War Baby (25 page)

They had built the press room over what had once been President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s indoor swimming pool. Over the years the press contingent had expanded and now the room was very cramped indeed. All the networks had booths at the back, they had originally been designed for two people, but now they accommodated at least four, seated side by side along narrow counter tops crammed with typewriters, word processors, printers, newspapers, press releases, make-up kits, books, televisions, radios and empty coffee cups. Every morning the reporters and their crews had to pick their way over video cameras, television cables and recording equipment to find a seat in the briefing room.

Normally it was bedlam, but when Ryan got to work that morning there was a funereal hush around the room, knots of journalists sitting around talking in huddles. He found his soundman, Larry Norstadt. ‘Who died?’ he said.

‘Nobody died. Yet.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s Lee.’

‘Cochrane? What happened?’

‘He’s in ICU in Mount Sinai. Massive coronary. They had to shock him five times in the ER.’

‘Oh Christ.’

Larry shook his head. ‘He’s only thirty-nine. Same as you and me.’

Ryan looked at his watch. Larry Speakes would be holding the first press briefing of the day just after nine and Ryan wanted to nail him on the El Salvador situation. ‘I’ll call the office and make sure someone sends him some flowers,’ he said. ‘Let’s get back to work.’

* * *

Reagan always held his press conferences in the evening. It gave him a larger, more immediate audience and prevented the networks from putting it on the early evening news with their own analysis. Reagan made the most of his folksy style; it was only later, when you reviewed the tapes, that you realized he hadn’t actually said anything. Ryan always said it was like a Chinese meal; it tasted great at the time but half an hour later you were hungry again.

The demands of television meant that the room was lit like a sports stadium. There was a battery of lights across the top of the stage, and two more banks on aluminum standards to the left and right of the rostrum. There were twenty rows of seats in front of the lectern. Ryan took his place in the very front row, which was reserved for the media VIPs: the talking heads from the major television networks and the reporters from the four major wire services, Reuters, AP, UPI and IPA. It also included other luminaries such as Sam Donaldson, Andrea Mitchell and Bob Scheiffer.

Ryan kept thinking about Cochrane. He had phoned his assistant at the network office and arranged for her to send him a packet of Marlboro and a Big Mac along with a get well card. Inside the card he told her to write:
You’re fired
above Ted Turner’s name. Hell, if it was him lying in hospital the last thing he would want is sympathy.

Still, the news had shaken him. As Larry had said, Cochrane was the same age as he was. Dying in a war was one thing; that was just fate. But a heart attack was different. What was the point of dodging all those rounds just to die of something so mundane before you forty?

Where would he be when it happened? Standing on a White House lawn doing stand-ups to a nation that didn’t give a damn about anything except abortion and lower taxes? On the way to work, worrying about the mortgage and where to put the new baby furniture?

He forced his attention back to the job at hand. There was an air of expectancy in the room. It would be a poor night if they could not rely on the Teflon President for at least one major gaffe.

A voice boomed over the loudspeaker: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.’

Reagan entered the auditorium along a long carpeted hallway, through a set of double doors. It was wonderful theatre.

He delivered his address faultlessly, if he was good at anything, it was learning his lines. His speechwriters painted Latin American politics as a shooting match between the cowboys and the Indians.

When the President indicated that he would field questions, Ryan patiently waited his turn. Reagan finally smiled and pointed in his direction.

He stood up. ‘Mr. President, why is this administration supporting a regime in El Salvador that routinely terrorizes and murders its own civilians and leaves their bodies lying in the street?’

He heard a sharp intake of breath from the reporters around him. It was not the sort of question any president wanted leveled at him on live prime-time television. Reagan’s minders looked like they would like to terrorize him themselves. But they were stuck with freedom of speech, however much they might wish it were otherwise.

Reagan stumbled on his answer, as he often did, responding with the usual mumbling, incoherent phrases that the American electorate loved. He mentioned the forthcoming national elections in El Salvador and quantitative progress in human rights and the threat posed by Cuban-backed guerrillas. Ryan felt his frustrations boiling over. He did the unthinkable.

He shouted him down.

‘Mr. Reagan, this is all bullshit and you know it. We are going down the same blind alley as we did in Vietnam. We are backing a blatantly fascist regime for our own imagined short-term political gains. Is this or is this not true?’

A breathless moment, flashbulbs popping, consternation on either side of the podium. Reagan blinked at him, looking for all the world like an old man being asked to get off the bus because he did not have enough money for the fare. A senior press aide took a Secret Service agent aside and pointed to him. They were going to try to throw him out. Well, that would make good television, especially if he resisted.

