The Hummingbird War

by Joan Shott

  “Then bring her here and let us help,” Louise said, her voice snaking around the corner.

  I walked back into the living room. “How could I do that? Where would she stay?”

  “In my room. I’ll sleep on the couch. You’ve got a heavy schedule and taking care of Lilly while your boyfriend’s on this trip, man, you’ve got to be exhausted.”

  Nancy must have filled her in on Matthew’s trip to Vietnam, too. Nancy was part friend, part press secretary.

  “That’s cool of you, but I can’t ask you to do that.” Was this really the roommate I’d said little more than good morning and good night to for over a year? I didn’t think I’d earned the right to ask for her help, but if she wanted to give it, maybe I should accept. I was so tired I couldn’t feel my feet anymore

  “You’re running the SDS office single-handedly. I support the anti-war movement, but I don’t have time to volunteer or anything. So let us help you. I mean, how long’s your boyfriend gonna be gone?” Louise sunk back into the old couch cushions.

  “It could be weeks.”

  “That’s nothing. I know Nancy wants to help, too. Gee, who knows, maybe even Amy will be of some use.”

  I was too exhausted to discuss the fine points, but I had to think on my feet even if I they were so tired if I sat down I might not be able to get up again. “I’ll ask Lilly what she thinks, but there can’t be any alcohol in the house if she stays here.”

  Louise nodded. “That’s cool. It does tend to dull the mind.” She crossed her eyes and smiled.

  Nancy waltzed into my room a few hours later. She sat cross-legged on my bed, her bare feet adorned with red nail polish and tufts of cotton stuffed between her toes. “Louise told me you guys talked about Lilly this afternoon,” she said. “I’d like her to stay with us. She sounds groovy from what you’ve told me.”

  Lilly, groovy? I wondered if my roommates needed a mother around as much as I did. Nancy and Louise still had mothers at home, but no one who was a mom. Their mothers had gladly packed them off to college and seldom, if ever, called.

  “Louise did the talking. I was surprised to even have a conversation with her, let alone have her tell me she’d help me with Lilly,” I said.

  “I think something’s troubling her at home, and maybe she wants to make up for whatever it is by helping you. I’m not sure but it seems to be some sort of, you know, compensation.”

  Nancy was always using her psychology training on us. She was planning on becoming a social worker when she graduated in June, and her quirky roommates’ problems made for good practice. That was mostly true when it came to me.

  When I mentioned the plan to Lilly, she agreed not only to stay at the duplex, but she dug the idea of getting to know my roommates. And if she stayed at my place, we could distract each other from the question running through our heads a hundred times a day: would Matthew bring his brother home?

  *****

  Louise took the lunch shift, making sandwiches and tea for Lilly between classes. More than once I came home in the afternoon to find the two of them sitting on the couch watching an old black and white movie on television, Lilly explaining to her how popular Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks had been in the old days.

  I made Lilly’s dinners, Nancy did our grocery shopping, and Amy did the laundry and ran to the pharmacy for prescriptions. I took Lilly to her doctor appointments twice a week. I rarely had time to sit down, eat a decent meal, or even listen to the radio, but I never stopped thinking about Matthew.

  In the middle of the second week she was staying with us, I took Lilly for her appointment to check on her cirrhosis, and she came out of the doctor’s office with a smile on her face.

  “He says I’m doing better this week. I’m beginning to believe I can beat this,” she said.

  I thought it might be a good idea to celebrate to emphasize the positive and try to keep the worries about her sons at bay. “How about some ice cream for dessert?” I asked.

  “That would be fun,” she said, clapping her hands like a child.

  Who would have thought a little ice cream would make a grown woman smile?

  For the first time in weeks, all of us were home for dinner at the same time. I made macaroni and cheese from scratch, and after dinner Louise served the ice cream. At dinner my appetite withered, and I watched the others eat the food I’d made. I was too tired to eat, even for the ice cream. The smell of the broccoli I’d served, and the sound of spoons scraping against china turned my stomach upside down.

