The Hummingbird War

by Joan Shott

  Free? Free to do what? Worry and fret and worry some more? Once they tell me I’m pregnant, I won’t have to worry about whether or not it’s true, then I can try to figure out how I’ll tell Matthew. Will Bobby know when he sees me? They say you can tell by looking at a woman that she’s pregnant. Just like Nancy saw something in my face. But she’s a woman. Women are different. You can’t live with them, can’t live without them.

  And I’d have to face my father. I had always known when I was growing up that the idea of me coming to tell him I was an unwed mother was his worst nightmare. But I wasn’t really an unwed mother, was I? No I was married to someone. I supposed, but didn’t know for sure, if my marriage to Bobby was still binding. Free. I was anything but free.

  At the clinic, most of the questions bordered on whispers and the heat of embarrassment rose from my toes to the top of my head. “When was your last period? What kind of birth control did you use? How many times have you been pregnant before?”

  I must have turned a deep shade of red as I sat in my open-backed gown on the exam table. “What? I don’t remember. Ummm, umm I have a diaphragm, and of course I’ve never been pregnant before.” I squeezed the thin cotton of the gown in my clenched fist.

  “Any reason why you weren’t on birth control pills?”

  “My doctor said they weren’t safe.”

  “That’s a bunch of baloney,” the nurse said, turning to give a knowing look to the other woman in the room. They’d seen it all, heard every excuse.

  They said they wouldn’t have an answer for me until the next day. “You don’t have to come in. Here’s the number. Just ask for me, Donna.”

  I took the piece of paper from her and folded it into a tiny square and shoved it into my jeans pocket.

  The problem with having to wait twenty-four hours to find out if I was pregnant or not, was that I couldn’t think of anything else. And if the clinic told me I was pregnant, it certainly wouldn’t stop me from thinking about anything else. I blamed myself. I had been too insecure and ignorant not to have gone to a different doctor who would have prescribed the pill for me. The infallible pill for the fallible girl, the old-fashioned girl. I was in the middle of biting off what was left of my fingernails when Lilly came into the kitchen.

  “Are you all right, Diane? Last night was…it must have been horrible for you. I was worried when you weren’t here when I woke up. Did you go for a walk? I know how you like to walk when you’re worried.”

  In more ways than she could know, it had been a night and a morning filled with fear and uncertainty. “Of course, I was just walking. I’ll be okay, Lilly. But, how about you? Matthew called, but before I could ask about Max the line went dead.”

  Her hands shook as she poured some coffee into a cup. “I have to be strong for you now. I know Maxwell will make it home.”

  I rolled forward in my seat with a wave of nausea. “You’ll support me whatever happens, won’t you?”

  “You’re not considering going back to your husband?”

  I’d been thinking about everything; if I would stay in school, if I would fight for the house on the island, if I would marry Matthew, have a baby, but I hadn’t ever thought about going back to being Bobby’s wife. “Whatever I decide to do in my life, you’ll stand by me, right?”

  “Of course, Diane, but what would change?”

  “Things change, you should understand that.”

  She covered my hand with hers and squeezed it. “Things change, but some things are meant to be. We’ll get through this.” She carried her cup to the window and looked through the leafless branches. “I want Matthew to be happy. I love both of you. My God, he needs a partner in life who’s loving and strong.”

  There was that word, partner, again. Someone who shares the burden. “I don’t feel so strong right now. I feel as if it’s all on me, and I’m sinking under the weight.”

  “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known,” she said.

  I spent the rest of the day in a cloud of worry over the phone call to the clinic I’d have to make. Just a few days ago life had been good. I was in love, and school and my job were more satisfying than I ever imagined they could be. All I had wanted was to take one day at a time, now everything demanded my immediate attention.

  The next morning, I walked to the pay phone at the corner store and called the clinic. Donna answered and when I told her who I was, I heard a lull as loud as an exploding shell.

  “Oh, Diane. Yes, the results came back this morning. It’s positive. You’re pregnant. Do you need to schedule a visit and discuss…”

  What I need. It came to me in the middle of her question. I need what I need, not what my father needs, or Bobby, or Lilly, or even Matthew. I need to be a first-rate student, a determined soldier against the war, a strong partner, and the good and loving mother I knew I was meant to be.

  I hung up the phone and walked back to the apartment.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The living room was dark, but the florescent fixture in the kitchen gave off enough light to walk without tripping over the mountain of magazines and newspapers piled next to his chair. I called out, “Hi Daddy, are you busy?”

  He was sitting at his small Formica kitchen table, eating a plate of greasy pork chops and mashed potatoes. The oily, bitter smell of his hot cup of coffee drifted across the room. My stomach did a somersault, the blood drained from my face. I dropped into the chair across from him.

  “Well, well, little girl. Come to see your old man in the middle of the week. Must be important. Seeing how Christmas is comin’ up you got some plans for what we’re gonna do?”

  “I forgot about Christmas. I’ve been busy with school, and Lilly’s been staying with us while Matthew’s away.” I couldn’t imagine any present big enough to distract him from the announcement about my pregnancy I’d have to make. That task made the one I had in front of me seem almost manageable.