‘You’ve really screwed up this time, Ryan,’ a print journalist from the Post muttered somewhere behind him.

‘This is all horseshit,’ he said, loud enough for the microphones to hear, and walked out of the room. He knew he would never come back. He didn’t think he would miss it at all.

* * *

Mickey stood in the middle of the living room, staring at the television. She was still in her scrubs. She backed into the kitchen, keeping her eyes on the screen. NBC had crossed live to Reagan’s press conference, and she knew Ryan would be there somewhere. She took the cap off a bottle of Stoli. She recognized her husband’s voice, heard the badgering tone creep into it, saw the consternation on the President’s face.

Mr. Reagan, this is all bullshit and you know it.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ she said.

She heard a commotion off camera, but the news editor kept with the President. She couldn’t watch any more. She flicked off the remote control and went upstairs to the bathroom.

She turned on the hot tub and undressed.

It had happened to her again, in the People’s Drug on Wisconsin. She had heard a car backfire in the street, and immediately threw herself on the floor, waiting for the mortar rounds to hit. When she finally looked up the rest of the customers and staff were staring at her, mouths open.

This was the World that everyone over there had dreamed of getting back to; mortgages and trim lawns and shopping malls and singles bars and loneliness, a place where no one really gave a damn about anyone else. No one really wanted to listen to her war stories, and they were the story of her life. She had hated Vietnam, but now she would give anything to be back there.

When Ryan got home he found Mickey in the hot tub, an empty bottle of vodka rolling across the green marble tiles. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and her cheeks flushed. ‘Way to go, you son of a gun,’ she said, slurring the words.

‘You saw it?’

‘Just like High Noon. The gunfight in the Okey Dokey Corral between the bad guy in the grey suit and the good guy with the notebook and the harassed expression.’

‘I really showed him, right?’

‘You sure got him good and pissed. We’ll probably get nuked in our sleep.’

‘Fuck Reagan.’ He dropped his jacket to the floor, looped his tie over his head, and sat down on the edge of the jacuzzi to rip off his shoes and socks.

‘Think you better send in your
I quit
letter before the acceptance letter gets here.’

‘I already did.’

‘What did Lee say?’

‘Lee wasn’t there. He’s in Mount Sinai hooked up to a machine.’ Ryan peeled off his shirt and pants and shorts. ‘Why do they call it a cardiac infarct? I hate that word. Why not a heart attack? Then everyone knows what they fucking mean.’ He got into the scented and bubbling water, put both arms along the cool marble and put his head back, resting it on the rim.

‘You’re kidding me, right?’

‘They don’t joke about heart attacks, not even in Washington. Especially not in Washington.’

‘Christ, he was ...’

‘Yeah, same age as me. The point’s been made.’

‘Is that what this evening was all about?’

‘Partly.’

He felt her toes stroke his groin under the water. ‘I was proud of you tonight.’ When he did not respond she added: ‘I like a man who can stand up to the President of the United States.’

He pushed her foot away.

‘Uh-oh. I did something wrong again.’

‘It’s not you.’

‘Why do guys always say that when they can’t get it up for you anymore? If it was Nastassia Kinski lying here in the hot tub naked and you couldn’t get it up for her, would you still say “It’s not you” in that condescending voice?’

He closed his eyes. ‘I don’t need this.’

She splashed water onto her face. ‘I have a confession.’

‘You do?’

‘My pregnancy test came back negative. Sorry. Hey, maybe we should have a little celebration. You got what you wanted, I got what I didn’t need.’ She fumbled for the bottle of Stoli. ‘Shit, it’s empty. Story of my life. A stud who can’t get it up for me, an empty bottle of Stoli, and sterility. Life doesn’t get any better than this, does it? Unless you count having your husband fired from a top-rating network news program. How the hell are we going to pay the mortgage?’

‘We’ll survive.’

‘How?’

He wouldn’t look at her.

* * *

He had told her that many times, breaking house rules in the White House was the same as knowingly walking into an ambush. You’d only do that if you wanted to draw fire away from somewhere else.

‘Who have you been talking to, Sean?’

‘Croz was in town last week.’

‘Croz?’

‘Dave Crosby. We knew each other in Saigon. He’s at IPA these days. They want someone to go to Afghanistan for them, cover the war.’

She closed her eyes. ‘Jesus.’

‘I have to go.’

‘No, you don’t have to! You
want
to. You’re a journalist, you should know the correct usage of these words.’

‘I’m dying here.’

‘No chance of that over there, of course.’

