“I raised a good boy,” she said as she hugged him. He was fifteen years old then, already significantly taller than his mother.
“No more running late, Ma,” he joked with her.
Now, when he fingered the worn leather band, her smile flashed in his memory. He looked at the dial and saw it was still keeping good time. “Thank you,” he said softly. “I appreciate your returning it to me.”
That last night, after Becky and he arrived at her apartment and she put on her favorite Joni Mitchell record, he gave her his mother’s watch. They had just finished eating a dinner she had made for his last night, a grilled steak he knew she had probably saved up to buy just for the occasion and creamed spinach, his favorite.
He took it out of the white envelope and held it for a moment between his fingers. It wasn’t worth a lot of money, but at that moment, it seemed like the most priceless thing he had in his possession.
“Keep it safe for me,” he whispered as he leaned in to kiss her. He wrapped it around her wrist and buckled it. “I bought it for my mom when I was just a kid. There’s something special knowing it’s still being worn by someone I love.”
CHAPTER 40Long Island, 1979
LOVE AND SADNESS TWISTED TOGETHER FORGRACE.SHE FELTlucky she had married Tom. They had two healthy daughters and a home she was proud of. And yet, sometimes at night she’d find herself back at the river behind her childhood home, the waves crashing over the rocks, not loud enough to mute the sound of her mother crying in the bedroom.
She hated when these bouts of depression hit her. It felt like her heart was being strangled, obfuscating everything she knew to be good in her life. She became sullen and moody and snapped more at the girls than they deserved, and when Tom reached for her in the night, she pushed him away.
On some of those nights, she would do math in her head, calculating how old Bridey would be had she gone on to live and how many things had died when she drowned. As a child, she’d only seen it from her perspective, the change in her parents’ marriage, the gray veil that came over her mother’s eyes, her father’s sadness that he wore like the rain jacket he wrapped his baby girl in when they pulled her from the river. But now, as a mother and a wife, Grace mourned her sister’s death in another way. That Bridey never had the chance to marry and fall in love or to have children. Everything that had brought Grace joy later in life seemed tinged with a bittersweetness, knowing her sister had been robbed of also experiencing it. And although she knew as an adult that it was wrong to blame herself for a tragic accident, especially when she had only been a child herself when it happened, the fact that shehad been making daisy chains when her sister fell into the river still haunted her.
Her daughters knew so little about her sister. Grace didn’t want to burden the children with the pain of knowing how she drowned. She had waffled during her first pregnancy to name Katie after Bridey if the baby was born a girl, and then again with Molly. After much contemplation, though, she decided against it, thinking it too much of a weight to put upon a child. But she didn’t anticipate the deep emotions it would continue to stir in her as the years passed. Molly was now several years older than her sister had been when she died, and there was so much of her daughter that reminded Grace of her sister. The laugh, the curiosity, even the love of animals. Grace had been seriously considering getting the girls a dog next year. They all loved Hendrix, Jack’s black Labrador who came into the shop when he worked at night. He was such a gentle animal, she thought perhaps if they had a dog of their own, it would knit the girls closer together.
She’d have to make the decision sooner or later; after all, Katie was only home another two years before she would go off to college. Time was going by too fast. She needed to remind herself that it was not good for her be pulled back to the sadness of her past. Her father-in-law’s favorite words circled inside her. “Time must move forward.” It really was the only way to survive.
CHAPTER 41Vietnam, 1969
AFTERJACK RETURNED FROM HIS TWO-WEEK LEAVE TO BURY HISmother, he was slapped into the harsh reality of combat duty. The comfort of a real bed and Becky’s soft skin was now cruelly replaced by the reality of sleeping in a foxhole with the radio headpiece in his ear and one of the men in company patrol keeping vigilant watch beside him.
Flannery was the first to welcome him back. He came over and slapped Jack on the back. “It’s good to have you back, Hollywood.… They made me carry that damn radio when you were gone. Man, that thing’s a bitch.” He kicked the ground. “And I’m real sorry about your mom.”
Jack tossed his head back. “Now you get why they call it a Prick-25.”
“Yeah, no shit. Carrying thirty pounds in this heat is bad enough. Adding another twenty-five on your back.… Shit, man …” Flannery shook his head. “That’s a fucking bad deal.”
The men were just as he had left them: hungry, wet, and tired. Doc had just returned from Cam Ranh Bay for Rosh Hashana. None of them had ever heard of this holiday before, but the military had decided to make a conscientious effort to see that the Jews in the military would celebrate their New Year and Passover. So they flew the enlisted men out to an idyllic spot where a chaplain oversaw a service for the hundred or so Jewish men. According to Doc, three Jewish women were also there, one with a particularly good sense of humor who took a Polaroid to send home to her mother with an inscription on the back:Who knew I had to go to Vietnam to meet a nice Jewish boy?
There was something quirky but lovable about Doc. Perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t appear as hardened as the rest of the men in the squad. He almost never swore, which was an anomaly. The others punctuated every other sentence with a curse. While the training and life in Vietnam had beaten every ounce of softness out of the men, he still had a boyish sensitivity in him that made him seem younger than his years.
It seemed strange to Jack that a corpsman like Doc, whose mother still sent him care packages of M&M’s, would have enlisted on the day before his eighteenth birthday to be a field medic.
He knew that Navy corpsmen who served as medics had to first do extensive training at corps school, learning basic emergency first aid medical training and triage before they were even sent out into the field. Volunteering for the role involved a minimum three-year commitment.
“Why didn’t you just go to college and medical school if your number wasn’t even called, Mike? I just don’t get it.” Jack shook his head in disbelief. “You can’t really like this shit? Can you?”
“I grew up hearing stories from my dad and my uncle about World War II.” Doc tried to find the words to explain. “I idealized both of these guys.… Dad was a medic and so proud of serving in Patton’s army as they tore through France.” In the moonlight he looked pensive as he remembered the family lore, the very stories that had inspired him to enlist. “But it was my uncle’s story, about a six-foot-three medic named Tex who saved him during the invasion of Peleliu, that I think really ultimately drew me to the corps.” He closed his eyes and the story fell from his lips, the oral history that he had heard from his uncle that was a part of him. “Tex was patching up Uncle Nate from a shrapnel wound and then fell down on top of him during heavy fire to protect him, like a human shield—the medic just gave his own life, just like that,” explained Doc. “Hearing stuff like that growing up as a kid just made me want to do my part, I guess.”
Jack had not grown up hearing glorified War World II stories that had fed so many of his fellow marines’ souls. Almost all of them were sons of vets, and it gave them a foundation of purpose that was missing for him. But perhaps it was for the best. He didn’t want to burst any of their bubbles, but he knew firsthand from the incident in the airport that there wasn’t going to be a ticker tape parade for them like their dads received when they returned home.
“You wanna be a doctor when you get back to the States, though, right?” Jack could easily imagine Doc sitting behind a wooden desk, talking gently to his patients. He had just that kind of demeanor that fit into the image of a typical television show about a devoted small-town physician.
“I think a pediatrician. I love kids.”
“You’d be great. I wanna have five kids with my girlfriend.” Jack slid back and laughed.
“You’re just thinking aboutmakingfive kids,” Doc ribbed him.
“You’re right, man,” answered Jack before the conversation turned toward food, Doc dreaming of his mother’s pot roast, Jack, a Philly cheese steak. Hunger manifested itself in so many ways.
CHAPTER 42Long Island, 1979
