Barb wore black corduroy pants and a black T-shirt and an olive-colored military-type jacket with the sleeves cut off. “Get out of bed, Frankie,” Barb said.
“My mom called in reinforcements?” Frankie said.
“I called, actually,” Barb said. “I hadn’t heard from you since we talked about Rye’s coming-home party. I got worried and called. Your mother answered the phone.”
“Get out of bed, Frank, or I’ll throw you over my shoulder,” Ethel said. “Don’t think I won’t. I can lift a bale of hay.”
Frankie knew there was no point arguing. She saw the way they looked at her, with a mixture of compassion and resolve. They were here to lift her out of despair; it was in the way they looked, the way they stood, the confident set to their chins.
They wanted her to just get up, stand, start to walk. As if grief were a pool you could simply step out of.
In reality, it was quicksand and heat. A rough entry, but warm and inviting once you let go.
She pushed the sour, sweat-smelling covers back and got out of bed. Without making eye contact—she couldn’t look at them without thinking of Rye—she walked down the hall to her bathroom and took a shower, trying dully to remember when she’d last turned the water on or washed her hair.
She towel-dried her hair and put on the clothes she’d left hanging on a hook on the back of the door （clothes her mother had bought to cheer her up）—a blue tunic and pants set with a pointed white sailor collar and a white cinch belt. She felt like an actress dressing for the role of dutiful daughter.
Ridiculous. But the effort it took to choose something else was beyond her.
Barefoot, she walked back into her bedroom.
At the sight of her friends standing there, she knew how much she loved them. She could almost feel that love, but not quite. Grief had bludgeoned away every other emotion. “I’m fine, you know,” Frankie said.
“Apparently you’ve been in bed for well over a week,” Ethel said.
“Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“Come on, Frank,” Ethel said, linking her arm through Frankie’s. Barb grabbed the radio and moved to Frankie’s other side. A flanking maneuver to make sure Frankie was hemmed in.
The trio walked down the hallway.
Frankie pulled them past her father’s office. The last thing she wanted them to see was the heroes’ wall, and her absence on it.
Frankie was surprised that they seemed to know the house and have a plan. They walked through the yard, across the street, and out to the beach, where three empty chairs and a portable ice chest waited for them. Barb set the radio on the ice chest and cranked up the music.
Frankie felt unsteady, listening to the surf roar toward her. The familiar music took her back to the best of Vietnam, and the worst.
“I loved him,” she said out loud.
Barb handed her a gin and tonic, said, “Sit, Frankie.”
Frankie didn’t sit so much as she collapsed.
Ethel sat down beside her, held her hand.
Barb sat in the third chair.
The three of them held hands, stared out at the Pacific Ocean crashing beautifully onto the shore, the constant, ceaseless battering of water, the quiet retreat of each wave.
Frankie said, “How could I not know he was gone? How could I not feel his loss from the world?”
For that, there was no answer. The three of them knew death intimately, had stood side by side with it for years.
“You need to do something,” Ethel said. “Start a life.”
“There’s this group,” Barb said. “Vietnam Veterans Against the War. It started with six vets marching in a peaceful protest to end the war. Maybe you could take your anger and use it for something good.”
Anger? That was a distant shadow on the horizon of her grief.
Barb had no idea how this felt, how debilitating it was to lose yourself along with your love. And Frankie couldn’t explain it without sounding pathetic or worrying them more.
Best to just say, “Hmm.”
“Life has to go on, Frank,” Ethel said. “You’re tough enough for Pleiku. You can survive this.”
Ah.
Life goes on.
But does it really? Not the same life, that was for sure.
“I love you,” she said, knowing that her friends wanted to help, but how could they, how could anyone? They were just telling her what she’d heard before: the only way out was through.
More platitudes.
The question was, how? How did you get through grief, how did you want to live again when you couldn’t imagine what that life could be, how you could be happy again?