‘You knew the kind of guy I was when you married me.’

‘Yes, but you said you wanted to change.’ She swallowed back tears.

‘It will only be for a while.’

‘Sure. How long can a war of attrition last anyway?’

‘It’s a three-month tour.’

‘Which you’ll extend when you start having fun again.’

‘Wars aren’t meant to be fun.’

‘But they are, aren’t they?’

They stared at each other. First one to blink loses, she thought. Ryan looked away. So you won the argument and lost ... a husband, such as he was. Funny how it had all crumbled away so quickly. Fifteen months: not a record, not in America, but still screwed up much faster than she would have believed possible. ‘The break away from each other will do us good,’ he said.

‘Goes without saying.’

‘Mickey, I need to recharge my batteries.’

‘What are you, a torch?’

‘You think I want out of the marriage?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve spent too long at the White House. You can lie almost as good as they can. You looked like George Schultz when you said that.’

He stood up, the water streaming off his hard, muscled body. Too damned attractive, that was Sean Ryan’s trouble. You miss him too much when he leaves.

‘Well, I guess that’s a wrap, then, as they say in the business.’

‘Mickey, it’s only three months.’

‘You already told me that.’

She stood up too, put her hands behind her head. ‘Take a good look, baby. Something to think about when you’re curled up in a shellhole in the Hindu Kush in the middle of a blizzard, with the Russians kicking the shit out of you.’

‘Mickey ...’

‘Don’t Mickey me, you son of a bitch.’ She grabbed a towel, wrapped it around her. ‘When are you leaving?’

‘Monday.’

‘Monday?
Monday?
How long have you known about this?’

‘I didn’t make up my mind until this afternoon. That’s the truth.’

‘You piece of shit.’ She went out trailing wet footprints across the carpet on the landing. She went in the bedroom, locking the door behind her.

Lincoln Cove, Long Island

Webb stood at the water’s edge, on a large and flat piece of shale, the collar of his hunting jacket turned up against the biting wind. A catamaran tacked through the neck of the channel in the hastening evening, the red and green riding lights lit on the mast.

‘If only you could know for sure,’ he said aloud. He wondered what he feared the most; discovering that she was Sean Ryan’s daughter, or finding out she wasn’t.

* * *

They were in the kitchen making spring rolls, a skill Phuong had learned as a small child from her mother. He stood beside her at the kitchen bench, to his elbows in pastry, bean shoots, shrimp and diced vegetables.

His first several attempts split open and spilled onto the counter top.

‘This is impossible!’

‘You’re not making a hamburger! You have to be gentle.’

‘My fingers are too fat.’

‘Your pastry is too wet. Like this. See?’

Webb shook his head. ‘Perhaps I’ll stick to pizza.’

‘No way! Just keep at it! All right?’

He smiled. Those were the exact words he had used on her every day for the last twelve months, when she found her English lessons too hard, or when she was having trouble making new friends, or even when she couldn’t bait a fishing hook.
Keep at it. Don’t let it beat you. You can do it.

And she could, and she did. She had a good ear for language and after just a few months her stilted phrase-book English had been replaced by New York idioms. She had started to make many new friends at school, and she had become a better fisherman than he was.

She had dropped her Vietnamese name and had chosen Jenny as her adopted English name. She had even developed a taste for Big Macs though he suspected it was because her friends liked to hang out at MacDonald’s.

He picked up a green chili from the bowl on the counter. ‘I’m feeling lucky.’

She laughed. ‘You’ll need more than luck.’

She chose one from the same bowl, and they faced each other, like duelists waiting for the seconds to call out the paces. She giggled: ‘You’re a wimp.’

He bit into the chili. Oh, God. Napalm you can eat; that was what Dave Crosby had called green chilis. But he grinned at her as if he was enjoying it.

The chili-eating contest had become a set play with them very early on, a way she could assert herself when every other part her new life was overwhelming her; when her homework was too difficult; when she could not find the right words to express herself; when she was defeated by cardboard milk cartons and electric can openers and VCRs and long division and English grammar.

But now Webb found ‘Jenny’s’ newfound cockiness irritating, and he wanted to beat her at this, just once.

On the second chili he knew it was futile.

She grinned, swallowed her chili and selected another. ‘Do you say uncle, Uncle?’

His eyes were streaming and he could not talk. It was like being tear-gassed. He went to the refrigerator, took out the iced water and swallowed two large glasses, one after the other. Jesus Christ. Her mouth must be lined with asbestos.

The telephone rang. ‘Webb,’ he croaked.

