Darkroom (21 page)

All I hear are the wheels rolling on the gravelly pavement.

“Kyle?”

He’s leaning over against the door, his face pale and shining. His chest is rising and falling in short rapid breaths. His eyes are rolled back and white, eyelashes flitting like a moth’s wings.

“Oh no. You can’t leave me alone in this!” I think he’s dying.

53

IAN MORTIMER

He was right. My heart’s no longer in it. Hasn’t been for ages. Yet somehow, he’s managed to yank me back like a bleeding dog on a choke collar. I’ve gotten dreadfully sloppy. Xandra Carrick appears to have enlisted an ally from the Bureau, something that has slipped past my research. Bloody hell, she’s managed to complicate things by not dying.

Carrick and Matthews are getting away. And if they do, TR will tighten that choke collar on my neck. If I’m lucky, that’s all he’ll do.

Flippin’ CHPs are tailing me with backup now. I’ve no time for this!

“Come on, you buggering idiot!” I just cut off a truck driver, who flips me the bird. Three police cars are tailing me now. If I end up getting interrogated by any law-enforcement agency, TR might not kill me, but he will see to it that Bobby suffers. What kind of fouled-up country is this anyway, where someone like TR can literally get away with murder?

Focus.

For Bobby’s sake.

It’s no good. I have to get him to clear this obstacle. But that would mean admitting that Xandra’s still alive. This mess grows increasingly difficult to clean.

Xandra and Agent Matthews are gone. But I’ve got the license-plate number memorized, and limo services usually install tracking devices in their cars.

When it seems inevitable, I pull over and wait for the police to approach. Two officers approach with guns aimed while another instructs me over the megaphone to come out with my hands visible.

I comply and set my hands on the roof of the squad car, while the officer with the name Dowler etched into his nameplate frisks me, takes my gun. “Special Agent Rolston, Department of Homeland Security. Badge is in my left breast pocket. The shooter’s getting away.”

“I’ve got two officers down back there, so you’ll excuse me if I check your credentials.” He takes out my badge and scrutinizes it. Hands it to his partner, who takes it back to their squad car. “What’s the make and model of the perp’s car?”

“Black sedan, I didn’t get a good look. He’s been shot. His accomplice is an Asian American woman, about twenty-seven, dark brown hair. She’s driving.”

“I’ll put out an APB—”

“This is a Homeland Security case. Can’t have anyone else interfere. Now release me so I can—”

“You’re the only one seen leaving the scene of the crime, in the squad car of the downed officers.”

“Mine was half a mile back! I pursued the suspect on foot until your men confronted him. Then he shot them!”

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to verify your identity. Should be quick.”

“Look, I know you’re just doing your job. But I’ve got to do mine. The guy who shot your men was a domestic terrorist. If we lose him, it’s on you.”

“I still gotta do this, Agent …”

“Rolston. Special Agent Rolston.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He cranes his neck back to his partner in their car. “Anderson, you get anything?”

Even though the rain is drizzling down on me out here on the
shoulder of the freeway, I’m feeling hot, my collar’s shrinking. Dowler’s partner comes out of the car and hands my badge back to him. “Checks out. They said the information on him was nontransferable. What’s that supposed to mean?”

I try to remain collected. “It means you boys are in over your heads.”

“Actually, Agent Rolston”—Dowler pulls my hands down off the car, one at a time and cuffs them—“it means you’re coming with us.”

54

GRACE TH’AM AI LE

Brooklyn, New York: May 7, 1975

I was reminded of the opening of a book by Charles Dickens, one of my favorite English authors among the many that Peter has introduced me to since we met:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.

This should have been the most joyous occasion of my life. Today, before God and before man, Peter and I were joined in marriage. Nothing could have diminished the joy of this occasion except for the news that came in a whisper from Juliana, Peter’s sister, who served as my bridesmaid.

Because communication had been cut off since the Communists took over Saigon, I had no means of speaking or corresponding with any of my classmates or teachers who might still be there.

Footage of a big rally celebrating the new administration has been playing on all the television sets in department-store windows. We learned that Saigon would be renamed Ho Chi Minh City. But to me and all the other refugees here in the States, it will always be Saigon.

I determined not to let the news ruin our special day. In fact, I didn’t even mention this to Peter until the wedding was over. We spent our wedding night at the Mayflower Hotel in Manhattan, but because of our limited budget, we will not be having a honeymoon.

I do not mind it as much as a girl who grew up in America might. My head was never filled with such dreams. It is enough for me to move into our apartment overlooking the trees and ponds of Prospect Park and begin our new life together.

Brooklyn, New York: August 15, 1977

I have been so busy with English classes, working as a cashier at Woolworths, doing community work at church, and taking care of the home that the past two years seem to have flown by and vanished before I knew it.

After hearing the harrowing stories of some of the Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees I have met through the Asian American Service Center, I realize how blessed I was to have arrived in America with relative ease.

However, Mother always said, “You cannot enjoy a durian without suffering its stink.” In time, you learn to embrace it along with the sweetness of the fruit.

As for the sweetness, Peter and I had experienced the joy of expecting a child. We chose the name Philip—after Peter’s father—and became deeply involved in matters such as purchasing a crib, a carriage, and many other things that a baby needs. Peter painted Philip’s room light blue and even bought a baseball glove for him.

But around my third month, I began to experience bleeding and strange cramps. When I finally saw the doctor, it was too late. I had miscarried.

For two weeks, I shut myself in my room and cried. Peter did all he could to comfort me. In order to tend to me, he canceled his trip to England to shoot the launching of the HMS
Invincible
by Queen Elizabeth.

It is only now that I can even talk about it without breaking down. Our little Philip, whom we loved so dearly, represented my hopes and dreams in America.

