A Mother's Heart (23 page)

He looked away from her and added, “And you’ve saved me.”

“Saved you? From what?”

“From myself. One of the Jesuit tenets I never bothered to master was humility. I know I can be insufferably cocky and full of myself, buying into the humanitarian and healer labels the world has bestowed on me and convincing myself that because I was on a mission, anything I did to accomplish it was right. You stood up to my bullshit. You spoke the truth. Thank you.”

“I’m the one who needs to say ‘thank you.’ You pushed me to see beyond myself.”

“I wish we had more time. Just think of all the improvements we could effect in each other.” He smiled, and she rewarded him with a smile of her own. It eased the intensity of their revelations and postponed for a few brief moments the reality that awaited them.

“Will you ride with us to Tan Son Nhut?”

“No. I’m leaving for Cambodia this evening. With the orphans being evacuated, my work here is done.”

“Then this is where we say goodbye?” She couldn’t hide the pain in her voice.

“Not goodbye. I told you that the other night at the Continental.” He was gentle in his correction of her words.

“What do we say?”

“This,” he said. And took her face in his hands, drew her toward him and kissed her. His breath, his pulse, his courage, his compassion filled the emptiness that had been carved out by her fear. They held each other in silence until the afternoon rain began its steady drumbeat and the buses pulled into the courtyard.

T
HE RIDE
to Tan Son Nhut was wrenching. The familiar landmarks of the city rolled by the clouded windows of the bus. Many of the buildings were empty, abandoned by merchants who had been serving Americans for almost a decade but who had seen the handwriting on the wall. A Coca-Cola sign flapped in the steamy breeze hanging by one corner, a broken chain dangling from the other.

From the moment the buses entered the heavily guarded airport past a desperate throng pressed up against the chain link fence, Mel understood how challenging a journey lay ahead of her. Tien began to cry as soon as they boarded the plane and could not be consoled. Improvising, Mel wrapped her in a sling and carried her for hours—first as they settled the children in their seats and makeshift cradles and then as an emigration official compared the information on the tag pinned to each child with the documents Mel had secured, his face impenetrable as he scrutinized every detail. She felt out of character balancing a baby on her hip. It was at once both unfamiliar and reinforcing. It was something so simple, but so clearly right for Tien, who responded with her body. She realized how incongruous she might look to her
Newsweek
colleagues, standing up to power and authority with a baby in her arms. But in a strange way she felt infused with a power all her own because of Tien. She was the fiercely protective she-wolf guarding her pups from predators. No one was going to take any of these children off the plane.

As soon as the official reluctantly signed off on the manifest, they were cleared for takeoff. Mel glanced out the window. Night had fallen. “Farewell, Saigon,” Mel whispered. “Farewell, Phil.” They lifted off and the plane banked toward the China Sea and the unknown.

The next twenty hours were a blur, caring for the children, snatching a few hours of rest and all the while holding Tien close to her.

When they landed in San Diego, nurses and ambulances were waiting on the runway to whisk the children away to the base hospital for checkups and care.

Mel stood in the doorway of the plane, Tien asleep and still sprawled across her hip in the sling. She blinked in the brilliant California sunshine, her eyes adjusting from the dimness of the plane. Around her everyone was crisp and energetic and efficient. She descended the stairs and a pair of hands reached out to take Tien from her.

As the nurse slipped her out of the sling, Tien woke up, took one look at the strange face and began to scream. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s okay.” She held the unhappy, struggling baby with practiced ease. “I’m a pediatric nurse and I go through this all the time with kids and their moms. She’ll calm down soon,” she reassured Mel.

“She hasn’t been separated from me since we left Saigon. I’m not so sure she’s able to calm down.”

“Don’t worry. It’s frightening for all children to have their routines disrupted. But the good news is, they’re flexible and, at this age, their memories are short. We’ll get her cleaned up and fed and before you know it, she’ll be united with her adoptive family and settling into life as a little American girl.”

“She doesn’t have a family yet. The agency hasn’t identified one. Where will she stay?”

“Here on base for a few days. Then the agency responsible for her will take custody.”

