He stopped speaking, and stared at the long columns of names. At the top were Hien Due and his family along with Mai, then followed the names, ages, length of time they had taken lessons, and how fluent they were now. There were no other messages of gratitude, but the spreadsheet of names struck a cord in David’s heart. How long had he cut himself off to emotional attachments? After so many years of bitter loneliness, he had found where he belonged.
“I … thank you. Thank you.”
“We know you didn’t want any sort of grand celebration, and I’m aware of why you don’t enjoy goodbyes. Go with our blessing.”
Hien Due rose and made a deep bow. His lips trembled and his eyes were full of a terrible sorrow, but he smiled all the same and left through the open door. David watched out the window, as his dearest friend drove away, and gripped the envelope with its precious contents to his chest.
The house moaned and rustled behind him, the drip-drip-drip of the draining tub water rushed through the pipes, yet David stood in the doorway listening to memories.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
17 October 1986
DAVID DROVE THE STREETS of Dallas in horror. October in this god-forsaken place was a special kind of hell, only August was worse. He rounded the corner, and pulled into a hotel parking lot. A large fifteen-passenger van and trailer had parked oddly in the corner. It shimmered in the spirals of heat, that rose from the pavement. It disgorged Marine after Marine. Some were tall and skinny, others with rounded stomachs protruding under their flight suits, but all with the same haircut.
A shorter man, though he looked more like a boy, jumped off the bus. He laughed freely and punched one of his friends in the shoulder. David exited his car, and cursed the heat again. If only he was back in France, with more than just memories of vacations in Cannes, Rome, and the Normandy beach.
“Uncle David!”
The short Marine he had noticed earlier now rushed to him with childlike joy.
“Andrew.”
His nephew hadn’t changed in the years it had been since they’d seen each other last. Andrew still had the same smooth, boyish face, calm brown eyes, and stick straight eyelashes. The two embraced. As David looked longer, it was clear that Andrew was exhausted, heavy dark rings burrowed under his eyes, and when he sighed, it was deep and lasting, as though he was taking his first breath in months.
“How was the flight from New Orleans?”
“A little bumpy.”
“Your daughter how is she? Six months old if I remember?”
“She’s good. Listen, I’d better see if my sergeant wants help, and then we can go. That ok?”
David nodded, and watched as Andrew trotted back to the white van. Without warning large black spots overwhelmed his sight, and he slipped, burning his hand against the side of the car. He struggled to stay upright, and cradling his hand, he felt his way back to the driver’s seat, and collapsed on it. Perhaps it was just a lack of water or the atrocious heat, but the collapse was worrisome.
“All right, I have the all clear.”
“Let’s go then.”
Some of the weariness and dizziness dissipated as they wove through traffic. Andrew chatted away, regaling David with a story about getting a new sergeant to piss out the back of a van after a night of heavy drinking and getting him caught by a MP. David couldn’t help but notice the forced joy in Andrew’s voice, and the dark circles under his eyes that had yet to be explained. David was, for all his faults, not the prying type. He had no inclination to make others think that they might also pry into his life. Though he was worried, he kept his mouth shut.
They arrived at the apartment complex, and David led the way down the now familiar path. Andrew wiped his forehead, and David longed to wipe away the sweat that trickled down his back.
“How long have you been here now, Uncle David?” Andrew asked, as he unzipped his flight suit, to reveal a white shirt.
“A couple of months,” David replied, removing the ratatouille from the oven.
Andrew sighed in pleasure at the scents wafting from David’s kitchen, as he looked around. The apartment was sparse to the point of Spartan. David didn’t even own a television, preferring the pleasure of books and music to the raucous, and frankly annoying shows. The walls were painted a drab sort of beige; not light enough for the French ideal and not dark enough to be fashionable. All that sat in the living room was an uncomfortable looking rocking chair and a faded grey couch with sagging cushions.
“I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble for me,” Andrew said sheepishly, as they sat down to dinner.
David smiled, placing a baguette, salad, and water jug on the table, and courteously said it was no trouble at all. Andrew ate with gusto, and failed to notice that David’s plate went mostly untouched.
He cleared the table as Andrew walked around the small living area. Dinner had been quiet and now David racked his brains for an innocuous topic. He joined Andrew in the living room.
“How is your new wife–your daughter? Rebecca?”
“Uncle David…I don’t know where to start,” Andrew said, his head dropped like a stone. David cringed inwardly. How could he even begin to give another person advice?
“In your own time,” David said assuringly.
“I slept with her before we were married. You must have done the math. Married in October, baby at the end of March. Rebecca is the most adorable little girl, but my wife … I don’t know what to do. I must be going crazy. A marriage shouldn’t be this hard, not even when it’s because of a pregnancy. Did you know my mother refused to come? I was an idiot. I love my daughter, but I shouldn’t have married this woman. But now I am married. I am married. I am committed,” he said, trailing off into a whisper, trying to convince himself.
Andrew choked back sobs, and David stood by: helpless. Before him wasn’t the affable young Marine or boisterous nephew, but a broken man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. A weight David knew all too well.
