CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Al sat down on the edge of Elsa's bed. Once upon a time it had been his and Elsa's, but considering their marital situation he was pushing his luck to think of it that way.

The remainder of their visit at the White House had passed without incident. They had awakened twined around each other after their night of passionate lovemaking, and Elsa hadn't seemed willing to talk about it. Really, Al didn't want to either. Not that it hadn't been terrific. Elsa was always terrific. It was just that, if he talked about that he would have to talk about what had preceded it.

He didn't know why he had let her do that. Just laid there like a lump and let her bathe him, for crying out loud, as if he was a baby or an invalid. But it had felt so good, so soothing to be tended to by soft, gentle fingers that knew nothing of misery or pain or wretchedness or loneliness. The hands massaging soap into his skin had not just been comforting his body, they had been washing away some of the ugliness in his mind. The moment had been so precious, and his psyche so vulnerable that he had been unable to resist surrendering to her hands.

That didn't mean he wasn't as embarrassed as hell about it now.

She was out getting groceries, and he had come up here in her absence because… probably because he wished it was still "their" bedroom. Her indifferent attitude towards him for the last few days made it plain that she might be willing to cuddle when the chips were down, and she wasn't adverse to a little hanky-panky when you caught her with her guard down, but he wasn't forgiven.

Really, why should she forgive him? She didn't know he was telling the truth. He had certainly not gone out of the way to seem credible. If he had told her the whole story off the bat, before she saw pictures of him and some blonde smeared across the cover of a supermarket rag, then maybe he could call her unreasonable. Better yet, he should have phoned her from that motel and given her the scoop then, even before she was expecting him home. That's what he would have done if it'd been Beth waiting at home.

No, if it had been Beth he probably would have brought Ana and the kids here, so that she could take a look at Ana's bruises and that little girl's black eye.

Al scrubbed his face with his hands. Damn it, it was so easy to forget for minutes or hours or even a whole day that he was married to Elsa. Why was it so hard to forget Beth?

He lay backwards on the bed, his feet dangling just above the carpet. Twelve days. Twelve days until launch. In less than a week he'd head in for the last round of physicals, for pre-launch quarantine and final sweeps of the itinerary. They were going up on the twenty-first. They'd circle the moon on Christmas Eve, and do the walks on Christmas Day.

Everything was in place. He had one more press conference to get through, and then that would be it until after splashdown. Jim and Clem had already decided they wanted to make reading Genesis on Christmas Eve a tradition, following suit with the boys from Apollo 8, which had also been a yuletide mission. Eight years ago… God, eight whole years. Hard to believe.

Hard to believe, at the same time, that it had only been eight years since that Christmas. He remembered it too damned well. He'd been in Major Quon's little camp outside of Cham Hoi for just over four months, and he could almost feel his body feeding on itself in protest of the third set of dietary restrictions he'd been placed on since the crash. First it had been rice and soup twice a day at Hoa Lo, then one or the other, never both, at Briarpatch. Quon, however, couldn't afford to let his captives get so strong, or maybe he just wanted to break them faster, because out there it was no more than one bowl of rice per diem and often less.

Al's stomach growled at him, and he almost laughed as he smacked it with an open palm. He was getting soft. Had a good, hearty breakfast, and at one in the afternoon his body was already crying out to be fed. What next?

He rolled over onto his belly and stretched his arms out, luxuriating in the gentle tugging on his muscles. His hands slipped under Elsa's pillow, and the fingers of his left closed around a familiar-feeling chain. He frowned. What were his dog tags doing under her pillow?

Hang on, his dog tags where under his shirt where they belonged.

So whose were these?

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM

Elsa fumbled with the key, hampered by her armload of groceries. She won through to the kitchen and began to unload.

What was she going to do? She couldn't deny that she felt something for Al, not after what had happened on Pennsylvania Avenue. Yet the fact remained that he had betrayed her with another woman.

Andrew would never have done that. She knew that Andrew would never have done that.

Or would he? The truth was that she needed to believe Andrew would have been the perfect husband. Part of her needed to be certain that her life with him would have been an idyll of bliss. She had to hold on to that dream.

It was harder to hold onto now. Her marriage to Al should have been an absolute disaster right from the start. From the moment they had met they had been at odds. There should never have been any happiness, or pleasure—unless it was the pleasure of two animals engaged in hedonistic rituals so akin to violence as to be almost indistinguishable. Yet she could not deny that, though they had argued and fought and come close to murdering one another many times, there had also been nights spent in enthralled discussion of some book or play; afternoons poring over her computer schematics with the first man willing to take instruction from her. There had been Sundays on the beach, and Friday nights in little restaurants, and strange, erotic reinterpretations of board games that had them laughing and gasping at once. Ice cream on hot summer days, steaming baths on cool winter evenings, and finally a night of "antics" that Al was quite right would have had every First Lady except perhaps the current one blushing in consternation.

It was bewildering. If the imperfect marriage had been so delightful, was it not possible that the perfect marriage would have been dreadful? That thought terrified Elsa more than she would have liked to admit.

