by C. L. Hoang
Taking my hand, she added gravely, “But you and I, we need to talk.”
In silence, we hurried past a merry crowd in the garden directly inside to the lounge. I recognized the bartenders mixing drinks at the counter in the far corner and the two hostesses in áo dài waiting with their empty trays. We waved at one another.
Mme Yvonne pulled me down next to her on the couch by the Baldwin piano, the same upright console Elise had played with such dazzling artistry.
“A dreadful thing just happened, mon chéri. I need your counsel on it,” she began in a shaky voice. Her eyes looked somber and puffy, as if she’d been crying for some time. “It was all so sudden. I have yet to figure out what best to do. Oh, Sainte Mère de Dieu. Why does horrible news always come in bunches?”
I patted her hand. It felt cold and rigid. “Tell me, please. What’s the problem?”
She finally pulled herself together. “Lee Anne is here. She arrived an hour ago. I took her to my office so she could have some quiet. I kept telling the poor girl to go lie down in my room and rest, but she refused.”
My heart skipped at the mention of her name, and a chill of foreboding crawled up my back. I must have been crushing Mme Yvonne’s hand inadvertently for she cringed, and I loosened my grip. Not wishing to cause her additional stress, I fought hard to refrain from rushing her.
In bits and pieces, Mme Yvonne struggled to recount the latest events. It was all I could do to hold still and listen to her strained voice while not ten steps away from us, behind that silent door, sat Lee Anne. All by herself.
“They showed up at her house this morning as she was getting ready to leave. Her mother had run out for a quick errand, and Lee Anne had just helped her dad back to bed for his morning rest. Somebody knocked on the door. She said the minute she answered it, she knew. Two of her husband’s fellow officers stood at the door with hats in hands and grim faces. They asked to come inside, helped her to a chair, then broke the news to her—with their condolences.”
Dumbstruck with disbelief, I dropped my head. Lee Anne’s worst fear had come true. What agony she must have gone through, caught totally off guard and all alone—like Nancy Olsen on the day Bob died. I’d have given anything to have been there for her.
As if sharing my thoughts, Mme Yvonne fought back new tears. The past few months had been horrendous. Only weeks beyond the ides of March, this year had already wrought a store of death and sorrow upon our small circle of friends, as it had over the whole country.
On one occasion before Tết, Lee Anne had told me that nearly everyone in Việt-Nam had suffered the loss of a friend or a family member due to the war. “It is sad but it seems our fate in life,” she’d remarked at the time. “You see, we have always had to fight for survival because we share a border with China. For thousands of years, the Chinese kept trying to conquer us. They only gave up in the last century after the French arrived with modern weapons and colonized Indochina by force. Then for eighty years the French ruled and exploited us, until the Japanese invaded and took over from them during World War II. And can you believe it? In just five years under Japanese occupation, two million of our people were either killed or starved to death.”
She had paused momentarily, shaking her head at the ghastly memory.
“Unfortunately, the killing and suffering continued for us even after 1945. The communists immediately launched their ‘liberation campaign,’ and since then our country has been torn apart by civil war. Now it is my generation’s turn to defend our freedom. We are ready to do our part. What is the choice? Nothing worthwhile comes for free, do you agree?”
Little had she suspected that day that her family would soon be destined to pay the ultimate price once again, having already lost her younger brother during the 1954 evacuation.
My heart broke for them.
Presently, Mme Yvonne regained enough composure to resume her account.
“Vĩnh, her husband, was due for a forty-eight-hour leave this next weekend, his first since Tết. It was to be a special time for them. Their three-year anniversary is the same weekend. Then last night out on patrol, his jeep ran over a mine. Four men were killed on the spot, including Vĩnh. Not one gunshot was fired. It was the most quiet night they had had in a while.” She rocked back and forth in her seat. “Oh, Sainte Mère Marie. What we are supposed to learn from this? Vĩnh was barely twenty-seven. And Liên, all of twenty-one, already a widow.”
