Her Mother's Daughter (100 page)

“Oh!” He was horrified. “No Italian women! They have the brothers, the fathers…!”

A crumpled airline ticket to Saigon.

Oh god. Grant. Yes.

That was after Toni and I had been married for a while, two or three years, I guess. And our life together was contented, we and the kids together, we were happy. And then Grant…when did I first meet him? In some city, unpleasant, show-offish, tall buildings topped with huge neon signs, yes, Berlin it was, West Berlin. His name was Grant Michaels, and he was a reporter for
Worldview,
a newsmagazine, a sister magazine of
World.
Yes, we were both in Berlin covering Kennedy's visit there, so it was 1963, June, I think. Our paths crossed a couple of times, we sat around the same tables with other reporters and photographers and local journalists, eating or drinking, and our eyes met in an electric way, but we never really spoke. I liked his face. He was in his forties, and every year he had lived was written on his face, it was deeply lined, but there was no petulance or anxiety on it, only understanding and sorrow. He was tall, and walked as if he had no relation to his body, but he had been married three times, some guy told me.

I met him again in Saigon in 1965, after Johnson had ordered heavy bombing of the North. The military wouldn't let me—or any other journalists I knew—go out on bombing missions or raids, so most of them sat in our very American hotel all day, drinking and gossiping, waiting for the official bulletins, the official photographs we sent home as news. So we all knew each other. I spent my time wandering the city taking pictures of ordinary people, not action shots but depressing enough—the lack of young Vietnamese men; the heavy American military “presence”; the hundreds of maimed bodies; the young girls whose bodies were whole but whose spirits were being maimed, for there was only one way to get money; the sense of corruption and disease….

One afternoon, feeling especially guilt-ridden and rotten because I had gotten some wonderful shots of a café hit by a bicycle bomb—the finished photographs showed the lower half of an arm flying off amid the smoke of the blast—I went back to the hotel early, resolved to get drunk. I went up to my room and took a shower and put on fresh clothes, but nothing helped, I felt dirty, my mouth had a bad taste in it. I went down to the bar, said hello to the regulars, and a head turned, and it was Grant. I moved toward him as if he were a magnet and I an iron filing. He pulled the barstool beside him closer to him, his eyes never leaving mine.

I ordered a bourbon. “I'm going to get drunk this afternoon,” I confided.

He said nothing. He simply looked at me as if he already knew everything I would tell him, as if his heart was breaking for it, as mine was.

I told him, it spilled out—the suddenness of the noise, the loudness of the noise, how my entire body, every nerve in it, leaped, blood leaping too in rage at the assault to my senses, then becoming conscious of the screams, the screaming of one person in particular, it didn't stop, was it the person whose arm I'd seen go flying out to the curb? The chaos, the sirens, the crowd, the voracity in some of the faces looking on, wanting to feel, needing the sensational to feel….

And worst of all was me, my own reaction, my instantaneous pulling of my camera to my eye, setting the f-stop, checking the light, clicking, clicking, the shutter. Humanity? Where was mine? Did I rush to help, to heal, to console? They shot their weapons, I shoot mine: what's the difference between us? Complicit. I was complicit in this hideous world I lived in.

Tears were spouting out of my eyes and even my nose. I tried to hide them, I was wary of these journalists, they were all men and they were tough and they had contempt for emotion, especially tears, especially in a woman. For a man to cry would be dramatic, the source of a grand confessional moment; for a woman to cry was simply ordinary, expected, exactly like being home. Grant suggested we go have some dinner in a little restaurant where few foreigners ventured because it was on the outskirts of the city and the menu was in Vietnamese. I agreed instantly.

He had a car there. He'd been there for weeks, he said, but outside Saigon. He'd been there before, many times, he had contacts, he sometimes was able to go along on a mission, he couldn't say more…. Except he told me about the mission he'd been on last week. The bombing was over, the planes had to get out of there, enemy antiaircraft guns were homing in on them, and the plane still had a bomb left and needed to get rid of it. The pilot fretted about it, but didn't drop it although they passed over a range of arid hills. He waited. And then he saw, far below him, a little old man in a donkey cart heaped with crates, a refugee probably, and called out to Grant, “Lookee, man, you wanta see some fuckin' A aim,” and signaled the bombardier, who dropped it, plop, on top of the little old man, whose cry couldn't be heard, nor his arm seen, who exploded in a dusty cloud, vanished, leaving the entire road empty and barren as it had been for miles before. There were tears in
his
eyes too, and my hand crept over his lying on the table, and we touched glasses and drank, and kept drinking.

