Follow Focus
42
Home, Please
THE SHIPS BROKE FORMATION Sunday morning, leaving some behind to continue to pick up stragglers. Others would return to patrol the South China Sea after they had discharged their current boatload of passengers. I wondered how long people would continue to flee the communist regime. I figured it would depend a lot on how well they were integrated into the society. I didn’t figure much would change for the average person trying to eke out a living on the farm.
Obviously, the wealthy would suffer. Wasn’t that what communism was supposed to do? Redistribute the wealth? I had to wonder whose pocket it would get redistributed to. As far as I could tell, one government was the same as another. American politics taught me to be a cynic.
We’d been informed through the daily ship’s bulletin that the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam had been raised over the presidential palace at the same time the US embassy was being evacuated. I really wished the people of Vietnam well, but I didn’t hold much hope that life there would improve in the next twenty years.
We went up on deck for a while to observe, but there really isn’t a lot to look at when you are just cruising across open water. I checked in with Miss Lim, and she said there wouldn’t be much activity until we docked at Subic Bay.
“You should just go enjoy your honeymoon,” she smirked. “We’ll have a disembarkation strategy session and dinner at 1700. You’ll be expected there. The admiral and the ambassador are working out details with the ambassador to the Philippines and the State Department. We expect to dock mid-morning tomorrow.”
“I guess that gives us our current orders,” I said. “I really need to make phone calls back home as soon as a phone is available. My family doesn’t know where I am and I currently am not sure where they are. I need to call in to the office in Chicago.”
“The time difference to Chicago is thirteen hours. You won’t find anyone in the office until at least nine tomorrow evening.”
“Great. Just great.”
The embassy staff with the executive staff of the fleet met for dinner in the officers’ mess. It was almost elegant. The food was good and there was a lot of self-congratulations around the table for managing the evacuation so successfully.
“Since March 24, we have managed the evacuation of 130,000 souls from Vietnam,” the ambassador said. “There are currently 70,000 aboard the fleet. We should be proud of that.”
“Unfortunately, disembarking 70,000 mostly undocumented souls in Manila will be as much a problem as scooping them out of the sea,” the admiral said. “It will require all of us to manage the process. Just as getting them all fed is creating headaches and a strain on ships’ galleys even as we speak. I can say no one is going hungry on the ships, but they aren’t eating four-star meals like we’re having tonight. Another day at sea and we would have to consider rationing. Hence our decision to get underway when we did.”
“The Navy and the embassy in Manila are setting up kitchens and processing at the base. We’ll disembark flagship staff and consulate employees first,” the ambassador continued. “We will move immediately to our screening stations. Mr. Hart, your equipment will be joined by that of two other teams. The focus will be on visas for those connecting to the US. Supplies are in hand to replenish your station. While management of your station is your business, I will suggest that you turn over the functionality to local personnel. You should retreat then to a separate station where you can review each visa and validate it.”
“Me, sir?”
“None of us are pretending that you cannot seal visas on behalf of the State Department. We’ll have staff to take over coordinating the dependents as you validate the visas. Nor will we need to process everyone. Many, if not most of the refugees, have escaped from the communists in Vietnam. They have not specifically requested immigration to the US. Therefore, the government of the Philippines will also be processing emergency refugee visas for those not expressing an interest in immigrating.”
“What about housing?” Bruce asked.
“Rooms for staff have been confirmed on base. Three refugee camps have been prepared for non-citizens. It isn’t luxury quarters, but most of these people are used to living with extended families in a single dwelling. Sometimes in a single room. They’ll be fed and sheltered,” the ambassador’s aide said. “The biggest tie-up will be US citizens with their non-citizen dependents. They are responsible for what happens next. They will be stamped as admitted to the Philippines, but then they need to make their own lodging and travel arrangements.”
“There will be travel agents available to handle the traffic,” Miss Lim said. “They have direct access to what hotels have rooms available throughout the city. Chartered buses will be moving people from intake at the base to hotels.”
“Once again, that does not apply to people in this room. Essential embassy and consulate staff will be housed on-base,” the ambassador said.
