Before Dad left for Vietnam, he and Mom ran a tight ship, and Lucy was a good soldier. Even though they hadn’t been a military family yet, Mom and Dad believed that a proper schedule and good hygiene were the answer to a happy and well-adjusted life. Dad had been working since Lucy had been born toward being a heart surgeon, which meant school, more school and then more school after that. Because he wasn’t home in the mornings and evenings like a regular dad, every precious minute of family time was accounted for.
On the few mornings he was home, he’d read Scientific American or the Wall Street Journal out loud at the breakfast table. When he’d finished, he’d start almost every sentence with “Lucy, did you know . . . ?” or “Come here, Janey. Look what they’ve discovered about transplantation.”
Lucy loved that he started his sentences with Lucy, did you know . . . ? as though she might already know about the stock market or business trends or new technologies in science. She loved listening to his deep voice saying things like aortic valve stenosis and hard capital rationing, and loved even more that he believed she was smart enough to talk to about it.
When he’d been home on those rare mornings, he’d brought Lucy into his smart doctor world just as though she belonged there. Because they were a team. And not just because Dad talked to her about aortic valve stenosis, but because she had her own part to play in his becoming a doctor. A silent part, but no less important.
Lucy’s part was that she had valiantly, if a little sadly, sacrificed her time with him. All the time she could have spent with her father reading books, riding bikes in the park or just eating dinners together at home. Instead, she and Mom would get on the number 4 bus that would take them across town so they could deliver Dad his dinner at the hospital. Sometimes they’d get to eat together in the cafeteria with all the other residents, who would play games with Lucy and always had pockets full of peppermints because they were her favorite. Sometimes Dad would be so tired, he’d barely wake up from a nap to eat the Tupperware of pasta Bolognese, and so they’d just kiss his stubbled cheek and leave it there under his cot.
It wasn’t as though Lucy was entirely deprived, however. Mom made sure she spent time with friends’ dads, who threw her in the pool and watched Saturday morning cartoons and showed her how to roast the perfect marshmallow. It wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t terrible, either.
Lucy didn’t mind these sacrifices; they were her contribution to their team. Together, they were helping Dad become a doctor. When graduation finally came and it was time for Dad to walk down the aisle to accept that little certificate with the MD after his name, he took Lucy by the hand and brought her with him.
Dad said she’d earned it, too.
Because Dad had also trained Lucy to be a thinker of positive thoughts, she forced several of his favorites through her mind as she went into her parents’ bedroom:
Progress is never a straight line.
Nothing worth doing is ever easy.
We should always seek to be an instrument in this life.
And he didn’t mean a tuba or a violin. He meant, Be useful.
“Can I help?” Lucy said to her mother.
“Everything is going to be fine,” Mom said, even though that wasn’t the question Lucy had asked.
Mom was dressing for the airport, walking from closet to dresser and back to closet, gathering electricity through her rubber-soled slippers, flinging nylons and shoes and all sorts of unmentionables all over the place.
If Lucy hadn’t known any better, she’d have thought Mom was worried. But that was impossible. Mom didn’t allow words like worry, nervous or try into their vocabulary. They were Chin-Up Women. Stiff-Upper-Lip Women. Just like Grandma Miller and everyone else on Mom’s side of the family.
Lucy went around and picked up, trying to stay out of reach as she didn’t want to get zapped with slipper-conducted static electricity. Dad deserved to come home to a clean room and to a daughter who was static free.
“Everything is going to be fine,” Mom said again, exactly like a worried person.
Which was not good. Because worried people were unpredictable, and it was important to be able to predict behavior in the wild so that if you’re watching a chimp, say, like Jane Goodall does, you can tell when they might want to bite your face off. Mom was always saying how Lucy was far too concerned with watching things and should behave more like a twelve-year-old, talking on the phone, wearing lip gloss and listening to David Cassidy records. Mom especially liked to remind her that Gia, her teenage cousin, had gone to a record-breaking seventeen birthday parties when she’d been twelve, and didn’t Lucy think that a fabulous goal to set for herself?
Of course, Lucy would say, and show Mom all her teeth.
Like a chimp.
Once every last strand of Mom’s beach-sand hair was safely pulled into a French twist, and her clip-on pearl earrings snapped evenly to her earlobes, she sat beside Lucy at the foot of the bed and pressed her shoulders back, lifted her chin.
“Things will be different when Dad gets home.”
Lucy nodded. She’d been putting together a reference collection of books with the help of Ms. Lula, the Millard McCollam Elementary librarian. At the beginning of the school year, when Lucy started spending her lunch period in the library, Ms. Lula had fed Lucy books like she was feeding a fire in the middle of an Antarctic freeze. When Lucy finally managed to squeak out that her dad was in Vietnam, and preferred nonfiction so that she might prepare herself for all possible outcomes, Ms. Lula brought in all sorts of reference items from her Giant Reception of Knowledge, or so she called it. Every once in a while, she tried to slip in something like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but Lucy figured she didn’t have time to lose herself in a fictional world when she had so much to learn about the real one.
Lucy had books on the Vietnam War, psychology and every copy of Life magazine going back three years to 1968. Ms. Lula worked part-time in the school library and part-time for the city library, so she had access to everything. More than President Nixon, according to Ms. Lula.
“Remember. Bad things don’t happen. Only learning opportunities,” Mom said, getting Lucy’s attention. But for the first time ever, Lucy wasn’t sure Mom believed her own words.
“Get back on the horse or you’ll forget how to ride,” Lucy said. It was Dad’s favorite saying. Never give up.
Mom smiled. Corrected Lucy’s posture, tilted her chin.
“Your dad will need some space . . . and time to figure things out. What he thinks is best, and what I think is best, may not seem best to you for a while.”
“Of course,” Lucy said. “I set up the walkie-talkies in case Dad wants to be alone periodically. Plus, there’s the schedule I created in order to help him settle back into our daily routines. I gathered some things I thought might help with his physical therapy. I’ve read what I could on amputation, even though there wasn’t as much information as I would have liked.”
Mom flinched at the word amputation, while Lucy pretended the word didn’t bother her. Mom took a deep breath, and then her hand was on Lucy’s cheek. Lucy closed her eyes and tried to absorb every bit of warmth from her mother’s hand.
When she opened them again, Mom looked right into Lucy’s eyes.
“We’re a team, Lucy. Always remember that.”
Lucy hugged her stiff mom fiercely. Because even though the Millers found affection slightly troubling, or so it seemed, that was the only way the Rossis ever did anything.
And today, maybe the Rossis had the right idea. At least about that.