Chapter Twenty
Twenty
“I’m worried about you, Frances,” Mom said.
“Go away.” Frankie rolled over, put her pillow over her head. How long had it been since she’d lost Rye? Three days? Four?
“Frankie…”
“GO AWAY.”
A gentle touch on her shoulder. “Frances?”
Frankie played dead until Mom sighed heavily and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Frankie eased the pillow off of her face. Did Mom think that Frankie had moved on already?
At that, her grief expanded again; she let it submerge her. Strangely, there was peace in the nothingness, comfort in her pain. At least Rye was with her here in this darkness. She let herself imagine the life they would have had, the children who looked like them.
That hurt too much to bear. She drew back, tried to push the thought away. It wouldn’t leave.
“Rye,” she whispered, reaching for a man who wasn’t there.
“Frances. Frances.”
Frankie heard her mother’s voice coming at her from far away. “Leave.”
“Frances. Open your eyes. You’re scaring me.”
Frankie rolled over, opened her eyes, stared blearily up at her mother, who was dressed for church.
“I’m not going to church,” Frankie said. Her voice felt thick. Or maybe that was her tongue.
Mom picked up the empty glass on the nightstand. Beside it was an empty bottle of gin. “You’re drinking too much.”
“Takes one to know one,” Frankie said.
“Dad said he saw you wandering in the living room. Sleepwalking, maybe.”
“Who cares?”
Mom stepped closer. “You lost someone you think you loved. It hurts. I know. But life goes on.”
“Think I loved?” Frankie rolled over and closed her eyes, thinking, Rye, remember our first kiss?
She was asleep before her mother left the room.
Frankie became aware of the music in stages. First the beat, then the rhythm, then at last, the words. The Doors. “Light My Fire.”
She was in ’Nam, at the O Club, dancing with Rye.
She felt his arms around her, felt his hips pressed against hers, his hand settling possessively in the curve at the base of her spine.
He whispered something and it made her feel cold, afraid.
What? she asked. Say it again, but he was pulling away, leaving her alone.
Suddenly the music blared, turned loud enough to hurt her ears, sounded like a red alert.
She sat up, groggy, headachy, pushed the damp hair out of her eyes.
Her lashes were stuck together. Grit itched at the corners of her eyes.
The music snapped off.
“Sleeping Beauty awakes.”
“Not so much beauty, but plenty of sleeping.”
Frankie turned her head, saw Ethel and Barb standing in her bedroom. Ethel was heavier than she’d been in Vietnam, with rounded curves that had filled out her tall frame. Her red hair was pulled into a low side ponytail. She wore bell-bottom jeans and a striped polyester tunic top.
Barb wore black corduroy pants and a black T-shirt and an olive-colored military-type jacket with the sleeves cut off. “Get out of bed, Frankie,” Barb said.
“My mom called in reinforcements?” Frankie said.
“I called, actually,” Barb said. “I hadn’t heard from you since we talked about Rye’s coming-home party. I got worried and called. Your mother answered the phone.”
“Get out of bed, Frank, or I’ll throw you over my shoulder,” Ethel said. “Don’t think I won’t. I can lift a bale of hay.”
Frankie knew there was no point arguing. She saw the way they looked at her, with a mixture of compassion and resolve. They were here to lift her out of despair; it was in the way they looked, the way they stood, the confident set to their chins.
They wanted her to just get up, stand, start to walk. As if grief were a pool you could simply step out of.
In reality, it was quicksand and heat. A rough entry, but warm and inviting once you let go.
She pushed the sour, sweat-smelling covers back and got out of bed. Without making eye contact—she couldn’t look at them without thinking of Rye—she walked down the hall to her bathroom and took a shower, trying dully to remember when she’d last turned the water on or washed her hair.
She towel-dried her hair and put on the clothes she’d left hanging on a hook on the back of the door (clothes her mother had bought to cheer her up)—a blue tunic and pants set with a pointed white sailor collar and a white cinch belt.
She felt like an actress dressing for the role of dutiful daughter.
Ridiculous . But the effort it took to choose something else was beyond her.
Barefoot, she walked back into her bedroom.
At the sight of her friends standing there, she knew how much she loved them. She could almost feel that love, but not quite. Grief had bludgeoned away every other emotion. “I’m fine, you know,” Frankie said.
“Apparently you’ve been in bed for well over a week,” Ethel said.
“Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“Come on, Frank,” Ethel said, linking her arm through Frankie’s. Barb grabbed the radio and moved to Frankie’s other side. A flanking maneuver to make sure Frankie was hemmed in.
The trio walked down the hallway.
Frankie pulled them past her father’s office. The last thing she wanted them to see was the heroes’ wall, and her absence on it.
Frankie was surprised that they seemed to know the house and have a plan. They walked through the yard, across the street, and out to the beach, where three empty chairs and a portable ice chest waited for them. Barb set the radio on the ice chest and cranked up the music.
Frankie felt unsteady, listening to the surf roar toward her. The familiar music took her back to the best of Vietnam, and the worst.
“I loved him,” she said out loud.
Barb handed her a gin and tonic, said, “Sit, Frankie.”
Frankie didn’t sit so much as she collapsed.
Ethel sat down beside her, held her hand.
Barb sat in the third chair.
The three of them held hands, stared out at the Pacific Ocean crashing beautifully onto the shore, the constant, ceaseless battering of water, the quiet retreat of each wave.
Frankie said, “How could I not know he was gone? How could I not feel his loss from the world?”
For that, there was no answer. The three of them knew death intimately, had stood side by side with it for years.
“You need to do something,” Ethel said. “Start a life.”
“There’s this group,” Barb said. “Vietnam Veterans Against the War. It started with six vets marching in a peaceful protest to end the war. Maybe you could take your anger and use it for something good.”
Anger? That was a distant shadow on the horizon of her grief.
Barb had no idea how this felt, how debilitating it was to lose yourself along with your love. And Frankie couldn’t explain it without sounding pathetic or worrying them more.
Best to just say, “Hmm.”
“Life has to go on, Frank,” Ethel said. “You’re tough enough for Pleiku. You can survive this.”
Ah.
Life goes on.
But does it really? Not the same life, that was for sure.
“I love you,” she said, knowing that her friends wanted to help, but how could they, how could anyone? They were just telling her what she’d heard before: the only way out was through.
More platitudes.
The question was, how ? How did you get through grief, how did you want to live again when you couldn’t imagine what that life could be, how you could be happy again?
It was a question that hadn’t occurred to her before. She’d done her best to exist (or not exist, really) in the safety of her bed, with the covers pulled up, but even she knew that couldn’t go on forever.
What did she want?
Rye.
A wedding.
A baby to hold in her arms.
A home of her own.
“How has it been, coming home?” Barb asked.
“Besides finding out that the man I love is dead?” Frankie said.
“Before that,” was Ethel’s softly spoken answer.
“Tough,” Frankie said. “No one wants to talk about the war. My father is ashamed of me even going.” She looked at her friends. “So, what did you two do?”
Ethel shrugged. “You know my story: I started vet school and fell back in love with my high school boyfriend, Noah. He was in-country while I was, but we never saw each other. He knew how much I loved George. We have… history. When I’m feeling fragile, he has a way of holding me together.”
Frankie nodded. “You have nightmares?”
“Not much. Anymore,” Ethel said at the same time Barb said, “You’ve got to push it aside, Frankie. Do something.”
“What do you have left, Frank?” Ethel asked after a while, when the music changed to something folky and soft. No anger in this music, just sadness and loss and sorrow.
“What do you mean?”
“You tell me.”
“Well.” Honestly, this was something Frankie had never thought about. She knew who she’d been raised to be, what was expected of her, but that was before, wasn’t it?
Barb repeated the question: “What do you have left?”
Frankie thought about how she’d changed in the past two years, what she’d learned about herself and the world.
About Jamie, and her certainty that she had to do the right thing, which meant that she’d never even kissed him; she thought about Rye and how their passion had transformed her, loosened her into a different, bolder version of herself.
She thought about Fin and their idyllic childhood, the way he’d told her, It’s okay, and she’d believed him.
All of them, the three men she’d loved, had awakened her, filled her heart, made her happy, but they couldn’t be everything.
“Nursing,” she said softly.
“Damn right,” Ethel said. “You are a shit-kicking, take-no-prisoners-good nurse. You save lives, Frank. Think about that.”
Frankie nodded. She sensed a glimmer of possibility, a way to move around her grief. In helping others, maybe she could find a way to help herself.
“You guys are the best,” she said, her voice breaking. “And I love you. Truly.” She got to her feet, turned, looked at them. They were here to help her, but she knew—as they knew—if she were to be saved, she’d have to do it herself.