Message from Nam (44 page)

“Will you come back?” He looked at her, almost sober for an instant between drinks, and she shook her head, and this time she knew she really meant it. No matter how difficult it was going to be going back, the answers were no longer here for her, nor were the questions. She had to go home and make a life of it now. And a part of her knew that she would continue prodding them about Tony. But maybe she could do it more effectively from there. There were other people in the States who cared about the men they’d lost, either as prisoners of war, or missing in action. “I should go home one of these days too,” Jean-Pierre added, almost as an afterthought. But like her, he had nothing to go home to. The people she had loved had died there, except for Tony, and for now, he was gone too, or perhaps forever. And even in the States, nothing would be the same. Her mother was gone. And there was nothing to hold her to Savannah any longer.

She said good-bye to him then, and walked down the Tu Do to her hotel, and she felt a terrible tug at her heart at the sounds and the smells, and she laughed as she looked into the square and saw a GI trying to teach a bunch of street urchins how to play Softball. There were softball games at Tan Son Nhut all the time, and she had gone a couple of times with Bill, but Tony had never really liked them. He was too nervous, too quick, he wanted to talk and think and argue and philosophize, he didn’t want to sit around watching people play baseball. And he had taught her so much while they were here. About life, and people, and war, and doing what she had to do as best she could, but that was part of her too. She kept remembering things he had said to her … ideas they had shared … and the night they had delivered France’s baby. And it all seemed like a dream now.

She walked through the lobby of the Caravelle, remembering when he’d first come to see her there, how ill at ease they had been after their difficult beginnings. And how happy they had been in the end … how sweet the time in Hong Kong had been. She still wore the ruby ring with the heart, and she always would. Just as she still wore Bill’s bracelet. And kept Peter’s dog tags locked away with her papers. Just as others wore locks of hair, or pieces of string, or carried a tiny piece of someone’s uniform or wore MIA bracelets with people’s names. They were all relics of a time that had hurt so much and yet had brought them love, a time that had cost so much, and was not yet over.

There were ghosts around her everywhere as she packed her bags and put her books away. She was leaving them for a few friends. She was taking precious little with her, except for the memories, which no one could ever take away. And the next morning she took a cab to Tan Son Nhut Base, and waited with the others to go home again. There were Vietnamese girls crying for their GIs, and big, strapping, healthy-looking boys who could hardly wait to get on the plane, and a handful of wounded. But they were the easy ones, because you could see their wounds, a bandaged hand, a missing arm, a brand-new pair of crutches. The others who went back unmarked were more complicated. The wounds were there, like Paxton’s, you just couldn’t see them.

They circled once over Saigon, and she caught her breath as she looked down. “
Chao ong,
” she whispered as they headed home. So long … good-bye, Viet Nam … good-bye … I really loved you … and she could almost feel Tony sitting beside her as she closed her eyes. She felt like a traitor leaving him there, except that they kept insisting he was gone, and she had to make herself believe them.

And she had no choice now anyway. She had to go home for her mother’s funeral. But it was strange. She didn’t feel anything, for anyone. She felt absolutely nothing, except a rock in her heart that had once been the place where she’d loved Tony. She knew she still loved him, she always would, but he had taken a piece of her with him, they all had.

They flew from Saigon to Midway and from there to San Francisco. But she didn’t call the paper or the Wilsons. They knew she was going home. But she had to change planes and go on to Savannah, and in a few days she would fly back to San Francisco to decide what she was going to do about her job on the paper. But “Message from Nam” had been written and closed, and now it was over forever.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon when she landed at Travis Field in Savannah, and she picked up her bags and hailed a cab, and gave the driver the address of the house she had grown up in. She still had her key, and there was no one there when she arrived. The new girl had been off since her mother died, there was no reason now for her to be there. And she called George almost as soon as she got in, and sat down with a groan of exhaustion in the familiar kitchen. There was nothing in the fridge, and surprisingly very little in the cupboards. But Paxton didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything. And coming back here turned out to be more painful than she had expected. Being there was a reminder of what had been and was no more, and some things that never had been.

