Eastman Was Here

by Alex Gilvarry

  He got dressed. Chose a good pair of pants, an airy summer shirt he’d picked up in Hawaii. He looked and felt good. Everything in his closet fit him now that he’d lost weight in Vietnam.

  The boys were seated around the table and he came in and gave them both a kiss.

  “Good to be back,” he said.

  Toby put his arms around Eastman’s waist and pressed his ear to his father’s stomach.

  “What’s for breakfast?” he asked.

  Penny was frying eggs at the stove and turned around to take notice of him. “I’m making eggs,” she said. “Have a seat.” She looked tired, her face was swollen from crying, and she wasn’t acting overly gracious. The eggs crackled in the pan. She cooked eggs with the heat too high, and normally he would tell her to lower the heat or the eggs would stick to the bottom of the pan. But today he was content to let her do it her way.

  “It’s good you’re back, Dad,” said Lee.

  “It’s good to be back,” he said, sitting down. “Let’s eat some eggs for protein. Protein builds muscle.” He flexed an arm and held it close to Toby. “Feel that.” Toby did. His arms were lean and tight, as tight as they’d been in years.

  “New shirt?” Penny asked.

  “Yes. I got it in Hawaii,” he said, and immediately he regretted it.

  “You were in Hawaii!?” asked Toby.

  “Yep.”

  “When were you in Hawaii?” said Penny.

  “Last week. On a layover back from Vietnam.”

  “So you flew that way,” she said, with implications.

  “I don’t know. Yes, I flew that way. I stopped in Bangkok on the way there, Hawaii on the way back. The paper has a bureau in Honolulu.” He particularly avoided thinking about Meredith. That was over. He ended it and Penny now had his full attention.

  Lee chimed in to change the subject, sensing the tension. “What was Vietnam like?”

  He told him about how to get there, stressing the length of the flight and the need to stop and refuel. “One can’t just fly direct into a war.” Then he spoke of the city of Saigon, full of reporters moving in and out, crossing rivers and borders. The hot spots, the curfew, the prostitutes. “Alan!” Penny scolded him. He had a copy of the paper in his suitcase, if Lee wanted to read his dispatch. At the mention of the paper he looked to Penny for a reaction to his work, but she didn’t lift her head or say anything. It irritated him, though he attributed her stoicism to being embarrassed for having thrown the paper away in the trash that day he followed her.

  “Are we getting the paper delivery?” he asked.

  “No, I assumed you had it stopped,” she said. She served the eggs, the boys each getting one. He got two, over medium, and reached for the salt. She kept an egg for herself that had stuck to the pan and broken.

  “I’ll call and have them start delivering it again. The Times and the Herald.”

  The boys ate their breakfast with smiles. He was happy to be back, to be around them. He was attuned to their attitudes and feelings for the next few days because his own mood was so connected to theirs. All he had to do was be with his children and he could feel good again. Children were a miracle. Which made him think of Helen. And after breakfast he went to his study and called her at her dormitory at Vassar.

  “I’m back and I’m alive. All’s well,” he said.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Helen said. “I got your letter. Did you get mine?”

  “No. But everything will be forwarded to me here by the hotel. I’m sorry I didn’t receive it in time, but I left in a hurry.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll tell you what I said. That I hope you come back safe and sound. That I love you. That I checked up on Toby and Lee while I was in the city again. I called first, of course. Penny was very nice to me. I think she felt bad. I decided whatever happens I still want to be close to my little brothers. And then I wrote to tell you that Bobby Cohen asked me to marry him.”

  “Well, hold on. You, who don’t believe in marriage, are considering a proposal?”

  “I didn’t say that. And I have good reason to be cynical, don’t you think, Daddy?”

  “What did you say? And who is Bobby Cohen?”

  “Don’t worry. I told him no. I barely know him. We went out twice, if that. He attends Columbia. My letter explained it all.”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem like you needed my counsel.”

  She wanted to know how he was and he gave her some details of his trip. He told her that he’d moved home and that they would be working things out. “Prospects are good,” he said.

  “I’m happy for you. I’m skeptical. But I’m happy. Has she broken it off with what’s his name?”

  Good question, he thought. “We’re working through all the aspects. I’m just calling to say I’m back and that I love you. And I want to see you soon. Why don’t I visit or you come down?”

  Helen’s summer semester had started, plus she was working part time at a record store for $1.60 an hour. She wouldn’t be able to get away until August. They settled on his going up to Poughkeepsie for a visit. “I love you, Daddy,” she said, and he was again filled with that feeling. Of being rich with love, the kind only children could provide.

  For the next week, their house on Pineapple Street bore a faint resemblance to the home they once had. Penny went about the household chores, the boys went to summer camp four days a week at Our Lady of Lebanon, and he tried to stay out of Penny’s way as she cleaned every surface, top to bottom—except for his study. He tried to work, despite the sound of the broom smacking the corners and walls, and the rumble of the vacuum. She avoided his study and any room he was in. So while she was cleaning their bedroom, he approached her.

  “Why don’t you let me help you,” he said.

  “This house is so dusty, I’m trying to air it out.”

  “My study could use a once-over.”