With that, the discussion turned to a timetable for when people would be disembarking from each ship, how many citizens and dependents, how many non-citizen immigrants and dependents, and how many non-immigrant refugees and dependents. The passport and visa agents had been hard at work on all the ships ever since the first arrivals.
When Xian and I got back to our cabin, we still found things awkward and a little embarrassing. We were exploring how each other felt, what we expected, and what we wanted.
“Xian, we’ve been pretty open with each other so far, and I want that to continue. Success in any relationship is based on trust and communication. The thing I’m most stressed about is explaining this all to my wives and children,” I said.
“Will they hate me, Nate?” she asked, a little fearfully.
There was one chair in the room—not a particularly comfortable one—but I sat on it and held Xian on my lap.
“No. I have a lot of faith in my family, regarding how they will treat you. It will require a period of adjustment. I’m adding a new member to the family that none of them have met before,” I said. “That’s really the problem point. It’s always been understood that adding another member to the family was a family decision. Trust and communication, remember? But I haven’t been able to communicate with them. They will be taken completely by surprise. I’m about guaranteeing they’ll be shocked.”
“Nate, I will do whatever is necessary to be accepted by them. I, too, have joined a family after knowing only one member. I don’t know how a multiple partner family works. I scarcely know how having only one partner works. I’m so afraid they won’t like me—or that I won’t like them!”
“I think we need to calm our fears a little,” I said. “We can expect some tension at first, but I’m sure we’ll be able to work it out.”
“Though it hurts for me to say it, if it doesn’t work out, I will accept a divorce without complaint. I will never intentionally be the cause of disrupting your family,” Xian said.
“I’m praying that will never be a problem. While the whole marriage thing took me by surprise, it is just the word and legal ramification that is discomforting to me. I am very fond of you, Xian. We have shared something that has brought us together unlike anything else ever could have,” I said. “Waking up in the middle of the night, both startled by the vibration, was a sign of that. But what I found in my arms was my wife. And I realized I am more than fond of you. It might be too early in our relationship to declare ourselves forever in love, but it is not too early to tell you I love you.”
“And I love you, though I scarcely know the meaning of the word. I will learn. I have heard—according to popular songs—that love grows. I will let mine grow for you and accept that for neither of us is it what it will become.”
I kissed her and that slightly tentative act soon deepened. Before long, we were naked in bed and things were growing.
We docked a little after dawn on Monday morning. Xian and I had packed up our equipment and loaded it on the trolley. I had my courier bag around my neck and the camera bag slung at my other side. We’d ‘borrowed’ a laundry bag from our cabin to pack our few clothes into and Xian carried that.
We were among the first off the ship and were directed immediately to a customs officer who stamped our passports. Then a local staff person showed us where the other passport technicians had set up the two stations I’d trained them on just a month ago.
“We’ve really been getting a workout on this equipment,” Royce Holland said. He was one of the guys in uniform I’d trained. He was being assisted by Jan Davis. “We’ve been running to the Air Force Base and the airport to meet with refugees flying in. This is the first batch coming in by ship.”
“Are there two more techs we can call in?” I asked. “I’ve been told I’ll be reviewing and validating finished visas. I need someone else to operate the extra equipment.”
“I’ll make a call,” Jan said. She ran to the office in the rather large warehouse-type building we were in. Corridors were roped off to keep people in line. Signs were printed in both English and Vietnamese. It was obvious the crews here in Manila had been preparing for this over the weekend—perhaps all month.
I set the equipment up at the station we’d been given and got a share of supplies from the other stations. We would be putting the bindery to full use with extra pages for the inside of visas and passports. Before people reached our stations, they had to stop to have templates typed from their application documents. Three passport agents from the various consulates were busy typing and reviewing the documents. Then another agent would lead the applicant and his dependents to one of the stations for photographs.
Before we really had a line for photos, two of the other technicians I’d trained had shown up at my station and I left the equipment in their care. I took down the serial numbers and had the techs sign for the equipment as a permanent transfer to the Manila embassy. Then China and I went to the back of the area where the rope lanes converged, and set up shop to validate visas as they were finished.
