Part 31 (1/2)

”Gary is making you staff photographer.”

Linh bowed his head a moment before he reached for the printing trays. ”That's a great honor.”

”Honor, BS. He's afraid to lose you to a compet.i.tor. It means that they can transfer you out of the country if you want.”

”Yes.”

”Thank you for taking me out there. To see that. It was a dream. After doing this for me... I'm keeping my word. I'm going home.”

”Yes.”

”Come with me.”

Linh said nothing.

”Robert will give you a good job.”

”I.

cannot.”

”Not even for me...” Helen said, more statement than question.

”It is too much to ask.”

Hours later they printed the closeup shot of the boy soldier. Linh burned in highlights, and as he promised, the picture was decent in quality, extraordinary in subject.

They handed the print to Gary, who stood at the door like a nurse waiting to carry off a newborn, forgetting Helen and Linh as soon as he collected his prize. They sat in the darkroom, door open, the red safelight a dull star. Both were tired and heavy-eyed but unwilling to leave.

”We make a good team,” she said.

Linh smiled.

”Will they hurt the boy when they see his picture? Will they think he's a traitor?”

”No,” Linh said. ”He'll think fast like he did with us. He'll survive.”

”I felt good out there.”

”Go to California. It will be better there for you.”

She was hurt by his constant dismissal. ”What about you?”

”Nothing to worry about. With you gone, I will be the best photographer in Vietnam. Maybe I will marry Mai's sister. She need a husband for her children.” He kept thinking of his debt to Darrow, how Helen's safety would have mattered to him more than anything else.

Helen's back stiffened. ”I had no idea.”

”It's a Vietnam tradition. To care for family,” Linh said.

”Darrow wanted you to be happy. Have a good life for him.” Helen scrambled to her feet and turned on the overhead light. ”I'm going to grab a couple of hours on the cot.”

”We got good pictures.”

”How can I top this? Go out on top, right?”

Helen moved out of the apartment in Cholon, handing the keys over to Linh, and the apartment in Cholon, handing the keys over to Linh, and went back to the Continental, where she had started. The next morning, she made arrangements to fly home. She did not feel more or less grieved than before she went out with Linh in the field, but something had changed. She knew it and suspected that Linh knew it, and they did not speak of it but instead acted as if nothing had s.h.i.+fted between them.

Late at night Helen stayed awake in her hotel room, sleep no longer a thing to be counted on, and she lay in bed, propped up by pillows, staring into darkness until she could see the patterns of the tiles on the wall, the blades of the fan above as they pushed against the heavy air. She stored a bottle of bourbon on her bedside table, and it slackened the thirst and loneliness she felt during those long hours, sure that there would be no knock on the door. Helen slowly trained herself to believe in Darrow's death. He had been her guide and mentor, as well as her lover, and she did not feel up to the challenge of the war without him.

Was it the same for others? Like children, did they all wait for the reappearance of a loved one, death simply a word, the lack of a knock on a door? She knew better, had seen the two bags on top of the steep ravine, had watched them sway on poles on the shoulders of the living.

And yet. The sight of the pale NVA soldiers had changed everything for her. Just when she thought there was nothing more but repeating herself, a whole other world, formerly invisible, appeared. No American had yet photographed the other side. As thrilling as exploring an unknown continent on a map. No one could understand except Darrow and MacCrae, who were gone. Only Linh, who now was determined to send her home. Frequently she dreamed of the boy soldier who had held their fate in his hands, who saved them and himself for another day, and how the Lurps sat, tensed, how one wet his index finger and marked it in the air, one down one down, like a sports score.

Helen woke groggy in the morning, her room too hot, mouth sour with alcohol.

Her room boy served her Vietnamese coffee, thick and sweet with condensed milk, out of a silver pot, laid down fresh rolls on a china plate with three small pots of jam-marmalade, strawberry, and guava--both knowing she used only marmalade. She slathered the bread with b.u.t.ter but used the orange sparingly so that the boy could take the two unused pots home with him each day. Why, just as she was leaving, did she finally feel at home?