All the while, Tien continued screaming and reaching out for Mel.

“You need some rest. We’ve got temp quarters set up for you aid workers in the gym. Hot showers, hot meal, a real bed. Go ahead, take care of yourself now.”

She pointed to a bus waiting to transport the adults.

Mel felt the accumulated fatigue and emotional assault of the last few weeks; she also felt an emptiness where she had carried Tien against her body.

She reached out for the little girl and took her back into her arms.

“I’ll stay with her until I know she’s settled down,” Mel said and went with Tien to the hospital.

M
EL WAS GRATEFUL
for the continued efficiency of everyone at the base, although the sunny can-do attitudes grated somewhat against her darker view of humanity. Tien was quickly examined and cleared. Rather than risk another bout of inconsolable crying, Mel bathed and dressed her herself.

Someone even provided a rocking chair along with a warm bottle and the two of them drifted into a state of contentment that Mel hadn’t known before. When Tien was finally in a deep sleep, a nurse showed Mel to a crib where she could lay her down. Mel hovered over her for several minutes, expecting another outburst, but she was clearly sound asleep and Mel tiptoed out of the room.

As she passed the nurses’ station, the nurse on duty stopped her.

“Are you Melanie Ames, the reporter who arrived on the babylift flight this afternoon?”

Mel groaned inwardly as she acknowledged who she
was. What, had
Newsweek
already tracked her down, chomping at the bit for a story about the flight?

“We have a phone message for you, asking you to call someone named Dessie.”

Mel’s heart, already pulled in so many directions in the last twenty-four hours, plunged. She found the phone the nurse pointed her towards and hoped as she dialed with trembling fingers that Dessie had called only to reassure herself that Mel had arrived safely in San Diego.

Mel almost didn’t recognize Dessie’s voice when she answered the phone, it was so frail and distant. She sounded to Mel like she was under water and later Mel understood that it had been the water of her tears that had so distorted her speech.

“Grandma, it’s Melanie. I’ve arrived safely in San Diego.”

“Oh, sweetheart, thank God! I couldn’t bear it if I lost you, as well.”

“Lost me, as well? What do you mean, Grandma?” But she knew exactly what Dessie meant.

“Melanie, your father passed away this morning after surgery. His heart…just not strong enough…too damaged…nothing they could do to save him.”

She seemed to be repeating a litany, unable to truly grasp the reality of her son’s death. She began to cry.

Mel held her own tears in check to comfort her grandmother.

“Oh, Grandma. I’m so sorry. I’ll be home as soon as I can get a flight out of here. We’ll be together. We’ll be all right.”

“Yes, hurry home, honey. I need to put my arms around you.”

“I will, Grandma. I’ll be there soon.”

Mel hung up the phone, stunned. She had somehow
managed all during the flight to deny her reason for flying in the first place. She slid to the floor on her knees and leaned her head against the cool tile of the wall as her own tears finally began to flow.

It was the nurse who had given her the phone message from Dessie who found her. She handed her a box of tissues.

“I’m so sorry. When you’re ready, I’ll have someone come pick you up and get you over to the gym. You need some rest, probably some food. When was the last time you ate?”

The nurse helped Mel up and sat her in a chair by the nurses’ station until she could catch her breath.

Another helpful soul ferried Mel across the base to the gym, where she stood under a hot shower for twenty minutes. There, mingled with her tears, the dust and memories of Saigon ran off her body and down the drain. She was crawling into a cot after picking at the roast beef dinner the base had provided, when a messenger came searching for her.

“Miss Ames? The hospital just called. The baby’s been screaming for half an hour and nobody knows what to do for her. They’re asking if you’ll come back.”

Mel swung her legs onto the floor and accompanied the messenger back to the hospital. She could hear Tien’s wails from down the corridor, and her body responded as if she herself were in pain. She began to run down the hall, arriving breathless at the door to the nursery and throwing off whatever burdens of fatigue or need had plagued her earlier. In that moment, she understood that Tien had become a part of her. The aching loss that her father’s death had precipitated had somehow been filled by the child who had clung to her since she left Saigon. The doubts that had swirled in her head during her last traumatic weeks in Vietnam were suddenly dispelled.
She knew now what she was meant to do. She was meant to be Tien’s mother.

