A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (33 page)

Everyone laughed very loud and I was certain that it was friendly laughter, all of it, laughter at this sudden extension of the coincidence, no laughter at me, no one imagining me dressed up like a duck, no one thinking how absurd for this Asian woman to be a game-show winner. Minnesota cried over the laughter, “Four” winners. What a hoot.”

The Vietnam vet seemed particularly pleased. I could tell, though, that there was still a question in his mind about our home country, but his hunch about us was getting stronger. All of this was in his face, the way he finished laughing before the others and began to squint at us with a little smile. At least I could read him enough to know he wasn’t a Vietnamese-as-the-enemy type of veteran. I looked at the faces of the others as the laughter faded and they were all friendly, and I mean no disrespect or arrogance when I say this, but I felt a little bit proud of them, like they were children who behaved really well when you didn’t expect it.

The veteran said, “May I ask where you’re from?”

I understood what he meant, but I chose not to show it all at once. “New Orleans,” I said. Perhaps not to betray my little game with the veteran, I did not look at him directly when I answered. I glanced across all the other faces and the young woman from Northern Louisiana could not hide a little jolt of distaste over this. Even that pleased me somehow. These were human beings and they had to have their own narrowness, their own prejudices. This woman showed it to me not because I was an Asian claiming game-show equality with her but because I was from New Orleans.

“I mean originally,” the veteran said, and he added, “You don’t mind me asking?”

I was turning back to the man and ready to smile at him and say I didn’t mind at all and let him wait a few more moments before I confirmed his hunch, but before I could say a word, I was surprised to hear Vinh’s voice, not hostile or angry but still very firm, say, “We are from the Republic of Vietnam originally. Now we are American citizens and so are our children and so will be our children’s children.”

For him to take over and answer the question would not surprise me. But the elaboration of it, talking about our children and our children’s children (though in Vietnamese culture the unborn and even the unconceived children are already thought to be part of the family), this is what surprised me. He was looking directly at the veteran and the veteran was looking directly at him, and maybe Vinh thought he was drawing a line, like the man does, the male animals do, here’s the line of my territory—look at it and don’t get too close. But maybe not. Because when the veteran suddenly smiled broadly and jumped up and strode the few steps over to us and bent and insisted on a handshake from my husband, Vinh gave his hand without hesitation and he was very intently looking into the face of this American, as if he was a man who needed a thousand baked chicken dinners and hadn’t decided who to buy them from.

The veteran said, “I’m Frank Davies and this is my wife, Eileen.” He checked back over his shoulder and his wife was looking a little confused, not knowing whether to continue to talk with the other Americans or to come over to us, as her husband was motioning for her to do. Then the pinch of confusion was gone and the face I saw at the pool returned, the placid face exactly in between exasperation and affection. “Come on, honey,” Frank Davies said, and the couple at the bar turned to get the bartender’s attention and the woman from Minnesota said something to her husband and Eileen Davies rose and came over and shook our hands and she and her husband sat down with us.

I saw no discomfort on Vinh’s face at all of this. I could tell if he was really wishing to make a quick escape, and he wasn’t. This interested me greatly. He turned slightly toward these two people but not all the way. He was still angled more toward the balcony and the bougainvillea and the sea than he was toward the veteran and his wife, but he clearly accepted their being with us. He did not look away from them, and there was not a single little glance to me as if to say, Look what you’ve led me into now. He was apparently content.

Frank Davies said, “I was in Vietnam, as you can see,” and he thumped himself on his chest. Vinh and I both dutifully read his T-shirt once more.

Eileen’s hand came out now and fell lightly on her husband’s as it returned from his chest and landed on the arm of the chair. The gesture seemed to be a reminder not to say certain things that he had said many times before. When he felt her hand, Frank looked at his wife and he began, “My wife . . .” But he paused, again measuring his words. I expected him to tell us that his wife didn’t like him talking too much about all of that, but apparently even this was something he’d agreed not to say, for he finished the sentence: “ . . . she’s the winner in the family.”

