Gift of the Golden Mountain (59 page)

     May interrupted. "I've only talked to her twice in the last few weeks, and both those times she wanted me to talk about you and Thea, come to think of it. She answered my questions as perfunctorily as possible. Still, there was something in her voice . . ."

     "Exactly," Karin answered. "It's how she looks that gives her away. She is just . . . the only word I can think to describe it is 'luminous' . . . she looks absolutely wonderful, you would never guess that she was sixty-nine, she looks ten years younger. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, I guess Faith figured out that I
was about to go crazy with all the avoiding, so she said something very sweet and gentle, I don't remember her words exactly, but something like, 'Karin, dear, tell us what you need to know.'"

     Karin stood, stretched, then leaned over to touch her toes, as if she could not sit still with the memory. She straightened, clasped her hands in front of her, and went on. I said, 'I need to know what I can do to help Philip.' No one said anything, there was this long silence—I think Faith was waiting for Kit to speak up, and she didn't, so I decided to dive in. 'And I need to know if all you are doing is for me, Kit. Or is it for Philip?'

     "Then something very strange happened. Kit's eyes flooded with tears. She wasn't really crying, but the tears just started streaming down her cheeks. And stranger yet, she didn't try to turn away. I always carry a linen handkerchief—you know that old habit—so I got up to give it to her, and instead she took my hand and clung to it. She was sitting on one of Faith's old settees . . . I sat down next to her and put my arms around her and we held each other.

     "After that," she went on, "all the barriers were down, it was as if one group of women had been replaced by another, and the three of us were old friends again, and we could really talk. I'm not sure that Kit knows why she is working so hard to help Philip. She says it is a tremendous challenge, and that it makes her feel as if she has a purpose again. I envy her, May . . . wanting to do it, I mean. I really do." Karin's voice cracked, and she began to cry, softly. The telephone rang, as if to announce a time-out, and May sprang up to answer it.

     "Yes," she said into the receiver, "I was just about to call you. Karin caught an earlier flight. Yes, everything is okay with your dad, she'll tell you all about it later. No, that won't work." A long silence, then, and with steel in her voice she said, "No. They don't have to bring you here, we'll pick you up in a while. Just sit tight and wait."

     "Was that Thea? Is something wrong?" Karin wanted to know.

     "We'll talk about Thea when you've finished telling me about Kit."

     Karin frowned, but did as May said. "Well, Philip's rehabilitation has become something of an obsession with her, that's the first thing. It took me awhile to catch on, but she has pushed everything else in her life aside, to concentrate on him. She is at the hospital almost every day. In the beginning I'm sure it was to give me some relief. But then it became a challenge, and when Philip began to respond, she said, she had a feeling of great
reward
—that was her word."

     It was May's turn to frown. "Did you tell her what you know?"

     "You mean that they were lovers once? No, I didn't, any more than I would tell her that Philip and I were never truly lovers. That's in the past, done."

     "And. . .?"

     "What I discovered is that Philip wants me to concentrate on Thea . . . what he said, using Morse code, was that he would be 'forever grateful' to me if I helped his children, so he could put all his energy into his recovery."

     "Do you think he meant it?"

     "Yes. Yes, I'm sure he did. What I'm not sure of is why. If he thinks I would be acting only out of a sense of duty, he would hate that. I don't know. I just know there is nothing more for me to do there, right now. I went in to see him this morning, very briefly, on the way to the airport. I interrupted his first session with a physical therapist, and I got the oddest feeling that he was annoyed at the interruption. That may not have been true, of course. There is an atmosphere in the room of work underway, people in and out all the time—it's a major production, really. You could title it, 'The Reclamation of Philip Ward.' I don't mean to sound cynical. Really, the feeling is very hopeful. I give Kit good marks."

     May's stomach growled. "I skipped lunch," she said, in explanation. "Let me stick some frozen dinners in the oven. Chicken divan, how does that sound?"

     "Terrible," Karin answered, "why don't we call out for Chinese?"

     May ran her forefinger down the list she kept taped to the wall next to the telephone and placed the order.

"You were saying that you didn't mean to sound cynical," May reminded her, "but you did . . . a little. Or did I misunderstand?"

     Karin struggled with the chopsticks, trying to pick up a square of barbecued pork. "I feel . . . impotent. I mean, when it comes right down to it, the best thing I can do for Philip is to stay out of his way. Oh, everybody—Kit particularly—works overtime to make it seem right to me. Because they know I don't have this driving passion to do what Kit is doing . . . they may even know that before Thea and I left, I had to force myself just to enter the hospital. It's as if I can't seem to come up with the right feelings, or reactions, or something. I'm disoriented—I don't know what I'm supposed to do . . . except I'm not supposed to be dismissed, am I?"

     "You're not being dismissed, and you're not running away. Thea and Dan are big responsibilities. They're still very young, and your work is cut out for you—it's not going to be easy sailing, you know."

     "I guess I can't put it off any longer—tell me about Thea," Karin said wearily.

     "Last night I called Lynne's house about nine, just to check to make sure the girls got back okay from the outing. Lynne was there, but Thea wasn't. She had never made plans to stay overnight. I drove right up to the house and found Thea there with the kid who has the green sports car. Alex? They were snuggled up together on the lanai, in a cloud of cannabis."

     "Damn!" Karin exploded. "That bastard Alex!"

     "Maybe," May came back, "but Thea was the one who lied to you."

     Karin ignored the remark to ask, "What did you do?"