I pulled the seal from my courier bag and got the first visa to look at. This was different than what I’d been doing earlier. I depended on the agents to have the right information entered and to keep the clients together. In this setting, validating the visa took longer than actually manufacturing it. I had to check the information on the document, with Xian reading over my shoulder to verify any print in Vietnamese. After the visa was validated, then we checked the applicant’s affidavits to be sure there was one properly signed and witnessed for each member of his party.
To relieve some of the growing physical stress, I swapped hands for squeezing the crimper every so often, and even used one hand to hold it steady while I leaned on it with my other forearm to crimp the seal. Between that and some aspirin, I somehow managed to keep going. After my aching arms sealed the document, an agent conducted the visa-holder and his family to customs where he got his passport and all the affidavits stamped by the Philippines’ passport control. Beyond that station, the family was loaded onto one of the charter buses with whatever belongings they had, and they were taken to one of the three refugee camps.
It was a long and tedious process. We’d managed several hundred documents by the time the line dwindled at about eight in the evening. All I’d had since breakfast was coffee and I was getting hungry and testy, and with all of that and the aspirin my stomach was complaining on multiple levels. It was going to take days to get everyone processed.
We were shown to our room and then to the mess on base. After a basic meal, I managed to find a phone and place my call to the home office.
“Passport Technician Training and Support. This is Josie Wallis.”
“Josie! Thank God I’m finally in touch with someone who can help me. It’s Nate.”
“Nate! You’re safe! When are you coming home?”
“When you get my flights arranged. I need to stay in Manila another two days to get all the refugees processed. Where’s my family?” I demanded.
“Oh, God! If my information is correct, they are still in England, but should be headed home this week.”
“England?”
“Miss May was taken seriously ill. The nurse in Muscat tentatively diagnosed meningitis and said she didn’t have anything but antibiotics to treat it with. She said Miss May needed to be hospitalized. Miss Marx swept into action and got your plane to fly them direct to London. Or as direct as they could. I understand they refueled in Italy. Miss May was hospitalized immediately. The diagnosis was changed to encephalitis, still serious but not as critical as meningitis.”
“Is she still in the hospital?”
“No. She called on Friday the twenty-fifth to say she was being released. The rest of the family had joined her and she planned to spend a week recovering there before returning home.”
“That’s been ten days ago. Did she say where she was staying or when she was returning?” I asked.
“No. At that time, the only information we had on you was that you were still in Saigon. Then this week everything fell apart. We got your telex indicating you were safe, but had no way to forward the information to your family. I’ve been staying through full business hours in London to make sure I could receive a call when it came in.”
“You know, I think I’m done with international travel. I don’t plan to ever be out of the same time zone as my family again. Please get me a late flight out of Manila to Chicago on Wednesday. When the family calls, tell them I’m on my way home.”
“I can do that.”
“And, Josie, there will be two returning from Manila.” I gave her Xian’s passport information and told her I’d signed an affidavit of support for her, so she was coming to the US under my sponsorship. I decided against telling her we were married. Let her assume what she wanted from the name. I wanted to give that information to my family directly, not through a third party.
On Tuesday, the day started earlier and was more organized than the previous day had been. About noon, the Manila consul general showed up with a stamp so he could split the work of validating visas with me. He did ask for procedures regarding the affidavits and checked his first few approvals with me, but then he was off and operating with a Vietnamese interpreter at his elbow. That was good. We were processing over a hundred visas an hour all day long.
When we closed the line that evening, it was early enough to go off-base for some food. I took Xian shopping. We bought a suitcase and several other articles of clothing so we weren’t wearing the same thing day after day and washing out our underwear every night. Later that night I called Josie again and took down our flight information. Still no word from the family.
The next morning, I informed the consul general that I would be leaving that afternoon. He made a call and before Xian and I left for the airport, another official from the Manila embassy showed up and took over. I packed my seal in the courier bag and Xian and I caught a cab to the airport.
