Peter's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  Peter couldn’t say enough praise for the coffee. At first everyone had assumed he was just being nice, but she knew better. She could tell when he was being disingenuous, and this was not one of those times. His sincerity became unmistakable when he began taking a real interest in their issues with exporting to the Americas. He begged them for at least a periodic care package that he would hoard in his own kitchen.

  As the evening progressed, Genny wondered how to get her grandmother aside. Even after the meal, no one wanted to leave the table. There was a warmth, a friendliness that pervaded the room.

  Genny passed through desperate and panicked on her way to resigned. She would just have to let go. Perhaps a phone call would be best, later in the week, or maybe next year. No, that was only two weeks away. Maybe the year after that. Though she had wanted to feel her grandmother’s touch and see her as they spoke, but there was clearly no time for that to happen tonight.

  So, Genny listened as Peter told the story of their first attempt to cook together which set off the smoke alarm in the Residence kitchen. He’d burned the French toast and she in turn had scorched the hot chocolate so badly they’d had to throw out the pot.

  “Now,” Gram announced as she rose to her feet at the end of Peter’s story. “I must talk with my granddaughter. And then you, Mr. Peter President, must return to your plane before you are missed. Come, Genny.” Gram turned for the door and, that simply, it was accomplished. Genny shuffled after her, feeling as if she were about twelve and was soon to be scolded.

  # # #

  Genny caught up with her grandmother exactly where she’d expected. Gram stood before the Weeping Wall in what had originally been the plantation’s front parlor. Though connected to the family living room by a curved arch, it was wholly different in character. Favorite chairs and stacks of books and board games gave way here to a state-of-the-art office. The cooperative was managed from here, workers and their families welcomed right into the main house if they needed anything.

  Now, in the light of a single lamp, all of that was but shadows. Desks, phones, copiers, computers, none of that mattered. What mattered was the powerful woman and the wall covered with hundreds of photos, each memory preserved in a small wooden frame.

  Genny came up beside the Beauchamp matriarch, wrapped her arm around the old woman’s waist, and rested her cheek upon the gray hair. For a long time they stood and looked at the pictures. Generations of images adorned the wall.

  She and her sisters growing up in pink pinafores and in traditional áo dài white dresses with circular nón lá leaf hats. Working on the farm together. Three pre-teen girls going off to school together, each two years apart. Even at that age, she had been the tall, gawky one, Jacqi rounder and smiling mischievously, and Helaine the serious one constantly trapped between them. There were dozens of photos of the three of them together through the years.

  There were also photos of her sisters graduating, Helly working in a hospital operating room, Jacqi at her first computer. Helly with her half-Viet, half-Lao husband. Jacqi with many different boys.

  And photos of Genny. Some she knew, some she didn’t. A series of her wearing her blue vophuc fighting uniform and a progression of belt colors. As the colors changed, so did she, from a young girl to a woman grown. But there were also photos of her at World Heritage Sites talking to reporters, and even one of her arguing a case to the U.N. Security Council just a few weeks ago, a grainy shot that must have been captured from an Internet news site.

  Her mother and father were there as well. Henri typically in the office with Jacqi looking over his shoulder, or more recently working beside him. Adele dressed like Gram, the two of them working the cooperative and a succession of Hmong dock-tail dogs accompanying them into the fields.

  Uncles who had died during the purges were here, as well as aunts who had died while fighting in the American War. And in the French War before that. And even her great, great granddad who had fought the guerilla war against the Japanese.

  Gram and Grand were there too, mostly working the plantation before the war. There were pictures of them at their two weddings: one Catholic, one traditional Vietnamese.

  “You looked so beautiful, Gram.” The photo was black and white, but that did nothing to hide the rich splendor of her robe or the perfect shape of the circular khan dong rising from her hair like a crown of gold.

  “As you will at your wedding, my dear,” Gram spoke in Viet.

  Genny looked at the Weeping Wall. At the wall that could make you weep for the pain of what was lost and at the same time for the wonder of what was gained. The wall always made her feel so full inside. As if, knowing where she came from, she could do anything.

  “Right there,” Gram pointed at a blank section of wall. “That’s where I will put the photo of the day you marry the man you love.”

  Genny turned to look at her, as much as their arms around each others’ waists allowed.

  “But, how will I know, grandmother? I don’t understand that.”

  “It’s simple, child. You already know. It will just take you a little more time to find out that you know. But you will get there. And soon I will put up the photo.”

  Genny once more rested her cheek against her grandmother’s hair and breathed in her rich smell of the farm life she still led. Of coffee and fan-palm, of jungle and river. Of home.

  She studied the blank spot on the wall that Gram had chosen for her. Genny did not need to close her eyes to see the image that would hang there.

  Her grandmother was right.

  Genny already knew.

  # # #

  They spoke little on the flight back. The night and the helicopter were dark. Peter sat with his arm around Geneviève, holding her as close as he could without crushing her to him. And, as well as the headset allowed, she rested her head on his shoulder.