     "I didn't want the kid to drive home stoned, so I made him call his father, and the guy was up there in about ten minutes and packed him off. Didn't have much to say, but he did the job—told the kid to get in his car and wait for him, he didn't even have to raise his voice. Then he apologized to me and Thea, though I'm not sure Thea heard, she was so out of it. I brought her here and put her to bed, and she is very contrite. She asked me if I felt I had to tell you, and I said yes. She is probably on pins and needles right now, wondering how you are going to react."

     Karin was holding her head in her hands. "I guess you're right. I do have my work cut out for me."

     "And you're on your own, Philip can't back you up."

     "He never really did," Karin answered. "Did I tell you Dan will be coming through in a couple of weeks? He called on Saturday to say he got his orders. He's being posted to the embassy in Saigon. I thought sure he wouldn't have to go at all, now that the war is over."

     "The war will be over when there aren't any more American military in Vietnam," May said.

     The telephone rang again. "That's Thea," May said, "she can't stand it another minute."

     Karin cleared her throat, picked up the phone, and answered in a voice with a studied distance. "Yes, we were about to come get you . . . yes, she did . . . not so much angry as disappointed, I think, but we'll talk about it later . . . I hope so, but I guess that is something we'll have to work on . . . yes, in about twenty minutes."

     She came back to the living room, smiling wanly. "You were right. She is very contrite, and very worried—and very sincere, I think. But I'm not sure just how smitten she is with this Hollowell kid."

     "You sound so old-fashioned, K."

     Karin started clearing the food cartons from the sink. "Maybe that is my problem," she answered. "My marriage was a mistake, but saying it doesn't exempt me from my responsibility to Philip.
He is still my husband, and he is helpless, and while Kit's great passion to help put him back together again is a wonderful help right now, I'm sure her commitment has its limits. I can't allow myself to forget that someday soon I am going to have to go back and take charge—and I should. It's my job. Philip would have done it for me."

     "If you had decided to . . ." May started, then stopped and shook her head. "Forget I said that."

     "Said what?" Karin answered. "If I had divorced Philip before this happened, would I still feel so responsible?"

     "And so guilty?" May added.

     Karin slipped into her sandals and began to gather her things. "I would have done whatever Thea and Dan needed me to do."

     "Isn't that what you are doing?" May asked. "Isn't that what Philip has asked you to do?"

     "Yes, but," Karin said as they climbed into May's car, "the difference is I hadn't made a break before the accident, and now I never can . . . and live with myself. I'm Philip's wife for life, and nothing is going to change that."

     "Nothing sounds pretty hopeless."

     "We make choices, May. I made one and it turned out to be a mistake, but that doesn't mean I can walk away from it."

     "Some people do," May answered. "My mother did."

     "And look at the pain her choice gave you," Karin answered.

APRIL FOOL'S DAY, 1973
, May scrawled in the journal,
I hope my starting on this date is not prophetic.

     She was in a small stateroom on the river boat
Nam Shan
, one hour out of Hong Kong on her way to Macao on the China Coast.

     She wrote: "I am keeping this notebook as a record. For Hayes and Kit, in case. And for Faith, for the archive. I do not mean to sound cataclysmic, it's just that I left in something of a hurry and without letting anyone but Karin know—though by now she will have called Hayes and Kit with my messages."

     She nibbled on her pencil, thinking, and then began to write again. "I have real confidence in the Hong Kong people who are helping me. Kit put me on to them a couple of years ago, and they have been working to set this up since the Thailand fiasco. I will not name any names, or give any clues to their identities here, in case."

     "In case," she repeated out loud. It was possible that something could happen. But they had all been so careful, so much attention had been paid to detail. She scribbled, "If all goes according to plan,
I should go into China through Macao's Barrier Gate on April 6 and be back out again on Friday, the 13th. I am operating on the theory that the days between April Fool's and Friday the 13th will be lucky."

     She closed the journal and made her way to the deck, to breathe in the Orient. There was, she thought, nothing in the world quite like it, the sweet smoky smell and steam rising.

     A heavy mist hung over the shores as the
Nam Shan
, flying the British flag, approached that point where the brown silt from the Pearl Estuary meets the waters of the South China Sea. The line of demarcation was almost pencil sharp, the water was so still. From the upper deck she could make out, even in the mist, the hills of Macao. Beyond them lay China.

     An Englishman, reporting to his wife from behind the pages of the
South China Morning Post
, read, "The last American troops left Vietnam yesterday. Today, all remaining American prisoners of war will be released in Hanoi." Then he offered, "The Yanks finally decided to cut and run—serves them right, arrogant bastards."

     When his wife attempted to shush him, he came out from behind the paper long enough to scan the deck and announce, "No Yanks here, why are you making all those dreadful squawking noises?"

     May felt an urge to correct him, but she held herself back. It was just as well, she thought. It showed she was passing already, if only in the mind of a smug, middle-aged British couple. She thought instead of the report from Vietnam. Hayes would be even more worried now about Andy's child and his mother, and she wasn't making matters any easier for him by choosing this time to smuggle herself into China. Karin's mind would be on Vietnam, too. Dan Ward would soon be on his way to Saigon to serve as a marine guard. It is all so strange, she thought, how so many threads of their lives seem to be coming together here, in Asia.

     As the docks at Macao hove into sight, the boat took a long,
slow dip and May's stomach rose and fell with it. Her heart began to race. She held hard to the railing and faced into the stiff, hot breeze to try to catch her breath. She did not recognize her own anxiety, did not realize her body was reacting to the fear that had been buried in her for most of her life.

     She was to make her way to the old Bella Vista hotel, register as Kwan Da-yong, and wait to be contacted. The mist that was turning into a light rain seemed to be conspiring to set the stage.