Pacific Avenue

by Watson, Anne L.

  “A long time ago. Eighteenth century? Something like that.” I didn’t know a lot about the Skye boat song myself. Vague words and pictures swirled through my mind: Bonnie Prince Charlie, Culloden, Glencoe, the clans. . . . Did tartans come later? I wasn’t sure.

  “What were they fighting about?” Thu asked.

  “Religion, I think. And independence.”

  “But Scotland is part of Great Britain, isn’t it?” She sounded puzzled.

  “They lost.”

  Thu considered this. “Are there any stories we could use for the puppets?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll take a look next time I’m at the library. I need to get back to rehearsing, Thu. Here it is November, and we’re opening at Christmas! I’ve probably forgotten everything!”

  “I doubt that. But Jamie is going to have to let you start working again. I still have baby things from Dom and Joss at home, you know. I’ll pull a playpen out, and you can bring her along. Also, could you do some grant forms for the NEA? I could bring them here—I don’t think the sound of the typewriter would bother her too much.”

  “No, don’t worry. I can type them. What are we going to do for Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. Of course, I’d be happy to cook, but it wouldn’t be traditional American.”

  “That’s fine with me.” After the disaster of last year’s Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving, I didn’t know if I could ever eat turkey and cranberry sauce again. Com Chien Thap Cam would be a lot better. So would peanut butter sandwiches, as far as I was concerned.

  “I’ll ask the others,” Thu said. “Maybe we could have a potluck—some traditional, some other dishes. Why don’t you invite your sister and Sam, too? We liked them a lot. I’ll pull out a high chair for Jamie.”

  She picked up her toolbox and tiptoed out, blowing a kiss to Jamie, or maybe to me.

  The thought of Thanksgiving with the Motleys made me smile. Maybe there’d be a mass at Our Lady of Lourdes. Then we’d sit down to a Motley dinner, fruits and vegetables from Eddie’s stand, Vietnamese food from Thu and Creole from Francine, jokes and fun, shoptalk about the puppets. Dom and Joss and now Jamie in the circle, learning from us every minute. Sharon and Sam were becoming honorary Motleys, and that made me smile too. I opened my cookbook, wondering what I could give them all that would be good enough for what I felt. Good enough for my family, my motley family.

  For now, Jamie was fast asleep. I snuggled into a chair with my cookbook and turned the radio on to soft piano music. I was almost feeling sleepy myself when the news came on.

  Today, the House and Senate voted to override President Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution, requiring the president to consult with Congress before committing military forces. Unless authorized by a declaration of war, no military involvement can be extended beyond ninety days. Opponents of the war in Vietnam have favored this resolution, believing that it reduces the chance for future conflicts that are not supported by the American people.

  In other news, the Chicago Cubs traded Glenn Beckert and a minor league player to the Padres for Jerry Morales.

  Stay tuned this evening for a reading from Black Elk Speaks in honor of author John Gneisenau Neihardt, who died on Saturday at the age of ninety-two. His book, an account of the history of the Oglala Sioux from the Indian point of view, is known for its historical and spiritual significance. The book describes a great vision of peace and Black Elk’s lifelong regret that he was not able to fulfill this vision.

  To have a vision of peace and then see it slip away . . . . I wondered about Black Elk, about what he’d done and why he’d failed. And I wondered if the War Powers Resolution would fare any better.

  I felt chilly as the room grew darker, so I got up to light the heater and set a kettle on the stove. The door opened, and Richard edged through with a box of puppets in his arms. I turned toward him, clinking the kettle against the sink, and was startled by his face, open and wondering, his eyes like Jamie’s. His love for us reached across the room to me. How could I ever have doubted it?

  He stood still for a minute. Then he set the box on the floor. I went to him and he wrapped me in his arms the way I always wrapped Jamie. I stayed there for a long time without saying anything, being held to his warmth, listening to him breathe.

  * * *

  “How do you spell that?” asked Sharon, pushing a flop of hair off her face with the back of her pen hand.

  We sat facing each other across my table, mid-afternoon sunlight slanting through the window. It picked up the gleam of things I’d cleaned when I had the time, and a swirl of dust bunnies in corners I hadn’t gotten around to.

