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Blue Moon
By Ruby Enario Carlino
*
FICTION. The following is a short story, a fictional tale of what might well have been a Foreign Service episode. The author previously published in this journal a straightforward, nonfiction account of her life abroad. Here she, a gifted writer, captures the essence of one of the great challenges facing any American living and working overseas: the threat of terrorism. –Ed.
He waited by the hallway window, looking idly out at the teeming traffic under the hot tropical sun. In his early 40's, he looked tanned and fit in his crisp white shirt. He was not a particularly good-looking man, but his curly brown hair was cropped short and his slightly bent nose, a reminder of his introduction to judo, gave his face a distinctive look. There was something about his appearance that made people give him a second look. Perhaps it was the brooding expression on his face or the way his hazel eyes looked at the world, as if guardedly peering from behind a shutter. Or perhaps it was that he carried himself with a quiet warning that said, "Do Not Disturb." His name was Willard Hays. He had spent most of his years in the Foreign Service, mostly in Asia, first as a diplomatic courier and later as an officer. He was the new regional security officer at the U.S. embassy in Sagallasus, a populous island nation in the North Pacific Ocean.
Willard was waiting to call on Marc Ormond, the chargé d'affaires at the embassy, when the secretary called to him from the doorway. He thanked her and strode into the chargé's office where his new boss, a man with prematurely gray hair, conservatively attired, was pacing back and forth, cradling a cell phone to his ear. Marc Ormond smiled and gestured for him to take a seat.
Willard noticed right away her photograph; in a large silver frame standing on the bureau behind the chargé's desk. Next to it was a photograph of Marc Ormond with a former secretary of state and the President of the United States. Willard's eyes returned to the photo of the woman. She looked elegant and assured, a single strand of pearls hung around her graceful neck; her dark, almond eyes were staring straight at the camera, and a smile hovered slightly on her full lips. She was older but as beautiful as he remembered her.
He quickly looked away. After almost ten years, she had reappeared in the most inconvenient of places. He was certain the gods of fate must have been doubled up with glee at that moment. If you had asked him how he felt then, he would have sworn at some unseen force hitting him squarely in the chest. He wondered why now, why here?
"Welcome on board," said Chargé Ormond, interrupting his thoughts and extending a hand.
"Thank you, sir. I'm glad to be here," he replied as he shook the other's hand. Marc Ormond appeared slightly younger than Willard, even though this was his second posting as deputy chief of mission. He was one of the East Asia Bureau's fast-rising stars, and it probably helped that he had served in several danger spots from Algiers to Dushanbe.
"We're not terribly formal here, Willard, please call me Marc," the chargé offered with a smile as he settled on his wide leather chair.
Later, Willard could not remember much of his brief conversation with his new boss. He did remember being told to come to the buffet dinner that he and his wife, Carmela, were hosting for newcomers at their residence that Friday. Willard spent the rest of the day in the standard whirl of office calls and in-processing and concluded it with some paperwork in his own office. He was able to block thoughts of Carmela Ormond from his head until he returned to his large, empty house provided through the embassy.
Willard arrived at the chargé's residence on Friday slightly earlier than the time stated on the engraved invitation. He was hoping to see Carmela before the other guests arrived. He was not sure what he would say, but he wanted to see her. He wanted to get the meeting over with and avoid the agony of imagining her shadow popping up from every nook and cranny of the embassy compound.
"Hello, Will. I've been wondering when you were going to show up," Carmela greeted him with two outstretched hands and a wide, open smile. "Kumusta?" asking how he was in her Philippine tongue, perhaps checking up on how much he remembered.
"Carmi, funny meeting you here," he replied flippantly as his hands touched the tips of her fingers briefly. "Or should I address you as Mrs. Ormond?" he asked with almost a grimace, unable to look away from the well-remembered face.
"Of course, you can call me Carmi," she laughed. "Although I should warn you that nobody calls me by that name anymore," she added without a trace of accent in her voice. "Marc should be down in a few minutes. Let's go out to the patio."
He listened politely while she explained the work she was doing with Sagallasian women's groups. "Why didn't you wait?" he asked before he could stop himself, his voice somber and barely audible.
"Wait for what?" Carmela inquired with a slight tilt of her head, smiling. "The letter asked me to leave you alone, and I did," she added with just a hint of bitterness.
"What letter?" Willard demanded with a start.
"A letter from a woman named Maureen. She said that she had thrown my letters to the dogs," Carmela explained wryly, "and promised to make me sorry if I didn't stop writing . . ." Her voice trailed off when she saw the stricken look on his face. "You did not know?" she asked quietly. "If she had access to my letters, I figured that she must have been somebody in your life," Carmela said with a slight shake of her head.
"Maureen wanted more than I could give her," Willard replied. "I'm sorry, I should have known."
