The Lotus Eaters: A Novel (42 page)

"It was an accident."

The nurse came back carrying two cafeteria trays of food and put one down in front of each of them. She winked at Helen. "If you two finish your lunch maybe I can find you a dessert."

Lan's face turned red, her brow furrowed. "My mama's right. No accidents. You're stupid."

Helen took a deep breath, suddenly tired of the whole idea of the shoot, the effort too hard; she just wanted to escape from the girl's craziness. "You like America?" Helen asked, bending down and taking a camera out of its case.

"I want that camera."

"This is mine. I'll buy you your own."

"I want to go home. Why can't my parents visit?" Lan shoved the tray of food across the table, sending it flying over the edge and onto the floor. "I hate chicken. Lan is special girl, eat anything she want." She jerked herself sideways on her stool, grabbing for the crutches against the wall, moving so quickly she lost her balance and fell.

Helen made no move to help her, and when Lan looked up and saw her sitting back, she cried louder as the nurse rushed forward and kneeled next to her.

"Don't touch," Lan screamed. "No touch me."

Helen's face beaded with sweat; she couldn't breathe, the commotion bringing back the low, dark Red Cross room in Saigon, the close smell of urine and unwashed bodies.

Images clattered one after another in her head. Helen rose on unsteady legs as if rising from a heavy, drugged sleep. No matter what she did, she could not escape, that much was clear. Even a dangerous talent better than nothing.

She longed for cool air and quiet. Lan's screams grew louder, more out of control, but Helen saw only the wounded children of Saigon in front of her, laid out on their beds sardine-style, the little boy in the courtyard eating bougainvillea blossoms. The camera in her hand shook. Lan rocked on the floor with the doctors kneeling around her like a wounded soldier attended by medics. Helen grabbed her camera bag and ducked out the door.

In the hallway, the cries muffled, Helen leaned against a cartoon rabbit painted on the wall and closed her eyes.

The nurse came out. "Sorry about that. Today's a bad one."

"She's done this before?"

"Oh yeah. Back and forth. Shell shock for kids. Not pretty."

"She wasn't like that."

"You don't look so good yourself. Why don't you lie down, and I'll get a doctor."

"That's okay." Helen moved toward the elevator.

"Aren't you going to say good-bye?" the nurse said.

"I don't want to upset her," Helen mumbled as the elevator doors opened.

"I can tell her you're coming back, right?" the nurse shouted, but Helen was already gone.

Helen and her mother
walked below their house with Duke, along the crescent of beach where she had grown up; in the sand she took her first steps in, stumbling into her father's arms; along the water where she and Michael spent innumerable summers building sand castles while their young mother sat and talked with the other mothers and prepared sandwiches and Kool-Aid for their lunches. They walked under the limestone cliffs, Duke's gold body weaving in and out of boulders, where Helen and teenage friends had burned bonfires late at night and talked and drank warm beer, the whole point to pair off and go into the dark, lie back in the cool embrace of sand and explore with lips and tongues and hands, to allow a first kiss, hands under a blouse, a bra to be unhooked, gentle kisses and quick straightenings, and then return to the group at the fire, and all that sweetness, all those boys smelling of shampoo that would later be transformed into the shapes of body bags. They walked in the late afternoon, the sun saffron-colored, and Helen's mother cried, her face punched-looking, pale and blotched, hands clutching.

"I forbid it. No," she said. "It isn't fair."

"But it's no good," Helen said. "I don't belong anywhere else right now."

"No!"

"I need to go," Helen said.

