The Hour I First Believed

Through the magazine and blanket distribution, the headset sales and overhead baggage jockeying, the seat next to mine remained empty. With any luck, I’d be able to flip up the armrest and stretch out a little, the better to sleep my way to Chicago.

I heard him before I saw him. “’Scuse me. ’Scuse me, please. Oops, sorry. ’Scuse me.” He negotiated the aisle with the grace of a buffalo and stopped dead at row 10. “Howdy doody,” he said. “Hold these for a sec?”

I took his coffee in one hand, his pastry in the other—a catcher’s-mitt-sized cinnamon bun. His suitcase was cinched with leather belts. As he jammed and whacked it into the overhead space, his shirt untucked, exposing a jiggling, tofu-colored stomach. Mission accomplished, he crash-landed into seat 10B.

“Whoa,” he said, adjusting his safety belt. “I think an anorexic must have had this seat before I did.” He buckled the belt, flopped down his tray table, reclaimed his coffee and pastry. “Oh, geez,” he said. “Forgot to take my jacket off. Do you mind doing the honors again?” He folded his tray, unbuckled his belt. Struggling out of his sleeves, he whacked my arm, sloshing coffee onto my shirt. “Oops, me bad boy,” he said. His giggle was girlish.

He was Mickey Schmidt, he said. I told him my name. We shook hands. His was sticky. “And what does Caleb Quirk do for a living?” he asked.

It’s Caelum, douchebag. “I teach.”

“At Colorado State? Me, too!”

I shook my head. “I teach high school.”

“High school!” He groaned. “I almost didn’t survive the experience.” I nodded, half-smiled. Told him a lot of people remembered it that way.

“No, I mean it,” he said. “Freshman year, I tried to kill myself. Twice.”

“Gee,” I said. I mean, what can you say?

“The first time, I filled the bathtub and climbed in with my father’s electric shaver. It kept shutting off. I thought it was God, willing me to live. But come to find out, it had a safety switch.” That giggle again. He took another slug of coffee, another mouthful of cinnamon bun. He talked and ate simultaneously. “The second time, I tried to OD on my mother’s Kaopectate. She used to buy it by the case. I drank five bottles. I was going for six, but I couldn’t do it. You ever have your stomach pumped? I don’t recommend it.”

I fished out the in-flight magazine. Thumbed through it to shut him up. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small vial of pills. Popped one. “Flight anxiety,” he said. “Takeoffs and landings, mostly. Once I’m in the air, I’m calmer. Want one?” The pill vial hovered in front of my nose. I shook my head. “Well, Mickey, how about you? Would you like another to help you fly a little higher through the friendly skies? Why, yes, please. Don’t mind if I do.” He took a second tablet, a slurp of coffee. “So what do you know about chaos-complexity theory?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Chaos-complexity theory.”

“Uh…is that the one where a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and—”

“And it triggers a tornado in Texas. Yup, that’s it. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Of course, that’s an oversimplification. It’s all about bifurcation, really. Three types: subtle, catastrophic, and explosive. See, when bifurcation occurs, a dynamical system destabilizes. Becomes perturbed, okay? You with me so far?”

A crowded flight probably meant no seat-switching. And who would I end up next to if I did switch? The incest aunt?

Mercifully, the video screens blinked on and the emergency landing spiel began. At the front of the plane, a flight attendant mimed the on-screen instructions. You’d think someone with “flying anxieties” would shut up and listen, but Mickey talked over the audio. “Of course, the fascinating thing is that there’s a self-organizing principle at the edge of chaos. Order breeds habit, okay? But chaos breeds life.”

“Yeah, hold on,” I said. “I want to hear this.”

He resumed as soon as the video was over. “But anyhoo, that’s my area of expertise. I’m adjunct at Colorado State. I teach one course in math, another in philosophy, which makes perfect sense, see, because chaos-complexity cuts across the disciplines. Actually, I could teach in the theology department, too, because chaos theory’s entirely applicable to the world’s religions. That’s not a concept Pat Robertson and the pope would embrace, but hey. Don’t shoot the messenger!” The giggle. “Of course, three classes is full time, so they’d have to give me the benefits package, which would kill them. Screw the adjuncts, right? We’re the monks of higher education. How much do you make?”

I flinched a little. “Rather not say.”

He nodded. “Thank God I have another income stream. Whoops, there I go again. I’m the only atheist I know who keeps thanking God. Well, what do you expect, growing up with my mother? I mean, she made my father put a shrine to the Blessed Virgin in our backyard. Immaculate conception? Yeah, sure, Mom. So what do you teach?”