The flight was at eight in the evening. We’d have a five-hour layover in Tokyo, and then straight to Chicago. With the International Dateline, we’d arrive around four or five o’clock Thursday morning. It was about twenty-two hours.
It was Xian’s first time on an airplane. The plane from Manila to Tokyo was a 737. It was comfortable, but nothing real special. It was night, so there wasn’t much to see out the window. We arrived in Tokyo at one-thirty in the morning and had to check our luggage through customs and have our passports stamped again. We just sat in the lounge, cuddled up and sleeping, until our flight was called at four-thirty.
This time, we were on a 747. First class was typically luxurious and we had a great breakfast before holding each other through a very short day over the ocean and into the night. After a twelve-hour flight, we arrived in Chicago just before we took off from Tokyo.
We had very little with us. I had my courier bag, minimal camera bag, and our small suitcase. I felt bad about not giving Xian a chance to freshen up, but I really needed to get to the office and find out where the hell my family was. We caught a cab and were downtown in forty minutes. We both displayed our department badges and had no difficulty getting in and heading to the ninth floor office. I hadn’t used the time clock since we returned from the Caribbean in January of ’73. I just hadn’t been in this office that much, so we walked right past the clock and to my office. Ronda’s and my office. Our names were still on the door, but the job title had been changed from Passport Technicians to Senior Foreign Service Specialist, Passports and Visas. Not much had changed in our absence. Josie had kept our map up, though, and now there were pins with colored flags across the world. Xian stopped to stare at it.
“You’ve really traveled a lot,” she said. “I feel like an infant just discovering a new world.”
“I hope you aren’t too eager to explore it,” I said. “If I can get back to my family, I don’t think I’ll travel again for a long time.”
“Are they here? In Chicago?”
“I doubt it, but as soon as I get Josie in here, we’ll find out the latest.” I dialed 413 and Josie picked up immediately. She squealed as soon as she heard my voice in the office and in a minute was standing in the doorway.
“You’re here! You made it!” she yelled. Then in a very uncharacteristic Josie moment, she rushed me and wrapped me in a hug. She quickly backed up, covering her embarrassment with a laugh.
“Josie, this is Xian,” I announced. Josie shook her hand and welcomed her. “Now, what have you heard? Where is Ronda and the rest of my family?”
“She called in last night,” Josie said. “Finally! The family is well and they are flying to Detroit on Saturday.”
“Detroit? Oh! Yes! We don’t need to be in Chicago! We can go home. Where have they been?”
“They spent Miss May’s recovery time with your friend, the Countess of Plympford. Apparently, they thought we had the contact information. They were very excited to find that you were on your way home.”
“We will be shortly,” I said. “If the family is headed for Stratford, we should be, too. I’ll call my father and ask him to come and pick us up this afternoon. Then we can drive to Stratford tomorrow. Get me on Mr. Martin’s calendar as quickly as possible, please.”
“Done. He’s in DC but will be in the office at three o’clock. I scheduled you for as soon as he gets back,” Josie said.
“Josie, you’ve always been an incredible lifeline here at the office for us. I’ll miss you.”
“Miss me? Oh, Nate! You’re not quitting, are you?”
“My alternative service ended five weeks ago. I took this last assignment voluntarily and it’s the last time I’ll ever volunteer for anything. As soon as I hand in my badge and camera, I’m gone.”
“There’s so much yet to be done! I don’t know how we’ll handle it.”
“I have at least twenty trainees I can recommend to take over,” I said. “I’m not going to stay a minute longer than I have to. It’s not because we don’t love you, and I’m not speaking for Ronda. She might want to stay with the department. I’m through.”
“I understand. Um… You might want to get a haircut before you meet with Mr. Martin. I’m sure you don’t have other responsibilities here in the office and it would seem to be a waste to just sit here.”
I laughed at her. Yes, I should get a haircut and get my beard trimmed if I was going to take Xian to meet my parents.
“I’ll do that as soon as I call Mom and Dad.”
