The Good Sister (32 page)

Harry was five years older than she and ordered her around as if she were a grunt; plus he teased her, promising that if she’d do his chores he would give her half of one of his cinnamon rolls. And not always the smallest half either. There was nothing stingy about Harry. And when Frankie’s life got sharky which it did whenever the General went after her for grades or table manners or not trying hard enough in sports, Harry was always there like a rock in the surf she could scramble up on and feel safe. It was Harry who told her she was a natural athlete and to be glad she was the tallest girl in the seventh grade at Arcadia School.

Harry had been accepted for Annapolis before his accident, slated to be a Marine like their father and every Byrne before him going back to the War of Independence. In the General’s office there was a display case holding the medals and ribbons he had inherited from his forebears. Frankie had watched his face when he learned that Harry would never serve. Not a muscle twitched to show how much this grieved him, but Frankie knew it just about broke his heart.

Amazingly Harry had quickly adjusted to his disability. Frankie’s suspicion that he was relieved to escape military duty was confirmed when he told her he had always wanted to be a pediatrician and now he could be. She was incredulous.

Until his accident he had never told anyone that his ambition was to go to Africa and work with Doctors Without Borders or to open a clinic for poor children right in San Diego. His aspirations and ambitions had been pipe dreams, subordinate to the General’s determination that he would distinguish himself as a Marine Corps officer.

Harry had been breaking school rules when he took a shortcut through the parking lot at Cathedral Boys’ High. It was spring and the track coach was a bear for punctuality, but Harry was a senior with girls and graduation on his mind. He wasn’t paying attention and neither, as it happened, was Mr. Penniman, one of the history teachers. He’d had trouble starting his ancient VW van, had to play the clutch just so. One minute there was no one in his rearview mirror and the next there was a thump and Harry Byrne went down.

The doctors at Scripps Hospital had tried to save his legs but they were a mess, and although Harry was young, they would never mend properly. Frankie was with her parents when the doctor told them, “We’re going to have to take them. At the knee.” She remembered how her father’s jaw set. Barely moving his lips, he said, “Do it.”

For a while Frankie was angry at Harry for being late for track, for not seeing the old VW van, for never really wanting to be a Marine. He seemed like a traitor to the Byrne family, the corps, and the General in particular.

The guard at the White House gate held a black umbrella over his head as he talked to the limo driver, then saluted the General and waved them up the circular drive to the entrance. At the entrance there were more umbrellas and Frankie’s shoes got wetter, but the welcoming committee at the White House knew how to handle Harry’s chair and had him inside before the rest of them.

“Welcome to my humble home,” her brother whispered and swept his arm in an arc, grinning like the Wonderland cat.

Everywhere she looked there were sober-faced men in uniforms and suits, buds stuck in their ears. A Marine who looked like Bon Jovi offered her his arm, and she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow though she was able to walk just fine in her little heels. She tried not to hear them squishing. The family was escorted down a long hall lined with paintings and mirrors framed in gold and through a wide doorway into a lovely room with windows facing the White House lawn. They were seated in the front row of about twenty comfortably padded chairs.

The room filled with other men in military uniforms from all the services. Some came alone, others had wives and children with them. Frankie hoped she didn’t look as dorky and awestruck as the other kids did. After a little waiting time, a disembodied voice announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States,” and everyone stood and there was more saluting and then the leader of the free world walked in and stood about six feet from Frankie. She observed how pink his skin was and that he had a Band-Aid on his left thumb, as if he’d chewed on a hangnail and made it bleed.

The president called the General to the front of the room and shook his hand hard, holding it in both of his while he looked him straight in the eye. He made a speech about the General’s heroism, his humility, and his service to the country since he had retired and he said the nation was grateful and proud. Through it all the General stood as still as the officer Frankie had seen the day before, guarding the tomb at Arlington National Cemetery. Composed, and in her eyes, radiant.

“Harlan Byrne,” the president said, “you are a great American hero.”

