1958

The 1958 recollection in I Know This Much Is True turns a family trip to the movies into an early portrait of fear passed from the street into the home. Recalled by Dominick Birdsey as a child, the sequence begins with the small pleasures of a city bus ride with Ma and Thomas, then shifts to a threatening passenger and, later, Ray’s violent response to Thomas. Its importance lies in that progression: the children are first told to run from danger, then to hide the truth, while violence within the family becomes another danger they must endure.

A family outing

The episode is framed as 1958 and begins with Ma taking Dominick and Thomas to the movies for the Back-to-School Festival of Fun. The city bus ride is familiar enough to contain its own little rituals. Dominick gets to pull the stop cord at the five-and-ten because Thomas had the turn on their previous trip; the bus will not stop at the theater itself. The children’s alternating turns make the outing feel like an ordinary piece of family life, organized around small acts of fairness and anticipation.

The day’s driver adds a playful counterpoint to the journey. He jokes with the children and produces candy from their ears, unlike the grouchy driver from their last trip, whose missing thumb had frightened Dominick. Ma had suggested that the man might have lost it in the war or in a machine, and told Dominick not to look if he was afraid. He looks anyway, drawn to what he does not want to see. At the five-and-ten, Ma lifts him so he can pull the cord. The driver sends the family off with a joking exchange, and Dominick calls a playful reply after the bus. For a moment, the outing lets the children participate in the friendly, manageable world of grown-ups.

The passenger on the bus

That ease breaks on the crowded ride back. Ma sits across the aisle with her new painting resting on her knees, while the boys sit together on a long bench near the back. A man with unkempt hair and whiskers, a large lump on his forehead, and a dirty coat squeezes into the small space beside Ma. Dominick recognizes him as frightening and later remembers dreaming about him throughout his life. The passenger stares at the twins and mutters a remark about seeing “goddamned double.”

Dominick cannot stop watching him, although Ma signals that he should not stare. The children’s twin appearance draws the stranger’s attention, turning what had been a private family outing into a confrontation in a public place. The recollection does not make the passenger’s behavior harmless; it records both the threat the children feel and Ma’s urgent effort to get them away. She screams for the boys not to stop or look back as they run. Dominick does look back, repeatedly seeing the man farther behind them, until he finally stops on the sidewalk and shouts words Dominick cannot understand.

Fear kept inside the house

By the time the three reach home, their feet hurt from running and all of them are crying. Ma locks the doors and windows and pulls down the shades. Then she sits in a dining-room chair and cries so violently that she shakes the table and rattles dishes in the china closet. The children stop crying to watch her. Her collapse makes visible how deeply the encounter has shaken the person who had been guiding them to safety.

Once she can speak again, Ma tells the boys not to tell Ray what happened. If he asks about the movie, they should say it was good; knowing about the frightening man, she fears, would mean Ray would not let them go to the movies again. She also minimizes the danger, saying that the man was crazy and did not know any better. Her explanation gives the children a way to understand the passenger, but the instruction to conceal the episode establishes a different kind of rule: what happened outside must not be carried into conversation with Ray. The family’s return home is therefore not a simple restoration of safety. The doors are locked, but the fear is followed by secrecy.

Ray’s punishment of Thomas

That night, the concealed distress gives way to a separate scene of punishment. At supper, Ray notices Thomas chewing on his sleeve, declares that he has had enough, stands, and removes his belt. He loops it and snaps it against the table. Dominick’s mind connects the crack to the rats running through the dark basement at the movie theater and tripping its traps. The outing’s images of entertainment and danger now echo inside the home, where Ray’s gesture turns the belt into a threat.

Ray later returns upstairs with a roll of tape and sends Dominick away. Outside, Dominick hears Thomas crying, choking, and struggling to breathe. Thomas repeatedly apologizes to Ray and begs him not to tape his hands. The scene gives the earlier bus threat a grim domestic counterpart: the frightened child who had run with his family is now alone in the backyard, pleading with an adult who has power over him. The recollection closes on Dominick’s association with The Wizard of Oz: the Wicked Witch melts, the spell breaks, and the flying monkeys become men. That child’s image of a spell being broken offers a momentary imaginative release, but the episode supplies no resolution to Thomas’s punishment. Instead, the 1958 sequence leaves the reader with the contrast between a frightening stranger who eventually stops and a household where fear is kept private and Ray’s threat continues to govern the children.