by Joan Shott
“They’re going at it almost day and night. Those guys are the best in the world,” he said.
“Yes, there seem to be a lot more lately.”
“That there’s an A-6. Mighty powerful engine in that baby. Listen to it purr. Hey, Danny Boy?” He looked over to the next bay where his young apprentice was working under a Camaro.
“Sure ‘nuf, Mr. Miller,” Danny answered from beneath the car.
I let my hands fall from my ears. “Sounds more like thunder to me. It scares me to death.”
“Don’t want to mess with those commies with nothing less. Can’t let the Reds get a leg up in that part a the world. Nothin’ can stop the U.S. of A. They’ll be sorry they messed with us. You can bet on that, little girl.”
I was about to question my father’s statement about the Vietnamese ever messing with the U.S. of A., but then I realized the man who had fixed my car in the pouring rain was one of them, those warriors of the U.S. of A. His short hair and neat khakis should have been red flags, but I’d ignored the warnings. Disappointment washed over me as I stood and watched my father’s back bent over the Volvo’s engine.
When you live in a navy town, navy guys are to be avoided. They were out for a good time with the locals, and then they’d leave for the other side of the world. If I’d been thinking straight, I would have told him to get away from my car. I would have rather walked a hundred miles in the rain. But I drove back to a sunny Bowman Bay the next day, and he was waiting there for me, standing expectantly with the razor-sharp Olympics behind him, the sparkling, cold waters of Puget Sound lapping calmly at the bay’s edge. Everything around us that day seemed so clear and peaceful.
We were married two days after my nineteenth birthday, and five months and three days later I became a widow. We’d only been married for a little more than a month when we said goodbye at the airport on an October morning while waiting for Bobby’s flight to San Diego. He held me as if he’d never let me go. But he did. We’d been inseparable for those few months before he shipped out: Diane and Bobby, Diane Elizabeth Miller and Robert John Hayes, Lt. and Mrs. Robert Hayes, USN. Then, unexpectedly, it was just me, Diane Hayes.
I thought I’d never get through it, but somehow, after months and months I began to mend, like a spider’s web shredded by a storm. It happened against my will. I simply slipped up one day and imagined for a moment what my life might be like in the future. Would I graduate? Keep the house on the island? Marry again and have children? Panic rose from my feet and clouded my thoughts. I had to be more careful. I had to stay true to Bobby.
I lived in the midst of people who talked about what they wanted to do when they graduated or their plans for the weekend, but I wouldn’t allow myself to see farther than the next ten seconds. I wanted to go backwards, like a movie in reverse — the men from the navy walking away from my house, kissing Bobby good-bye at the airport, meeting him that rainy day at Bowman Bay. But nothing would change if I didn’t try, so I made an effort to smile, to look into other people’s eyes, to listen to music on the radio a little more each day.
I was building my life step by step but still felt the threat that the incoming tide would rush up and ruin all the little pieces of my future I had painstakingly engineered out of sand.
*****
I walked back to the duplex for lunch when I knew my roommates wouldn’t be home. I gazed in shop windows or into houses with parted curtains to spy on someone else’s life. It was almost painless to watch other people’s happiness from a distance. I passed the ramshackle little restaurants near the campus as I walked down University Way. Front doors opened. Students headed in or out. I yearned to walk in and sit at a counter and order something decadent like a chocolate milkshake. But I kept walking towards the place where I would be alone.
I crossed at 50th Street, cut through a small park, and walked past a church. It was a mild day, and the side door had been propped open. People were seated in rows of folding chairs, their voices a murmur to my ears. I thought they might be praying. I wanted to be able to join in a choir of voices raised to heaven, as if I were a child again at my mother’s side in our little Congregational Church on the island. The thought warmed me as the dampness of spring seeped into the loose soles of my old boots. I moved closer to the door and listened.
A woman said, Hi, my name is Linda and I’ve been sober for two months and five days. Then I heard voices buzz, Great, Linda…Way to go, Linda…keep up the good work. Another confessor, this time a man who said his name was Leo, repeated similar sentiments and the response was the same. I looked inside the doorway at a small board announcing daily meetings for Friends of Bill W — University Lutheran Church — daily, noon until one.
I had no idea who Bill W was, but it sounded like the people in the meeting were alcoholics. I had heard of AA meetings before, so I had an idea of what went on there. I moved out of sight, standing just behind a towering rhododendron to listen, my heart beating like a thief’s. Voice after voice declared their victories, counting years, months, days. Each person was encouraged. Some confessed the daily meetings and the people in the room were the only forces keeping them from going back to the desperate lives they had been leading.
I wondered if alcoholics went through the same withdrawals I was experiencing as if love were an addiction. I thought about walking in and introducing myself and saying, My name is Diane and I’ve been widowed for three hundred and sixty-two days. I imagined telling them about the heartache I faced each day. I could confess my daydreams of driving off the road at the highest speed I could get out of my old Volvo. I would admit the horror of what I relived each night: the jet, the crash in a faraway jungle, the end of my world. My emptiness craved a compassionate ear like the people in the hall must have craved alcohol.
