Mom called again. “Come home.”
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Have you been drinking?”
She hadn’t slept the night before, and her head felt like cotton. “What’s it to you what I do?”
“Charlie would be ashamed of you!”
The words cut deeper than if her mother had wielded a butcher knife. Charlie had gotten drunk a few times after football games in high school. If Mom and Dad ever knew about it, they never said so. “I’m trying to stop the war! I’m trying to bring him home! But I guess that counts for nothing in your book! If you want to know the truth, Mom, you and Dad sent Charlie to Vietnam. All your talk of God and country.”
“Stop it!”
This time, Carolyn hung up.
Dad called a few hours later. Chel answered and held out the telephone. “It’s your father.” Carolyn took the receiver and slammed it down.
When a letter arrived from Oma, Carolyn dreaded opening it. When she read it, she found no mention of Mom and Dad other than the usual “working hard.” Oma went on about books she had read, the garden, and missing Carolyn every afternoon when she sat down to tea.
I hope you can make it home soon. I miss you.
She must be the only one. Carolyn wrote back.
Dear Oma,
I can’t come home right now. I’m collecting signatures on a petition to end the war. Chel is writing for an underground press, sharing intelligence on how to protest the war more effectively. No one seems to be listening now, but I have hope that change will come. There are plans to march on Washington, and many of us are sending letters on alternative service for conscientious objectors. Several of our friends burned their draft cards. A few are talking about moving to Canada…
Carolyn thought she’d write back and argue.
Mom wrote and asked if she was coming home for Thanksgiving. Carolyn didn’t answer. Mom wrote again a few weeks later and invited her home for Christmas.
Carolyn couldn’t face them. She felt ashamed of her behavior, but also somewhat self-righteous as well. They didn’t understand her, and with Charlie off in Vietnam, she wouldn’t have an interpreter. She didn’t want to face their disapproval and submit to endless lectures about her political views, her loss of faith, or whatever else they would find to criticize. She couldn’t stand seeing them sitting in front of their television set, listening to the news reports and body counts. She didn’t want to watch them worry and then have them take it out on her. She was doing everything she could to end the war and make a better world for all of them!
She wrote home and said she and Chel planned to go skiing in Tahoe. They had talked about it, so it technically wasn’t a lie. They went to San Francisco, instead, the new happening place in America, and spent the night partying at a house in Haight-Ashbury. Cold as it was, they put flowers in their hair and danced in the streets to guitar music and bongo drums.
When they got back to the Berkeley bungalow, Carolyn had two Christmas cards, one from Mom and Dad with fifty dollars in it, and another from Oma with only a note.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don’t lean on your own understanding. Acknowledge Him in all your ways and He will make your path straight. Proverbs 3:5-6. Live by it and you’ll have no regrets. I love you, Liebling.
Oma
Carolyn felt a sharp pang of guilt, realizing she hadn’t sent a card to anyone, not even Charlie.
She wrote back.
God is dead, Oma. If He loved us, we wouldn’t have wars and famines. People wouldn’t die of disease or be born with deformities or mentally retarded. I don’t believe in God anymore.
She sent it before she could change her mind and then felt eaten up by guilt, ashamed that she’d lashed out at Oma, who’d always loved her unconditionally.
1968
January blew cold and brought with it the Chinese Lunar New Year. While the Vietnamese celebrated Tet, the Vietcong and North Vietnamese army overran the city of Hue. Chel had bought a television, and a dozen friends and strangers were packed into their living room, high on pot and angst, watching buildings explode and wounded American soldiers carried out on stretchers. Conversation buzzed around Carolyn, but she felt cold inside. Was Charlie among the Marines trying to retake the city? She wanted to scream. Shut up! My brother is in the middle of hell, and if you call him a baby killer or warmonger again, I’ll kill you. Maybe she did say it. It got quiet in the room.
“What’s with her?” someone muttered angrily.
“Jesus… Jesus…,” Carolyn prayed, trying to grasp hold of faith again, a last-ditch effort to save Charlie. Please, God, don’t let him get killed. Drunk, she pressed her hands against the television screen. She felt someone’s arms around her.
“Easy, babe. He’ll be okay, Caro. You gotta believe. He’ll be okay.”
Believe in what? God? They’d all been saying God didn’t care or God was dead. When had faith ever been enough?
Carolyn didn’t go to work. She sat glued to the television, searching faces, drinking, looking for Charlie on the screen.
Oma called. “Two soldiers are with your mom and dad.” She spoke Carolyn’s name, but couldn’t get any more out.
Something cracked inside Carolyn. She fumbled the telephone back into the cradle. Her body started to shake violently. The phone rang again. Carolyn heard it from a distance. Another sound intruded, a terrible sound, like a wounded animal screaming in pain. She covered her ears, trying to block it out. Charlie! It was Charlie!
Chel came out of the bedroom, half-dressed, hair in disarray. She grabbed Carolyn’s wrists and pulled her arms down. When the sound grew louder, Chel slapped her across the face. The screaming stopped. Carolyn sat silent, stunned. Chel cupped her face. “Charlie?” Unable to speak, Carolyn crumpled. Hands spread on the bare wood floor, she sobbed.
Uttering a sobbing cry, Chel rose. She screamed a string of curses. When the telephone rang again, she grabbed the cord and yanked it out of the wall. Snatching up the telephone, she hurled it through a window. Hunkering down again, she grabbed Carolyn’s shoulders and shook her. “Caro. Caro!”
The radio played an Animals song. “We gotta get out of this place if it’s the last thing we ever do…”
“I tried so hard, Chel. And I couldn’t save him.”
Chel got dressed, then lit a roach with shaking hands. She pulled Carolyn up with one hand and offered her the rolled marijuana. “Take a drag, Caro. Come on, babe. It’s better than barbiturates.”
Carolyn filled her lungs with pot smoke. She didn’t want to feel anything. The music kept playing its siren song. “We gotta get out of this place…” Too late. Too late.
Chel dragged her up. “Let’s get outta here.”
They didn’t pack anything. They left it all behind. The last thing Carolyn remembered was riding across the Bay Bridge in the front seat of Chel’s red Camaro, Janis Joplin screaming, Chel screaming along with her, tears running down her white face.
Oh, Rosie, where do I begin? Charlie is dead, killed in Vietnam, and my sweet Carolyn has disappeared. The pain is too deep for tears. Hildemara can’t eat or sleep; she cries all the time. I fear for her health. I fear for Carolyn as well. God alone knows where she is and what she’s doing to herself. Will I lose everyone I love?
Ever since Charlie joined the Marines, the family has been in conflict. Carolyn has set herself against the war, and unwittingly against Trip. He says anyone against the war is against Charlie and every other young American boy fighting this war. Carolyn says she’d do anything to bring Charlie home, but Trip says the protests are aiding the enemy and demoralizing the troops. Trip called her a traitor and said Charlie would be ashamed of her. She withdrew from the university to devote herself to the antiwar movement, and she has no job, no means of support other than her rich, abandoned friend Rachel Altman. I’ve never met a more damaged girl.