Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Eight
Dear Barb,
Thanks for the birthday card!
I’m writing an identical letter to Ethel. Should I call? Yeah. Sure. Of course.
I just can’t. Maybe I’m becoming a coward in my old age, I’m not sure.
Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase. I’m pregnant.
Who saw that coming, right? Although I do recall you mentioning birth control a million years ago when I lost my virginity.
Henry and I are getting married. I know, it’s a lot, and fast, and I’m a modern woman, I can raise a child on my own, but, well, there’s something special about Henry.
I think I’ll learn to love him. More importantly, it seems impossible, but I’m already in love with the baby in my womb.
How can that be? Sometimes I’m giddy and embarrassed by how much I want this. (Her, I think.)
The wedding won’t be much, probably something small in our backyard or on the beach.
You’ll come? Be my maid of honor? Ethel can be the matron of honor. She’ll love how old that makes her sound.
Love ya—
F
Henry slipped his grandmother’s diamond ring on Frankie’s finger on Christmas morning, saying, “Forever, Frankie, and longer.” They decided on Saturday, February 17, for the wedding, and sent out a small number of casual, handwritten invitations.
Henry taught Frankie how to spin a dream into something tangible: a nursery.
They started with furniture—bought a crib and a changing table—and then went to the hardware store together early on a Saturday morning and picked out a sunny shade of yellow for the walls.
They spent the next two weekends and several weekday evenings readying the small bedroom at the end of the hallway.
A yellow room, with big windows and new gingham drapes.
Henry was sitting on the floor now, with white crib pieces scattered all around, counting out screws, swearing under his breath. “Why in the hell do they give you more screws than there are holes?”
Smiling, Frankie left him with the incomprehensible instructions and headed to the kitchen. It took forever to wash the yellow paint off of her hands and cheeks. It was even in her hair, and she’d worn a kerchief. At last, she started dinner and made an apple pie for dessert.
“Something smells good,” Henry said an hour later, when he walked into the kitchen.
“That’s me,” Frankie said.
He took her in his arms, pulled her close. “I love a woman who smells like apples and cinnamon. You made a pie?”
“From scratch, I might add. It’s Ethel’s family recipe.” She smiled. Pregnancy had calmed her. For the first time in years, she was sleeping well. Her moods had evened out; finally, she thought, she was becoming herself again.
“I assume you’ll start knitting booties. Or making your own baby food.”
Frankie smiled. “Are you suggesting I’m going overboard on the whole nesting thing?”
“Never.”
He kissed her, then led her down the hallway to the nursery. In the soft yellow room with bright white trim, the new crib stood against one wall.
She went to the crib, touched the rocket-and-stars mobile that hung over it, remembering the disagreement they’d had about this mobile: Should it be rockets or princess castles? I want our daughter to know she can fly to the moon if she wants to, had been Henry’s winning argument.
A new rocker sat in the corner, next to an empty bookcase that she would soon fill with her favorite childhood stories.
She sat down in it, pushed off with her feet.
The chair made a creaking, clacking sound on the floor.
She bumped the bookcase and a stuffed blue octopus fell into her lap. Idly, she stroked its soft fake fur.
Henry moved closer, gazed down at her, his clothes splattered with yellow, his graying hair a ragged mess.
“I love you,” she said, and just then, as he pulled her up for a kiss, she thought it was true. Or at least that it could be true.
She wanted it to be true.
In the first week of the new year, 1973, they started a tradition of weekly dinners with Frankie’s parents.
Dad and Henry never seemed to run out of topics to talk about, even though their political views differed.
The clinic Henry and his colleagues had worked so hard to create was months away from opening, and he could wax poetic about their big plans to help addicts and alcoholics heal.
Mom had offered to spearhead another fundraising campaign with other Junior League wives.
She was already shopping for a gown for the opening.
Dad seemed thrilled that his daughter had finally stepped onto the accepted female life path: marriage and motherhood. Mom talked excitedly about the wedding, pressed for a small reception at the club after the backyard ceremony, a request that Frankie politely denied.
Now they were in the living room, gathered in comfortable chairs around the fireplace, with a fire roaring. The television in the corner was on. Cronkite was reporting on the Watergate scandal. The aroma of pot roast wafted in from the kitchen.
