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Why had Richard said those things to Lori? He never said them to her. She had long ago rationalized his refusal to talk with her, believing he wanted to forget Vietnam. Once when she asked, he told her it was not possible to imagine war. “If politicians could, they’d work harder to keep us out of it.” She had realized then there were things about Richard she would never know. She worried it was because she had been on the other side in the sixties, a peace activist, the enemy. But when she met wives of other veterans, she discovered this was a frequent complaint. Vietnam was seldom a topic of casual conversation, talked about at the breakfast table or over cocktails at parties. It was not shared in the bedrooms or in a couple’s intimate conversations. At the few veterans’ reunions Maggie attended, the men usually ended up by themselves in another room of the house or hotel, in the yard or the bar, leaving the women to commiserate about what they did not understand about their husbands’ military service. “In country,” a phrase she heard often from veterans, was a code, like a secret handshake, separating those who had been in Vietnam from those who had not.
Maggie left the car and walked toward Copley Square. Jeff had mentioned weeks ago that Lori had discovered some of Richard’s personal papers at the office. She decided to go by there now. It was a brisk October morning, the sky cloudless. Since Richard’s death, she had only driven to his office. To walk, as Richard had done most days, meant passing Stern’s Drug Store. She slowed as she crossed Berkley and walked on, stopping before she reached the drugstore. She could cross the street, go up the other side of Boylston then cross again to Richard’s building. But she forged ahead, telling herself this was good for her, important. Life went on, like it or not. She angled her head away from the storefronts and went by. But when she had passed the drugstore, she turned and came back, pausing before the door. She took a quick breath and went in. The comfortable familiarity startled her. She expected the store to be transformed. She had been here so many times in the years they had lived on Marlborough Street, even before it was called Stern’s. The shelves of merchandise were laid out as they had always been, refrigerated compartments running along the side wall, cash register and pharmacy counter at the back. An Asian woman was at the cash register, checking out a customer. The pharmacist in his white coat was farther back behind the counter, rummaging in a drug cabinet. Several customers browsed along the rows. Maggie waited just inside the doorway, trying to see what could not be seen — Richard in his gray suit coming toward her from the cash register, heading to the door, Billy Nguyen entering from the street and standing where she stood. At the counter a second teenager,18-year-old Tommy Randolph, the part-time clerk. The police had gone through this scene with her after the shooting, even showing her a diagram of the drugstore. Billy came in the door here, Richard stood there, Tommy Randolph was behind the counter. No one else was in the store. The police detective said Billy had a pistol and threatened Randolph with it. The clerk knew Billy and owed him money. When he saw Billy come in, he bolted, running to the back to lock himself in the employee bathroom. Maggie took a tentative step further into the store, stepping where Billy had stepped, although the boy had probably moved quickly, going after Tommy when the clerk ran. Richard, witnessing this scene, grabbed Billy as he ran by him. But Billy broke free and turned the gun on Richard, sending a bullet into his abdomen. The night he died, she had stood beside the emergency room table with Father Phil, Richard’s body covered by a white sheet, the bright lights streaming on her face. The fidgety attendant pulled back the sheet so she could see Richard’s head, and she reached out and touched his cheeks, his mouth, his closed eyelids, the purple bruise on his forehead where he had fallen. When she asked the attendant and Father Phil to leave her alone, she removed the sheet completely and put her hand on the old scar on his gray chest, ran her fingers through the dark hairs. She touched the clotted hole in his abdomen, dried blood and mucous staining her fingers. She laid her hand on the limp penis and stroked the hairs at his crotch. She did not remember that she wept or spoke or cried out. She just kept touching him, his legs, his feet, his arms, until Father Phil came into the room and gently tugged her away. Cause of death, hemorrhagic shock, the emergency room doctor told her. “A wound like that has a high morbidity. It’s doubtful he would have survived under the best of circumstances.” He meant to console her, but she was not consoled. Richard was left bleeding on the floor of this place where she now stood until a customer came in and called 911. Tommy Randolph, according to the police, was still in the bathroom when the police arrived. Maggie stared into the space before her, imagining Richard coming toward the front door as Billy rushed past. She shut her eyes and tried to see Richard threatening Billy Nguyen because he was Vietnamese, believing himself under attack in Vietnam. But no such image formed. Not Richard, steady, stoic Richard. That strategy would never play for Ev Quincy. She opened her eyes. The room tilted. She leaned against the magazine shelf. “May I help you?” The female voice came from across the room. “Miss, may I help you?” The woman behind the counter was staring.
Maggie shook her head. “No, sorry, you can’t,” she said and hurried from the store.
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