Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Oh, right. I’m an Army Nurse Corps vet. Just back from ’Nam.”
The woman gave her a skeptical look. “Dr. Durfee is in his office. He doesn’t have an appointment until nine A.M. I guess you could—”
“Thanks.”
She sighed. “Two doors down. On the left.”
Frankie headed down the wide hallway, where more men sat on plastic seats beneath a framed portrait of Richard Nixon. Frankie saw posters and brochures offering different kinds of help to veterans: employment help, state benefits, education, and training.
At Dr. Durfee’s door, she stopped, took a deep breath, and knocked.
“Come in.”
She opened the door and stepped into a narrow, almost closet-small office.
An old man—old enough to be her grandfather—sat behind a cluttered desk.
Stacks of paper were on every surface in the room.
A poster was tacked up on the wall behind him: a kitten hanging from one claw with the words HANG TOUGH.
The doctor peered at her through black-rimmed, Coke-bottle-thick glasses. What strands of hair he had left, he’d combed to one side and maybe sprayed in place. He wore a madras shirt, buttoned to his wattled neck. “Hello, young lady. Are you lost?”
Frankie smiled tiredly. It was such a relief to be here. To say, I need help, and receive it. “I am lost, but I’m in the right place. I probably should have come before now.”
His gaze narrowed, moved from her face, down her rumpled blouse and wrinkled jeans, to the red-splattered white shoes.
“The woman at the front desk said you had until nine. I can make an appointment, but I really need some help now, if you don’t mind.”
“Help?”
She sank into the chair in front of his desk.
“I was in-country for two years. And my boyfriend was supposed to come home in April, but he was KIA, so what came was a we-regret-to-inform-you telegram. And the way people treat us. We can’t even say Vietnam .
We went to serve our country and now they call us baby killers.
My dad can’t look at me. At my job, I was fired for being too good even though I might have saved a young man’s life.
And I, well, I can’t seem to get a handle on my emotions since I got back.
I’m always either banshee-angry or bursting into tears.
My dad is so ashamed, he said I went to Florence.
” She said it all in a rush and felt exhausted afterward.
“Are you menstruating now?”
Frankie took a moment to process that. “I tell you that I’m having trouble after being in Vietnam, and that’s your question?”
“You were in Vietnam? There were no women in Vietnam, dear. Do you have thoughts of hurting yourself? Hurting others?”
Frankie got slowly to her feet. It felt nearly impossible to do so. “You won’t help me?”
“I’m here for veterans.”
“I am a veteran.”
“In combat?”
“Well. No. But—”
“See? So, you’ll be fine. Trust me. Go home. Go out with friends. Fall in love again. You’re young. Just forget about Vietnam.”
Just forget. It was what everyone recommended.
Why couldn’t she do it? The doctor was right. She hadn’t seen combat, hadn’t been wounded or tortured.
Why couldn’t she forget?
She turned and walked out of the office, past the men sitting in chairs along the wall, under the watchful eyes of President Nixon. In the lobby, she saw a pay phone and thought, Barb, and stopped.
She needed her best friend to talk her down from this ledge of despair.
She went to the phone, made a collect call.
Barb answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“This is the operator. Will you accept a collect call from Frankie McGrath?”
“Yes,” Barb said quickly.
The operator clicked off the line.
“Frankie? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s expensive to call collect—”
“Frances. What’s wrong?”
“I… don’t know. But I’m in bad shape, Barb. I’m kind of falling apart here.” She tried to make herself laugh, to lighten it, and couldn’t. “My parents threw me out. I crashed my car. I was fired. And that was just the last twenty-four hours.”
“Oh, Frankie.”
The compassion in Barb’s voice was Frankie’s undoing. She started crying— pathetic —and couldn’t stop. “I need help.”
“Where are you?”
“At the useless VA.”
“Is there somewhere you could go?”
She couldn’t think. She was still crying.
“ Frankie .”
She wiped her eyes. “The Crystal Pier Cottages aren’t far away. Finley and I used to ride bikes on the pier…”
“Go. Get a room. Eat something. And don’t leave, okay? I’m on my way. You hear me?”
