The Summer Garden (91 page)

“Mom, the jam is unbelievable. What is it, blueberry/raspberry?”

Anthony! Tatiana wants to cry. Anthony. She is speechless before her firstborn son. Twenty-two in three weeks! Tatiana has a twenty-month-old baby girl, still in diapers, whom she is still nursing; she has two primary-school-age boys. And two days ago Anthony graduated from West Point.

The whole family flew out east to see him throw his white cap in the air. A frail Aunt Esther came down with Rosa from Barrington and cried through nearly the entire ceremony. Sam Gulotta and his wife came up from Washington. Tom Richter and Vikki came, estranged yet together. Richter gave the commencement address. Richter, in full military dress with bars and stripes and a lieutenant-colonel’s insignia, standing tall at the podium, speaking to five hundred men and their families, all in oppressive, melting June heat on the open fields, speaking loud and clear to Tatiana and Alexander, speaking to Anthony Barrington.

“You walk in the footsteps of Eisenhower and MacArthur, Patton and Bradley, the commanders that saved a civilization. The eyes of the world are upon you.”

Richter has been in Southeast Asia since 1959, an officer in a military advisory group, training the South Vietnamese to fight the North, but he is a big wig now in MACV—Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—the brain that controls the entire body that is American involvement in Southeast Asia. Rosa was so impressed by him, she asked to be seated next to him at dinner. The boys demanded to sit next to their cadet brother, but so did Aunt Esther. They wouldn’t budge. Neither would she. They ended up, sulkily, sitting between their parents, while Anthony was flanked by Aunt Esther on one side and Vikki and Richter on the other.

Tatiana and Alexander rented the Pool Terrace Room at the modern and opulent Four Seasons restaurant in New York City, where they spent a raucous evening. Even Aunt Esther was raucous. At eighty-six, nearly deaf, sitting
very
close to Anthony—ostensibly to hear him better—all she wanted to hear was his cadet stories. Anthony tried to stay circumspect just like his father had taught him. He behaved well, he said; played football, Army against Navy, won finally, Army’s first win in six years. He played pick-up basketball games on the open courts—“Basketball,” Anthony told his aunt, “that was more like rugby.” He played tennis, and his coach was Lieutenant Arthur Ashe, and Esther said, “Who’s Arthur Ashe?” and, before Ant could reply, stated firmly that she wasn’t in the least interested in Anthony’s athletic escapades (and this is where Tatiana wanted to concur) but was “most interested” in his romantic ones. Anthony smiled and said nothing (the good boy), but Richter, always ready to stir some trouble, said, “Lieutenant, why don’t you tell your great-aunt about your two demerits in Chicago.” And when Anthony flat-out refused, Richter happily regaled Aunt Esther with the story of how, when the West Point Firsties came to Chicago, Mayor Daley’s wife arranged for all the cadets to have dates with the good local girls from fine families. “Some great times for the cadets,” Richter said with a grin.

“Yes, and a mess for the Daleys,” Anthony added dryly.

“Details, Anthony, details!” cried Aunt Esther.

Tatiana smiled while feeding Janie sweet potatoes, glancing at Alexander, who was also smiling, though tensely, while telling Pasha and Harry to pipe down and stop flicking their peas and shooting bread balls out of their straws. Vikki wanted to know if there was more drink. Aunt Esther asked Anthony if he was going to follow the honored West Point cadet tradition and get married right after graduation at the academy chapel, and Rosa said only if it was a Catholic chapel, and Richter said only if he got married “to a good local Chicago girl,” and Anthony deadpan replied that he couldn’t find one. “Despite his best efforts,” piped up Richter, and oh, how everyone laughed, and Vikki said where
is
that wine already, and Tatiana said, “Harry, you fire one more bread ball at Anthony…” And Harry said, “Mom, they’re not bread balls, they’re buckshot.” And Alexander said, “Tom, how are the South Vietnamese holding up—Harry,
what
did your mother tell you!”

