Message from Nam

by Danielle Steel

  “Were you in love with him?”

  Paxton’s pause was even longer. “Yes, I was.” She was proud of it, but she didn’t think it was any of this woman’s business. But oddly enough it formed a bond between them.

  “So was I, a long time ago. He was a good man … and a good father. We had a little girl … she died … maybe Tony told you about it …”

  “Yes, he did,” Paxton said softly.

  “I think that’s what finished our marriage. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, what happened to her, I mean, it was just that every time I looked at him, I thought of it, he was so broken up, I couldn’t get away from it. And Tommy … well, he made me feel better.” Yeah, I’ll bet, Paxton thought to herself, but she also suspected that there was some truth to what she was saying. Tony himself had admitted that he was so devoured with grief, and then so obsessed with Joey when he was born, it kind of did something to their marriage. So she wasn’t totally wrong. But she had been tasteless in her choice of second husbands. And her lack of tact had driven Tony to Viet Nam, and deprived Joey of his father. But who was she to judge? If Barbara Campobello hadn’t married her brother-in-law, Paxton would never have met Tony in Saigon.

  “I’m sorry,” Paxton said again.

  “Yeah … I’ll call you.” And then she was gone, and Paxton spent the rest of the afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum. It was a far cry from Saigon. And when she got back to the hotel there was a message from Joey’s mother. Paxton called her right back and to her amusement, she told her to come the next morning. It was Saturday and Joey would be out of school. Tony’s mother would even be there, and she wanted to meet Paxton. She didn’t tell her that her husband was furious over it, but she had told him they owed it to Tony, and Joey, and that was that, and she was an important correspondent from The New York Times, and maybe she’d make a real big stink if they didn’t let her see the boy, seeing as it was Tony’s last request, that she see Joey. He had agreed, but he was mad as hell. But Barbara didn’t care now. She wanted to do it. She gave Paxton the directions on how to come. And the next morning, Paxton rented a car at the hotel, and drove to Great Neck.

  And when she got there, they were all waiting for her. Even Mrs. Campobello, Sr., in a black dress, and three little girls in fancy little pink dresses. They looked like bonbons on a cake, and Paxton almost laughed as she looked at them. They were cute, but they were so foreign to her, she didn’t know what to say. It was all a little overwhelming.

  Barbara and her mother-in-law and the girls were outside when Paxton came, and in the distance she could see a tall, powerful-looking man, but he didn’t approach, and she couldn’t see from that distance if he looked anything like Tony. And in any case, he didn’t seem anxious to meet her. And then Barbara introduced her to her mother-in-law. And when Paxton looked at her, all she could see was Tony. She started to cry almost as soon as Paxton touched her hand, and she had a heavy Italian accent.

  “You knew my boy in Viet Nam?” Her voice quavered as she asked, not so much from age, as from emotion.

  “Yes, I did.” Paxton was fighting back tears, too, as Barbara stepped away with her daughters. “He was a fine man. You can be very proud of him,” she said as her voice broke. “He was famous in all of Viet Nam for his courage.” The truth was a little stretched there, but not much, and she knew that it would mean a lot to Tony’s mother. And then tears stung her eyes and she reached out and took the old lady into her arms.

  “It’s my fault he wennaway … I shouldda stopped what happened, but I didn’t.”

  “You couldn’t have,” Paxton comforted her, knowing what she meant. They all had so much guilt, all of them. She had told herself for years that it was her fault that Peter had died, and Bill … and now Tony? Had she killed them all? Had they? Or had Charlie? “He didn’t resent anyone,” Paxton reassured her. “He was happy.” Mrs. Campobello blew her nose and nodded, and then looked up at Paxton with interest.

  “You was his girlfriend?”

  Paxton smiled at the term and nodded. “He was a wonderful man, and I loved him very much.” And then she wondered why she kept talking in the past tense. Except that for their own sanity, they all kept pretending that they knew he was dead, but they didn’t.

  “You’re a pretty girl,” his mother said. “What were you doing over there?” She was torn between curiosity and disapproval.

