by Mendy Sobol
Then suddenly, there’s Toby—the accidental activist, man of mystery, glamorously unstoppable, excitingly uncatchable. If Paul was meant to spend his life among machines, hadn’t Toby become the kind of man I once imagined spending my life with? Yet instead, here was this beautiful young woman who’d obviously been much more than mere partners in crime with the dashing, tattooed fugitive, the man who could have been mine so long ago.
Quyen’s sources reported to her, and Quyen reported to me, that since Melora’s arrival she’d become friends with several techie colleagues, many of whom had once worked with U.S. military forces in the South. Melora easily bridged the language barrier that took me decades to overcome. For her and her new friends, language apparently consisted of long strings of ones and zeros.
Communicating with Paul and me was another matter, friendship out of the question. From her first day in Saigon, Melora made it clear she had no interest in seeing me, answering my cheerful questions in monosyllables, then looking directly in my eyes, saying simply, “No one ever asked me what I wanted, so I don’t owe you anything.”
Melora tolerated Paul, perhaps because of whatever Toby wrote in the letter Paul brought her, perhaps because she wanted to learn everything she could about Paul’s New Jersey meeting with Toby—“Was he okay? I mean healthy and everything? Did he tell you how we did it? Does he understand why I did what I did? Is he angry at me?”
After reading Toby’s letter, she listened while Paul explained about history, HYDRA, and his dreams. She looked at him silently for a long time, reread Toby’s letter, and said, “If all we need to do is get Toby to the ROTC action meeting, why can’t we change the message, send him the meeting’s correct location, but add something like, ‘Stick around afterward for free pizza’?”
“We know what changing history did the first time,” Paul said. “Three nuclear bombs dropped on Vietnam, two on Afghanistan. Toby and I agree, we can’t take that chance again.”
“So you’ve decided. Toby has to die.”
Paul could barely answer.
“Yes.”
That’s when Melora turned her back saying, “You haven’t got enough imagination to make something like this up.”
Six months passed without a word from Melora. Then she called Paul to Saigon, making it clear I wasn’t invited, grilling him for ten and twelve hours at a time with questions about HYDRA, many of which he couldn’t answer. Another six months passed, and another, every attempt Paul made to contact her rebuffed by members of Melora’s growing entourage. Then, two years to the day since her arrival, Melora summoned Paul again.
“Thanks for letting me past your honor guard out there, Melora. You’ve done well for yourself the last two years—your own office, your own assistants, your own computers....”
Melora noticed Paul’s eyes looking hungrily past her at the monitor on her desk and jacked in her cybergrammer headset before replying.
“Two years while your best friend rots in prison,” she said.
“Two years you’ve been free, Melora, so you could do what he asked.”
“Look, Tesla, I didn’t bring you here to talk. I brought you here to show you something.” And almost inaudibly, under her breath, Melora said, “Initiate HYDRA.”
Paul looked past her again, past her to the monitor. And just like in the dream, he saw his and Toby’s old Bruin entries scrolling down the screen, stopping at Paul’s final, altered, history-transforming message.
“Melora, that’s incredible! You did it! Now we can change the message, change history, make things the way they’re supposed to be. I wish we could tell Toby. He’s right about you—you’re a genius! But can we wait a little before you send the message? I’d like to talk to Meg, explain more about what may happen.”
Then, subvocally, Melora uttered a single word.
“Delete.”
And looking up from her monitor, past Paul, out her window at the cloud-filled sky, she said, “Now you don’t have to explain anything.”
Paul pleaded with Melora to change her mind. She answered with a single sentence— “Leave, or I’ll call someone who’ll make you leave.”
Paul and I realized Melora loved Toby, held us responsible for his imprisonment, blamed us for wanting her to kill him. But I thought there was something more, something I could never explain to Paul.
Yes, I was jealous of Melora. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I realized Melora was jealous of me.
