“Semper fì,Tony,” AndrewJackson Spellman countered on the other end of the line. “What’s up?”
Tony rubbed at the tension in his temples. “I think I didsomething stupid, man.”
“Of course you did. You joined the Marines.”
Tony grinned. Leave it to Andy. “No, I mean it. I need awoman, Andy.”
“Whoa, man. This is a vet center. Not the Adam and Eve Massage Parlor.”
“A vet.”
“I think that violates a few federal codes.”
“Shut up and listen.”
“I’m all ears.” Andy’s pauses were therapeutic. He bestowed one on Tony now, which somehow eased the feelingof desperation he’d carried away from that kitchen withhim. “What did you do?”
“I went to see my nurse.”
Another pause, this one not quite so sanguine. Andy hadbeen sitting in Tony’s living room sharing a round of oldJohn Wayne movies when Tony had decided once and for allto take this step. “Not a resounding success, I take it?”
“For me, yeah. Amazing, ya know?”
“Yeah. I know.”
Tony nodded instinctively. Rubbed at the tightness thatwas building alongside his left eye where the old scars stillnagged him on bad days. “But I think she’s so far back inthe closet she can’t even see the light when the door’s open.”
Andy’s answer was a curse even the Marines had forbidden their DI’s to use. “Oh, damn, that’s my fault, Tony. Ishould have warned you.”
“Warned me?”
“Yeah. I’ve been getting memos for months, man.There’s been a big push on to get counselors who can focus on the women. Seems we’re finally figuring out that PTSDisn’t just a male prerogative, ya know?”
PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The diagnosis forthe nineties. Fancy name for surviving hell. Never acknowledged as a legitimate problem until some kids whosurvived kidnapping and disaster exhibited the same symptomology as returning vets. Subtle as a snake sometimes,insinuating itself into the edges of your dreams and turningthem into catastrophe. Devastating enough that it couldpropel a man into a mindless, hopeless existence on thestreets or so far back into the woods nobody could find himbut his ghosts.
So pervasive that even more than twenty years later, menlike Tony who had come home to get on with their lives werestill forced to step back into those fetid, teeming jungles thathad changed them utterly.
Men.
He’d somehow always thought of the victims as men. Themen had suffered, while the women had soothed. Thewomen had always appeared like a gift in Nam, bright-eyedand brash and smelling like Dove soap. A reward for having survived the time back in the boonies, a reminder thatsomewhere in the world there was still grace and compassion.
He hadn’t considered, all these years, that the women hadbrought their own nightmares home.
Well, he thought it now.
Tony sighed, wished he were a lot smarter. A lot.
“We’re stupid, aren’t we?” he finally countered, seeingagain the soft smile in Claire’s eyes when she’d cupped hergrown son’s face in her mother’s hands, hearing again the terrible desperation in her voice when he’d found her. “Ireally screwed it up, man. Tell me what to do.”
“I think you need a woman.”
“I think that’s where this all started. What do I do in themeantime?”
“Same thing you do with any of the guys you’ve runacross. Just be there until I can get you extra help.”
Tony thought of the responsibilities he’d left back home,of the daughter who would even now be worried that shehadn’t heard from him the night before. Then he thought ofthe way Claire Maguire Henderson had wrapped her handsaround her mug in that starkly bright kitchen, the instinctive action of somebody who’d once had nothing else withwhich to warm herself when it got cold. And it could getcold in Nam. It could get real cold. Tony thought of the wayher gaze couldn’t seem to rest any more than those hands,the hands that had held him through those long, terribledays.
He thought of the sadness he’d finally recognized at thedepths of her eyes. The untouchable melancholy, a friend ofhis had called it. The uniform Claire had worn home from the war and never been able to take off since.
