Chapter Nineteen #3
She went to the kitchen phone, picked it up, and dialed Barb’s number. No doubt there would be hell to pay when the bill came in—long-distance calls were so expensive—but she needed to talk to her best friend.
Barb answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Hey,” Frankie said quietly. Holding the receiver to her ear, she slid down the kitchen wall and sat on the linoleum floor. “I… just thought I’d check in on you. See how you’re holding up? How’s your mom?”
“Frankie?” Barb said. “How are you?”
“We don’t have to talk about me. I know how much you miss your brother—”
“Frankie,” Barb said. “Are you okay?”
Frankie shook her head, whispered, “No. Not okay.”
“I got your letter. Your folks really told people you were studying abroad? That is brutal.”
“Yeah.” Frankie let out a breath.
“That’s rough, man,” Barb said.
“How was it when you came home? Bad?”
“Yeah, but my mama’s block is full of vets coming home. Ain’t no lying about it. All I know is you gotta push through, keep on going. Soldier on. It’ll all settle out.”
Frankie heard the hope in those words. “Rye’s home soon. So, there’s that. I swear, if he asks me to move in with him, I’m saying yes.”
Barb laughed. “You, Miss I-Need-a-Ring-First?”
“That’s not me anymore,” Frankie said.
“Yeah. Life is short, and don’t we know it? You having a party for him when he gets back? Maybe I could get Ethel to road-trip to la-la land.”
“I hadn’t thought about a party.”
“You and I know how hard it is to come back. A little cake helps everything.”
Frankie thought about it. A party. “His dad lives up in Compton. Maybe we could plan something together.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Thanks, Barb. I knew you’d haul me out of this funk I’m in.”
“What are girlfriends for?”
They talked for a few more minutes, and by the time she hung up, Frankie had a plan.
It might be a bad idea.
Or a great idea.
She wasn’t sure.
All she knew was that once Barb had suggested the idea of a party for Rye, Frankie was on a mission.
So she dressed in the new clothes her mother had purchased for her—baggy bell-bottom jeans and a tunic top with a hip belt—and called information to get an address for Stanley and Mo’s Auto Repair in Compton.
By 0900 hours, without a word to her parents, she was dressed, with makeup on, and pulling out of the gated yard in the baby-blue Volkswagen Bug that had been her sixteenth birthday present.
On the ferry, she rolled down her window, let the air wash across her face.
She heard the roar of heavy equipment and the clang of jackhammers being used to construct the bridge from San Diego to Coronado—an improvement her father had fought tirelessly for.
She felt hopeful for the first time in days.
Directed. She was—in the words of her favorite poem, “Desiderata”—advancing confidently in the direction of her dreams.
On the mainland, she cranked up the radio, heard Wolfman Jack’s famous howl, and sang along with the music. Cream. Country Joe and the Fish. The Beatles. The music of Vietnam.
In Compton, she slowed down. It had been years since the Watts riots, but the remnant of that time of trouble was still visible in boarded-up windows, broken porches, and graffiti.
Spray-painted Black fists emblazoned the walls of empty storefronts and closed-up restaurants. The poverty of the neighborhood was obvious.
She passed a junkyard, where heaps of metal and broken-down cars huddled behind chain-link fencing. A growling dog followed her moving car from one end of the fence to the other, straining at the end of big-linked chain.
Abandoned cars sat on untended lots, their tires missing, hubcaps gone, windshields cracked. Many of the houses were dilapidated, in need of paint. She saw groups of Black men ambling down the street, dressed in black, wearing black berets.
Stanley and Mo’s Auto Repair was housed in a 1940s-era gas station with a large garage beside it. OUT OF BUSINESS had been spray-painted in red across the garage doors. Crushed beer cans littered the yard. A trash can erupted with garbage.
A trio of young Black men walked past the garage. One of them saw Frankie and stopped to stare for a moment, then walked quickly to catch up with his friends.
She pulled into the empty parking area and stepped out of the car.
Somewhere close by, a dog started barking. A car backfired, sounded like gunfire.
Calm down, Frankie. Breathe. It was just a car. Not a mortar attack.
She walked up to the shop’s office, which looked abandoned. There was chicken wire and plywood over every window and someone had painted PANTHER POWER beneath one of them. The words were smeared, as if someone had tried to wash them away and given up.
She knocked on the door.
“Go ’way,” someone yelled from inside.
Frankie opened the front door and was assailed by the odor of stale beer and cigarette smoke. “Hello?”
She pushed the door open all the way and stepped over the threshold.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom inside.
A single lamp sat on a metal filing cabinet, which was covered with stacks of paper. Old calendars covered one wall, the pinup kind from another era. Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth.
A grizzled man sat hunched in a wheeled office chair, staring at a rabbit-eared TV on another filing cabinet. As the World Turns was on.
“We’re closed,” he said harshly, without even looking at her. “Been closed since the riots, but I ain’t damn leaving. They won’t run me out.”
“Mr. Walsh?”
“Who wants to know?” the man said, taking the cigarette from his mouth. He turned slowly, saw her, and frowned. “Girlie, you are in the wrong part of town.”
Frankie moved forward slowly. She saw the resemblance of Rye to his father—it was as if Rye’s handsome face had been layered in fleshy gray modeling clay and left out in the sun to dry.
The older man had cheeks that sagged into jowls, and a bulbous nose.
Thick brown eyebrows contrasted sharply with his colorless face and graying blond hair.
He had a mustache that was badly in need of tending.
Gnarled hands curled around his drink glass.
He wore a gray mechanic’s jumpsuit that read STAN on the pocket.
Frankie saw the reality of Rye’s childhood before her. No wonder he’d felt uncomfortable in the McGrath home, at Finley’s going-away party. No wonder he’d joined the military and dreamed of flying faster than the speed of sound.