Chapter Forty-Five: Meg
The rainy season begins with a huge storm backing up out of the South China Sea, crossing the Gulf of Tonkin, slamming into the southern peninsula with hundred-kilometer gusts and sheets of rain. The helicopter trip to Saigon is one long roller coaster ride, and with zero visibility, there’s nothing for me to do except meditate, pray, and rehearse the coming conversation with Melora.
At Vietnam’s equivalent of the Pentagon, a two-story French Colonial wood-frame building filled with men and women in khaki seated behind American-made steel desks, a tall young lieutenant greets me, bowing, welcoming “the esteemed Mother to our ministry.” Yet his demeanor is cold, a far cry from the effusive welcomes I usually receive at government offices. Driving home the point, he assigns a mere corporal to escort me to Melora’s quarters. The young soldier knocks on Melora’s door, but on the command “Enter,” spoken in perfect Vietnamese, I step past him, opening the door, quickly closing it behind me, leaving the non-com outside.
“Hello, Melora.”
Melora lies stretched on her bunk, clothed in a khaki tee shirt, cutoffs, and sandals soled with tire tread from abandoned U.S. Army jeeps. She’s been waiting, no doubt warned of my arrival, reading the glossy American magazine in which Kim’s article appeared, and jacked into the computer on her desk, running what looks like a pinball program.
“Well, if it isn’t Motherfucking Teresa. What brings you out of the paddies? Come to lay hands on my sick computer?”
I answer, in control as always, as always sure what to do, sure I can talk Melora into doing it, too.
“No, Melora. I’m here to ask for your help.”
“I read your big interview, Meg.” Rising from her bunk, holding the magazine between thumb and forefinger like something unclean.
“And?”
“And funny how you relate every detail of your glamorous life story—I mean, shit, I thought you were gonna tell everyone what color panties you wore to your first demonstration—but you got amnesia between the night you met Tesla and the morning you arrived in Vietnam.”
“No color.”
“Huh?”
“No color. I wasn’t wearing panties.”
“Fucking hilarious, Meg.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Yeah, I’d say it’s a problem. Unless you think that little ROTC fire was funny. Or maybe you’ve forgotten. But Toby remembers, and he told me everything.”
“What’s ‘everything’?”
“How it’s your fault the whole thing happened. How you got poor lovesick Tesla to follow your stupid plan, got him and the others burned up for nothing, turned Toby into a criminal avenging his best friend.”
“Toby never said that.”
“Come on, Meg. Everyone knows that if it wasn’t for you, Tesla’s in one piece, Toby’s a free man, Hanoi isn’t a radioactive slag heap. And what did you give up, Saint Meg? A fucking Nobel Prize? That’s a lot of guilt for one spoiled little rich girl to carry around all these years. Must be gettin’ heavy. So fuckin’ heavy you need my generation to clean up your generation’s mess.”
“You’re lucky you had my generation making messes for you to clean up. You wouldn’t like the world we were born into.”
“You never gave us a chance to find out.”
I stop, take a breath.
“So... you think Toby’s still in love with me after all these years?”
Melora’s head jerks around, eyes wide. I’m glad, seeing her look surprised, off balance. Anything’s better t
han her anger. But in the next moment her dark eyes flash.
“You want to save all your Vietnamese victims, but the only way is with a computer. And you can’t even find the ‘on’ button.”
“That’s why I saved you.”
Her eyes blaze again, then turn smoky, flat, opaque.
“Toby carried two things with him all those years he was hiding. Do you know what they were? Pictures of you, and him, and Tesla.”
“And every time you saw them you got angry because you couldn’t be part of something so important to him.”
“I never worried about you and Toby. I never worried because I knew he could never love some stupid e-virgin. And I knew you couldn’t love anyone who didn’t have cancer, or leprosy, or was at least deformed.”
If she’s sorry about what she said, she shows no sign.
“Look, I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t care what you think about Paul. But if you care about Toby, do what he asked.”
She says nothing for a long time. I’m thinking she won’t answer at all, as Paul warned me. But slowly, softly, she at last begins speaking.
