Remembering Bobby

One of the names on the wall in Washington:

Robert Carovillano

As with all names, there are dozens of stories, people who recall the human, the relicts, the turn of a nose or a crew cut or a laugh.

I grew up at 24 Roliver Street in Rutherford, NJ, a suburb of New York City so close that you can see the Empire State Building in the distance. I was the oldest of the three little kids who lived next door to his house on sharply terraced lots on a very steep street. Bobby's mom Pat and my mom were best friends, and, since my mother hadn't learned to drive, the two women often ran errands together.

Bobby sometimes babysat for us, and he loved to play games with us even when he was just hanging out at home. He had a pair of bongos that he played all the time, usually half-sitting out the windows of his bedroom, and if I or my younger sister or brother were outside on the side of our house, he would mysteriously vanish, still playing, only to suddenly appear in a different window. It was a constant game that we thought was hysterical. One day the bongos were out at the curb. He had broken the piece of wood that tied them together, and gotten another set. I asked his mom, Pat, if I could take them, and she said yes. I was maybe eight or nine at the time, and loved that they were Bobby's and that they made a lot of cool noise. He had decorated them with leftover decals from model cars and that made them even cooler in my eyes.

When we prepared to move from the house in August 1966, we threw out or sold most of our toys, but I insisted on keeping the bongos, to the point where my mom threw them out several times, and I kept retrieving them from the trash. She must have finally given up, because the bongos ended up on the floor of my bedroom closet in the new house, sort of a security blanket in a strange place.

Six months after we moved, I came home from sixth grade in my new school to find Pat in our kitchen talking to our mother. Bobby had been killed. I can still remember the shock, like I remember JFK and other events, the look on their faces as they talked about making the funeral arrangements. It was the first time anyone I ever knew had died. Here I am, forty years later, and I still can see his face, flitting from window to window as he played with a couple of little girls. He would have been a wonderful adult, a wonderful parent, and I think of him all the time whenever someone mentions that war. It changed my view of the world and of politics in so many ways I can't explain them.

When my mother's house was cleaned out and sold last spring, Bobby's bongos were still up in my mother's attic. Now they are upstairs in my house once again. My kids couldn't understand what I wanted with an old set of broken drums and repeatedly asked me about them until I gave in any explained how I came to have them and what they meant to me. My older daughter remembered hearing me talk about how someone I knew had died in Vietnam, and we went online to the Wall site and looked up Bobby's information.

It doesn't say very much. Just dates, rank and a tiny bit of how his life ended. It is up to us who still remember him, and all the other names on the wall, to pass on what we do remember to those they never got a chance to meet. In my mind, I could see a grey-haired guy, with kids of his own, racing from room to room to surprise them as they played outside. With that smile I can still remember.

Damn. Damn.

If you have ever read "Patterns" by Amy Lowell, it is what I am thinking now, too.

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles
on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon --
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?