She went to the little girl and enveloped her with arms that seemed to Mel to have grown in strength since she’d left Saigon.

“I’m here, baby. Mama’s here. And I won’t leave you again.”

Present day

T
HE FERRY
Martha’s Vineyard
eased out of its berth at Woods Hole on Cape Cod and turned toward the island after which it was named. Mel climbed the narrow metal stairs to the top deck and stood at the prow, the wind whipping her hair as gulls hovered overhead and a few early morning sailors tacked away from the shipping channel.

She could have flown from D.C. to the Vineyard—along with half the Massachusetts Congressional delegation—but in addition to not wanting to get stuck sitting next to a senator who would feel compelled to expound on the latest national crisis, she simply loved this early morning voyage across Nantucket Sound.

She had always driven her beat-up Subaru from Georgetown every summer when she came to stay with Dessie at the cottage on Cape Pogue that had been in the family since before Mel was born.

When Tien had been a child, all three of them had driven together—Mel at the wheel and Dessie in the back entertaining her great-granddaughter as they made their way up the congested I-95 corridor. When they arrived on the island they had opened the cottage for the summer, airing out rooms that had been sealed against winter
storms, making beds, inspecting for weather damage or habitation by mice and squirrels. Mel enjoyed the industry of those first few days, rolling up her sleeves and attacking cobwebs and dust bunnies and mouse droppings. It was a far cry from the intellectual life she led as a reporter and columnist for
The Washington Post.

Before Dessie had passed away last year at the age of ninety-six, she had asked Mel to promise her that she would go back to the cottage at least one more summer.

“Oh, Grandma! I wouldn’t miss it. Cape Pogue is very special to me.”

“I know, dear. That’s why I don’t want you to lose what I saw it giving you every summer. Not just a respite from work, but a replenishment of your soul. You’ve always been so hard on yourself, Melanie. Especially when you were young and felt you had so much to prove.

“I am certainly proud of all your accomplishments—not everyone at my women’s club had a granddaughter who’d won not one, but
two
Pulitzer Prizes.” Her eyes twinkled in amused recollection of her bragging rights even in the heady environment of Georgetown. “But more than anything, I want you to know that you are a wonderful mother.”

W
HEN
M
EL HAD EMBRACED
Tien as her daughter she also made the decision to find work that would keep her close to home. She vowed not to abandon Tien for her job as her own father had her. Her reputation established by the work she’d done for
Newsweek
, it had been easier than she’d thought possible to secure a slot with the
Post
. She had expected the transition from war correspondent to a city beat at a metropolitan newspaper—even one in the nation’s capital—to be confining. She had anticipated the dismissive attitudes of her male colleagues in Saigon
who were heading off to the next conflagration without her to make their coffee or do their research. But she hadn’t known that the choices she made by Tien’s crib in San Diego—to adopt Tien and stay home to raise her—would ultimately be so satisfying. Mel had no regrets.

Tien had developed into an extraordinary young woman, flourishing as a high school teacher in a challenging school in the Bronx after graduating from Mel’s alma mater, Columbia. Most summers Mel stopped in New York to pick her daughter up on the way to Woods Hole, but this year Tien was making her way separately, flying in from Wisconsin, where she’d been working as a counselor at a camp for Vietnamese children who’d been adopted by American families. She’d gone there herself as a teenager, one of the attempts Mel had made to help Tien understand her own heritage.

The loudspeaker advising drivers to return to their vehicles broke Mel’s reverie on the deck and she headed below to join the line of escaping vehicles as the ferry pulled into the harbor at Oak Bluffs. Even at eight in the morning the dockside was bustling, and Mel maneuvered through SUVs towing boat trailers and mounted with bicycle racks until she was on Barnes Road and headed for the airport.

Tien had caught a Cape Air flight out of Boston after traveling the day before from Milwaukee, so she was exhausted and more subdued than her usual chatty self. Mel knew that Tien loved coming to the Vineyard as much as she did and chalked up her daughter’s withdrawn demeanor to fatigue. A nap in the hammock on the lawn overlooking the pond, a meal of freshly dug clams and a glass of wine on the porch as the sun set this evening would revive her.

