“Because,” Tony said, deliberately focusing on Jess, “I had given up. I was tired and I hurt and I guess I couldn’timagine making it through. Your mom convinced me otherwise. She says she can’t remember me, so she must havehit a lot of guys over there.”
“Hundreds,” she allowed in a curt voice without turning. “I must have hit somebody every five minutes.”
“That’s what I thought,” Tony retorted, toying with athread of hope. Would she say something? Could she givesomething to her children, who were both watching her in absolute silence? “From what I remember, she kept doing it for two weeks. It must have been because I harassed her about my friend Smitty.”
“Smitty?” Jess asked.
Claire’s back grew stiffer. Her hands tightened against thecounter.
“Yeah,” Tony admitted, trying to sound nonchalantwhen his heart was running away with him. “He’d been withme all night out in that rice paddy. He died, but shewouldn’t tell me—”
She swung around, her face stark, her eyes glittering.
“She couldn’t tell me,” Tony said, facing her withoutflinching. Hoping she saw what she needed in his eyes. “Ifshe had, I would have given up completely.”
Silence.
Thick, old, heavy as regret. He wanted to go to her. To tellher that he’d found Smitty’s name there on The Wall with Baker’s and Doc Rodriguez’s and Washington’s. All killedthat night, all together again and forever where they’d finally found their peace. He wanted to tell her it was all right.That he’d put Smitty to rest. That she should, too.
“Did you take care of Smitty, too, Mom?” Jess asked,her voice curiously young. Uncertain.
“No... I mean... I don’t...I don’t remember.” Shecouldn’t seem to take her gaze from Tony, couldn’t seem tofind the words she needed to weave the lie she’d lived for solong.
It’s okay, Claire, he wanted to say. Tell them. Tell us all.
“Your mom had a lot of patients like me,” Tony toldJess. “A lot like Smitty. More than you ever want to know.”
“I know,” the girl defended herself. Defended hermother. “I’ve seen ‘China Beach’ and all the stuff aboutThe Wall. Fifty-six thousand men died in Vietnam.”
“A heck of a lot more didn’t,” Tony told the girl. “Because of your mom.”
Claire was shaking her head. Tony saw the light flicker,retreat. “I was just one nurse in one evac hospital. There were hundreds of us, nurses, doctors, corpsmen, medics.”
“It wasn’t the doctors who held my hand when I thoughtthey were my mom.”
Her smile was fleeting and tenuous. “The doctors didn’t look a thing like your mom.”
“Neither do you. But you were there.”
Her eyes gave her away before she could ever manage thewords. Huge eyes, eloquent eyes, eyes that betrayed the oldhorrors she’d locked so far away. “It was only my job,” shesaid quietly, and nobody in the kitchen believed her.
“What are we going to do about Pete?” Johnny asked herlater.
Claire looked up from the employee evaluations she was working on. “What’s the matter? Is he having problems?”
Johnny waved off her concern and settled himself ontothe bench seat by the wall of the kitchen where he’d earliersat with Gina Riordan. “No. He’s still asleep. Poor guy. Idon’t think he’s slept since that chaplain showed up at hisdoor. No, I mean later, you know. For good. You don’t really think he’s going to be able to handle... you know.What’s going on in his house.”
Instinctively Claire ironed out the skirt of the dress shehadn’t taken off yet from the funeral. There was a half-empty wineglass on the table and a stack of bills to be paid after she finished with work problems.
Claire had orchestrated it that way. Things to do. Business to care for. No room for recriminations or sessions inself-awareness. No time for the fresh wounds inflicted in herkitchen not two hours ago.
She could see it in Johnny’s eyes, a new caution. A question he wouldn’t ask. She could sense it in the careful wayeveryone moved around her. She knew that Tony had setsomething terrible into motion, and she didn’t want to faceit.
How could he have done that to her? How could he havestood in her kitchen and absolved her, when she could stillhear the raw cry of grief that had met her admission thatSmitty hadn’t made it after all.
Get Smitty. You get Smitty...
She simply couldn’t deal with anymore today. So she’dtaken herself and her wine off to pay bills, hoping everyonewould get the message. She’d hidden in her kitchen whereno one would make her hurt worse.