According to Mme Yvonne, the news had so stunned Lee Anne she probably didn’t shed a tear during the officers’ visit. “When it was over, the poor child saw the dispatchers to the door and waited until they were gone, then she locked up the house and left, as she had been all set to do before the interruption. As if nothing had happened. How in heavens she managed to get in a taxi and arrive here, I will never know.
“But I could see she was in a total daze, that something was terribly amiss. So I brought her back here to my office, away from the crowd. Even then it took some doing to get the complete story out of her, for she was not coherent, as you can imagine.”
Mme Yvonne stared into my eyes as she clutched my hand in earnest. “Oh, Roger, chéri. I am really worried about her. I broke down when she gave me the news, yet she herself remained so calm—so detached, like there were no feelings at all. This is not healthy. You know it is not. She has got to find a way to let it out.
“Anyway, this is not the best place for her to be, with all the carrying on and such. Unfortunately, I cannot cancel the party and send everyone away. It is clear the poor kid should not be left alone, but I doubt she is ready to go home to her parents. They will be devastated by the news, for sure, and she is in no shape to deal with all that right now. What can we do for her, dear? Please, help me think of something.”
My head was spinning, unable to focus. But I knew I had to be with Lee Anne. “I’ll go in and see her now,” I said. “You get back with Bill and the guests. Let me handle it from here.”
“Please take good care of ma petite soeur, Roger. You know she’s like a sister to me.”
I got up and gave Mme Yvonne a warm hug. “I may try and get her out of here if I can.”
She nodded, drew a long breath, then crossed the French door into the garden.
I immediately scurried across the lounge toward the closed door at the end of the hallway.
I knocked and listened. Not a sound.
Never would I have imagined such an ordinary door could look so forbidding. Softly so as not to startle her, I turned the knob, stuck my head in.
The hair on the back of my neck rose as a hot-and-cold sensation slithered down my spine. The lights were out in the office and the floor-length curtain was halfway drawn across the sliding glass door, but my eyes could still make out an all too familiar scene.
Somehow, somewhere, I’d taken a wrong turn and stepped back in time.
Immobile as a stone statue behind the desk, her face turned away toward the serene setting on the outdoor patio, she sat lost in sorrow—a portrait of loneliness. She gave no indication she had heard me intrude on her solitude.
I stumbled a few steps into the room and was about to call her name—Vivienne—when she slowly turned around. I stood transfixed, mouth open and dry, heart pounding.
Lee Anne. My eyes blinked.
“Oh, sweetie,” I murmured in the shadow as I approached the desk.
Half her face was still drowned in the shade, her eyes peering out at me. There was a flash of recognition in them, but they conveyed such weariness, and as Mme Yvonne herself had noted, something akin to aloofness. She was wearing her beautiful Tết áo dài, the yellow silk decorated with sequined chrysanthemum flowers—áo hoàng-hậu, her “queen’s attire,” as we had called it. I had a suspicion she might have chosen it for my benefit, remembering how much I had admired it, perhaps only minutes before the dispatchers knocked on her door.
/> I sat down at the desk, facing her. We looked at each other. Then I reached across the desktop and took her hand. It felt cold and lifeless in mine. I got up, stepped to her side, and put my arm around her shoulders.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I whispered, bending close to her ear. “We need to get you out of this dark cave. Let me take you some place where we can talk.”
I had no idea where we could escape to for some privacy.
The capital was bursting at the seams, jam-packed with people everywhere. Downtown was out of the question, being the hub of all activities for locals and foreigners alike. The Botanical Garden crossed my mind, but it was more of a fun place for young couples on dates, thus hardly appropriate for our purpose. Then the answer came to me as I was helping Lee Anne into a blue-and-yellow cab outside the National Music Conservatory, a short block from Mme Yvonne’s.
“Passage Eden, please,” I told the driver after we’d settled in.
