That night Tony ended up working on the inn till well after dinner. By the time he walked through the kitchen screendoor, the truck was gone and so were three of the four kids,which made him briefly wonder why he’d thought it so important to have Gina come out to stay with him in the firstplace.
Gina wasn’t his problem, though. Still dressed in the scrubsuit she tended to wear home from work, Claire was sittingat the kitchen table, her eyes glued to the TV. There werehelicopters on the screen and tears on her face.
After Tony had spent the afternoon learning how inadequate he was for the job at hand, he hesitated on thethreshold. After that brief moment on the staircase, he knewhe couldn’t be anywhere else.
“It’s like watching a tornado come at you,” Claire admitted without looking away. “You can’t stop watching, nomatter how horrible it is.”
Tony checked the screen to see plumes of black smoke andcrumbled buildings. After all these years, he still expectedto see a young Dan Rather in a flak jacket standing in frontof the destruction.
“What’s happened now?” he asked.
She shrugged. “The UN forces have bombed the capital.God, what is wrong with this country? Can’t it simply leaveone challenge alone?”
“It’s not necessarily a bad fight every time,” Tony said to her, and headed straight to the refrigerator, where he’d begun to stock his own beer. He was sweaty and stale andtired. What he really was was nervous.
He set one of the beers down before Claire.
“What I object to is the enthusiasm,” she said, wiping herface with a towel. “This isn’t a soccer game.”
She sounded so calm. So matter-of-fact, as if all news reports demanded tears. As if the mere sight of carnage didn’tawaken old memories that ate away peace of mind like termites.
Tony had gone through this phase. During the Gulf War,he’d practically let the company go under in his attempt tocatch every second of CNN’s coverage. Gorging himself onit, torturing himself with the familiarity of the scene. Railing at the country’s short memories, at the frivolous loss oflife, at the lessons unlearned.
Seeing his friends every time the face of a killed soldier was shown on the air.
Now he just wanted to turn away. He’d had enough.
Without realizing he was doing it, he found himselfreaching out to her. She looked so lost sitting there, so veryfragile. He brushed his knuckles along her cheek, just to lether know someone was there.
To let her know he was there.
She leaned against his hand as if it were the only sourceof heat in the room, and Tony felt his heart stumble. He lethis hand rest on her shoulder, unwilling to break contact,uncertain how much she could take.
He wanted to kiss her. To soak up those tears and sootheher fears. He wanted to wind his fingers through hers andpull her away from the nightmares.
He didn’t know how, so he stood where he was and didwhat he could.
Her hand still caught in his, Claire slowly shook her head. She wasn’t watching the screen anymore. Tony could see thedistance in her eyes as she looked back at other carnage.
“It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” she said, her voice soft with a kind of surprised wonder.
Tony wasn’t sure he could breathe. God, he didn’t want to give the wrong answer. He didn’t want to hurt her anymore.
“I know,” he answered. “I forget sometimes.”
Somehow she chuckled. An almost-easy sound, companionable, as if they were talking about Virginia instead ofVietnam. “Me, too. I remember flying up to Chu Lai in asupply chopper that first day and not being able to stay outof the door of the ship. The crew thought I was nuts. Theirlast door gunner had been killed two days before. But Icouldn’t stop looking. It was so green, so exotic. So lush.Sure as heck different from Kansas City. I hopped a liftevery time I had a couple of spare hours off, just so I couldlook at the countryside.”
“Sunrises,” he said with a contemplative sip of beer.“I’ve never seen colors like that again in my life.”
She nodded with a sad little smile. “Sunsets. We used to toast them. Called it the Sunset Club. We’d all meet at thecorner table of the OC just in time and sing as the sun wentdown. The mama san in our hooch couldn’t understandwhat we thought was so interesting.”
“Probably because she had to wade around in all that slop instead of just look at it.”
“She did that. She cleaned our sheets in paddy water.God, what an awful smell.”
“As bad as mildew?”
“As bad as napalm.”
