FALLING STARS
Chapter Thirty
Summer, 1969
Rose hung up the phone in the kitchen and
walked into the living room, where Jack was watching the news on television.
"Who was that?" he asked, as she sat down beside him.
"Harry," Rose replied. "He
just arrived back in Los Angeles, and he’s heading out here. He says he has a
surprise for us."
"I hope his ‘surprise’ isn’t a court
martial," Jack said, a bit sourly.
Rose sighed. Not surprisingly, Harry had
refused to conform to what was expected of him in the army, and had been in
constant conflict with his superiors. He had written numerous letters home
complaining about the rules, the war, the food, the officers, and anything else
that happened to annoy him. Once he had been sent to Vietnam, he had continued
to complain, though his letters of complaint were tempered by facts about the
war, which he continued to be against, and by his glowing descriptions of a
woman he had met. He had been smitten with a young Vietnamese woman, who, much
to the dismay of his parents, siblings, and fellow soldiers, turned out to be
the sister of a prominent member of the Vietcong.
No amount of persuading could convince Harry
to stop seeing her, and Jack and Rose had been stunned to see him on the
evening news with his girlfriend, openly protesting the war from Vietnam.
Andrew had also seen this display, and had immediately sent his brother a
furious letter--the first time they had communicated since the night in 1967
that he had stormed out in a rage because of Harry’s attitude toward the war.
Harry had sent him a polite but stubborn letter in return, and Andrew had
refused to have anything to do with him after that.
Andrew had also become estranged from his
parents, largely because of his shock and fury at his father’s admission that
he would have dodged the draft during World War I if he could have, and by his
father’s support of the young men who had fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam
draft. He hadn’t visited or spoken with his parents since his grandmother’s
funeral the previous summer.
On July 2, 1968, Ruth Hockley had passed away
quietly in her sleep, just a week before she would have been ninety-eight years
old. Andrew had attended the funeral, as had all the other Dawson children
except Harry, who couldn’t be contacted, but he had refused to attend the wake,
heading back to Washington, DC as soon as the funeral was over. His siblings
had been shocked and upset, but he refused to associate with his parents, who
he considered traitors.
Rose had tried to contact him in January,
when Jack had suffered a mild heart attack and wound up in the hospital for two
weeks, but even then Andrew was unwilling to mend fences. So stubborn and set
in his ways was he that he wouldn’t try to see someone else’s viewpoint, or
even tolerate it--not even that of an elderly parent.
Rose was brought back to the present when
Jack turned from the television and asked, "When will Harry be here?"
"Tomorrow," Rose told him, hoping
that whatever Harry’s "surprise" was, it wouldn’t cause another
fight, or a greater rift in the family. She doubted that Andrew would pay them
a visit while Harry was there, but she couldn’t be sure.
"God only knows what he’s gotten into
this time," Jack commented. "I’m almost afraid to wonder what his
‘surprise’ is."
"If it was something bad, he undoubtedly
would have come right out and said it. You know how he loves to complain. And
if it were something that he thought would be too shocking for us, he probably
would have kept it a secret. You know how concerned he was after I wrote to him
about your heart attack."
"We also wrote to him about the rift in
the family after Andrew decided that we were traitors, and it didn’t stop him
from writing an upsetting letter to his brother."
"If you’d had a brother who had told you
to stay away from me, would you have listened?"
"Probably not," Jack admitted,
running a hand through his white hair.
"Then why expect Harry to? You and I did
some outrageous things in our youth."
"You mean we’ve stopped?" Jack
teased her, momentarily forgetting his concerns about his son.
Rose gave him a look of mock offense.
"We’re both perfectly respectable now."
"Which is why you got that speeding
ticket last week. What was it that cop called you--the little old lady from
Pasadena?"
Rose sniffed. "Actually, I’m from
Philadelphia. And I’m as tall as I ever was."
"And you look sixty, not
seventy-four."
"That’s still old."
"Not really. He got the ‘lady’ part
right, though."
Rose laughed. "You’re a good liar."
"So I’ve been told. But how many old
ladies have natural brown hair?"
Rose patted her head, pretending to fix her
hair. Jack laughed, looking at her. Around the time that she had turned sixty,
Rose’s once red hair had begun to fade to an attractive shade of light brown.