"What is it they say—it's water under the bridge now?" Carmela asked him with a sad smile.
"Yes, that's right," Willard agreed. After a pause, he added, "I did come back for you, you know."
"I must have gone on with my life while you weren't looking," Carmela replied with a small smile, as if to take away the sting from her answer. "Milan Kundera once wrote that the past is full of life, eager to irritate us," she said looking at him closely for the first time.
"Let it go, Will."
"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine," Willard muttered Bogart's classic line under his breath.
"What did you say?" she asked.
"Nothing," he replied quietly. "It's nothing."
Willard Hays gazed at the sophisticated and elegant woman before him and marveled at how far she had come since he knew her in the Philippines. He remembered the young woman he once knew who could bring the house down with her rendition of Linda Ronstadt songs. He could still recall the first time he saw her perform in the Executive Lounge of the Plaza Hotel. Her waist-long hair was jet-black and shiny, framing a pixie-like face. She was wearing a short black dress, red shoes and a thin black ribbon around her neck with a spray of vermilion cattleyas. She was so prim and proper she would not let him buy her a drink. He smiled, thinking of how he had never heard her swear, even when she was hopping mad. She was the best thing that ever happened to him. And he had walked away. Who was he to complain?
"Humor me and tell me how you met him," Willard said.
"After you left I quit my job at the lounge," Carmela replied. "Has it been almost ten years? It seems so long ago." She sighed and her face took on a distant look. "Anyway," she shrugged her delicate brown shoulders, "to make the story short, I became a full-time student and eventually, a nurse. I was working at the Mactan Community Hospital when Marc, who was with the consulate, accompanied a group of American sailors who were assigned to repaint the hospital during a ship visit. He asked me out and the rest, as you say, is history.
"We're over here, Marc," she called to her husband, who had just entered the adjacent sunroom holding two glasses and followed by a young girl with dark, curly hair.
A full moon was low on the horizon, tinting the world in silvery gleam. A light breeze carried the smell of frangipanis from the garden. Willard watched as his boss walked towards them and handed his wife a wineglass.
"I thought you might need a drink," Marc said as he turned to Willard and offered him a highball. Marc Ormond looked him in the eyes but his new boss' expression was inscrutable. "And this is Isabella," Marc said, proudly introducing the young girl who was now holding on to his arm. "Say hello, honey," he prompted his daughter.
"Hello," Isabella complied with a smile, showing a gap between her front teeth.
"Hello to you, too," Willard replied politely, not knowing what else to say. He was an only child, had never been married, and dealing with children, especially young girls, had never been his forte. He was struck by how Isabella resembled her mother. The girl was chattering along and seemed to possess all the wisdom of a seven or eight year old, although he could not exactly tell her age. This girl, he thought, would grow up to be a heartbreaker.
"We actually have a blue moon tonight," Marc changed the subject as he peered into the night. "This is the second full moon this month."
"Why, but it's not blue, Daddy!" Isabella exclaimed as she tried to hang onto her father's arm.
"It's just old folklore, honey; it doesn't actually turn blue," Marc answered. "The second full moon in a calendar month is often called a blue moon."
"There had been few instances when the moon really did turned blue," Willard said. "In 1883 when the Krakatoa volcano exploded, its dust turned sunsets green and the Moon turned blue, reportedly for two years. And in North America in the 50's, the moon appeared blue apparently due to smoke particles thrown up into the sky from huge forest fires in Canada," he added.
"Is that so?" Marc asked. "I didn't know that. Do we have some kind of an astronomy whiz here, Carmela?"
"Not when I knew him," Carmela smiled thinly as she sipped her white wine and looked out into the night.
Willard laughed softly. "Oh no, not at all. I just picked it up somewhere. Too many airplane rides when I was a courier," he replied.
The rest of the embassy newcomers all seemed to arrive at the same time. Before long, the dinner party was officially off and running. Willard watched the Ormond couple worked the room as he nursed his drink in a corner. The chargé seemed to remember everyone's name and was soon chatting with the new general services officer. Carmela looked charming and gracious as she tried to get everyone acquainted and talking. The young girl, Isabella, was quite self-possessed and seemed to be at home in the crowd, asking questions and talking with the visitors. Willard moved on to chat with the nurse practitioner and did the necessary "meet and greet" before slipping away to pass a long, disturbing, sleepless night.
In the following weeks and months, Willard had never been so grateful to have demanding work to attend to and paperwork to wade through. He buried himself in work; he did not want to give himself time to think of the "what-ifs" in his life. He was a pragmatist and, for the most part, was able to push thoughts of Carmela Ormond to the back of his mind. But nights were harder to bear. He had considered curtailment of his tour at the post, resignation from the Foreign Service, and even volunteering for assignment in Kabul. The farther away the better, he thought; but he could not bring himself to walk away just yet.
