Letter to My Daughter (10 page)

The story, as I was able to piece it together, turned around an incident that happened when he and his buddy were out on a surveillance mission. By his accounts, everything was done by the book. For three or four weeks they had been monitoring suspicious activity in a village in a neighboring valley. There were trucks rolling in and out of the village at night, fluctuations in the population, new huts being erected around the perimeter. Radio transmissions eventually confirmed that the village was a transport hub for the Viet Cong.

So one morning after getting the go-ahead, Tim called in the coordinates for an air strike. Twenty minutes later a single F-4 Phantom jet screamed over their heads and dropped a neat load of ordnance: two missilelike Hammer bombs that tore straight through the palm trees toward the village, followed by one stumpy-looking napalm canister that tumbled end over end as it fell, like something accidentally dropped from the back of the plane. Explosions rumbled like thunder up from the valley floor. The jet veered off to the left and disappeared over the hills, leaving clouds of dense black smoke and fire pluming in the valley. An eerie quiet settled on the mountaintop. All the birds had fallen silent. Mission accomplished.

This was when Tim and his buddy usually packed up their gear and headed back to base. But, oddly, radio transmissions continued to issue from the bombed village. Since they were the only troops in the vicinity, Tim and his partner were ordered in to “have a look-see.”

“I normally have nothing to do with this kind of thing, you understand,” Tim explained in one of the letters. “We do our radio business and get out of there.” But orders were orders. They hiked down from their camp on the ridge, helmets on, rifles out, just two skinny radio geeks in boots and camouflage clomping and slipping down the mountainside. They came out onto the dirt road leading to the village. Black smoke continued to billow over the palm trees ahead, a good sign that they’d hit a weapons cache.

The first thing was the sound, Tim wrote. They heard it as they approached the village, a high, spooky wail, something stuck halfway between animal and human. And then the smell—a smell that Tim had never encountered before, but one that his body instinctively recognized and recoiled from, causing him to buckle and vomit, right there on the trail.

•   •   •

That was as far as Tim ever got in the story in his letters to me that year. But over the weeks he kept coming back again and again to those same details: how he was just doing his job, calling in the coordinates; the eerie silence on the mountaintop after the jet dropped its load; then he and his buddy hiking down the hill and seeing the black smoke above the trees. And at last, that strange keening noise, followed by the gut-wrenching smell as they entered the village …

Well. I had seen only snippets of the war on TV, but even in those brief color-washed flashes there were horrors enough to haunt a lifetime. So I had an idea of what Tim had seen but could not tell. The wonder of it was that he had been spared for so long. Because what Tim had seen at last when they entered the village that day, I knew, was only the manifest consequence of his radio work, numbered coordinates revealed as flesh-and-blood people.

What he had finally seen was the truth of war, which is death: fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, slaughtered.

So you’re officially a missing person now, Liz. For what that’s worth.

We found a sympathetic night desk officer at the police station who agreed to register the case. He went through a checklist with us over the phone. Had we contacted our child’s friends and classmates? Had we informed relatives? Had we spoken to neighbors? Had we visited places we knew our child to frequent? Yes yes yes yes. Your father even thought to look for clues on your computer—correspondence, Web searches, whatever—but he couldn’t get past the log-in without your password. He’s gone to the police station now to sign the forms and leave a photograph.

Your photograph: we had kind of a fight over that. It’s because of the stress, I know. I found a lovely snapshot from your junior high school graduation. You remember that nice blue dress we bought with the white belt and matching collar? You looked so pretty in that. In the picture you’re holding your diploma with a bouquet of flowers, the sun full on your face, smiling. Your father, though, thought we should use a more recent photo and found one on the bulletin board in your room. I suppose it was taken by one of your friends. You’re wearing camouflage pants and a too-small black T-shirt, with your black eyeliner and black lipstick and brow ring, and holding what looks like a plastic beer cup in one hand. “But this is her. This is how she looks,” your father said. I’m the one who always insists on telling it like it is, he said, looking the truth square in the face and all that, but when it comes to my own daughter, it’s like I’m wearing blinders. He may be right, I don’t know. In the end, he took the ugly photo.