I guess we ate something. I guess the food was good. But between the upset of the day and the excitement of his presence, I was dazed even without the three or four drinks I'd poured down. We went back to the hotel and got in bed and passed out in each other's arms.

After that, for the rest of the time I was in Saigon, Grant and I spent our evenings together. We talked, held hands, looked in each other's eyes. We made love, but his disconnection from his body and the sorrow he carried with him like his body smell affected his lovemaking. He would make love for a long time, but he came as soon as he entered me; and once he came, it was over, he did nothing to help me. Still, he made me feel cherished somehow. Sex can be so many things….

He was from a Greek family that had suffered under the Nazi occupation, then in the civil war, and had finally given up and emigrated. Grant had been studying at Penn when World War II broke out, when his family was still in Greece. He immediately enlisted in the Air Force, went to OCS, became a pilot. Now, some of the Air Force officers felt he was one of them, had the right background to be allowed to participate in bombing raids. The other journalists who lacked this regarded him with envy or admiration, but they all treated him respectfully to his face. He was between wives—he'd had two, not three, although he would have a third before he died. For he is dead. I read about it two years ago in
The Times.
His heart. I could have predicted that.

For Grant was like me, his heart hurt him. My heart was starting to ache regularly, who knows why? I say, I insist, this was a happy time of my life. I had a rich and contented family life, I loved Toni, my career was really hot, I was successful in a way I had not been before, nor have been since. I suppose, really, it was the best time of my life.
My
life. The lives of others were not so fortunate. The world was cruel, and I could not avert my eyes—I existed to
see.

It was after that first coming together with Grant that I had the dream about Poland. I was walking through newly tilled fields, brown furrows spread off into the distance as far as I could see, ending in masses of green foliage that framed my view like the frame around a picture. The air was fragrant with the sour smell of new-turned earth, and I knew this was Poland, I had always known it looked like that—at the time, I had not been to Poland.

I walked happily, I was filled with joy even before I spotted a rough-built wooden vegetable stand a few hundred yards away on my left. The back of the stand had a narrow roof covering a counter; there was a parallel counter in front, with room in between for her to stand—it was Grandma's vegetable stand, I knew that. Oh, Grandma! I was overjoyed to have her back again. I began to run, crying out “Grandma, Grandma!” I could see now that there were huge pots—soup, I knew—simmering on the burners on the back counter, and that Grandma was working—but not too hard, it was work she enjoyed—cutting up vegetables to add to the soup. She heard my cries and looked up and came out from behind the counter to greet me, my grandmother, small and shapeless in a cotton housedress without a belt. She threw her arms around me as I threw mine around her. I was breathless from running, warm with happiness. “Grandma, guess what? I'm going to be married!”

“Ah! Ah!” She kissed me many times, hugged me, held me, she couldn't let go of me, she was so happy. “We must tell Papa!” she crowed, and raised her voice to call him. We both stared out across the brown fields toward the trees. A small figure appeared, running. He got larger and larger and then my grandfather was there with us, a small brown man, smiling, happy. “Papa, our Anastasia is going to be married!” Grandma cried. And he embraced us both, we embraced him, it was ecstasy, it was bliss, it was coming home.

I woke glowing with it, and glowed all morning as I prepared to leave Hawaii, where I'd spent a night to break the journey from Saigon to New York. Because of the dream, I didn't carry the horror of Vietnam home with me.

I didn't see Grant again for a long time. He called me when he got back to New York, on the official phone that no one but I was allowed to pick up, but I couldn't meet him in the city, how could I? He sounded disappointed, but I didn't want to tell him the truth about my life, I was too afraid the word would get out. I just said I was completely tied up. He didn't understand, obviously, because next time we met, in London, in the fall of '66, he acted cool. He was there doing an in-depth report on the new Wilson government; I was on my way to Zambia to shoot the independence ceremonies. He'd been there for a while and would stay several weeks longer; I had a night's layover in each direction. We were both staying at Morrow House, where all the
World
people stayed, and met by accident, one leaving, the other entering an elevator.