I locked my courier bag in my desk and took Xian out to do some shopping in Chicago. Dad said he’d plan to pick me up at four. He had our family’s Suburban, so we’d go back to Camp Otterbein for the night and then Xian and I would drive to Stratford on Friday. I wanted to be home when the family arrived. I’d pick them all up at the airport Saturday. I was going to see my wives and daughters again. At last!
I knew the stores in Chicago much better than I knew Manila, so shopping with Xian was a lot easier than our quick trip a few days ago. I wanted to be sure she had everything she would need and I discovered she had very good taste in clothing. She was concerned about how much things cost, but I assured her that we could get all the basics and later she could also go shopping with the other wives.
She chose one very interesting top and skirt. The top was a triangle or kind of diamond of fabric in the front that tied behind her neck and back. She said it was like a traditional Vietnamese top called a yem. I agreed that it looked very attractive. She said it was usually an undergarment worn instead of the western brassiere, but she had seen many women wearing only that garment in Saigon. She was happy to have the piece to wear as underwear. I encouraged her to get three so she would always be comfortable, and she chose colorful silk blouses to wear over them.
At two o’clock, we returned to the office and simply sat with our purchases as I pulled together the things I would need to surrender to Mr. Martin. I made sure I’d separated out the canisters of film I’d shot of Xian and left those I’d shot of the embassy, ambassador, and the DAO. This was my old camera that the department had purchased when I bought myself a new one. I’d taken two lenses with it to Saigon and intended to surrender them all with the bag and the dozen rolls of black and white film.
I still had the box the seal had come in and it was tucked nicely inside. I asked Xian for her black passport as I laid out mine. When Ronda came to the office, either to end her service or to continue working, she could bring the rest of the family’s black passports to surrender. We placed our badges in the pile and I took the few pieces of correspondence I’d been given before I left Manila from the bag. I thought for a moment and decided the bag itself belonged to the department as well. I checked through the desk for any other personal items, and put the picture of our family in my shopping bag after pointing out who everyone was to China.
Promptly at three o’clock we stood outside Mr. Martin’s door and knocked.
“Nate, welcome back Stateside. Josie sent me a note indicating that your family had been found and you would be reunited on Saturday. That’s great. We need to fix more regular ways for you to have contact points before you go out again.”
“I won’t be going out again, Mr. Martin. Here are the things I’m returning to the department.” I laid them out on his desk. “I’ve completed my term of alternative service plus a month. Thank you for this opportunity.”
“Wait, wait! Let’s not be too hasty. I know this past month was difficult, but I’ve received a report that simply glowed with your review from the ambassador. We need you in the State Department. The secretary would not forgive me if I simply let you resign.”
“I’m sorry to cause difficulty with the secretary for you, sir. I can’t go back out there. Never.”
Mr. Martin shook his head and then seemed to notice Xian for the first time.
“Who is this with you, Nate? The ambassador mentioned you were returning with a dependent on a signed affidavit,” he said.
“Mr. Martin, may I present my wife, Xian Armor Nguyen Hart. Xian, this is my boss, Mr. Martin.”
She offered her hand to him and he took it as what I said sank in.
“Wife, Nate? You got married while you were there? That’s sudden. How has your family… Oh, dear. They don’t know, do they?”
“The ambassador made it a condition of allowing Xian to escape. We had the strangest wedding vows I think have ever been recorded and neither of us really comprehended what was going on until he pronounced us man and wife, told me to kiss the bride and sign the paper.” I produced our copy of the marriage certificate with our names, the ambassador’s attestation, and Miss Lim’s witnessing.
“That shouldn’t be,” he said. “I understand that things were desperate and might have merited desperate measures, but we can get this annulled. Neither of you should have been forced into a marriage. I’m sorry.”
“We are going to try to make it work. I plan to take Xian to Canada with me tomorrow and meet the family in Toronto on Saturday. Not exactly ideal, but I have faith in my family.”
“Do you have a visa, Xian?”
“I have my passport,” she said.
“I’ve included our black passports in the packet on your desk. She has only her green passport as I have. Unfortunately, when I made passports on the ship, we had no filler pages, so there is just the cover and identity page.”
“A passport? That would indicate citizenship,” he said, sorting through the pile until he pulled out the document.