“Why not?”
Andrew looked up, his face long and drawn as if he had aged fifty years in the space of a minute. David felt the need to clarify, “Why shouldn’t you have married her?”
“She had a terrible childhood, Uncle David. Worse than anything I could imagine. She was sexually, physically, and emotionally abused. She’s a broken, mixed up person. I wanted to help her. I thought I could fix her. I thought that with me she might start to heal from all the pain. But she still wants to see her parents, wants their validation. She wants me to be perfect. We had a blazing argument before I left because she was angry that I was leaving again and not supporting her. Uncle David, I had to go! It’s required for my job. But she’s so angry that I have a job, and she’s stuck at home.”
“Have you tried talking to her?”
Andrew nodded his head. It looked as though he was unraveling at the seams. David’s mouth was dry. What advice was he supposed to offer? He had experience with sexual relations outside of marriage and the shame it brought, but Catherine had always been a steadying force for him. She was happy, loving, and understanding. There was not a moment that David felt confused about her. Andrew was barely twenty-one, already husband and father.
“Sometimes I don’t want to go back. I’d like to take Becca and run,” Andrew whispered, his eyes grew large and fearful.
David saw terrible cancerous shame grow in those eyes, shame that made Andrew’s shoulders slump forward with exhaustion.
“I don’t know what to say.”
Andrew looked up, and smiled for the first time.
“I know you already knew,” Andrew blurted out. “I’m sure Mom told you.”
“It wasn’t your mother. Delbert came by to see me after your wedding.”
“Dad usually isn’t the gossiping type.”
“Don’t hold it against him. I had to tear it out of him piece by piece. He loves you. I remember when he called me after his first grandchild was born. He was so proud, and Deb was never one fo
r pride. But I could hear it in his voice. The idea of grandchildren thrilled him. It thrills your mother as well. Though she might not admit it right now.”
They shared a laugh.
“I haven’t talked to my mother since I told her about the baby. She’s furious.”
“Oh, she’ll come around in time. I’ve known her longer than you have. She’s got a soft spot for family.”
“I’m a failure,” Andrew said.
The temperature in the apartment might have dropped fifty degrees. David saw in Andrew a reflection of his own failures and shortcomings. So much shame lay shored up in his heart, and he had never been able to wholly eradicate Catherine or Zoya from his mind. There was some string holding them together that refused to break.
He knew what the family said about him: the rumors that he was homosexual, that he left behind a lover in France. It was enough to make him hide away in this hellhole. He was in no situation to advise his young nephew, because if David were honest, he was always lying to someone.
The family was made up of good Christians who had never committed a mortal sin in their lives. They were upstanding members of their church. David and Andrew were contaminated; black sheep in a gleaming white family. But while forgiveness might be possible for Andrew, acceptance too someday, that was not in the cards for him. Who could forgive what he’d done to Catherine, if they knew?
“I’m sorry about all this,” Andrew said, hastily wiping his eyes on his sleeve.
David grinned. “You’re more than welcome to keep going,” he said as his nephew laughed and hiccupped awkwardly into his glass.
“Do you ever think of going back to France?”
David didn’t even flinch. It was a question he was asked quite often.
“No, I don’t think so. I’m content here. Paris was a long time ago.”
“Do you miss it?”
“I miss the food and the wine and the culture.”
“I can’t wait to go someday. Maybe I’ll take my wife, maybe that would be enough to make her happy,” Andrew said with a sigh.
“That’s a slippery slope.”
Nephew and uncle looked at each other for a moment. It worried David that Andrew was falling into the same trap that Catherine had. She was forever trying to be everything, to solve everything. In her mind, if she were perfect, then David would never have to dwell on his past. It was a fallacy. As hard as she tried, Catherine could never give him what he wanted.
“I hope you don’t mind my coming here,” Andrew said. “It’s wonderful to see you.”
David looked at the morose face across from him, and smiled.
“I don’t remember the last time I cooked ratatouille. You lose the desire when there’s no one else to share the meal, and I don’t eat much.”
“You don’t? Is something wrong?”
David stiffened, caught himself, and then relaxed. It was a slip he had not anticipated, and Andrew now looked at him with wary eyes.
“Oh Andrew, I’m fine. I’ve just been working odd hours. It’s hard to keep up an appetite. I’m sure you don’t know anything about that.”
“The Marine Corps works us so hard that I want to collapse and gorge myself at the same time. I either fall asleep at my plate or eat everything in the refrigerator.”
The two men laughed long and hard, clutching their sides in mirth. David could remember what it was like being so young, so hungry that it felt as though there wasn’t enough food in the world to satiate his appetite.
He turned the conversation to their extended family, and Andrew jumped at the opening, chattering happily away. In place of David’s heart, a heavy weight clawed at him. He sat across from Andrew watching the young man’s face light up. Andrew knew of secrets and heartache and before David could control it, they rushed to his lips, his buried secrets, tickling his tongue, pushing toward the light. David bit down on his lips hard.
