More men stood over by a table, eating donuts and pouring coffee from a tall silver urn.
Frankie had expected to be the only woman, but she still felt uncomfortable as, one by one, the men turned to look at her.
A man approached her. He wore a checkered shirt and cowboy jeans held up by a huge-buckled belt. His long, layered hair flipped back from a center part. A huge mustache covered most of his upper lip.
“Can I help you, foxy lady?” he said, smiling.
“I’m here for the Vietnam veterans rap therapy group.”
“It’s groovy that you want to understand your man, but this is for veterans only.”
“I am a vet.”
“Of Vietnam.”
“I am a Vietnam vet.”
“Oh. I … uh … there were no women in ’Nam.”
“Wrong. ANC nurse. Two tours. The Thirty-Sixth and Seventy-First Evac Hospitals. If you never saw a woman, you were lucky. It meant you didn’t end up in a hospital.”
He frowned. “Oh. Well. You should talk to other chicks about … whatever. I mean, you didn’t see combat. The men would clam up with a woman in the room.”
“Are you telling me I can’t stay? I have nightmares. And I’m … scared. You won’t help me?”
“You don’t belong here, ma’am. This is for vets who saw action in ’Nam.”
Frankie walked out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her. She strode down the hallway, saw a GET HELP HERE poster, and ripped it off the wall and stomped on it. M*A*S*H was a hit TV show this year; how could people still think there had been no women in Vietnam? Especially veterans, for God’s sake?
Outside, she let out a howl of rage that she couldn’t have held back if she’d wanted to—and she didn’t want to. It felt good to finally scream.
* * *
Frankie had nowhere to go. No one to talk to. She knew something was deeply, terribly wrong with her, but not how to fix it.
She could call Barb and Ethel, but it was pathetic how often she’d called on them already. And when they heard about the affair with Rye and driving drunk into the Coronado Bridge, they would judge her as harshly as she judged herself.
Still, she had to do something.
She could go to the man she’d almost killed and beg for forgiveness.
She found a pay phone and asked the operator for the address for Mr. Bill Brightman.
He lived on Coronado, in a small house in the middle of the island. The perfectly tended yard was outlined by bright-red flowers and a white picket fence. A house someone loved.
She parked by his mailbox, sat outside for a long time, unable to get out of the car, unable to drive away. When she closed her eyes, she saw the accident again and again, in slow motion, saw his pale, terrified face in her headlights.
The door opened. A middle-aged man with sunken cheeks and black hair stepped out of the house, wearing a brown suit. He was holding a folded-up newspaper in one hand and a battered leather briefcase in the other.
Frankie opened her car door, stepped out.
He looked at her, frowned slightly.
She opened the white picket gate, dared to step onto his property, slowly took off her sunglasses to reveal her black eyes. “I’m Frances McGrath,” she said quietly. “The driver who almost hit you.” She felt tears burn her eyes and wiped them away impatiently. This wasn’t about her pain or guilt or shame. It was about his. “I am so sorry.”
“Bring me my mail,” he said, lighting up a cigarette.
Frankie nodded sharply, went to his mailbox, pulled out a stack of letters and magazines, and carried them up to the man. On the porch, she handed him his mail. “I’ll replace your bike.”
“My bike? Lady, you almost ended me,” he said.
Frankie couldn’t find her voice. She nodded.
“I have a daughter. A wife. A mother. A father. Do you know anything about losing people?”
“I do,” she said.
“Remember that. Next time you get behind the wheel drunk.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, knowing it wasn’t enough, but what else was there?
He looked at her a long moment, saying nothing, then turned and took his mail back into the house, closing the door behind him.
She drove back to her parents’ house and parked the car in the garage. Inside the house, she found her mother at the kitchen table. Frankie threw the keys on the table between them. “I’m back,” she said dully.
“You’re scaring me, Frances,” Mom said.
“Yeah. Sorry.”