Absolution, p.5
Absolution, page 5
“How much does your husband make?” she asked me.
Across all these decades, you cannot imagine how rude and inappropriate, even startling, the question was. She might just as well have asked me how I enjoyed oral sex.
I stammered that I didn’t really know—I didn’t really know—and suddenly she launched into a precise delineation of her own household accounts: her husband’s salary, what the company paid for, how much she was given as a monthly allowance, how she spent it, saved it, distributed it among her children and the servants. All of it very precise, and as I said, in that day and age, very startling.
I made some awkward attempt to explain that since we were childless, we were not as strict about our household accounts as she, so admirably, was. When I needed money for something—clothes, perfume, gifts to bring home—I simply asked Peter for whatever I thought it would cost, and he gave me the cash.
She raised those fierce eyebrows. “Just like that?”
“Yes,” I said, although, of course, in truth, there would be a playful cross-examination. “Another dress? How many dresses can you wear at once?” Or some vaudevillian riff on why he should have stayed a bachelor. Sometimes he’d croon, “She wears silk underwear, I wear my last year’s pair. Hey, boys, that’s where my money goes.” Fondly, I should add, the prelude to a dance around our bedroom. Although I confess such kidding did prolong the agony of having to put my hand out in this way.
“And spending money?” Charlene asked.
At home, Peter used to leave twenty dollars, a ten, a five, five ones, in my jewelry box every Sunday night. Here, he did the same, but in a mix of American dollars and piastres tucked into a lovely lacquered box decorated with the Xa Loi Pagoda—one of the first souvenirs I’d picked up in Saigon.
“If you want to give me your American dollars,” Charlene said coolly, “I can return them to you double their worth. For a small commission, of course.”
I was so dazed I actually asked her, “How?”
She paused. “There’s a jeweler I know,” she began, and then waved her hand. “It’s dreary old black-market stuff,” she said. “Not interesting at all.”
And then once more her eyes went to that middle distance, her two circulating fingertips the only indication that she was thinking—thinking, as I came to see it, ferociously.
Suddenly she said, “I want to do good.” She said it with the same calculation and dispassion with which she had said, “I want to charge two bucks.”
“There’s so much wretchedness,” she added.
I assumed at the time she meant in Vietnam, but looking back on it, I’m certain she meant in the world at large.
“It takes money,” she said.
She stood, began to make a brief tour of the crates and the boxes scattered about the room. She had a sister in New York, she told me—the businesswoman aunt you had mentioned at the garden party—an executive secretary at Macy’s. “We’re a two-woman relief organization,” she said. “Completely haphazard,” she said, although somehow I doubted it. Charlene saw a need and wrote to her sister, and the two of them went about seeing what they could do. Clothes were the easiest things to obtain—her sister could make good use of her employee discount as well as, Charlene said, “the five-fingered kind.” Apparently, her sister had a special friend who was in charge of the loading dock for the world’s largest store.
She indicated the box of folded children’s clothes. These were bound for an orphanage outside the city.
The books, mostly children’s books and classics, were for the Vietnamese women and girls that Helen and Roberta—“whom you met today”—and some other ladies were tutoring. “Trying to keep them out of the whorehouses,” Charlene said. “Or get them out. Get them real jobs with Americans or Europeans, if we can.”
She looked around. “What else can I tell you? Shipping costs are a problem. My sister does well enough, but she also has rent to pay and our aging alcoholic father to look after. If you can give me your American dollars, I’ll get you an exchange rate your husband wouldn’t dream of. I’ll take a little off the top. That—along with your brilliant Barbie fundraiser—will be a lovely contribution to the cause.”
“Fine,” I said.
She lit a cigarette, barely inhaled. “Tell me what you think of this,” she went on, both of us knowing she was not actually seeking my opinion. “If we can store up some funds, I’ll ask my sister to send me a few dozen actual dolls—Barbies—at a good discount, of course. We can dress them in Lily’s ao dais, pin on Weezie’s hats, and sell them for twenty-five dollars at the officers’ club.”