  “Your family is wonderful,” Peter had set them to have a private intercom but they had been mostly content with the silence. “Though I feel a touch of pity for whatever man Jacqi finally decides on.”

  “We all do. But for all that, she is an alarmingly sensible woman. The cooperative will continue very well under her management for many years. She loves the business, even more than mother. Maybe as much as Gram, if that were possible. I often think it is the only thing that grounds Jacqi on this planet.”

  More miles passed in silence. Peter was trying to assimilate Geneviève’s family, to see them for who they were, rather than for the whirlwind that had just filled the last few hours of his life. Like digesting the gigantic meal they had prepared that still left his appetite feeling deeply content, he knew it was not something that could happen quickly.

  “Your grandmother is everything you said and more.”

  Geneviève nodded her head against his shoulder.

  “What did she say to you?”

  Geneviève shook her head this time. She had been very quiet after her talk with her grandmother. Deep in thought. Not remote, just quiet.

  “You are so like her.”

  “I am?” That brought her jolting upright so abruptly that her headset caught his chin and he bit his tongue hard.

  “Ow! Yes.”

  “No, Jacqi is—”

  “Like your father mixed with a California surfer girl right out of a Beach Boys song. Helaine has your mother’s serious streak, those are two very formidable women. I still can’t believe your mother came back while the re-education camps and long marches from the cities back to the country were still going on.”

  “But I’m not like Gram. She’s—”

  “Exactly like you. There is a peace and a centeredness to your strengths that runs so deep and so wide that you two are the great rivers others flow into. How’s that for an appropriate metaphor while flying over the Red River Delta?”

  They were approaching southern Hanoi now. By the city light
s that washed into the night sky, he could see Geneviève staring at him. But not at him. It was as if she were staring at a reflection of herself in his face that she had never seen before. He found it so obvious that he wondered how she could not have known.

  They swung around the western edge of the city on the last leg of their flight back to Noi Bai airport. The broad river was a dark anchor to the bright lights of the scattered skyscrapers and the busy city at their feet.

  These were his last moments of being Peter. He could feel the Presidency lurking on the ground below him, waiting there like a crouched beast. Or like a mantle that, once pulled back over his shoulders, would change him. Change who he had been these last few hours with Geneviève and her family.

  “There’s something I need to say, Geneviève. Something while we are still in the air and I am not back to being the Commander in Chief.”

  She looked at him. Her focus changing from the reflection of herself back to that peaceful waiting she created so effortlessly for him.

  This shouldn’t be said over headsets and an intercom. But neither did he want to take them off and have to shout to her either, only to have her cup an ear and shout back, “What?”

  But they were on final descent, and he had to speak while he still felt like Peter. He kissed her lightly on the lips, her widening eyes catching the airport lights and revealing their rich green as she guessed.

  Did she hope, or fear? Well, there was only one way to find out.

  “I love you, Geneviève.”

  Her kiss and the taste of her tears were the only answer he needed.

  Chapter 11

  Preah Vihear Temple was located at the northernmost edge of Cambodia, close to Thailand. It was over an hour-long helicopter flight from where Air Force One was parked at Phnom Penh International. They could have parked much closer, Siem Reap airport by Angkor Wat was within thirty minutes flight. The shorter runway would limit the take-off weight of the plane, but that could be compensated for with partial fueling. However, Peter had deemed it more politically appropriate for them to land in the capital city.

  There he’d had lunch with both the King and the Prime Minister as well as key members of the Cambodian Parliament. Then, with their U.N. Ambassador and Deputy Prime Minister aboard, they had flown north on Marine One.

  This trip was vastly different from the flight to Geneviève’s, this was a full-on Marine Corps operation. Two VH-60N White Hawks, heavily armored versions of the Sikorsky Black Hawks, were the main flight. They jostled about, exchanging places in a shell game until no one except the pilots and their passengers knew which craft was which.

  The Royal Cambodian Air Force provided a pair of their Aero L-39 Albatross ground attack jets to fly escort, and flight controllers had cleared a corridor twenty kilometers wide. Frank’s briefing had selected this site, from the several Geneviève had suggested, as being the lowest-risk and most defensible for a Presidential visit. It had also been Geneviève’s preferred location for cultural and political reasons.

  “So, Ms. Beauchamp,” Peter thought it best to keep it formal in front of the other officials, though any idiot would be able to see they were hopelessly crazy about each other. “Could you bring us up to speed on this site and UNESCO’s involvement in it?”

  Peter sat as he usually did in the White Hawk, in the sole, forward-facing armchair. Directly across from him, the Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister sat in the other armchair facing the back of the helicopter. The small couch running along the other side of the cabin included the Cambodian Ambassador to the U.N., the U.S. Assistant Representative to ASEAN, and Geneviève, as the Southeast Asia Chief of Unit for UNESCO World Heritage Convention.

