Message from Nam

by Danielle Steel

  “Shit. She’s not, is she? Tell me she’s not … please … or I’m going to kill her. And then I’m going to kill him.” His whole jaw was taut, but Paxton quickly grabbed his arm and almost shook him.

  “You’re not going to do anything. You’re going to let them work it out.”

  “Oh, Paxxie …” There were tears in his eyes as he sat staring at her in disbelief. “How could she? The guy is a jerk, can’t she see that?”

  “Maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s okay. Maybe he’ll come through for her.” She certainly hoped so. If not, Gabby was in big trouble.

  “I think she should get an abortion. She is pregnant, isn’t she?” He was right, of course, and she nodded. “How could she let that happen?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Those kind of accidents don’t happen. They don’t happen to you. Doesn’t she take the pill?” Paxton shook her head sadly.

  “Christ. What are my parents going to say?” “Nobody’s going to say anything. Let her work it out first. She doesn’t even know what she wants yet.”

  “She was so fucking desperate to get married, and now look at her, she gets knocked up by a ski bum.”

  Paxton laughed at him. “Stop it. He is not a ski bum. She met him on a ski slope, and for all we know he’s the perfect husband for her.” And just as she said it, the doorbell rang, and it was Matthew, looking somber and drawn, and asking if he could see Gabby.

  “She’s in her room,” Paxxie said quietly, and then glanced at Peter, praying he wouldn’t strangle the baby’s father. “Why don’t we go out for a pizza or something.”

  “Because I’m not hungry,” Peter snarled, glaring at him, and then let Paxton force him out of the house, as he argued with her once they were outside. “Why can’t I talk to him?”

  “Because he doesn’t want to talk to you. He wants to talk to Gabby. Leave them alone, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Why? Look what happened when they were alone before.”

  “Well, it can’t happen again. So mind your own business.”

  “She’s my sister.”

  “I think he has priority now. Besides, I’m hungry.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re pregnant, too, or I’ll throw up.”

  “Is that what you’d do?” She looked at him with interest as they stopped at his car, and he looked suddenly serious as he watched her.

  “No, that isn’t what I’d do, just for the record. If that ever happens to us, Pax, I don’t want you to do anything stupid. Hell, we’re practically married now. We’d just make it legal, and I’d keep the baby for you while you go to the Peace Corps.”

  “You almost make it sound tempting.” He was teasing her a little, but he wanted her to know that he’d marry her in a minute.

  He walked around the car to her, and put his arms around her. “I love you, babe … a lot. One day I’d love you to have my baby.”

  “So would I,” she whispered into his neck, but she couldn’t imagine it yet. And she couldn’t imagine Gabby with a baby either.

  Gabby and Matt were sitting on the front steps when they got back, and she wasn’t crying, which Paxton thought was a good sign. And he stood up nervously and looked at Peter.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” he said, looking him straight in the eye.

  “What about?” Peter had no intention of making it easy for him, but Gabby was too nervous to listen. She jumped up and looked at her older brother.

  “We’re getting married.” She glanced at him and then at Paxton, and then she started to cry, as Paxton put her arms around her, and gave her a hug and told her she was happy for her.

  “Have you spoken to Mom and Dad yet?” Peter asked cautiously, knowing full well that they hadn’t.

  “Matt is going to have lunch with Dad tomorrow.”

  Peter looked at both of them, and it was obvious that he was still upset. “Is he going to tell him you’re knocked up?”

  “No,” Gabby said, with a trembling lip, “are you?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Peter answered, but suddenly Matthew stepped in, and put an arm around Gabby’s shoulders.

  “That’s enough. There’s no reason to tell anyone.” He looked at his future brother-in-law. “That’s between the four of us. There’s no reason to upset your parents, or Gabby. This has been traumatic for everyone. It kind of knocked me off my feet, too, when Gabby told me. But we might as well make the best of it. I love her, she loves me, and we’re going to have a wonderful baby.” He pulled her close to him again, and kissed the top of her head as she fought back tears and looked up at him with gratitude. He could have told her to go to hell but he hadn’t. But Peter also knew that there were a lot of benefits to being married to Gabby Wilson. He had a lot less to lose than she did.

