It was just a party. Nothing dangerous or frightening, but she felt anxiety ripple through her. Panic rose up; she closed her eyes, thought, You can leave soon. But what was she so afraid of?
“Are you okay?”
She felt Becky come up beside her, smelled her floral perfume. Jean Naté. Their favorite from high school. It made Frankie think of ’Nam, and how her perfume had reminded the wounded men of their girls back home.
Frankie released a breath, let it out slowly, and opened her eyes.
Becky was there, tucked in close as she used to do a lifetime ago. Her smile was bright and untroubled. She seemed impossibly young, but she was Frankie’s age.
Frankie tried to smile, but her anxiety was so high, she wasn’t able to tell if she’d succeeded.
“Fine,” Frankie said. How long ago had Becky asked? “Fine,” she said again, trying to smile. “So. When’s the wedding?”
“Two months,” Becky said. “Dana is marrying Jeffrey Heller. You remember him? Football scholarship. We were all at USC together.”
“Did he go to ’Nam?”
Becky laughed. A pretty, optimistic sound. “Course not. Most of the boys we know have ways out. A few have gotten married.”
“How fortunate.” Frankie got to her feet so quickly it must have looked like she wasn’t in control of her body, and really, she wasn’t. She was like an animal who had sensed danger and gone into full flight mode. If she didn’t leave now she might scream. “I should go.”
“Why, you just got here, silly!”
“I … have to work.” Frankie sidled to the left to give herself a clear path.
Someone put a record on the stereo and turned up the volume.
“We gotta get out of this place…”
“Turn that shit off,” Frankie snapped. She didn’t realize that she’d yelled it until the record was scratched and the party fell quiet and everyone was staring at her.
She couldn’t smile. “Sorry. I hate that song.”
Becky looked frightened. “Uh. How was Florence? Chad and I are going for our anniversary.”
“I wasn’t in Florence, Bex,” she said slowly, trying to calm down, pull back, be okay. Be normal.
But she wasn’t okay.
She was standing with a bunch of debutantes and sorority girls who were planning a wedding with fresh flowers and honeymoons abroad while men their age were dying on foreign soil. Not their men, though, not their rich, pretty college boys. “I was in Vietnam.”
Silence.
Then a titter of laughter. It broke the silence; the women all joined in.
Becky looked relieved. “Ah. Funny joke, Frankie. You always were a card.”
Frankie took a step closer, went toe to toe with her best friend from ninth grade. All the while she was thinking, Calm down, back off, at the same time she thought, Killed by enemy fire and almost instantly.
“Believe me, Bex. It is not a joke. I’ve held men’s severed legs in my hands and tried to hold their chests together just long enough to get them into the OR. What’s happening in Vietnam is no joke. The joke is here. This.” She looked around. “You.”
She pushed past her friend and strode through the pod of silent, staring women, heard someone say, “What’s wrong with her?,” and before she made it outside to her car, she was screaming.
* * *
Frankie sat at a picnic table in Ski Beach Park, overlooking the ocean. As usual on a summer evening, the place was crowded with people out walking their dogs or jogging in brightly colored short shorts. Kids played in the grass and in the sand, their shrieks of joy sometimes startlingly loud.
She ignored all of it, or, more accurately, she didn’t notice the commotion going on around her. She smoked one cigarette after another, only getting up to put her butts in the trash.
There was something wrong. With her. And she was unsure of how to fix it. Her behavior at the shower was unacceptable on any level. There was no doubt about that. Oh, Becky and the others had been offensive about Vietnam, but so was much of the country. That didn’t give Frankie license to lash out. All she’d had to do was claim a need to leave and politely walk out of the party.
Instead …
Her anxiety and anger had surged, come out of nowhere, and suffocated her.
Even now, hours later, it was still there, lying in wait, ready to lash out at a moment’s notice. It made her feel weak, shaky. Fragile.
She’d never thought of herself as fragile, and yet here she was. Alone and afraid.
She could handle a MASCAL in ’Nam with ease, but a long-forgotten friend at a bridal shower could bring her to her emotional knees with the flick of a word.