They talked about everything and anything, except the one thing they needed and
had
to talk about—Anthony’s future. That was the burning question on everyone’s mind, and has been the
only
thing on the minds of Tatiana and Alexander since August 1964 when the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was passed by Congress, authorizing the use of any and all appropriate force to keep South Vietnam free from North Vietnam, the way South Korea had been kept and was still being kept free from North Korea. Tom Richter had been with MacArthur in Bataan and in the dense jungles of New Guinea during WWII, he’d been with MacArthur in Japan after the war, and then leading MacArthur’s men from Port Inchon to the Yalu River in Korea, and now MacArthur had heard the bugle call and crossed his own river, and Richter was with Westmoreland (West Point, ’36) in Vietnam. He didn’t speak much about what went on there, but Tatiana knew from Alexander that Richter ran clandestine special ops units. Obviously letting the South Vietnamese defend themselves with only a small U.S. presence had not done the trick. They were not holding up. They were getting run over. The North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong, the Viet Cong Self-Defense Forces, the Viet Cong Secret Self-Defense Forces were better supplied.

Something more was needed.

“You think you are entering a world far different from the one your fathers entered, but you’re not. I graduated in June 1941, and six months later, on December 7th, our Naval officers saw something so out of line on their radar screens that they ignored it. It must be friendly planes, they said. And thirty minutes later, nearly our entire Naval fleet was destroyed. I’m telling you now, in the face of imperial communism, our greatest threat is complacency. During the American Civil War, Union General Sedgwick looked over a parapet toward Confederate lines and said that they couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance. Those were his last words. At that moment a sharpshooter took his life. For the last twenty years, the East and West have engaged in stand-offs, in proxy wars, all against a backdrop of a nuclear Armageddon. Soon the time for pretend will be over. That is the world you are entering as West Point men.”

This bright Arizona morning Tatiana and Alexander are waiting for Anthony to tell them how he intends to enter that world. Tatiana feels Alexander so tense behind her that she backs away from the island, squeezes his arm, looks up into his stone-like face and whispers, “Shh,” and then says, “Darling, do you hear Harry in the front yard? Why is he up already?”

“He’s convinced he can catch a Gila monster in the early morning,” says Alexander, not taking his eyes off Anthony. “He thinks it’s like fishing.” He pulls his arm away from Tatiana. “Ant, do you want to talk later? I have to save Harry from himself.”

“If you have to go, then go, Dad,” says Anthony, not looking up from the paper. “I have a reception at Luke Air Force base at ten.”

“I don’t have to go, but once the kids come in, talking as you know will become impossible,” Alexander says. The kids are noisy, especially the boys. Like wild dogs, they never stop moving. The girl is marginally quieter—but attention must be on her at all times. Once they get her up, there will be no adult conversation until her nap time.

Anthony! Do you see what you’re doing to your father’s heart, to your mother’s heart? We can’t speak, our throats are so full of our pride, of our love, of our fears for you.

“Let’s talk later then,” Anthony says, his head in the paper. “I just got here. My first morning back. I’ll be here two months. Can we just
please
ease up…”

“Anthony.” That’s Tatiana. Finally she speaks. His name is all she says.

He sighs, wipes his mouth, closes the paper. And then he too stands up. So now, Anthony is standing at one side of the island, Tatiana and Alexander at another. All are stiff as boards.

“You’re about to man the walls of democracy and freedom. We hope to see a world transformed by your presence in it.”

In full white military dress, Anthony picks up his white cap off the black granite and puts it on. He is a West Point graduate, a commissioned lieutenant. In return for a first class education at the most prestigious military training academy in the United States, Anthony owes the U.S. government four more years of active service. He knows it. His mother and father know it.

And the Tonkin Gulf Resolution had been unanimously passed. U.S. troops, little by little, are filling the planes that are heading en masse for Southeast Asia.

For the last nine months, Alexander has been talking to every person he knows in Military Intelligence and in the newly formed Defense Intelligence Agency, trying to get Anthony a position that would be equal to his talents, that would satisfy his active duty requirement, and that—most importantly—would be stateside. Finally, four weeks ago, the Director of DIA said he would hire Anthony to work on his Special Staff. He would be reporting directly to the head of the department that is the primary producer of foreign military intelligence for the United States. The formal written offer had gone out to Anthony two weeks ago.

