure out why he used to go gunning for him. He just did.”
“Maybe that’s why Thomas got so messed up,” she said.
“Because of Ray? Uh-uh. It’s not that simple. I used to think that, too, though: that all the shit he took from Ray was what made him crack up. I used to like thinking it, actually: making Ray the big villain, wishing he was dead. But it wasn’t that simple. I mean, hey, it’s not like Ray ever helped the situation much. But he didn’t cause Thomas’s illness. His brain caused it. It’s biological. Chemical. Remember?”
“Did he used to hit him?” she asked.
“Hit Thomas? Yeah, sometimes. We both got batted around from time to time. My mother, too. Not that much. Ray was more of a screamer than a hitter. Telling us what human garbage we were. Telling Ma how she’d still be hanging out there in the wind with her two little bastards if he hadn’t come along and married her. This one time . . . this one time, I remember . . . see, Thomas would get nervous and chew on things? Pencils, napkins,
the sleeves on his shirts. Half the time, he wouldn’t even realize he was doing it. And Ray . . . and Ray . . . it used to drive him apeshit. He turned it into this huge deal—used to practically stalk the poor kid, waiting for him to put something else in his mouth. So one night, we’re eating supper and . . . and Thomas forgets. Starts chewing on his shirt. Ray goes down in the cellar and he comes back up with a roll of duct tape and he duct-tapes Thomas’s hands. Covers up his fingers so that he can’t chew on them. He had to wear the tape for, I don’t know, a couple of days, at least. . . . It’s funny, the things you remember: I can still see Thomas with his head down in his plate, eating his meals like a fucking dog. Can still hear his whimpering, all goddamned day long.”
Joy reached over. Covered my hand with hers. “That’s so awful,” she said.
“This other time? Ray punished us both by pouring rice out of the box and making us kneel on it. On the kitchen floor. I can’t even remember what the ‘crime’ was. Just the punishment. . . . It seemed silly, you know? Kneeling on rice. Big deal. But after about five minutes, it wasn’t so funny anymore. It hurt. I got to get up after about fifteen minutes because I hadn’t cried, but Ray made Thomas stay down there on his knees because he was crying. Bawling his head off. That was the biggest sin you could commit, as far as Ray was concerned. Letting the enemy see you cry.”
“And your mother used to just let him get away with it?”
“Ma? Ma was more scared of Ray than we were. More scared than I was, anyway. I was the only one of the three of us that would stand up to him. Stick my neck out. I guess, in a way, that was what saved me from the worst of it.”
It felt strange, actually: having Joy’s full attention like that. Letting my guard down. It was like going over to that emergency room after all and pulling down my underwear and saying, “Here. Look. Here’s what that Nazi guard down there did to me. Take a look.” . . . Robocop, Ray: I was forty years old and still watching out for bullies.
I walked over to the window, looked out. There’d been a frost, first of the season. All the leaves were changing. “It’s just not worth dredging up, Joy,” I said. “It’s all ancient history. . . . I better shut up or you’re going to be late.”
She got up and came up behind me. Put her arms around me and leaned her forehead against my shoulder. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey, what?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“That Ray was so mean. That you have to go through all this with your brother.”
I gave a little snort. “Don’t feel sorry for me. Thomas is the one who’s locked up down there. Not me.”
She kept holding me. Held on tighter, as a matter of fact. Held on for over a minute.
After she left, I poured myself more coffee. Leafed through the rest of the paper. Maybe I’d give up caffeine again, once this stuff with Thomas was settled. Once I had pain-in-the-ass Rood’s house finished. Start jogging again, maybe. Take Joy on a trip. We could make it work, the two of us, if only we . . . if only . . .
I went back to the window. Watched all those dying leaves flapping outside in the wind. Came up with all kinds of arguments to give her—all kinds of reasons why I had to keep running interference for Thomas.
I know you need to be taken care of, Joy, but guys kill each other in places like Hatch. He never could defend himself. It’d be like throwing a rabbit to the wolves.
It’s different when you’re a twin, Joy. It’s complicated.
I promised Ma.
8
1968–69
When my brother and I graduated from Three Rivers’ John F. Kennedy High School in June of 1968, we received a joint present from our mother. She had Scotch-taped a three-quarter-inch aluminum key to the inside of each of our graduation cards and written identical inscriptions. “Congratulations! Love, Ma and Ray. Proceed to the front hall closet.”
Inside the closet, Thomas and I found a portable Royal typewriter in a dark blue carrying case, lockable and unlockable with either of our duplicate keys. We brought the typewriter into the living room, put it on the coffee table, and unlocked the case. Thomas, who had taken a typing class at JFK, rolled a piece of paper into the machine and tried a test sentence: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. I typed one, too: Thomas Birdsey is an asshole. Ma said, all right, all right, that was enough of that kind of stuff. She gave us each a kiss.
