by Joan Shott
He stared at me. I stuffed my cold hands deep into his coat pockets and leaned into him.
“Come on, Matthew. Talk to me.”
“How’d you do it, Diane?”
“Do what?” I asked, lifting my face to his.
“Figure things out that I can’t?”
I led him back towards the house. We stood on the front porch in the pale glow of the lights from the living room windows. “I don’t have brothers or sisters,” I said, “but if I did, I would worry if something happened to one of them. Like what happened to Max. But all this guilt you carry around, it doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s my fault,” he said.
“No, your brother was thousands of miles away. It can’t be your fault.” I pulled him closer. Raindrops glistened on his forehead.
“I was there.”
“You were there? In Vietnam? With your brother?”
Another piece of his life he’d kept hidden dropped at our feet with the weight of days and months and years of pain. My body braced as if I’d been hit by a car, spun and thrown so hard I didn’t know which way was up. I struggled to catch my breath.
“Do you think I wanted you to know? Me, the great anti-war protestor.” He covered his face with his hands. “I was a soldier. I killed people and men under my command died. I put my own brother in harm’s way.”
I took his hands in mine. “Tell me what happened.”
He sighed and looked up towards the black clouds moving over an even blacker sky. “I don’t know where to start.”
“At the beginning.”
He hesitated, leaned away from me. After what seemed like hours, he spoke again. “That night in the fields…hell on earth in someplace called la Drang…there’d been rain for days, but no action…and when it cleared there was this big, old full moon.”
He’d fallen back into the middle of the war, far from me and my little house.
“Who’d ever think of killing on a beautiful night like that?” he asked.
His hands were sweating, but I held on as tight as I could.
“We come to the edge of a ravine and all hell breaks loose. Bullets flying everywhere. Me and Tyrone behind some goddamned little trees, we’re falling down every time we try to get up. This is different than anything we’ve been in before. Even crazier…chaos. It was an ambush. Mud fucking anywhere you move, like it’s under your skin. You can hardly walk, never mind run. We’re thrown back to the edge of a river…something so strong it picks us up in the air like we’re nothing. I look down — everything’s lit up with the moonlight and tracers, and he’s covered in blood, and me, I’m shot, too.
“I radio for help, and there’s no dustoffs from our company can come. No Hueys…NVA shooting ‘em down with Soviet rocket launchers. So they call for the closest company, my brother’s command.” He stopped and caught his breath, wiped his eyes.
“I want to save Tyrone. I’m scared we’ll both die there in the muck. Tyrone’s saved me plenty of times. It’s my turn. I tell them, yeah, godammnit, get Max. My staff sergeant’s down. He tries to find us. He shouldn’t have, but he did. My fault, it was my fault.”
“Tyrone,” I said, remembering the name of Rodney’s brother. I squeezed his hand. It was bloodless cold.
“They got my brother. Must have been dawn…I heard the shots, voices of Americans, then nothing. But they knew whose son he was. That was probably the only thing that saved him…if it did. NVA prisoners captured a couple of weeks later said the general’s son was still being held. Said he was still alive.” He stopped and swallowed something as hard as stone.
I knew he was blaming himself, his father, the world. If he had only been the next Mickey Mantle, if his father had been anything instead of a soldier. If, if, if, then none of this would have happened. I knew what he was thinking. I’d thought it myself a hundred times a day. If I hadn’t married Bobby, maybe some little quirk of fate would have spared him — and me. And if I hadn’t lost Bobby, I would never have found Matthew.
“I made it back to my squad the next day with a hole in my shoulder,” he said. “I carried Tyrone the whole way. And those VC on the way back…I killed them…I was sure they were VC, but they were just kids. Kids with AK 47s.” His desperate gaze tracked the landscape, and he turned to me for some sign that I understood he’d only done what he had to do to survive.
“Tyrone didn’t make it.” He caught his breath, closed his eyes. “They patched up my shoulder and stuck me on a transport back to the states.”
His shoulder. The scar I’d wondered about when we had made love the first time. His excuse had been as flimsy as smoke, and I’d let it fool me, because I didn’t want to question anything that would have spoiled the perfect moment. I wrapped my arms around him so tightly I felt his beating heart through the layers of shirt and sweater and jacket.
“They thought my old man would want me home. But, fuck him, he thought I was a coward for leaving my brother behind. All the General could say to me when he showed up at the hospital was, Never give up, grunt. Don’t you know, you always keep fighting’“ He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I tried to tell you that first night in Chicago, but I wanted you so much I couldn’t risk letting go of the worst secret of all. I didn’t want you to know what a fake I am.”
“You’re no such thing,” I said.
“I don’t deserve you, but, God, I don’t want to lose you.”
“What makes you think you will? I’m not going anywhere.” Even though it would take time for me to straighten out all the things in my mind in that orderly way I was used to, hearing the truth from him let me love him even more. He opened a place in his heart, and I slipped in. Nancy had once told me I was like her: a woman who wanted a man to need her more than she needed him. “I’m not going to leave you. What do I have to do to convince you?”