“You think I don’t know anything about your war, about Vietnam, Cambodia, Kent State, Jackson State? About you brave college kids going to classes, keggers, and, oh yeah, peace marches? Well I know this much. If you women hadn’t always been so busy doing whatever your men wanted, you might have ended that war in five years instead of twenty.”
“Is that what this is about for you? Showing your independence?”
“What’s it about for you, Mother Meg?”
“Putting things right. Making them the way they’re supposed to be. Sparing the Vietnamese people—and maybe the Afghans too—generations of birth defects and radiation poisoning. Stuffing the nuclear genie back in its lead-lined bottle.”
Melora looked up at me, angry, disgusted. “Isn’t it really about your guilt? Because it was you who caused all this, you who talked Tesla and the others into setting the fire. If your friend, the English professor in the article…” waving the magazine in my face, then tossing it in her waste basket, “…Evelyn—if she’d been around she could have talked you out of it. She wasn’t. One more thing you fucked up. Because of you she leaves, Tesla gets torched, Toby wipes the Pentagon’s computers to get revenge. Doesn’t that make it your fault America nuked Vietnam?”
“Yes.”
“Now you want me to sacrifice Toby to atone for your sins?”
“Yes.”
“So I give up Toby, Toby gives up his life. And what do you give up Meg? Your shot at fucking sainthood?”
I can’t say anything. Can’t speak. Just feel tears on my cheeks, feel myself crying, in front of Melora, her eyes bright, satisfied.
“Well, Meg, you can go fuck yourself.”
We sit together while I cry and Melora plays video pinball, sit together in silence as time passes and monsoon winds howl outside her window.
Finally, I speak.
“Toby and Paul aren’t the only ones who have nightmares. Except I don’t have to close my eyes to live mine. They’re there, every day, right in front of me at the clinic. And I can’t escape them by waking up. Ever wonder why Paul and I never had children, why none of your coworkers have children? Because we’re afraid. Afraid they’ll be little monsters with two hearts or two heads. Afraid the radiation in our breast milk will make them vomit and bleed, dissolve before our eyes the way children do every day in this country. So hate me if you want, but if you care anything about the people you call your friends, spend one day working at the clinic. One day. Then you can tell me to go to hell.”
Melora looks at me, thinks for a moment, jacks out of her cyber headset. “Okay. I’ll come to your clinic. For a day. But after that, I don’t ever want to see you, or Tesla, again.”
I leave without saying another word, walking quickly, afraid Melora will back out of the bargain we struck, afraid I’ll upset its delicate balance. But halfway down the empty hall I turn around, meaning to apologize, to tell Melora, I’m sorry, tell her, Don’t listen to me, forget the clinic, forget everything I said, live your own life.
At the door I hear sobbing and know it’s too late. I hear sobbing and know Melora’s made up her mind. I know I’ll have my way. But unlike with Kim and so many others, if I open the door, offer her my shoulder to cry on, there will be no comfort there, no strengthening for her, only humiliation. So instead, I turn away.
Chapter Forty-Six: Meg
At the next new moon, Melora came to the clinic. Any day now she’ll have HYDRA up and running, send the message, set history on its proper course. The price I pay, the price Melora pays, the way Melora hurt me, the way I hurt Melora, the hurt yet to come, none of that matters. Because Melora changed her mind, as I knew she would. She’ll change history, as I knew she would. You see, that’s my gift. Getting people to do things, whatever things I decide need doing.
It’s funny how even now my thoughts turn to my parents. All that cruelty directed at bending a child to their will. I guess I’ve become like them, after my fashion. Bending people to my will, less brutally than my father, more openly than my mother, more successful than either of them.
Melora says she won’t give any warning. I wonder, will I feel anything when I blink out of existence? I spend my time tending to the clinic, enjoying the ritual of my monthly visit with Quyen’s mother, making up for time I lost—will lose—with Paul, putting jealousy to rest in a downy bed of renewed passion. And Paul, as used to be his way, said the sweetest thing—“I don’t need makeup or the nightie. I only need you.”
