Faithful Unto Death

by Stephanie Jaye Evans

He held his hand up to stop me and his face grew severe.

  “If you don’t mind, it’s my house. I’ll do the explaining.”

  I leaned closer to him and held my palms up. “It’s just that you’ve misunderstood—”

  He stood and leaned over me, his finger pointing at my face, his voice harsh. “That’s what the other one said, ‘You misunderstand me, Dr. Fallon.’” His voice took on a mocking, wheedling tone.

  “But he was the one who misunderstood. Not me. Not me. Now”—his voice went back to his normal range—“are you going to let me tell you my story? It didn’t make any difference to him, but maybe, just maybe, there is some shred of character left in the men of your generation.”

  I was leaning my head back, looking up into this furious old man’s face. My head had gone still and quiet. That’s what the other one said …

  I said, “Yes, sir, I’d like for you to tell me your story.”

  He stood a moment longer, finger inches from my nose. Then he tucked his finger under his thumb and stood straight.

  “Right. That’s good,” he said. He stepped back a pace and folded himself back into his chair. “Mai is in bed asleep. I don’t know how much you managed to make her drink …”

  I started to interrupt; again he held his hand up to stop me.

  “But it was enough to make her ill when she got home. I’ve given her something for the nausea, and something to help her sleep.”

  “Are you sure that was wise?” I said—the combination of alcohol and sedatives …

  His lip curled. “Excuse me, Mr. Wells, I am a doctor. Now then. Am I to be allowed to tell my story, or not?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes. Good,” he said. He seemed to relax a little.

  “I don’t suppose you ever served your country?” he said. Oh, good. This question again. I shook my head.

  “No, that’s right. I’ve already asked you that, haven’t I? After that memorable Memorial Day sermon. You told me you had ‘missed the draft.’

  “I chose to serve my country. I enlisted. And I didn’t enlist to pay for my medical school bills, either. I left a budding practice, and a family, in San Rafael to become a doctor with the Air Force in Vietnam,” Fallon said. “Men who don’t serve don’t have a clue about the sacrifice. You reap the benefits of freedom without ever understanding the price that’s paid, much less paying part of that price.”

  I hoped that “you” was a generic and all-inclusive “you” and not a personal statement about my own patriotism, but that seemed overly optimistic. My fingers had found a button in the upholstery and I realized I had been worrying at it. I clasped my hands to keep them still. I once pulled a button off the family room couch after worrying it, and that had made Annie Laurie really mad. I don’t think Fallon had noticed the slightly loosened button. Might even have been loose before I started on it.

  “I worked alongside Mai’s father, and her grandfather—they were doctors, too, fine men, good doctors. My wife and children were back in the States, and I didn’t have much in common with most of the servicemen. For one thing, I was a lot older than the others; even the other doctors were mainly in their twenties. I was on my own a good deal, missing my family. I was lonely. Trung, Mai’s father, often had me in his home. His wife, well, his whole family, they were lovely people.

  “Americans, when Americans think of the Vietnamese, they picture peasants in coolie hats and Mao pajamas. The Dinhs were an educated, cosmopolitan family. They lived in a big, old French town house—the whole extended family together. Grandparents, parents, aunt and uncle, Mai’s two brothers, and little sister. Mai was twelve, Trung’s oldest. She was in a Catholic boarding school in Paris—both Mai’s parents and three of her grandparents had attended the same school—it’s the Stanislas College. I can’t ever get the pronunciation right.

  “So Mai was in France the whole time I was in Vietnam and I never saw her there. In Vietnam.”

  Fallon got up and walked over to his desk. There was a carafe of water on his desk, one of those where the lid to the carafe is an upside-down glass. He took the glass off, and I heard the clinking of glass against glass. He filled the tumbler with water, drank it all, and then upended the glass on the carafe again. Fallon came back to the sitting area and sat down heavily. He hadn’t offered me any water. Not that I wanted some—it was interesting, that’s all.

  What I wanted was for Fallon to get to the part of his story that included “the other one.” He might have been talking about Mai’s first husband, Jonathon; but again, he might have been talking about Graham Garcia. Fallon could have known about Graham. Knowing what I did about Fallon, he wouldn’t have been at all happy about the affair. I sure as heck wouldn’t be happy if one of my daughters let herself get caught up in such a situation.