He stared at me with a quizzical smile. I repeated our destination, adding, “By the Rex Hotel.” The man finally flashed a broad grin and nodded with enthusiasm. “Okay. Okay. You good. You number one.”
It didn’t take long before we arrived at the bustling curbside in front of Passage Eden. From there, it was a brief walk to Dick’s apartment on the ground floor. I had brought his key with me, thinking I might later look in on the place as promised. But as it turned out, it seemed the perfect sanctuary for Lee Anne right now: private and peaceful, out of the scorching midday sun, with a bed to lie down in and rest if she so desired.
I unlocked the door and ushered her in.
It smelled closed-up inside. Some loose mail was strewn on the tiles by the door. The only window was shut, a drape pulled over it, blocking out street noises from the sidewalk. The place looked neat and tidy even in the dim light, like a well-scrubbed hotel room—more like heaven, in comparison to my hooch at Biên-Hoà.
I guided Lee Anne to sit down on the edge of the bed, then stepped to the window and flung open the drape to let in daylight. A compact phonograph in sunflower yellow sat on the desk below the window, a 45 single on its turntable. I clicked it on for background noise and pulled on a long chain dangling from an old ceiling fan to start the air circulating.
As soft music rose and filled the room, I returned to Lee Anne’s side. She hadn’t spoken all this time and had simply followed my lead without reaction. Though increasingly nervous about this apathy, I had respected her silence, thinking it best to let her come out of it on her own, when she felt ready to talk.
“It’s warm in here,” I said. “I’ll run down to the street corner and pick us up something to drink. Make yourself at home. Dick would really want you to. Lie down and rest, why don’t you. I’ll try and be quiet when I get back.”
“Thank you. I will be fine,” she replied, her voice hollow and emotionless.
Hesitating a moment, I closed the door behind me and left her to her thoughts.
To my surprise, the Corsican shop owner instantly recognized me. It had been three months since Lee Anne and I had stopped in. “Ah, bonjour, vous revoilà—here you are again. You want key to Richard’s appartement?” he greeted me in his booming voice.
I waved back at him. “Not this time, thank you. I just need a couple of things.”
I grabbed a few goodies from the shelves, enough for a simple snack for two in case we got hungry later: a French baguette, a box of Laughing Cow cheese, a couple of bananas, and a six-pack of Coke bottles from the fridge. I set everything down at the cash register and dug in my pocket for my wallet, but the old man waved me off.
“Don’t worry, monsieur,” he said. “I will put it on Richard’s addition. That’s what he told me to do.” He then gathered all the items in a brown bag and handed it to me.
I thanked him and left, clutching the bag in my arm and hastening—no, running—back to Dick’s studio, suddenly seized with panic. I shouldn’t have left Lee Anne, even for a few minutes, alone in an unfamiliar environment in her current state of mind. What the hell had I been thinking?
The final dash robbed me of my last breath as I staggered into the room, nearly dropping the grocery bag and still seeing white from the glaring sun outside. But I already knew.
Lee Anne was no longer sitting on the bed where I’d left her.
My eyes blinked repeatedly trying to adjust to the shadows inside. The curtain had been drawn back over the window, filtering out the harsh daylight once again. The darkness cast a soothing atmosphere, further enhanced by the breeze from the ceiling fan.
Then I made out her frail silhouette leaning against the desk, head bowed. Music swirled around her, pouring forth from the record player, rapturous and tender like a lover’s embrace. To my dismay, I recognized Eddy Arnold’s rich baritone crooning “Make the World Go Away,” a song about broken hearts and second chances, the vagaries of life and redemptive love. Precisely not what Lee Anne needed in her hour of loss. I kicked myself for not having checked before playing the record.
Quietly, I shut the door and set the groceries on the kitchen counter. With trepidation, I approached her, not sure what to do.
She heard me and turned. I stopped, face-to-face with her mere steps away.
