And Yesterday Is Gone (38 page)

Alfie said, “I'm guessing they will take me now. I want the Marines—no back at the base crap. I want to be with the troops on the front lines.”

His enthusiasm spurred my imagination. What an opportunity as a foreign correspondent. What an adventure: front-page material, dramatic photos—a chance to see the real thing close up. We parted, promising to stay in touch.

A
t last, we were bringing the babies home.

For the first year, it seemed that all they did was sleep and eat. It was seldom that I saw Rica without a baby at her breast. They were mine to burp or change. Our lives revolved around the girls.

Billy had difficulty pronouncing “Margarita,” and since I often referred to her as “Baby,” he shortened that to “Babe.” So that was the name she was known by. Actually, from the beginning she was “Daddy's Babe,” and in later years, when knowledge increased and tongues grew sharper, she became “Daddy's Pet.” This really wasn't true; it was only that I loved them differently.

They walked at thirteen months. With her first steps, Babe bypassed her mother and fell into my arms. I thought my heart would burst. Sarita was loyal to her mother.

They had such fun sitting in their high chairs throwing food at each other. Our experience with Billy obviously was a test—nothing prepared us for these hell-raising, angelic-appearing little cherubs. If these were the terrible twos, I shuddered for the coming years.

“Rica, we've got to get away from these kids once in a while. We are not required to give up our lives for their constant attendance,” I insisted.

She agreed, but nothing changed. The tickets I bought for a play I thought we'd both enjoy somehow got mislaid.

Then Rica joined the Women's Literary Guild in North Beach, making the acquaintance of other young women with similar interests.

I fell asleep in my big chair, dreaming of places far away.

Our neighborhood was older and mainly occupied by a childless population. There was one family with an eight-year-old girl who occasionally came to play with Billy, but that friendship faltered when she insisted that Horse was “only a pony.”

Now it was time to think of Billy's education. At Juan's suggestion, we enrolled him in a small private school with excellent credentials in North Beach.

Billy—fun-loving, outgoing, wise beyond his years, having been raised in a mostly adult world—had no difficulty finding his place at the top of his class, a position he maintained until he graduated high school.

When living is easy, the years slide by.

•  •  •

In high school, Billy was a sports addict—captain of the basketball team, fast man on the track, and pitcher for the softball team. Juan and Sara never missed his games. Dr. Teddy said she would rather read about them in the newspaper.

Rica, the girls and I cheered so loudly when he made a basket that he said we embarrassed him.

Rica said it was no more than she expected, but Juan's pride knew no bounds.

Billy, at that upscale academy for boys, was home on weekends and holidays. “Home” could mean Pacific Heights, Juan's “playhouse” or his room.

The house now resounded with girls' giggles or the boisterous noise of Billy's friends.

When did Billy get so tall? He grew so fast, tall and skinny with close-cropped, curly blond hair, not to mention the pimples. And his voice was already changing. The years had blurred by—I could hardly remember his fifth birthday. Ah, yes, how could I forget that pony.

“Thanks a lot, Pop, for this contribution.” Billy always reminded me as he tried to slick down an errant curl—like I once had.

I could see myself in Billy at that age. My hope was that he should travel faster and go further than I had.

From birth, Billy had the best, with never a hand laid on him in anger. I smothered the intruding scenes of my childhood and knew that it was my mother who had given me whatever it took to make me the man I was.

Juan's attitude toward the girls was completely different—I don't believe I ever saw him hold one in his arms. He was always kind and thoughtful, but distant—as though they were the children of strangers. Sometimes I wondered if this was a form of self-protection on his part.

Juan had profited hugely from Dr. Teddy's advice and was now the owner of some very fine properties in the downtown area of San Francisco. He had maintained his studio in the house he had so beautifully restored, and in his sanctuary, stacked against the walls, were many canvases—some half-finished paintings leaning against the wall, another on the easel—and the smell of turpentine, brushes and paints.