  There wouldn’t be any use in trying to hurry the old man. An old soldier has earned the right to tell his story.

  Fallon fiddled with the angle of a crookneck floor lamp until he had adjusted it to his satisfaction—I couldn’t tell that the fiddling had made a difference.

  He said, “Skip to 1975. How old were you in ’75?”

  “I’d have been in junior high,” I said.

  Fallon frowned as if being born too early for the draft was just what should be expected of a slacker like me.

  “Did you read the papers back then?”

  I said, apologetically, that I had not. I had discovered football and girls and those two subjects had occupied my mind to the exclusion of nearly everything else, war or no war. I didn’t say that last part out loud.

  Fallon sighed at my ignorance.

  “In brief, then. In 1975, without ever having made a full-out effort to win the war, the U.S. government no longer finds it politically expedient to support the South Vietnamese, regardless of promises made. We are packing up and moving out. I get Trung Dinh and his entire family secure seats on a transport plane. I mean everybody: his parents and in-laws, his brother and his sister-in-law, the kids, everybody who lived in that house and more than a dozen who didn’t but were closely related. I called in every favor I was owed and pulled strings I didn’t have any business pulling. I was determined that at least one Goddamned American was going to be true to his promise.”

  I had no idea where this story was going. It didn’t appear to be going anywhere near the Bridgewater golf course last Sunday evening, but Fallon had my complete attention.

  “Trung called the Stanislas College and arranged for Mai to be flown to California to meet them. He wanted the family to make this new start together. Mai’s flight was, I think, three days before the evacuation transport. There is a Catholic boarding school in Monterey, the Santa Catalina, and it was arranged that a nun would pick Mai up from the airport and she would stay at the school until Trung and his wife came to get her.

  “I was at the house while he made the call. All around me the women were rushing, trying to decide what to pack. They had to leave almost everything, all that gorgeous antique furniture, the rugs. Trung’s dad was walking through the house cutting paintings from their frames, layering the paintings in silk and wrapping them into scrolls. Family pictures and jewelry, that’s about all they were able to take with them.

  “Trung has Mai on the phone, he’s speaking Vietnamese—Mai didn’t speak English, she spoke Vietnamese and French—but I’d been in Vietnam for three years and I could understand him a little. He was saying, ‘Mai, we’re all going to go live in California near my friend Malcolm. Malcolm says you will love California; it’s always sunny, and there are fruit trees in every yard.’ He explains about the Sister from Santa Catalina who will pick her up from the airport. Trung says, ‘Two nights you will go to bed in Santa Catalina, and then you will wake up and Mommy and Daddy will be there to take you to your new home. Be brave for a little while only. Daddy is coming. I promise.’”

  Fallon put a fist to his mouth to still his lips. I knew enough to realize this story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.
/>   He cleared his throat roughly. “We get to the airport. Marines are clearing the way for us, there are desperate people clawing to get through, screaming for help. You know, these people were our allies, they had helped us, risked their lives for the American forces, and now, now we were leaving them behind to face the enemy alone. I couldn’t save them all, but I’d made a promise to Trung and I was doing everything I can.

  “I’ve got a duffle slung over my shoulder, and a little girl by each hand. We’re all there, Trung’s entire family, his wife’s family, too. And oh, about a hundred and thirty orphans who will also be starting new lives in America, the little mixed-blood boys and girls whose American fathers had never claimed them. It is flat chaos. The C-5 stretches in front, looking like an airport hangar with wings—it’s huge.

  “Trung’s family is getting counted in, one by one. I hand over the two little girls, they feel like puppies, they’re so light and warm; they get checked off, and then, there’s one too many. We count again and Trung’s nephew has a young woman by the arm, his fiancée, he’s not leaving without her, oh, Dr. Fallon, she weighs nothing, if you can’t take her, let her have my seat, I’ll stay behind.