I walked through the doorway on legs with a will of their own. The people in the low-ceilinged room looked up at me. It must have been obvious that I didn’t know what to do. They pitied me the novice I was with nods of their heads and understanding smiles here and there. Someone motioned to an empty chair and a few said quiet hellos.
One of the men stood up and said, “Welcome young lady. Are you here for the meeting? We’re just about to wrap up, but if you’d like to introduce yourself we can make the time.”
I nodded, sat down in the chair. Tears rose to my eyes, and my voice raced ahead of me. “My name’s Diane. Diane Elizabeth Hayes. I’m not an alcoholic, but I need help.” Then I covered my eyes with my hands and leaned my head on my knees. Hands reached down to pat me on the back. The ceiling seemed to press down on me, forcing the air out of my lungs.
A woman’s voice whispered in my ear. “It’s okay, Diane. No one here will judge you.”
She said her name was Lilly. She looked as if she could have been anywhere between forty and a hundred years old, she was so ravaged by the effects of alcohol. Her voice was worn to its roots, and her skin was as thin as tissue. She wrapped her arm around me and pulled me up against her shoulder, but I felt as though I should be supporting her.
“I’ll be all right,” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. My long hair fell across my face, and I hid there, ashamed of myself for the lie I had hoped to perpetrate on this group of honest people. “I have to go.” I stood up to leave.
She held tight to my arm. “Let me walk with you, Diane.” She motioned to someone in the group, goodbye. I let her lead me out of the church.
“How about a cup of coffee?” she asked. “There’s a place down there on the Ave.” She lifted her arm and pointed with a shaky, bone-thin hand in the general direction of where I had come from on my walk from the campus.
I nodded. She seemed as if she needed to try to help me, as if the act were strengthening her somehow. As we walked the weight between us shifted, and I took hold of her arm and supported her as we ambled down the sidewalk. “I appreciate this, Lilly, but I swear I’ll be all right. You don’t need to go out of your way.”
“Dear, you were hur
ting enough to come into an AA meeting, and I know you aren’t a drinker. There’s something else bothering you. At AA we make a pact to be responsible for anyone who comes to a meeting to ask for help. There have been people who helped me when I was in need, and now I want to be the one to help you. I am responsible for you.” She looked at me with rheumy gray eyes I was sure had seen more than their share of grief. I thought she might need my company as much as I needed hers, even if half of what she was telling me was surely memorized from some book passed around in the church basement.
We walked into the first coffee shop we came to and sat in a booth at the back of the room. Lilly ordered two coffees.
“I’m buying,” I said. I reached over and tapped Lilly’s hand as she rifled through her wallet looking for bills. “I insist,” I added, even though I couldn’t stand the taste of coffee and didn’t like the jitters it produced in me when I’d tried it.
“Okay, but just this one time,” she said. She stuffed her wallet into her shoulder bag. “Tell me what you need to say. You’ve been keeping something pent up inside you for much too long.” Her voice was kind, softened at the edges with the slightest Southern accent; as if she’d once called the South home but had known many more places in her life.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell Lilly about my husband’s death. My father pretended to listen when I talked about missing Bobby and then he’d tell me someday I’d find another man to fix what was wrong with me. In his next breath, he’d mention how much his assistant, Danny, needed a good wife. I wanted to talk to someone who would hear the words I said and what I didn’t say, too.
“My husband died last year, and I’m having a very hard time getting over it.”
Lilly shook her head gently. “You’ll never get over something like that. If you love someone you never leave them, and they never leave you. The empty space just fills in a little with other things in your life and you learn to live again.”
“I don’t want to forget him, but I think my husband would want me to be happy.” I let the thought sink in, but it floated back to the surface of my realization I’d never heard Bobby say anything about my filling my life with someone else if anything should happen to him. Of course, we’d never wanted to think anything would happen.
There was an awkward silence as the waitress brought our coffees and we waited for her to leave.
“What was his name, Diane? I don’t want to ask too much so soon, but I’d like to be respectful to your husband’s memory.”
“His name was Bobby. Lieutenant Robert Hayes.”
Lilly’s eyes lit up, her focus seemed to sharpen, and she looked younger than she had moments before. “A soldier, was he? Was your Bobby in the Army?”
“No, the Navy.”
There were tears in her eyes. “I know what it’s like to lose someone like that. Maybe not like you. No, not like you.” She reached over and covered my hand with hers.
It felt like a feather had landed on my heart.
“It’s hard to believe someone would want to go to war,” I said. I knew she was thinking about something else by the vacant expression on her face. “Isn’t it?” I asked, prodding her.
“Oh yes. Well, that was another time when soldiers were considered heroes. Young people don’t feel that way anymore. Now they’re protesting the war. They don’t want to risk their lives for something they don’t believe is right. It’s understandable.”
“My father thinks fighting in Vietnam will save our country. Do you think that, too?”
“Some say there’s danger from the Communists. Russians, Chinese trying to take over the world. The politicians, they call it the domino theory. I suppose you’ve heard all about that in college, though. They say, Vietnam goes, we’re next.” She nodded her head and smiled as if she were thinking about some private joke. But what could be funny about war?