One thing at least your father and I agree on is that you’ve changed, Liz. That I can see plainly enough. You used to be so cheerful. Your girlfriends would come over and you all would laugh yourselves silly trying on clothes or making up cookie recipes in the kitchen. You dressed nicely then. You smiled for photographs, and talked to us over dinner, and looked forward to summer vacations. And then suddenly it seemed it was all over. You began locking your bedroom door, and skipping meals, and generally keeping so much to yourself that now you’re little more than a dark shadow flying through the den and out the door to jump into the cars of mysterious strangers we’ve never met. When we ask where you’re going, you say, “Out.” With whom? “Friends.” And you’ll be back … ? “Later.”

We’ve wondered, you know, your father and I, if it’s drugs. Ever since the infamous lake house incident with Missy and friends last summer when the whole gang of you were dragged to the Pointe Coupee Parish police station, it’s only natural that we would become suspicious. Your father, however, who claims some knowledge in this area, says you don’t exhibit any of the usual signs of drug abuse: you seem healthy enough, your eyes aren’t glazed, and your speech, when you speak, is coherent at least. Your father’s been wrong before, of course, but this time I sincerely hope he’s not.

Now the house is really quiet. There’s just the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the low buzz of crickets coming from the yard. Other than that, the rooms stand silent, like they’ve been abandoned. A home shouldn’t be this quiet, Liz. This much quiet is unsettling; it leaves too much room for memory and imagination, for fear and dread. Every time another car rounds the corner I jerk up, thinking it might be you.

Wartime or not, high school goes on.

I didn’t go with Chip to the winter dance that year. But he didn’t give up, and by the end of the second semester I agreed to go to his senior prom with him. My friends said I was lucky he even asked me after I’d been so weird to him. And what was the big deal, anyway? It was only a dance, after all. What harm could there be in a little school prom?

Soo Chee borrowed a dress from her older sister for me. A tight, pink silk tube, it wasn’t like the dresses other SHA girls picked out at Godchaux’s, but it was sleek and flattering in an Oriental kind of way. The high-heeled shoes I got from Christy Lee, the beaded handbag from Anne Harding. The afternoon of the dance, they all came over to my room to help me get ready.

“He’ll have whiskey and try to get you drunk,” Christy Lee warned, working on my hair. “Don’t let him.”

“And don’t eat too much at dinner, no matter how good the food is,” said Soo Chee, fussing over my dress. Her mother worked as a seamstress, so Soo Chee knew how to take up the hem. “Don’t forget your toothbrush. You keep it in your handbag with your makeup. Take a handkerchief, too, so you can wipe your hands when they get sweaty. Boys hate sweaty hands.”

“Should I bring money?”

“God no. You’re the date,” said Anne. “You’re like the princess for the evening. Don’t pay for anything.”

“Make him grovel,” said Christy. “Make him beg.”

My roommate, Melissa, watched from the side of the room, fascinated. “Have you seriously never been on a date before?”

After they finished, my friends stood back to admire their handiwork. Soo Chee adjusted the dress so it fell properly. “Now you look good.”

“Stand up straight,” Anne said. “Don’t slouch.”

Christy took photos of us all, Anne cried a little, and I promised to tell them everything that happened that night. When word came that Chip had arrived and was waiting outside, my friends followed me down for more pictures. Sister Hagatha-Agatha watched us suspiciously from the door of the convent building. The school had waived the usual curfew for boarding students attending the prom, and even though a whole slew of teachers and parents would be on hand to chaperone the dance, Hagatha-Agatha made it plain she didn’t approve of this much liberty for young Catholic ladies. Chip good-naturedly made a show out of pinning on my corsage, then offering me his arm, then holding open the door of his car for me. Before climbing into the driver’s seat, he called out, “Don’t worry, Sister. I won’t let her take advantage of me!”—daring to do what none of us girls ever did, which was to try to joke with Sister Agatha. He honked the horn, and as we drove off waving goodbye from the windows I felt, if only for a moment, like we really were royalty.

•   •   •

Do boys and girls your age go out on dates like this anymore, Liz? I’ve only heard you talk about hanging out and hooking up, which doesn’t sound much like what Chip and I did that evening. But who knows. Maybe the difference is only in the details. Maybe when you hang out and hook up you feel the same nervous excitement that I felt then, seventeen years old and on my first real date.