It was the first time either of them had been to Cape
Pogue without Dessie. Jerry Soames, the handyman on the island who cared for the place in the off-season, had already removed the boards that protected the windows during winter storms and had made sure the propane tanks were full. The cottage had no electricity and everything—the stove, refrigerator, gas lamps and water heater—ran on propane. Jerry had even raised the flag on the pole outside the house. Glancing down the beach Mel could see flags snapping in the breeze in front of other cottages. It was a common practice among the few families who inhabited this isolated stretch of land on the northern tip of Chappaquiddick—their sign to neighbors that they were there.

Mel and Tien quickly dispatched the preliminaries of settling into the achingly familiar place and then Mel shooed Tien off to sleep. While Tien retreated to the cozy bedroom she’d always used, Mel took a deep breath and opened the door to Dessie’s room.

It reflected Dessie’s touches: a white iron bedstead, a quilted coverlet faded to pale blues and greens, a bundle of dried lavender hanging above the bed reawakening Mel’s memory of her grandmother’s scent. On a table next to the bed was a wooden box Mel had never seen before.

When Tien woke from her nap, Mel was still in the bedroom, the contents of the box strewn across the bed around her.

“What’s all this?”

“Mementos Gigi had apparently saved of the times the family spent here.”

“Gigi” had been Tien’s name for Dessie, short for great-grandmother.

Tien joined her on the bed to look at the photos and notes. She picked up one of a smiling young woman in a sundress holding a little girl by the flagpole.

“Who are they?”

“That’s me with my mother.”

“Do you remember her?”

“Yes. I especially remember spending summers here with her and my grandparents while my father was away.”

Tien stroked the photo thoughtfully. Mel watched a look of longing cross her daughter’s face and was puzzled by Tien’s reaction to the photo.

“You’re lucky to remember her. There’s so much family history here,” Tien mused, as she glanced at the array of pictures spanning almost fifty years.

“Look, here’s you and me in almost the same pose,” Mel said. “Gigi must have remembered the older photo and had us recreate it.”

Later in the day the two women walked along the beach, empty except for a couple of fly fisherman hoping to catch a few blues.

Their walk was a ritual for them every year when they came to the island, an opportunity to catch up with each other since they’d seen each other last.

Mel remembered the first time Tien had returned from the Wisconsin camp at the age of eight, armed with recipes and a vocabulary list. When Mel had first adopted her she gave her the American name of Christine, a common practice among the families adopting the babylift children. But in addition to the foods and language she’d been introduced to at camp, Tien had also learned the meaning of her Vietnamese name—fairy or spirit—and wanted to reclaim it.

“My name is Tien,” she had corrected Mel and Dessie several times. “I want to be called Tien.” So Tien she became.

As they walked, arms linked, along the water’s edge, Mel sensed that once again her experience at the Vietna
mese camp had triggered some transformation in Tien. She no longer assumed that it was merely jet lag and sleep deprivation that had silenced her daughter. Something was on her mind that she was finding difficult to share with her mother.

“You’ve been very thoughtful since you arrived. Anything you want to talk about?”

Mel felt Tien stiffen and turn to look out over the horizon. An osprey swooped overhead returning with food to its nestlings.

“I’m not sure where to begin. It’s something that’s been on my mind for a long time. I just haven’t felt compelled to act until now. Being at the camp and then, this afternoon, sifting through all those photographs of your family, I realized it’s always going to gnaw at me.”

Mel did not miss that Tien had said
your
family, not
our
family.

Tien stopped walking and faced Mel, her hands at her side.

“I need to find Anh. I want to know my Vietnamese family.”

Mel saw the longing in her daughter’s eyes. She also saw her searching Mel’s eyes for approval and acceptance. Mel put her arms around Tien.

“Oh, honey, of course you do!”

“It’s okay with you?” Tien’s voice was flooded with relief.

“Sweetheart, I know what it means to want to know who your mother is. There were so many times in my life when I wished and longed for mine.”

