Faithful Unto Death (26 page)

“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 cu
a 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!”

I’d never had the slightest interest in Mai, not as a woman, not to act on.

I stood up and turned off the lamps. With the lamps off, I could see the green, groomed golf course, even in the dark. I could see the flag at the ninth hole.

“Did you tell Mai’s story to Graham Garcia?”

“I . . . what? Did I . . . who?” His voice sounded frightened in the dark room.

“Did you sit here in the dark and see Mai leave through the back gate to meet her lover? Did you see them embrace? Did you go out there to confront them together?”

I tried to picture the scene in my mind.

“No,” I said. “You wouldn’t have done that because Mai isn’t strong enough for confrontation, is she? And you were trying to protect her. You were trying to keep your promise.”

Fallon stumbled to his desk and poured himself water. The glass rattled against the carafe, and I heard the glass click against his teeth when Fallon lifted it to drink. He fell back into the chair behind his desk.

I stood before Fallon at his desk.

“You waited until she came back in, didn’t you? Then you went to find the man.”

“Not to kill him. I didn’t go out there to kill him.” Fallon whispered the words.

Fallon’s face glowed white in the dark room. He had his hands braced against his desk as if he needed the barrier between us.

I said, “You didn’t go out there to kill Graham Garcia, but you killed him all the same, didn’t you?”

Now Fallon yelled at me, roaring, “I told him the story! I knew if I explained, if I could make him understand what Mai had been through . . . why he had to leave her alone. I told him everything I told you!” Fallon shouted.

He started shoving stuff around on his desk, yanking drawers open and knocking papers to the floor, as if somewhere on his desk he could find the proof that he had acted in good faith, the certificate that would vindicate him. I was afraid he would work himself into a heart attack.

I held my hands wide and took a step toward him in the darkened room.

“Take it easy, Dr. Fallon, take it easy.” My words had no effect.

“He wouldn’t listen to me. He said it was too late. He had a family, did you know that? Just like you do, but here you are, sniffing for another woman!”

“No, Dr. Fallon.”

“You deny it! You deny it just like him! You take my daughter to a bar in the middle of the afternoon—”

“No!”

I could not get through to this guy; he kept on as if he couldn’t hear me.

“You pour liquor down her throat, you play on her weaknesses—”

“I did not!”

I pulled my phone from my pocket and scrolled for Wanderley’s number, grateful for the lighted screen.

“Because you’re the same as he was . . . you want what you want and . . .”

I looked up from my phone.

“You killed him.” I said it quietly, and somehow through his mental static, he heard me.

“No. No. I didn’t.” His voice was calm and quiet, rational, and for a second, I thought I had gotten it wrong.

Then Fallon went on, “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. We were sitting out on the golf course, and I was explaining. I was telling him Mai’s story and he was listening and asking good questions and nodding his head and I thought he understood, I thought we were on the same page, two gentlemen.”