Peter does not bare his sorrow for others to see. Not even me. I learned this one day when I confronted him about his lack of emotion. “You have not even shed a tear!”

Of course he was devastated, he said. But that just wasn’t his way. I did not accept that. He took that as my calling him a liar. In my anger, I stormed out of the apartment and spent the rest of the afternoon in Prospect Park, watching mothers pushing baby carriages or holding their children’s hands as they learned to walk.

When I came home, I did not see my husband. I called out to him, but he did not answer. The radio in the kitchen was on. “Peter, are you home?” Ordinarily he would answer. But his briefcase and jacket were still sitting on the living-room chair. He was not in our bedroom, nor the bathroom. Finally, I heard something coming from the baby’s room. The door was half open. Without disturbing it, I looked inside.

There knelt Peter, his head draped over the crib. He was holding the baseball glove in one hand and covering his eyes with the other. I had never before seen him like this, weeping and broken as a man could be.

My own heart melted, and without another thought I went to him and knelt beside him. He looked at me with reddened eyes, tear-drenched cheeks, and a face crumpled with grief. He let out a wet sob. “My boy. My poor little boy!”

And now it was my time to hold him as he cried. How greatly I had misjudged him. If only I had believed him, respected his way of grieving. I might not have added to his pain. As he buried his face into my breast, I rocked him back and forth, caressed the back of his head. “Philip is with the Lord, Peter. He’s in the best hands now.”

That night, for the first time in months, I made love to my husband and he slept more soundly than ever before in our marriage.

Brooklyn, New York: May 16, 1980

I did not wish to say anything until it was confirmed. Peter has won the Pulitzer Prize for his never-before-seen photos,
Survivors of the Massacre at Huế
. Strangely enough, Peter was not happy when he found out. A friend of his had convinced him to submit his work and sponsored his entry. Peter never thought anything would come of it.

The subject matter opened up old wounds and caused quite a stir in sociopolitical circles. Most people wished to leave the past behind and not resurrect the atrocities of the Vietcong, or the failure of the United States.

But no one could dispute its importance. Nor could they deny the quality of the photos that captured so much more than the realism; they caught the emotion, the moment. Peter is widely acclaimed now and has become quite a celebrity. He deserves nothing less than this success, though he accepts it with reluctance.

Had this been the only event of the year, I would have been content. But one other competes with it. Something of greater significance than President Carter’s grain embargo against the Soviet Union, Ayatollah Khomeini and the American hostages, or our boycott of the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow.

I am once again pregnant and am expecting in February next year. We have tried many times since Philip to get pregnant, but to no avail. Though Peter is not a believer, I am. So in secret, one night after we made love, I went into the living room, took out my Bible, and prayed the prayer of Hannah:

O L
ORD
of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the L
ORD
all the days of his life.

Peter thinks I should not write about this in my journal. “You’ll jinx it,” he always says. For a man who does not practice
any particular religion, he certainly lives by faith. But I feel I must record this, even if I must do so in secret, lest one day I forget.

One night at a Wednesday-evening prayer meeting, the minister laid hands on my head and prophesied over me. “You will be gifted a child. Through her, many will be blessed and helped.”

Her? I kept that in my heart and never mentioned it to Peter. He did not quite understand why I reacted with such excitement when the doctor confirmed that we would indeed be having a daughter.

Peter is nervous about this pregnancy and cannot fathom why I do not share his anxiety or partake in his odd precautions regarding bad luck and jinxes. I do not believe in luck. All things happen for a reason. Every event, no matter how random it appears, is connected by the hand of the Almighty. And I will have this child the good Lord gave me.

Brooklyn, New York: March 20, 1981

On February 23, 1981, at 6:35 a.m., Alexandra Phuong Carrick was born. She weighed in at seven and a half pounds and, to everyone’s surprise, had the pinkest, clearest skin of any baby they’d ever seen. Labor had lasted only one hour, and Peter was amazed that I had not turned into what he called “a disheveled Medusa.”

How rude.

But that was his way of complimenting me. He quickly explained, after I pinched his arm, that I looked radiant, not like a woman who had just gone through labor and childbirth.

We must have spent well over ten combined hours choosing a name for our daughter. But we both agreed Xandra would be more unique than the traditional spelling (Sandra), and more accurately derived—from Alexandra, which means
helper of mankind
. How appropriate, though I still have not told Peter of the prophecy spoken over me regarding our little gift from heaven. He would probably just laugh anyway.

I have just finished nursing my precious little Xandi, and she’s sleeping soundly. I wish the same could be said for my husband. With the exception of a few nights, he always tosses and turns, having nightmares of which he claims no recollection the morning after.

55

XANDRA CARRICK

What will happen if he bleeds to death here in the car? I’ve parked right outside the first building I find in a small rural community, the name of which is lost on me because I didn’t bother to look carefully at the wooden sign as I drove up the dusty path.

“Hang on, Kyle, okay?” He’s breathing, thank God, but I don’t know for how much longer. “I’m getting help right now.”

Wind and dissipating rain blow through the trees over the valley below. I approach the brick building ahead. Dim light and shadows flicker in the windows. On the far left, a horse nickers and blows. Harnessed to a black carriage that looks like a stripped-down pickup without an engine, it eyes me with suspicion.

I knock on the door, but no one answers.

Again, I knock.

Still nothing. With my ear pressed to the door, I hear singing. Or maybe it’s shouting, or crying. Whatever it is, someone’s inside. This time I knock harder, repeatedly. “Hello! Please, we need help!”

The door opens, and I’m greeted by a smiling fair-haired man in blue overalls. He can’t be more than a few years older than I. “Well, hello! Didn’t hear you.”