“Xian’s father was an American stationed at the embassy in 1954. I hope we will be able to locate him with assistance from the State Department. She was born in the embassy infirmary and has lived all her life in the embassy. Unfortunately, her mother and her papers were lost in the bombing of the embassy in 1965.”
“Oh my. That is complicated. But a passport can be considered evidence of citizenship since you have one. Why don’t we go to the office and have a new passport made with the right number of pages in it?”
He led us to a room that looked remarkably familiar, since I’d been functioning just like this for the past month. There was no one in the room.
“You know how this operates,” he said. “Our equipment is the original model and was never equipped with the key system. Just work your magic. Have a seat, Xian.”
She sat in the chair and I used her current passport to fill in a template while they waited. I could type well when my hands weren’t so sore. I fumbled a bit with the template and Xian moved me aside to type up the information. Then I inserted the template and centered her in the lens. In a second, the camera was moving the new photo through the laminating process. Mr. Martin signed the application form and I sent the new passport into the bindery with a green cover and the right number of filler pages.
Then he looked at my passport, which was full, and had me make up a form for a new one. Xian typed and I sat in the chair as Mr. Martin pressed the shutter release. In two minutes, I had a new passport as well. He carried the documents as we returned to his office and used the State Department seal I’d been carrying to validate them. He then used a hole punch to invalidate our old passports and handed them back to us.
“You should apply for a Social Security number as soon as possible,” he said to Xian. “With a passport and a social, no one will ever question your citizenship. That includes if you decide to have your marriage annulled. Simply request my presence and I will attest to it.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. He motioned us to sit down and sank into his own chair with a heavy sigh.
“I really don’t want to lose you as an employee, Nate,” he said. “I understand where you are coming from and I can’t say that I blame you. I asked extraordinary things of you and you shone. In September of 1971, I was in a symposium and listened to a young man say that he was nobody, but that like all the men and women of his generation, he hoped one day to become somebody. Nate, you have shown many times over that you are somebody. Here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to keep your file open as an employee for the summer, just as we would if you were coming back to work in September. Please just consider it. Tell Ronda I’ll do the same with hers. We’ll talk at the end of the summer, and if you still feel the same way, I’ll file the termination papers.”
“Thank you, sir. I don’t think it makes any sense, but I won’t contest waiting until September. If you’ll excuse us, my father is out there circling the block waiting to pick us up.”
“Certainly. Xian, welcome to America.”
“Thank you, Mr. Martin.”
We gathered our packages and suitcase and left the office. As far as I was concerned, it was for the last time.
Dad pulled up to the curb five minutes after we left the building.
I introduce Xian to Dad when we got in the car. I had her slide to the center of the front seat rather than sitting in back. I gave Dad only the thinnest of outlines of promising to support Xian so she could leave the country. I wanted to wait until we were with Mom and Dad together before I broached the subject of my marriage.
It was only an hour out to the campground. Some of the summer staff had already arrived and the first batch of campers would be coming in on Sunday. Mom was openly weeping when we arrived and I thought she’d never let go of me when she hugged me. All she’d gathered from my earlier phone call was that I’d been in Vietnam, which she knew from a call Ronda had made from Muscat the week after I left.
“Mom and Dad, I need to make an official introduction. I told you I had a dependent. This is Xian Nguyen Armor Hart—my wife.”
“Your…?” Mom was open mouthed. Dad is a lot simpler in his outlook on life. Perhaps less cluttered by religion.
“Another daughter! Welcome Cheyenne.” He opened his arms to hug her. Well, that was actually closer to the pronunciation than China was.
“Thank you, Mr. Hart. Reverend Hart, I promise to be a good and faithful wife to your son,” Xian said.
“The rest of the girls call me Papa Rich,” Dad said.
“You need to tell us all about how this came about,” Mom said. “Over dinner. Nate, the rest…?”
“I guess they’ll all find out on Saturday. We haven’t been able to talk since I left for Vietnam the first of April.”
It was a tense and uncomfortable conversation. Mom tried not to say anything to offend Xian, but she was definitely having trouble coming to grips with her son returning from Vietnam with a Vietnamese wife.