This was a reference to her game-show victory, but when Frank heard himself say this, you could see his face flinch as he unexpectedly interpreted his own words in another way. He could not resist: “I wish I’d been part of a winner for you folks.”

Eileen smiled faintly and I looked at Vinh and he thought for a moment and then he squared around in his chair, leaving the sea. “What are you drinking?” he asked.

“Coca-Cola,” Frank proclaimed. “I’ve given up the hard stuff.”

“And you?” Vinh smiled over to Eileen, and she looked at me before she answered. Her eyes searched my face for a moment and it seemed like she was trying to see if it was okay with me for her to answer him, if there was some sort of hidden protocol from our culture that she needed to observe in requesting a drink from my husband.

I felt so sure that this was what was going on that I was about to remind her that we were from New Orleans, but before I could speak, she looked back to Vinh and said, “White wine.”

Vinh called over the waiter and ordered the drinks and Frank caught the waiter by the sleeve before he went to get them and said, “Coca-Cola from a bottle. Not a can, por favor.”

The waiter nodded at him as if he understood this request and Vinh said, “You’ve given up cans, too?” When Vinh was in his sharpest business mood, he could probe people like this, and it was not always with a friendly intent. But Frank laughed loud and he said that he sure as hell was. Vinh smiled and nodded, and this may be surprising, but I was having trouble now reading his mood. I make so many presumptions about people from the things I observe, and I’m usually right. But I’ve been around Vinh long enough to observe when he has made his feelings invisible to me, and this was one of those times.

So the drinks came and we talked, Vinh and me and this proud-to-be Vietnam veteran and his wife, Eileen. We asked where Frank had served and it turned out that he’d been a helicopter mechanic in Qui Nhon. He told us a story about how he’d had trouble with a “butter bar” because Frank was going up on his own time as a door gunner and he was supposed to be just a mechanic. When I got a chance, I asked what a butter bar was and he said a second looey and that was not much help. It had to be some kind of Army man, perhaps a rank. But as his words flowed on, I was sitting there thinking about Frank Davies going into the place where the Army men eat their meals and there was an incident at one of the tables, Frank was arguing with a bar of butter and they came to blows and Frank squeezed the bar and it was oozing through his fingers and all the men were sighing like a game-show audience, but Frank was in big trouble.

Then Eileen was at my elbow. She’d moved her chair closer to mine and she leaned near and she said in a low voice, “The men do go on about the war, don’t they?”

This snapped me out of my little fantasy and I looked over to Frank and he had turned his attentions strictly on my husband, and Vinh was listening to him, leaning slightly forward and listening as if with great interest. He spoke to Frank and I didn’t catch the words, but Frank nodded vigorously and said more and I turned to Eileen and replied, “My husband doesn’t often talk about all of that.”

“Was he a soldier?” Eileen asked.

“Yes,” I said, “a very good one. He was a major in the airborne. But later, about a year before the end of the war, he was reassigned to Saigon City Hall, where he worked in a special program to develop business in the city. They were trying until the very end to make the economy work, to make people want to defend their way of life. Everyone respected my husband.”

Eileen looked over to her husband and pursed her lips. “Frank was a good soldier, too. He wanted to do so much. He really felt like he was responsible for everyone.”

I looked at Frank and his hands were before him, gesturing, shaping some point. He was talking about helicopter engines. I said, “He has so much energy.”

Eileen Sighed softly, in both appreciation and exasperation, it seemed. “I just wish I could get him to focus it where it’s needed.”

I wondered where that might be, but I did not ask. Perhaps I should have. Perhaps Eileen had something she needed to talk about and she was waiting for me to ask. But I did not. I have no trouble intruding on people’s lives by reading the things that they show. But I have trouble asking my way in. So I sipped my own glass of white wine and Eileen and I watched the men talking for a while longer and then she leaned forward and touched her husband on the arm and said it was time to go.

Frank turned to her and looked at his watch and said she was right. He rose and shook our hands—his hand taking mine was large and hard but surprisingly gentle—and Eileen thanked each of us and said she hoped we could speak again soon and they moved off. I watched them carefully. Frank led the way with an air almost of determination, like weaving between these tables and overstuffed chairs took the skills of an experienced tracker. Eileen followed two paces behind. Passing by, Frank bumped one of the chairs and kept on moving and Eileen paused to straighten it.