“I don’t even know where to begin.”

“I can help you. I’m an investigative reporter, remember!”

For the next two weeks, while soaking up the peace
and serenity that Pogue always brought her, Mel began what she could of the search to reunite Tien with Anh. A trip to the library in Edgartown to use the computer gave her some of the information she needed; a phone call provided a few leads.

Mel was going through the motions, doing everything she could think of to support Tien—from that first embrace to reassure her on the beach to hunting down contacts who might still have knowledge of the orphanage.

But late at night alone in her bed, Mel feared that every step she was taking to help Tien was also placing one more step between them. Despite her intellectual grasp that bringing Tien closer to Anh was not a zero-sum game—her actions weren’t taking Tien away from her—emotionally she felt at risk of losing her daughter.

The night before they left the island, they sat at the dining room table with Mel’s notes. She had accumulated enough information and developed a list of contacts that it made sense for Tien to go to Vietnam and continue in person to seek Anh. Tien was excited, but also distressed.

“I don’t think I can do this on my own. I’m a school-teacher who’s used to lesson plans and curricula and established criteria. I like knowing what to expect. I’m not sure I can deal with the uncertainty and ambiguity. I don’t want to do this alone.”

Mel looked across the table. Instead of the competent grown woman she knew her daughter to be, she saw the frightened little girl who had clung to her on the flight from Saigon.

She knew she would pick her up and carry her this time, as well.

“Shall I come with you?” she asked quietly.

“Would you? Thank you, Mom!”

I
N THE NEXT FEW WEEKS
, they made preparations for the trip. Mel took a leave of absence from the newspaper with her editor’s blessing—she suspected because he anticipated she might be persuaded to write a story about Tien’s quest for her mother. Mel’s writing was deeply personal and often tapped into her own experience, but she had always drawn the line when it came to Tien’s life. Raising a daughter had been challenging enough without having to deal with her feeling that her mother had told her secrets to the world. Tien was no longer a teenager, but this journey was as emotionally draining as adolescence.

Mel also acknowledged to herself that returning to Vietnam awakened feelings she thought she had long put to rest. Although Phil Coughlin had disappeared into the killing fields of Cambodia after Saigon fell, he had not disappeared from her heart. What might life have held for them if they had been able to fulfill the promise of those last few days in Saigon? As she had been when she was in her twenties, Mel wasn’t one to dwell on loss. But in anticipating this journey she found herself tinged with regret that they had let slip from their hands something she knew now had been precious and irredeemable. With her usual practicality, she brushed aside these flickers of distraction. She had work to do.

Before she knew it, she and Tien had their visas and tickets, letters of introduction to the ministries that might have records, and a short list of contacts to start their search.

The night before they were to leave, Tien took the Acela from Penn Station in New York City to D.C. Normally composed and self-contained, she spent the evening at Mel’s pacing, repacking and questioning every aspect of their plans.

“Do you think the gifts I’ve gotten are appropriate? How do I know what she’ll like?”

“Tien, let’s find her first. And the best gift will be you—a beautiful, happy woman who cared enough about her to seek her.”

“Am I being selfish? What if she doesn’t want to be found?”

“Then we won’t violate that wish. There are no guarantees here, Tien. Let’s try to get some sleep. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

As the plane descended into Tan Son Nhat International Airport, Mel found herself with her face pressed against the window, searching for the familiar. She didn’t know what she was looking for—and after thirty years of postwar reconstruction, it was doubtful that she’d recognize it. But with a jolt she understood that this trip was as much a homecoming for her as for Tien. Even to be landing at Tan Son Nhat, the new name for what had once been Tan Son Nhut airbase, and the incongruity of it now being an international airport and major hub for Vietnamese flights, seemed unbelievable.

The terminal was a chaotic mess of tourists scrambling to check in and find their gates. They’d arrived smack in the middle of monsoon season, and delays flickered across the departures and arrivals board. Tien seemed almost paralyzed by the assault on her senses, staring at the waves of people pushing past her, trying to decipher the lettering on the signs with her limited command of the language, unable to focus on any one thing as they moved through the airport. Her only comment to Mel was a revelation.