“Marry me,” he said.
His words were like a punch I hadn’t seen coming. I’d imagined us sailing along for months, maybe years and growing to reach a point where I was sure, so absolutely sure, we’d be happy forever. I’d know when that time came; I’d feel it in my bones like some sort of strength built by time and hard work, my heart and lungs able to handle the rarified air the total commitment of marriage demanded.
“I don’t…” I stammered, trying to catch my breath. I was unwilling to tell him no, but unable to say yes. My heart fluttered in my chest like the wings of my beloved hummingbirds, so fast, so determined, so fragile. “I don’t want a proposal that comes from fear. We’re stronger than that.”
The sound of the phone ringing in the house was like the bell at the end of a fight. We were both punch-drunk, exhausted. “I’d better get it,” I said. I walked into the house and picked up the phone, half-scared by late-night phone calls and half-grateful for the diversion it offered.
“Diane, it’s Lilly. Is Matthew there?”
“He’s right here.” The screen door squeaked open behind me. I handed the receiver to Matthew. “It’s your mother.”
He took the phone and listened to whatever it was she had to tell him.
“We’re having Thanksgiving dinner here tomorrow. That doesn’t include him,” he said. “I’ll meet with him Friday. We’ll pick you up at the ferry at two o’clock.” He handled the phone as if it might break in his hands when he placed it in the cradle.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“My father’s in town. The North Vietnamese sent word to him that they’re willing to release an unreported prisoner.”
“Oh, God, that’s what you’ve wanted. Aren’t you happy?”
“Of course, it’s what I want, but you don’t know him, Diane.”
“Who?”
“My father. If he gets involved, I don’t know what’ll happen.”
“How bad can he be?”
“You’ll find out when you meet him,” he said.
“When I meet him?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
I droppe
d into the kitchen chair. Outside the blowing rain whistled through the tall, white pines like a siren. Our plans for a romantic evening had dissipated into a night I’d never forget, but not for the reasons I could have imagined. I reached across the table for Matthew’s hand.
“Let’s go to bed,” I said.
“There?” he asked, his eyes moving towards the bedroom.
“Yes. Our bedroom. Yours and mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
On Thanksgiving Day, Lilly got a ride to Mukilteo and boarded the ferry for the Clinton terminal just down the road from my house on Useless Bay. Matthew, Lilly, and I drove back from the ferry to the house in near-silence. The mountains sulked behind a shroud of heavy mist, and Useless Bay was churned into the color of tension. A foghorn wailed in the distance, and smoke from the fireplace curled into the air like the billow from a genie’s lantern. My father’s car was parked by the porch. I closed my eyes as I neared the front steps and made a wish to survive the day: Please, give me something to be thankful for.
Inside the house was warm and dry. Lilly embraced my father, pressing her cheek to his as if they were old friends. I thought I saw him blush. Then he shook Matthew’s hand with a stiff arm and muttered, “Happy Thanksgiving.”
While I worked on dinner in the kitchen with Matthew for company, my father sat with Lilly by the fire. I peeked around the corner and heard him describing the races he looked forward to each spring, his hands driving the imaginary race car of his dreams.
“Roads a little too slick right now for good racing, but come spring I head down to the Kent speedway.”
Lilly did her best to seem interested, but she looked tired, and my father was the kind of man who thought what was interesting to him was interesting to everyone. He chattered away as her eyelids grew heavy. I poured wine into two mismatched glasses and some beer for my father and Matthew.
“Lilly, would you like some …” I balked, turned on my heels, and emptied the wineglass I’d meant for her into the sink. “How about some coffee?”
“Oh, no thank you, Diane.” she said. “I need to rest for a minute after that ferry trip. It was a bit of a rough ride.”
The mention of the ferry crossing along, along with how close I’d come to offering Lilly a drink, filled me with enough dread to cause the room to spin in front of my eyes. I felt as if I’d swallowed the little moths flitting around the outdoor lights. “Dinner’s not for a while, Lilly, so why don’t you lie down in the bedroom?”
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “Excuse me, Ed. Thank you for the racing stories. I’d love to hear more about it later.” She shuffled into the bedroom and closed the door.
“Sure ‘nuf,” my father said, his voice dropping off the edge of disappointment.
“I hope the beer isn’t a problem,” I said, holding tight to the glasses before offering them.
“No, she’s okay with that. I think she’s preoccupied because my father’s in town, and she hasn’t seen him since my brother died,” Matthew said.
“Wait a minute, there.” My father stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen. “You say your father’s in town?”
Matthew looked up from the newspaper he’d been reading. “Yeah, we’re meeting him tomorrow at my mother’s apartment.”
My father puffed out his chest and strutted into the room. “Well, Matt, this here might seem like a big thing to ask after how we got off on the wrong foot and all, but I’d sure like to meet your dad.”
“You would?” I thought I caught the hint of an opportunity to level the playing field with my father along with a bit of apprehension in Matthew’s response.