  “B, a, n, h, new word, k, h, o, a, i,” I read from Thu’s writing.

  “Let me see it.” She reached across the table and took the paper. “What in the world is it?”

  “A specialty from Hue. Thu says it’s a crepe with pork stuffing.”

  “Oh.” She wrote that and then studied the list for a minute, frowning. “Well, what’s this other one?”

  “Can chua. Richard and I had that once before at their place. It has fruit and spices and vegetables—it’s sour, maybe like Chinese hot and sour soup.”

  “What was that one she served last time we were here?”

  “The soup? Pho, I think.”

  “She said it was beef noodle, but it didn’t taste like any beef noodle I ever had.”

  “It has star anise and ginger in it. I like it too.” Sharon hadn’t exactly said she’d liked it, but I remembered she’d eaten three bowls of it. In fact, I’d had to snitch the last of it from her.

  The conversation was a murmur, because Jamie was finally sleeping. She had caught a cold, probably at Thu’s birthday party, and had screamed for about four days, as well as most of the nights between them. Sam said she’d be okay, but I was beginning to wonder whether I would.

  Sharon was visiting, staying in Francine’s guest room. Our current project was fancy menus for the Motleys’ Thanksgiving dinner. Sharon’s handwriting wasn’t real calligraphy, but it looked good.

  “Francine’s bringing Creole bread pudding with whiskey sauce,” I told her.

  “I’ll save that for the end. What are you making?”

  “I can’t decide. Got any suggestions?” Cooking was not my specialty.

  “Hey, I’ve got it! S’mores! You were always good at s’mores!” She pretended to write on the menu, giggling. “Let’s see. . . . S, apostrophe, m . . . .”

  I shook my head. “Not s’mores. This is a formal dinner. I’ll make that rice cereal and marshmallow thing.”

  “Do you serve that with red or white Kool-Aid?”

  I assumed an air of hauteur. “Red, of course. Only a peasant would serve white Kool-Aid with marshmallow squares.”

  Jamie’s waking shriek cut through our giggles. I picked her up from her crib, changed her, and held her close to me. Her breathing was stuffed-up and snuffly, and she pushed away her bottle. I used a rubber syringe Sam had provided to clear her nose. She hiccupped for a few minutes and fell back asleep, wheezing and whimpering.

  “Sam and I might move down here after we get married,” said Sharon. “We both like New Orleans, and Sam has some doctors he might want to partner with.”

  “That’s great!” I loved the idea of having Sharon and Sam in town.

  “Also,” she went on, more slowly, laying her pen aside, “Dad is thinking of coming down here for a few weeks.”

  “What for?”

  “He wants to see a doctor at Ochsner Hospital.”

  “Why?” My annoyance with Dad didn’t keep me from feeling a stab of fear. “Is he sick?”

  “No, not really. But he did have rheumatic fever, and he’s having problems. Feeling tired, short of breath, that kind of thing.”

  “But he was a kid when he had rheumatic fever!”

  “Some of the symptoms don’t show up much until you get older.”

  “Did you ask Sam about it?�
�

  “I didn’t want to.”

  Why not? “Where is Dad going to stay?”

  “What about here at Francine’s?”

  I thought a moment. “Things are awkward right now.”

  Sharon frowned. “I think he needs to see Jamie. Kathy, you and Dad have to work this out. I know they hurt your feelings when Jamie was born. Dad wanted to come, and Mom wouldn’t let him. And he shouldn’t have given in, and he’s sorry he did. Give him another chance, would you? He has to accept his grandchild, and you have to accept that he’s not perfect.” She went back to her lettering.

  “What about Mom?” I asked.

  Sharon looked up at me with a conspiratorial grin straight from our childhood years. “Divide and conquer.”

  I had to laugh.

  “Gotta go, Sis,” said Sharon, packing up her pens. “I promised Sam I’d call at five.”

  There was a knock at the door, and Sharon opened it. “Hi, Thu. I was just leaving. We’re working on menus for Thanksgiving. See you later.”