March 17 began like any other day at the office. Willard had been on the job for slightly over a year and was reviewing the preparations for a crisis management exercise at the embassy when his direct line rang. "Are there official Americans at the Center?" he inquired urgently in response to the dreaded news, one hand already shoving his classified material into a safe. His face turned sheet-white as he listened on the line. "Then do we know who besides Mrs. Ormond is there?"
A bomb had exploded at the U. S. cultural center in the downtown area. The north side of a conference room where Carmela Ormond was meeting with members of a Sagallasian women's group had reportedly collapsed. Willard could not wait for the Embassy's emergency action team to convene. He hurried to Marc Ormond's office, told him what he knew, then quickly left for the center.
Local law enforcement officials swarmed the blast site already, but had not set up a command post. Sagallasus was a country composed of 20 million people representing several major ethnic groups. This was the nation's first terrorist incident. Until now, the State Department had considered Sagallasus a low-threat post, where high unemployment and resulting non-violent crimes seemed to be the main problems. After 9/11 and, despite strong urging by the embassy, the government of Sagallasus had not been moved to initiate heightened security measures.
Willard was acutely aware that the country did not have trained search and rescue teams on standby and had reduced law enforcement capabilities due to a recent crisis in the national budget. He noted a crowd of several hundred onlookers had gathered at the center; no one had taken charge of crowd control or rescue efforts, however. An ambulance arrived, but the three-person team had no rescue equipment. Willard hastily borrowed a traffic policeman's megaphone and started barking orders. He had the perimeter of the blast site secured and instructed several of the traffic policemen to set up staging sites for incoming units. He also got the ambulance personnel to establish a triage area at a safe distance. He was functioning on autopilot as he got the Sagallasians to work together.
Willard made another call to Marc Ormond, giving him a quick assessment of the post-blast situation and what was needed. Then asked that somebody be sent down to coordinate the efforts in his stead.
"I'm on my way. Anything on Carmela yet? What are her chances?" Marc Ormond inquired finally.
"She'll be singing again before you know it," Willard replied, realizing for the first time that he had blocked out thoughts of Carmela and had responded automatically with his hope for what would happen. "I'm sorry," he paused, "we have started digging in the north side of the building..." He started, then stopped as he tried to keep his emotions down. Willard did not know how much his boss knew of the history he shared with Carmela; he suspected Marc Ormond knew more than he let on and had chosen not to dwell on the past.
"I'll do all I possibly can to get her out of there, Marc" he said finally. He switched off the phone.
He almost lost it at that point, he wanted to hit somebody or something so badly. He shook himself hard and went to work next to the Sagallasians, removing small and large chunks of blast debris by hand and with whatever implements they could find. Workers from a nearby construction site came with their tools and joined in the rescue efforts.
His training had not prepared him for this, Willard mused as he worked in the debris field, ignoring his cut and bleeding hands, the sweat soaking his shirt. All he could think about was Carmela, trapped somewhere under the rubble. He did not realize his face was streaked with tears. He was no longer there as a representative of the embassy or even as an American; he was just a man, like any other man or woman, clawing at the debris in desperation to see a loved one well and alive again. "Oh God, the girl," he muttered and hoped that Marc had somebody with Isabella.
It took them two hours to find her. Finally partly freed from the covering rubble, she was barely conscious, suffering from serious shrapnel wounds in her upper torso.
"Will. Big fella, I forgot to duck," Carmela said softly when she recognized him. Her pale face winced in pain as she attempted the jest.
"Shhh, it's all right baby. Please don't talk," Willard whispered as he cradled Carmela's head in his arms. "Please, please, don't let her die," he prayed silently. "I will do anything, I'll even go away. Just make her live," he pleaded to a God he had not prayed to since grade school.
"... did have a blue moon," Carmela whispered, her voice fading on and off, as she held on tightly to Willard's arm.
Willard answered simply, "Yes, honey. Just rest, we're getting you out of here now and you'll be with Marc and Isabella before you know it," Willard said, trying to reassure her even as he finally comprehended the extent of her wounds.
"Will, don't BS me," Carmela quietly ordered. "I was a nurse, remember?" she forced herself to enunciate slowly each word clearly. "About Isabella ... get to know her, will you?" she asked, obviously in great pain. "She's a great kid .... you'll be so proud ....." Her voice trailed off into an emptiness, leaving a gaping black hole as large as the universe in his poor and desolate heart.
August 1, 2004
Endnotes
Note *: Ms. Carlino writes fiction from San Salvador, where her husband is currently posted with the U.S. Foreign Service. Born and raised in the Philippines, she has accompanied her husband to assignments in Ankara, Istanbul, and Washington, D.C. Ms. Carlino notes that any resemblance of characters in her story to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Back