Disclaimer: The characters of the Stephanie Plum Series belong to Janet Evanovich and are used here without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.
Note: First. PLEASE NOTE: For the purposes of this story, Stephanie was born sometime between 1970-1972 and the Plum Series stories are happening in 2000-2002, not present day. Second, this story is not meant to offend anyone. No research has gone into it so there are probably some (OK, many) inaccuracies. The very brief allusions to the social aspects of what Vietnam veterans faced when they came home are not from historical accounts, but from memories of stray, overheard comments and one particular incident from when I was a child so, it’s very possible I got it wrong.
Frank Reflects
By TT
Combat changes you in ways most people can never understand. The things you see, the things you do reveal parts of yourself that no person should ever know. Even your fellow soldiers and veterans can’t fully comprehend the changes it makes to you since most of them didn’t know you before and those that did have also been changed by it.
What’s worse is when you come home from something like that and need to keep it a secret, need to hide all the good you did and all the bad. But it’s safer for you and those you love to keep silent about the fact you fought in Vietnam. It’s the only way to protect them from the hateful words people throw at you.
You come back to a world that is as foreign as the one you just left, where rules of polite society are expected to be enforced and where the horror that has consumed you for the past however long might as well be on another planet.
People see the changes in you, see the knowledge you now have and look away or deny it. So you hide it, hide yourself, try to push back that portion of yourself you never wanted to know and pretend to be something you once were, pretend that something within you didn’t die over there, that nothing changed.
Each person who has experienced it handles the return to reality in different ways. Some never come back.
Those of us who do return need things in our lives as we never have before. For me, I needed life. I’m not talking about living from day to day or waking up each morning, I’m talking about those people who blaze and burn with the fire of life, who can’t be contained by the rules of society but actually live each moment, each heartbeat with a passion that takes your breath away.
When I came home, it was to the quiet order of the life my wife had created. She saw the difference in me, but had no clue what to do about it. She didn’t understand and couldn’t. The Frank Plum who left wasn’t the same one who came back. She had the house in perfect order including little Valerie. Ellen was pregnant with the girl when I left. Valerie was walking now and beginning to talk, letting me know how much of her life I’d already missed. But Valerie, as wonderful as she was and still is, didn’t fill that gaping hole in me, didn’t breath life into my frozen soul.
A second cousin on my mother’s side worked for the post office. He got me in there, helping me skip over the waiting list. It was a good job, acceptable, honorable. But I was just as dead as always.
The longer I was home, the more I could see changes begin in Ellen and the way she handled Valerie, becoming more adamant that her daughter live in the black and white world that had ruled her own life. Ellen became even more Burg, even more the typical housewife. I’ll never be sure if she was trying to protect Valerie or just in denial, but that’s when it all began.
My wife was still fire and passion in bed. It was one of the few times I felt alive, felt whole, felt complete. Why that fire didn’t carry over outside the bedroom is anyone’s guess, but I missed it during the day.
Naturally, my need to feel alive and acting upon that need led to Ellen announcing she was pregnant. I’m not sure what I felt about it. Everything was still rather numb.
Even after Stephanie was born, I didn’t really pay much attention to her. Valerie would sometimes amuse me with her antics, but she was so much her mother’s daughter, those moments were few and far between.
Then Stephanie began to crawl.
I have no idea why I noticed that at first, but as soon as she was mobile, she was into everything. Her laughter would sound throughout the house until Ellen scolded her or made her cry.
By the time she was toddling around, the light and life in her eyes could be seen even from a distance. Her curiosity and enthusiasm for discovering things slowly began to heal a part of me and I began to feel more alive, more like the Frank Plum of old.
As she grew even more, her passion came through in everything she did. She loved completely, hated passionately (mostly vegetables), and simply radiated life.
Ellen and I used to laugh about her antics, even when we had to scold her for misbehaving. My wife had to become very creative in teaching that little girl social niceties like using a spoon instead of her hands and the importance of wearing clothes.
Then, one day when Stephanie was about six, I came home and Ellen was looking strained. Stephanie was pouting and angry about something. No matter what I did, however, they wouldn’t say a word about what happened. I stopped pressing, but I didn’t forget.
A week later I found out that Joey Morelli had played “choo-choo” with my little girl. That was the first time that part of me that had seen me through Vietnam reappeared. I had thought it was disappearing, but it had just been covered up.
I stopped by to speak with Joey’s father, reminding myself I couldn’t take my anger out on him, no matter how worthless that drunken wife beater was.
He was out behind their house, working on a car when I found him. It wasn’t a pleasant conversation, but it was civil. Then he told me that it wasn’t his son’s fault, it was the fault of the “little slut in training” who had gone along with it.
At those words something in me snapped. Morelli must have seen that he pushed too far because he suddenly turned grey, cringed and backed away. I have no idea what happened next. I do remember that Morelli only registered as a ‘threat’. It wasn’t until two gasps and the sound of a shattering cup that I came back to myself. I was holding Morelli up in the air by his throat at the time. Angie Morelli and Ellen had stepped outside. Angie had dropped her coffee cup.