  “So, if you’re so busy, what are you doing here?”

  “I have something to tell you.”

  “I’ve been expectin’ this so just go ahead and tell me the weddin’ date. I’ve had me some time to think about it, and I’m not against like I was before. I suppose with his father being who he is, I can’t fight you two getting married.”

  “It’s not about Matthew, Daddy.”

  “Come on, tell me. I’m getting’ ready to sit down and watch Gunsmoke.”

  “It’s about Bobby.”

  “Bobby? What about him? God rest that poor boy’s soul.”

  “Some men from the Navy came to see me.” I reached across the table and put my hand on his. “He didn’t die when his plane was shot down. He survived and they said he was taken as an unreported prisoner. He’s been released.” I stopped and took a breath. “He’s coming home.”

  He looked at me with his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide. “You pullin’ my leg?” He waited for me to tell him it was a joke, but I looked away from his expectant expression. He stood up and started to pace the floor.

  “Well, I know these things have happened before. Was a guy I knew back in the army…well, don’t matter no more. But, golly, this is some good news ain’t it? I can’t believe it. This is the kinda stuff happens to other people. Well, this changes everything. You got your husband back.”

  “I’m not married to him anymore.”

  “Little girl, this is your husband we’re talkin’ about here. He’s comin’ back and wants to have his wife at home when he gets there. He’s probably been thinkin’ about you this whole time. You can’t pretend you didn’t take those vows.”

  “I’m not pretending anything. You know I mourned for him. My life has changed.” I was close to shouting.

  “So you just change it back. Don’t tell me you’re gonna leave him for another man. Don’t tell me that, little girl.” He banged his fist on the table.

  “Stop it. I’m not a little girl anymore. I know what I want and what I need.”

  “What
you need is to honor those weddin’ vows. Just like…”

  “Just like what? Why are you are so set on my staying with Bobby? You know I haven’t done anything wrong. You know how much I suffered when they told me he was dead. I got through that, and on the other side I found a man I love.”

  “You tellin’ me you married that man and didn’t love him?” He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, and I saw his eyes focus on my earrings. His angry expression turned to a look of distress. I touched my ear with a shaky hand and felt the pearl earrings my mother had given me, their smoothness running through my fingers like an electrical shock.

  “We should have waited, but I got caught up in his plans. I wanted to make him happy, but I never thought about my own happiness. I never even got to know him.”

  “You leave your husband, and you might as well write me off. I won’t stand for it.”

  “There’s something more to this than what happens between Bobby and me, isn’t there?” Like seeing myself in a hall of mirrors, I remembered the sense of creeping up on an realization, the feeling I’d had the night I’d told Matthew about my parents talking about earning children’s love and respect. I watched my image growing smaller from mirror to mirror, as I recognized what had happened was further and further from the fairy tale about my parents I’d made up. “Tell me what happened when Mom took me to that motel when I was eight years old, the last time I saw her. I know it’s not as simple as what you told me.”

  “I ain’t gonna talk about it.”

  “Yes, you are.” I grabbed him by the arm. “Tell me what happened. I’m a grown woman now, and she was my mother. I need to know.”

  He looked away from me. “I’m never gonna’ say it more than this one time. I ‘spose you should know the truth so you don’t go destroying someone’s life like she did.” He walked to the sink and looked out the window into the night.

  “What did my mother do?”

  His eyes rose to the milky blanket of clouds in the starless sky. “She left me. She took you and drove on down towards her family’s place in California and didn’t get no farther than Portland before she got sick, and the next thing I know, she’s callin’ me and asking for help.”

  “Was that when she took me to the motel?”

  He nodded his head. “She asked me to come get you. I told her to call the police, get an ambulance if it was that bad. I think she was scared to because she was runnin’ away. She waited too long. By the time they got there, she was in pretty bad shape. They said it was her appendix had burst inside and spread the poison. She died at the hospital.” He walked over to the sink, poured his coffee out, washed the cup, and put it in the drainer, careful not to touch it against the other china. Anything to bring some order to his mind. Just like me.

  “You was so scared, you held onto me while I was drivin’ home. Wouldn’t even let me get outta the car when we took the ferry. Said, Don’t ever leave me, Daddy. I’m scared a dying. Why’d you think I’m so set on protectin’ you, little girl?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “You was so young, and I didn’t want you to think bad about your mother. Her trying to take you away and all, and I guess I didn’t want you to know how much it hurt me.”

  “Why did she leave you?”

  “Just wasn’t in love no more, she said. Wanted her own life. She ran because I told her I wouldn’t let her have you if she left.” He turned and looked at me. “I said she’d take you over my dead body.”

  My heart ached with the weight of my father’s confession of fear and loneliness, but I couldn’t let his past dictate my future.

  “This isn’t what’s happening to me,” I said.

  “You bet it is. You marry someone, it’s forever. You know, til death do us part.”

  “He died. Don’t you understand? He died in my heart.”

  “I understand you’ve got another chance. You do right by that boy, Diane.”

  “So, if I don’t stay with him you don’t want to see me anymore.”

  “Little girl, you do right by that boy.”

