Message from Nam (40 page)

“Don’t be silly.”

He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was in case he never saw her again, but he didn’t. There was something else he wanted to say to her instead, and as he asked her, he felt strangely nervous. “You wouldn’t want to have dinner sometime, would you?”

She looked startled for a minute, and then nodded. She couldn’t quite make head or tail of him, but maybe he just needed a friend, and she was willing. “Sure … I’d like that …”

“I’ll call you sometime.”

“Thanks, Tony.” She shook his hand, and went back upstairs, to write the story of what had happened the day before. But after she wrote it, she sat staring into space for a long time, thinking of the little boy whose father had left him five years before to come to Viet Nam, and she didn’t know why, but without even knowing him, her heart went out to Joey.

C
HAPTER
22

T
ony called her the following week when he came to Saigon again, and she was out on a story with Ralph and some other men, but when she came back, she called him at the number he’d left her. He was staying with friends at Tan Son Nhut Base, and he wondered if she wanted to go to dinner and maybe a movie on the base afterward. And she thought it sounded like fun. It had been ages since she’d seen a movie.

He picked her up at seven o’clock, and she’d just had time to shower and wash her hair and change, when he knocked on her door, and they went to Ramuntcho’s on the ground floor of the Eden Building for dinner.

It was a good French restaurant, frequented by a lot of GIs, and no one paid any attention to them as they talked, and laughed and joked, and now that they knew each other a little better, the dinner was relaxed and easy. He had a good sense of humor, and much of the time his view of life in the army had her in hysterics.

“So why the hell do you keep reenlisting?” she asked.

“I’ve got nothing else to do. I did two years of college at night. I speak Spanish fluently. I used to change a diaper pretty good.” He had been brilliant at caring for a dying child. “I supposedly have strong powers of leadership, and I’ve been a tunnel, rat for four and a half years. So what’s that going to get me? A job in the sewers of New York? What else can I do?”

“What about your farm, or the vineyard in the Napa Valley?”

“There’s plenty of time for that. Besides,” he confessed, “I hate walking out on unfinished business.” Yet he had walked out on his son. But he had been twenty-five years old, and felt completely helpless. “What about you?” he asked her. “What are you going to be when you grow up?”

“Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz,
” she said without a moment’s hesitation. “I have a thing about red shoes.”

“Now I know why I like you.” He grinned. “You’re crazy.” And then he got serious again. “Do you want to keep working for a newspaper when you go back?”

“I guess so. I always wanted to be a journalist, and actually, I like it a lot.”

“You’re lucky. It’s also a nice clean way to earn a living.” And then suddenly they both remembered what had almost happened to her in Cu Chi, and they laughed. “No, I guess I take that back. What have you been up to this week, by the way?” And when she told him, he was impressed by the stories she’d covered. She wasn’t afraid to get dirty, get shot at, or see the ugly side of war, and although it frightened him for her, he also respected her for it.

And in the end, they decided to skip the movie. They went to the bar at her hotel instead and talked for hours, about themselves, Viet Nam, Bill, Tony’s family, hers, and even Queenie.

“I feel as though I’ve known you all my life,” he said admiringly as he left Paxton that night. There was something so warm and giving about her that it was easy to open up and get to know her.

“So do I,” she confessed. “I don’t usually do this,” but it had done them both good. She had even told him about how awkward she had always felt with her mother. Only that one time, after Peter had died, was there something different between them. Yet when she went back, after she’d been to Viet Nam, she couldn’t seem to make contact with her again. They were just too different.

“I haven’t had a friend like you since I was a kid.” He laughed happily. “You know, the kind of buddy you can say anything to.” It had been like that with Barbara when they were kids. But not in a long, long time since then.

“When are you coming back to Saigon?” she asked as they stood in the lobby, and it was after two o’clock, and way after curfew.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll call you.” He seemed to hesitate, and then reached out and touched her shoulder.

And the call came two days later. He had traded time off with someone else, and made the offer of the movie again, and this time they almost made it as far as Tan Son Nhut Base, but someone had blown a car up in the road, and there was an enormous traffic jam, and finally they turned around and went back to Saigon.

“What do you want to do instead? Radio City Music Hall? A nice Broadway play? A hamburger and shake at Schrafft’s?”

“Don’t,” she groaned. “You make me homesick.”

“Want to go dancing at the Pink Nightclub?”

“Let’s go back to your place and watch TV and eat popcorn,” she teased, and now he groaned.

“Screw it. Let’s go back to your hotel and talk.” And they did it again, and this time, when he left her in the lobby, he pulled her into a dark corner and kissed her. He ran his hands through her hair and touched the satin of the creamy skin on her shoulders, and it almost made him moan, it hurt so much just to think about her. “This is getting difficult,” he said in the voice of the Munchkins from
The Wizard of Oz
, readjusting his trousers, and she had to laugh at him.

“You’re impossible,” she said, kissing him again.

“I’m extremely possible, I promise you. Want to try me?” he whispered into her neck, and she chuckled.

“You’re not supposed to make me laugh at a time like this,” she whispered to him, and he kissed her hard on the lips.