He colored, then paled when he saw me, and we talked for a moment, the usual excited “How have you been, it's been so long, we must get together” sort of thing, and then he turned to walk away, cool and detached. But I slid my arm through his and walked along with him through the lobby, teasing him out of his pique.

“Don't be mad,” I cajoled. “I have a private life I can't talk about. I can't see you in New York. But we could have wonderful times meeting each other in exotic places, couldn't we?”

He gave an unwilling smile, and almost whined. “It's just—it's not easy, Stacey. I want more….”

I nodded. Men did tend to want to be married. “You'll probably get more,” I said. “But in the meantime, can't we be friends?”

He gave me an anguished look and I suddenly realized that he'd fallen in love with me, that our separation was painful to him. That stopped me short. I freed his arm. “Oh!” I cried softly, and stood still. I don't know what he thought, seeing my stricken face, but he moved toward me smiling and said, “Sure we can, sure! Are you free tonight?”

That was really the beginning of our affair. We cherished each other from a distance, and when we were together, we had deep affectionate conversation, affectionate sex; and a shared knowledge of work, shared attitudes toward what was going on in the world. What we didn't have was intimacy on the day-to-day level, we didn't talk about our troubles with the oil burner, the check that bounced, the kids' newest revolt. And that was great. It was freeing. We went on meeting for several years—we met in Manila, Paris, Ottawa, Perth, several times in London—other places too, I don't remember. Sometimes we'd even make an effort to get assigned to the same places.

I had the Yeats dream—that's how I think of it—in Zambia, a couple of nights after our reunion. Probably it was influenced by the pageantry of the celebration in Lusaka, the colors, the feathers and banners. And it was a happy time, I had so much hope for the new African nations….

I was walking through a huge park, deep green lawns carved by neatly tended paths, woods at a distance, with two men. We all had our arms around each other, I was in the center. One man was older than I, the other was younger. We were full of joy, we were going to the opening of an arts complex and all of us were artists—our work was going to be performed, shown, read. As we turned into the low fence marking off the exposition, we were approached by a man wearing tight black pants, a short flared black cape, and a wide-brimmed hat with a great feather, the kind worn by seventeenth-century cavaliers. He was carrying an open book, reading softly aloud to himself. When he saw us—me—he stopped. He did not bow or remove his hat. He stared at me imperiously. He gazed down at his book and read:

“For death does not end life but is part of it, one of nature's transformations as we work our way through its cycles. Death informs life. It is not, as
your
poet says, simply the mother of beauty; it is the mother of life itself for how could we conceive of life if there were no death? And it is only because we conceive of life that we know we must taste it lingeringly, try every flavor and nuance, drink in experience while we can. Death and life are dependent upon each other, like order and chaos, neither concept being possible without the other. So there should be no fear of death, which is omnipresent, part of life. Welcome it into your arms, for it is but rest: For you lie in nature like a heartbeat.”

This sounded profound to me, and I breathed “Oh, thank you, Mr. Yeats”—I knew he was William Butler Yeats. He nodded peremptorily, closed his book, and walked on. My companions and I continued, with the lightness of heart that follows an aesthetic liberation, and entered the first building on our right. It was all glass—its high roof, its sides. Through the glass we could see an encompassing green blur—the trees that surrounded the building. Sunlight reflected on the floor, bright and cool at once. We walked directly to William Hull, my college English teacher, the poet, who was standing on a ladder painting glass panels. Below him, ranked in parallel rows at a forty-five-degree angle to the side walls, were glass panels, all painted in Rouault-like patches of brilliant color so they resembled stained glass but had more fluid, freer forms. The panels are making rainbows of the sun that pours in through the glass roof; the room glows like jewels, glistens with light, I am speechless at the beauty. I knew that I was home, had come home. William smiled, my companions embraced me, I embraced them, smiling. We were encased in bliss. Yes.