  She didn’t answer. He went over to their bed and began straightening the duvet and fluffing the pillows.

  “Are you avoiding cleaning my study? Or is it me you’re avoiding?”

  In response to what he thought a fair question, she turned the vacuum on once again. He didn’t want to get angry, but he saw Penny making very little effort to communicate. He pulled the plug on the vacuum. She looked at him, perplexed, as he held up the cord and threw it on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “I’m standing here and I want you to tell me what I can do to help.”

  She didn’t think he was interested in helping her and he told her she was wrong. It would be different now. They would be equals and he would do equal work.

  “I’m about to do the boys’ room next. You can start there.”

  “Fine.”

  He went into the boys’ room and started picking up dirty socks and T-shirts, their shoes and slippers. He found one of the special pilot’s wings in Toby’s mattress and he placed it on the bureau. After Penny was finished vacuuming the master bedroom they switched places and he went into the bedroom to tidy up. Her suitcase was closed and placed upright at the foot of the closet. He took it out and saw that it had just been closed, her things remained inside. He would begin here. He spread the suitcase out on the bed and folded her things neatly, laying them out. One pile for tank tops, then undergarments, blouses, skirts, shorts. He hung her blouses in her corner of the closet and put the piles away in their respective places. When the clothes didn’t look right in the bureau, he readjusted the piles and refolded some of the items. He even messed up her underwear drawer a little as he remembered it before she left. Her bed slippers he placed at the foot of her side of the bed at a forty-five-degree angle facing out. He wanted to demonstrate that he was trying. The suitcase he put away at the bottom of the closet where he’d found it.

  At times, it was hard for them to simply talk. They slept in t
he same bed at night, though between dinner and bed he went into his study to work on his second dispatch, which still wasn’t finished. It reeked of falseness, had little substance, and in truth he might have considered it some of the worst reporting to come out of the war. He took a look at the copy of the Herald with his first dispatch, and even though it had some decent parts, mostly regarding Channing, he found it depressed him. And he knew why. He had used Saigon not as a subject, but as a way to sop up all of his misery, ignoring what was at the heart of the misery in front of him. He’d cheated Saigon, but above all, he’d cheated himself. He vowed that it was time to get back to work. He was still intent on making a book out of his dispatches, but to do so, he would have to return to Vietnam in order to do the war justice.

  By the time he retired to bed on these nights he was in no mood to talk to Penny and she wasn’t pushing for it either.

  Friday evening, Penny was late getting home. She’d left for her office in the morning, but didn’t call to tell him what time she would be home. If it was a test of some sort, he felt ready for it. So he went to the market with the boys. They would be preparing dinner for their mother to reward her for all of her hard work. They made spaghetti and sauce from scratch. Canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, grated carrots, ground beef, garlic powder, oregano, salt, and pepper. Evaporated milk, too, for creaminess. Lee grated the carrots and chopped the onion while Eastman supervised. Toby was in charge of stirring the sauce from his position on a step stool. For the first time since Eastman was back he was having fun with his boys. He noticed a change in their dispositions, too. They had been walking on eggshells around their parents when Eastman and Penny were both home. They hid in their rooms or played outside in the street. And whenever Eastman entered a room Penny was in, Lee shuffled his little brother out to avoid what they sensed was coming. The children were well aware of the tension in the home. Now with Penny out, they could all relax.

  He kept the task of making dinner focused on Penny. They were preparing a meal for their mother. But when he mentioned this it seemed to take the air out of the room.

  He had Toby feed him a taste of the sauce over the stove top. It was a touch sour and too salty. “It needs sugar,” he said. “Regardless, Mom’s going to be very proud of you.” The boy made an anxious face. Eastman gave Toby the box of sugar and went to help Lee set the table. Toby yelled, “Dad! Dad!” The boy had poured nearly the whole box of sugar into the sauce.

  “Stop, don’t stir it in!” Eastman ran over and picked the boy off the step stool and put him on the floor. He got a ladle and scooped out most of the excess sugar into the sink. “There,” he said. “We’re saved. What happened? Didn’t I say just a little sugar?”

  “It slipped,” said Toby.

  “It slipped!? You almost turned the sauce into dessert!” The boys laughed. He put Toby back up on the stool and returned the wooden spoon to his son. “Okay, just keep stirring.”

  Penny returned, unannounced, just as they were draining the pasta into a colander in the sink. Lee was sitting up on the kitchen counter banging his legs against the cabinets, waiting. The kitchen was a mess, but the dinner was ready. When Penny saw them all working together, she smiled, put her things on the counter. “Down,” she told Lee and he hopped off.

  “We’re making spaghetti,” said Eastman.

  “I can see that,” Penny said. “Do you need help?”

  “No, sit. We’re making dinner tonight.”

  Penny sat down and waited while Eastman and the boys served her. She was dressed particularly well and her makeup was extreme. Over the steam and the smell of onion and garlic he could make out her perfume.

  It was clear to him in the way she didn’t offer an explanation as to where she had been that tonight they would have a major talk. And the meal that he and the boys had so much fun making turned into the worst time they all had eating together. The food was fine. It had been made with love. But the pieces around the table were out of place. He looked to his youngest, Toby, who was tensing his jaw. He remembered Helen pointing this out.