“Twenty-five?” I asked. It seemed an outrageous sum. It was an outrageous sum.
She shrugged. “We’ll only get so far selling these outfits to mothers and aunties. We need a male clientele. And a lot of our American men over here have no idea whether their daughters back home have Barbie dolls or baby dolls. Or cleft palates and missing limbs, for that matter. If we can sell them the actual dolls, already dressed, we won’t have to worry about straining their brain cells to recall how old their daughters are and what kind of dollies they play with. No doubt they’ll buy one for their wives and girlfriends, too.” She lowered her voice and smiled a crooked smile. “Although I do worry about the girlfriend part. I worry about stirring their limited imaginations.”
She studied me from under those luxurious brows. She saw, I suppose, that I wasn’t quite following. She reached up to flick her cigarette into a silver dish on her bookshelf. “What I’m saying is I just hope they don’t get carried away thinking they’re buying replicas of their favorite prostitutes.” And she shook her tanned, freckled American-girl shoulders, shuddering.
Looking back, I’m amazed to remember how steadily I remained upright through all this speaking about things mostly unspoken of. Our husbands’ salaries. Our own allowances. The black market. Shoplifting. Prostitutes. The cleft palates of the generals’ daughters. I’d been raised with all the lace-curtain refinements of the era, an era when so many words, so many concepts, were verboten. My friend Stella Carney could talk politics with the aplomb and seriousness of any man, but our conversations about sex were always full of euphemisms, winks, and nods.
And although, as I said, I’d known wealthy girls at school, and I certainly knew something about fundraising, I had never encountered this kind of—what to call it?—grossly mercenary matter-of-factness. Not in any females of my acquaintance.
Charlene and I both turned our eyes to the seated Barbie. Even with her white skin and her blond ponytail flattened beneath her hat, she did indeed seem a somewhat more buxom replica of the lovely young girls of Saigon. I noticed for the first time that her eyes were almond-shaped.
With a laugh, Charlene cried out, “How sick would that be? Generals beating off on our sweet Barbies. Getting their goo on Lily’s pretty handiwork.”
Perhaps I did waver a bit then, because Charlene suddenly took my arm, much as she had done in the garden just the day before, aligning our hips, holding her cigarette away as you did in those days when you smoked around a child.
“Lily’s making great progress,” she said. “So if you’ll swing by Marcia Case’s villa next Wednesday morning as we planned, pick up the outfits, and drop them here—just give them to the houseboy, I’ll be out of town—I’ll wrap them up nicely and start delivering to the ladies. Once I’ve collected the cash, I’ll see my money guy. Then, on Saturday morning, we can visit the children and bring our little gifts. You’ll come, yes?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You go to Mass at the cathedral?” she asked.
I was already too nonplussed to be further nonplussed by this non sequitur. “Yes,” I said.
She reached toward the bookcase to stamp out her cigarette. “Of course,” she said. “You’re the Kellys. What was your maiden name?”
“Riordan,” I said.
She laughed her I’ll apologize for laughing at you later laugh. As uncontrollable as a sneeze. Who can be blamed for a sneeze? “Of course it was,” she said.
She pulled me a bit closer. “But would you be my guest at St. Christopher’s, our church, this Sunday? You and your husband, of course. We only have the one service, at eleven, so if you wanted to catch a Mass at the cathedral earlier in the day…”
She hesitated. “I guess you don’t say ‘catch a Mass.’”
“No,” I said.
She fluttered her fingers as if to clear away the smoke—to clear away any notion that she’d misspoken. “It’s just that your presence will give me a chance to sell a few more outfits. I’ll have my Rainey put the ao dai in her purse. I don’t allow her to bring dolls to church. After the service, I can introduce you to the various ladies over the lemonade and cookies, mention your wonderful fundraiser, and Rainey can produce the outfit. All completely spontaneous. I do hate a hard sell. And if the ambassador and his wife are in town, so much the better. Little Caroline Kennedy just may end up with one of our Saigon Barbies. Can you imagine?”