After all these long years, they had suffocated him. After two decades of telling lies and swallowing the truth there were many days where he believed the fabrication and he lived the fantasy that there was no one in Paris and there never had been.
Andrew was looking for a compatriot, a lost soul, someone to share the burden of being the family disappointment. It didn’t matter how much Andrew was hurting. The years, which lay like lovers upon his secrets, were too hard to strip away. He could only sit and listen to a boy with more troubles than he deserved.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
31 October 1988
HALLOWEEN. EVEN THROUGH THE second story windows, he could hear children laughing and screaming with delight as they chased each other around, and compared their bulging bags of candy. The floor of the bathroom was wonderfully cool. He lay there, his shirt soaked through with sweat, one arm underneath his head, his eyes shining out of deep dark recesses of his pale face.
A knock sounded at the door as another wave of nausea hit. Nothing was left for his stomach to force out, just the never-ending twisting and clenching of the organ trying to collapse itself. A pale, weakened hand extended in midair, grasped at the sink, while his lungs worked feverishly to calm the tired heart. David’s outstretched arm gave out midway through the room, and the unsteady feet tossed the white emaciated body against the doorframe. A cry escaped the careful lips.
“David?”
The sweetest voice sounded from beyond the cheap door. He was saved, full of joy he lunged forward and fell against a second doorframe. The world was moving and it threw off his balance. The lock, he must get to the lock on the door.
“David? David! Open the door.”
David’s fingers fumbled with the brass lock before he stumbled back, feet slipping over the grimy floor. A white-haired Vietnamese man burst through the door, crying out as David fell back against the linoleum.
The world went quiet; snow was falling, everything grew soft and quiet and the pain called from far away. A soft hand pulled his face front, and the last thing David saw was Hien Due’s eyes, wide with fear and soaked in tears.
“I’m so tired,” he croaked.
“Oh David. My boy.”
Warm hands flung themselves around his body. David sighed with pleasure. It might have been his mother embracing him, warming him, pulling him to safety.
“Hien …”
The world righted itself at last, sounds became clearer, and the pain, which echoed across his body, was no longer dulled, but sharp, a thousand knives set against his flesh.
“I called an ambulance,” Hien Due said, his fingers brushed David’s speckled hair away from his soaked forehead.
“I don’t need an ambulance.”
“Of course you do, you collapsed in front of me. Something is wrong. I’ll call your family from the hospital. They must know.”
“Don’t tell them, Hien. I know what’s happening to me.”
“I must tell them and … what? What is it you know?”
“I’m dying, Hien Due. I don’t want them to come to see me die.”
“No. No, you’re not. You’re not dying. I am the old man. You are young and strong. I must call them.”
The strong arms were around him once more. It was comfortable here. He might go to sleep, never to wake, never to face the pain again. A sharp pounding echoed through the apartment, and Hien Due called for the knocker to enter. Hien Due introduced himself as family and told the paramedics all he knew. David sighed and gave his doctor’s name and the diagnosis he had given. He couldn’t bear to look at Hien Due, when his friend cried out. David simply closed his eyes and was gone again.
DAVID BLINKED IN THE glare of lights strung up above him. He lay prone on an uncomfortable bed, but his head was oddly clear, and he thought he might be able to stand. He tried one leg, and it met a dull resistant force. A grey mass was lying on the sheets; a mass that smelled familiar.
“David, you’re awake.”
Hien Due’s exhausted face rose from the sheets. His skin had taken on the same tone as his hair and long pat
ches of skin were peeling on his lips.
“Hien Due?”
“Yes, it’s me. It’s all right, David. They brought you to the hospital,” he cooed.
“Why … how is it you’re here?” David asked.
It took a great effort to speak, his lips felt as though they were made of iron, and his mind was a mass of swirling clouds.
“You missed two days of work, David. I’m your emergency contact. They called to see if I had heard from you. I arrived yesterday afternoon. You’ve been asleep for a full day.”
David studied Hien Due’s face; it was much more lined than he remembered. Then, behind the worried eyes David saw something else.
“You called them,” David said, interpreting what he saw there.
“I did.”
“Why?”
“They are your family. You are dying. They must know.”
David turned toward the window, onto the vast teeming city of Dallas. The sun had only just risen; it must be November now.
“How long have you known? Why didn’t you tell me?” Hien Due asked.
“I don’t want to be a burden to anyone. You’ve flown across the country because my boss was worried. What would you do if I told you I was dying?”
“You are my son, David. My children’s children will never forget what you have done for us. That is why I care. For all that you have done. You are not a burden; you are a gift.”
Hien Due took David’s hand and clasped it between his own. David was grateful for the love, for the care.
“There is something you must fix before it is too late. Make peace with them, David.”
Hien Due patted David on the arm. It was not the first time that he felt that his friend could see deeper and clearer than most, deeper into the heart of things. David smiled, and rested his head on the flimsy pillows. Hien Due sighed, patted David’s mottled hand and sank back into his chair to resume his prayers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
2 November 1988
Lives Paris Took Page 27