They walked past families having early dinners, small children and dogs running and chasing, Duke running and chasing, around picnic tables piled with food, people laughing and talking, the same people
they
used to be, and Helen stumbled, something sharp against her ankles, her balance upset, and without thought she was diving sideways, facedown, pitching over her shoulder in a combat roll into the sand, and when she looked up she saw it was a piece of line pulled taut to a fishing pole stuck at the water's edge, and two frightened little boys turned from their dinners, afraid they were in trouble, and because it wasn't a trip wire, because it was not an ambush with a mine or a grenade or death at the end, Helen lost her control, sobbed and screamed and pounded her hands into the sand that had cheated her, that had cheated all of them, and her mother froze, a premonition, she did not know this strange haunted woman at her feet, her movements as foreign as that far-off, floating, green country, and seeing with her own eyes the death of her little blond-haired girl who was as dead now as her son, she realized she had lost them all, she was powerless against this thing called Vietnam. The people at the picnic table stared, silent. A large-bellied man with a sandwich in his hand hesitated and reluctantly began to approach them, Duke with a ball in his mouth ran along the water, and the young mother ran to her two boys, pressing them into her hips, the reality of the war creeping up the sand, invading, at last coming home.

FIFTEEN
Hang Hum Noc Ran

Tiger Den and Snake Venom--A Place of Danger

November 1968

It was a prodigal's
return. Helen arrived in Vietnam at night; as the plane approached the darkened runway of Tan Son Nhut, the lights on board blackened to avoid rocket or mortar attack. Blind, she could only feel the magnetic pull of the place, dragging her back to earth, and she suspected it had exerted itself, however faintly, all the way to California.

She stood in the open doorway of the plane, unable to see anything in the pitch-dark night of the tarmac, the air shrill with the sound of jet engines revving for night runs. The physical weight of the heat and humidity made her feel like a fish being released back into water. She breathed in deeply, and the scent that had teased her in the States came to her, forgotten and familiar, a third-world emanation of jungle and decomposition, garbage and dinner and unwashed skin mixed with the fumes of sewers, diesel, and rain. Home.

In the chaos of
the airport stood Linh, unchanged, as if their months apart were nothing. Her relief to see him in the flesh, as if she dreaded that he, too, had become a ghost, was so great she dropped her bags and ran to hug him, kissing his cheek.

He pulled away, embarrassed, and looked around to see who might have been observing. She had forgotten too much already; all the difficulties and barriers to life in Saigon had disappeared from memory in her rush to return. Linh handed her the golden scarf.

She took it and wrapped it around her neck. "I missed it."

Linh shrugged. "It was always yours. It waited for your return."

"Good to be back." She tried to hide her disappointment at the formality between them. When she had wired him announcing her return, she took his answer that he'd pick her up as approval.

She saw there had been a change in him, his face more tired and drawn than she had ever seen it. The war had not stopped simply because she went away.

"Is it really good?" he asked, and picked up her bags.

"Believe it or not," she said. "It's more terrifying there than here."

"I don't understand," he said.

They rode into the city in silence with a new distance. Without the barrier of Darrow, the easy camaraderie between them strained. Helen was very aware of Linh as a man, and her former playful intimacy, up to the kiss she had just given him in public, embarrassed her. Clear that they had had a unique window of friendship because of Darrow, and this allowed her to know him in a way that would not have happened otherwise.

Things appeared smaller and dirtier and shabbier than she remembered. The car idled at the mouth of the alley in Cholon, dawn just beginning to lighten the edge of the sky, the first merchants stirring. They walked single file to avoid the large puddle, Linh ahead, carrying bags, until they reached the crooked apartment, its worn, stained stucco and tipped blue roof, the faded Buddha door. Helen stood in the alley and looked up, and her heart flooded at the sight of the red lamp in the window. A guilty plea sure like smoking a cigarette after months of abstinence. Her vision swam. Unreal to accept that Darrow was gone when she felt his presence here stronger than she had in months. Nothing was the same and yet a teasing that one could rewind time.

"Did you marry, Linh?"

He watched her face, not able to guess her feelings. "No." He stopped, but when she remained silent he continued. "Thao fell in love with a mechanic. They married last year. She is expecting a child."

"I'm sorry..."

"I'm happy for her."

Helen seemed far from him. So far he feared he'd never reach her; he half-expected that she would know the imagined conversations he had with her in the intervening months, the intimacy gained in his thoughts. "Sleep and I'll come by in the afternoon."

"Stay and let's talk--"

"It's better to rest, I think. Be patient. Good night."