  Peter looked hard at his sister then. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

  She nodded, looking at him. “Yes, it is. I just didn’t know what to do at first.” She glanced nervously at Paxton. It was a big step to take. From college co-ed, she was suddenly leaping into being wife and mother.

  “What are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”

  “That we want to get married … soon … like in a few weeks, or a month maybe.”

  “You don’t think they’ll know? Mom will be real disappointed if you don’t want a big wedding.”

  “I’ll just tell her Matthew feels strongly about it because he’s divorced.” She shrugged. “And then the baby will be two months premature. Lots of babies are.” She smiled happily up at Matt, as Paxton watched them. It was amazing, in the space of a few hours, her friend’s whole life had changed and suddenly she seemed to belong not to them, but to Matthew. She went home with him that night and when Paxton saw her again a few days later, she seemed to have changed completely. He had bought her a ring, and all she could talk about was getting married. She had finally gotten what she wanted out of school. A husband. But Paxton still wasn’t sure that Matt Stanton was the perfect answer.

  Ed Wilson felt the same way, too, but all his entreaties to them to wait held absolutely no sway, and finally he gave up. She was so headstrong, he knew she’d run off to Mexico and marry him if she had to.

  Their wedding day was set for June, and they had insisted they wanted only a few friends, and a luncheon at the house. And just as Peter had predicted, Marjorie Wilson was bitterly disappointed.

  And on their wedding day, on the fourth of June, Paxton stood beside her and cried, because she knew Gabby was doing something that she really wasn’t sure of. And in January, they were going to have a baby. Ed Wilson suspected it, too, and even Marjorie wasn’t fooled. But they all went along with it for Gabby’s sake, and prayed that Matt would turn out to be a decent husband.

  Peter and Paxton drove back to the house in Berkeley afterward. They had to move out in another week, and they still had some packing to do. They were giving the house up and moving to a smaller place, and there was no longer any pretense about being roommates. Only Paxton’s mother didn’t know for sure, and there was no reason to tell her. She was far enough away to believe the charade they had lived for the past year. But with Gabby gone, things were going to be a little different.

  “Well,” Paxton said seriously, as she took off her hat when they got to the house and looked at the sea of boxes all around them. Gabby and Matt were already on their honeymoon. They had flown to New York that afternoon, and after two days there, at the Pierre, they were flying on to Europe. “What do you think? Do you think he’ll do?”

  “I don’t know, Pax.” No one knew. They could only pray, for her sake.

  “He’s nice to her at least.”

  “He’d better be,” Peter growled, and she leaned over and kissed him.

  “What are we going to do with all this stuff?”

  “I don’t know. Give it away?” Most of it was books, and a lot of it was Paxton’s.

  “I’m never going to have time to pack all of this before I go to Savannah.”

&
nbsp; “Don’t worry about it. I’ll do it for you.”

  “You’re a saint.” She smiled. She was leaving the following week for her brother’s wedding in Savannah. They had decided to get married in June too. And she felt as though she was on a merry-go-round, packing, moving, unpacking, and flying to Savannah for the wedding.

  And when Paxton arrived, Queenie didn’t look well to her again this time, but her mother seemed a little more relaxed than usual. She seemed to get along very well with Allison, which took some of the heat off Paxton.

  Two days later, after the wedding, Paxton came back to San Francisco to start her job on the paper. Peter had taken a job for the summer in a law firm in Berkeley. It was almost like being married now that they’d moved. They had their own place, a cute little house with a big living room, a kitchen, a dining room, a garden, and a big bedroom upstairs, with a little den where Peter kept all his lawbooks. She cooked for him at night when she got home from work, or sometimes he met her in the city and they went out for dinner. And she was crazy about her job at the paper. They gave her interesting stories to do, and sometimes she just stood there and read the Teletypes, feeling as though she had a finger on the pulse of the world. And she’d never been happier. And neither had Gabby.

