There was a woman preacher, which no doubt made Femke and Hank happy. They were both invited, even though I told Sue she didn’t have to feel obligated. Timmy and Johnny were there too. Even Frank got an invite, although I told Sue and Big T to make sure that happened, because Frank always puts a shitload of cash into a wedding card, and I didn’t want them to miss out on that.
I wondered about Sue’s biological family back in Vietnam, especially since Hank had finally been in touch with his biological paternal family, saying that he at least wanted genetic information regarding diseases so that both Ella and he could watch for warning signs throughout life. I was okay with that, especially since Femke was playing nice now, and it felt like we were all solid otherwise.
At the reception, to open things up, Sue and I danced to Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” no doubt so that Sue could impress her new family, being that Stevie Wonder is a black musical genius. He’s also blind, and I have already told you about my fear of blind people, but I managed to control that long enough to get through the many dance practices Sue put me through, which were physically more demanding than training with Gay Timmy. But I did my best on the big night and—to be fair—Sue did most of the spinning around and showboating while I sort of stayed in one spot, just guiding her, or so it appeared to the untrained eye.
And when everyone was clapping at the end of our dance, she whispered into my ear—which I had cleaned free of hair using the trimmer Hank gave me—and said she loved me. I told her that her father, Alan, would be damn proud of her, and then she was off with Big T, grooving with the young people.
Timmy and Johnny were dancing with Ella and Femke and Hank, and a lot of Teddy’s friends were trying to get the white people out of their seats, and eventually everyone but me was on the dance floor, having so much fun.
I watched for a bit, and then I went outside for a smoke. I could still hear the music, but it was a lot quieter.
With all that had happened, I was already exhausted on account of the fucking brain meds. To be truthful, I had also gotten to missing Jessica again. I missed her every day of my life, but there was something about attending a wedding with everyone I loved except her—seeing two young people like Sue and Big T starting off a marriage in that good hopeful beginning place, all while mine had ended so fucking tragically more than thirty years ago. I didn’t want to make the day about me, because it wasn’t, but I also couldn’t help the way I was feeling. So I just lit up and started puffing.
Jessica is what they call a conundrum. If Roger Dodger and I hadn’t fought in the Vietnam War, Jessica and I would have never met. And yet I’m pretty sure that our being in the war is exactly what ended my marriage and Jessica’s life early.
My wife was a sensitive person, too in tune with the world. If most people receive life’s radio frequency at volume four, she received it at volume one hundred million. So while you might read this here report and ponder it for a few hours before going on with your trivial civilian lives, forgetting—just like everyone else—what Vietnam veterans went through during and after the war, Jessica internalized everything, both metaphorically and literally, when you think about the fucking rape and Hank growing in her belly, and so she would never ever stop thinking about all this shit for one single second for the rest of her life. She simply was unable. She never fully recovered from the early blows life dealt her, and I don’t think I had the tools to help her the way she needed to be helped. I saved her ass when she was a pregnant teenager, and I gave her unlimited art supplies and a studio to paint in, but she obviously needed more than that.
Even before the war, I was a hardheaded asshole. My mother always used to say so. I was born set in my ways, and I’m not sure my ways were good for Jessica in the long run. So maybe her killing herself doesn’t have anything to do with the Vietnam War at all. But then I go back to thinking about why she went to that drug house and how far gone her brother was and how that affected her at a young age, which was compounded by all of my crazy baggage.
Jessica developed all sorts of tricks for dealing with me. The first time we slept in a bed together, I had the fucking nightmares like always and started screaming in my sleep. I had told her never to wake me up under any circumstance whatsoever, but she didn’t listen, so the next thing I remember, she’s on the floor and I’m holding a knife to her throat. I regained consciousness and came to my senses just in time to refrain from opening up her jugular. Not a great way to start off a romance, to say the least. But Jessica learned and adapted.
She didn’t wake me up from then on, but sang lullabies to me whenever I started to scream, and whispered through the darkness that she was with me and everything was okay. Sometimes this stopped my screaming completely. Other times I simply woke up, which was just as good. It took time to implant this trigger in my brain, meaning I would subconsciously associate her voice with safety. It became a switch to turn off the horror movie in my mind. Some nights she would sing and whisper for hours before I stopped screaming, and you can imagine what that did to her own circadian rhythms or whatever the fuck you call them.
Roger Dodger used to drain her too, coming around the house when he knew I was at work, distracting her from Hank and her paintings, trying to steal shit from our home to sell. He once stole all our silverware and the TV set when Jessica was in her studio, and yet she used to make him coffee and listen to him rant about the war and the government and how America was a scam and his wild theories about Light People too. That shit takes a toll on a sensitive person. She was counseling two Vietnam veterans, and all while she was depressed herself.
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom, especially when Hank was little and her painting was going well.
I got my first convertible in the mid-seventies—a mint 1969 Camaro, black with two thick white stripes on the hood. I bought it because I got a good deal, and my wife said driving around in the wind and sun would help with her depression. I remember Jessica and Hank absolutely loved feeling the air ripping through their hair and hand-surfing the world as it rushed by, and I was proud to have made enough money working at the bank and doing some other side investments to buy the car that they wanted.