  “I write for a newspaper. That’s how I met him.” And then she smiled. “We used to fight a lot in the beginning.” His mother laughed through her tears at that.

  “He used to fight with me too. When he was a kid, he drove me crazy.” He wasn’t like Tommy, she started to say, and then thought better of it. God had already punished her for that, because Tommy was still there and Tony wasn’t.

  And then Barbara Campobello came back, and she looked pointedly at Paxton. “Joe’s inside if you want to talk to him there.”

  “That would be nice,” Paxton said, and Barbara led her to the front door as Paxton followed. Barbara had obviously had a good figure once, and she had an attractive face, but she seemed hardened, and tough, and somehow disappointed. Paxton followed her inside, and there he was, sitting on the couch, wearing jeans and a clean shirt and a baseball cap, and he looked up at her with exactly the same expression she had come to love so much in his father. “Hi,” she said quietly, and much to her surprise, Barbara discreetly disappeared back outside to the others. “My name is Paxton.” He looked up at her, and then she sat down slowly in a chair near him. “I knew your Dad in Viet Nam. And he asked me to visit you if I ever came this way. And I happened to be in town, so I thought I’d come by and see you.”

  He nodded, interested in her, and looking so much like his father that he scared her. “Are you writing a story about my Dad? That’s what my Mom said,” but Paxton was quick to shake her head.

  “No, Joey.” She wanted to be honest with him, as honest as she had been with Tony. “I’m here because I loved him. And he loved you very much … in fact,” she smiled through her tears, “I still love him. I just came back from Viet Nam a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to come see you.”

  “What happened?” Joey looked at her almost accusingly. “How did he die?”

  “They don’t even know for sure that he did die. They just know he’s missing in action. That means there was a battle and he got lost, and he never came back. He could be alive, he could be dead, he could be wounded out there somewhere, he could even be a prisoner of the Viet Cong, but no one knows.”

  “Wow!” He looked excited as he sat up on the couch. “No one told me that!” He was eight years old and she thought he had a right to know, and that was why she had told him.

  “No one knows anything. They think he might be dead. And there’s a good chance that he could be. But the truth is they’re not sure yet.”

  And then he looked her square in the eye and asked her the hardest question of all. “What do you think?”

  “What do I think?” she repeated back to him, wondering if she should tell him. And then she decided to anyway. “I can’t tell you why, and I could be wrong, but I think he’s still alive. I just feel it in my heart … maybe I just loved him so much that I don’t want him to die. Maybe that’s why I feel like that. But that’s how I feel.” He nodded, absorbing what she’d said, and moving a little bit closer.

  “Do you have any pictures of him?” She could have kicked herself for not bringing them. She hadn’t even thought of it.

  “I do, back at the hotel. I’ll send you copies of them when I get to Paris.” He nodded again, satisfied with that.

  “Are you going back to Viet Nam again?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It must have been pretty scary, huh?” He moved closer again, fascinated by her, by how pretty she was, and the fact that she knew his father. There was no one else he could talk to about him. His Mom always acted like talking about him was a crime, and whenever he mentioned him, his grandmother cried, and his Dad ye
lled at him. But Paxton was a direct emissary from his father, and Joey could say anything he wanted.

  “It was pretty scary.” Paxton smiled at him. “But not all the time. We had some good times too. And he talked about you a lot,” she told him, and watched his face light up, and she wanted to reach out and touch him.

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. All the time. He used to show me your photograph. He wanted to come home and see you.” But he never got the chance. Gone at thirty-one, there was a lot he wasn’t going to do now.

  “Will you come back and see me again?” Joey asked her hopefully, sidling closer to her, and finally reaching out to touch her hair, which was so straight and gold, and so unlike his mother’s.

  “I’d like that a lot, if your Mom and stepfather don’t mind.”

  Joey made a face and whispered to her, “He’s not really my stepdad, he’s my uncle!”

  And she whispered back, “I know! Your Dad told me”.