“Sometimes I think I should get involved to help end the war, but I don’t know what I’d do. I suppose that’s wishful thinking. I find it hard enough to just get through the day. It’s the reason, I guess, I ended up in your meeting. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude but I can’t explain it. Something drew me into that room.” I tried to sip the bitter, lukewarm coffee, but I couldn’t stand to swallow it. I wanted to get back out on the street and be on my own again. My attempt at reaching out to another person for help was drawing tight around my throat, and the air inside the restaurant weighed me down like being under water. “I guess I’d better get going. I’ve got a class this afternoon.”
Lilly seemed lost in thought again, and then she looked up and asked, “What are you studying, Diane?”
“I’m still a freshman, but I plan on studying birds, ornithology. I’m nowhere near being able to claim a major.”
“Every thing and every moment, great and small, should be appreciated. Even the birds. You’ve learned that after losing your husband. Can I ask how he died?”
I fought the impulse to run out the door and tightened my fingers around the edge of the seat cushion. “He was a pilot and his plane was shot down. That’s about all I know. It happened so far away.”
“Yes, that’s difficult. You send a fine man off to war, and they ship him home in pieces. Not even a man anymore. I’m so sorry, Diane.” She reached across the table and put her hand on mine again.
“They didn’t ship him home, though. I didn’t even have a body to bury. They never found it. All they got was some kind of aerial photographs and they gave me a flag. They said his plane had veered off course and crashed in a country we weren’t allowed to go into to retrieve anything. It’s called Cambodia and it’s just across the border from Vietnam. I found it on a map once.” The coffee cup I was resting in my hands began to clatter against the saucer. “They said he didn’t suffer. His jet exploded on impact.”
“No wonder you’re having a tough time. Things are unfinished, aren’t they? There’s a woman, a woman in the group at the church, of course, whose son has been missing for a long time. Some think he’s dead, but his body’s never shown up. It sent her off the deep end, and she drank herself to the doorstep of the church where they took her in. Losing someone you love is almost like dying yourself.”
Her eyes were swollen with tears that refused to fall. She was a good-hearted person who cared too much about the pain of others. Maybe it was all part of her problem, part of what had driven her to alcohol.
“I’m sure there are people who have it worse than me. I won’t be waiting for him to walk through the door. Well, sometimes I imagine him doing that, but it’s just dreaming.”
Lilly tipped her cup towards the passing waitress. It was a sign for me to leave. I wanted the solace of the classroom and the peace of the library stacks. I needed to return to where I’d been earlier, maybe another step, one more inch closer to healing. I thanked Lilly for her time, and she made me promise I would come back to see her. We could talk again and I knew where to find her — same time, same place, every day, she said.
I left the restaurant full of thoughts of how I would fit our visits into my schedule. How I’d change my life to be with her and talk about the things I needed to understand. I was so caught up with the thought of the caring and thoughtful soul I’d found who wanted to share my burden that I never once looked into other people’s houses on my way home. And as I jogged up the stairs to the back porch of the duplex with newfound energy, I looked up to see an Anna’s hummingbird sitting on the new feeder drinking the sugar water I’d set out, as if nothing else in the world mattered.
Chapter Three
The next day I wandered back to the Lutheran church and waited at the doorway for the meeting to end. Lilly seemed happy to see me. She threw her arms around me as if we were old friends, and I was surprised at how glad I was for the gesture. I needed a friend, even if this one was on shaky ground. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I felt as if we had something in common.
We walked through the campus under a canopy of stately old trees, budding with th
e renewal of life. Black-eyed juncos fluttered from branch to branch, their small, gray bodies fitting perfectly into the spaces between the newly sprouting leaves. And the unexpected sight of a red-shafted flicker, its long, woodpecker’s beak searching a massive oak for a meal, made me smile. It was as if my friends were visiting me and I’d finally noticed them on my doorstep.
The sky was cloudless for a change and spring was in the air. It was one of those Seattle days when the sogginess of April goes away temporarily and our lives dry out just a bit before the rains come again. I took advantage of the gift of the unexpected warmth and walked along the path with my coat unbuttoned. Lilly kept her tattered gloves on and her parka zipped. I glanced at her gloves and noticed they looked like cashmere, worn thin, but once very fine wool. And from the pocket of her coat, a lift-tag still dangled, declaring the owner had once skied at St. Moritz. Lilly must have haunted the second-hand stores in the affluent neighborhoods to come up with such classy throwaways.
“You’re lucky to be able to go to school,” Lilly said, as we passed under the shadows of a massive rhododendron just beginning to bloom. “It’s a privilege often taken for granted.”
I nodded in agreement as the promise I’d made with Bobby slipped into a chasm in my lungs. I must have gasped from the sense of falling into my old place of pain because Lilly looked at me, her eyes full of concern. “Does this have something to do with Lieutenant Hayes?” she asked.
“It’s just that I promised him I’d finish college, and luck or not, I have to make it through to graduation.” I stopped walking and looked over at her. “Why do you call him that? Lieutenant?”
“Out of respect. He died for his country.”
“He was very proud to fly for the Navy. Flying was in his blood. It’s almost as if you knew him…the way you talk about him.”