“It’s too expensive to fly, Barb—”
“Don’t leave, Frankie. Get a room at the Crystal Pier and stay there. I mean it.”
Someone was pounding on the door.
Frankie sat up, immediately felt sick to her stomach. An empty gin bottle lay on the carpet by the bed.
“Open the damn door, Frankie.”
Barb.
Frankie looked blearily around the cottage she’d rented, saw the empty gin bottle, an overflowing ashtray, empty potato chip bags.
No wonder she felt like hell.
She climbed out of bed and went to the door, unlocking it, letting it swing open.
Barb and Ethel stood there, side by side, both with worried looks on their faces.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Frankie said. Her voice was hoarse. She’d been screaming in her sleep again.
Barb was the first to take Frankie in her arms. Ethel moved in beside them, wrapped her strong arms around both of them.
“I’d rather be in Pleiku,” Frankie said. “At least there I know when to put on my flak jacket. Here…”
“Yeah,” Barb said.
“I don’t know what to do, who I am now. Without the Army or Rye… my dad threw me out of the house. I just want… I don’t know… for someone to care that I’m home. That I went.”
“We care,” Ethel said. “That’s why we’re here. And we came up with a plan on the way here.”
Frankie pushed the damp, greasy bangs out of her face. “A plan for what?”
“Your future.”
“Do I get a say in it?” she asked sarcastically, but really she didn’t care. She just wanted her friends to save her.
“No,” Ethel said. “That was our first decision.”
“When your girl calls and says, I need help, you help. So don’t think you can change your mind now.”
Frankie nodded. Behind her friends, she saw a yellow cab idling at the curb.
“Get your stuff,” Barb said.
Frankie felt too crappy to argue or question and more relieved than she could say. She went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth and put on pants, then tossed her bloody nurse shoes in the trash and walked out barefoot.
“So, what am I doing to fix my life?” Frankie asked as the three of them walked to the waiting cab. Her girlfriends bookended her, stayed close, as if they were afraid she’d bolt.
Frankie tossed her overnight bag into the car, then slid into the backseat, with Barb on one side and Ethel on the other.
“Train station,” Ethel said to the driver. At the same time Barb said, “We checked you out of the motel, Frankie, so sit tight.”
The taxi drove back down the pier, tires bumping over the rough wood.
“Where are we going?” Frankie asked.
“My dad’s farm near Charlottesville,” Ethel said. “You two are moving into the bunkhouse. We’ll remodel it ourselves. Give us a legit reason to hit things. I’m going to finish school. Barb joined that new organization. Vietnam Veterans Against the War.”
Frankie turned. “You’re against the war now?”
“It’s got to stop, Frankie. I don’t know if this can help, and I sure as hell don’t want to be a part of some privileged white kids picketing something they know nothing about. But this—the VVAW—is about us having a voice. The veterans. Don’t you think someone should listen to us?”
Frankie didn’t know how she felt about that. “And me. What have you two decided on for me?”
“That’s what we’re giving you,” Ethel said, “time to figure it out.”
If Frankie hadn’t been so sick of crying, so emptied out, she would have cried. Thank God for girlfriends. In this crazy, chaotic, divided world that was run by men, you could count on the women.
“This bunkhouse,” Frankie said. “Is there indoor plumbing?”
Ethel’s face transformed with a smile, revealing how nervous she’d been that Frankie would say no to this bold plan. “Why? You too good for a latrine, Lieutenant?”
Frankie smiled for the first time in… how long? She didn’t even know. “No, ma’am. With you two at my side, I can live in practically anything.”
Barb held out her hand. The three put their hands together. “Enough bad memories,” she said solemnly. “We won’t ever forget, God knows, but we move forward. Away from Vietnam. Into the future.”
It felt solemn and important and suddenly possible. Frankie thought: I won’t talk about it anymore. I will forget. Soldier on.
“Away,” they said in one voice.
They stopped only long enough to get Frankie a new pair of shoes.