Chip had made dinner reservations for us at the Riverside Hotel downtown, the one that used to have the revolving restaurant at the top. We headed straight there in his ship of a car. It was his father’s car, actually, but I could see that Chip had taken pains to get it ready for us. He had washed and polished it, inside and out, and sprayed it with pine-scented air freshener. On the transmission hump between our legs sat a small caddy holding a fresh miniature box of Kleenex and two new rolls of peppermint Life Savers. He worried over the radio and air-conditioner controls. “That’s not too cold on you, is it?”

The Cadillac Sedan DeVille was different from the Coupe DeVille in that it had four doors instead of two, he explained when I asked. His mom hated two doors, so that’s why they always got four doors. I nodded and expressed interest in whatever he said and kept asking questions, as I’d been coached by my girlfriends. “And this car was made when, exactly?” I asked, and, “What other lines of cars are you fond of?” We went on like this for ten or fifteen minutes until Chip, exasperated, said, “Oh for Christ’s sake, can we forget about the car? Who gives a damn about the car anyway?” I laughed and felt the weight fly off my chest, and knew that we’d do just fine that evening.

The maitre d’ at the restaurant was Chip’s cousin, so we not only got a table by the window, we got wine with our dinner, too. I tried to act nonchalant about the wine, the candles, the beautiful china and silverware, and the shockingly high prices on the menu, but it was the nicest restaurant I’d ever been to in my life. My parents had never brought me to a place like this before. I ordered the sirloin strip because Chip ordered the sirloin strip, and the Caesar salad because he ordered the Caesar salad. “No, no, I like that, too,” I insisted.

Over dinner, Chip told me about his acceptance at Tulane University in New Orleans for the fall. He wasn’t sure yet if he would major in business or premed, he said, but he figured he had a semester or two to decide. He’d live on campus his freshman year since that was easiest, and then probably move into a frat house his sophomore year. Some of his buddies were talking about pledging Phi Kappa Alpha, but Chip’s father had been a Kappa Sig, so there was a good chance he’d end up there, too. He might’ve been talking about studying in Paris at the Sorbonne, it sounded so elite to me.

“God, that’s just so …” I said.

“What?”

“I mean, in Zachary hardly anyone goes to college. If a boy’s very ambitious, he might go to ag school at LSU. But then he’d drop out after the first semester because what’s the use in learning all that chemistry when everything you need to know about farming you can learn from your daddy?”

Chip chuckled.

“And if you’re a girl, well, forget it. Your choice is basically to get married or not.”

“And if you’re a girl named Laura Jenkins?”

“If you’re a girl named Laura Jenkins …”

“Yeah. What’re her plans?”

From the window of the revolving restaurant I watched the state capitol drift by over Chip’s right shoulder, followed by the gas jets of the oil refineries lighting up the night sky like Roman candles. Down below, the shiny black river caught the reflected glare of the fires as it streamed past Baton Rouge, on down toward New Orleans and points farther south, where the waters spilled into the Gulf of Mexico to merge at last with the great wide ocean beyond. As we floated high above it all at our white-draped table, the world seemed to open itself up like a gilt-edged invitation to a life full of promise and glamour.

Chip watched me from across the table. “Some deep thoughts going on there.”

“Not so deep.”

“What is it, then?”

I twisted the stem of the wineglass in my fingers. Why shouldn’t we talk about this? We were adults, after all, having an adult conversation over a steak dinner in this very sophisticated restaurant. And Chip looked so handsome in his rented tuxedo, and his expression was so earnest and open.

“Well,” I said. “If you must know. There’s this boy.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, a friend, he’s a good friend. He’s in Vietnam now. I met him two, almost three years ago, in Zachary. Before I came here. We kind of, you know, we dated. But then I got sent to Sacred Heart and he enlisted.”

“Wow. I didn’t realize…. How old is he?”

“Um, twenty.”

“And you’re … He’s your boyfriend?”

“I don’t know. Yes. I mean … he was my first. You have to understand. I was fifteen years old, he was a senior. I had never met a boy like Tim before.” I explained how we got to know each other, how my parents hated him, how Tim’s letters practically saved my life during my first year at Sacred Heart. And how, just as I needed him then, he needed me now while he was in Vietnam.

I looked up at Chip. “He wants us to get married when he comes home.”

“Gosh. Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Chip took a big gulp of his wine. “I didn’t know any of this.”

“I know.”

“When’s he coming back?”

“He reenlisted. He’s got about six more months.”

“And then?”

