karenika - books - i know this much is true

I Know This Much is True

The sun was just coming up, I remember. She'd been thrashing around for an hour or more, moaning, trying to yank of her oxygen mask. Then, right about when it was getting light out, she quieted down. Stopped fighting.

Ray had stepped out for a couple of minutes - to make a phone call about work. And I leaned over toward her, started stroking her forehead. And she looked right at me - she was conscious at that point, I know it... And I told her I loved her. Told her thanks for everything she'd done for us - all the sacrifices she'd made. And then I said it: the one thing I know she'd been waiting to hear: "I'll take care of him for you, Ma. I'll make sure he's safe. You can go now."

And she did - just like that. By the time Ray got back, she was unconscious. Died sometime in the next hour... Soon as she heard that her "little bunny rabbit" was going to be fine, she could let go.

I love you. Ma. I hate you...

There was something Dr. Patel hadn't figured out yet. Something I was just starting to figure out myself: how much I hated my mother for putting me on guard duty my whole life. For making me their sentry...

"Playing nice" they used to call it - whatever it was they'd do up there. Dress-up: was that all it was? Thomas clomping around in her high heels, twirling around in her dresses...She had no friends. She was lonely....

Go downstairs now, Dominick. I made you a special snack. Thomas and I are just going to "play nice."

And so I'd sit down there, eating my pudding or potato chips, staring at the television that, later on, would eplode. Set the living room on fire.

On guard. Watching out for Ray...

This wouldn't be any fun for you, Dominick. This is the kind of fun only your brother likes...Let me know right away if Ray comes. If Ray ever found out about "playing nice," he'd get mad at all three of us. Madder than he's ever been before...

It's not that she didn't love me, Doc. She did love me. I knew that. She just always loved him more. Loved the exact thing about Thomas that Ray hated. Nailed him for...Her "sweetheart." Her "little cuddly bunny rabbit."...

I'll take care of him for you, Ma. I'll keep him safe. You can go now.

As if promising her would finally put me in the first place, even for a minute - for one fucking minute before she died...All my life, I had come in second. Number two in a two-man race. Even now I was, with her gone four years and him locked away at Hatch. Number two in our never-ending two-man struggle.

And it hurt. It hurt, Ma - being the lookout, the spider monkey - the one you never invited onto your lap...

It hurt, Ma. It goddamned hurt...

After both my friends Tera and Jenn, who have literary choices that I respect, told me I had to (had to) read I Know This Much is True, Wally Lamb's second book, I finally stopped fighting myself and bought the book. I had read his first, She's Come Undone, on a plane ride to London and finished it in my room in London where I cried for way longer that I'd like to admit. I was reluctant to read anything else by Lamb, I wasn't prepared for the amount of crying 890 pages could bring.

Well, I fell into the book around page 480. At that point, I barely functioned outside reading the book. I woke up, worked and then read at lunch. I worked some more and then, as soon as my day was over, I read and read until my eyes hurt. After a long week of reading, I have finally finished the novel. I didn't shed one tear and it was fantastic.