Wally Lamb - I Know This Much Is True

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I KNOW THIS MUCH

IS TRUE

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WALLY LAMB

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This book is for my father and my sons

In ways I dont fully understand, this story is connected to the lives and deaths of the following: Christopher Biase, Elizabeth Cobb, Randy Deglin, Samantha Deglin, Kathy Levesque, Nicholas Spano, and Patrick Vitagliano. I hope that, in some small way, the novel honors both their memory and the devotion and strength of the loved ones they had to leave.

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Contents

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I Know[001-115] 7/24/02 12:21 PM Page 1

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On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable. Mrs. Theresa Fenneck, the childrens librarian, was officially in charge that day because the head librarian was at an all-day meeting in Hartford.

She approached my brother and told him hed have to keep his voice down or else leave the library. She could hear him all the way up at the front desk. There were other patrons to consider. If he wanted to pray, she told him, he should go to a church, not the library.

Thomas and I had spent several hours together the day before. Our Sunday afternoon ritual dictated that I sign him out of the state hospitals Settle Building, treat him to lunch, visit our stepfather or take him for a drive, and then return him to the hospital before suppertime.

At a back booth at Friendlys, Id sat across from my brother, breathing in his secondary smoke and leafing for the umpteenth time through his scrapbook of clippings on the Persian Gulf crisis. Hed been col

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lecting them since August as evidence that Armageddon was at handthat the final battle between good and evil was about to be triggered. Americas been living on borrowed time all these years, Dominick, he told me. Playing the worlds whore, wallowing in our greed. Now were going to pay the price.

He was oblivious of my drumming fingers on the tabletop. Not to change the subject, I said, but hows the coffee business? Ever since eight milligrams of Haldol per day had quieted Thomass voices, he had managed a small morning concession in the patients

loungecoffee and cigarettes and newspapers dispensed from a metal cart more rickety than his emotional state. Like so many of the patients there, he indulged in caffeine and nicotine, but it was the newspapers that had become Thomass most potent addiction.

How can we kill people for the sake of cheap oil? How can we justify that ? His hands flapped as he talked; his palms were grimy from newsprint ink. Those dirty hands should have warned meshould have tipped me off. How are we going to prevent Gods vengeance if we have that little respect for human life?

Our waitress approacheda high school kid wearing two buttons:

Hi, Im Kristin and Patience, please. Im a trainee. She asked us if we wanted to start out with some cheese sticks or a bowl of soup.

You cant worship both God and money, Kristin, Thomas told her. Americas going to vomit up its own blood.

About a month laterafter President Bush had declared that a line has been drawn in the sand and conflict might be inevitableMrs.

Fenneck showed up at my front door. She had sought me outhad researched where I lived via the city directory, then ridden out of the blue to Joys and my condo and rung the bell. She pointed to her husband, parked at the curb and waiting for her in their blue Dodge Shadow. She identified herself as the librarian whod called 911.

Your brother was always neat and clean, she told me. You cant say that about all of them. But you have to be firm with these people. All day long, day in, day out, the state hospital van just drops them downtown and leaves them. They have nowhere to go, noth

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ing to do. The stores dont want thembusiness is bad enough, for pitys sake. So they come to the library and sit. Her pale green eyes jerked repeatedly away from my face as she spoke. Thomas and I are identical twins, not fraternalone fertilized egg that split in half and went off in two directions. Mrs. Fenneck couldnt look at me because she was looking at Thomas.

It was cold, I remember, and I invited her into the foyer, no further. For two weeks Id been channel-flipping through the Desert Shield updates, swallowing back the anger and guilt my brothers act had left me with, and hanging up in the ears of reporters and TV

typesall those bloodsuckers trying to book and bag next weeks freak show. I didnt offer to take Mrs. Fennecks coat. I stood there, arms crossed, fists tucked into my armpits. Whatever this was, I needed it to be over.

She said she wanted me to understand what librarians put up with these days. Once upon a time it had been a pleasant jobshe liked people, after all. But now libraries were at the mercy of every derelict and homeless person in the area. People who cared nothing about books or information. People who only wanted to sit and veg-etate or run to the toilet every five minutes. And now with AIDS

and drugs and such. The other day theyd found a dirty syringe jammed behind the paper towel dispenser in the mens restroom. In her opinion, the whole country was like a chest of drawers that had been pulled out and dumped onto the floor.

Id answered the door barefoot. My feet were cold. What do you want ? I asked her. Why did you come here?

Shed come, she said, because she hadnt had any appetite or a decent nights sleep since my brother did it. Not that she was responsible, she pointed out. Clearly, Thomas had planned the whole thing in advance and would have done it whether shed said anything to him or not. A dozen people or more had told her theyd seen him walking around town, muttering about the war with that one fist of his up in the air, as if it was stuck in that position. Shed noticed it herself, it always looked so curious. Hed come inside and sit all afternoon in the periodical section, arguing with the newspapers, she said. Then, after I Know[001-115] 7/24/02 12:21 PM Page 4

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a while, hed quiet down. Just stare out the window and sigh, with his arm bent at the elbow, his hand making that fist. But whod have taken it for a sign ? Who in their right mind would have put two and two together and guessed he was planning to do that ?

No one, I said. None of us had.

Mrs. Fenneck said she had worked for many years at the main desk before becoming the childrens librarian and remembered my mother, God rest her soul. She was a reader. Mysteries and romances, as I recall. Quiet, always very pleasant. And neat as a pin. Its a blessing she didnt live to see this, poor thing. Not that dying from cancer is any picnic, either. She said shed had a sister who died of cancer, too, and a niece who was battling it now. If you ask me, she said, one of these days theyre going to get to the bottom of why theres so much of it now and the answers going to be computers.

If she had kept yapping, I might have burst into tears. Might have cold-cocked her. Mrs. Fenneck! I said.

All right, she said, she would just ask me point-blank: did my father or I hold her responsible in any way for what had happened?

You? I asked. Why you?

Because I spoke crossly to him just before he did it.