Full Circle (21 page)

“Who has time, all I do is read. What time does your plane come in?”

“Three o'clock tomorrow.”

“I'll be there.”

“Thanks.” He sounded so young again, on the last word, and when she saw him the next day, she thought he looked pale and tired. He didn't look as well as when she had seen him in June, and their brief visit was nervous and strained. She didn't know what to do with him. Five hours wasn't very long. She took him to her Berkeley room, and then they drove into town for lunch in Chinatown, wandered around, and Harry kept looking at his watch. He had a bus to catch. He had decided not to rent a car to get to Fort Ord after all, but that shortened the time he had with her. They didn't laugh as much as usual, and they were both upset all afternoon.

“Harry, why are you doing this? You could have bought your way out.”

“That's not my style, Tan. You must know that by now. And maybe, secretly, I think I'm doing the right thing. There's a patriotic part of me I didn't know I had.”

Tana felt her heart sink. “That's not patriotism for chrissake. It isn't our war.” It horrified her that he had an out he wouldn't use. It was a side of him she had never seen. Easygoing Harry had grown up, and she saw a man in him she had never known before. He was stubborn and strong, and although what he was doing frightened him, it was clearly what he wanted to do.

“I think it will be our war soon, Tan.”

“But why you?” They sat silently for a long time and the day went too fast. She held him tight when they said goodbye, and she made him promise to call whenever he could. But that wasn't for another six weeks, and by then basic training was over. He had been planning to come back to San Francisco to see her, but instead of going north, he was being sent south. “I leave for San Diego tonight.” It was Saturday. “And Honolulu, the beginning of the week.” And she had midterm exams, so she couldn't just run down to San Diego for a day or two.

“Damn. Will you stay in Honolulu for a while?”

“Apparently not.” She sensed instantly that he wasn't telling her what she wanted to know.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I'm being sent to Saigon by the end of next week.” His voice sounded cold and hard, almost like steel, and it didn't sound like Harry at all. She wondered how this had happened to him, and it was something he had wondered himself every day for six weeks. “Just lucky, I guess,” he had said jokingly to his friends, but there was nothing to joke about, and you could have cut the air with a knife when they handed the assignments out. No one dared say anything to anyone, least of all those who had fared well, for fear that others had not. And Harry was one of the unlucky ones. “It's a bitch, Tan, but there it is.”

“Does your father know?”

“I called last night. No one knows where he is. In Paris, they think he's in Rome. In Rome, they think he's in New York. I tried South Africa, and then I figured fuck the son of a bitch. He'll find out sooner or later where I am.” Why the hell didn't he have a father one could reach? Tana would even have called for him, but he had always sounded like the kind of man she didn't want to know anyway. “I wrote to him at the London address, and I left a message at the Pierre in New York. That's the best I can do.”

“It's probably more than he deserves anyway. Harry, is there anything I can do?”

“Say a prayer.” He sounded as though he were serious, and she was shocked. This wasn't possible. Harry was her best friend, her brother, practically her twin, and they were sending him to Vietnam. She had a sense of panic she had never known before and there was absolutely nothing she could do.

“Will you call me again before you leave? … and from Honolulu … ?” There were tears in her eyes … what if something happened to him? But nothing would, she gritted her teeth, she wouldn't even let herself think like that. Harry Winslow was invincible, and he belonged to her. He owned a piece of her heart. But she felt lost for the next few days, waiting constantly for his calls. There were two from San Diego before he left, “Sorry I took so long, I was busy getting laid, probably got the clap, but what the hell.” He was drunk most of the time, and even more so in Hawaii, and he called her twice from there too, and after that he was gone, into the silence, the jungles and the abyss of Vietnam. She constantly imagined him in danger, and then began to get outrageous letters describing life in Saigon, the hookers, the drugs, the once lovely hotels, the exquisite girls, the constant use he had for his French, and she began to relax. Good old Harry, nothing ever changed, from Cambridge to Saigon, he was the same. She managed to get through her exams, Thanksgiving, and the first two days of the Christmas holiday, which she was spending in her room with a two-foot-tall stack of books, when someone came and pounded on her door at seven o'clock one night.