She needed to get out of these clothes and into something more comfortable. The supermarket had been a veritable zoo, and she was feeling tired and not a little cross.

Stowing away the last of her purchases, Elsa ascended the short flights of stairs to her bedroom. She froze on the threshold. Al was standing in the middle of the room, frowning pensively. And in his hands…

"Give me those!" she cried frantically, running towards him. "Give them to me, they're mine!"

He turned with a sardonic laugh. "Oh, they're definitely not yours," he said.

The mockery in his tone struck fear into her heart. He wasn't going to give them back! They were all she had left, and he wasn't going to give them back!

"Give them to me! Give them back!"

She tried to grab them, but he held them out of her reach, catching her around the waist with his free arm.

"Ah-ah," he taunted. "First you tell me the story. Where'd you get these, little lady?"

Elsa wasn't even listening. She had to get them back! She had to! Oh, the beast, the wicked beast, to hold them like that, like a prize to be fought over! Her treasure, her one treasure…

"Monster!" she shrieked. "Monster! Elfajzott! Give them to me!"

"Now that's a good place to start!" Al said cheerfully. "What does that word mean?"

She was too desperate and too angry to care that she was acceding to his demands. "In English you say bastard!" she said. "Illegitimate, worthless, vile and unwanted, loathsome, stinking, wicked—"

Al chuckled. "Cool down or I'll think you mean it as an insult!" he said. "Now, just tell me where these came from, dolly, and then you can have them back."

The last word triggered her terror afresh, and the rage was forgotten. "Give them back! They're mine, give them to me! Al, please give them back! Please!"

Quite against her will, she began to cry. No one was supposed to touch them. No one but her. They were precious. They were irreplaceable. They were all that she had left.

"Give them back!" she sobbed again. "Give them back to me!"

Al's expression changed to one of contrition and concern. "Aw, kid, don't cry," he said softly, stroking the tears away from her cheeks. "Don't cry, honey; I was only teasing. Ssh, don't cry, Elsa. Here, here they are. Don't cry."

She snatched the chain from his fingers and pressed the thin leaves of metal to her lips hastily and yet reverently, the way that Mama would always kiss the medallion of her rosary in moments of anxiety. Andrew's dog tags. Her Andrew's dog tags. The feel of their weight in her hand soothed her very soul.

Al was still petting her face. "There, baby, there," he murmured. "I'm sorry, honey. I was only teasing."

She nodded, her eyes still fixed upon the letters that spelled out his name, and the numbers that had identified him to the Navy and the rest of the world. A hiccough jerked through her lungs. Al hugged her, and she let her head rest upon his shoulder.

"There," he said again. "Now tell me who he is, honey. Who is Andrew del Rio?"

She looked up with an irrational gasp of surprise. Of course, the name was imprinted on the tags, and he would know it, but somehow hearing it from Al's lips was stranger than anything she could have imagined. "He was a boy—" she began, then amended her words. "A man. A man I met when I was at school in California."

"At Caltech?" Al asked.

"Yes… no… no, I didn't meet him at school…" It was all so bewildering. She had never expected to tell Al this. How did one start such a story?

Al eased her down onto the bed, leaning back against the headboard and holding her against his chest. She curled her legs in towards her body and felt him remove first one pump, and then the other. His hand moved soothingly over her feet, while the other embraced her across her abdomen. She let her head rest on his shoulder.

"You didn't meet him at school," he prompted gently.

"No…" Elsa drew a deep, shuddering breath. "No. He was a boxer, a prize fighter. He had come to America about the same time that I did, hoping to do well in his sport. He was very good, but it is hard for foreigners to break into the game, you see…"

"Where was he from?" Al asked when her words lost direction and died away. "Mexico?"

Elsa shook her head. "Argentina," she whispered. "He used to call it la nacion de dos caras. In English it means—"

"The nation of two faces," Al said.

She shivered and leaned further in towards him. And he spoke Spanish, and this was the marriage that should never have had any happiness… "He said because things changed so often," she continued. "He loved America. He became a citizen, not long after we met. I… he worked days in a coffee house where I used to go when I wanted to be alone. Soon I wasn't going there to be alone anymore. He had a little house, by the sea. We used to go there and…"

She stopped. That was too intimate a detail to share. Inappropriate, anyway, to tell your husband how you had once made love to other men.

"Do the bingo-bango-bongo?" Al asked, his voice amused and yet comforting. His silly word for intercourse brought a tiny smile to Elsa's lips.

"Yes, and it was wonderful," she said. Then she flushed. She should not have said that. It would make him angry, and with reason. Did she want to hear how wonderful his encounters with prostitutes and wantons were? "I'm sorry, Al," she said hastily. "I mean…"

"You mean it was wonderful," Al said firmly. "Young love…always is..."

There was a dreamy lilt to his tone as he said that, and she wondered if he was remembering his own young love. Elizabeth, perhaps? But he had not been so very young when he had married her. Another girl?

Andrew, she reminded herself. Andrew. "We were to be married," she said. "But first he wanted to serve his new country, to give back some of what had been given, he said."

