Waiting: One Wife's Year of the Vietnam War

Chapter 3

{Chapter 3} Connie embraced me briefly when I stepped into the terminal and guided me toward the baggage claim. I concentrated to catch her welcoming chatter, but I couldn’t seem to tune into her words. Some autopilot part of me must have been responding because she marched us through the corridors as if nothing were amiss. From another dimension, I looked at Connie beside me: five-foot-six, strangely much shorter than I remembered . Her shiny brown hair with its reddish highlights curled around her face in a neckline frame. Her green eyes darted with energy and impatience toward the luggage chute as she talked. Then, looking up at me with her arms crossed, she said something and threw back her head in laughter. Connie grabbed my bag as quickly as it bounced into sight and led the way across the parking lot. Within minutes, traffic and acres of suburbs were whizzing past at a nauseating speed. Connie played tour guide from behind the wheel while I acknowledged to myself the mistake I had made in coming here. Her efforts to be especially amusing were wasted, for I could think of nothing except Lee in a plane over the Pacific. When we walked into Connie’s apartment, a greater sense of disorientation hit. It was not the apartment itself with its rented modern Danish furniture that affected me; it was the fact that it was her home, albeit temporary , that brought me to an abrupt realization. All I wanted was to go home, only I no longer had a home. How could I not have thought of that until now? I had no place of my own to go. Mother and Daddy’s house was no longer my home, and the quarters at Bragg had long since been issued to someone else. I didn’t belong anywhere. Connie ignored my periodic gasps for breath, keeping the one-sided [18] chapter 3 conversation fast-paced and cheerful. Her only direct question about Lee came when she stopped mid-sentence and asked, “Well, did you see him off?” I nodded, and she continued talking. Part of me was thankful that she kept up the monologue that relieved me of the responsibility of participating. The other part of me wanted to shake her by the shoulders and shout, “Who gives a damn about that? I’ve just sent my husband off to die and I’ve lost my faith in God!” But instead I swallowed and nodded at the story about her nephews. I knew what she was doing, of course. I caught her several times stealing worried looks at me as she spoke and then introduced me to her two roommates as they arrived home from work. When they sat down, Connie announced dinner plans. The thought of food added to my nausea. But she had arranged for her date and Allan Goforth, one of our high school classmates also living in Los Angeles, to take us all out for pizza. Any other time I would have been delighted to see Allan and would be inquisitive about his job at Lockheed. Shorter even than Connie, Allan had ears scaled for an infinitely larger head than his, much like the Mad Magazine role models with which he had entertained us for years. But he belonged in another compartment of my life; seeing him here was as bizarre as watching a Western movie in which a police car pursues a speeding stagecoach. “Connie, I’m really not hungry,” I said, wishing they would all just go away. “Of course you are,” she insisted as she pushed me toward the door. Resisting would have taken more energy than climbing into the car. As the six of us rode down the lighted streets, I wondered if I was the only one who thought it strange that I was on my way to a pizza parlor while Lee was on his way to war. Fortunately, the sing-song clamor of Shakey’s Pizza made conversation difficult. Even between banjo-driven songs, the other five had to shout to hear each other. They spoke English but their words were foreign to me. It wasn’t what they said about jobs, bosses, or traffic that sounded alien. It was what they didn’t say. No one mentioned temporary duty, DD Form 1049s, field exercises, or booby traps. And certainly no one mentioned Vietnam. I turned to face the busy dining room. A man yelled for another pitcher [3...