“And then …”

“And then you’ll get married?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, Chip. I’m not even a senior yet. How can I get married? But Tim wants to. He says it’s all he thinks about now. He’s saving his money to buy us a house in Zachary.”

“Jesus, Laura.”

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No, I’m glad you did. I’m glad.”

He frowned as he grabbed a dinner roll and began buttering it. He didn’t look glad. I sipped water, and as the restaurant took us on another tour of Baton Rouge I waited to see who would speak next. I was afraid I’d ruined our evening by introducing Tim. It was like I’d summoned him right into the restaurant, and now he was standing by our table in his muddy combat boots, his rifle slung on his back, staring down on our dinner looking hurt and betrayed. I couldn’t pretend he didn’t exist. But what was I going to do? Tell him “We’re having dinner. Go away, please. Leave us alone. Go back to your war”?

Later, after Chip had paid for our meal and pulled out my chair and was leading us through the elegant old lobby of the hotel, I linked my hand in his arm.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“No. Really.”

“I just want us to have a good time tonight,” he said, rubbing his toe on the pavement as we waited for the valet to bring the car.

I gave his arm a squeeze. “Don’t worry, we will. I promise.”

•   •   •

Remember what I said about you learning from my mistakes? About how the whole moral purpose of this story is to help you lead a better life than I did? Well. Keep that in mind.

My friend Christy was right. Chip had brought whiskey for the evening, a neat flask of Jack Daniel’s tucked in the glove compartment of his father’s car. When we arrived at the Hilton hotel, Chip stopped the car in a dark corner of the parking lot and took out the bottle. On the first sip the whiskey seared the inside of my throat. “You’ll want to go easy on that,” he said. “Just a taste on the lips.”

“I’m fine,” I said, coughing.

We listened to the radio as we passed the bottle. Chip began to tell me about a horse he once had. They used to keep him at the family farm—a farm that I gathered wasn’t like the farm I grew up on, but more like a summer home. The horse’s name was Geronimo, an American paint. Chip took good care of him, and the horse understood that he belonged to Chip and would become snappish whenever someone else tried to ride him. He was like Chip’s best friend all through junior high, until he got a brain disease that made his muscles go slack. At first he stumbled around like he was drunk, but then it got so bad that he couldn’t stand up and they had to shoot him. “Not me. I didn’t shoot him,” Chip said. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. His father had to do it.

Chip stopped talking and we sat a moment in silence.

“Gosh. That’s terrible,” I said. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“It was a long time ago,” Chip said, and abruptly leaned forward to adjust the radio dial. “I don’t even know why I told you that. It’s not even a funny story.”

But his story, I felt, with its hint of loss and love, bound us together in some deeper way, adding an extra intimacy to the evening. It was this feeling, I believe, that would encourage me to do what I did later.

“You ready?” Chip said. “Let’s go.”

The theme of the CHS 1972 senior prom was “Nights in White Satin,” named after a ponderous Moody Blues song popular that year. Everything was draped in white satiny cloth, naturally, and a whole gang of boys had come dressed in matching white tuxedos, calling themselves the Knights in White Satin. We shared a table with Chip’s friends and their dates, some of whom I knew from Sacred Heart. No charity cases here, only teenagers dressed up in tuxedos and gowns, their shoes shiny, their hair shiny, a little bit tipsy, celebrating all their good fortune—fortune that came so easily and was so common here as to be all but unnoticed.

Some songs popular that year, in case you’re curious: “American Pie,” “Alone Again, Naturally,” “Lean on Me,” “I Can See Clearly Now,” and “Bang a Gong (Get It On).” We danced the shake, the hitchhike, and the otherwise general kind of flopping around we did in those days, working up a sweat that mingled with the smell of hairspray and deodorant to create a sweet, heady stew of teenage exuberance. Dropping back down in our chairs, we swallowed cups of Coke that had been spiked with rum under the table. When someone brought out a camera for photos, Chip threw his arm around me. A girl at the table remarked on what an attractive couple we made.

“Yeah, too bad she’s already taken,” Chip said.

“What? Who is it?” the girl asked.

“An older man. Major in the army,” Chip said.

“Not a major,” I said.

“I like soldiers,” another girl said.

“They’re gonna get married when he comes home.”

“Chip—” I said.

“Is that true?”

“Little home there in Zachary. Couple of broken cars in the front yard. Kids rolling around in the dirt.”

“Chip—”