Kim? She’s halfway across the world, Pulitzer in hand, as I promised. She kept her promise, too, a convert to the cause, raising money for the clinic among the rich and famous. The big interview changed her life, but I can’t say I would have been so free with intimate details of my history if I didn’t believe in my heart that before too long none of this history will exist, including the interview.
Even so, Kim never asked, and Melora never asked, so I didn’t bother telling them what happened to Evelyn. If I had, they’d know Mother Meg doesn’t always get her way. Besides, why spoil a happy ending?
May 5, 1970
Dear Evelyn,
Yesterday Ohio National Guardsmen murdered four students at Kent State. We watched it on TV. Everyone’s shocked but me. God help me, Evelyn, but I’m not shocked. I’ve been expecting it.
Wellston’s going on strike. Last night 3,000 students gathered on The Green. Two-to-one they voted in favor of the strike. I stood with Paul, holding his hand while he voted. Then we climbed to the roof of Robertson House, watching the vote continue until dawn. Paul thought I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but I could, and he was crying.
I’ve been up for three days straight helping organize protests, fundraisers, and community education programs. At night we meet in Franklin Hall, endlessly discussing what to do about ROTC.
It’s so cold here in Butler. I can’t remember a May this cold. And I miss you, Evelyn. We all do. We miss you, and we need you.
Love,
Meg
May 13, 1970
Dear Meg,
Cold is not a problem here in Mississippi. May in Mississippi is more like August in Butler. And it’s not just the weather that’s hot. The students, the faculty, the police, the politicians—everyone’s hot, and getting hotter.
Every night carloads of rednecks roar through campus screaming racial slurs. Every day student protests get bigger and more unruly. I was home in Detroit during the ‘67 riot. That’s what this feels like. Hot, very hot. And like somebody’s going to make a mistake.
If you can stand a little good news, here goes. Yesterday the custodian came and put a new plaque on my door. It reads—not Assistant Professor, or Associate Professor—but, PROFESSOR Evelyn Ruger. I make half the money I did at Wellston, but at least I’m doing at as a FULL Professor. My students are throwing me a party as soon as things settle down.
For a
girl from Grosse Pointe you’re doing fine up there without me, and I want you to know I’m proud of you. But don’t THINK about writing me until you’ve had a good night’s sleep and a hot meal! And don’t worry, Meg. We are going to end this war!
Yours truly,
Evelyn Ruger, (as in “sugar”)
Professor of English, Alexander Hall, Jackson State University
Evelyn’s letter reached me after the news. On May 14, police sprayed the Jackson State campus with bullets, firing three hundred rounds into Alexander Hall. Miraculously, they added only two more names to the list of four from Kent State, the list of tens of thousands from Vietnam. Phillip Gibbs, a twenty-one year old pre-law student, and James Green, seventeen, a high school senior taking a shortcut home from work.
Evelyn’s name wasn’t among those reported in the Times as killed or injured, but two days later the Detroit Free Press ran her obituary. A meter maid found Evelyn slumped over the steering wheel of her ‘66 Chevelle. The coroner’s report said she died from a stroke suffered while rushing to campus during the gunfire.
When Paul’s doctors upgraded his condition from critical to stable, I called my parents. “I want to come home,” I said. My father wouldn’t speak to me; my mother wired me plane fare. But I didn’t go to Grosse Pointe. I went to see Evelyn.
In Detroit’s New Bethel Baptist Church, the same church where six years later two surviving Supremes, Diana Ross and Mary Wilson, would return for Flo Ballard’s funeral, Reverend Franklin, Aretha’s father, presided over the ceremony. He’d asked Evelyn’s friends and family to bring music they shared with her. After his eulogy (“Dear God in heaven, you took this beautiful child from us too soon! But she’s in your sweet care now. So look after her, Jesus. Evelyn was one of our best!”), the Reverend invited everyone to play Evelyn’s favorites on an RCA portable set up next to her casket. For the next hour, sounds of the Temptations, Miles Davis, and Reverend Franklin’s famous daughter flowed through the church, warming Evelyn’s friends and family, letting them visit with her one last time.