She showered and changed and went to the funeral parlor downtown to meet George, and as she stood there, looking down at her mother, she felt absolutely nothing except pity. Pity for the unhappy woman she had been, unable to give love for most of her life, or receive it. At least her father had lived, and loved her so deeply, and maybe others as well. And Queenie had given everything she had to give … and Ralph had led a full life … and even France … and Peter and Bill … and Tony … but this woman had never done anything except go to her clubs and now it was all over.

“You look tired,” George whispered to her. He was wearing a dark suit, and Paxton noticed that there was a little gray in his hair, which made him look very distinguished.

“I’ve just been traveling for twenty-six hours.” She looked at him ruefully. He was so much like her mother. He had barely kissed her hello, barely embraced her, never asked her how she was, and after all that she’d been through, he was surprised that she looked tired.

“You seem thinner.”

She smiled at him. “I probably am. Things in Viet Nam can be a little dicey.” Land mines, snipers, suicides, guys going missing in action, you know, just like downtown Savannah, she thought. They were speaking quietly near their mother’s casket. “How are Allison and the kids?” They had had a second baby while she was gone, and Paxton felt totally distant from it.

“Fine. She’d have come tonight, but the kids are sick.” It didn’t matter. Her mother would never know the difference.

People came to pay their respects that night, mostly from the Daughters of the Civil War. And the next day, they held the funeral at St. John’s Episcopal Church, with pomp and ceremony, and her pallbearers were the husbands of her friends. It was respectable and appropriate, and everything her mother would have wanted. And afterward, all Paxton wanted to do was get out of town. Just being there, in the empty house, depressed her. She told her brother to dispose of the house, she had absolutely no interest in it, and couldn’t imagine moving back to Savannah.

“Unless you and Allison want to move in.”

“It’s not big enough for us,” he said politely. “Do you want any of her things?” She had some pearls, a diamond watch their father had given her, a few pairs of earrings, most of it was sentimental, but it would have made Paxton feel sick now to start pawing through her jewelry.

“Just send it to me, and take something for Allison.”

“Actually,” he seemed to clear his throat, “she’d like to have Mama’s clothes, and her fur jacket.” It was ten years old and sadly out of fashion, and Paxton looked at him with regret and pity, wanting to suggest he go out and buy his wife a new one, but she didn’t.

“That’s fine.” She’d been a lot taller than her mother, and she would have hated the idea of wearing her clothes. None of it was that important to Paxton.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked the sister he had never really known. He still couldn’t understand why she had spent most of the last two years in Viet Nam, even though he had been surprised by how well she wrote, and how good her column was when it was syndicated to the Georgia papers.

“I don’t know yet.” She looked at him with a sigh, wondering what Tony would have thought of him, and knowing instantly that they would have hated each other. Tony was too blunt and too direct, and too honest to have put up with George’s nonsense. “I’m going back to San Francisco tomorrow sometime, and I’ll have to talk to them about what they have in mind. I think, for a while anyway, like most of the GIs who come back from Nam, I’ll be a misfit. I was last year anyway.”

“And you’re not going back again?” He looked at her, wondering who she was and if he had ever known her, but she could have told him he hadn’t.

“I don’t think so. I think I have to stay here now.”

“I never really understood why you went … except … well, that boy dying … but that was no reason for you to go to Saigon.”

“Maybe not.” But somehow that had kept her there for two years. Her sorrow over the war, her need to tell it like it was, her need to be there.

“Anyway, I’ll let you know what I’m doing.” She said good-night to him then, and he barely kissed her when he said good-bye. And in the morning when she left, she locked the door, and slipped the key into the mailbox. She wouldn’t be needing it anymore, and she had told him to send her things when she let him know where she was staying in San Francisco.

