I Know This Much Is True

  Leo went first. I followed, half-walking and half-running down the steep path. Drinkwater brought up the rear. Down by the water’s edge, Leo and I shucked off our clothes and eased into the cedar-tinted water. Ralph yanked off his boots and socks, threw his wallet onto the pile. Then he waded in, still wearing his tank top and jeans. I wondered why—what all the modesty was about—but I didn’t say anything. Didn’t kid him about it. If I didn’t really understand the whys of Ralph’s boundaries, I at least had a sense of what they were. Unlike Leo.

  “Hey, you guys! Look!” Leo called over the roar of the water. He was pointing to the middle of the river. “Holy shit! Is this what I think it is?”

  Ralph and I stood watching as he dived underwater, swam to the spot where he’d been pointing, and resurfaced. “Hey! I don’t believe it! It is!”

  “What?” I yelled. Ralph and I waited, riveted.

  Instead of answering, Leo dived again. Surfaced. “Yup. Just like I thought. Holy Christ!”

  “What?” I said. “What the fuck you talking about?”

  “It’s that Mary Jo Kopechne broad. She must have floated downstream from Massachusetts. Psyche!” He broke into obnoxious guffawing that ricocheted into the treetops. “Man, I got you two bad!”

  I shot a nervous glance over toward Ralph. “Shut up, Leo,” I called to him.

  “What’s the matter with you, Birdsey?” he laughed. “You related to the Kennedys or something?”

  Then Ralph went under. I waited. He resurfaced fifty feet or so up the river. Climbed the bank and disappeared back into the woods.

  I swam upriver myself, wanting to distance myself from Leo. I cooled off for five or ten minutes. When I got back to the Falls, Leo called my name. He was pointing straight up.

  Ralph had climbed back up the path, but instead of crawling through the opening in the fence, he was scaling the remaining ten or twelve feet of cliff wall. We watched him in silence until he was out on the unprotected side of the ledge. From there, he started climbing the mammoth oak tree that grew right at the cliff’s edge. He rose way the hell up into the branches and leaves, until he was so high up there that it made me nauseous to even look. Finally he climbed out onto a branch and just sat there, his legs dangling over the sides. He was staring down into the falling water, smirking that smirk. What struck me most was the loneliness of his position: the black Indian, the nonseasonal worker. The untwinned twin. There was something about Ralph that filled me up with sadness. Some pain that was readable just in the way he sat up there on that tree limb. But not completely readable. Something unreadable, too.

  “Hey, Drinkwater,” Leo shouted up. “Let’s see a dive! Come on, you chicken-shit bastard. Jump!”

  I saw Penny Ann’s body falling over the edge and down. “Shut up!” I yelled and whacked Leo one across the mouth.

  “Hey! What’d you fucking do that for?”

  “To shut you up, asshole.” I grabbed his wrist as his fist came flying at me in retaliation. The two of us tussled, went under. I’d split his lip. Bloodied up his teeth. I got him in a hold from behind. “His sister died out here, you idiot,” I hissed into his ear. “The guy threw her body over—”

  “Whose sister? What the fuck you talking about?”

  We both stopped. Looked up. Ralph was standing on the tree limb now. Rocking the branch. For a few seconds, I thought we were witnessing his suicide. Then he turned back toward the trunk, climbed limb by limb back down the tree. Got to the ground, the ledge. Squatting, he went through the fence hole and back into the woods. I swam, as far away from Leo as I could get. If I hadn’t, I would have pummeled him. Uncapped his capped teeth. Rearranged his entire fucking face.

  By the time Leo and I got dressed, got back to the truck and roused Dell out of his stupor, Drinkwater still hadn’t shown. “Screw the bastard,” Dell said. “It’s quitting time. I ain’t waiting around forever.” He threw the truck in gear. Drove us out of the graveyard.

  During the ride back to the barn, neither Leo nor I spoke. “Hey, Dominick, I’m sorry already!” he finally blurted out as the truck pulled back into the Public Works yard. “My mother and I didn’t even move here until 1963, okay? So shoot me, already. I didn’t even know the guy had a sister!”

  That same night, Thomas began to lecture me on the evils of smoking marijuana. We were lying in the dark, in our bedroom, neither of us able to sleep. Nighttime hadn’t done dick to cool things down, take away a little of the humidity. The air just hung there, pressing against me.