  Nancy cleaned the plates from the table. “You done?” she asked.

  I nodded my head. “I’m not hungry.”

  She bent over and looked at me as she reached across the table for the empty bowls.

  “I’m just tired,” I said, in answer to her worried expression. She probably didn’t want two invalids on her hands if I came down with some bug.

  Louise and Amy hinted about homework piling up, and Nancy dropped into the folds of the dilapidated couch. “Maybe it’s a good night to watch a movie. Want to join me, Lilly?”

  “Absolutely.” Lilly pulled herself up on her crutches and scuttled towards the couch.

  I put a pillow under her leg before grabbing my pile of books off the floor. “Time to study, ladies. Enjoy the movie,” I said.

  As I stood up, the room moved from under my feet, and my stomach crawled up my throat. I ran to the bathroom and closed the door behind me, slumped onto the floor, and vomited into the toilet. I laid my head on the hard, cool seat and heaved up emptiness again and again. My chest ached. I slid to the floor and listened to my heartbeat drum in my ears. The door opened.

  “Diane, are you okay?” Nancy asked. She clicked the door closed, bent down, and helped me sit up against the wall as she dabbed my face with a wet towel. It felt as cold as winter on sunburned skin.

  “I’ll be all right,” I said, pulling myself up and falling to my knees again with another round of dry heaves.

  “Hey, Diane. Look at me.” She ran her hand across my forehead and pushed the damp hair out of my face. She looked worried. Worried about me, the silly girl she’d tried so hard to befriend for months and months. Look at what trouble I’d brought to her ordinary college-girl life.

  I reached over and took her hand. “Sorry,” I said.

  “Are you pregnant?” she asked.

  “Why would you ask that?” I said, shivering and wiping the sweat from my face and neck with the wet towel.

  “Because you look flushed and the vomiting and dry heaves…do you think? I mean, your face looks different, and you didn’t eat dinner. Are you…late?” she asked gently, knowing I was never one to talk about private things.

  “Well, yes, but I thought it was because of all the stress of Matthew’s trip and…I can’t be pregnant.”

  “I hate to tell you, but saying it can’t be true won’t get you very far. I’ll take you to see someone tomorrow. I know a few people at the university clinic, and it’ll be discreet. Okay? Let me help you with this. If you are, you don’t have to go through with it. In Colorado you can…”

  “That’s not an answer.” I rested my head against her shoulder. “I could never do something like that. It’s just not me.”

  “You’re so old-fashioned, Diane, but I love you anyway. Here,” she said, handing me a hairbrush with one hand, my toothbrush with the other. “No one will be the wiser.” She helped me stand up and put her arm around my shoulder. “And there are worse things that could happen. You and Matt love each other.”

  When I walked back into the living room, I tried my best to act as if nothing had happened “I might be getting the flu,” I said, as Lilly and my roommates stared at me. I wasn’t a good liar, and I felt a bead of guilty sweat run down the side of my face. I stood still, trying to force my stomach to cooperate by sheer will when a knock on the front door startled me. No one ever came to the front door unless they were lost or selling magazine subscriptions.

  Amy stood up and grab
bed her jacket. “I’ll get it. I’m going out anyway.”

  She opened the door, and a man’s voice said, “Good evening. Does Mrs. Diane Hayes live here?”

  Amy answered, “Yes, Diane lives here.” She turned to me, “Diane, someone to see you.” She backed away from the door, and her eyes darted nervously towards Nancy and Lilly.

  I walked to the door. Two men stood on our little front porch. I stared at their dark blue pants and jackets, their hats held tightly in their hands. From the rows of medals on their uniforms, I knew they were officers. And the stripes on the sleeves — Causality Assistance Officers. It couldn’t be happening again. My heart withered and fell into a place as black as the December sky behind them. Specks of light sparked in front of my eyes, as if the men were photographing my terror.