Everyone in the room clapped enthusiastically and then another hero came forward, but the General stayed beside President Bush. Thirty minutes later there were six men on the dais, three on either side of the president. Flashbulbs reflected off every mirrored and polished surface in the beautiful room. Frankie wanted to be a Marine standing beside the president in a dress uniform, wanted to be covered with ribbons and medals.

At the end of the ceremony, Mrs. Bush came in wearing a wine-red dress with a lace collar and shoes with heels like Frankie’s. The General introduced his family to the first couple.

The president shook Harry’s hand. “We heard about your accident, son, and Mrs. Bush and I are so very sorry. A terrible thing to happen. Terrible. I understand you’ve decided on a career in medicine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful doctor,” Mrs. Bush said.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Whatever he does,” the president said, “he’ll make you proud, General Byrne.”

Frankie glanced at the General, though she did not really expect his expression to show his feelings. In Ms. Hoffman’s English class she had learned the word
inscrutable.
No other word described her father as well. Without looking at Harry, she knew what he was thinking. They both knew he could win the Nobel Prize for Medicine, but the General wouldn’t be as proud as if he wore the uniform of the Marine Corps.

“Mr. President, may I present my daughter, Francine?”

Mrs. Bush said something about soccer.

“Yes, ma’am,” Frankie wasn’t quite sure what she was agreeing to. She stood up straighter and looked right over Barbara Bush’s head, out the window to where the lawn stretched away from the house and the rain fell in silver chains.

“And I understand you have a beautiful singing voice.”

Mrs. Bush had a friendly way about her. Talking to her, Frankie relaxed and it seemed natural to tell her about the Bach cantata the All Souls’ choir was rehearsing.

There were more questions and she must have said and done the right thing because as they all filed into the dining room for a fancy lunch, her mother whispered, “I’m very proud of you, Frankie.”

The praise would have meant more coming from her father.

2001 to 2007—San Diego, California

O
n September 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the United States, Frankie and Rick Tennyson had been married sixteen months and had a daughter named Glory and an Irish setter named Flame. When it became clear that American forces would be going back to Iraq for the second time in ten years, she knew what she had to do.

She had Glory with her in the stroller, and the recruiter asked three times, was she sure.

She made her announcement at a family dinner.

Harry spoke first. “Shit. You’re kidding, please say you’re kidding.”

Her mother didn’t bother telling him not to swear at dinner. She sat back and covered her mouth with her table napkin as tears welled in her eyes. “What on earth possessed you?” She pushed her chair back and fled into the kitchen.

“Is this some kind of a joke, Francine? Because if it is…” The General knew it wasn’t a joke. “Why in God’s name would you do such a thing?”

She had been prepared for their shock and initial upset.

“I want to serve our country, sir.”

“What about your family?”

“You’ve got a finance degree,” Rick said, sounding confused. “You work in a bank.”

Her sister-in-law, Gaby, asked, “Is it final?”

“I leave for Quantico in six weeks.” First there would be officer’s training and then months and months of Basic, what she knew would be the most physically and psychologically grueling months of her life. “After that, I don’t know where they’ll send me.”

“They’ll send you goddamn nowhere!” the General roared.

Gaby sighed and reached for Rick’s hand in sympathy.

“I can’t believe you’d do this. What about our daughter?”

Everyone seated at the table looked at the baby in the high chair. Glory stopped stirring her peas into her mashed potatoes and looked back at them.

“Answer your husband, Francine. What about your daughter? I can understand a man enlisting, but a wife and mother? This is wrong. Very wrong. Unnatural.”

Until the General used the word
unnatural
Frankie had not understood the depth and breadth and steel of his opposition to women serving in the Marine Corps. This was more than the shock and anger she had expected. It was worse than disapproval. As if an iron gate had dropped between them, she felt herself shut out of her father’s heart.