“American lit,” I said. “And writing.”

“Really? So you’re a writer?”

“Uh, yeah. Yes.” My answer surprised me.

“That’s what I’m doing this summer: writing a book.”

I nodded. “Publish or perish, right?”

“Oh, no, no, noooo. This isn’t part of my scholarly work. It’s a manual for the casino gambler. I’m going to show how the principles of chaos theory can be employed to beat the house. Gambling’s my other income stream, see? Know how much I pull in in a year? Go ahead, guesstimate.”

I shrugged. “Five thousand?”

“Try fifty thousand.”

I’d seen that suitcase of his. Who did he think he was kidding? “Well,” I said, “if you can teach people how to hit the jackpot, you’ll have a best-seller.”

“Oh, I can teach them, all right. Not that I’m going to give away all of my trade secrets. In Vegas? I’m banned at Harrah’s, the Golden Nugget, and Circus Circus.” I nodded, then closed my eyes and shifted my body toward the window. Mickey didn’t take the hint. “I get ten steps in the front door, disguised or not, and security approaches me. Escorts me out of the building. It’s all very cordial, very gentlemanly. They don’t make trouble and neither do I. I could, though, because it impedes my research. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of publication, right? That’s why I’m flying to Connecticut. To do research for my book. The Indians have a casino there called—”

I opened my eyes. “Wequonnoc Moon,” I said.

“Right. You’ve been there?”

I nodded. “It’s about ten minutes from where I grew up.”

“Biggest single gaming venue in the country,” Mickey said. “Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never been there before. Been to Atlantic City many times over. I’m no longer welcome at Mr. Trump’s venues either. Now I ask you: is it legal to ban me, simply because I’ve figured out how to beat them at their own game? If I could afford to do it, I’d sue the bastards.”

The plane lurched forward. The intercom clicked on. The captain said we’d been cleared for takeoff. Would the flight attendants prepare the cabin?

“Oh, boy, here we go,” Mickey said. He pulled the vomit bag from his seat pocket. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to puke. I use these for my breathing exercise.”

“Right,” I said. Closed my eyes.

Mickey grabbed my arm. “I was wondering if, when we lift off, would you hold my hand? It helps.”

“Uh, well…”

The plane began to taxi. “Oh, boy,” Mickey muttered. “Oh, boy, oh, boy.” Paper crinkled in my right ear. In my peripheral vision, I saw his vomit bag expand and contract like a lung. The plane turned right and started down the runway, picking up speed. “Please,” he said, his shaky hand groping for mine. Instead of taking it, I pushed it down against the armrest between us.

The cabin rattled. Mickey’s hand gripped the armrest. We rose.

With the whine of the landing gear’s retraction, he returned to his abnormal normalcy. “Fascinating stuff, though, chaos-complexity,” he said. “Order in disorder. Disequilibrium as the source of life. Can you imagine it?”

“What?”

“God as flux? God as mutability?”

His pupils were dilated. Stoned from whatever he’d taken, I figured. For the next few minutes, neither of us spoke.

The captain turned off the seatbelt sign. The flight attendants wheeled the beverage cart down the aisle. Mickey flopped down his tray table and began to play solitaire with a deck of cards that, in my peripheral vision, I noticed were pornographic.

I dozed, woke up, fell into a deeper sleep. Somewhere during the flight, I heard Mickey and a flight attendant joking about Mr. Sandman….

IT TOOK TWO FLIGHT ATTENDANTS to rouse me. I looked around, lost at first. Mickey was gone. Up front, the last of the passengers were deplaning.

Inside the terminal, I wandered myself awake. At the pay phones, I fished out my calling card and punched in the numbers. Back in Colorado, our machine clicked on. “Hey,” I said. “It’s me. I’m at O’Hare. Doing all right, I guess—a little groggy…. Guy next to me on the flight here was a lunatic. And there were these kissin’ cousins going to be on Jerry Springer. You want evidence that Western civilization’s in sharp decline, just come to the airport…. Hey, Mo? I’m a little scared to be going back there. Lolly’s my last link, you know?…Well, okay. I’ll call you tonight. Don’t let the dogs drive you nuts.” I stood there wondering what would come first: me saying it or the beep ending my message.

“I love you, Mo.”

