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 nodded.
“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 the
re? 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.