In the middle of the broadcast, Frankie got up from her chair and headed to the bathroom. She was back in the hallway, heading for the living room, when Henry appeared, looking worried.
“Are you okay? You look pale.”
“I’m Irish,” she said. “And I currently have a bladder the size of a pea, which I’m pretty sure our daughter is sitting on.”
He put a hand on her belly, leaned down to say, “Hey, baby. Daddy’s here.”
Frankie’s pregnancy was barely showing. There was just the tiniest bump in her belly, which she touched often, stroked, imagining her baby (a daughter, she still thought) like a little fish in there, swimming around, doing effortless somersaults.
She had begun recently to touch her belly frequently, saying, Come on, baby, do a little twirl for Mama, let me feel you, but she knew it was too early .
“Mama wants a little attention, too,” Frankie said, taking Henry by the hand, leading him down the hallway. She opened her father’s office door, pulled him inside.
Henry kissed her, then said, “Okay, we’ve hidden out long enough. Your mom’s going to send a SWAT team in after us.”
He pulled back.
Frankie realized her mistake; in the past few weeks—since the night of their engagement—she’d taken great care not to show Henry this room, to bypass the closed door. Now he’d seen the heroes’ wall.
She tried to pull him away.
“Wow.” He let go of her hand, moved toward the wall, staring at the photographs and mementos.
Frankie moved to his side, kept one arm around his narrow waist. She hadn’t been in this room for years. The last thing she wanted to see was Finley’s American flag, folded into a neat triangle, protected behind glass, framed in wood .
“Where’s your picture?” Henry asked, and she loved him for noticing the absence and not being afraid to remark upon it. Before she could answer, the door behind them opened.
Dad strode into the room, moving as he always did, with authority.
“We are so proud of our family’s service,” Dad said.
“The men’s service,” Frankie remarked.
Mom arrived a second later, a martini in hand. “I hope you haven’t told them without me,” she said.
“Of course not,” Dad said. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a fat, sealed manila envelope. “This is the deed to the cottage on Ocean Boulevard. It’s our wedding gift to you.”
“That’s very generous,” Henry said with a frown.
“I say a toast is in order,” Mom said. “Henry, please, come help me choose a bottle of champagne.”
Mom tucked her arm through Henry’s and pulled him away.
That left Frankie alone at the heroes’ wall with her father. They stood there a long moment, staring up at the pictures and memorabilia. “Why isn’t there a picture of me up there, Dad?”
“We’ll put your wedding photo up. That’s what we do for the women in this family. You’re a hero for putting up with the men.”
How many times had he made that joke? “Nurses died in Vietnam, Dad.”
“I’m uncomfortable with this conversation. Your fiancé is here. You’re expecting a child. Your pride should come from caring for your husband and child. Women going to war…” He shook his head.
“If I’d been a son who went to Vietnam and came home in one piece, would my photograph be on the wall, Dad?”
“You’re upsetting me with this jabble, Frankie.
You’re my daughter. You had no business going to war and I told you so at the time.
Now we find out we shouldn’t even have been fighting the damn war in the first place and we are losing.
America. Losing a war. Who wants that reminder?
Let it go, Frankie. Forget and move on.”
He was right. She needed to forget it.
She was engaged to be married. Pregnant. Why should she care if no one—including her own family—valued her service to her country? Why should she care that no one remembered the women?
She remembered.
Why wasn’t that enough?
Suddenly the door to the office banged open. Henry stood there, holding a bottle of champagne. “It’s over,” he said.
“Over?” Frankie said.
“The war,” Henry said. “Nixon signed the Peace Accord.”
Two weeks after President Nixon signed the Peace Accord, it was announced on the television news that the first wave of POWs would be coming home from Vietnam.
Operation Homecoming, it was called, and, overnight, the League of Families’ efforts changed from advocacy to preparing for the POWs’ return, some of whom had been gone for nearly a decade.
Letters and postcards began to arrive at the League of Families’ San Diego and D.C.
offices, letters from all over the country from people who had worn a POW bracelet; glowing welcome-home letters that thanked the men.
Strangers sent gifts of gratitude, donations.
A public that couldn’t wait to get past the war embraced the return of the heroes released from the Hoa Lo Prison, a place that was just beginning to be written about as hell on earth, just beginning to be known by the public as the “Hanoi Hilton.”