“Excuse me …” And then out of nowhere, “… let’s go upstairs, Paxxie …”

“I’m scared …” she whispered back.

“Don’t be.” But she was. Everyone she had loved had died, and what if it happened to him now? She didn’t want to do that to him, or herself, she just couldn’t. She tried to explain it to him as they stood there, and he looked down at her gently and pushed the silky blond hair gently back from her shoulders.

“We’re not in control of anything, Pax. It’s all in the stars, in God’s hands. What happens happens … it’s not your fault what happened to Bill … or Peter … no matter what I said back then. And what happens to me isn’t up to you either. We just have to take what we can while we can get it. And love each other and be there for each other, for as long as we can, and if something happens, then we did the best we could. Paxton, you can’t hide for the rest of your life because you’re afraid of what will happen to someone.”

“But I feel as though I killed them,” she said sorrowfully with tears in her eyes, and he hated himself for what he had said to her when he didn’t really know her.

“You didn’t kill anyone, and you know that … you’re just scared.” He put his arms around her and held her tight. “But, baby, please don’t be. I’ve never loved anyone like I love you … don’t run away from me … please …” And then he looked at her as he had never looked at any woman before and said something he had never said to anyone, but it was true, and he dared to say it. “Baby, I need you.” They needed each other, and they all needed someone. You couldn’t face the brutality of what they were living through without having someone to get you through it.

He walked her up to her room then, thinking about what they had said and holding her close to him, and when they reached her door, he pulled her close to him and kissed her for a long, long time, and when he pulled away again he looked into her eyes with a gentle smile.

“Whatever happens to us, Paxton … whatever you decide … I’ll always love you.” And then he walked quickly down the stairs, without turning back, while she watched him.

C
HAPTER
23

T
he following week, she got a telegram from the Wilsons in San Francisco. Gabby had had another little girl, and mother and baby were doing well. And they had named her Mathilda. Paxton was happy for her, but it all seemed so far away, and so removed from the life Paxton was leading now. And for the rest of that week, the Teletypes were full of reports of an incredible gathering of youth for a concert in a place called Woodstock.

She had been out with Tony again, and they had finally gotten to the movies this time and seen
The Producers
, and they had both loved it. They’d also seen a fantastic special newsreel of the first men walking on the moon a few weeks before, and Tony had tears in his eyes as he watched it. And afterward they’d had milkshakes and hamburgers on the base and talked about their childhoods. Hers in Savannah and his in New York were like night and day and when she had tried to explain the Daughters of the Civil War to him, he refused to believe her.

“Paxton, please … don’t tell me people still care about things like that. The Civil War? I don’t believe it.”

And she had told him about other things, her father, and the things she’d done with him, and her beloved Saturday mornings at his office. And he had told her about working for his father every summer in the Bronx, and his family slowly making it, and eventually having a little money. And how hard he had worked, feeling like a man when he was a kid, and how much he had loved it. And how he had felt when his first baby was born, their little girl, and how he had felt when she was sick, and when she died. He had thought it would kill him. And then little Joey coming along after that like a little miracle, but so healthy and so strong, and so different.

“You don’t know what it was like.” His eyes were alight from the memory of the day Joey was born, although he didn’t allow himself to think about it often. “It’s the greatest feeling in the world … having kids.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “You want kids one day, Pax?” There were still a few things he didn’t know about her, but not many. Being together in a place like that, you learned things about each other that in most cases, you didn’t learn in an entire lifetime.

“I guess so. I’ve never thought about it much.” And then, slowly, she remembered. “No, that’s not true.” She always wanted to be honest with him. It was just her nature. “I guess with Peter I used to think that eventually I wanted kids … with Bill it was different, because I never let myself think that he’d really marry me, so I wouldn’t be too disappointed if he didn’t. But the funny thing is, I always feel so remote with other people’s children.”

“It’s not the same when they’re your own,” he reassured her. “It’s so different. It’s just a miracle, it’s hard to explain, and you feel this incredible bond afterwards knowing that that child is a part of you forever.”

She looked at him gently then over their milkshakes. “Is that how you feel about Joey, even now?”

He nodded, thinking about it, and then he looked at her. “Yes, it is.” There seemed to be no doubt in his mind, in spite of what had happened.

“Then you should go back and see him sometime.”

“Yeah, I guess I should,” he said hoarsely. And then they went dancing that night, and eventually they went back to her hotel, and he had his arm around her as he walked her upstairs, and he didn’t expect her to ask him in, so when he kissed her good night, he started to leave, and she tugged gently at his sleeve, and when he turned to look at her again, he saw that the door to her room was open. He didn’t dare ask her what it meant. He just followed her inside, and closed the door behind him, and pulled her into his arms and kissed her as he hadn’t kissed anyone in years, if ever. And she responded to him as she never had to anyone. Everything was different with him. What she thought, what she did, what she felt. He made her feel young again, and old, and incredibly womanly, and totally at ease. It was as though she had been born for him, and had waited all her life for him, and he felt the same way about her, and as they lay in bed afterward, side by side, he said that.