But she felt like a gypsy as she left. She was a person with no home, no roots, and a questionable destination. And if her brother had thought of it, he would have found it strange that someone who had lived under one roof all her life was suddenly so rootless. And others returning from Vietnam were doing the same thing. They came back but they didn’t want to go home, they didn’t know where to go or what to do, or what would happen when they got there.

She was like that as she flew to San Francisco, and checked into a small hotel. This time there was no suite at the Fairmont Hotel, and the Wilsons didn’t invite her to dinner. And after thinking about it for a few days, she decided not to call Gabby. She just didn’t know what to tell her. What could you say … about France … about Ralph … about Bill … about Tony … How did you explain all that to somebody who had been sitting safely at home, going to dinner parties and football games, and movies? You didn’t.

She saw Ed Wilson at the paper, and they talked about her plans, and the best he could offer her was a column based on local events. In some ways; it was a small town and a small paper.

“Things are quieter in the country these days. People don’t want to hear about the war anymore, Paxton. They’re tired of it. They’re tired of the noise and the demonstrations, and the complaints. I think this is going to be a quiet time.” But he was wrong. He wasn’t taking into account the impact of the four students killed and eight wounded by the National Guard at an antiwar demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio. And it proved what Paxton still believed. That some people cared, and the country was still aching over the open wound it had created for itself in Viet Nam and didn’t know how to heal now.

But
The New York Times
made it an easier decision. The
Morning Sun
had been decent to her. And Ed Wilson had given her a chance in Saigon when she was as green as the countryside around it. But now she had outgrown them. And out of nowhere, she got an offer from the
Times
to go to Paris and cover the Paris peace talks. They wanted her to come to New York and discuss it with them first, but she was very flattered both by the salary and the offer. They said a lot of very nice things about the column she’d written for the
Sun
, and they seemed to consider her some kind of expert. It was a little hard to believe, and she almost giggled like a kid again, as she set the phone down. She wished she could tell Tony about it, and she thought about him all that night, silently communing with him wherever he was. And when she slept, she dreamt of him that night, crawling through bushes and jungle and hiding in tunnels. And when she awoke, she knew it was only a dream. And yet, she still had that feeling she had had from the first that he was not dead but still living. Sometimes she wondered if it was just because she couldn’t stand death anymore. But whatever it was, it was a real feeling.

Ed Wilson was pleased for her when she told him about the job with the
Times
. And relieved. He sensed that had she stayed, she would have become a problem. Like so many of the boys coming home, she didn’t seem to know what to do with herself, or what she really wanted. It was almost as though Viet Nam had sapped their strength and their goals and their direction. It had taken their courage and their guts, and taken everything else. Or maybe it was the drugs, he wondered to himself. Maybe that was it. But whatever it was, he was glad she was going. She wasn’t the same girl anymore, and he knew it. She was bitter, she was strong, she was sad to her very core, and in a hidden part of her, he knew she was still angry. He wished her luck, and she told him to give her love to Mrs. Wilson and Gabby. She had seen neither of them when she left, and it was a relief in some ways not to make the pretense that she still cared about the same things they did. The truth was, she didn’t.

In New York, she had several meetings at the
Times
, and they put her up at a hotel called the Algonquin. It was filled with journalists and writers and playwrights, and a few businessmen, and they looked like an interesting crowd coming and going, although she didn’t talk to anyone. And she liked what the
Times
had to say about what they wanted from her. What they wanted was the truth, and whatever she saw in Paris. They wanted the peace talks, and an interview with Lieutenant Calley before she left, and anything she could think of that related to Viet Nam and what she had seen there. They wanted strong words from her, and the kind of powerful material she had sent back when she was going on missions with Ralph to An Loc and Da Nang, and Long Binh, and Chu Lai, and the other places that had come to mean so much in the past two years she had been there. They wanted it all. The past and the present and the future, until at last the war finally ended. They wanted to consider her their editor-at-large on the subject of Viet Nam, and Paxton knew she couldn’t have asked for anything better.