“Natoma.”
“That sounds pretty Japanese.”
James got annoyed. “No, it’s American.” He gave his father another of those prickly, torn-patience looks.
Andrea tried to soften the mood. “Tell me again what the little man’s name was.”
“James.”
Now James seemed restless, bored, tired of the whole interrogation. But more than that, he seemed angry—angry at Bruce for doubting his word!
This two-year-old was standing up to his father over the name Natoma! Andrea was a little shocked. So she ended the questioning and put James to bed. She read him his three books and gave him his hundred kisses and sang him his song and gave him her blessings for a peaceful night’s sleep.
Bruce was not in the family room. He was in his office, Googling on his computer. He had keyed in Natoma and found something.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he said quietly.
Andrea looked over his shoulder at the screen. There was an old black-and-white picture of a small escort carrier.
Bruce stood up. In a voice filled with surprise, he said, “Natoma Bay was actually a United States aircraft carrier that fought in the Pacific in World War Two.”
They both stood there, stiff, and so did the hair on the back of their necks.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN A FUNNY WAY, when James gave us the name Natoma, it made me mad. Not at anyone, just at the situation. He wasn’t even potty trained and he was telling me something that shook my world. I needed to be right about this. You see, I like to be able to solve things. Put the sink back together. Assemble the bike. Get management to see the advantages of improving worker benefits. I like to wrap things up, find logical solutions to difficult problems, and move on to the next challenge.
The thing to understand about Bruce Leininger was that when he ventured into truly unknown territory, when he was faced with something not written down in any textbook or programmed into a hard drive, he began to panic. You would never see the panic—just the grim tower of suffering silence that he presented to the world.
It was the same coping mechanism of a lot of modern men. His background was conventionally schooled and systematically oriented. His spiritual side was covered by his Christian faith; and that was the end of that story. But when it came to the secular world, the pegs always had to fit into the right slots. Tell him that a rigger got knocked off an oil platform by a high-pressure hose, and he could cope with it. It had a rational cause and a rational effect. Tell him that a two-year-old child—his own two-year-old child—was dreaming about a World War II battle, and his brain seized up.
Let me tell you, when Andrea first came out of the bedroom with these reports about the “little man” being James, well, let’s just say I wanted to get this information firsthand. We went back down to the bedroom, and she prompted him to tell me what was happening. “Who is the little man?” And he said, “Me,” and then he said that the man’s name was “James,” and I thought he was just confused about who was who. Lord knows I was confused as hell.
And then when he named the plane, called it a Corsair, I was flat knocked out. That was a very specific piece of information about a very specific piece of equipment. How could he know that? But then, when we asked him to name the ship from which the plane took off, he said Natoma; that definitely sounded Japanese. He looked at me as if I was the village idiot when I called him on it, and he stuck to the story and insisted that it was American. I was pretty confident he got that wrong. Natoma had to be Japanese. I’m hammering away at a child in diapers like I’m questioning some criminal suspect.
Nevertheless, I still have to prove my point. So when Dre put James to bed I went into my office and started to Google Natoma, and, well, here I am, knocked out again. The word search came up with a thousand hits. There was a Lake Natoma Hotel in California, a Natoma restaurant in Ohio—there was even a town in Kansas called Natoma. After a lot more Natomas, I found a reference to a ship named Natoma. That really had me worried. I had to force myself to open the site, but it turned out to be a Geodetic Survey ship, not an aircraft carrier. Okay! See, it’s all a coincidence. It’s all bullshit!
I almost stopped looking right there, but, you know, I didn’t want to be sloppy. There was a site about Natoma Bay in Alaska, and I thought that since I was in the neighborhood, I might as well look into that one. There it was, the USS Natoma Bay CVE-62. It was a World War II escort carrier that fought in the Pacific. There was even a black and white picture of the boat.
That’s when Dre came into the office and saw my face.
August ended and life went on, but with an air of suspense and incompletion hovering over the question of James and his bad dreams. Andrea and “the panel” were leaning toward a supernatural explanation, albeit in a lackadaisical, passive way. That is, no one was calling up experts in the paranormal—yet. A kind of acceptance was settling in over the facts—the nightmares and an implausible explanation.
Not so for Bruce. He regarded the Scoggin women’s whole approach as pure heresy—nothing more than New Age mumbo jumbo, and he was not going to sit still for it. No such thing as a past life or reincarnation was going to appear under his roof. His anger was connected to his inability to nail down the clear truth. All he had to do—to reaffirm his natural leadership of the family, as well as bolster his obligations to his religious faith—was to establish a natural cause for James’s nocturnal misery.
The problem was that he had run out of ideas. The Natoma thing had rendered him speechless. For a time, he needed to gather himself, rethink the whole business. He would solve the riddle, but he needed some time and maybe even some help.
I was working long and hard. The stress got so bad that I finally gave in to Dre’s entreaties and joined Red’s Gym. I spent an hour on the StairMaster, then hit the weights, so that by the time I got home my hair was not on fire.