Her eyes glistened in the dark. They reminded me of Vivienne’s the last time I’d seen her alive, at Mme Yvonne’s before Tết—struggling to project poise and dignity while tottering on the brink of tears and emotional collapse.
“Three years we had been married . . . I had not once been to the Botanical Garden with him—” she started, her voice hoarse, then choked up.
I rushed over and reached for her hand.
I wanted to tell her I understood, maybe better than she thought I might—how the war had robbed her of adolescence and its playful rites of passage; how she’d grown up from schoolgirl to responsible housewife to co-provider for the family in virtually no time; and how she and Vĩnh had been forced to put their lives on indefinite hold, settling for one forty-eight-hour leave at a time. So much deprivation and sacrifice, so much hunger and yearning on their part—all coming to a crashing end. All for naught.
Yet no words came. Just a swelling in my chest that cut short my breath and stung my eyes.
I felt her hand fluttering in mine, its small grip closing tighter around my fingers.
“So much we had not shared. Even simple little things,” she murmured. “Never time, never a chance . . .”
Then came the tears, at long last. Without warning, they silently rolled down her cheeks and dripped on my hands, one drop following another, warm and gentle like fresh rain.
I took her in my arms, drew her close to me. That’s it, sweetheart, that’s it, I whispered to her in my thoughts. Just let it out, let it all out. All the pain and grief and rage. You don’t need to be strong and brave. This is your time to weep. This is your time to mourn.
My arms wrapped around her, I felt the warmth of her small body nestled against mine. Her cheeks rested on my chest, dampening my shirtfront with tears, while her shoulders shook in silence. The phonograph must have been set on automatic replay, for the music kept playing on and on as I held her close and rocked her gently in my arms.
Immersed in song and shadow, we were locked in place in a slow dance of sorrow.
How much time had elapsed, I didn’t know, until I felt her stirring in my arms. Looking down, I saw her face veiled in tearful grief, though her eyes were closed. Her warm breath grazed across my neck—soft as a sigh, and reminiscent of the scent of lotus from that afternoon over the pond not so long ago. I shifted around to support her from the back, then slowly coaxed her toward the bed. Perhaps after the release of emotions, she might now be able to catch some much-needed rest.
Bending down until my knees almost touched the floor, I eased her languid body onto the mattress, then leaned over to straighten the pillow. For one fleeting moment, my l
ips brushed against her cheek and our breaths mingled together. In shock, I registered the salty taste of tears on her sweet skin. Here, in the crook of my arms, by tragic twists and turns of fate, I was holding everything my heart had secretly yearned for.
Appalled by such an inopportune thought, I drew back. But her hand clung to mine, refusing to let go. I remained kneeling by the bed.
Against the white pillow, shrouded in the silk of her long, black hair, her unadorned face appeared even paler than usual, except for her lips burning bright red with inner fire. Hesitantly, I reached to brush the hair from her face and wipe tears from her closed eyes. My hand lingered just long enough for a stolen caress.
Overcome with awe and tenderness, my throat tightened and my own eyes welled up. The next thing I knew, my whole body tensed up under the distinct pressure on the back of my neck, gentle yet insistent, of her hands pulling me closer to her.
Until, startling us both, our lips touched.
A lifetime later, I still recall the taste of hunger and despair on her lips that day, which seared my own like a burning cut and filled my soul with indescribable agony. It was a kiss of reckless abandon, of rebellious rage from years of suppressed yearnings and denied happiness—and for me, the blinding storm that snuffed out any last glimmer of reason.
Swallowing hard, I cast all caution to the devil and surrendered to her beckoning.
In a fog of bewilderment, I cupped her face in my hands and covered it with kisses until my lips settled in the soft nook of her neck. I shut my eyes, inhaled the scent of her. In a flash, I was back in an alpine meadow in the High Sierra on a hot summer day, drunk from the heady scents of wild flowers and pine forests and the rush of life all around me. My skin was on fire, sending tingling sensations through my body to the very tips of my fingers and toes.