  “See you later, Sharon. Hi, Kathy.” Thu closed the door behind her and looked around. She took off her coat and hung it carefully over a chair. “How’s Jamie?”

  “She’s asleep. I don’t know whether to be happy or worried. If she sleeps now, maybe she’ll be up all night again.”

  “Bad night?”

  “Richard couldn’t stand it. He went out and slept in the car.”

  “In the Volkswagen?”

  Is she surprised because he’s so tall and the car is so small, or because he walked out and didn’t help me with the baby? Change the subject. “Thu, would you teach me some Vietnamese?”

  “What for?”

  “No special reason. I’m curious about it. Please?”

  “But how are you going to find the time? You have Jamie, and opening is in a few weeks, and you’re still trying to learn to carve, and . . .”—she fished some papers out of her purse—“I brought even more forms for you to fill out, courtesy of our friends at the National Endowment for the Arts.”

  “That won’t take long, now that I’ve figured out how to adjust the typewriter.”

  She put the papers on the table. “Okay, where do you want to start with Vietnamese? I don’t have any lesson books or anything.”

  “You taught me ‘hello.’ Xin chào. Is that right?” I sat down and waved her to a chair, too.

  “Well, yes, in a general sense. That means hello, but it depends who you’re talking to.”

  I didn’t feel like this was a good start—I was confused already. “You say hello differently to different people?”

  “It depends on how old the other person is compared to you, how much respect you want to show, how close you are. . . . It’s complicated. In a formal situation, you’d say the person’s name. For casual, you probably wouldn’t.” Thu ticked off points on her fingers.

  I felt discouraged, but I still wanted to start somewhere. “How would you say hello to me?”

  “Chào ban. That would be for a friend of your own age. Or, to an intimate, chào em. There’s a few different terms.”

  “How do you say good-bye?”

  “Tam biêt.”

  “Would you make me a list to study?”

  “Sure.” Thu turned as Richard came in. “Hi, Richard. Is rehearsal over?”

  “For now.” He went to the kitchen.

  “It’s almost evening—I’d better see about dinner,” Thu said, putting on her coat. “Bye—tam biêt.” She closed the door quietly behind her. It was later than I’d realized—the sun was pulling back from the window and the room was shadowy. I’d been so wrapped up with Jamie that I hadn’t even thought about dinner.

  Richard opened the refrigerator and stared into it.

  “I wish I didn’t run into Thu everywhere,” he blurted.

  I was startled. “I thought you liked Thu.”

  “I do, but she sure makes me remember stuff I don’t want to. Especially when I have to hear someone speaking Vietnamese in my own home.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, Richard, Thu wasn’t a soldier!” I remembered to keep my voice down so I wouldn’t wake Jamie.

  “That’s the point. She wasn’t a soldier. Probably most of the people I killed with my M-101 weren’t soldiers.” He fished a loaf of bread out of the refrigerator and tossed it onto the counter. The wrapping opened and bread fanned out over the cutting board. A couple of slices fell on the floor, but Richard didn’t pick them up.

  I started to do it, but he glared at me, and I stepped back. “Richard, that’s morbid.” I said. “You don’t know that you killed anyone.”

  “True enough, but I sure aimed a howitzer at places where people lived and fired it. What do you think happened at the other end, Kathy?”

  “Shhhhh! I think you did what you were ordered to do. And I think it’s in the past.”

  “It’s never in the damn past. I dream about it almost every night—for sure after every time I see Thu. The only reason she wasn’t in any danger from me is that no one ordered me to shell the town where she lived. If they had, I would’ve.”

  His melodrama was getting on my nerves. “I don’t think so, Richard. By the time you were in the army, Martin and Thu lived in Sydney, Australia. If someone had ordered you to shell Sydney, I doubt you’d have done it. We weren’t at war with Australia.”

  “Very funny, Kathy. We weren’t at war with Vietnam either.”

  “I bet you could have fooled them.”

  “Probably so.” Richard slapped a sandwich together, just one for himself, and sat down at the kitchen table. He didn’t ask me if I’d eaten.