“Call for you.” Her mother had been calling her a lot, but Tana knew why, although neither of them ever admitted it. The holidays were difficult for Jean. Arthur never spent much time with her, and somehow she always hoped that he would. There were excuses and reasons and parties where he just couldn't take her along, and Tana suspected that there were probably other women too, and now there was Ann and her husband and her baby, and maybe Billy was there too, and Jean just wasn't family, no matter how many years she'd been around.

“I'll be right there,” Tana called out, pulled on her bathrobe, and went to the phone. The hall was cold, and she knew it was foggy outside. It was rare for the fog to come this far east, but sometimes it did on particularly bad nights. “Hello?” She expected her mother's voice and was shocked when she heard Harry's instead. He sounded hoarse and very tired, as though he'd been up all night, which was understandable, if he was in town. His voice sounded exquisitely close. “Harry?…” Tears instantly filled her eyes, “Harry! Is that you?”

“Hell, yes, Tan.” He almost growled at her, and she could almost feel the beard stubble on his face.

“Where are you?”

There was only a fraction of a pause. “Here. San Francisco.”

“When did you arrive? Christ, I'd have picked you up if I'd known.” What a Christmas gift, having Harry back!

“I just got in.” It was a lie, but it was easier to say that than to explain why it had taken so long to call.

“You sure didn't stay long, thank God.” She was so grateful to hear his voice that she couldn't stop the tears. She was smiling and crying all at once, and at his end, so was he. He had never thought he would hear her voice again, and he loved her more than he ever had before. He wasn't even sure that he could hide it now. But he would have to, for her sake, and his own. “Why'd they let you come back so soon?”

“I guess I gave them a bad time. The food stank, the girls had lice. Shit, I caught crabs twice, and the worst case of the clap I ever had.…” He tried to laugh but it hurt too much.

“You creep. Don't you ever behave yourself?”

“Not if I have a choice.”

“So where are you now?”

There was that pause again. “They're cleaning me up at Letterman.”

“Hospital?”

“Yeah.”

“For the clap?” She said it so loud that two girls turned halfway down the hall and she started to laugh. “You know, you're impossible. You're the worst person I know, Harry Winslow the Fourth, or whoever the hell you are. Can I come and visit you or will I get it too?” She was still laughing, and he still sounded tired and hoarse.

“Just don't use my toilet seat.”

“Don't worry, I won't. I may not shake your hand either unless I see it boiled. God only knows where it's been.” He smiled. It was so goddamn good to hear her voice. She looked at her watch. “Can I come over now?”

“Don't you have anything better to do on a Saturday night?”

“I was planning to make love to a stack of law books.”

“You're about as amusing as you used to be, I see.”

“Yeah, but I'm a lot smarter than you are, asshole, and nobody sent me to Vietnam.” There was a strange silent pause, and Harry wasn't smiling when he answered her.

“Thank God, Tan.” She felt strange as she heard his voice, and an odd feeling crept over her, that sent chills up her spine. “Do you really want to come over tonight?”

“Hell, yes, do you think I wouldn't come? I just don't want to catch the clap, that's all.”

He smiled. “I'll behave myself.” But he had to say something to her … before she came … it wasn't fair. “Tan…” His voice caught on the words. He hadn't said anything to anyone yet. He hadn't even talked to his father yet. They hadn't been able to locate him anywhere although Harry knew he'd be in Gstaad by the end of the week. He always spent Christmas there, whether Harry was there or not. Switzerland meant Christmas to him. “Tan … I've got a little more than the clap.…” An odd chill raced up her spine and she closed her eyes.

“Yeah, asshole? Like what?” She wanted to fight back the words, to make him laugh, to make him all right in case he was not, but it was too late … to stop either the truth or the words.…

“I got a little bit shot up.…” She heard his voice crack, and felt a sudden pain in her chest as she fought back a sob.

“Oh yeah? Why'd you go do a thing like that?” She was fighting back tears and so was he.

“Nothing better to do, I guess. The girls were really all dogs.…” His voice grew sad and soft, “… compared to you, Tan.”