  “Daddy, I’ll do what I have to. This is my life.”

  I walked through the hallway towards the front door, stopping at the old photographs on the wall. I stared at the one of my mother and me. She was young and beautiful, but when I looked closely I could see unhappiness in her expression, something I’d never noticed before. Maybe I recognized it now from seeing the same look in my own face.

  I pulled the door closed and stood on the porch, watching my father through the small wavy panes of old glass. He sat in his chair at the kitchen table and held his head in his hands. When he stood up and threw his dinner plate across the room — I jumped. And when the tears ran down his face and his body shook with sobs — I ran to my car. He would have rather died than know I’d seen him like that.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I followed the signs for the air station visitor’s entrance and drove the Volvo up to the guardhouse. A man in a khaki uniform nodded at me. “What can I do for you, ma’am? Special flight coming today. You need to be on the list to get in.”

  I wanted to ask if he could please tell me to turn around and go home, just say it had all been a big mistake. But I said my name was on the list and presented my driver’s license with a trembling hand.

  He checked his clipboard, nodded his head sharply, and bent down to give me back my license. “I sure hope everything turns out okay, Mrs. Hayes.”

  If he had known all my troubles, he might have turned me away as a threat, someone who did not have the best interests of the Navy in her heart. Isn’t that what guards are supposed to do? There was nothing but confusion driving me forward as I turned where he motioned and parked in one of the visitor spaces. I recognized the officer who’d been to the apartment as he walked towards my car and recalled his name, Captain Johnson, as if his face, his name, his visit had been something I had dreamed of long ago. He opened the car door for me.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Hayes,” he said.

  “Please call me Diane, Captain.” I had bristled at being called Mrs. Hayes ever since the day I’d met the other Mrs. Hayes, Bobby’s mother. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact time I’d packed away that name like an old sweater, but I didn’t want to be called Mrs. Hayes ever again. I had to do away with my old title in an action tantamount to surgical removal. And then I thought of Bobby’s missing arm. I winced at how hard my heart had become.

  The captain offered his arm and shepherded me towards a hangar. He opened the door and led me to a row of metal folding chairs.

  “Diane, have a seat. The plane will be landing in a few minutes. They radioed when they passed over Portland.”

  I eyed the collection of aviator’s paraphernalia on the wall with dread: flight suits hanging expectantly on pegs, faded parachute packs, scuffed fighter-pilot helmets. No matter how long you were married to a navy flier, you could never break into their society of men and their pride of accomplishment.

  The captain stood behind me. He remained silent; no small talk, no mention of the coming holidays or hope for the future. He was surely putting himself in Bobby’s shoes and knew he was a lucky guy compared to poor Lieutenant Hayes. No matter what was going on in his life, nothing could be as bad as what the poor guy about to step off that airplane was going through: prisoner of war for two years, everyone thinking he was dead, loses part of his arm, and the wife he left behind doesn’t love him anymore. The last part must have been obvious to anyone who looked at me. But worst of all, he can never again fly the jets he loves so much.

  The droning of the approaching plane resonated through the hangar, louder and louder, an alarm too significant to ignore. I looked up at the captain, but I was on my own, and the task before me was as daunting as an unwinnable war.

  “After they land I’ll take you outside,” he barked, over the roar of the engines.

  I stood up and stared straight ahead until he touched my arm. He opened the doo
r and we walked out towards the plane. Icy gusts whipped my skirt against my legs. Someone pushed a rolling set of stairs to the forward door, and when it opened, my heart dropped into a place I didn’t think I would ever be able to find again. My legs buckled, but I kept standing.

  “God bless, Diane,” Captain Johnson said.

  Bobby was the first one off the plane. The other men on the tarmac snapped to attention and saluted. His long, straight legs seemed stiff, his blonde hair was as dull as straw, and his eyes were looking at me, but seemed empty. His shoulders weren’t as broad and thick as I remembered, and his posture was slightly stooped. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the determined set of his jaw. I remembered that look from the time when he wanted me to marry him right away after he’d gotten his orders to go to Vietnam. His face was wired with steel by the look of it.

  He took the stairs one at a time, favoring one leg over the other. And, like the flag of some abandoned territory, his shortened left arm hung uselessly by his side, the sleeve of his jacket precisely folded and pinned away from where the rest of his arm should have been. The neat bit of fabric was buffeted cruelly by the wind. He looked across the wide sea of time and smiled at me hopefully, like a child waiting for a gift he would never get.

  My heart broke like glass, and I did what I swore I wouldn’t; I cried.

  As soon as Bobby stepped off the last stair, Matthew walked out of the plane’s door. He took each step as if he were matching his pace to the beat of his heart. At the bottom, he turned and walked with two officers into one of the buildings on the edge of the airfield. Then suddenly Bobby was standing right in front of me. He pulled me towards him with his good arm. I stumbled into the embrace of a stranger.

  “Diane, it’s you…it’s you.” He rocked me in his arms, kissed the side of my face, and then somehow moved me in his arm just enough to be able to really kiss me. His tears burned my skin. He held me so tight I couldn’t breathe. I pulled away from him.