  She showed by September when Peter and Paxton went back to school, and she was thrilled about taking the year off. And Paxton suspected she’d never go back. Her parents knew about the baby now, and Matt was being good to her, so everyone was very happy.

  It was hard to imagine where the time went that year. It was her third year at Berkeley. Paxton went home to Savannah for Christmas this time, and Queenie was clearly ill. She looked pale, if that was possible, and she coughed all the time, but even though her daughters thought she should retire now, she still insisted on working, especially while Paxxie was home, which really scared Paxton. But George insisted there was nothing he could do for her, when Paxton pressed him. He wasn’t terribly interested anyway. All he could think of was Allison. She was expecting their first baby the following summer, in August.

  And Gabby’s baby came three weeks after Paxton got home at Christmastime, a little girl with bright red hair like her mother’s. And as Paxton stood in the hospital, looking at her, it was hard to believe that Gabby was a mother. But Matt was thrilled, and the Wilsons were too. And Paxxie felt an odd empty space in her heart as she drove home to Berkeley with Peter.

  “You okay?” He had noticed it, and she hadn’t said much on the ride home, but she looked at him when he asked, and smiled strangely.

  “Yeah. It’s funny to see her with a baby, isn’t it? We’ve been together for such a long time, more than two years, and we know each other so well. And they’ve only known each other for a year, and there they are, happily married, with a baby. It seems kind of weird, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess it does.” And then he grinned. “But it could be arranged, if that’s what you want.”

  “It isn’t. Not now anyway.” She smiled almost sadly, because in some ways she did. She wanted everything, and she was tired of school. She missed the job that she’d had at the paper that summer. And now it was back to exams, and papers, and quizzes, and blue books.

  There were four hundred thousand American boys in Viet Nam by then and nothing made sense anymore. It was easier if you didn’t care. But she did. She cared too much, and in five more months, Peter would be out of law school.

  She was still sad when she went to bed that night, and realized when Peter held her that she was jealous of Gabby’s baby.

  “What are you thinking about?” Peter asked her in the dark, with his arms around her.

  “How dumb I am.” She grinned and he laughed.

  “There’s a cheerful thought.”

  “I get ahead of myself sometimes.”

  “Are you thinking about the baby again?” The baby was cute, but what had struck her was how happy they were, and how complete, and yet she couldn’t see herself having babies for years, but a part of her knew she would love that.

  “Look, if you want to, we can get married when I graduate in June. I’ll have a job by then … baby, I’d love it.” He was beaming in the dark, and from a draft standpoint too, it would be safer.

  “I just don’t think we should. Look at Gabby, she’ll never go back to school. I want to finish what I started.”

  “What about the Peace Corps?”

  She grinned. “I think maybe I could sacrifice that. I’m not so sure I’d be so great with all those cockroaches and leeches.”

  “Is it a date then?” He was smiling too. “June sixty-eight, when you graduate?” It was only seventeen months away, and it actually sounded pretty good to Paxton. “What do you say, babe?”

  “I say yes … and I love you.…”

  “I love you too.” He beamed. “Does this mean we’re engaged?”

  “It sounds like it, doesn’t it?” She almost giggled.

  “Can I buy you a ring?”

  “Maybe we should wait.” That seemed like such a big step, and it meant she had to tell her mother and listen to her rant and rave that she wasn’t marrying someone from Savannah. “Why don’t we wait till Christmas? Then it won’t be such a long time till the wedding.”

  “I’ll start saving,” he said, and snuggled close to her, as they fell asleep in the cozy little house in Berkeley.