‘Hugh?’

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s me ... Mickey ...’

‘Mickey?’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes ... fine ... just... just a head cold.’

Jenny grinned and wagged her finger at the lie. He turned away.

‘Is everything okay?’ He hadn’t heard from her in months.

‘Sure. Just called to say hi. What’s new with you?’

‘Not a lot.’ Mickey and Sean didn’t know about Jenny; they had never been up to visit so it was easier not to say anything at all.
Oh, by the way, Sean, this girl I’ve adopted, I’m still not entirely sure she’s not your daughter.

‘I saw you on the Today show the other week. You were talking about your book. The one about the refugees.’

‘Yeah, I’m famous now, like Sean. I get people stopping me in the street all the time asking for my autograph.’

Jenny made a face at him.

‘So the book’s doing well?’ He frowned: not like her to take him seriously.

‘It made the New York Times best seller list for one whole week. I get fan mail from Norman Mailer.’

‘I got a copy at the station bookstore last week. Next time I see you, you’ll have to sign it for me.’

A long silence. Why would she want to see him? ‘What’s up, Mickey?’ he asked her, finally.

Jenny dropped the spring rolls into hot oil. He couldn’t hear what Mickey was saying. He covered the mouthpiece. ‘Take the damn things out of there!’

‘It’s too late. The oil will make them go soft.’

‘Take them out!’ He took the phone into the living room. ‘Sorry, the radio was on too loud.’

‘Sean and I have split up.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ It was true, he was sorry; just not very surprised. All that surprised him was that it had taken so long. He knew about Ryan walking out of his job at the network, of course, some of the news channels were still replaying the shouting match he’d had with Reagan in the Press room. ‘What happened, Mickey? Is it another woman?’

‘Another war.’

‘Shit.’

‘His buddy Dave Crosby gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse: freezing snow, religious fanatics, communists tanks and all the bullets he could eat. You just don’t pass up chances like that.’

‘You want to come and stay here for a while?’

‘Maybe that’s not such a good idea.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. I’m all kind of mixed up.’

‘Is he coming back, Mickey?’

‘He says he’ll be back in three months. But he won’t be. Will he?’

‘I guess not.’

There was a long silence while they both searched for the right thing to say.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last.

‘What for?’

‘Christ, don’t make me spell it out. I’ve made some big fucking mistakes in my life, but the biggest mistake I made was marrying Ryan. And the second biggest was letting you go.’

He’d always thought that, too. Well, it was too late now. ‘Are you going to be okay, Mickey?’

‘Sure. You know me. Keep in touch, huh?’

‘Mickey?’ For a moment he imagined himself getting on the shuttle and flying down to see her. But even as he thought it, he decided that wasn’t such a good idea. She had hurt him twice. He wasn’t going to let her do it to him again.

‘Take care,’ he said.

She hung up.

He walked back into the kitchen and put the phone back in its cradle. ‘You okay?’ Jenny asked him.

‘An old flame.’

‘You still really like her, huh?’

‘No, I’m over it now.’

‘Yes, uncle.’

‘Look what you’ve done, you’ve ruined the spring rolls. You can’t put them in the oil and take them out again before they’re cooked. It makes them go soft.’

‘Got to find yourself a wife, uncle. You look too sad on your own.’

That was the trouble with having a fourteen-year-old around the place, he thought. They thought they knew every damned thing. ‘How about we forget about my love life and try and salvage dinner? Okay?’

* * *

It was a hazy evening in June. She got off the school bus and started the long climb up the bluff to the cottage. A salt wind skimmed the whitecaps in the cove, and bent the branches of the pink oak beside the road. Far below her an old whaler crashed through the narrows, bucking in the swell.

It hit her without warning; I can never return. She heard the sound of rain hissing on a charcoal brazier in a Cholon alleyway; the chatter of the women selling noodles and duck eggs; the ringing of a wooden bell on the cart of an old man selling steamed sugar cane.

I’ll never ever get it back. Vietnam is gone forever.

So long since she had thought about the boat, how they had capsized on the reef. She should have drowned that night, but she had survived somehow, like a dutiful daughter should, following her mother’s last instruction to her:
Stay alive. Don’t die! Stay alive!

All this first year in America she had told herself her mother was there watching her, encouraging her, laughing at every small success. But she wasn’t; she was dead, consumed by the crabs, her bones bleaching on a reef somewhere.

It is just me here, in this strange town with an even stranger name. Driftwood. Dust.

She stopped her halfway up the hill. All the breath went out of her and she staggered two steps back. It was gone, all gone.