  “You could have helped me with Jamie last night instead of going off to sleep in the car.” I’m getting tired of you feeling so guilty about the past that you act like a jackass in the present.

  “I couldn’t.” His voice was loud and flat.

  “Don’t talk so loud—she’ll wake up. Someone has to take care of her. What if I’d walked out too?”

  “I do remember suggesting that having a baby wasn’t going to be easy. Although, I must say, I hadn’t counted on your family being so damned racist and hypocritical. Isn’t it the grandmother who’s supposed to help out? Shame our baby’s too brown for that. Besides, why would Jamie need anyone but you? All you think about is Jamie, Jamie, Jamie. I’m not sure I live here anymore.”

  Let it rip. I don’t care. “Well, I’m not sure who you are anymore. I never know who’s going to walk through the door, my lover or Mr. Ice. Back when I told you I was pregnant, you wanted me to chuck Jamie away like a Dixie cup. One day you don’t seem to have any feelings at all. Then the next day, you love us. Except when you say you love us, I wonder if you’re acting. It’s weird, Richard. I want you to make up your mind and stop jerking me back and forth. Are you in this family or out?”

  Richard jumped up out of his chair. Is he going to hit me? Is he going to leave? He stood glaring at me for a minute like he didn’t know himself which to do. Then he sat down again and huddled over his solo sandwich without another whisper.

  You didn’t answer my question. Are you in this family or out?

  * * *

  “What in the world is this all over the clothes?” asked Richard, dragging in a basket from the Laundromat.

  He pulled out a pair of jockey shorts, now glitter-bedizened. They looked like a costume for one of the male strippers at the My-Oh-My Club in the Quarter. Or might have, except that these shorts weren’t exactly new.

  “Uh-oh. I must have left one of the bags of puppet snow in a pocket,” I said.

  We looked at each other for a minute. Is he going to explode again? He shook the shorts provocatively. Flecks of glitter drifted down in exactly the effect I had perfected for the Snow Queen production. We both cracked up.

  We laughed all the harder because it was such a relief after a week of politeness, going to rehearsal and pretending the fight hadn’t happened. Putting on an act for the couple of days left in Sharo
n’s visit, then for Thu and Martin. A giggle emerged from Jamie’s direction too, and we both stopped and looked at her enjoying our laugh together. She was growing fast, now, watching us, learning how to be a person.

  Thinking I might not have given her too good an example lately, I hugged Richard and kissed the end of his nose. Then I scooped Jamie up and made a raspberry sound on her neck. She squealed and reached for him, and we sat down hard together on the edge of the bed, all three wiggling like puppies.

  “Want me to wash the clothes again?” I offered.

  “No, let’s be spangled for a while. It’ll be festive. About time, too.” He pulled me to him in a long hug.

  “Richard . . . about this week . . . .”

  “Let’s not start in again. I’m sorry.” Is anything going to change, or does “sorry” just mean you don’t want to discuss it? I tried to hold onto some hope. Maybe he’d think things over. Maybe some of Sam’s ideas would sink in. Sam, sweet redheaded Sam, who had to watch kids die of cancer. I hugged Jamie tightly to me.

  “Don’t squish her,” Richard said.

  I came back to the present, with Jamie wiggling and starting to whine. I picked her stuffed dog off the bed and handed it to her. “Doggie!” I said in my best mama voice. “Woof woof!” I tickled her, and she waved her arms and giggled. She chewed the toy, drooling a little.

  “Dad’s coming to New Orleans soon,” I told Richard. “Sharon thinks we should encourage him to get to know Jamie.”

  I set Jamie in her crib and started folding the sparkly clothes—underwear and shirts and jeans. I even knotted the socks into pairs, studying them as if they were important, so I wouldn’t have to look Richard in the eye. As I crossed the room to put the clothes away, he took one of the shirts off the pile and put it on. It had a lot of glitter on it.

  I remembered a Dylan Thomas poem from English class: “They shall have stars at elbow and foot.” It looked like we would too for a while.

  Richard watched me fiddle for a minute. “I hope it works out.”

  To change the subject, I asked, “What do you think I should take to Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “Pumpkin pie.”