Billy's gym equipment was in a corner. A basketball hoop was fastened high outside where Juan and Billy practiced and I joined them on occasion.

From Juan's, it was a short walk on a beaten path to our house, from where that delicious smell of food emanated most evenings.

Juan, fundamentally the same skinny boy who had taught me to roll a cigarette, was now a man in an expensive suit, a little older, a little quieter, but the same feelings between us never changed, except perhaps to have grown deeper with maturity. And I knew he loved Billy as though he was his own son.

As they grew older, the two identical black-haired girls were replicas of their mother. Juan had marked them, too, in ways not so easily seen, but recognized instantly by those who knew him well.

The girls did not betray the beauty of their inheritance.

Sarita was more outgoing. Her dark hair swinging around a face that nearly always was about to break into a giggle. Her feet never walked, they danced—sometimes clomping awkwardly in her mother's high-heels or twirling in pink ballet slippers.

With all the “Lookit me, Dad, Mom. Look,” came wet sloppy kisses, and screams of agony at the sight of broccoli. “Not again.”

“My” Babe, quiet, quick-witted, sensitive, and usually with her nose in a picture book, was devoted to her more adventuresome sister who frequently got Babe involved, too. A stern look from her mother would send her flying to my lap, her sanctuary. This was always followed by Sarita's teasing “Daddy's Pet,” while explaining to her mother with such perfectly logical reasoning why she was made up like a burlesque queen, ignoring the powder covering the floor.

These girls made the “terrible twos” seem mild. We were pleased and relieved to get them enrolled in a good private school.

The girls loved to visit Gramma Sara and she loved to have them. Dr. Teddy watched with bemused eyes as Sara played with the girls as though they were paper dolls. She took them shopping and they brought back everything Rica had forbidden—lipstick, high-heeled shoes, eye shadow. Had Rica dropped in, she would not have recognized these two young girls, still in grade school, dressed in the outrageous clothing and makeup of runway models. Tottering in their high-heels, they played and paraded with abandon, but left their treasures behind when, newly scrubbed, they came home.

Sara had loved the twins from birth—she loved their youth and enthusiasm and, of course, the knowledge that they were of Juan.

After a long day in a busy workday, my reward was Babe waiting for my car to turn in the long driveway and walk with me to the door where Sarita stood and chanted, “Daddy's Pet, Daddy's Pet.” Then the three of us would walk into this lovely home. With a beautiful ten-year-old girl on each arm, I would smell the pot roast. Woe betide me if I didn't produce some little goody—even if it was no more than a chocolate bar concealed in a pocket.

Soon I would hear the plaintive cry, “And what do you have for the mistress of the house?”

I always answered with a leer and, “Later, Mistress, later.”

N
ow that Charles had finished his second term as governor, he and Ma had been living it up, traveling in a motorhome as big as a boxcar—a far cry from the “horse trailer” that Sis had predicted would transport us to the whoop-de-do that had announced Ma's birthday and their marriage.

They had yet to spend more than a few days at a time with us since I was usually on the job. And now that they had surprised us with plans to visit, J.W. called with another “big one” for me.

For the first time, I rebelled and screwed up my courage to confront J.W. I asked, hat in hand, if someone else couldn't do the job as well. I was almost—almost—ready to add “better,” but couldn't bring myself to say it.

I promised an in-depth interview in the near future with Charles Kearney, recently retired governor of Texas, who had his eye on a seat in the senate.

I skidded by on that.

The following week was unforgettable.

Ma and I sat up late with time that was our very own. She was indulged by Rica's culinary skills and impressed with the beautiful kitchen. Charles and I talked politics and drank lots of beer.

Ma was, of course, entranced with our identical twins who delighted in confusing her as they pretended to be each other.

“I would have thought one of them would have looked like you, Steve.”

“Sure, Ma, the next time you're here, Babe will have blue eyes. They change as they grow older, you know.”

“How would I know? No one in our family ever had black hair and brown eyes. Sis and Tim's three-year-old girl has curly blonde hair and big blue eyes. Cutest baby that ever walked,” Ma declared.