I barely noticed that as she spoke, she was moving us imperceptibly toward the door.
I said I’d ask my husband. In truth, I wasn’t sure Peter would be willing to show up at a Protestant church.
Just as we were about to cross the threshold of her office, Charlene laughed again. “Tricia,” she said, with some sudden exasperation—once more we were fond friends from a long-ago girlhood, a history of sleepovers between us—“aren’t you going to ask me about the pillboxes?”
Of course, I immediately glanced at the boxes piled behind the Barbie on her desk, even as I said, as if I had no idea, “I’m sorry?”
“You can’t be as incurious as you pretend,” she said flatly. “Not that I blame you. Vagueness is a wonderful defense.” She laughed. “Librium,” she said. “Have you taken it?”
I said I had not.
“Calms you down,” she said. “I have my own prescription but my sister has another friend in pharmaceuticals. My sister has many friends. I’ll make some money on about half of them.” And then, as if I hadn’t caught on: “Black market,” she whispered.
Even still, I didn’t swoon. “What about the other half?” I asked her.
She smiled, fondly, still in her Isn’t that just like you? mode.
“Those are for little ole me,” she said. Those straight teeth and those flashing green eyes. “Night terrors,” she said. Only the corners of her smooth lips turned down. “I wouldn’t wish them on Khrushchev.”
* * *
SHE OFFERED TO WALK ME to the street to get a cab, but just as we returned to the foyer, you came in through the villa’s front door, followed by your father.
You looked up at me, fondly, I thought, if a little startled, and said, “Hello, again.” Very adult. Your mother corrected you: “Mrs. Kelly. Good afternoon, Mrs. Kelly,” and admonished, you repeated the phrase, holding out your little hand, which felt so hot in mine I wondered for a moment if you were running a fever. I wanted to tell you immediately that your Barbie was home, on the desk in your mother’s office and wearing a new hat, but I sensed this was Charlene’s news to deliver—or, I imagined, to withhold.
Charlene was explaining that the American school didn’t go until three—“as we do back home”—because of the heat. “Which delights this child to no end,” she added. “No scholar here.”
I saw how you ducked your head under the blow of this maternal jibe. I understood that you considered us equals and did not appreciate being made childish in my presence. I got it.
Kent, your father, was a tall guy who seemed to take up all the space in the wide foyer. He was good-looking, with a big face and straight white teeth to match Charlene’s. Despite the glistening sweat across his forehead, he managed to keep a Kennedyesque wave in his damp hair. He needed a shower—his shirt front was dark with perspiration and his pale suit jacket looked limp, puckered at the armpits. This whiff of male body odor was a familiar scent in those days. People forget. (I hope you’re laughing again, although it’s true.) He carried a leather schoolbag, which he handed to you before he shook my hand.
That scent of leather, of manly sweat, can evoke for me, to this day, my time among the American men in Vietnam as much as the smell of diesel fuel or fish sauce brings back Saigon itself.
Charlene introduced me as “Peter Kelly’s wife,” and although Kent said, “Of course, Pete,” he gave no indication that he remembered me from the day before. Or that he had seen his baby chucking up all over my dress.
And then, as if I had conjured the child, one of the servants entered the salon behind us with Charlene’s baby on her shoulder.
Kent’s face lit up. It’s a cliché, but there you go: that’s what happened. “Hey, there he is,” he exclaimed, and seemed ready to leave us behind. But Charlene took his arm. “Tricia’s just leaving,” Charlene told him. “Will you walk her out and get her a cab?”
He bowed. “Of course.” But the faux gallantry could not hide the fact that this was the last thing he wanted to do.
I objected. Charlene insisted. And then Kent made a joke about who wore the pants in this family of his. A familiar married-man joke. In response, Charlene ducked her head in much the same way her daughter had just done: aware of the attempt to diminish her in front of a new friend. Acquiescent but not happy.
“Sunday, then,” she said to me. She did not lean forward to air-kiss or touch cheeks as the other ladies had done. I was just as well pleased. “I’ll look for you after the service.”