Andrea had found Red Lerille’s gym first. It is one of those state-of-the-art, football-field–size gyms. It was a godsend to Andrea, who had gone a little soft since being a full-time dancer. And, she noticed, her weight had ballooned to 130. Hitting that weight was what the Scoggin girls called her “maximum schwagitude.” (“Schwag” was the family term lovingly implanted on the little lapses of paunch and flab that accumulated over the years.) So that’s when she got serious. She’d had a child and run a house and put on a couple of years, but now she would take it down a notch.
She didn’t have to fight her way back to her dancing weight of 105—she didn’t have to face those brutal body-cut auditions in which casting directors decided her fate with one quick glance. She wouldn’t even have to endure a diet of bouillon cubes and Tab to pass her own daily auditions before the mirror. Maybe she was never going to be twenty-two again, but she could look great for thirty-eight.
Which is what she did. It was at Red’s Gym that she hit her primary goal—she got rid of her Schwag.
There was something else missing. Since the Leiningers moved to Lafayette, Andrea had been so busy with the house and James’s and Bruce’s various crises that she hadn’t made any friends.
The neighborhood was filled with walkers and joggers, and so Andrea decided to join the parade. In her own practical and dedicated fashion, Andrea managed to make friends.
Red’s Gym had her back to her fighting weight of 120 pounds, she had a posse of girlfriends, James was happy in Mother’s Day Out, and Bruce was preoccupied with all his perplexing puzzles. By the end of that summer, the Leiningers had really settled in. Lafayette began to feel like home.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ON OCTOBER 5, with a deep sigh of relief, Andrea ran around opening all the windows, inviting the fresh breeze into her home. The sweltering tropical weather had finally broken. James trailed behind, imitating his mother, savoring the first whiff of autumn. It seemed as if the air of suspense created by the new details that James had shared about his dreams was softened by the cooler weather and the drop in humid
ity.
And so, on that Thursday, Andrea’s native optimism kicked in. There was that zip in the air, and it was only two days until Bruce’s fifty-first birthday (she enjoyed any excuse for a celebration), and she could tell by the slack in her clothing that she was getting into shape, losing that “schwag.” Of course, once you have been a ballet dancer, objectivity is no longer possible when standing before a mirror in skimpy leotards. No matter how buff she got, she always felt a twinge of disappointment; she always half expected to see that twenty-two-year-old dancer looking back.
But ferocious discipline was also part of her history. So she took James, strapped him into his car seat, placed his diaper bag on the floor, then got into the front and strapped herself in, ready to head for Red’s Gym.
She glanced in the rearview mirror and smiled. James had a new and comical stunt; it was a car ritual. Once he was strapped in, he would reach up and pull an imaginary something over both ears, like slapping on earmuffs; then he would reach high up over his head and pull another imaginary something down to the front of his mouth, like a football player pulling down a face guard. She had no idea what it meant, but it looked cute. This had been going on for a few weeks. James did it every time they got into the car now, and Andrea meant to mention it to Bruce. Let him stew about it. He was her go-to worrier.
They went to the gym, stopped to buy a couple of mushy birthday cards, and picked up Bruce’s gifts—several workout outfits, a Walkman, and a jogging stroller so he could take James along—then bought some French champagne and a layered chocolate butter cake, called a doberge, at Poupart’s Bakery.
They came home and had a light lunch. Andrea put James down for his nap and started to make dinner. She liked to cook, enjoyed getting her hands messy and into all the sauces and ingredients. And she enjoyed the mental challenge of dreaming up menus—something that was “grown-up” yet could be managed by a two-year-old boy who was still finding his way around the utensils. Aunt G. J.’s recipe for chicken tetrazzini included diced chicken breasts, pasta with butter, and peas and mushrooms. That worked for everyone.
Bruce came home from work, and the family sat down to dinner. The meals they all ate together were always the best. There was the whole frantic run-up—setting the places, timing the courses (they always had to be served together for Bruce)—then the calm of saying grace, followed by the unstrained conversation.
They usually played “high-low,” a game in which everybody got a chance to complain or boast about their day. James was still trying to master the fork, and Andrea would scold him mildly when he reverted to using his hands. Table manners were important, she said, but still those little hands would sneak out onto his plate from time to time to grab an elusive morsel.
After dinner there were the evening rituals, including the bath in which James and Bruce shared a tub and talked “man-to-man.” Then Andrea took over, and there were the three books and the hundred kisses and the good-night routine.
But Andrea had another wrinkle. After the one hundred kisses, she had James lie on his back in his bed and close his eyes. She ran her hand through his hair, as if she were pulling something out, and flung whatever it was to the floor.
“I’m taking out everything that scares you,” she said. “I’m taking out everything that makes you cry.” And her hand pantomimed another grasp and pull and toss to the floor. “Everything that makes you angry or that frightens you.”
Then she reversed the process, grabbing something in the air and running her hand over his face. “Now we’re gonna put in everything that makes you happy, everything that makes you smile, everything that makes you laugh, and all the love of everyone who loves you.”
She ran her hand softly over his forehead with each wish—or prayer, maybe—and James called it “putting the good dreams in.”
It seemed to help—that is, the nightmares went from three or four times a week to two or three, but they didn’t stop or diminish in intensity. It was a small victory.