Later Frankie and Rick put Glory to bed together as they always did, Frankie sang to her, and the baby’s eyes never left her face.

Across the crib Rick interrupted. “You only got pregnant to please me. You never wanted her.”

“I wanted to wait.”

Rick was ten years older than she and had felt the need to hurry. Probably because of this, he had taken to fatherhood immediately; but until Glory was almost a year old Frankie had only gone through the motions. Accustomed to being good at everything she committed to, she was determined to master the skills of a good mother in much the same way she had learned to block and kick a soccer ball, by repetition and an effort of will.

She had felt foolish making conversation with a baby who didn’t understand a word, but she did as all the books said she should, pointing out and naming things until her conversational skills deteriorated to the simplest sentences, just nouns and verbs with a modifier tossed in when she was inspired. She read all the recommended childcare books and followed all the prescriptions for a happy healthy baby. Eventually and without Frankie noticing how it happened—by hourly, daily increments, she supposed—the love had come. Now, like Rick and the rest of the family, she was completely smitten with Glory, who was certainly the brightest and prettiest baby who had ever lived.

“You wanted a baby and I wanted you to be happy,” Frankie said. “I love her now. Isn’t that what matters?”

Glory followed the conversation, her sleepy eyes looking back and forth between her mother and father.

“Anyway, I’m doing it for her.”

“That is such a load of crap.” Glory’s eyes opened wider. “How can you even say it? You should be gagging on the words.”

“Rick, there were children on those planes. Glory could have been one of them.”

He exhaled in disgust.

Rick was doing fast and furious sit-ups on the far side of the bed, his toes tucked under the chest of drawers. He jumped to his feet and faced her. The tendons in his neck stood out like the roots of an old tree.

“Just tell me why.”

“Don’t poke your finger at me.”

“I want to hear the truth. No more bullshit.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Frankie, don’t you know yourself better than that? Have you so little insight?”

He used his condescending, I’ve-lived-longer-and-know-more-than-you voice, and her desire to cooperate froze.

“I told you. I’m doing it for her.”

“The hell you are. You’re doing it because you’re a twenty-five-year-old woman who’s still trying to get her father to love her.”

On the soccer field if someone elbowed Frankie out of the referee’s line of sight, she waited for the right moment and got her back. In games and life, the impulse to retaliate came to her as naturally as breathing. But this was Rick and part of her understood his anger and even sympathized with it. If their positions had been reversed, she too would be confused and heated; however, she would eventually accept his decision to serve and defend because she had been raised to believe that this was what military families did when the country was threatened.

“It would be different,” she said from the closet doorway, “if it were you who wanted to go.”

“But it’s not me, Frankie. It’s you, the mother of my daughter.”

“I’m a woman, so I don’t get to do what my conscience tells me? There has to be some deep dark Freudian explanation?”

“Shall we pursue that idea? Do you think you’re up for that conversation?”

She ignored his challenge. “This war is about who we are as a nation.”

“Stop.” He held up his hand. “If we’re going to talk about this, you have to do one thing for me. Stop the spin. Stick to the truth. You enlisted because you’re the General’s daughter and you’ll do anything, even leave your family to fight in some godforsaken desert, just to hear him say you’re a good girl and give you that look.”

“What look?”

“The one he gets on his face when he starts talking about his father and his uncle and grandfather. All the bully Byrnes who risked their lives so America can be free.” He looked disgusted. “If you knew how tired I get of listening to that crap.”

His vehemence stung her. “I thought you loved my father. He loves you.”

Rick laughed. “But he’d love me so much more if I were a Marine.”

They had always talked in the dark. It had been their way from the beginning.

“What are Glory and I supposed to do without you?”

He was calmer than he had been, more hurt than angry. But this was harder to bear. She wanted so much for him to understand.

“On the plane that hit the Pentagon there were a bunch of kids on a National Geographic field trip. And there were two little girls. Sisters. I imagine I’m their mother and I know they’re going to die and I can’t help them.”