Page 78 of Good Days Bad Days
“True,” she said falteringly. “So, you’ll write?”
“Sure,” I said as though I didn’t care either way, even though the idea of receiving even one letter from her brought me near euphoria. “I’ll write.”
“Good. And I’ll write you back.”
Then, as I was about to leave, she did something I’ve been replaying in my mind ever since. She dove through the space between us and collided with my torso, her arms encircling me in a crushing, lingering embrace. When my initial shock wore off, I dropped the bag and wrapped my arms around her. My God, if she’d asked me to stay while I held her that way, I’d never have been able to say no.
We stood like that for what seemed like forever, her tears soaking the front of my shirt and my lips finding the top of her head. I inhaled her sweet, powdery scent, forcing it into my memory. Intoxicated by it all, I kissed her hair once and then twice. When she leaned back to look at me with tears still wet on her cheeks, I wiped them away with the side of my thumb, running my fingers up into her hair from the back of her neck. To have her that close, to touch her with such freedom, it was nearly worth all the torture I’d endured.
“Kiss me goodbye,” she whispered.
Usually, I’m a man of inaction, of hesitation, but in that instant, I was all the things I’d always wanted to be. I dug my fingertips into the flesh at her waist and deeper into the velvety depths of her bobbed hairdo, yanking her into me, pressing my mouth against hers. There wasno tentative start—from the second her mouth met mine, a fire erupted between us. She shivered under my touch, opening her mouth to take me in, our tongues reaching for each other, her hands wrapped in the fabric of my shirt so desperately my knees went weak.
And as suddenly as it started, it was over. She broke away mid-embrace, her hand covering her mouth as though she’d been sleepwalking and awoken to find she’d nearly walked off the roof of a tall building. Without a word, she ran out the studio door, leaving me vibrating with passion and dizzy with confusion.
I didn’t see her again before I flew out. I donated my mother’s piano to the local school, put all my belongings in storage, and drove to Minneapolis with one suitcase in the back seat. Martha was the only familiar face at KSTP, but I was only there for a few days before I left with the team. She stayed behind, as KSTP’s newest news operations manager, also promising to write. No lingering embraces there. I broke Martha’s rose-colored glasses the night of the banquet, which ended up being a blessing. Now that she knows how useless I’d be as a boyfriend, we can be friends.
Martha wrote to me right after I left, sending me six double-sided pages about all the new experiences at KSTP, her coworkers, the still uphill battle she faced as a newswoman, and then a whole narrative of how they decided what shades of orange to paint their new set. The letter was waiting for me in Saigon when I arrived back from my first assignment.
After twenty hours of nonstop travel, we dropped our belongings in the shared hotel rooms and then hopped on a helicopter that took us into a combat zone, where we bunked with the grunts for a week.
I’d been warned by Scott O’Neil, the correspondent I’d been paired with, that the trips into the field had two speeds: boring and deadly.
“Avoid anyone with a radio,” he said when giving me tips on staying alive. “And keep low. You’re so damn tall you’re like a walking target for the VC.”
We didn’t end up seeing much “action,” as they call it, on that first outing, but I did lug around my heavy camera and bag. I spent the days recording O’Neil interviewing men who wanted to send messages home or say their own two cents about the war and what it was like out there in the “rice paddies.” I didn’t talk much on that first trip. I had no reason to. I was a facilitator, a means to an end, a silent witness, but that didn’t mean I was unaffected.
When O’Neil and I returned to Saigon, I craved distraction, and finding a stack of mail on my bed was just what I needed. Besides the letter from Martha, I also had one from Mark, who wrote me about his new Playboy Club key and his repeated attempts at convincing Lucy to let him take her out for dinner. As a sign-off, he included one very graphic and impressively accurate drawing of breasts.
And I had two letters from Betty.
“I got your address from Mark,” the first line in her letter read, which at this point I’ve reread so much it’s close to falling apart, the folds of the off-white stationery reinforced with Scotch tape. “He said you’re doing well and I’m sure that’s true, but I thought I should probably find out for myself.”
The pages smelled of her perfume, and her tight but loopy handwriting looked so feminine that it made my pulse rise, making me feel like some kind of pervert. The first letter was one full page, front and back. She detailed how the show had been taken over by an import from EBN, resulting in Martha’s more feminist segments being trimmed down. She also mentioned that she was writing a book, though she wasn’t doing it alone. A team had been assembled to help her shape it according to EBN’s views and agenda. She included a lot of talk about work and even a small paragraph about the weather, but I didn’t care how bland her narrative was. I was delighted to have something she’d held in her hands and taken the time and effort to send.
The second letter, though, took me by surprise.
In it she told me about a mistake she made on air. She said it made her remember her tenth-grade music concert, how her voice crackedduring a solo. It was the last concert her mother attended before she went missing. “For two years I would always think about how I wish I’d sung for my mom one more time before she left so she didn’t walk around living the rest of her life embarrassed by her daughter.”
She went on to explain that her obsession with that mistake went away when a neighbor’s hunting dog uncovered her mother’s body buried in the woods near the main road. Her stepfather, Bill, was arrested but, with all the evidence erased by time, he took a plea deal for a lesser charge, leaving Charlotte alone for the next three years. Stunned and pregnant with their second child, she was easily brainwashed into believing his innocence. After that, he was in and out of jail for petty crimes, fights, and a few DUIs.
“I’d send Charlotte money when he was incarcerated and stop when he was home. Every time he got locked away I hoped she’d wise up, but she always let him come back. Over the years I started to realize my mom wasn’t turning over in her grave thinking about some note I missed in a tenth-grade concert. She was heartbroken I couldn’t get Charlotte free.”
It’s a quality that’s always drawn me to Betty, the vulnerable soul underneath the outward beauty, the sister who wants to protect and save by any means necessary, the sad girl who has no one to protect her. I wish she could see herself the way I do, the way she really is. I’d give anything to be her safe harbor.
After that letter, I’ve received at least one a week from her.
I write back every time, speaking very little of my daily life, especially not of the dangers I see and experience firsthand. I don’t tell her how we know we’re lied to in the nightly press briefings, how many soldiers don’t want to be here and how clear it’s becoming that this war is unwinnable.
In turn, she never mentions Don or her wedding, even though Mark keeps me apprised through his correspondence. But when he sent me a copy of her wedding announcement cut out of the newspaper, I hate to admit I burned it. Now, to maintain the illusion of Betty’sdevotion to me, I wait to open his letters until after I read any I’ve received from her.
One letter from Betty started “Dearest Greg, I got my first television today. It’s a ten-inch black and white with bunny ears, but I get all the local stations, which is why I wanted it. I watch every news broadcast I can get on my little set and wonder if you’re the one behind the camera whenever they report on the war. It makes me feel closer to you, but some nights, I can’t sleep with worry. I hope you come home soon.”
All her letters start that way, like I’m the only man in her life, like she’s waiting in a little bungalow for me to return to her and fill it with children and a future we’ll build together. It’s not true, I logically know that, but being so isolated, so surrounded by terror and death, I let myself pretend. A lot of the guys out here live like this, putting their girl up on a golden pedestal which keeps them motivated to live long enough to get home.
I’ve made it ten months and filmed more tragedy than I knew existed before climbing onto that plane last year. The injuries, the fear and disillusionment—it’s all palpable and nearly as poisonous as the napalm I was warned about.
And the stories, damn. Most of what we film will never be seen, I know that. No one wants to know about a soldier’s dying words or the heavily racist views of some of the men when it comes not only to the enemy but also to the native population they’re supposed to be protecting. To say nothing of the nonstop pot use that’s almost as pervasive as smoking cigarettes.
