Prologue

Fortunate Son

When the Selective Service notice comes for Tiger, Kate’s first instinct is to throw it away. Surely this is every American mother’s first instinct? Pretend it got lost in the mail, buy Tiger a few more weeks of freedom before the U.S. Army sends another letter—by which time, this god-awful war in Vietnam might be over. Nixon has promised to end it. There are peace talks going on right now in Paris. Le Duan will succumb to the allure of capitalism or Thieu will be assassinated and someone with better sense will take over. Frankly, Kate doesn’t care if Vietnam succumbs to the Communists. She just wants to keep her son safe.

When Tiger gets home from his job at the driving school, Kate says, “There’s a letter for you on the kitchen table.” Tiger seems unconcerned about what it might be. He’s whistling, wearing the polyester uniform shirt issued by Walden Pond Driving Academy with his name stitched on the pocket: Richard. The letter uses that first name too—it’s addressed to Richard Foley—though no one ever calls him anything but Tiger.

Tiger says, “I taught a real cutie today, Ma. Name was Magee, that was her first name, which I thought was far out. She’s nineteen, like me, studying to be a dental hygienist. I flashed her my pearly whites and then I asked her out to dinner for tonight and she said yes. You’ll like her, I bet.”

Kate busies herself at the sink arranging daffodils in a vase. She closes her eyes and thinks, These are the last easy thoughts he’ll ever have.

And sure enough, a second later, he says, “Oh jeez, oh wow…” He clears his throat. “Ma?”

Kate spins around, clutching a handful of daffodils in front of her like a cross to ward off a vampire. The expression on Tiger’s face is part shock, part excitement, part terror.

“I got called up,” he says. “I’m to report to the army recruitment office in South Boston on April twenty-first.”

April 21 is Kate’s birthday. She’ll be forty-eight years old. In forty-eight years, she has been married twice and had four children, three daughters and a son. She would never say she loves the son the most; she will say only that she loves him differently. It’s the fierce, all-consuming love that any mother feels for her child, but with a dash of extra indulgence. Her handsome son—so much like his father, but kind. And good.

Kate opens her wallet and sets twenty dollars on the table in front of Tiger. “For your date tonight,” she says. “Go someplace nice.”

On April 21, it’s Kate who takes Tiger from Brookline to South Boston. David offered to drive, but Kate wanted to do it alone. “He’s my son,” she said, and a flicker of astonished pain crossed David’s face—they never speak in those terms, her children, meaning not his—and Kate berated herself while at the same time thinking that if David wanted to know what real pain was, he should try being her. Tiger said goodbye to David and his three sisters in the driveway. Kate had instructed the girls not to cry. “We don’t want him to think he’s never coming back,” she said.

And yet it’s this exact fear that’s holding Kate hostage: That Tiger will die on foreign soil. He will be shot in the stomach or the head; he will be killed by a grenade. He will drown in a rice paddy; he will burn in a helicopter crash. Kate has seen it night after night on the news. American boys are dying, and what have Kennedy and Johnson and, now, Nixon done? Sent more boys.

At the recruitment office, Kate pulls into a line of cars. Ahead of them, kids just like Tiger are hugging their parents, some of them for the last time. Right? It’s indisputable that a percentage of the boys right here in South Boston are headed to their deaths.

Kate puts the car in park. It’s obvious from watching everyone else that this is going to be quick. Tiger grabs his rucksack from the back seat and Kate gets out of the car and hurries around. She takes a moment to fix Tiger in her eyes. He’s nineteen years old, six foot two, a hundred and eighty pounds, and he has let his blond hair grow over the collar of his shirt, much to the dismay of Kate’s mother, Exalta, but the U.S. Army will take care of that pronto. He has clear green eyes, one of them with an elongated pupil like honey dripping off a spoon; someone said it looked like a tiger eye, which was how he got his nickname.

Tiger has a high-school diploma and one semester of college at Framingham State. He listens to Led Zeppelin and the Who; he loves fast cars. He dreams of someday racing in the Indy 500.

And then, without warning, Kate is sucked back in time. Tiger was born a week past his due date and weighed nine pounds, twelve ounces. He took his first steps at ten months old, which is very early, but he was intent on chasing after Blair and Kirby. At age seven, he could name every player on the Red Sox lineup; Ted Williams was his favorite. At age twelve, Tiger hit three consecutive home runs in his final game of Little League. He was voted class president in eighth grade and then quickly and wisely lost interest in politics. He took up bowling as a rainy-day pastime in Nantucket and won his first tournament soon after. Then, in high school, there was football. Tiger Foley holds every receiving record at Brookline High School, including total receiving yards, a record Coach Bevilacqua predicts will never be broken. He was recruited to play at Penn State, but Tiger didn’t want to travel that far from home, and UMass’s team wasn’t exciting enough—or at least that’s what Tiger claimed. Kate suspects that Tiger just ran out of enthusiasm for the game or preferred to go out on top or just really, really disliked the idea of four more years of school. Kate would have liked to point out that if Tiger had gone to college, any college, or if he had stayed at Framingham State part-time, he would not be in this position right now.

“Don’t forget, you promised to check in on Magee,” Tiger says.

Magee; he’s worried about Magee. Tiger and Magee went on their first date the day Tiger got the letter and they’ve been inseparable ever since. Privately, Kate thought it was unwise to jump into a relationship only two weeks before going to war, but it might have been the distraction he needed. Kate has agreed to check in on Magee, who Tiger says will be very upset that he’s gone, but there is no way a girlfriend of two weeks will be as upset as the soldier’s own mother.

A tour of duty is thirteen months, not a lifetime, but some of the mothers here outside the recruitment office are unknowingly saying a permanent goodbye, and Kate feels certain she’s one of them. The other mothers didn’t do the terrible thing that she did. She deserves to be punished; she has enjoyed every happy day of the past sixteen years like it was something she borrowed, and now, finally, the time for payback has arrived. Kate had thought it would be a cancer diagnosis or a car accident or a house fire. She never considered that she would lose her son. But here she is. This is her fault.