The sadness, fear and emotional pain that flashed through Ellen’s eyes was enough to bring me back to myself completely. I released Morelli, told him to keep his son away from my girls and then took Ellen by the hand and left.
I knew what had happened had scared her. It pained me as well. I hadn’t seen that look in her eyes since I first got back.
Returning home, I began to bury myself in the newspaper, television and work. I still took joy in the life Stephanie showed, but knew that Ellen wasn’t sure what to do. It was the beginning of her attempts to turn Stephanie into a little clone of Valerie. I understood that the attempt to rein in and control Stephanie had nothing to do with what Stephanie had done and everything to do with my reaction. Ellen never again wanted to see me like that, never again wanted to see that part of me. So, she worked on Stephanie, tried to limit her.
Of course, Stephanie wouldn’t be controlled. Instead of being upset when she jumped off the roof, I felt like I had soared with her for those few seconds. Her light continued to heal me.
When she was sixteen and Joey Morelli dared to come near her again, she thought her mother and I didn’t know. The question was, how could be not know? That boy had written about it at the stadium and the sub shop.
I found out at the same time Ellen did. The only reason I didn’t follow the boy then was Ellen. She was so terrified of what would happen to me, so scared that I would lose it again, that she begged me not to follow, not to do anything, to just let it die down on its own.
It was a struggle. The part of me that had been uncovered so long ago, burrowed through the layers under which it had been buried and demanded I remove the threat. But there was no way I could ignore Ellen’s pleas. For her, I let it go.
As it turns out, I didn’t need to worry. Stephanie handled the situation on her own. I was so proud of her that day.
A few years later, it nearly killed me to see her with Dickie Orr, but he was her choice. She couldn’t see the way he dimmed her fire, couldn’t see the way he looked at other women more than he looked at her. Her mother saw it as Stephanie finally settling down and keeping that part of me she feared away forever.
The marriage didn’t last long. Stephanie was never one to be confined. Eventually, her life, her passion, her fire demanded escape. The fact that Dickie also managed to ignite her anger was appropriate.
Ellen was terrified of what I would do, remembering all the way back to the Morelli incident. But I didn’t need to do anything. Stephanie had done it all herself. But Ellen’s fear caused me to retreat a little more from the world, turn a little more into myself. The world became a mostly gray place for me for a few years, especially when Stephanie moved to Newark and I was faced with retirement.
When Ellen’s mother moved in, I found I needed to get out of the house more and was able to spot flashes of the light my soul craved in people I met or drove around in the cab.
Edna and I have an odd relationship. She knew me before my tour and afterward. She saw the change in me. She had always been something of a wild one. Ellen had been just like her as a girl, Ellen’s innocence and zest for life had drawn me to her so long ago.
The changes in me had slowly, over the years, transformed that zeal in Ellen and turned her into what was almost a caricature of herself.
Edna blames me for that. Of course, I blame myself to some extent as well. I just never knew how to reassure Ellen, how to help her, not when I wasn’t sure how to help myself.
So, Edna got wilder. Oddly, she eventually realized that, although we’d never see eye to eye, her antics were helping me and that, in turn, helped Ellen. So, she continued living life as fully as she could, willing to do what it took to see life and joy dance in her daughter’s eyes again, to see her embrace life and not fear it.
When Stephanie came home and announced she was doing skip tracing for Vinnie, her mother and I had the normal worries and concerns about her safety, but it was the first time in a long time she’d looked alive and her old fire started to burn again. I supported her in it as much as I could at that point, as did Edna. Ellen reserved judgment for a while.
When Stephanie brought the Morelli boy home, both Ellen and I were horrified. He’d eventually turned out all right, but I never forgot what he’d done to my daughter. For just a moment, I let him see that part of me that I kept hidden away and buried. I had the satisfaction of seeing him understand what he was looking at, what I was showing him. He’d served in the Navy; he’d seen that look before.
When she brought that Ranger fellow home, what I had buried so long ago recognized the same shadows near the surface of his eyes. Ellen, Edna and I all saw it. It was then that I knew what drew him to my little girl, even if he didn’t understand it.
Seeing that Stephanie was comfortable with him scared Ellen. I just didn’t realize how much it scared her until she started trying to get Stephanie to quit her job and settle down with Morelli.
I stayed and still stay out of Stephanie’s life for the most part, content to watch her live it, content to feel alive though her. I won’t go against Ellen’s wishes; it’s how she deals with what she doesn’t understand. But, what I want for my little girl is the choice that lets her fly, the choice that causes her life to burn brighter, not the one that dims it, banks it, limits it.
I don’t know who can help her live more fully, but I have a feeling it’s going to be someone like me, someone who understands what lurks in the darkness of the world, who has seen the shades and shadows of his soul and understands, needs and longs for light, for her light.
One day, I will lose her again and hopefully to someone worthy.
Until then, I still have a little of Stephanie and I have Mary Alice. The girl may think she’s a horse, but life burns in her wild and free, just as it did in Stephanie. Angie has a light as well, almost as bright, but more controlled – a campfire versus a wildfire. They provide light for now and hopefully, someday, Ellen will rediscover and release her light as well.
End.