I love you, Lolly: I should have been saying it at the end of every one of those goddamn Sunday-evening calls. Should have been calling her. I love you: Why did that simple three-syllable sentence always get stuck in my throat?…Well, I was flying back there, wasn’t I? She’d asked for Caelum, and here I was at fucking O’Hare instead of sleeping off my post-prom assignment. It was like what Dr. Patel told me that time: that “I love you” was just three meaningless words without the actions that went with them. Lolly’s crippled tongue had said my name, or tried to, and I was halfway there.

I walked—up one concourse, down another, in and out of a dozen stores stocked with crap I didn’t want. Walked past the smokers, sequestered like lepers in their Plexiglas pen, and a crazy-looking shoeshine guy, wearing a do-rag and muttering to himself at the base of his empty platform chair.

I bought a coffee and a U.S.A. Today. Sat and read about that Love Bug computer virus. It arrived via an e-mail titled “I Love You.” Opening its attachment, “Love-Letter-for-You,” was what infected you. Well, I thought, the diabolical prick who designed it understood technology and human psychology. I mean, something like that arrives, and you’re not going to open it? It was both a virus and a worm, the article said; as it erased your files, it raided your address book, sending copies of itself to everyone on your e-mail list and spreading the havoc exponentially. Like HIV, I thought. Like that chaos-complexity stuff. Small disturbances, big repercussions. God, we were all so vulnerable.

Walking back, I passed that crazy shoeshine guy again. On impulse, I did an about-face, climbed up onto his platform, and sat. I was nothing more than a pair of shoes to him, and he went to work without so much as an upward glance. But as it turned out, he hadn’t been mumbling to himself, as I’d assumed; he’d been rapping. He rapped under his breath while he shined my shoes. I caught a little of it: “Calvin Klein no friend of mine, don’t want nobody’s name on my behind…” When he finished, he rose from his stool. “Five dollar,” he said, looking over my shoulder.

I handed him two fives. “One for the shine, the other for the performance,” I said, at which point he did look at me. I figured he’d return my smile, but instead he nodded, blank-faced, stuffed the bills into his pocket, and gave me his back.

At the food court, I bought a turkey sandwich and another coffee. As I ate, an entourage caught my eye: four Buddhist monks, camped at the periphery of the food court seats, about thirty feet away. Shaved heads, maroon and pumpkin-colored robes. Each was smiling, even the one who slept. You’d think monks would be wearing sandals, wouldn’t you? But these guys were wearing what I wear: Nike sneakers, Timberland boots. Two were horsing around with a Hacky Sack. Another was chatting quietly with a black woman in a Chicago Bulls sweatshirt.

I spotted a fifth monk, seated apart from the others. He was staring at something on his finger—studying it, or meditating on it, or whatever.

It moved.

Slowly, gently, the monk put his index fingers together, tip to tip, and it crossed the bridge they made, then traveled the back of the monk’s hand and halfway up his arm. I got up. Got closer. Saw that it was a praying mantis. I watched that monk watch that mantis for…well, I don’t know how long. But somehow, it made me feel better. Less anxious or whatever. Less alone.

THE FLIGHT TO CONNECTICUT WAS uneventful, and Bradley Airport looked and felt as glum as ever. I rented a Camry and picked up Interstate 91 going south. In Hartford, I exited onto I–84 and drove, with gathering dread, toward Three Rivers. Lolly’d been a life force my whole life. I didn’t want even to see her diminishment, never mind have to do something about it. I wanted to be back in Colorado, facing nothing more than my computer monitor and three or four open bottles of beer.

En route, I passed billboards luring travelers to Wequonnoc Moon, the U.S. Army, the home cooking at Cracker Barrel, Jesus Christ. Weird how they all promised the same thing: rescue. Salvation from your dissatisfying life. “Begin the Quest!” one of those signs advised, but I didn’t quite catch the quest for what. Smart advertising, whatever it was. A personal lord and savior, a casino jackpot, a Phoenician Yellow Mustang: everyone was out looking for something.

Right you are, Quirk. And what, pray tell, are you looking for?

Me? I don’t know. To avoid the Love Bug virus, maybe?

Not something you’re looking to escape, Quirk. Something you’re looking for.

A little peace of mind, maybe? A full night’s sleep?…Yeah, that’d be nice: eight uninterrupted hours of repose.

Don’t play dead before you have to.

Approaching Three Rivers, things looked both the same (the dog’s face painted on the rock ledge, the abandoned textile mills) and different (Wal-Mart, Staples, an Olive Garden restaurant). At the foot of the downtown bridge, they’d put up a sculpture: a Wequonnoc warrior, steroid-enhanced from the looks of him. For most of the twentieth century, Three Rivers had been in bed with the defense industry—the submarine base, Electric Boat. But the affair had fizzled when the Cold War ended, and now, for better or worse, the town was sleeping with the Indians. Or, as Lolly liked to grouse, “those phony-baloney one-eighth Indians. Those white one-sixteenth Wequonnocs.”