  He had to keep reminding himself of that. She was so close, her knees practically brushing the side of his seat. She wore a skirt that came to just her knees. It was snug, but elegant. So easy to rest his hand on her knee, which would be unfair to her position of status among the others.

  Frank sat in his typical spot, in the jump seat directly behind Peter’s armchair. This helicopter, unlike Emily’s SOAR craft, was well enough sound insulated for them to talk without headsets.

  “Well,” Geneviève leaned forward, exposing the line of her neck.

  Peter considered slapping himself, but knew it wouldn’t help. There hadn’t been a moment for them to discuss how she could possibly continue her career and be with the President of the United States. But it didn’t matter. That she wanted to was all the answer that mattered at the moment. They had agreed not to tell anyone, neither staff nor family, until this trip was over. That would be only three more days. By then they should have figured out what to say to everyone.

  “The temple is over a thousand years old, a masterpiece of the Khmer Empire, as is Angkor Wat, their capital city.” She spoke easily, her voice engaging. “It is perched on a narrow promontory of the Dângrêk Mountains. This has caused both Cambodia and Thailand severe problems over the last century. The escarpment that separates the mountains from the Cambodian plains over five hundred meters below, was to be the line of the border. More correctly, the line of the watershed was to be the border. There were maps drawn in 1907, placing the temple and one of the approaches to it in Cambodia and another approach in Thailand. But the watershed line, had it been followed, would have placed all of the approaches in Thailand and only the temple itself in Cambodia. In 1962 the International Court of Justice became involved and ruled that because Thailand had not protested the border as drawn for almost sixty years, the 1907 map was valid and would stand.”

  Deputy Prime Minister Pok made an emphatic nod.

  Peter had to force himself to remain focused on his guests. Geneviève had warned him that they would be entering a murky and emotional area when they discussed the border. But a fresh coup in two different African countries had cost him most of last night between the dinner with Geneviève’s family and this flight. He’d crashed into his cabin for only two hours, pleased to see Geneviève asleep on one of the twin beds when he did so. She hadn’t woken when he kissed her on the forehead, and she’d been awake and gone by the time he crawled back into his office.

  “Yes,” Pok insisted, nodding again as if it would make his statement more real. “It is the property of the Kingdom of Cambodia, just as is Angkor Wat. The Khmer Empire became Cambodia and it is rightfully ours.”

  The Cambodian Ambassador to the U.N., Moul, or was he Muy, looked apologetic. He thought it was Moul, but Peter would just have to be careful not to say his name until someone else did.

  “I would not contradict the esteemed Minister Pok.” Meaning the man had his facts totally wrong. “Suffice to say, the temple is on Cambodian soil, despite being atop the escarpment. Despite numerous international mandates and agreements, the Thai government places border stations and police barricades on these roads. They often close the road that is our only access to a piece of our own country. At other times, we have free passage.”

  “Yes,” Geneviève stepped in before Pok, who was clearly getting ready to build a righteous national-pride argument, could begin. “Preah Vihear, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2008, represents both significant cultural pride as well as substantial tourist dollars. And the argument over this balance is beyond the purview of today’s discussions, Mr. President.” But she addressed the last to Pok, clearly a reminder of exactly who was important in today’s visit.

  “UNESCO is attempting to work with both governments to set up a free economic zone that is shared by both countries. The International Court has required both Thailand and Cambodia to withdraw their troops from the area. The two governments agree only that they can’t withdraw unless the other does so first.”

  “It is Cambodian land, why should we move first?” Pok felt that completed his argument.

  “We’re flying into the heart of a military stand-off?” Peter glanced back at Frank not giving a damn if the officials hear
d. Better if they did, it would emphasize that the President of America felt they needed to get their act together.

  Frank’s deep voice carried forward easily. “Last shots were fired in February 2011. Forces remain in the area, but there have been no more hostilities since that time. Both Cambodian and Thai commanders have assured us that we will have a peaceful visit. They each separately stated that it was to our advantage to have so much military security in such an unusually remote locale.”

  “It is further suggested,” Geneviève picked up without missing a beat “By the UNESCO Director, ASEAN Director, and concurred with by the U.S. State Department, that a site visit will demonstrate international commitment to a peaceful solution.”

  It was almost as if she and Frank had rehearsed the handoff from security to veiled threat of U.S. and U.N. military involvement. Peter glanced at Geneviève’s carefully neutral expression. He’d learned to read that face over these last weeks. Yes, she had clearly planned that last speech which had Minister Pok squirming in his seat. He had to remember not to mess with her.

  “We’re approaching the site. We have been cleared to land at the end of the temple grounds, as the most readily securable location,” the Marine Corps pilot announced.

  Peter looked out the window. He tapped the intercom. “Could you circle once please?”

  The pilot swung wide, keeping Peter’s window toward the view. The flat plains of Cambodia which had climbed just a few hundred feet in the three hundred miles from the coast were chopped off by the Dângrêk Mountain escarpment. The Preah Vihear Temple itself was perched on a narrow promontory that reached half a mile into the plains compared with the rest of the rise.