“So, then, it’s not actually a legal marriage as it would be in the United States,” she ventured, after we’d told the whole story about how the ambassador had insisted it was the only way she’d be allowed into the country.
I pulled our marriage certificate out of my bag and handed it to her. She read it and shook her head.
“It still needs to be filed with the relevant jurisdiction,” she said.
“Well, in this case, the relevant jurisdiction is the embassy in Saigon, which will have all their remaining legal papers filed with the State Department. I assure you, the ambassador and Miss Lim will be sure this certificate is filed as well,” I said.
Mom seemed reluctant to let the subject drop, but Dad stepped in and asked us to tell about the last month in Vietnam. They’d heard all kinds of reports in newspaper and there were horrific images that played on the TV. We agreed that most of them had been accurate from one perspective, though for us the real horror hadn’t set in until the last few days as we were trying to get out of the DAO with the VC shelling the airport.
Eventually, I suggested that we’d been in transit for the past forty-some hours and really needed some sleep. Once that was settled, I led Xian to the shower and told her to take her time and enjoy the feeling of unlimited hot water and scented soaps and shampoos. She took her new nightclothes into the bathroom and gave me a quick kiss before closing the door. I went back downstairs to confront my mother.
“Okay, Mom. Let’s have it,” I said a little harshly.
“It’s just such a shock! You have three wonderful wives and two beautiful children. I’m trying not to be judgmental—I am—but I’m so worried about your family,” she said. She was crying. I held her in my arms to comfort her.
“I’m worried about my family, too,” I said. “You just can’t imagine what this last month—five weeks has been like. I’ve been desperate to talk to them. But Ronda became extremely ill and the entire family decamped to England without letting our office know where they were. I only managed to get a couple of messages out, asking the office to find them. Josie did her best, bless her, but they thought she knew where Lady Jane lived and didn’t give her the contact info. This could be a Shakespearean play performed in Stratford this summer, but I don’t know yet if it is a comedy or a tragedy.”
“Do you care for her?” Mom asked.
“Oh, yes. Mom, we spent nearly every waking minute together in Saigon. She was the one anchor I had that kept me from simply bolting and abandoning my job. She reminded me of the good I was doing and held me when I wept for loneliness. We became very close.”
“That close?” Mom asked, trying to imply a relationship that hadn’t blossomed in Saigon.
“No, Mom. We didn’t become that close until after we were married. How’s that? Your son finally waited until marriage to have sex with his wife.” I laughed and Mom joined, a little weakly.
“Nate, I promised you years ago that I would love and honor the ones you loved and honored to the very best of my ability. I promise it will be the same with Xian. Would you pray with me?”
“Yes, Mom. Please pray for the safety, love, and acceptance of my family.”
Once Xian was out of the shower and in the bedroom, I gave her a quick kiss and promised I would be right back after I’d also showered. She looked at the big bed in the room.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “This is our room for tonight. It has frequently been the room I share with my wives.”
“It’s okay?” she asked.
“Yes. I promise. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I grabbed a clean pair of boxers so I wouldn’t be running through my parents’ house naked and went to shower.
“Are all beds in America like this?” Xian asked when I joined her. “It’s so big and soft.”
“Well, we do put a priority on our sleeping arrangements,” I laughed. “Maybe not all beds are this comfy, but you’ll find my family’s beds are definitely this comfortable. And even bigger.”
“Yes. I can imagine with three wives you must need a very big bed.”
“Four,” I said, kissing her softly.
“I’m so worried, Nate. Your mother doesn’t like me.”
“That’s not true, honey. It was just such a shock that it will take her a bit to adjust. She wants to love you like my other wives. Fully. Just remember that she’s known them for nine years. She just met you and it will take a little getting used to.”
“Your father… Papa Rich… didn’t seem to take much time at all.”
“Dad is simple. You are my wife, therefore he loves you like a daughter. Just as he loves my other wives. To Toni and Alex, he is their beloved Gampa. He dotes on them and would keep my wives as his daughters even if something happened that caused us to split up.”
