Wally Lamb - The Hour I First Believed: A Novel (P.S.)

The Hour I First Believed

A Novel

Wally Lamb

FOR ANNA

A SERIES OF DEBILITATING STROKES and the onset of dementia necessitated the agonizing conversation I had with my mother in the winter of 1997. When I told her shed be moving to a nearby nursing home, she shook her head and, atypically, began to cry. Tears were a rarity for my stoic Sicilian-American mother. The next day, she offered me a deal. Okay, Ill go, she said. But my refrigerator comes with me. I couldnt meet her demand, but I understood it.

Mas refrigerator defined her. The freezer was stockpiled with half-gallons of ice cream for the grandkids, and I do mean stockpiled; you opened that freezer compartment at your peril, hoping those dozen or so rock-hard bricks, precariously stacked, wouldnt tumble forth and give you a concussion. The bottom half of Mas icebox was a gleaming tribute to aluminumenough foil-wrapped Italian food to feed, should we all show up unexpectedly at once, her own family and the extended families of her ten siblings. But it was the outside of Mas fridge that best spoke of who she was. The front and sides were papered with greeting cards, holy pictures, and photos, old and new, curling and faded, of all the people she knew and loved. Children were disproportionately represented in her refrigerator photo gallery. She adored kidsher own and everyone elses. My mother was a woman of strong faith, quiet resolve, and easy and frequent laughter.

This storys been a hard one to write, Ma, and it got harder after you left us. But I had the title from the very beginning, and when I reached the end, I realized Id written it for you.

(P.S. Sorry about all those four-letter words, Ma. Thats the characters speaking. Not me.)

AND SO, THEY MOVED OVER THE DARK WAVES,

AND EVEN BEFORE THEY DISEMBARKED,

NEW HORDES GATHERED THERE.

Dantes Inferno, canto 3, lines 118120

Contents

About the Publisher

PART ONE

Butterfly

chapter one

THEY WERE BOTH WORKING THEIR final shift at Blackjack Pizza that night, although nobody but the two of them realized it was that. Give them this much: they were talented secret-keepers. Patient planners. Theyd been planning it for a year, hiding their intentions in plain sight on paper, on videotape, over the Internet. In their junior year, one had written in the others yearbook, God, I cant wait till they die. I can taste the blood now. And the other had answered, Killing enemies, blowing up stuff, killing cops! My wrath will be godlike!

My wrath will be godlike: maybe thats a clue. Maybe their ability to dupe everyone was their justification. If we could be fooled, then we were all fools; they were, therefore, superior, chaos theirs to inflict. But I dont know. Im just one more chaos theorist, as lost in the maze as everyone else.

It was Friday, April 16, 1999, four days before they opened fire. Id stayed after school for a parent conference and a union meeting and, in between, had called Maureen to tell her Id pick up takeout. Blackjack Pizza was between school and home.

It was early still. The Friday-night pizza rush hadnt begun. He was at the register, elbows against the counter, talking to a girl in a hairdressers smock. Or not talking, pretty much. There was a cell phone on the counter, and he kept tapping it with his index finger to make it spinkept looking at the revolving cell phone instead of at the girl. I remember wondering if Id just walked in on a lovers spat. I better get back, the girl said. See you tomorrow. Her smock said Great Clips, which meant she worked at the salon next doorthe place where Maureen went.

Prom date? I asked him. The big event was the next night at the Design Center in Denver. From there, the kids would head back to school for the all-night post-prom party, which Id been tagged to help chaperone.

I wouldnt go to that bogus prom, he said. He called over his shoulder. Hows his half-mushroom-half-meatball coming? His cohort opened the oven door and peered in. Gave a thumbs-up.

So tell me, I said. You guys been having any more of your famous Blackjack flour wars?

He gave me a half-smile. You remember that?

Sure. Best piece you wrote all term.

Hed been in my junior English class the year before. A grade-conscious concrete sequential, he was the kind of kid who was more comfortable memorizing vocab definitions and lines from Shakespeare than doing the creative stuff. Still, his paper about the Blackjack Pizza staffs flour fights, which hed shaped as a spoof on war, was the liveliest thing hed written all term. I remember scrawling across his paper, You should think about taking creative writing next year. And he had. He was in Rhonda Baxters class. Rhonda didnt like him, thoughsaid she found him condescending. She hated the way he rolled his eyes at other kids comments. Rhonda and I shared a free hour, and we often compared notes about the kids. I neither liked nor disliked him, particularly. Hed asked me to write him a letter of recommendation once. Cant remember what for. What I do recall is sitting there, trying to think up something to say.

He rang up my sale. I handed him a twenty. So whats next year looking like? I asked. You heard back from any of the schools you applied to?

Im joining the Marines, he said.

Yeah? Well, I heard theyre looking for a few good men. He nodded, not smiling, and handed me my change.

His buddy ambled over to the counter, pizza box in hand. Hed lost the boyish look I remembered from his freshman year. Now he was a lanky, beak-nosed adult, his hair tied back in a sorry-looking ponytail, his chin as prominent as Jay Lenos. So whats your game plan for next year? I asked him.

University of Arizona.

Sounds good, I said. I gave a nod to the Red Sox cap he was wearing. You follow the Sox?

Somewhat. I just traded for Garciaparra in my fantasy league.

Good move, I said. I used to go to Sox games all the time when I was in college. Boston University. Fenway was five minutes away.

Cool, he said.

Maybe this is their year, huh?

Maybe. He didnt sound like he gave a shit either way.

He was in Rhondas creative writing class, too. Shed come into the staff room sputtering about him one day. Read this, she said. Is this sick or what? Hed written a two-page story about a mysterious avenger in a metal-studded black trench coat. As jocks and college preps leave a busy bar, he pulls pistols and explosives out of his duffel bag, wastes them, and walks away, smiling. Do you think I should call his parents? Rhonda had asked.

Id shrugged. A lot of the guys write this kind of crap. Too many video games, too much testosterone. I wouldnt worry about it. He probably just needs a girlfriend. She had worried, though, enough to make that call. Shed referred to the meeting, a week or so later, as a waste of time.

The door banged open; five or six rowdy kids entered Blackjack. Hey, Ill see you later, I said.

Later, he said. And I remember thinking hed make a good Marine. Clean-cut, conscientious, his ironed T-shirt tucked neatly into his wrinkle-free shorts. Give him a few years, I figured, and hed probably be officer material.

AT DINNER THAT NIGHT, MAUREEN suggested we go out to a movie, but I begged off, citing end-of-the-week exhaustion. She cleaned up, I fed the dogs, and we adjourned to our separate TVs. By ten oclock, I was parked on my recliner, watching Homicide with the closed-caption activated, my belly full of pizza. There was a Newsweek opened on my lap for commercial breaks, a Petes Wicked ale resting against my crotch, and a Van Morrison CD reverberating inside my skull: Astral Weeks, a record that had been released in 1968, the year I turned seventeen.