Al stiffened a little. "Vietnam," he said quietly. "Oh, Elsa, honey…"

"He enlisted," she said fiercely, unwilling to accept his pity. "He was Navy, too." One hand clutched Andrew's dog tags close to her heart. The other fumbled with the collar of Al's shirt, drawing out his slender chain. She placed the smooth metal tabs side by side.

"Sailor?" Al asked, resting his chin on the crown of her head.

"No, a Marine," Elsa replied. "He was a Marine. Very brave, very strong, so handsome in his uniform… like you." She closed her eyes. Every time she thought about this it grew harder and harder to overcome the desolation of the loss. "He promised, when the war was over he would come home and we would be married, have children…"

"I thought you said you didn't want kids," said Al.

Elsa stopped. She had thought so, too. No, that was silly. Of course she didn't want kids. "I don't," she said, then pressed on because she didn't like that he had caught her in a contradiction like that. "When his time was up he decided to stay, because they needed men. He wanted to serve his country, and he said… he said that if he stayed, one more boy who didn't want to go to war could stay home… st-stay safe."

She shivered and Al held her more tightly. The hand that had been petting her feet now stroked the length of her flank, down her ribs and into the curve of her waist and over her hip.

"He was killed in action," Al said.

Elsa felt a burst of gratitude that he had not forced her to say it.

"Yes… in a way," she said. "There was an accident. Miscommunication. They dropped the napalm too soon, before the Marines had cleared out of the area. Five of the men in his squadron died then, and Andrew… he was burned so badly. Eighty percent of his body. They airlifted him home as quickly as they could. At the hospital they tried so hard, but his blood became infected and—and he died."

Al's lips brushed her forehead. "Elsa, Elsa, honey," he chanted.

That was as much as she had ever told anyone. The dark secret she had carried for so long was weighing heavy on her heart, and she had to speak. She had to free herself of this silent anguish.

"It was my fault," she said abruptly.

"No," Al told her. "No, baby, no, it wasn't your fault."

"It was!" Elsa reiterated. "I was here, in Florida. I had just finished my degree, I was here starting work with NASA. I didn't even know he had been wounded until he was dead. His friends couldn't find me. My friends didn't know. He died because he could not hold on hard enough, and if I had been there I could have helped him. I could have made him fight, the way that I made you fight when you wanted to quit because of your claustrophobia, but I was here, because my job was more important than Andrew. It's my fault, my fault that he died…"

She was crying now, but she didn't care. Al's gentle arms around her made it all right to cry. He stroked her hair and held her tight as she poured out her emptiness on his strong shoulders. They had borne so much, surely they could bear this, too.

The tears seemed to purify her heart, washing away the brokenness and healing old wounds. At last, when the weeping ended, she felt a strange new strength beyond her exhaustion. A burden she had not really realized she carried seemed lifted from her soul. She raised her head and looked into Al's beautiful dark eyes.

"You were right to follow your dream, Elsa," he said. "You couldn't tie up your life waiting for him forever. That's not—" His voice faltered for a moment. "That's not fair to you. Not fair to any woman to have her life tied up just because… because a man's off doing what he has to do. You made the right choice. He knows you love him."

Elsa smiled through the tears still wet upon her cheeks. "That's what the nurse said," she told him. "That is just what the nurse said about living my own life, not being tied up. She was so kind… told me how brave Andrew was, how he had always tried to smile. She told me he was so handsome, his smile just like Robert Redford's. She spent a whole afternoon with me, telling me about his last days. She was the one who saved his dog tags for me."

"World needs more nurses like that," Al said, smoothing her hair away from her face.

That was true, Elsa thought. Suddenly she realized she couldn't remember the nurse's name. The sweet, dark-haired nurse who had offered empathy and kindness that made Elsa believe she truly understood such a loss… But if she could not immortalize the name, at least she could immortalize the deed.

"She was so kind," she repeated. "She took time for me… and she was so busy. It was just after Easter, and she was getting ready to be married. She was moving away from San Diego, and leaving the Navy, too, and still she took the time to tell me how Andrew—"

Beneath her Al had suddenly gone rigid. She straightened in confusion. His face was a horrible shade of gray, and his eyes stared vacantly off into the distance.

"You started at NASA…" he croaked.

"The spring of nineteen sixty-nine," Elsa said. His expression was frightening. Numb and terrifying. A mask of death, yes, that was it. As if some part of him was dying…

A tremor like the ones that sometimes roused her in the night ripped through his body.

"And this nurse… she said that, about being tied down?"

"Just exactly what you said, yes, yes, she did," Elsa affirmed hastily, resisting the urge to shrink away. He had tolerated her ugliness. She could tolerate his.

His throat spasmed as if he was going to vomit.

"Damn it," he gasped, his voice so strangled that it seemed scarcely capable of producing the sounds. "God damn it."

Elsa tried to caress his jaw, hoping to drive away whatever demon was tormenting him now. Al slapped her hand away and pushed her off of him, getting to his feet and striding from the room as if Satan himself was on his heels.

Bewildered and shocked and somehow humiliated, Elsa lay on the bed, clutching her stinging wrist, and felt the anger rekindling in her heart.