  “Mrs. Hayes? My name is Captain Johnson and this is Captain Lewis. We’re from the Naval CAC Office. May we come inside?”

  “I know what you are. No, you can’t come here. Don’t tell me something has happened to Matthew. I won’t listen to what you say.” My ears rang, and their faces swam in my vision. My heart hardened into a fist, and I fell on the floor, crumpled against the door frame.

  I felt a hand under one of my arms and heard Nancy’s voice say, “Come on, Diane. Get up. Help me.” Her voice wavered between loud and dim. The strength of a man lifted me up, and blackness tucked itself in around me like a heavy blanket. When I woke, I was half-sitting, half-lying on the couch, my head propped against Lilly’s shoulder.

  One of the officers sat down in the chair next to me. “Mrs. Hayes, Are you all right? We didn’t mean to frighten you. We’re here about your husband, Lieutenant Robert Hayes.”

  “What about him? He died two years ago.” I looked into the man’s green eyes, refused to watch his mouth as he spoke. The truth would be in his eyes. He blinked and looked away. He straightened his back and looked at me again.

  “We’ve have been sent by the United States Navy to tell you Lieutenant Hayes is alive. The Secretary of State’s office has informed us he survived his crash and he’s alive.”

  I heard a Navy jet roar over the house, rattle the windows, crash into the mountains. I flinched and climbed closer into Lilly’s arms, but no one else seemed to notice the deafening sounds. I tried to talk, but the words stuck inside me: Bobby Hayes, Lieutenant Robert Hayes, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hayes. Bobby and Diane Hayes died in the jungle. Don’t you know? I’m not the person you think I am. Senseless thoughts ran circles in my head.

  “What are you saying?” Lilly asked the officers. “Diane’s husband was shot down quite some time ago. She was told he was killed, but they were unable to recover his body. How could this be a mistake?” She tightened her arms around my shoulders.

  “I don’t know the details, Miss, Mrs…?”

  “Mrs. Bluestone,” Lilly said. Even in my state of bewilderment, I knew she never referred to herself as Mrs. Bluestone.

  “Bluestone?”

  “You know my husband, David?”

  “You mean General Bluestone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, yes, we know who he is.”

  “You look surprised,” she said.

  “Well, ma’am, it’s not that we’re surprised by you being related to the general, but you must be Matthew Bluestone’s mother.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “He’s the one bringing Lieutenant Hayes home. He’s the one who arranged his release.”

  “What about Lt. Colonel Bluestone? Max, my son, Maxwell? He’s an MIA…”

  “Lt. Matthew Bluestone is bringing one MIA back from Vietnam — Lieutenant Hayes. It’s all in the papers from the Department of State we received. They’ll be debriefed in San Diego. Mrs. Hayes will be notified of the day and time of their return to the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island.”

  “Mrs. Hayes? What does Bobby’s mother have to do with this?” I asked.

  “Diane, do you want to lie down?” Nancy asked.

  Lie down, sit up — what did any of it matter? “I want you to leave,” I said to the officers. Tears ran down my face. I couldn’t catch my breath. My hands were numb.

  “Yes, ma’am. At your service. I’ll contact you with the arrival time. I’ll be at the air station to assist you.” He pulled a card out of his pocket and offered it to me. “I’m at this number if you need anything at all.” I stared at it. Nancy took the card.

  After they shut the front door, their footsteps pounded down the stairs in unison.

  I staggered to the door, pulled the little voile curtain aside, and watched them get into a tan sedan with a naval emblem on the door. I wasn’t dreaming, at least I didn’t think so. I walked back to the couch and looked down at Lilly.

  “D-d-did they really tell me B-B-Bobby is alive? Is it someone’s idea of a joke?” My breath was catching in my lungs like a record skipping across a damaged place.

  “No, Dear. It’s true,” Lilly said. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Matthew isn’t coming home w-w-w-with his brother.” I knelt in front of her to put my head in her lap. The room was still spinning. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…about everything.” Sorry for her, but mostly sorry for me.