I’d intended to drive out to the farm first, but changed my mind. I’d come all this way to see her, so I should go see her, right? I got to the hospital a little after six. They had a parking garage now—that was new. They’d redone the entrance: added an atrium, a gift boutique, a coffee bar. “Courtesy of the Wequonnoc Nation,” a banner proclaimed. The receptionist told me Lolly was on the fourth floor. In the elevator, I could feel the beat of my heart.

At the desk, two nurses were conferring over a takeout menu. “Well, they wouldn’t call it spicy tuna if it wasn’t spicy, but you can probably order it milder,” the frizzy-haired one said. Then, to me, “Can I help you, sir?”

“Louella Quirk?” I said.

“Oh, yes. I’m her shift nurse. Are you her nephew from California?”

“Colorado,” I said. “How is she?”

“Well, according to her chart, she had some agitation earlier in the day, but she’s been sleeping peacefully since I came on. Her vitals look good. I just took her temp and b.p. a few minutes ago. You can go on down. She’s in 432, four rooms down on the left. I’m Valerie, by the way.”

“Caelum.”

“Hi. Hey, are you hungry? We were just about to order sushi.” I shook my head and started down the corridor. Sushi? In blue-collar Three Rivers?

She was in a semiprivate, her bed the one near the window. I exchanged smiles and nods with the roommate and her visitor. Lolly’s curtain was half drawn, her light dimmed. Her TV was on, moving images minus sound.

Her face looked lopsided, her mouth drooping open on the left side. Her coloring, usually burnished by the sun, was as gray as putty. There was dried blood at the point where the IV tube entered her hand. A sour smell hung in the air around her. When I kissed her forehead, she sighed in her sleep.

Valerie came in. “Aw, look at her,” she whispered. “Sleeping like a baby.” She checked her IV drip, plumped up her pillow, and left us.

A baby, I thought. Babies. Within the first few minutes of their lives, their mother had died, leaving them to be raised by a distant father and a no-nonsense prison matron of a grandmother. Daddy—born second and assigned the burden of having killed his mother in the process—had drunk his life away. Lolly had soldiered on, worked hard, kept her spunk and her spirits up. She’d found love, too, whether people liked it or not. And now here she was, widowed and weakened, the rest of her life to be dictated by a damaged brain.

I kept a vigil by her bedside, feeling, in waves, both moved and bored. In the top drawer of the nightstand, I found the standard issue: tissues, lotion, a cellophane-wrapped comb. Lolly’s short gray hair, usually permanent-waved and poufy, lay limp and oily. I pulled the wrapper off the comb. Tried to fix her hair a little. I didn’t want to wake her if rest was what she needed, but I was hoping, too, that she would wake up. See me and know that I’d come. When I stopped combing, she did open her eyes. She stared at me for several seconds without recognition, then closed her eyes again…. Had she been awake? Had I just missed another chance to tell her I loved her?

Valerie reappeared, a cup of coffee in one hand, a cup of ice cream in the other. “Thought you might like a little something,” she said. “I figured you for a chocolate man, but we have vanilla and strawberry, too.”

“Chocolate’s good,” I said. “Thanks. She opened her eyes a few minutes ago. She looked right at me, but I don’t think anything registered.”

Valerie shrugged. “Hard to tell,” she said.

I asked her how to activate the TV’s closed-captioning, and as she did it for me, the 60 Minutes stopwatch filled the screen. “Kind of fitting this show’s coming on,” I said. “It’s her favorite.”

“Oh, mine, too,” Valerie said. “I love it when they nail the hypocrites.”

I nodded toward Lolly. “She calls me every Sunday night after her supper, gives me all the updates. But as soon as that stopwatch starts ticking, she’ll say, ‘Well, gotta go, kiddo. My boyfriend’s coming on.’”

Valerie smiled. “Who’s her boyfriend?”

“Morley Safer.”

She nodded. “Mine’s Ed Bradley. I like his little earring.”

I touched Lolly’s shoulder. “Safer interviewed her once.”

“Your aunt? What for?”

“This story they did called ‘The Prison That Cures With Kindness.’ Their researchers went looking for the correctional facility with the lowest recidivism rate in the country, and they came up with Bride Lake.”

