Carry Me Home (47 page)

“We just walked up,” Jo said quietly. She gave Linda a hug. “We don’t want to wake the babies.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Linda said. “They’re in there gabbing at each other. They’re so funny. They actually goo-goo to each other. Hi Grandpa.”

“How are you, Linda?” John Sr. said.

“Great,” Linda said. “Come on in,” she said to Johnny and Molly, who’d remained on the porch. Then back to her father-in-law, “Want a cup of coffee? It’s fresh.”

“Linda,” Jo said, “I don’t know how you do it. I’m just going to peek in, okay?”

John Sr. said, “I’ll get it. I brought you some pastries. From the Italian bakery.”

“Oh, Grandpa”—Linda scolded him—“and me still with fifteen pounds to lose.”

“Can I peek in too?”

“Of course. Bring them out if ... ah ... unless they need to be changed. You don’t want to get a leak on your nice clothes.”

“We just came from church,” Johnny said.

“If they need it, I’ll change em,” Linda called. She already had out four cups and saucers, spoons, napkins, and was untying the pastry box. Grandma returned carrying bright-eyed Gina. Molly brought in Michelle, who the instant she saw her mom squirmed, her face furling into a boo-boo face, emitting a tiny sniff.

“Ohhh!” Grandpa Pisano drew out the word. “Look at that face. Let me hold her.”

They stayed an hour. Molly confided to Linda that she and Johnny were thinking about getting married. She did not mention it being Linda and Tony’s anniversary, pretended, as they all did, as if the present situation was normal, wonderful, as if nothing had happened. Except for John Sr. who lingered after the others had left and said to Linda, “Any word?”

“No.”

“Not even a postcard.”

“No.”

“I’m ...” John Pisano’s voice trembled. “If he comes back ...”

“He’ll come home,” Linda said softly. “Really, Grandpa.”

“You don’t know how sick this makes me.”

“I know he’s going to come back,” Linda said. “I just know it.”

“Do you need anything? You shouldn’t have to work.”

“You paid the doctor,” Linda said. “You gave me the car. And the furniture and toys. You’ve done so much. And Annalisa and Aunt Isabella are always helping. Really, we’re doing okay. And I like working.”

“But with the babies ...” John Pisano shook his head. “Not even a card on your first anniversary. Not even a damn postcard.”

An hour later Jessie Taynor banged on the door waking up the infants. “Ssshh!” Linda flew to the door to stop her, shook her head hearing Michelle cry.

Jessie, seeing her look, cringed. “I didn’t make t’em cry,” she said.

“No. No, Jessie. You didn’t. Come in.”

“Jessie didn’t make t’em cry. They make Jessie cry.”

“Ssshh.” Linda raised her finger to her lips. Jessie had become her “buddy.” She was good to talk to unless she was in her defensive mode. Then she neither listened nor made sense but instead struck out verbally, sometimes physically—sometimes to the delight of the twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys who would see her on the street, torment her, just to listen to her ramble and rage and watch her waddle after them shaking her big fists, her fat arms.

“Do you want a pastry?” Linda asked.

“Um.”

“Okay. Sit down. At the kitchen table. Let me quiet the girls.”

“Jessie didn’t make t’em cry.”

“No. Jessie didn’t make them cry. But now Linda must kiss them.” Linda went into the nursery, smiled at her two babies who were lying, Gina belly-down, Michelle belly-up, next to each other, Michelle’s right arm under Gina’s head, Gina’s right arm over Michelle’s chest. “What are you two doing, huh?” Linda checked their diapers. They were both damp but, she thought, not really wet. She cranked up the musical mobile that craned over the crib. “Let me talk to Jessie,” Linda said sweetly, “then maybe we’ll go out in the stroller. Or maybe read a book.”

Back in the kitchen Jessie had already eaten both napoleons and the only cannoli that John Jr. hadn’t eaten earlier.

“So, Jessie, how are you?”

“Jessie good,” said Jessie Taynor. She had cannoli cream on her face. “Linda good?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m tired though.”

“Jessie not tired. Jessie never tired.”

“Linda get tired.” Linda caught herself, changed her syntax. “I get tired,” she said. “And sometimes a little down.”

“We go downstairs. Go downtown.”

“No. I mean sometimes I feel a little down. You know, sad. That’s when I’m glad I have you as my friend.”

“Jessie Linda’s friend.”

“I know. Mrs. Meredith ... do you know Mrs. Meredith?”