  “Hey,” he said to Toby in order to distract the boy, “you’re eating tomatoes. You never eat tomatoes.”

  “It’s spaghetti,” Toby said.

  “Yeah, but the sauce is made out of tomatoes.”

  “It is?”

  Eastman looked at Penny to gauge her interest. “He made the sauce.”

  “It’s raw tomato that he doesn’t like,” Penny said. “He always eats spaghetti, don’t you, honey? Now finish your plate.”

  Toby looked down at his spaghetti and did what his mother ordered.

  “All I know is,” Eastman said, “the kid doesn’t like tomato, never has.”

  “Let it go, Alan.”

  “Let what go? I’m only trying to make conversation. If you prefer we eat here in silence—the meal your kids made for you—then all the better.”

  Penny didn’t respond. She wasn’t even going to give him the satisfaction of an argument.

  Later that evening, in bed, she said to him, “Aren’t you going to ask me where I was?” She phrased it as if he had made another mistake.

  “I was waiting for you to tell me. Besides, I didn’t want to ask in front of the boys in case it was something they shouldn’t hear.”

  “But are you going to ask me now?”

  “Are we arguing about whether I am going to act jealous or are you just going to tell me where you were?”

  “I was with him. I broke it off.”

  Eastman nodded his head. Was he to smile at the news? Was he to embrace her with a kiss? He didn’t feel like either of those things.

  “I thought you would be pleased,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “Boy, you’re sure acting like it.”

  “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “You knew, Alan. It’s not news that I was seeing someone.”

  “We have talked about him, once, but you never offered up any details. You kept them from me deliberately. To me he’s a phantom. Maybe I don’t want any details now because I’d rather not fixate on him and what you did. We’re supposed to be working on putting things back together. I’d rather not get upset.”

  “Lower your voice,” she said. He hadn’t realized he raised it. And all things considered, Eastman felt justified.

  In the past they would have had it out, reconciled, made love, cried, worked through the pain, battled again, and gotten themselves to a place where they felt resilient to what may come. This time, he thought of the children. Would it really benefit Lee and Toby if their parents stayed together? This had been the week from hell; he could no longer ignore it.

  All the time he spent brooding over her, rehashing their past, daydreaming of her, and having lustful fantasies didn’t seem relevant now. The children were unhappy, and it was because of the dynamic in the home. Penny’s feelings for him had changed for a reason. He wasn’t picking up any hints from her that she would fall madly in love with him again. And he was too tired to convince her.

  Penny furrowed her forehead. Whether she regretted getting back with him or breaking it off with her lover was anyone’s guess. She had done something to her eyebrows. Colored them in dark brown to make them look more defined. He didn’t prefer it. It was like she had put on a mask and wasn’t going to take it off.

  Both of them were too drained that night to begin planning the separation. But he went to bed knowing it was the only way to continue.

  • • •

  The newspaper delivery resumed the next day and the papers hit the front door with a thud. He rose early, dressed, and made his way down to put the coffee on the stove. He went out onto the stoop to collect the newspapers. It was a bright, summer morning with a cool breeze coming off the water, heading east.

  Back inside, he had his coffee in the kitchen, sitting down, flipping through the Ti
mes to see if there were any relevant stories on Vietnam. There was one about an accidental bombing by the U.S. in Cambodia on the Phnom Penh–Saigon Highway, which sounded close enough to Phnom Penh for him to be concerned. Four hundred casualties from a 20-ton mistake dropped by their great ally in the sky. No plausible explanation was given as to why. There was no reported enemy activity in the area.

  The Times hadn’t reported any Americans killed, even though the bombs were close to a marine barracks, so he shifted to the Herald to see if they had reported anything different. It was possibly still too soon to know who was killed. He was truly worried about Channing as he scanned the front page. Then he saw her byline, front and center, and knew that everything was okay. She was alive.

  Her dispatch was from a place called Neak Loeung, about forty miles south of Phnom Penh along the Mekong River. He assumed she wasn’t in the bombing, but my God, how quickly she got there from the capital. He read on about the people of Neak Loeung who lost entire families, people who wished they were dead, too. She talked to these men and women perhaps a day after the bombing and he could feel their anxiety. The article was still damp with emotion. In his mind he saw the rubble of hospitals and schools, the leveled homes and debris, the faces caked in dust—all through Channing’s careful eye. Things he would have generalized as “the toll of war” she stopped to observe. It was a piece of writing that could sway Washington if the right people were to read it. She knew the power of emotion, it seeped through her details, got under the skin. The power of witnessing and reporting. The power of empathy. This is what his writing was missing. Not humanity, but humanity’s authenticity.

  Eastman went to his study and with a pair of scissors he cut Channing’s article from the front page. He sat down at his desk and was moved to write a note to Meredith. He got some stationery and a pen, and wrote simply, You were right. She’s the real deal.

  Upstairs, the house began to stir. He could hear Penny awake now, and one of the boys shuffling into the bathroom. He folded Channing’s article along with his note into an envelope. Then he walked out his front door with a letter to post.