To cover Ma's misspoken words, Charles and I exchanged glances and changed the subject, nearly outshouting each other about the price of oil. I was grateful that Rica was in the kitchen.

Charles added that Tim had received another promotion, and that there was talk among the military of an American interaction to discourage Iraqi violation of Kuwait territory.

The night before they left, we were invited to dinner at the big house in Pacific Heights. And what a dinner it was, as usual, and in such impressive surroundings.

Charles and Dr. Teddy were deeply engrossed in the subject of cars. Ma and Sara bragged about their sons, and Rica attempted to interrupt with Billy's latest achievements. Juan and I hid out in his studio.

I wished that Sis and Tim could have been with us to make the evening even more perfect.

But there was a serpent in the Garden of Eden.

I was disenchanted with the same old routine of everyday life, and increasingly bored, even with the job that I loved.

My wife, my kids and my job. As much as I truly loved them, this was my entire world from day to day.

Now, I did have my Saturday-night poker game with the fellows at the paper, and Rica had her clubs and activities with the girls, plus a new Chrysler station wagon, in which she was always picking up or dropping off someone. She acted like a girl herself and I loved her—that never changed.

So why wasn't I content? Sometimes I felt alone, what with Rica and the girls off to their various events, and Billy and Juan almost inseparable. Just reading the Sunday funnies was all the excitement I thought I needed.

I got fat and lazy.

“There's got to be something more,” I told Rica.

She laughed at me. “You're young for male menopause. What more is there? You have beautiful children, a lovely home, a good job, a devoted wife and friends who love you. There isn't any more—you've got it all.”

“I know, but for some reason it isn't enough.” Thoughts of an exciting faraway adventure blocked everything else out.

•  •  •

Then came breaking news that grew like Jack-in-the-Beanstalk of an invasion by Iraq into Kuwait, a land rich in oil that Saddam Hussein maintained still belonged to Iraq. This claim was violently disputed by Kuwait and supported by the United Nations.

An ultimatum to withdraw Iraqi troops from Kuwait was ignored, and so the Persian Gulf War exploded with over one hundred thousand sorties flown, eighty-eight thousand and five hundred tons of bombs destroying both military and civilian structures on the first day.

At that, my mind instantly snapped back to my last conversation with Alfie, and how it had fueled the flames of my imagination.

As I sat by my warm fireside dreaming, I did not know how fine the line is between a dream and a nightmare.

Everything else paled beside the news of the war. Every newspaper, every television program centered on reports of the Gulf War.

Inwardly, I both raged and wept—and here I was home “walking the dog.”

I called Alfie, only to be told that Dr. Myers had joined the military.

Shortly after, I received a short note from Alfie telling me that “Now is the time” and giving me his location.

My heart leaped—this was my chance to be involved in something really big. I imagined my magic pen could win me the Pulitzer Prize if only I could get to the real war. I would probably get enough material to write a book—oh, and the pictures taken on the spot would go down in history books. I'd never have another opportunity like this—I couldn't miss it. I was going to go come hell or high water and nobody was going to stop me.

I knew the real battle would start at home and that was a feeble understatement.

When I approached J.W. with the hope that he was going to be supportive, that hope died a quick death.

“You're like a damn kid. You think war is all glamour and excitement like it is in the movies. I can tell you it is not. I was in the Second World War, and that hell I don't dare to think about. Blood, guts, brains—not from the assholes that plan it, of course, but the little guys in the field.” He waved away any interruptions.

“What's this noble war all about? The poor people in Kuwait? Hell, no,” he spewed, stubbing out his cigarette hard enough to put it through the desk. “We want the oil to feed our fancy cars. Those people have been fighting over there before the ground was dry in Noah's day and they will be fighting as long as this world exists. We'll get our men back in pieces, dead, crippled—mentally as well as physically. And the bombing will probably kill thousands of their innocent civilians, too.”