“Merra-dit.” Jessie Taynor smiled. “Big house.”

“Uh-huh. You know, sometimes I get tired of her.”

“She bitter old bitch.” Jessie laughed.

“Nooo.” Linda looked compassionately at Jessie. “No. But she treats me more like a maid than a nurse. I don’t really mind. That’s part of the job. But you’d think her family’d help more with that stuff.”

“Jessie help Linda. Jessie tell Merra-dit go fuck.”

“No no, Jessie. But thank you.”

Late that afternoon Pewel Wapinski knocked lightly on Linda’s door. Linda, Gina and Michelle had been on the floor in the small living room, Linda marveling at how Gina had learned to roll over and push herself against her sister until she was sitting up; and marveling at Michelle who still needed help sitting up but who, occasionally, bonked her sister with a plastic Donald Duck rattle. “Mr. Wapinski!”

“Um.” He stood with his hands behind his back.

“Won’t you come in?”

“Jus stopped for a minute,” he said. He brought his hands forward, produced a bouquet of flowers.

“Oooo!” Linda gasped, surprised.

“Happy anniversary,” the old man said.

“Oh, they’re beautiful. Please come in. How did you know?”

“Remembered it in the paper last year.”

“In the paper?”

“Um.”

“Oh. We must still have been in Boston.”

“Um.”

“Did you want to see the girls?”

“Yep. But I’m bothering you. Those his certificates on the wall?”

Linda turned. She had forgotten she’d put them back. “Yes. Some of them.”

Pewel knelt down, bent over, gave first his index finger to Gina, then his thumb to Michelle which she immediately seized and yanked almost toppling him. “Whoa! That’s some handshake, Missy.” He extricated his hand. To Linda he said, “Thank you.”

“For what? Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“No. I got to be goin. Said I’d only stay a minute. I know sometimes young boys forget. Those are really from him. Jus through me.”

“Did he—”

“No. But he will. And he’d a asked me to bring em if he’d a thought and he’ll think of it later and he’ll be angry at his self for forgetting. Maybe in a month. And then he’ll ask and it’ll have been done.”

“Thanks so much. That’s so thoughtful.”

“Maybe you and the missies could come up for dinner some night.”

“Oh. We’d like that.”

It was eight thirty. There were no more knocks on the door. Linda was exhausted. She had nursed and changed the babies, put them in the crib, knew she’d be nursing and changing them again in four hours. Now it was quiet. The windows were dark. She did not play the stereo. She was in the living room. She knelt, got down on all fours to pick up the rattles and stuffed animals with eyes that shimmied, tossing them one by one into the old milk crate she’d cleaned and painted for toys. In the corner of her eye she could see the flowers that Pewel Wapinski had brought and her stomach tightened. She sat back on her heels, rocked forward at the waist, pulled her arms in tight, clenched her fist to her face. Tears broke and she cried, sobbed, her arms quivering. “Come home, Tony. Dear God, Tony, please come home. Please come home. Please. Please. Please ...”

Rock Ridge Veterans Medical Center—There is no time when one is heavily under the influence of Elavil, Thorazine and diazepam. No time, no space, no freedom. The orderlies call it liquid strait jacket. Tony is confused, cannot concentrate, standard effects of Elavil. He has been warehoused a week, no, certainly longer—he does not really care, standard effect of Thorazine. To think tires him, he is tired all the time—standard effect of diazepam. Tony too has come to call his “therapy” liquid strait jacket. He had been repatriated, almost, involuntarily, and this angers him but he cannot hold anger because of the ETD drug combo: 400 milligrams of Elavil each day, 300 milligrams of Thorazine, 40 milligrams of diazepam. One brother he’s met is on 800 milligrams of Elavil, 400 Thorazine. They sleep, eat, watch TV, nod off, watch TV. When they talk they talk of Thorazine, of their strait jackets. They do not talk about combat, about Viet Nam, about their service. This is 1970. If they speak of Marines or Airborne the orderlies take note, report them, their jackets are upped. They are not here because of combat stress. Posttraumatic stress disorders will not be officially recognized for nine more years. They are here because they are psychotic, sociopathic, insane, crazy, nuts. They are here because they are poor, have no jobs in the sour economy, have refused to hold jobs, are difficult, are irritants, are bitter at a society in which—if they’d only get off their goddamned asses, settle down, get on with their lives—they would be provided with everything, absolutely anything, status quo or counterculture or in between. But no, they have essentially given the finger to everyone, maybe given the ultimate insult, attempted to check out of this society permanently.