  Amy and Louise stood frozen in the kitchen doorway. I couldn’t blame them for not knowing what to do. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get the words out, choking against the effort of trying to find something to say, to tell them how I was pedaling in reverse. I’d been on the other side of this story, them telling me he was dead. I was going backwards, chapter by chapter in my life, but ending up with the same overwhelming loss.

  “We’ll get through this,” Lilly said. She stroked my head with her thin hand. “I feel it.”

  Before I’d wanted to turn myself into two Dianes, as if I had the power of Hollywood make-believe, a wiggle of the nose and my wishes would come true. Now I felt split down the middle between the girl I’d been and the woman I’d become. Not two women, but a woman shadowed by the ghost of a girl. I had to think about the man I loved, the man I’d left behind, and, maybe a child caught in the crossfire of all our needs.

  “Lilly, remember the time you told me we were meant to take care of each other?” I asked.

  “I do remember, dear. The day you walked into my meeting at the church we stepped onto a path to this very moment. We were family before we ever met.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The sound of the kitchen phone ringing and ringing and ringing woke me. It was still dark outside at six a.m. I stumbled towards the kitchen, cow-heavy and disoriented. Was it the weight of worry, or could it be pregnancy girdling my body? I grabbed the phone as if it were a lifeline.

  “Diane?” Matthew’s voice was a million miles away and broken into jagged pieces. “I’m in Saigon, at — embassy. I tried to call you yesterday, but I couldn’t — connection. They told you — ”

  I held the receiver in both hands. “Yes, the men from the Navy were here. I’m scared. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I’ll be — in a few days, and we’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”

  I didn’t want to wait for days, didn’t want to go through any of it alone: the waiting, the visit to the clinic, meeting Bobby when he came home, but I had to. “Did you see him? Bobby?”

  “I saw him, but — won’t let him talk to anyone — after he’s debriefed at San Diego.” He hesitated and an ocean of silence roared in my ear. “Diane, he lost part of his — arm. He’s thin but considering the fact — a POW, he looks — like I thought — would.”

  My breath snagged in my chest. “His arm? How did that happen?”

  “Most likely when his plane — down. Ejecting from — jet is risky.”

  “How am I going to tell him, how?”

  “I’ve got to hang up. — you soon. I love you — than anything.”

  “I love you, too. What about your brother, Matthew?” But the line had already gone dead.

  I was sitting on the kitchen floor, thinking about how m
essed up my life was when Louise came out of her room, her backpack slung across her shoulder. She almost tripped on me.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m okay.” My usual answer when my life was coming down around my ears.

  “I can’t imagine how you feel. If you need anything …”

  Need? What did I need? I was now one of the statistics, their numbers quite small, but still real: a widow before the age of twenty, with a husband back from the dead, and cautious but, most likely, pregnant. I stood by the kitchen sink, staring at the leafless trees in the backyard as the weak sun rose above the neighbor’s garage. In the heartless winter light I watched the birds at the feeders. I wanted to fly away with them, hover high in the sky and look down on me to see if I could make sense of any of the confusion swirling like an ocean eddy around my life.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Louise asked. “What about classes?”

  “Two left tomorrow, then Christmas break. Finals aren’t until January.” I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Second week of January. I know what I’ll be doing during Christmas vacation. Studying.” She walked out the door then turned around and came back inside. “If you need anything, just ask,” she said. She hugged me, waved goodbye, and then headed off towards campus.

  I opened the refrigerator and stared inside and made it to the bathroom just before I vomited. Bile burned my throat. I washed my face and rinsed my mouth and crawled back into bed. I must have slept, because the next thing I knew Nancy poked her head in the door.

  “Hey, wake up. It’s almost eight. Let’s get to the clinic when it opens. My friend will squeeze you in as a favor, and you’ll have the rest of the day free.”