Ma hadn’t bought the typewriter; she’d redeemed it. For years, she had been saving S&H green stamps in hopes of cashing them in for a chiming grandfather clock, handcrafted in Germany and obtainable for 275 books. Ma had wanted that grandfather clock so badly that she visited it from time to time at the redemption store on Bath Avenue, just to hear its tone and stroke the polished wood. She was more than halfway to her goal—had accumulated nearly 150 books of green stamps—when she revised her plan and got us the typewriter instead. Our success, she told us, was more important than some silly clock.
By “our success,” I think Ma meant our safety. The year before, a neighbor of ours, Billy Covington, had been killed in Vietnam—shot down during a bombing raid near Haiphong. As a kid, Billy had walked to our house after school because his father had left the family and his mother worked downtown. Four years older than Thomas and me, he was unbeatable at tag and baseball and his favorite game, Superman. He owned Superman pajamas, I remember, and would pack them in his school bag and change into them before we played, completing his costume with one of our bath towels, which Ma would safety-pin around his neck. Billy would begin each episode of our play with an imitation of the TV show opening: “Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive!” But if Billy seemed invincible as the Man of Steel, he was pitiable afterwards. “Poor Billy,” Ma would sometimes sigh as we watched him walk down our front steps, hand in hand with Mrs. Covington. “He doesn’t have a nice daddy like you boys do. His father left Billy and his mother high and dry.”
Years later, Billy Covington was our paperboy—a lanky near-man of fourteen or fifteen whose voice alternated between baritone and donkey’s bray and who, from the street, could land a folded Daily Record at the base of our cement flowerpot with deadly accuracy. By the time Thomas and I entered high school ourselves, Billy had graduated and enlisted in the Air Force and become irrelevant. At his military funeral, I thought nothing about the meaning of Billy Covington’s life and death or the waste of the Vietnam War or even the implications for my brother and me. I focused, instead, on Billy’s fiancée, whose breasts shook tantalizingly as she sobbed, and on his black GTO (386 cubes, 415 horses). Maybe his mother would want to sell his “goat” dirt cheap so she could forget about him and get on with her life, I remember calculating in the very presence of Billy’s flag-draped silver casket.
Although Billy Covington’s death failed to move me at age sixteen, it clobbered my mother. “Goddamn this war,” she said in the car on the way back from the memorial service. “Goddamn this war to hell.” In the backseat, Thomas and I looked at each other, jolted. We had never before heard Ma use God’s name in vain. More shocking, still, was the fact that she’d said it right in front of Ray, who had fought in both World War II and Korea and thought all antiwar protesters should be put against the wall and shot. Ma moped for days afterward. She found an old snapshot of Billy and bought a frame and put the picture on her chest of drawers along with the studio portraits of Thomas and me and her framed photos of her father and Ray. She said novenas on behalf of Billy’s departed soul. Her eyes teared over whenever she saw Mrs. Covington walking zombielike past our house. I remember feeling slightly annoyed by what I perceived as Ma’s mournful overreaction. It was only years later—well after the trouble with Thomas had begun—that I came to understand my mother’s strong reaction to Billy Covington’s death: four years our senior, Billy had been, all his life, a sort of living “preview of coming attractions” for her two boys. If Superman could be shot down from the sky, then so could hi
s younger sidekicks. Vietnam could kill us. College would keep us safe.
Ray hadn’t really signed our graduation cards with love and congratulations. Our stepfather had, in fact, opposed the idea of college educations for Thomas and me. For one thing, he said, he and Ma couldn’t afford twin tuition bills. He should know, not her. He was the one who paid the bills and managed their savings. She had no idea what they could or couldn’t afford. For another thing, from what he read and heard down at the shipyard, half the teachers at those colleges were Communists. And half the kids were on drugs. If he ever caught either of us messing with that kind of junk, he’d knock us into the day after tomorrow. He couldn’t for the life of him see why two able-bodied young men out of high school couldn’t work for a living. Or enter the Navy the way he had done. There were worse things in life than a military career. It was the draftees they were sending to Vietnam; enlisted men had choices. Or, if we didn’t want that, maybe he could get us in down at Electric Boat as apprentice pipe fitters or electricians or welders. Some of those jobs carried deferments. Building submarines might not be a fancy college-boy job, but it “backed the attack.” It put meat and potatoes on the table, didn’t it?
“But that’s not the point, Ray,” my mother said one night at supper.
“What do you mean it’s not the point?” His fist banged against the tabletop hard enough to make the dishes jump. “I’ll tell you what the point is. The point is, Tweedledum and Tweedledee here have been living high off the hog all their lives. The two of them know nothing but take, take, take, and I’m getting goddamned fed up with it.” He got up and slammed out of the house. When he came back, he was speaking single syllables to Thomas and me but nothing at all to Ma. He gave her the silent treatment for days.
After that, there were arguments and tears behind my mother and Ray’s bedroom door. Ma threatened to go to work if she had to in order to get us the money for school, and when Ray told her no one would hire her, she called his bluff and filled out an application for a maid’s job down at Howard Johnson’s. She was petrified at the thought of working outside the home—afraid of taking orders from a boss and making mistakes, scared that she might have to make small talk with strangers who would look at her funny because of her cleft lip. Howard Johnson’s called her for an interview and offered her the job that same afternoon. She was to start the following Monday.