  CHAPTER 8

  Peter graduated from law school in June 1967, and his parents gave an enormous lunch for him, at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. It was a serious affair attended by every important person in town, including Peter’s new boss at a very impressive law firm. The Wilsons introduced Paxton to everyone as their future daughter-in-law, and she didn’t seem to mind it. And Matt and Gabby were there. She looked beautiful and slim, and she talked constantly about the baby.

  “I’m ready for another one,” she confided to Paxton when they went to the ladies’ room. And Paxton noticed that she had never looked prettier or better.

  “What about school?”

  “I don’t want to go back anyway. I’m not like you. You want to be a journalist, you want a career, you want to prove something. Hell, Pax, I just want to be married and have babies.”

  Paxton smiled ruefully at her. “You sound like my mother’s dream. At least Allison will keep the heat off me. She’s having her baby in August. I guess I’ll have to fly back there then to see it.” Although she was planning to work for the Morning Sun again over the summer. And she only had one more year of school, and then they were going to give her a permanent job as a reporter. “So when’s the next one due?” Paxton teased. They had named the baby Marjorie Gabrielle, and called her Marjie. “A boy this time, I assume.”

  “That’s what Matt wants.” Gabby beamed. She was twenty-one years old, married, and a mother. And Paxton had lived with Peter for two years, and he was an attorney, and all she was was a student. She wanted to get on with it now. To finish school, get a real job, and get married. In that order.

  “Is he good to you?” Paxton asked, but she knew she didn’t have to.

  “Yes, he is,” Gabby said quietly, with a serious look at her old friend and roommate and future sister. “I was lucky. He could have turned out to be a real shit, but he didn’t. And he’s terrific with the baby.”

  “I’m glad,” Paxton said honestly as they left the ladies’ room finally and wandered back to their table.

  “What were you two doing in there? I was looking everywhere for you,” Peter complained when he finally found her. “I wanted to introduce you to my boss’s wife. She’s English and I think you’d like her.” But they couldn’t find her again, and it was a long, happy day and they were both exhausted when they finally went home to the little house in Berkeley. They had decided to continue to rent it for another year, so it would be easier for Paxton during her last year at UC Berkeley. And when she graduated, and she went to work for the paper, and they were married … then they would move into the city.

 
“It was a wonderful day.” She smiled at him. “I’m so proud of you … you did it!” He looked pleased, too, and his parents had been so proud. They were happy with both their children, and they loved Paxton, too, and she really loved them. They chatted about his graduation day all that evening.

  The rest of the summer sped past them. He was busy at his job, and Paxton was busy night and day at the paper. And then she flew home just before she went back to school, to see her mother and George’s new baby. He had had a little boy, and he was so pleased with himself he could hardly stand it. They had called the baby James Carlton Andrews, and he was cute and Allison was fine. And even her mother had unbent a little.

  Only Queenie seemed to have aged a dozen years, and suddenly seemed barely able to move with crippling arthritis. “Why don’t you do something for her?” Paxton accused, and George brushed her off. He had other things to do than worry about his mother’s ancient servant. “She won’t go to anyone else, George. She trusts you.”

  “There’s nothing I can do. She’s old, Pax. Hell, she must be close to eighty.”

  “So what? She could live to be a hundred if someone took care of her properly.” But although he didn’t say it, he didn’t think so. She had been failing for the past couple of years, and whether or not Paxton wanted to admit it, she wasn’t going to live forever.

  But Paxton reminded him again before she left, and she spent most of her last afternoon with Queenie.

  “You finally gonna marry him?” she asked grumpily when Paxton mentioned Peter.

  “We’ve been talking about next June, when I graduate, or maybe sometime next summer.” She really wanted to start working first. She still had strong feelings about remaining independent.

  “What you waitin’ for, girl? Gray hair or a full moon? You been lovin’ him for three years now.”

  “I know. But I want to finish what I’m doing.”

  “You can be married and go to school too. You smart enough to do both. So what’s the problem?”

  “I’m silly, I guess. I keep thinking I have to do one thing and then the other.”