  “The kid is pleading, the girl is the size of my thumb, eyes dark and still—not begging, only waiting for my answer. She never says a word. Trung’s sister starts crying, no, no he has to go, I’ll give up my seat, only let my baby have a chance for life. I said, ‘Give her my seat.’ I’m not being a hero—there’s no chance a U.S. doctor is getting left behind, I’ll catch another plane, no fear.

  “But, my God, they think I’m a hero, they’re crying, embracing me, kisses, hugs. I’m yelling, ‘Go, go, go!’” Dr. Fallon passed a hand over his face.

  “Trung, very solemn, shakes my hand. He says, ‘Ba․n là mô․t ngu’ò’i d¯ã d¯ú’ng cua mình hú’a he․n.’ ‘You are a man who stands by his promise.’” Fallon’s voice broke in a sob. He took a moment to gather himself back together, rotating his head, working out the strain, then giving me a stern look.

  “Trung got on the plane. He had his entire family with him, everyone except Mai. Also on that plane were a number of young American nurses, and some of my fellow doctors, who had served selflessly and stayed until the end. There were three hundred and twenty-eight people on that plane. I was supposed to be one of them.”

  Dr. Fallon fell silent. He took a long gasping breath as though he had forgotten to breathe for a minute.

  “The C-5 is in the air twelve minutes and there is an explosion. The Air Force still doesn’t know for sure whether it was shot down, or sabotaged, or if there was a systems malfunction. It doesn’t matter. The plane goes down in a rice paddy, hits a dike. A hundred and fifty-three people died. Almost all the orphans, three of those pretty, young nurses, and every last member of Mai’s family.”

  There was a quiet “pop” and I felt that chair button come free in my hand. I tried to palm it back into place.

  Fallon’s hands were trembling. I stood and went to his desk and poured him another glass of water and handed it to him. He drank it and nodded his thanks. It took him a while before he could go on.

  “Oh, my Lord. I had sent them to their death.” He waved off my protest. “No, I don’t take responsibility—I really had done what I could, but …

  “Then I had to get out myself. There wasn’t any time to mourn, to see to the funerals. The North Vietnamese were only miles away. Five days later, I’m out of the mud and the heat and the blood and in the sweet, cool arms of my beautiful, blond Faye. I am in a different world from the one I left behind.

  “For the first couple of weeks, I was working at fitting back in with Faye, and getting to know my boys again. Not that I had forgotten Mai, but I needed to choose the right time to ask Faye … She never hesitated, not one second. It doesn’t matter that she was already raising four sons; of course we would adopt Mai.

  “Faye says, ‘Malcolm, you know I have always wanted a little girl.’”

  Abruptly Fallon stood up and took a framed picture from his desk. He handed it to me. I looked into the soft, blue eyes of a pretty blond woman. She wore her hair in the full, puffy, pageboy style I associate with airline hostesses. Her smile was warm.

  Fallon tapped the face.

  “That’s Faye,” he said.

  “She’s lovely,” I said. That’s the only thing you can say when a man shows you a picture of his wife, but Fallon’s Faye was a truly lovely woman. She looked gentle and kind and calm—which is quite an achievement for a woman raising four sons and somebody else’s emotionally wounded daughter. My sister-in-law Stacy has only three sons, and I once saw her pull her shoe off and fling it at a kid. Not that I blamed her. I just wished I’d thought of it first—my shoes are bigger and heavier and I’ve got a better aim.

  “But first we have to find Mai. Because I couldn’t remember where she is! When Trung was on the phone telling Mai about the school, he was speaking Vietnamese, very fast, and everybody was bustling around me, talking a hundred miles an hour, and mainly it didn’t occur to me that I was going to need the information. It wasn’t like now when you can get on the Internet and search and ten minutes later you have your information. All I really remembered was that a nun was going to pick Mai up at the airport.

  “Faye and I are going through the Yellow Pages calling every Catholic parish listed. Meanwhile, Mai is in Santa Catalina. She doesn’t speak English, and none of the little girls speak French. A couple of the Sisters do. Three days pass and there’s no daddy there to get her. Of course, the American withdrawal from Saigon is all over the television, the crash, too, and it’s very frightening, but Mai doesn’t have any reason to believe her family was on that plane, except that her dad said he would come and get her and he hasn’t.