“Jesus, they must have shot you in the brain.” They both laughed a little bit, and she stood in her bare feet feeling as though her whole body had turned to ice. “Let-terman. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“I'll be there in half an hour.”

“Take your time. I'm not going anywhere.” And he wouldn't be for quite a while. But Tana didn't know any of that as she pulled on her jeans, shoved her feet into shoes, she didn't even know which ones, pulled a black turtleneck over her head, dragged a comb through her hair, and yanked her pea jacket off the foot of her bed. She had to get to him now, had to see what had happened to him.…
I got a little bit shot up.…
It was all she could hear again and again in her head as she took the bus into town, and then found a cab to take her to Letter-man Hospital in the Presidio. It was twice as long as she had said it would be, but she had run like hell, and fifty-five minutes after she hung up, she walked into the hospital and asked for Harry's room. The woman at the reception desk asked Tana what department he was in, and she had a strong urge to say “the department for the clap,” but she wasn't feeling funny now, and she felt even less so as she ran down the halls labelled
Neurosurgery,
praying that he was all right. Her face was so pale it was almost gray, but so was his when she walked into the room. There was a respirator standing by, and he was lying flat on a bed with a mirror overhead. There were racks and tubes, and a nurse watching over him. She thought he was paralyzed at first. Absolutely nothing moved, and then she saw him move a hand and tears filled her eyes, but she had been half right anyway. He was paralyzed from the waist down. He had been shot in the spine as he explained to her that night, as tears filled his eyes. He could finally talk to her, cry with her, tell her how he felt. He felt like shit. He wanted to die. He had wanted to die ever since they brought him back.

“So this is it.…” He could hardly speak, and the tears ran down the sides of his face, down his neck, onto the sheets. “I'll be in a wheelchair from now on.…” He was sobbing openly. He had thought he would never see her again, and suddenly there she was, so beautiful and so good and so blond … just as she had always been. Everything was the same as it always had been here. No one knew about Vietnam here. About Saigon or Da Nang or the Viet Cong, whom you never even saw. They just shot you in the ass from their hiding place in a tree, and maybe they were only nine years old, or just looked that way. But no one gave a damn about that here.

Tana was watching him, trying not to cry. She was grateful he was alive. From the story he had told, of lying face down in the mud, in the driving rains, in the jungle for five days, it was obviously a miracle that he was alive at all. So what if he could never walk again? He was alive, wasn't he? And the thing Miriam Blake had seen in her so long before began to surface now. “That's what you get for screwing cheap whores, ya jerk. Now, you can lie there if you want to, for a while, but I want you to know right now that I'm not going to put up with much of this. Got that?” She stood up, and they were both unable to stop their tears, but she took his hand and she held it fast. “You're going to get off your ass and do something with yourself. Is that clear?” He stared at her in disbelief, and the crazy thing was that she was serious. “Is that clear?” Her voice was shaking as her heart swelled.

“You know you're a crazy girl. Do you know that, Tan?”

“And you're a lazy son of a bitch, so don't
get
too excited about this lie-on-your-ass life of yours, because it's not going to last long. Got that, asshole?”

“Yes, ma'm.” He saluted her, and a few minutes later, a nurse came in and gave him a shot for the pain, and Tana watched him drift off to sleep, holding his hand, as the tears coursed down her face and she cried silently whispering her prayers and her thanks. She watched him for hours, just holding his hand, and at last she kissed his cheek, and his eyes, and she left the hospital. It was after midnight by then, and all she could think of as she took a bus back to Berkeley that night was “Thank God.” Thank God he was alive. Thank God he hadn't died in that godforsaken jungle, wherever the hell it was. Vietnam had a new meaning to her now. It was a place where people went to be killed. It wasn't just someplace one read about, something to talk about between classes, with professors or friends. It was real to her now. She knew exactly what it meant. It meant Harry Wins-low would never walk again. And as she stepped off the bus in Berkeley that night, the tears still running down her cheeks, she jammed her hands in her pockets, and walked back to her rented room, knowing that neither of them would ever be the same again.