  “He told you everything, huh?” And then he laughed. He had a new friend and he really liked her. She stroked his hair then, and touched his face, and she had an arm around him when his mother came back in.

  “We had a nice visit,” Paxton said, grateful to her for letting her come. “And I’m going to send Joey some pictures of his Dad from Paris.”

  “Yeah,” he said by way of confirmation. And they walked slowly outside, holding hands. It was as though they could communicate now without saying anything. And before she left, she took him in her arms and held him.

  “Remember how much he loved you.” Joey nodded with tears in his eyes, and Paxton hugged him to her, remembering how it had felt when her own father died, but she hadn’t said any of that to Joey. “I’ll call you again.”

  “Okay.”

  She saw his stepfather then, lurking nearby, watching her, and he was tall and dark, but he didn’t look anything like his brother, and he didn’t approach to shake her hand or meet her. He went back to the garage to attend to whatever he was doing. She thanked Barbara Campobello again, and kissed Tony’s mother good-bye, and they wished her good luck in Paris, almost as though they knew her.

  “I’ll send you those photographs,” she promised the child again, and he was still waving when she turned slowly around the corner, thinking of him, and how sad it was that he would never know his father.

  CHAPTER 27

  She arrived in Paris on a beautiful spring day, a week after she’d gone to Washington to see Pentagon officials and Fort Benning, Georgia, to interview Lieutenant Calley. The interview with him had been brief, and in some ways very painful. He was becoming almost a symbol of the war, and our loss of control, our brutishness and the grief we caused, and as Paxton thought about it later, she was sorry for him, for everyone, for all that had happened.

  But Paris healed some of her wounds, and she found a sweet studio near the Seine. And she would walk alone at night, thinking of how different her life was from the life she’d led in Saigon.

  Here, her life was solitary and austere, and serious, as she went to the peace talks each day, and interviewed people like Kissinger and Le Due Tho. And in Saigon, as hard as it was at times, her life had been happier and easier than it was now, filled with only memories of a place she would never see again, and the men she had loved there.

  She sent Joey the copies of the photographs, and he wrote her back, in a careful hand, and thanked her. And every now and then, she sent him a postcard from Paris.

  She was integrally tied into all the news from Viet Nam, and by October, the American casualties were lower than they had ever been. But still, it would have been nice to know it was all over.

  And she spoke frequently to all the connections she had made to find out if there was any news of the MIAs, but there was never any news of Tony. She had stopped expecting it now, and yet there was always that same strange feeling. In some ways, she just thought it was because he would always be alive to her. But by year end, they had almost convinced her it was hopeless.

  In November, the Times flew her back to Fort Benning, Georgia, for the beginning of the Calley trial, and that was a depressing affair, with hideous photographs, and frightening testimony that, in the end, led to his conviction.

  She went to see her brother after the trial, and as usual, had almost nothing to say to him, and she was beyond making the effort with Allison anymore.

  She went to Washington after that, for another interview with Kissinger. And then she went to see her editor in New York. And she called and saw Joey again, and this time, she took the boy to lunch. He had just turned nine, and he looked even more like Tony than he had before. She took him to Radio City Music Hall, and before that they had a very grown-up lunch. She had taken him to “21,” and he was extremely impressed, as he looked up at the airplanes hanging near the bar. And the headwaiter had recognized her name, as an ardent devotee of The New York Times, and they deferred to her every whim, and brought Joey a backpack that said “21”.

  “This is a terrific place,” he said, admiring her taste, and she smiled at him. “Think Dad would have liked it here?” That was the criterion for everything with him.

  “I think he would have loved it. We used to talk about coming to New York sometimes. Or going to San Francisco. That’s where I used to live. I went to college there.” He was enormously impressed and demanded that she tell him all about it, and then as they finished dessert he looked at her with painful seriousness.

  “My Dad … my other Dad, I mean … you know, my uncle.” Paxton almost laughed, he was so intense, and somehow it was so grotesque and confusing, and she knew Tony would have laughed too. In fact, he might almost have loved it. “He says that what you said isn’t true … about my Dad maybe being alive because he’s missing in action. He says he’s probably dead, and you’re crazy.”

