Russell Banks - Outer Banks

6.

When our third son was born, I named him Rory, after Rex’s father, and determined to protect him, if possible, from the several influences of his father that I was fast learning to be frightened of.

As aspects of his whole personality, Rex’s fierce competitive pride, his love of sports and danger, and his occasional, dark fascination with solitude did not in any way alarm me. But in our sons, one or another and sometimes several of these aspects became dominant, intimidating, and, eventually, I feared, killing the milder, sweeter traits which, in Rex, made me love him — his tenderness, his shyness, his naiveté, and his insecurity.

Immediately, it seemed, Rex sensed my protectiveness toward Rory, and he subtly undermined me, encouraging and thereby instilling in his youngest son yet another negative aspect of his own personality.

“You’re like your mother,” he would tell him. “All emotions. Now, your mother is a wonderful woman, and I’m pleased that one of my sons is like her, so don’t go thinking I’m putting you down, son.”

But of course poor Rory thought his father was rejecting him, so the only emotion he allowed himself to feel with passion was anger, raging, explosive anger, even as a child.

7.

Thus it was with deeply mixed emotions that I watched my husband in his Air Force major’s uniform stride down the steps of our blue mobile home, cross the pebbled driveway to the white convertible waiting for him at the curb, pausing a second at the sidewalk to give Bif’s soccer ball a friendly boot into the goal in the side yard. And then, flinging his flight bag into the back seat, he jumped into the low-slung car without opening the door and signaled to the lieutenant to take off, which, with a great roar of exhausts and squealing of tires, the lieutenant did.

Little did I know that I would never see my husband, my beloved Rex, again. If I had known it, or even had suspected it (I was so enthralled with the man that I imagined him winning the war quickly and returning home in a season), I never would have allowed myself to feel the wave of relief that swept over me as he drove away. I did not then understand that feeling, and naturally I felt terrible for having it, as if I were an evil woman. Rex had made my life possible. Without him, I had no reason for living. I knew that I loved him deeply. Why, then, did I feel this hatred for him?

8.

Happily, the feeling swiftly went away, and I began to miss Rex awfully. I stayed up late night after night writing long, amorous letters to him (one thing about my Rex, he was a marvelous lover). My days were busier than ever, taken up completely with the boys and my housekeeping.

Then, one night late that summer, I was startled from my letter-writing by a telephone call from the Tampa hospital. There had been a terrible accident, the doctor told me, on the causeway between St. Petersburg and Tampa, and my mother and father, who had driven over to look at a new Golden Age planned community, had been killed. I quickly got my friend Judy from the trailer next door to baby-sit and took a bus to Tampa, as the doctor had suggested, to identify my poor mother and father.

“Yes,” I sobbed, “it’s they!”

The doctor, a kind, handsome, young man with a blond moustache, comforted me by holding me in his arms. “There, there,” he said, “you’ll be all right. They went together,” he reminded me. “Think how much that would have meant to them.”

I wiped away my tears, blew my nose, thanked him for all his trouble, and walked slowly out of the hospital into the cool, palmy night, terrified.

9.

Now I was truly on my own — in spite of what Rex had said to Bif. He had known as well as I that a twelve-year-old boy can’t take care of a twenty-eight-year-old woman. He had said it mainly for Bif’s benefit, not mine — so the boy would feel the proper responsibility, regardless of whether or not he could act on it.

At first, I had felt sorry for Bif, who was trying hard to live up to the terms of his charge, but then, as increasingly he began to order me around, I began to feel anger toward him. As long as my mother and father were still alive, I was able to get Bif to stop worrying over me simply by assuring him that Grandpa was taking care of us all while Daddy was away in Vietnam. But after the accident, even that assurance was no longer possible.

Then, finally, one evening about six months after my parents’ death, all my anger flooded over. I served the boys a supper of turkey hash on toast, leftovers from the roast turkey of the night before, and Bif slammed his little fists down on the table and said loudly, “We never had to eat this crap when Dad was at home! What makes you think it’s any different now?”

I slapped him across the mouth with my open hand as hard as I could, sending him spinning off his chair to the floor. After calling Judy over to baby-sit, I stomped out and caught the bus to Tampa.

10.

I arrived home again just before dawn (the doctor, Ben, insisted on driving me in his new Buick sedan), exhausted, slightly woozy from the gin-and-tonics, and in spite of the endless shame I felt, still raging. The combination of guilt and anger was almost too much to bear, and I was afraid I was going mad, though Ben assured me that I was not, that it was perfectly normal for the wife of a man away in the service to feel this way.

I sent Judy home, and while I waited for the boys to get up for their breakfast, I sat down and tried to write a letter to Rex. I began the letter many times, tearing each new attempt to shreds just as I got to the place where I had to tell him I had let Ben make love to me. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t make that man’s life any more painful than it already was. I remembered his last letter to me, received the day before.

Kay, honey, even though I’m 9000 miles away from you and the boys, my heart and mind are there with you, believe me. I still feel that I’m the king in that little kingdom. I feel like a government-in-exile or something, waiting for the signal from you, or from somebody, that it’s okay to return. (Hey, I’d better be careful or the military censors will think I’m talking politics, eh? Ha ha!)

At last, I heard the boys happily slamming each other with pillows, and wearily I got up and started setting the table for breakfast.

11.

That very afternoon, I received the letter from Washington, D.C., the Department of Defense, informing me that Rex’s plane had been shot down by the enemy while on a mission over North Vietnam, and he had been taken prisoner. He was now a POW, and, as far as they knew, he was not injured.

In that one brief moment, as I read the letter, I felt my life turn over and go back to zero and start anew, the opposite of drowning. I still loved Rex, of course, but deep inside, I said a prayer of thanks to the North Vietnamese gunners who had shot him down. I would never be able to explain that gratitude to anyone, I was sure, and I probably could not explain it even to myself, but I could not deny to myself that I felt it, no matter how hard I tried. And though I was not especially proud of the feeling, neither was I ashamed of it.

I joined a group of POW wives from central Florida, and for a while went around with them, speaking to groups of men who were said to have influence in Washington in ways that would somehow benefit the POWs. But I could never quite understand how POWs or their wives could benefit from a more aggressive war policy, so I dropped out of the group. I took good care of my sons and our home, saw Ben about once a month, and just sort of cooled my heels for a while.

12.

Gradually, I became used to the idea that I was on my own and, therefore, had no choice but to take care of myself. I enrolled in night school and got my high school diploma with an ease that astounded me. I went on a diet and exercise program and studied yoga at the Sarasota YWCA. I started sending Rory to a reading clinic, because of his disability, and no longer insisted that the boys get their haircuts where their father had always gotten his. I started trying new foods, exotic dishes, and occasionally took in an X-rated movie with Ben. I took driving lessons, got my license and borrowed the money from a bank to buy a Japanese station wagon.