“Ouch!”
“I do apologize, Mrs. Hunter. But the more tense you are, the more uncomfortable it is.”
“I’m not tense.”
“Then you’re the first pregnant newlywed woman I’ve ever met who is not.” Another chuckle, back there beyond the draped cloth over her bent knees, from a man who suspects nothing more than new mom nerves.
“Exactly when . . . I mean, am I due in April?”
“’Bout mid-May. Hold still if you can.”
“Sorry. I’m trying.”
Mid-May. God help her.
“Your husband is in the army, Mrs. Hunter?”
“Yes.”
“Have you had word from him recently? Since . . . ?”
“No, I haven’t heard from him . . . since.”
Two days ago, the Viet Cong had launched a violent offensive to coincide with the Tet lunar new year.
“I’m sure he’s just fine,” Dr. Stevens says as though he knows, and Melody nods as though she agrees.
“When he does get in touch, you’ll have big news to share with him, won’t you?”
“Yes. I surely will.”
At last the doctor rolls back and stands, methodically plucking his splayed fingertips to remove one glove, and then the other. He looks like the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy—elderly, with a goatee, horn-rimmed glasses, and a black string tie beneath his white coat.
“No man ever forgets the day he finds out he’s going to become a daddy. Got the news from my wife back in ’28, right before the Okeechobee Hurricane made landfall. I don’t know which one hit harder.” A smile curves his lips, but his eyes pity her, a pregnant young wife whose husband might never return.
He makes an appointment to see her next month and hands her a bottle of prenatal vitamins. “All righty, then. You can go ahead and get dressed. Oh, and, Mrs. Hunter?” He turns back in the doorway. “I’ll keep your husband in my prayers.”
“Thank you.”
Travis’s well-being should be Melody’s only concern right now. She should be at home watching the news, or in church praying.
Six months along . . .
Six months.
The baby had been conceived in late August, early September.
Travis had deployed in July.
The Bronx, New York
Her birth certificate says Linda Lucille Miller.
She was named after her mother, plain old Linda Miller, and her mother’s favorite comedienne, Lucille Ball. It’s hard to imagine that a woman who’d never smiled or shown interest in television, or anything really, would have had a favorite comedienne. It’s even harder to imagine that she herself has anything in common with plain old Linda Miller, but her biology teacher says that a person’s parents leave a genetic imprint in every cell. She doesn’t like to think about that, or about her mother, who always called her Linda Lou.
Everyone else calls her Linda, except her father. To him, she’s “Gypsy,” the name he’d privately bestowed when she’d come into this world. The name he says everyone else will know when they leave it—en masse, according to his prophecy, and anytime now.
Gypsy Colt Matthews would have been her legal name if he’d had any say in the matter, but he hadn’t been around the night she’d been born.
“Hospitals aren’t my scene,” he’d told her with a shrug.
Her mother hadn’t been his scene, either. And though he’s mentioned the family and friends—followers—he’d once had, now there is only his daughter.
“You and me, we’re the chosen ones, Gypsy, baby. No one else matters. They’ll be gone, just like that, when Judgment Day comes,” he says, snapping his fingers. “And it’s coming, man. Anytime now. We have to be ready.”
When she isn’t in the mood for Bible study or reading newspapers in search of signs that the apocalypse is imminent, she claims to be bogged down in homework.
Most of the time, he buys that excuse, especially now that she’s in high school. But for her, academics have always been a breeze.
The other day, her biology teacher, Mr. Dixon, asked her if she’d started thinking about college yet.
“Oh, I can’t afford that.”
“Keep up your studies, and the finest universities in this country will be offering you scholarships.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Of course. But you’ll have to work hard.”
A scholarship . . . college . . . a ticket out of this declining neighborhood and vermin-infested apartment, with windows too warped to open and a bathtub in the kitchen.
Sitting in front of the television news on this Friday evening, she works algebra problems as Walter Cronkite gravely reports the ongoing Tet Offensive in Vietnam and Eddie Adams’s graphic photograph yesterday capturing a Viet Cong prisoner’s execution. Then he announces the birth of Elvis Presley’s daughter.
The war is bad enough, but now her girlhood idol, the world’s greatest sex symbol, has become a dad?
Yeah, the world’s coming to an end, all right.
She turns off the TV and goes to the icebox to scrounge up some supper. Oran had left a note this morning saying he’s working late tonight.
So smart, putting it in writing rather than mentioning it in person before she’d gone off to school. She might have read something into his voice, or seen a glimmer in his eyes.
She can always tell when he’s lying, though it usually isn’t to her. Often he prefaces a lie with the phrase, “Very truly I tell you,” lifted from the gospel according to John, one of his favorite books in the Bible. Fascinated by scholarly theories about John’s identity, Oran occasionally claims to have written the book himself, along with Revelation. Gypsy has seen him convince rapt crowds of it, dispatching the naysayers with his breathless, brilliant dissertation.
Yes, he’s smart, Oran.
But Gypsy is smarter.
Back in Travis’s poppy-red Camaro, Melody puts the top down despite the cool day. She’s suffocating. She needs air.
This is going to happen. There’s no way out. Not anymore.
Melody’s old friend Charlene still lives in town. After going through school together, they’d been bridesmaids in each other’s weddings, and had looked forward to sharing married life as couples. But as Travis prepared to deploy, Charlene’s husband, Gary, was burning his draft card and marching on Washington.
“He’s the devil. You stay away from him,” Travis had told Melody. “Stay away from both of them.”
“She’s my friend.”
“You heard the scripture at their wedding, same as at ours. ‘And the two become one flesh.’ He’s the devil, and she’s his wife. That makes her the devil, too. You got that?”
“But—”
“You vowed to love, honor, and obey me, Melody. I’m ordering you to stay away from those people. You got that?”
I don’t take orders from anyone!
It’s what she should have said. Instead, she’d cried, and he’d softened.
“Baby, I’m going to war to fight for this country. I’m a patriot, putting my life on the line for your freedom. How do you think I feel when I see these long-haired whining hippies who don’t respect me? Can you blame me for wanting to keep you away from them? I’m trying to protect you.”