At seventy-four, her hair was still light brown, with just a touch of gray, and
she still wore it long, unlike many women her age. Jack often told her that she
was beautiful, and she always argued with him, but she knew that he meant it.
They had been together for fifty-seven years, and Jack still thought she was as
beautiful as the day he’d first seen her on the Titanic, so long ago.
*****
Jack got up from his chair as the doorbell
rang. He could hear Rose coming down the stairs, and shouted to her that he had
the door.
He opened the door to find Harry on the other
side. Jack looked at him in surprise.
"Harry! We weren’t expecting you until
afternoon. We were going to pick you up at the airport."
"I caught an earlier flight. The second
I stepped off the plane, I was confronted by anti-war protesters, calling me
baby-killer, among other things."
"Didn’t you used to do the same
thing?"
"I’ve learned something now. We were
yelling at the wrong people. It wasn’t the people who got drafted we should
have been yelling at, it was the people who went there voluntarily, and the people
in the government."
"I’m sure Andrew would love to hear you
say that."
"Andrew doesn’t love anything, except
maybe his career."
Jack picked up the bag Harry had dropped in
front of the door and set it on the couch. "Well, are you going to come in?"
"Just a second." Harry turned to
pick up something he had set behind him. "People stopped calling me
baby-killer after they saw this."
"After they saw what?" Rose asked,
coming to the door.
Harry turned, holding a baby carrier. A tiny,
black-haired infant with a mixture of Vietnamese and Caucasian features lay
inside, one tiny thumb in its mouth.
"Mom, Dad, I’d like you to meet my
‘surprise’. This is my daughter, Susan Thao Dawson. Your granddaughter."
Jack and Rose stared at the baby, stunned.
They had eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, but this was the
first grandchild they had found out about after birth.
"Where’s her mother?" Jack asked,
looking more closely at the baby. The tiny girl had black hair and somewhat
slanted eyes, but resembled her father in most other ways.
"She died," Harry explained,
avoiding their eyes. "She got some kind of a fever after Susan was born,
and died about three days later."
"How old is Susan?" Rose wanted to
know. The baby couldn’t be more than a few weeks old.
"Two weeks old yesterday," Harry
told them proudly. "Her uncle went looking for me, wanting to know what I
planned to do about her. A lot of Americans just leave their offspring behind,
and a lot of Vietnamese won’t accept these kids, because they consider them to
be Americans."
"Was her mother the same woman that we
saw with you on television? The one with the Vietcong brother?"
"Yes. In fact, he was the one who wanted
to know what I planned to do with Susan. He found me the day before I was
supposed to leave Vietnam, and I managed to talk my superiors into letting me
take her back to the United States with me. A lot of kids get left behind, but
I figured she’d be better off here, rather than left behind as a war orphan.
She’ll have a family here."
"Are you planning on raising her
alone?" Jack asked.
"Well, yes. She’s my daughter.
Although...maybe you and Mom could give me some pointers on taking care of her?
I’m not quite sure what to do with her sometimes."
"Of course," Rose told him.
"May I hold her?"
"Sure, Mom." Harry lifted the baby
girl from the carrier, placing her in her grandmother’s arms. Susan whimpered
for a moment, disturbed by the strange arms holding her, then relaxed, putting
her thumb back in her mouth.
Rose sat down on the couch, cradling the
infant. Susan opened her eyes and stared with infant fascination at her
grandmother. "She’s beautiful, Harry," Rose told him, as Susan
wrapped a tiny fist around her finger and held on tight.
"She looks a lot like you, Mom. She has
your face, except for the eyes. She gets her eyes from her mother."
Jack sat down beside Rose. After a moment,
she handed the baby to him. Jack rocked Susan gently as she stared at him, her
eyes wide and accepting of her new family.
Harry dug a package of formula out of his
bag. "She’ll be hungry soon," he told his parents. "I’ve been
feeding her this formula. Someone told me that cow’s milk isn’t good for
babies, so she gets this."
"You’re right. Cow’s milk isn’t good for
babies," Rose told him. "Do you know how to prepare that?"
"I’ve figured it out. I just follow the
instructions on the package." He headed for the kitchen.
"Harry," Rose called.
"Yeah, Mom?"
"We’re proud of you. You did the right
thing, bringing her home with you. If you ever need our help, we’ll be
there."
"Thanks, Mom."