After she inserted the last good dream on this first Thursday in October, Bruce came in to say good night. He kissed James and said, “No dreams about the little man tonight, okay buddy?”
James said, “The little man’s name is James, Daddy.”
“Baby, your name is James,” offered Andrea.
But James insisted, “The little man is named James, too.”
Andrea was confused. “Do you remember the little man’s last name?”
“No, I can’t remember it.”
Bruce and Andrea were sitting on the bed. It was one of those fragile moments when James offered up some small, select details, like dropping pearls. But both parents knew that it was only a brief glimpse into his dreams and that it could end with the least little pressure on him. James spoke when he wanted to speak, and he went silent and dark when he didn’t want to talk about it. Bruce compared it to the coin-operated telescopes on top of the Empire State Building. You put in your quarter and you got to see a great distance, and then, suddenly, when you were well and truly into it, on the cusp of perfect clarity, the scope shut down. The coin had run out.
But Bruce and Andrea kept at it with James, albeit with the knowledge that they were seeing through a very capricious lens.
“Can you remember anyone else in the dream?” asked Andrea. “Any friends?”
James concentrated for a moment; then his face lit up and he said, “Jack!”
Well, it was a name, but it was no big deal. There were a million guys named Jack. He could have said Frank or Tom or Joe. Jack could even be a nickname for James.
“Do you remember Jack’s last name?” asked Andrea.
And then James said, very clearly, “Larsen. It was Jack Larsen.”
“Get the pen and paper,” said Bruce, holding down his excitement.
Andrea went down to the office and fetched the legal pad and a pen, and Bruce started scribbling away, trying to remember it all in sequence. Andrea saw that James was sleepy, but asked one more question anyway.
“Was Jack James’s friend?”
And James replied, “He was a pilot, too.”
It was too much to take in. They couldn’t push James much further. He was yawning and ready for sleep. So they kissed him on his forehead and went into the family room, where they sat quietly, trying to digest this latest development.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JACK LARSEN” PLUNGED the Leiningers into the heart of the matter: belief and skepticism.
Andrea decided to believe. Under the circumstances, it felt like the sensible thing to do. She could not live indefinitely in a state of nervous fear. (Even in combat, soldiers under fire attend to the banal, everyday details of existence.) In the end, belief seemed the only practical solution.
For her, the name Jack Larsen was proof enough of the never-to-be-spoken-of “past life” memory. She did not need a perfect circle. She was a mother with meals to prepare, a home to keep clean, and a child to amuse. Life had to go on. Those everyday, humdrum imperatives trumped the midnight mysteries.
As far as Andrea was concerned, the war was won and the troops could come home.
Of course, she had help in arriving at her new belief. Her mother continued to talk about a New Age paranormal key to the problem. She kept alive the possibility of a past life.
On the other side of the cleft was Bruce, hardened now into a firm nonbeliever. It was his mission, as he perceived it, to prove to his wife (and the entire Scoggin clan) that his son’s nightmares were the coincidental rants of a child, not the recovered memory of… Well, he would have to find out about “Jack Larsen” to make his point.
This was not just the whim of a contrarian. At stake for Bruce was the integrity of his Christian faith, as well as the whole history of rational thought that he had studied in college and graduate school. He had dismissed the possibility of a past life as no more than New Age mumbo jumbo. His background was conventionally schooled and systematically oriented. He had studied mathematics and histo
ry and Descartes, and he believed in the scientific method and a rational universe.
And he had another incentive: victory on the home front. He could not surrender his role as custodian of the family’s good sense and judgment. He held himself out to be the voice of reason on West St. Mary Boulevard.
“You cannot argue with the Scoggin women,” he would declare. “You have to prove them wrong.”
As Andrea went about the mundane business of maintaining the home, Bruce spent hours in his home office, brooding about the nightmare problem. That first night, after James revealed the name of Jack Larsen, he went into the office and sat in front of the computer screen, trying to figure out how to connect the name to the nightmares. It was late, after ten at night—he saw the time glowing on the computer screen—and he had a big day at work ahead of him. He needed his rest, but he felt he had to deal with this nagging problem of these nightmares. But how? Where was he going to begin? Was Jack Larsen the little man in the burning plane? Was Jack Larsen another name for James? After all, Jack was a nickname. It could be John.
He turned the puzzle over and around, looking at it this way and that, searching for the key that would unlock the secret.
The modern version of brooding in the Leininger house took the form of Internet toe tapping. In would go the keywords and key phrases, and Google would spit out—in the case of Jack Larsen—blind alleys. Bruce found himself stymied. He had no idea where to begin. It was as if he were suddenly speechless on the Internet. And so he went to bed.
The weather turned sultry again on Saturday, and the quest for Jack Larsen was put on a back burner as the Leiningers celebrated Bruce’s birthday. He had his coffee and read the newspaper and went out to do some work in the yard. Then he got his usual bundle of hugs and kisses and gifts. As always, he was delighted with Andrea’s choices—his old jogging outfits were threadbare and he welcomed clothes that were new and crisp. But his favorite was the jogging stroller. Now he could go on his runs with James.
Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot Page 8