“This won’t cause you to split up, will it, Nate? I’ll go back to Vietnam if it does.”
“Xian, you do not ever need to return to Vietnam. You are safe now and I have promised to protect and care for you. Nothing will stop that.”
“Can we… um… make love in this big bed? I’ve heard that in America people don’t have sex in their parents’ homes.”
“Well, we do. Yes, my lovely precious wife. We can make love and take all the time we need doing it.”
As it turned out, we didn’t need that much time. We were both desperate to reassure each other of our love and commitment, but we were just as desperate for sleep.
“Well, we own a house here in the Chicago area, but it is rented out. For the past two years, we lived nine months in London, England and eight months in Muscat, Oman. In the summers since 1970, we’ve lived at our home in Stratford, Ontario. That’s where we’re headed now.”
“It seems so strange to talk about how you have two homes. And to see the map where you’ve traveled. And to see your parents’ home. I did not realize you were so wealthy,” she said.
“Wealth is a relative thing. I got very lucky with my photography business when I was younger. I had sponsors who supplied all my photography needs and bought photos. And then a movie company hired me to be a consultant and paid me a lot of money. And my photographs won some awards and many were sold for a lot of money.”
“Why two homes?”
“Well, back in 1968 and 69, the war in Vietnam was a real threat to us. We had a draft in America and young men were conscripted into the army and many were sent to Vietnam to fight. To fight and die. You might have a different perspective on this, but I considered the entire war effort—especially the draft—to be a corrupt enterprise devoted to propping up a corrupt government at the cost of thousands of lives. I attempted to become a conscientious objector, but my draft board made it almost impossible. So, we invested in a house and business in Canada, just in case I needed to move there to avoid the draft.”
“But you were a conscientious objector. You said so and Mr. Martin agreed,” she said.
“Yes. That was a parting gift from my draft board. Even though the draft had technically ended, as soon as I graduated from college, my draft board reclassified me as a CO and told me all conscientious objectors were required to serve. It was a kind of shady deal, but I had campaigned publicly against the war and the draft on the grounds that I was a conscientious objector. To me that meant more than just avoiding the war. It meant I needed to live up to my ethics and serve. Mr. Martin acquired my contract from the draft board so he could use me to travel to the embassies and install the new passport technology.”
“Why did you finally go to Vietnam? Your service was over.”
“Yeah. I think I’ll be explaining that to my wives more than explaining how I happened to come back with another wife.”
I drove on in silence for a few miles. I liked that Xian had automatically occupied the center seat in front so she was right next to me. I put an arm around her, though I seldom drove one-handed.
“It all comes down to the same thing,” I said. “I never hated the Vietnamese people. I hated what we had done to them. Fifty thousand Americans died in Vietnam. I heard estimates as high as two million Vietnamese. I’m not distinguishing between the North and South. Americans killed well over half that number. We bombed. We denuded forests. We shot. We used everything in our arsenal except nuclear weapons to kill people in Vietnam. And when Mr. Martin explained that I could make a difference by going to Saigon and making sure more people escaped who would be purged in the reunification, I had to…”
Tears were in my eyes, making it difficult to drive. I pulled to the shoulder and stopped the car while I wept. I never wanted to go to Vietnam, but it seemed like such a small thing that I could do to help save lives instead of spending them.
“I had to,” I repeated.
I managed to get control of myself eventually and we resumed our journey. We shifted the conversation to more of what life was like in our family.
I think the most shocking thing to Xian was that my wives were lovers with each other and not just with me. It took her a while to comprehend how that was even possible, but at nineteen, Xian was far more open to all possibilities than perhaps an older woman would be.
We reached Stratford in the evening and had dinner at the pub. Then I introduced her to our apartment. I checked the phone to make sure the line was working and opened things up to get the apartment aired out. I showed Xian the studio and she was very impressed by my gallery. I wondered if I would ever really take that kind of photo again. There were a thousand images taking shape in my mind that were not simply glamour portraits.
My vision had been influenced… perhaps even fully reshaped by my experience over the past few months.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