At the press briefings
, Helen was surprised how filled the room was, how many unknown faces. New journalists jockeyed for information and packed the restaurants and bars. She recognized a handful of veteran reporters, and when she caught their eye, they nodded, unsurprised by her return. For those who had the appetite, it was as simple as wanting to be where the action was. For the first time in months, Helen felt she was where she belonged. Doing what she was good at. Being at the source of history in the making and not reading about it in the paper. But she noticed there was no more talk at the parties and restaurants and briefings whether the war was being won or lost. It had ceased to be an issue.

When she first went back to the magazine's offices, Gary met her with a big hug and stony silence.

"Come on," she said.

"You weren't supposed to come back."

"I missed you too much."

"Liar."

"And Linh sent me a letter."

"Don't worry about Linh. He hasn't been exactly mooning around. He's my new star reporter."

"He didn't say anything."

"Things have changed. Be careful. It's getting uglier by the day."

Linh and Helen went out on patrol in the Bong Son. She could not wait to leave the hot house of Saigon. Orders were delivered that she not shower with soap or shampoo, and not wear perfume. Ambushes had been discovered because the Vietnamese could smell the deodorized, scented Westerners from far away. That morning, in preparation, the platoon had purchased gallons of
nuoc mam
, fermented fish sauce, and amid laughter from Linh, they had smeared it all over the canvas parts of their gear and on their uniforms.

A nineteen-year-old PFC named Kirby slapped a big gob of it on Helen's back and rubbed it around. "If you'll allow me, ma'am."

Helen acted the good sport even though the smell sickened her and she'd have to throw away her tailor-made uniform afterward--no number of washings would get rid of the odor. "Aren't they going to be suspicious of a patch of jungle that reeks of fish sauce?" she asked. But she felt excited and alert for the first time in months, energized by the patrol; in her new confidence, the debilitating fear seemed vanished.

"Naw, after a few days we'll just smell like any other gook."

Helen looked to see if Linh had heard.

But instead of lessening, the odor of
nuoc mam
seemed to grow more rancid, more lingering. It rubbed off of the canvas and onto her skin, sank into her pores, until Helen was so overwhelmed it distracted her from the danger of walking patrol. Sweat reinvigorated the paste; it stuck in her throat and burned her eyes, permeated her hair like cigarette smoke until that, too, reeked.

Two days into the patrol they were deep in the jungle, hunkered down for the night under a canopy of umbrella trees. Hot meals and mail had been delivered earlier, and Kirby made his way over to Helen, who sat on a rock, staring at her serving of ham and beans.

"Not hungry?" he said. He had a slight frame and a sleepy expression; one could almost see the fear in him. "I'm hungry all the time."

"The fish smell makes everything taste bad," she said.

"If you're hungry enough, it doesn't matter."

"Want mine?" They sat in silence for a minute. "Get any mail?" she asked.

"From my parents."

"Miss home? I do."

"I hear you loud and clear," Kirby said, his face relaxed now as he settled back, resting his head in the crook of his arm, relieved at the shared acknowledgment of fear. "I dream of that plane ride home. Girls waiting to jump the war hero. People so grateful, they give me a parade. Life like one of those stupid commercials."

"It'll happen," Helen said, stirring at her dinner that now seemed more, not less, revolting. "You're one of the lucky ones."

He looked at her and crinkled his nose. "You're putting me on."

"No. Trust me." She did not want this new role, giving encouragement where it wasn't particularly warranted. She did not like knowing in advance the poor odds for a scared boy with no heart for danger.

"I can't exactly collect if you're wrong," he said.

She handed him her dinner. "You'll be on that plane."

Kirby studied her face for a moment and moved closer to her, and Helen smelled the strong odor of the
nuoc mam
mixed with something sweet like candy. He spoke in a low whisper.

"Can I tell you something personal?"

"Sure."

His face tightened. "That dream before was just a wet dream. I know it's not going to be like that. I worry..." He stopped talking for a moment and swallowed hard. "What if everything's changed? What if my parents are ashamed? What if I lose an arm or leg and my girlfriend goes off with one of those guys who thinks the war is a crock?"