It made her even more determined to show him her love with a welcome-home party. “I wanted to talk about throwing Rye a coming-home party. I’m—”
“I know who you are, missy. And there ain’t gonna be a damned party for my son. You should know that.”
“Are you one of those people who are ashamed of the men and women in Vietnam?”
He snorted. “Women in Vietnam. You on drugs?”
“Mr. Walsh, I want you to know—”
“Let me stop you right there.” He headed to the metal desk beneath the boarded-up window, which was covered with papers and ashtrays and dirty dishes.
He rifled through a pile of envelopes and magazines and plucked out a piece of paper.
“Here,” he said, handing her a telegram.
“Three days ago, two assholes in uniform showed up here to tell me my kid was dead. Shot down. Some place like Ankle. Ankee. Who the hell knows?”
Frankie stared down at the telegram. We regret to inform you… Lieutenant Commander Joseph Ryerson Walsh has been killed in action.
“Remains ain’t recoverable, the shitheads said. He certainly won’t need no welcome-home party,” Mr. Walsh said.
Frankie couldn’t draw a breath. “It… can’t be true…”
“It is.”
“But—”
“Go on, missy. Nothing for you here.”
She turned away, stumbled out of the dirty office, and made it to the Bug and collapsed inside.
The telegram shook in her hand.
We regret to inform you.
Rye. She thought of him carrying her to her hooch… the night he’d shown up in her OR, worrying about her… their first kiss… that night on the beach on Kauai where he’d shown her what love felt like. I’m afraid I’ll love you till I die…
Rye. Her love.
Gone.
Frankie didn’t remember driving home. When she pulled into her parents’ driveway and parked, she looked up through her tears and was vaguely surprised to see where she was.
She got out of the car, forgot to close the door or take her keys. She walked into the house and went directly to her bedroom. Music followed her—Pat Boone, her mom’s favorite singer, tried to soothe and romance with his voice, but she barely heard it.
It had been only a few hours since she’d heard those words— killed in action —but already it felt like a lifetime of sorrow. Interminable.
She climbed into bed, shoes and all; she leaned back into the stacks of pillows against her headboard and stared up at the frilly pink canopy.
Grief blunted the world, put a thick, cottony veil between Frankie and everything else. She was so numb it took a moment to realize that someone was knocking on her bedroom door.
“Go away,” she said.
The door opened. Her mother stood there, smiling uncertainly. It was how they looked at each other these days, but Frankie didn’t care about that, either. “There you are—”
Frankie heard her own scream and knew it was a mistake, but she couldn’t stop herself. She went from screaming in anger to sobbing in the time it took for her mother to get to the bed.
Frankie rolled away, tucked her legs up into the fetal position.
Mom edged up onto the bed beside her, stroked her hair. For a long time, she didn’t say anything, just let Frankie cry.
Finally, Frankie rolled into her mother’s embrace, instead of away from it.
“What is it?” Mom asked.
“I fell in love in Vietnam.” Frankie drew in a shuddering breath. “He was shot down. Killed in action.” She looked at her mother. “How could I not have known?”
“You never said anything about a man over there…” Mom sighed heavily. “Oh, Frances…”
“You didn’t want to hear anything about the war.”
Frankie waited for words of wisdom, for something—anything—to remind her that she still had a reason for living.
Mom said nothing, just stroked her hair and held her close.
Frankie felt her heartbeat slow, felt vaguely that it might be physically breaking down and would be unable to beat in a world without Rye, in this body of hers that felt suddenly foreign.
Footsteps, coming down the hall.
Her father appeared in the open doorway, a briefcase in one hand, a handful of mail in the other.
“A friend of hers was shot down,” Mom said.
“Oh,” Dad said. He turned around and walked away, closing the door behind him.
Frankie curled into her mother’s arms and cried.
They’re shooting at us.
Pop-pop-pop.
A spark of light hits the Huey broadside. The gunner shoots back, the chopper veers sharply to the left, then up to the right, does almost a pirouette.
Another shot. Sparks. The ra-ta-ta-tat of the gunner shooting back, and then a loud crack of an explosion. The tail of the helicopter bends, breaks, falls to the jungle. Another explosion; this one is the fuel tank. The chopper bursts into a ball of flame and smoke and crashes to the ground.
A thick black column of smoke and flames shoots up from the jungle; the trees catch fire.
Frankie woke up, still in the throes of the nightmare, thinking that she was in Vietnam again, that she’d seen Rye get shot down.
The world righted itself slowly.
She was in her bedroom, with the frilly pink tulle canopy overhead, and the ballerina jewelry box on her nightstand.
Last night had been brutal. Consecutive nightmares. She had a vague memory of wandering through the dark house, smoking, afraid to sleep.
Feeling numb, her body heavy, her heart heavier, she stood, but once she was up, she didn’t know what to do.
She just stood there.
There was a knock at her door.
Frankie sighed. It had been only two days in a world without Rye; forty-eight hours of this grief, and already she couldn’t stand being in this house. She hated the way her mom watched her, with sad, wary eyes, as if she were afraid Frankie might run out into traffic at any moment.
Mom opened the door. She was dressed in a lavender silk peignoir with pearl buttons and pom-pommed white slippers. A white turban covered her hair.
Frankie stared at her through bleary, bloodshot eyes. “How do I stop loving him?”
“You don’t. You endure. You go on. I won’t insult you by mentioning the supposed healing properties of time, but it will get better.” Mom gave her a sad, compassionate look. “He would want you to live, wouldn’t he?”
Frankie had lost track of the variations on life-goes-on that she’d already heard from her mother.
The words had become just clanging noises in the empty room inside of her.
“Sure, Mom. Right.”