  I’d planned that night to ride up to Dessa’s house, but she’d called at the last minute and said she had to go to work—cover for another waitress. “If you’d stop being so stubborn and just quit that stupid job, then things like this wouldn’t happen,” I’d snapped at her. She’d given it right back to me. Why didn’t I quit my stupid job? Make myself available when it was convenient for her?

  “Because I’m not Daddy’s little girl, that’s why. Because if I want to go back to school next month instead of going off to Vietnam, I’ve got to bust my ass five days a week to pay for it. Okay, princess?”

  She’d hung up in my ear. Not answered when I called her back. Between what had happened out at the Falls that day with Ralph and Leo and the argument I’d had with Dessa, I was in no mood to take any shit from Thomas.

  “It’s just not right, Dominick,” he argued from the bottom bunk. “You guys are getting paid to work, not to smoke that stuff.”

  “The town gets more of their money’s worth out of us working stoned than it does out of you working straight,” I said. “Much more.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is, that stuff turns you into a whole different person. Plus, you’re breaking the law. What if Dell finds out what you guys are up to?”

  I hung my head down over the top bunk and laughed in his face. “What if Dell finds out? Dell, who gets so cocked on the job that he has to sleep it off? He’s going to blow the whistle on us?”

  “Well, what if Lou Clukey gets wind of what’s going on? I hate to tell you, Dominick, but you guys reek after you smoke that stuff. And your eyes glaze over—yours especially. I’ve seen guys from the other crews stare at the three of you when we get back to the barn sometimes. What if Lou Clukey catches on and calls the cops? That would make Ma feel great, wouldn’t it? Reading your name in the arrest report? What do you think Ray would do to you?”

  I told him he was being paranoid—that nobody at the barn was staring at us.

  “Oh, yeah, right,” he said.

  “Look, everyone in this entire country’s getting wasted except for little saints like you,” I said. “We do our work. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Well, fine then. Tell that to Lou Clukey.”

  “Screw Lou Clukey! I’m not afraid of him. And I’m not afraid of Ray, either.” I clamped my eyes shut and rolled over toward the wall. “And screw you, too. Next time I want my conscience to be my guide, I’ll call up Jiminy Fuckin’ Cricket. Okay, Thomas?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Fine. Excuse me for worrying about my own brother.”

  I rolled over and hung my head back down again. “Look, no one but me has to worry about me,” I told him. “You got that? I’ve been taking care of myself my whole life. You’re the one everyone around here has to worry about. Not me. Remember? You’re the one who’s messed up.”

  I was sorry as soon as I said it. I pictured him back in our dorm room, pacing and shaking in front of that smashed typewriter case. . . . Saw him sobbing at the kitchen table while Ray slammed into him about his grades. Saw him sulking at work because I wasn’t willing, anymore, to stay joined at the hip.

  Thomas said he wanted to know what that was supposed to mean.

  “What?”

  “What you just said. That I’m messed up. That everyone has to worry about me.”

  “It just means . . . it means you ought to take care of your own screwed-up life instead of butting into mine. . . . Look, just take a hit or two off a joi
nt yourself once in a while. It’s no big deal. Join the human race, for Christ’s sake.”

  Neither of us said anything for several minutes. It was Thomas who spoke first.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  “If it’s about marijuana, no. The subject’s closed.”

  “It isn’t about that. It’s about you and your girlfriend.”

  I rolled over in bed. Looked up at the ceiling. “What about us?”

  “Are you and she . . . going to bed with each other?”

  “Why? You gonna give me a big speech about premarital sex now?”

  “No. I was just curious.”

  “What Dessa and I do is none of your business. . . . Curious about what?”

  He kept me waiting for several seconds. “About what it feels like,” he said.

  “You know what it feels like. Don’t tell me you never woke up in the middle of a wet dream or reached down and had a little fun with yourself. You’re not that much of a saint, are you?”

  “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I meant, what it feels like to be inside of a girl.”

  The room was still for a while. Then I surprised myself. “It feels good,” I said. “It feels unbelievably good. It’s like . . . this private connection that you get to share with another person.” In the morning, I would call Dessa and apologize. Maybe send her some flowers, buy her a mushy card. Or maybe I’d go down to the Dial-Tone and wait for her to get off work. “It’s like . . . it’s like you’re magnets. Your body and her body.”