  “He could be right. In fact, he probably is, on both counts.” Paxton tried to smile at him. “But the real truth, Joey, is that no one knows. That’s what missing in action is. Some of the men who disappeared have been taken prisoners. But we don’t even know that about him. I keep pretty close tabs on it, and I call the Pentagon whenever I can, but they haven’t heard anything about your Dad being on the lists of prisoners. And they haven’t found his remains near where he died. So the truth is, no one knows.” It was hard for him. It was hard for everyone. It was killing not to know what had happened.

  “So that still means he could be alive, doesn’t it?” He looked hopeful again, and then as he turned it over in his mind, he looked depressed again.

  “But my Dad … my uncle … he says he’s dead. Paxton, do you think he is?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head as she looked at him honestly, “Joey, I don’t.” And with that she took his hand, and held it tightly in her own, thinking again how much he looked like Tony.

  CHAPTER 28

  Paxton was busy in 1971, and she spent most of the year in Paris. She still had high hopes for the Paris talks, and conveyed that feeling through much of what she wrote for the paper. But the war still went on. And in Viet Nam, the troops were getting angry. They were getting tired of the war, and there seemed to be more problems with insubordination to the officers than there had been when she was there. And “fragging,” GIs using fragmentation grenades to wound their officers “by mistake,” was becoming common. Racial issues were tense as well. And in February, the ARVN began operations in Laos, to destroy parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And still, whenever she inquired, in whatever sector, there was never any news of Tony.

  And in March, Paxton went back to the States for the rest of the Calley trial, and saw him convicted. And she was in Washington to see the enormous Viet Nam Veterans Against the War demonstration, where some of the men flung their medals on the steps of the Capitol. She wrote about it for the Times, and then flew back to Paris.

  She was still in Paris when the Pentagon Papers were made public by Daniel Ellsberg in June. And in July, when Nixon announced Kissinger’s trip to
China. And when Thieu was reelected president of South Vietnam in October 1971, she was still busy covering the peace talks. And finally, in December, she was happy to report that American troops in Viet Nam were down to a hundred and forty thousand, less than a third of what it had been when she was there nineteen months before. And in those nineteen months, there had been not a single bit of news about Tony Campobello. The evidence was overwhelming now. Had he been taken prisoner, or been hiding wounded somewhere, surely by now someone would have heard it. She couldn’t offer much hope to Joey anymore, and yet, when he asked her, whenever they talked on the phone, every few months when she called him, she always told him what she felt and that was that his Dad was out there somewhere. He was ten by then and better able to understand it. She had told him about her own father by then, and it gave him a special kinship with her. They had both grown up without their fathers.

  And for her, at the end of 1971, life was interesting but strange. She was twenty-five years old, and very beautiful, and greatly admired in Paris. But it was as though a part of her life didn’t exist at all, and never had. It was sealed off now. She lived for her work, and a little boy she had come to love in Great Neck. And he was the only love in her life. The rest were memories, and photographs she kept on a table in her living room. Peter … Bill … Ralph … France … Pax … An … and, of course, Tony. It was a strange gallery of people she had loved and lost, in a place she knew she would never go back to, and yet oddly she still missed it. She missed what it had been, and who they were, and what she had been when they all lived there. And yet, she was very successful at what she did, and very respected. And in an odd way, she was content. Not happy, but satisfied, and she still missed him. And his ruby ring was still on her finger.

  And in ’72, it was painful for her knowing what distress Viet Nam was in. The peace talks had gone nowhere. And in March the North Vietnamese crossed the demilitarized zone with tanks and began moving south down Highway One on a rampage of terror. By May, Route One was filled with refugees and soldiers. The southern ARVN proved no match for the northern troops, and civilians were constantly being killed, children burned and women dying. The photographs she saw, with the rest of the world, particularly in Time magazine, were awful.