“Duty, Honor, Country—those are the words you walk with. Douglas MacArthur, the liberator of the Philippines, of Japan, the man who in one night reversed the course of the Korean War and saved South Korea, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, stood before you three years ago at this very lectern and told you that all his adult life he listened for the witching melody of faint bugles, of far drums beating the long roll, but when he crossed the river, his last thought would be the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps. Duty, Honor, Country. Let that be your first thought as well as your last.”

Anthony stands so tall, so wide, so black-haired and dark-eyed. He is his father’s son in every physical way but one: he has his mother’s mouth. Men do not need full mouths like hers to draw the bees to the nectar—but Anthony has it. He is young, idealistic, beautiful. He is heartbreaking.

Both Tatiana and Alexander lower their heads. Though the child is now nearly the size of her outsized husband, her larger-than-life Alexander, what Tatiana sees in front of her is fifteen-month-old Anthony, a chubby dark little boy, sitting in their New York apartment, eating her croissants, his pudgy little hands covered with crumbs and glistening with butter. He is smiling at her with his four milk teeth, sitting in their lonely apartment without his daddy, who is in the mud and blood of the River Vistula with his penal battalion. She wonders what Alexander sees.

Alexander says, “Ant, so what have you decided?”

Anthony looks only at his warily blinking mother. “It’s a great offer from the DIA, Dad,” he says. “I know you’re trying to help. I appreciate it. But I’m not going to take it.”

“In 1903, the Secretary of War told the West Point graduating class, of which Douglas MacArthur was first, ‘Before you leave the Army, you will be engaged in another war. Prepare your country.’ And that is what I am saying to you today.”

Taking a breath, Anthony stops looking at either of his parents. “I’m going to Vietnam.”

“Today in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato—Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

Silence drips through the white kitchen. Somewhere on the other side of the house a door slams. Two children are running, running. Tatiana can hear the thump of their creature feet.

Tatiana says nothing, Alexander says nothing, but she can feel him behind her, coiling up.

“Come on, guys,” says Anthony. “After surviving Beast Barracks cadet training and my drill sergeant, the King of Beasts, did you really think I was going to sit behind a desk at DIA?” He is so blasé, so casual. He can be. He is only twenty-one. They were twenty-one once, too.

“Anthony, don’t be ridiculous,” says Alexander. “You won’t be sitting behind a desk. It’s Military Intelligence, for God’s sake. It’s active combat support.”

“That’s just the thing, Dad—I don’t want combat support. I want combat.”

“Don’t be”—Alexander stops to keep his voice low—“Don’t be stupid, Anthony—”

“Look, it’s decided. I talked to Tom Richter. It’s done.”

“Oh, to
Richter
you talked about this!” No keeping voice low.

“He’s going to recommend me for the 2nd Airborne Division in Company A,” Anthony says. “One tour with them, and he might be able to get me a Special Forces spot with him for the next round.”

“The
next
round?” Tatiana repeats incredulously.

No one moves.

“Mom, Dad, you do know we’re at war, right?”

Tatiana sinks into a chair, puts her arms out on the kitchen table, palms down. Alexander’s arm goes on her back, on her shoulder.

“Mom, come on,” says Anthony.

“Too fucking late to comfort your mother now,” says Alexander. “Why the theater, Ant? Why not just tell us at graduation, at Four Seasons? Obviously Richter already knew—why not tell us, too?” Alexander’s voice is distraught, but he places his steady hands on Tatiana. She knows she needs to get up to calm
him
down, but she can’t calm herself down. She needs his hands.

“Anthony, please,” Tatiana whispers. “You don’t have to prove anything to anybody.”

He is so tall with his brown sparkling eyes, with his thick black hair. So full of impossible youth. “I’m not proving anything to anybody,” he says. “This is about me.”

Tatiana and Alexander stare blackly at their son, and he, unable to take their dual agonized gaze, looks away.

“I graduated from
West Point
,” Anthony says. “Eisenhower, Grant, Stonewall Jackson, Patton—
MacArthur
, for God’s sake! I graduated from the school that makes warriors. What do you want me to do? What did you think I was going to a military academy for?”