  I lay there, in the dark above my brother. Got hard just thinking about her. “When she gets excited . . . she gets wet inside.”

  I reached down and touched it the way Dessa touched it. Ached for her. Her want, her wetness. “She wants you inside of her,” I said. “She gets ready, so that by the time you’re in, it’s like . . . it’s like this . . .”

  I was struck, abruptly, by the intrusion of it: my brother elbowing in on one more thing of mine. Thomas wanting another chunk of my life instead of going out and getting one of his own.

  “Like what?” he said.

  “Like nothing. Like none of your business. If you want to know what it feels like, then go find some girl and fuck her brains out. And get high first, too. That makes it even better. Now shut up and go to sleep.” I flipped over onto my stomach. Sighed. Calmed back down again.

  Several minutes went by. “Dominick?” he said. “Are you awake?”

  I didn’t answer him for a while. A minute or so. “What do you want?” I said.

  “About you smoking pot? I’m just worried, that’s all. I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you. Because you’re my brother and I love you. Okay?”

  I didn’t answer him—didn’t even know how to answer. His out-of-the-blue declaration of brotherly love disarmed me. Embarrassed me. I could buddy up with whoever I wanted to for the summer, pedal up there and screw Dessa seven nights a week, but I was never going to be rid of Thomas. . . .

  He fell asleep long before I answered him, which I did, finally, half out loud and half to myself. In the dark, in the midst of his snoring. “I love you, too,” I said.

  “You know what gets to me when I remember that conversation? That little talk we had in the dark, him and me? What gets me is that, back then, he was still there.”

  “Still there in what respect?”

  “Still able . . . still able to care about someone other than himself. I guess the disease must have already started claiming his brain by then. That had to have been what that typewriter stuff was about. Right? . . . But there was still someone home in Thomas’s head that summer. And I squandered it. Wasted the last weeks he had. Hindsight, right? Twenty-twenty. . . . But all I wanted to do that summer was to cut loose from him. Be one of the guys—one of the Three Dumb Fucks in the back of the city truck. Be Dessa’s lover. I was just so tired of . . .

  “Later on? After the disease took him to the mat, he lost that ability to care about other people. Worry about anyone besides himself. His enemies. . . . Well, he did and he didn’t lose it. I mean, hey, he’s always trying to save the world, right? Save civilization from spies and Communists and all that happy horseshit. He still cares about people in some weird way, I guess. But he lost the ability to care about . . . well, about me, I guess. He just . . . those voices. They just drowned out everything else. . . .

  “I remember the morning of my wedding. Mine and Dessa’s. I got ready early and drove down to the hospital in my monkey suit—me and Leo. He was real bad then; he couldn’t go to the wedding. So Leo drove me down there. Waited outside in the car and I went in by myself. In my tuxedo. And I told him, I said, ‘You know, Thomas, if things were different, if you weren’t so sick, you would have been my best man.’”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Nothing much. He was just kind of out of it—zoned on whatever they were giving him back then. Librium, I think. I forget. . . . I’ve got all that stuff written down—his history of medication and all that. You should see all these folders I’ve got on him. A whole filing cabinet full. My mother and I started it together and then, after she died, I more or less kept it up. Took over his records. . . .

  “I remember the morning I drove down to Settle to tell him Ma had finally given up the fight. Ray and I went, but Ray cut out of there pretty quick. And Thomas was—I didn’t know how he was going to react. But he was . . . what? Philosophical about it, I guess. I mean, he understood. He got it that she was dead. It was just . . . you know what he did? He started showing me that stupid Lives of the Saints book of his. Comparing Ma’s death to . . . talking like she was some stupid saint who’d lived five hundred years ago and been tortured by Pope What’s-His-Face or whatever. Like Ma was someone out of his stupid saint book.”

  “Do you want a tissue, Dominick? They’re right there. Help yourself.”

  “I’m okay. . . . You know when I did get a rise out of him? The night I went down there after Angela was born. I went down there and handed him an “It’s a girl” cigar. Told him he was an uncle. He liked that, I remember. Uncle Thomas. Big smile on his face. . . . He, uh . . . he never even saw her. My daughter. We just hadn’t gotten down there yet. I mean, three weeks? We were going to go that weekend. Drive down there and show her to him. But then she died.