“The women’s prison? When was this?”

“Long time ago. ’Seventy-eight, ’seventy-nine. The producers came up, dug around, and discovered Lolly. She was a guard there at the time, but she was also the granddaughter of the woman who’d established the place. See, before my great-grandmother came along, they used to just lock up the women with the men. The assumption was that they were throw-aways anyway.”

“Oh, my God, that’s horrible,” Valerie said.

“But my great-grandmother had this idea that a separate facility run by women—plus fresh air, sunshine, farmwork, schoolwork—would rehabilitate. Community service, too. Giving back was part of her formula. And it worked, too, I guess. Sociologists, criminologists, shrinks: they came from all over to study her methods. Sigmund Freud visited once. That was in the 60 Minutes story, I remember. There’s this great picture of Freud and my great-grandmother strolling the grounds arm in arm.

“But anyway, they loved Lolly—the producers, the crew, Morley Safer. She’d never paid much attention to television, so she wasn’t intimidated by it. And that made her, whaddaya call it? Telegenic. And on top of that, Lolly’s a great storyteller. She told Safer about the day Sophie Tucker came to visit an old vaudeville friend who was in for larceny and stayed on to do a show. And about the summer when the inmates served as surrogate mothers for a bunch of monkeys that were being fed experimental doses of lithium up the road at the state hospital. And the time when ‘the gals’ made hootch from the dried fruit platters the Baptist church ladies had given them for Christmas, and they were drunk on their asses when the state inspector dropped by for a visit.”

Valerie laughed. Touched Lolly’s hand.

“But like I said, Morley Safer got a kick out of Lolly. Sent his crew back to New York and stayed for supper. My aunt’s companion fried some chicken and made peach cobbler, and Lolly told more stories. And somehow that night, he and Lolly discovered they shared a birthday, November the eighth. They’ve sent each other a birthday card ever since.”

“Wow,” Valerie said. “Well, now that I know I’m taking care of a TV star, I’ll have to give her the VIP treatment.”

I smiled, teared up a little. “I just want her to be okay,” I said.

Valerie pulled a tissue from the little box on Lolly’s tray table and handed it to me. “Sure you do.”

I left the hospital sometime between eight and nine. There was a Taco Bell on West Main Street now; that was new. I pulled up to the drive-thru, got a couple of burritos. Ate as I drove. The endless day flew back at me in fragments: the post-prom, the monk and his praying mantis, the chaos theorist’s jawing. God as mutability, I thought. God as flux….

THE ROAD HOME WAS TRAFFICKY with cars heading to and from Wequonnoc Moon. I drove past its purple and green glow. Took the left onto Ice House Road, and then the right onto Bride Lake. Nearing the farm, I approached the prison compound. Braked. “Grandma’s prison,” Lolly always called it.

I put on my blinker. Slowed down, swung left, and headed up the dirt driveway to the farmhouse. My headlights caught a raccoon on the front porch, feasting out of the cat food dish. I cut the engine and got out of the car. “Get!” I shouted. Unintimidated, it sat up on its haunches and looked at me as if to say, And who might you be? It took its sweet time waddling down the stairs and into the darkness.

The storm windows were still in; the door latch was busted. I could take care of that stuff while I was here. The old tin coffeepot was where it always was. I reached in, and touched the front door key. In the foyer, I fumbled, my hand batting at the darkness until I felt the old-fashioned pull chain. I yanked it, squinted…. Things looked the same, pretty much—a little shabbier, maybe, a little more cluttery. Things smelled the same, too: musty carpet, cooking grease, a slight whiff of cat piss. I put down my travel bag and walked over to the large framed photograph that hung on the wall at the foot of the stairs. “Bride Lake Farm, Aerial View, August 1948.”

God, this house, I thought. This abandoned Bride Lake life.

The place was radioactive with memories.

Chapter Four

MOTHER SAYS I’M NOT TO cross Bride Lake Road without permission, or dawdle near the ladies’ prison fence, or walk past it to our south field where the corn maze is. But I’ve done all three this morning because I’m mad at Mother and really, really mad at Grandpa Quirk. He said I’m too young to run the cash register, and I’m not. In our arithmetic workbook, I zoom through the money pages and I’m always the first one done. “Well, I’m sorry, Davy Crockett, but this is our livelihood,” Grandpa said. “No means no.”

Mother said yes, we can go to the movies tomorrow if she finishes the priests’ ironing, but no, we cannot see I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. “You’re too young for those kind of pictures, Caelum. They could give you scary dreams.”