When he was clear of the lounge area, Frank stopped and turned and waited for his wife, but when she drew near him, he was looking out over our heads, back out to the sea, and she spoke a word to turn him and they walked off. They were side by side now, but they did not hold hands, though American couples often do.

Vinh and I remained in the bar for only a brief time. In the elevator, we were alone, but as the doors were closing, a young couple got into the car with us. She had one of those hairdos that looked like she’d slept standing on her head, full of wild waves and wrinkles. The man had a very thick neck and they were both wearing bathrobes. But their hair was not wet and they did not smell of suntan lotion, so I knew they’d spent the day in bed. Newlyweds. And I knew at once that they, too, were from a game. When they entered, the wife’s robe fell open at the top and showed a lot of bare cleavage, and the husband clamped it shut and looked at me and said, “She’s like that.” “So are you,” she said, slapping at his hand. “My little show-off,” he said and he tried to kiss her on the cheek. She turned her face in mock anger and then kissed him and I looked to the front of the car. “The Newlywed Game.” Unquestionably.

And I thought about Frank and Eileen, leaving the lounge. How they had moved away with a space between them and he had not taken her hand and she did not take his, for whatever reason. As Vinh and I lay beside each other that night in the dark, well before Vinh’s breathing was due to turn soft and regular with sleep, I said, “What do you think of them?”

From the few moments of silence that followed, I knew that he understood who I was talking about, even though he finally said, “Who’s that?” If he really didn’t know, then he would have asked that question immediately. Instead, he’d been trying to think what to say, or perhaps trying to understand for himself why he’d been as receptive as he had to the couple. So now he either knew the reason and didn’t want to tell me or he was as puzzled as me; I didn’t know which.

“Frank and Eileen Davies,” I said.

“Oh, them,” he said, and then there was silence again.

I waited for a while and decided not to let him off the hook.

“Well?”

“What’s that?” He forced a slur into his voice. But I knew he wasn’t really sleeping.

“You seemed to be very friendly with Frank.”

“Was I friendly exactly?”

“You ordered him a drink.”

“I couldn’t avoid that. There they were.”

“When the two of you were speaking, you leaned forward for his words. You don’t do that to just anyone.”

Vinh thrashed about with his covers. “I hate it when you do that,” he said.

Two could play his little game. I let a few moments pass and then said, “What’s that?”

“You know what I’m talking about. When you start telling me what my little gestures and looks mean.
I
don’t even know.”

I could hear music from somewhere. Very faint. I couldn’t control the sigh that billowed up from my chest. It was very clear, the sound of my Sigh in the dark room, but I wasn’t sure that Vinh had noticed. I wished that he had. I wished that he had my own little gifts so he could tell me why it was that I made that sound right then.

Then he said, softly enough that I could hear the music behind his words, “I’m not being critical.”

I didn’t answer. I turned my face toward the sliding doors. I’d left one of them open and the curtain moved a little in a breeze and the music was out there, out in the bay. There was a horn and there were guitars and a violin. “I don’t know,” Vinh said.

“You don’t know what?” I asked, and I truly didn’t.

“I don’t know what it is about that man.”

I found I didn’t care, for the moment. I rose and moved to the windows and listened to the music. It was a looping kind of melody, a mariachi waltz. I brushed the curtain aside and stepped out onto the balcony and far out in the dark bay was a triangle of colored lights, red and blue, and it was moving slowly and I looked harder and could see the boat, its decks flashing faintly, color wheels whirling there, and I could imagine the couples waltzing, the sweat still on them from the fast songs, and now they were holding each other close and gliding across the deck, their skin flushed with colored light.

“What is it?” Vinh’s voice came to me faintly, as if it was he who was far across the bay. I could even hear the rasp of the maracas now. And then the maracas faded, and then the strings, and the horn, and I watched until the boat disappeared down the shore. When I slipped back into bed, Vinh was asleep.