It is early morning. Tony does not know the time but the orderlies know, mumble quietly to each other about their charges sleeping and dreaming their Thorazine dreams, sip their morning coffee, read their magazines, prefer that no one wake up—not yet, the expedience of Thorazine, the warehousing of spirit and body by diazepam.

On his cot Tony is restless. His body is paralyzed, his mind is impaired, but the drugs don’t mask everything, don’t keep everything from the conscious or the subconscious.

He is afraid. He is afraid he is going crazy. He is afraid he is dying. His heartbeat is irregular. The orderlies have told him not to worry, they’ll watch over him. They have not told him it is another common side effect. He lies there not awake, not truly asleep. Night images splash his mind, sometimes dripping entire episodes of his life—the death of Manny in particular, maybe because one of the orderlies looks like Manny, looks as much like Manny as Tony can remember Manny looking. Except in the episodes. Then he sees Manny, sees him exactly how he was. Sometimes the images are flashes, the third child shot by the NVA, just a still photo in the mind, just the expression on the child’s face, then falling, Tony’s body arching, grabbing his cot, falling, the helicopter at Phu Bai, the blood dripping onto his hand as he reaches to switch off the ignition.

“All right. Let’s go guys. Everybody up.” The orderlies move through the ward, bang on the metal lockers that stand back-to-back separating two cots here from two there, an aisle between sections, on and on, ward after ward, but Tony is restricted to his ward, Seven-upper, they joke about it. Everyone lights up. Tony smokes Pall Malls. They are his one pleasure even if they no longer taste like Pall Malls. Nothing tastes as it did. He doesn’t know why. They are herded through the motions of daily hygiene and morning meds. Tony can’t shit. He feels bloated. His feet and hands feel puffed, numb. They watch TV. Then they watch more TV. And more TV. And they smoke and nod and on some wards they do talk but on Seven-upper they barely talk at all.

It is his fifth or eighth or tenth, he can’t concentrate, can’t calculate, session with Dr. Jonathan Freiburg. “I think we’ve been making some progress,” Freiburg says. “Don’t you?”

Tony nods. He is afraid to open up to Freiburg. Everyone knows Freiburg dictates the strength of the strait jacket.

“Tony, are there still people you’d like to kill?”

What kind of fuckin question is that? Tony thinks. “I killed enough people,” he says. “I don’t want to kill anymore.”

“And all the people you killed, you killed during combat missions, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. I guess. I told you last time that that Storrow Drive thing was an accident. I was responding. I was driving the ambulance.”

“Um-hmm. Go on.”

“I was angry at the guy who caused it.”

“Why were you so angry, Tony?”

“Because it could have been me. I could have been driving the car he hit. So I was scared.”

“Yes. That’s a good reason to be angry, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. And I answered a lot of other accidents. Lots of em could of been me.”

“That’s pretty frightening, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I ... I wasn’t in control.”

“Go on.”

“Back in Viet Nam ...” Tony pauses. This was a bad subject unless Freiburg brought it up. Tony, even drugged, knows Freiburg can’t handle it, hates it, condemns him for it. His body language always conveys a don’t-tell-me-about-the-atrocities-you-committed attitude, “ah ... back then I was all spunk and courage but now I’m afraid to talk to people. I’m afraid of most everything.”

“What kind of things, Tony?”

Tony sighs internally.
Beat him on that one
. “Sometimes I’m afraid people can hear what I’m thinking,” he says.

“Umm.” Freiburg hums.

“I’m afraid the woman who dispenses the meds at noon knows I can’t get a hard on no more.”

“Hmm.”

“But the guys say that’s cause of the meds and sure she knows it.”

“Do you know that you’ve been on a reduced dosage this past week?”

“Me?”

“You haven’t felt it, have you?”

“No.” Tony immediately thinks about his strength returning but he says nothing.

“Tony, let’s go back to some of the things you fear. You’ve told me very little about your family.”

Again Tony sighs inside.
Now I got this asshole on the right track
. He has never mentioned Linda or his daughters, has said little about his folks. The not-mentioning has developed an inertia that has become drug-confused into a code of silence, a way to protect them. Still he is sad, not mentioning them here, or in the ward, sad, embarrassed, ashamed about denying them, denying the blood from which he’d come, the blood that came from him. Still, it is easier, better, less complicated, this way. “They’re good people,” Tony says. “I don’t want to burden them. With my problems.”