59
Frank had written to tell me that he wouldn’t be able to come home for my birthday dinner. He had loads of work to do and it was an awfully long drive.
“The end of January is a busy time around here, believe it or not,” he’d written. “But I’ll make it up to you next time I’m over that way. I promise.”
It seemed like any other reasonable newly turned nineteen-year-old would understand. That she’d be a grown-up about it and not pout. For the most part, I did well with it. And any pouting I did do was in private so no one would see how immature I was.
Mom picked up burgers on the way home from work, and Oma made me a cake with whipped cream frosting. Joel set the table and David brought a bouquet of flowers. They sang to me and Mom turned off the lights so the candles could flicker in their fullness of beauty before I blew them out.
All in all, it was a good day, even with Mike and Frank not there.
Oma and David had long since gone home and Joel had gone to bed. Mom sat in her easy chair and I on the couch, each with a cup of hot cocoa and a second slice of cake.
“Why not?” Mom asked, serving them up. “My girl only turns nineteen once.”
“Do you want to watch the news?” I said.
“Sounds good.”
“David picked out pretty flowers for you,” she said.
“He did.” I glanced at the bouquet of daisies and carnations with a little bit of baby’s breath here and there. “I’ve never gotten flowers before.”
“It was sweet of him.” She took a bite of cake.
“Mom?”
“Hm?”
“How do I know if we’re going steady or not?”
“Oh, I don’t know how kids do it now.” She put down her fork. “I knew I was Frank’s girl after he knocked Bill DeVries’s lights out.”
“He punched Dr. DeVries?”
“Well, to be fair, Bill wasn’t a doctor yet.” Mom smiled and got a faraway look in her eyes. “They were fighting over me. Bill said something about how a nice girl like me wouldn’t choose to be with trash like Frank.”
“I just can’t imagine Frank hitting anyone.”
“Oh, he was a bit wild.” She shook her head. “It was that fire in him that I fell in love with. Oma, though, wasn’t too fond of what she called his ‘ill temper.’”
“And Dr. DeVries didn’t have it?”
“Heavens no.” She covered her mouth when she laughed. “If Frank was fire, Bill was room-temperature water.”
“That’s not flattering,” I said.
“I guess not.” She took a sip of her cocoa. “As far as David goes, he brought you flowers on your birthday and endured a meal with all of us. I’d say that’s all the evidence you need.”
“You think so?”
“I do,” she said. “And you have my blessing. I saw the way he looks at you. He’ll treat you well, I can tell.”
“I didn’t tell you about New Year’s Eve.”
“Did he kiss you at midnight?”
“He kissed my hand.” I blushed and shrugged. “It was nice.”
“His mother must be an incredible woman to have raised such a young man.”
I nodded. “We should turn on the TV or we’ll miss the beginning of the show.”
She reached out from her seat, changing the channel to NBC.
But it wasn’t Johnny Carson on the screen. Instead, an announcer with a larger-than-life voice said, “NBC News presents ‘Viet Cong Terror: A Guerrilla Offensive.’”
“What’s this?” Mom whispered, turning up the volume.
A man with silvery white hair and dark-rimmed glasses spoke of raiders and terrorism and snipers. The communist violence was widespread. Ten provinces, at the American embassy in Saigon, air bases, in civilian areas.
Two-hundred-thirty-two American soldiers dead. More than nine hundred wounded.
“. . . the bloodiest two days we have known in Vietnam thus far,” he said. “And while we were meant to be under seven days of truce for the Vietnamese new year, otherwise known as Têt, it appears the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army have broken the truce with offenses that span the whole of South Vietnam.”
“Did you hear about this?” Mom asked.
I shook my head. “I haven’t had the television on all day.”
She put her plate on the end table.
The footage of men running across streets or crawling over grass was blurry at best. I had to squint to see what was happening. But the sounds of gunfire were clear, and there was a lot of it. As hard to see as it was, I knew when I saw men carrying stretchers to an ambulance or a body lying on the ground.
A man slouched among the American GIs, gun pointed in a window of what I imagined to be the embassy, shooting at whoever he could hit inside. He moved with no hurry from window to window, shooting in through the bars.
At one point, he held the shoulder of a kneeling soldier, steadying himself as he went to shoot through another window. It seemed the most normal thing for him to do, firing a gun into a building. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought he was spraying poison into a wasp-infested shed, for how casually he went about it.
The picture changed to a zoomed-in image of a man I assumed to be dead, lying in a fountain. Then more dead, lying on the ground.
“All of the Viet Cong terrorists, nineteen of them, were killed,” the reporter said.
“They had lots of ammunition,” a man in fatigues told the cameraman. “Had enough to snipe at helicopters and airplanes as they flew overhead.”
A helicopter hovered nearby and the man pointed at it. Squinting, I hoped to see if it was Mike on it, even though I was sure there were hundreds of machines just like that one. All I could manage to see were shadows of men on board.
“These attacks,” the reporter went on, “were meticulously planned and extremely well-coordinated. It may be that the communists are not winning this war, as we’re told by the Pentagon. However, they are not losing it, either.”
Mom turned off the television and picked up her plate and cup, headed for the kitchen.
“We won’t lose,” I asked. “Will we?”
“I don’t know, honey,” she answered. “We haven’t lost a war yet.”
“What would happen if we did?”
“Let’s not think about that right now, all right?”
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t put the idea out of my mind.
Reel-to-reel recording sent from Vietnam
| Mike: | This is Mike Jacobson and the date is January 19, 1968. |
| Annie! Happy Birthday, you sweet, smart, and supercilious sister of mine. You’ve somehow managed to singlehandedly improve the past nineteen years of my life. Although, I can’t remember a thing from before you came along, I’m quite certain I was miserable until I first met you. | |
| Now, this next part is to all of you. Mom, you’ll have to make sure Grandma and Frank get a listen to it too. All right? | |
| The care package of goodies came. Before Christmas Day, even. Oma and Annie must have spent a month making all of those cookies. But the guys in my hooch say thank you. After this whole thing is over, you might have a couple boys knocking on your door for a cookie and a glass of milk. I told them you wouldn’t mind that, Oma. And, Annie, I told those fellas to keep their distance from you. You’re too good for any of them. |
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