  “I don’t know who finally called the school. Trung had told someone in Vietnam where Mai was going to be sent, I guess. One of the Sisters who can speak French takes Mai out to the garden, and she tells her. Her father, her mother, her little sister, and her brothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles … everybody is gone.

  “Mai finds herself in a strange country, with a strange language. There is no one on earth who knows her and loves her. She is alone in a way you and I can never imagine. She has lost everyone.

  “She stops eating. At night she thrashes around in her bed until she throws herself on the floor. The Sisters start constraining Mai to her bed at night. They’re afraid she’s going to hurt herself.

  “So a month or so into Mai’s stay at Santa Catalina, at last we know where she is. Now we have to get permission to see her, and before that we have to get permission to adopt her, because the school is concerned about Mai’s mental health—they don’t want us coming into Mai’s life and then disappearing. Mai can’t have any more people disappearing. We go through all the interviews, the home visits—the boys were troopers—they want all our financial information … it took forever.

  “Mai can’t wait forever. One day Mai is sitting in front of a dinner she won’t touch, with a bunch of American girls she can’t talk to. One of the Sisters touches her shoulder and says, ‘Mai? Will you walk with me outside?’ The Sister takes Mai out to the gardens, and on a sudden impulse, the Sister told me she’d had a message from God, but on this impulse, she kneels down next to Mai and says, ‘Mai, run. Run as hard as you can. Run until it stops hurting. And then run back here to me.’ Mai stares up at her for a long time, and then she turns and runs. Mai runs for more than an hour. She’s running in her woolen school jumper and cloggy, leather-soled Oxfords.

  “That night, Mai sleeps without the nightmares. The next morning, Mai dresses in her uniform but puts her sneakers on. She won’t eat her breakfast, but she does drink some juice and that is a great relief to the Sisters. Instead of going to class, Mai goes out to the garden and she runs. She really never stopped running. ‘Run till it stops hurting.’ It never did.

  “Do you know what Mai does most Saturdays? She runs to the Galleria, eats lunch at
the Cheesecake Factory, and runs back. That’s a thirty-mile round trip.”

  I made appropriate noises of amazement.

  “It was soon after Mai discovered running as a pain management tool that Faye and I qualified for the adoption process. Faye asked the nuns not to pack for Mai. She didn’t want Mai to feel she was being shipped around like a parcel. The nuns did tell Mai that I was a friend of her daddy’s, and that we wanted to meet her. We left the boys at home with my mom and dad; four brothers at once, well.

  “We talked it over beforehand, Faye and I, what would be the best way to handle this. So, as we had planned, I waited out in the garden. This school is gorgeous, you should see the pictures. While I’m outside waiting, my Faye goes to the parlor with Sister I-can’t-remember-her-name. Mai is sitting as still as a china doll on a shelf. She is a Thumbelina, you could blow her away like flower thistle.

  “Faye gets down on her knees in front of Mai, and with the Sister translating, Faye says, ‘Mai, it broke Malcolm’s heart when he heard about the plane accident. Ever since then, we have been searching and searching for you. We can’t bring back your family. But if you will let us, we will be your new family, and I will be a mother to you.’ And my Faye opens her arms, and after four heartbeats, Mai slides down from the chair and into Faye’s arms and into our lives.”

  Fallon’s eyes were swimming. He groped at his pockets and pulled out a handkerchief. A real cotton handkerchief, not a Kleenex.

  I had to blink myself. I waited until I was sure he had finished his story. It was a story he had told many times, I thought, the way someone keeps a stone in his pocket and rubs and rubs it until it is polished and perfect.

  I said, “What a grace that you and Faye were there for Mai, Dr. Fallon. You saved that little girl. I can’t bear to think of her growing up without a family to love her. You really are a man who stands by his promise. You have walked the walk.” I reached over and touched his knee. “But, Dr. Fallon, why did you tell me that story?”

  “Why?” Fallon was aghast. “How can you not know why? Because Mai can’t have you in her life; she’s not strong enough. You think she’s a pretty face, a diversion from a stale marriage, but she’s a person. I thought she was going to die when her worthless husband walked out on her! I really thought she might die! She stopped eating again—she ran herself to the bone!”