“Well, you’re darn right. I’m one of the officers of the local VFW, and if I could get the general to come talk to the boys, well, it would be a pretty feather in my cap. Not to mention how it would feel real good to make his acquaintance, seeing how you two are gonna get married and all.”
“I never said…I said nothing about getting married,” I stammered.
“Didn’t have to. Lilly says it’s gonna happen, most likely it will. Lilly’s a smart lady. She’s per..per..” he hesitated, searching for the word. “She’s perceptive.”
I held my breath, waiting for patience to rise in my chest like a deep-sea diver following the rules of ascension. “Matthew’s father isn’t here on a social visit. It looks as if Matthew’s brother is the prisoner the North Vietnamese have offered to release as a gesture of goodwill, and he’s going there to negotiate with them.”
“Good will? You believe those Commie bastards got any good will?”
“Mr. Miller, I’ll take it, whatever they’re calling it. There are things I can’t talk about, but they’ve promised to hand over a captured American. I’ve been working to get my brother home for a long time.”
“I guess I put my foot in my mouth. I’m sorry, son.”
Matthew crossed his arms on his chest. “I think I might be able to work something out. If I can get him up here on Saturday, can you get the guys together last minute?”
“For General David Bluestone, I’d say they’ll drop whatever plans they have. Somethin’ like that don’t come around every day.”
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Miller,” Matthew said. He extended his hand to my father, and this time my father shook it like he meant it.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you told me to get lost after what I said to you before. Maybe I was wrong.”
“Daddy, would you get more wood from the shed for the fireplace?”
“Sure thing, little girl,” he said, as he headed out the door.
“Why did you promise him something like that?” I asked.
“I just said I’d try to get my old man up to talk to his friends.”
“Oh my God, the first time I’m supposed to meet your father and you saddle him with my father and his VFW cronies. You father will never forgive me. He has other things to do, I’m sure.” I took my frustration out on the carrots I was peeling, sending little orange strips flying through the air and onto the floor.
“Telling veterans how much you appreciate their sacrifice is his job. That’s what he should be doing.” He drummed his fingertips anxiously on the table.
“Why don’t you let your father go to Vietnam for you? How can you even think about going back there?” I threw the carrots into a pot of boiling water.
“I have to do it.”
“And our government is going to let this happen?”
“They have no choice. I’m doing this as a private citizen. I’ll hand it over to the State Department after his release is official. They can handle his re-entry into the U.S., debrief him.”
“You make it sound all so simple,” I wiped my hands on a dish towel and nervously folded it into a small bundle.
“It is that simple. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? I have to let you get on a plane to a place where…if something happened to you…I promised I’d never let you put your life in danger.”
“What are you talking about? Nothing will happen to me,” he said. He kissed me on the top of my head as my father’s footsteps squeaked on the porch.
The door swung open, and my father walked in with an armful of wood. “Here you go. I hope dinner’s getting close, ‘cause I’m starving.”
“Do you want to wake Lilly?” I poured the water from the potatoes down the drain and felt my appetite go with it.
“I’ll get her.” Matthew walked towards the bedroom.
“Daddy, don’t be too disappointed if Matthew’s father can’t fit a visit to the VFW into his schedule.”
“I think your young man wants to make sure it happens. Get in good with me if he pulls this off. Show me he’s serious about you.”
“How can you be so selfish?”
“Hey, little girl, don’t you be talking to me like that. I didn’t bring you up to be disrespectful to me.” He huffed back into the living room.
God, how had my mother put up with him? I
remembered her anger coming to a head dozens of times over things he’d done. Once she’d told me she wanted to send him away for good, and I had thought she was joking. Could she have been serious, and I had been too young to understand? Could they have been on the verge of parting before she died? Maybe that was why he didn’t want to keep any of her things.
Matthew closed the bedroom door behind him. “She’ll be out in a minute.”
“I hope she’d not ill from the stress of all that’s happening,” I said, absentmindedly spooning the mashed potatoes into a bowl, my mind caught between memories of my parents and Lilly’s illness.
Lilly was as delicate as the flower she’d been named after, and since the day I’d returned from Chicago and found her in the corner tavern with her hands wrapped around a double vodka, I’d known she was in pain, physically and emotionally. I didn’t want to lose her like I’d lost my mother, never having the chance to become a young woman in my mother’s eyes, or a bride, or a mother myself. The things many women took for granted were the things I prayed for. Please, Lilly, don’t leave me.
“Diane?”
“Uh, what Matthew?”
“You were a thousand miles away. Thinking about something?”
“Lilly means so much to me. Make her happy. Bring your brother home.” He pulled me into his arms, and we held each other until my father walked back into the room and coughed so we’d know he was watching.
“Time to get this show on the road,” my father said.
Matthew picked up the glass of beer he’d been drinking and held it towards my father who reciprocated. “Here’s to the first of many happy Thanksgivings together.”
“Yes indeed, son. And a safe trip. Come back to us in one piece from that goddamned hell hole.”
It was the best my father could do; a ragtag, back-handed show of concern. It was, I supposed, something to be thankful for.