“Frances,” Mom said at her approach.
A look passed between them, a sharing of emotion between mother and daughter. “You look good,” Mom said. “Too thin.”
“You, too,” Frankie said, walking into her mother’s arms, being held in the new, fierce way that Mom had developed. Like Frankie, Mom had learned how capricious life and one’s own body could be.
When Mom finally let go—with tears in her eyes—Frankie turned, looked across the shiny black roof of the Cadillac at her dad.
She had aged him, she knew, taught him that success and money couldn’t insulate a family from loss or hardship. Walls around a house were no guarantee of safety, not in a world that was constantly shifting. He’d changed with the times, in a way, grown out his sideburns, and traded in his custom suits for knit bowling-style shirts and double-knit pants, but there was no denying the wariness in his eyes when he looked at his daughter.
She remembered him carrying her out of the water that night. The memory of his crying would always be with her. What he’d learned about her that night, about them, could never be erased. She knew a part of him would worry about her forever. And that he would never say a word about it. He and her mother were of a quieter generation. They didn’t believe in words as much as they believed in optimism and hard work.
“I think you look great, Frankie,” he said.
“Thanks, Dad.”
She opened the back door, tossed her bag in the backseat, and slid in next to it.
When Dad started the engine, Perry Como’s voice sang through the speakers and pulled time away. Suddenly Frankie was ten years old again, sitting in the backseat of the car, sliding across at every turn in the road, bumping into her brother.
“That bag still smells mildewed,” Mom said. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“Monsoon season,” Frankie said, staring down at the black, soft-sided bag that had gone around the world with her. “Everything was wet. Nothing ever dried.”
“That must have been … unpleasant,” Mom said.
The first real conversation they’d ever had about Vietnam.
Frankie couldn’t help smiling. They were trying, hoping to change in small and meaningful ways. “Yeah, Mom,” she said with a smile. “It was unpleasant.”
* * *
They pulled up in front of the small gray beach bungalow, with its old-fashioned wishing well out front and the American flag hanging over the garage door.
“You could stay with us,” Dad said in a gruff voice.
Frankie understood his worry. No one wanted to leave an addict alone for long, but she needed to stand on her own. Or fall. And if she fell, she needed to stand again. “I’ll be okay here, Dad.”
She saw the way he frowned. Nodded. He reached across for Mom’s hand, held it.
Frankie nodded, grabbed her bag, and got out of the car and stood there for a moment.
Mom got out of the car and hugged Frankie.
“Don’t scare me again,” Mom whispered.
Frankie felt a surge of love for her mother, a kinship. She thought suddenly about what it meant to lose a child. When Frankie was young, it had bothered her, her mother’s sturdy impassivity, her calm demeanor. But now Frankie knew better. You survived a day at a time, however you could.
Tomorrow Frankie would begin the work of day-at-a-time living: she’d find a local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and get a sponsor. Then she’d send Mr. Brightman a check for a new bicycle—the first step in her lengthy reparation process. She would not seek to reinstate her nursing license until she was sure of her recovery.
Mom laid a hand on Frankie’s cheek, looked deeply into her eyes. “I am so proud of you, Frances.”
“Thank you, Mom.”
Letting go of her mother, Frankie turned and headed for the cottage. The deed—in Frankie’s name—lay on the kitchen counter. No doubt her father had put it there to remind her that she belonged here, on Coronado.
She went to her bedroom and tossed her bag on the floor, where it landed with a thunk and slid bumpily across the wooden planks.
Then she walked down the hallway to the nursery.
When had she last opened that door?
She opened it now and stood in the doorway, staring at the yellow room. For the first time, she let herself remember all of it, here, in this room where she’d once been filled with hope.
A different version of her.
A different world.
As she stood there, letting the pain in, remembering the whole of her life, she realized suddenly that she was young. Not even twenty-nine.
She’d made some of the most momentous choices in her life before she had any idea of consequences. Some had been thrust on her, some had been expected, some had been impetuous. She’d decided to become a nurse at seventeen. She’d joined the Army Nurse Corps and gone to war at twenty-one. She’d gone to Virginia with her friends to run away from home, and when her mother needed care, she’d come home.
In love, she’d been too cautious for years, and then too impetuous.
In retrospect, it all felt haphazard. Some good decisions, some bad. Some experiences that she would never trade. What she’d learned about herself in Vietnam and the friendships she’d made were indelible.
But now it was time to actually go in search of her life.
* * *
Summer, 1974.
The air smelled of childhood: of the sea, and sand baked by the sun, and lemon trees.
On Ocean Boulevard, Frankie tented a hand over her eyes and stared out at the wide blue Pacific. She imagined a pair of black-haired, blue-eyed kids running across the sand, carrying surfboards; kids who’d thought they had all the time in the world to grow up, who didn’t know what it meant to be broken or afraid or lost.
Hey, Fin. I miss you.
She walked along the sidewalk, on her way home from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, with the long white beach on her left. A tuft of greenery capped the rise. In the distance, boats moved across the horizon. Tourists and locals filled the beach on this hot August day.
A jet roared overhead, probably a pilot from that new fighter jet school at Miramar. The roar of the engines was loud enough to shake the ground. She knew that no one on Coronado cared; they called it the sound of freedom.
At the gate to her parents’ house, Frankie paused, steeled herself for what she was sure would be a battle, and opened the gate.
It had taken months of hard work to get to this place, and still it was just the beginning. Often, as she’d begun to contemplate her future, she’d panicked, felt weak, thought, I can’t do this. On those hard days, she either went to a second—or third—meeting or called her sponsor and found just enough strength to keep going. Keep believing. One day at a time.
Today the yard was awash in summer color.
Dad was on the patio, smoking a cigarette.
She closed the gate behind her and walked around the pool to stand in front of him.
She fought the urge to say she was sorry. Again. She’d said it to him dozens of times in the past few months, and she knew how uncomfortable it made him.
At first she’d hoped her apology would be a beginning, the start of reparations, maybe, a healing that could only come through conversation. She longed to tell him he’d hurt her and understand why he’d been so cold and dismissive about her service in Vietnam.
But it was not to be. He had no interest in talking about it. He wanted to pretend the war had never torn this family apart. Dr. Alden had taught her to accept that, accept him. That was what family meant. Sometimes hurts didn’t quite heal. That was life.
“I need to talk to you guys,” she said.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
Frankie smiled. “I know how you love to talk.” She took hold of his hand, squeezed it.
He squeezed back.
Mom came out onto the patio, a glass of iced tea in one hand.
“Our girl wants to talk to us,” Dad said.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Mom said.
There was something to be said for consistency. Frankie led her parents into the living room, where a sofa and four chairs were gathered around a huge stone fireplace.