When Helen expressed the desire to see the crooked apartment one last time, desire to see the crooked apartment one last time, Linh told her Thao had already moved in, that the whole building shook from the running of children up and down the stairs.

”Good,” Helen said. ”Something to break the bad luck.”

After the remains from the crash site had been identified, Gary brought out Darrow's will stating he wished to be cremated in Vietnam, but his wife made an official complaint to the magazine, and they gave in to her wishes, s.h.i.+pping the body back to New York for burial.

Helen, ready to fly out, felt all the original grief renew itself. She was nothing to Darrow. She begged Gary to read Darrow's letter over the phone to the wife, but the woman remained unswayed, convinced that he had not been in his right mind the last year. In the end, the body went to the States, and the staff had a Buddhist funeral with an empty casket, done frequently as the numbers of dead grew and recovery of bodies became more problematic.

The procession began at the apartment in Cholon. Helen looked up at the window, hoping to see the sister-in-law and her children crowding the sill, but it remained empty.

Was it possible that Linh had kept her away so memory would not change her mind about leaving? The Vietnamese in the procession wore traditional white scarves of mourning on their heads. Monks chanted and burned joss. They wound their way to downtown, stopped in the plaza next to the Marine Statue, beneath the office's windows.

Helen was dry-eyed. Her head ached. At the plaza, Gary leaned against a tree, facing away from them, and all she could see was the curl of his shoulders, his newly white hair. But she wasn't able to comfort him. Weren't they all children, pretending tragedy when it was clear the danger they placed themselves in? Shouldn't they just d.a.m.n well accept it? When they pa.s.sed the Continental, the head bartender carried out a gla.s.s of Darrow's favorite scotch on a silver tray.

At Mac Dinh Chi cemetery, Linh scattered a trail of uncooked rice and paper money. Clouds gathered and wind blew as a mat was unrolled at the gravesite. A plate of cracked crab flown in from Vung Tau, a bowl of rice, and the gla.s.s of scotch were laid out. Tangible things that Helen understood, compared to the generic funerals of flowers and coffins and organ music she had attended back home. A bundle of incense was lit and then it was over.

The clouds darkened, the longed-for rain fell, and people scattered for any available shelter.

Helen looked for Annick in the procession, but she had warned that she would not come. Too many funerals Too many funerals, she said. If she went to them all that's all she'd do. But Helen was leaving that night and wanted to say good-bye, so she walked, covering herself with the umbrella, moving through the flooding streets, skirting small moving streams of dirty water floating with trash. The rain kept falling, gray and hard, pounding the earth, and a gust of wind blew off the river, lifting the ribs of her umbrella inside out until she was gathering the rain rather than sheltering from it, and she let the umbrella fall on the road, knowing it would be picked up, repaired, and used within minutes. Each item reincarnated countless times. One thing she had learned in Vietnam--that reincarnation was not only in the hereafter but also in the now. She continued on, rain pelting her, and reached the milliner's and stood under the awning, wiping water off her face. In the display window was a wedding dress she hoped had been created for some jilted bride and not her.

Inside, the Vietnamese seamstresses sat on their accustomed rush seats, sewing away faster and with more concentration than usual. From outside, over the sound of rain, Helen had thought she heard talking and laughter, but inside, the store was as silent as a tomb. She stood at the counter, but Annick did not come out from the back where she usually hid out, smoked cigarettes, and drank wine. The seamstresses took no notice of Helen's presence, so she tapped the bell on the counter.

At the sound, the older one stood. She wore the same black dress Helen had seen her in the first time and each subsequent time she came to the store, so that Helen was convinced that the madames owned seven identical black dresses, one for each day in order for the worn ones to be washed and starched and made ready. Her head pounding, Helen felt feverish as she stood, dripping water onto the floor. The elder madame mumbled to herself as she made her stiff, slow way to the counter, all the while looking down to study her suddenly idle fingers.

”Bonjour, madame,” Helen said, and the seamstress returned the greeting in her Helen said, and the seamstress returned the greeting in her singsong French, more as a refrain than greeting, still without making eye contact.

”Ou est Madame Annick?” Helen asked. Helen asked.

The seamstress sighed. ”Madame est parti.” ”Madame est parti.”