And I plunged into the midday heat with her husband clasping my elbow.
As we crossed the portico he said, “Pete tells me you’ve settled in Virginia now, is that right?”
“Hardly settled,” I told him. “We had only a few weeks before we came here. My sister-in-law is minding the house till we get back—”
“I grew up in Virginia,” he said, speaking over me as if he hadn’t heard a word I said. Perhaps he hadn’t—he was very tall. “Both Virginia and New York.” (I promise you I did not foolishly cry out, “Thomas Jefferson! Al Smith!”) “Virginia is much nicer. Make Pete keep you in Virginia.”
We’d barely left the gate when a noisy little Renault pulled up to the curb. Those ubiquitous blue-and-white taxis. You remember, I’m sure. Kent opened the door for me and then reached into his pocket to pay the driver. I tried to object, but he held up his hand as he leaned into the window, said a few quick words in French to the young man behind the wheel. Over the noise of the engine, I shouted my thanks, and he replied with the full charm of his good looks and straight teeth and wilted JFK pompadour.
“Just don’t let Charlene lure you into her cabal,” he said. And the cab pulled away.
When I leaned forward to give the driver my address, he waved his hand as if to brush a whining mosquito from his ear. “I got it. I got it,” he said.
And took me to our door. I guess I wondered at the time how it was that Kent did not know that Peter never went by “Pete”—no more than I had ever gone by “Tricia”—and yet he knew where we lived. It was a mystery I never bothered to explore.
AFTER SOME INITIAL DOUBT—of the How will it look? sort—Peter agreed to attend the Episcopal service. A gesture in keeping, he reasoned, with the good pope’s move toward (a new word for us) ecumenical understanding. As long as we sat in the back and didn’t receive communion. And went to the earlier Mass at the cathedral, of course.
We would not have believed, in those days, that a Protestant mass was a legitimate substitute for our Sunday obligation. Mere bread and wine versus actual body and blood. Mere ceremony versus miraculous transubstantiation. That sort of thing.
The president of the United States was a Catholic then and so, still, was the president of Vietnam and his family. Years later, really toward the end of his life when he spoke about these things more freely, Peter told me how important it had been to him in those days that the U.S. was supporting a Catholic regime in Vietnam.
There was to his mind, then anyway, something divinely ordained about Diem and his brother and even Madame Nhu, as crass and vain as some of us found her.
Personally, I never forgave her for her “barbecue” remark after the first Buddhist monk set himself on fire—what was it she’d said? One can’t be responsible for the madness of others. And yet, she had banned contraception and abortion and closed the dance halls, as a good Catholic sovereign should.
It was a rough alliance, Peter admitted, our shoring up the Diem regime, full of compromise, but an alliance that seemed to portend the redemption he so believed in then. Redemption not just for the Far East but for all the world, for all of us in it.
* * *
BEFORE WE WERE MARRIED, Peter’s mother had shown me a small gift she was waiting to bestow, “when the time comes.” It was a diaper pin—does your generation even remember there was such a thing?—with a pale blue plastic cover at the top and a tiny blue medal attached to the circle of steel at the bottom. A medal so small that it took me a moment to decipher it: an image of the Virgin Mary, a Miraculous Medal, in the parlance of our times.
Peter, she told me, had been dedicated to the Blessed Mother at his baptism, and had worn this medal on his diapers until he grew old enough to wear a larger version around his neck. I was familiar with this larger version. He wore it every day under his clothes.
I’m not sure, to be honest, what people know anymore. So much that was common knowledge back then is a cipher now. Do you know what I refer to when I say Fátima? A small village in Portugal where the Blessed Mother appeared on multiple occasions to three peasant children. This was during the First World War. The Virgin asked the children to tell the world to pray the rosary. She promised that if Russia could be consecrated to her sacred heart, communism and all its pernicious errors—atheism, materialism, war and persecution and moral confusion—would be defeated. Satan’s “diabolical disorientation”—as the nuns at Marymount used to put it—would not overwhelm us.