  “Mostly, I can just accept it, you know? That total absorption of his—the way his illness finally did what I’d been trying all my life to do: separate the two of us. Untwin us. But I’ll be honest with you. There have been times when I’ve ached to have him back again. When I’ve needed him bad.”

  “Here. Take a tissue.”

  “That night the baby died? And then, a year or so later, when the bottom fell out. When . . . she says to me, ‘I have to breathe, Dominick. You suck all the oxygen out of the room.’ Try hearing that from the person you love. The one person you need more than. . . . Well, anyway, I just . . . I just wanted to throw down my armor for once, my defenses, and share . . .”

  “Share what, Dominick?”

  “My brother’s love. I just wanted to tell him, ‘I’m scared shitless, Thomas.’ And hold him. Hold on to my brother for dear life. Because, you know, he’s my brother. Right? Only, by then, he wasn’t Thomas anymore. By then, he was just the paunchy guy with the institutional haircut and the gray pants and shirt. Jesus’ apprentice. The guy that the FBI and the KGB and the aliens all wanted to destroy.

  “You know what the funny thing is, though? I look back . . . I look back at that summer the four of us were cutting lawns and playing graveball. Playing tag. And I think . . . I think how it could have tagged any one of us. . . . Ralph. Leo. Me, especially.

  “Why did it tag him and not me? His identical twin. His other half. That’s what I’ve never been able to figure out. Why Thomas was ‘it,’ not me.”

  20

  1969

  Ray jerked my brother around about school until mid-August, then announced one night at the supper tab
le that he’d help him finance one last chance. He handed a two-thousand-dollar bank check to my mother for Thomas’s and my tuition bills, due that week.

  “God bless you, Ray,” Ma said and burst into tears. Ray loved that: being the big hero. The savior.

  Thomas told Ray he wouldn’t regret it, honest to God. He’d learned his lesson. From now on, he was going to stay ahead of his assignments and get to bed earlier. He’d get out of his room and take walks when he was feeling nervous. He’d go to the library and study with me. In the midst of all Thomas’s suppertime resolutions, I made a silent promise of my own: he was going to make it or break it without my help. I wasn’t going to hold Thomas’s hand or walk him to the library or cover for him the next time he took out his frustrations on our typewriter.

  I wasn’t going to live with him, either. Three weeks earlier, Leo and I had driven up in secret to the university housing office and asked about the possibility of our rooming together at South Campus. Now they’d notified us that the change had gone through. Beyond that, I was planning to haul my ass up to Boston College every weekend to be with Dessa—to make sure I didn’t lose out on the best thing I had going in my whole life.

  The problem was wheels. If I wanted to see my girlfriend, I couldn’t exactly pedal my bike up the Massachusetts Turnpike. Hitchhiking was cheap but unreliable. It could get crazy, too. I’d had a string of bad experiences bumming rides: a guy who said he had explosives in his trunk, a driver whose acid-head wife thought my head was on fire. There were all kinds of wackos out there waiting to pull over and give you a lift. I needed a car.

  I’d managed to save almost eleven hundred dollars over the summer. Ray and I agreed that I’d add five hundred to the loan he was giving me to cover college costs. I was planning to use most of what was left to buy a secondhand clunker and some insurance. The rest was for living expenses. But now another thought kept spinning in my head: getting Dessa a diamond for Christmas. So what if I was only nineteen? I’d turn twenty over the holidays. How much surer could I be that she was the one? That I was the one for her? She’d said it herself: I was the only guy she felt safe with. In a recurring fantasy, I pummeled those other two jerks she’d gone out with—beat the shit out of them for having hurt her. From what I gathered, the dulcimer player was still living up in Boston; he could walk right back into Dessa’s life. Or she could meet someone new—some faceless guy I hadn’t even bothered to beat up in my daydreams. If I could buy a car for around two hundred, I reasoned, and get a part-time job once I got to school, then I could start the engagement ring fund right away. Not that I could buy her anything like that boulder her mother wore. Not in a million years. But as well off as the Constantines were, Dessa didn’t really care about material stuff. Ever since her family had gotten back from Greece, she and her father had argued about several things. One of them was his focus on money. Another was me.