Helen set down her glass, sobered.
“She came for a surprise visit. Waiting for him in his room at the hotel. Word is that rumors made their way back home about a certain loose female photographer.”
This mythical wife existed in a time and space so far away from the crooked apartment that Helen had been able to ignore the situation. Darrow himself gave the marriage such little credence that she couldn’t grasp the reality of the wife’s sudden presence in Saigon. But here it was, or rather, here the wife was, pushing herself into a place she didn’t belong. Helen felt the scruples of her old life. If she had meet Darrow back home, the fact of his marriage would have kept her from seeing him, but the thousands of miles, the nature of the war, had seduced her, made life back home strange and unfathomable.
“You shouldn’t care. He loves you, not her.”
The idea of being the other woman so ridiculous. Compared to what she had just witnessed, wasn’t Darrow right, wasn’t this small and unimportant? She wanted her life to be clean and right; to have things of her own. This must be the first thing to change. Helen leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What should I do? Go home?”
“A woman’s never the most important thing to a man like him. You are fighting over scraps. Why not just take your pictures?”
Helen waved her hand as if shooing off an annoying insect.
“Then stop,” Annick said. “You’ve proved yourself.”
“The more I go out there the less I know why. But there are moments… when I feel this is what I’m alive for.”
“So take a little vacation to Singapore. A break.” Annick stubbed out her cigarette. “Other people make a whole life out of avoiding pain.” The waiter brought a bowl of fruit; Annick smiled up at him extravagantly till he left. “Distracting themselves.”
Helen smiled at her open flirtation. “What about you? I know how you distract yourself.”
Now Annick sat up and her demeanor became as businesslike as in the shop. “Speaking of- would you mind if I saw Robert?”
A stab of possessiveness, but Helen dismissed it. Of course, life had to go on, and it was no one’s fault that she had messed up her own. “Someone should be happy in Saigon.”
“Don’t be silly. This is a small place; we have to reuse each other. You think he’s an innocent, but you’re wrong. He sees through you and Darrow. He’s like me; he knows this war means nothing. Maybe a change would do us both good. Maybe living in New Orleans would be fun.”
That night Helen lay in bed, restless. After the drinks with Annick, she had hoped to fall asleep quickly, but each time she closed her eyes the image of Samuels haunted her. She regretted things. Crazy thoughts, made more powerful because of their lack of logic. What she had done or failed to do. The arrival of Darrow’s wife presaged a change, but to what? She fell into a fitful sleep, and again she had the dream; children approached and circled her, pressing in, circling around and around, touching, but when she tried to speak with them, they turned away.
After midnight footsteps on the stairs woke her, a key in the lock, and now that the change was close she wished he had stayed away longer.
Darrow felt his way into the dark room. “You awake?”
“Yes.”
He flipped on the red-shaded lamp. “I was hoping you were here.” He sat on the bed. “I drove straight in from Bien Hoa, screw the curfew.”
In his arms, she let herself be still a minute, feel protected for the barest fraction of time. He smelled of sweat, dirt, and the fecund reek from being in the field. It repulsed and made her hold him tighter. His body strong, but he was no different from Samuels, the vulnerability of flesh.
“Your wife’s in town. At your hotel room.”
He let go of her. “Not now.”
“Wasn’t my choice.”
“How do you know?”
“As in, have I seen her? No.”
Darrow pulled off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “She threatened something about coming.”
Helen moved away and pulled the sheet up around herself. “You didn’t mention me… no.” He had let it come to this, having her here. Helen’s feelings were suddenly clear. “I had my own little religious experience out there this last time. Maybe you didn’t tell her about us for a reason. I need something of my own. Not you. It never was. You and I were just a diversion.”
“Where’s this coming from?” He was angry at how quickly she was willing to throw them away.
“That’s rich-you’re being jealous.”
Darrow stood and shoved a chair hard across the room. It made a heavy thud as it fell on its side. “A war is on, you notice? What the fuck do my marriage and your hurt feelings mean?”
“ ‘The cool thing for us, baby, is that when this war’s done, there’s always another one. The war doesn’t ever have to end for us.’ What would you do without the war as an excuse?”
“Ask me to leave her.”
“Very romantic, but impractical.”
Darrow kicked the door, and it bounced back into the wall. She flinched. The knob left a fist- size indentation in the wallpaper. “I’m ending this marriage now, regardless of if you’re here when I get back.” Her back was to him, and he stood in the door frame, catching his breath. “Be here when I get back.”
A military jeep roared past Darrow in the street. Three ARVN soldiers sat in the front, two squeezed in the passenger seat. They had just finished a good dinner, with ample quantities of beer, and insisted on driving him to his hotel so that less liberal-minded soldiers didn’t hassle him for being out past curfew. Apparent that if he didn’t oblige, they, in fact, would be the ones to hassle him. He got in and offered cigarettes all around. Satisfied, the soldiers forgot about him and gossiped among themselves. Darrow sat back in silence and smoked.
Helen was right, of course. He didn’t reveal himself, or rather the limited facts of biography never seemed important, always giving an arbitrary, confining version of the truth. He smiled in the darkness, realizing this was a liar’s rationale. His wife’s father owned the major newspaper that he had first worked for; he knew that fact led to surmises about his integrity. What it meant in reality was that he worked much harder to prove himself, that he had doggedly achieved on his own merits despite that.
But the withholding had started even earlier. He had never even told his wife about his name change. At the time, he had felt it gave him a foolish and vaguely embarrassing vanity, an adolescent stunt. Now too much time had passed for the truth; they had been married six years, even though he hadn’t spent more than a few weeks at a time with either her or the boy.
No, not telling his wife had involved something deeper that he wanted to hide. She fell in love with Sam Darrow, the famous war photographer, but he was still the insecure young man determined to create this mythic persona. When he told her the first time that he was leaving for the Middle East, she sobbed. Wanted him to move to features, take pictures of politicians and movie stars. Not understanding that the creation now demanded its due, demanded to be played out.
He sat her down on the chintz-covered sofa in the living room. The marriage a terrible mistake, he offered an immediate divorce-an annulment for her sake. But she insisted on waiting till after the baby. Which was the way she announced her pregnancy to him. Much to his father-in-law’s displeasure, he jumped when the offer to work for Life came, no longer beholden to the paper. He had been gone since; if it made her happy to stay married, he had seen no reason to inflict more suffering on the girl than he already had.
As the jeep swung through the empty streets, the night air blew cool and damp; he was still grimy from patrol but in no hurry to reach his destination. No other place he’d rather be than Saigon, no other life he would choose.
He hardly knew the woman waiting in the hotel room for him. He supposed she was a nice, loving girl and that her marriage to him had been a terrible disappointment. He blamed himself for weakness. There
