Come Back To Me

by Melissa Foster

  Kevin felt better the moment she walked in the door. Not having to shoulder the burden alone was reassuring. “I straightened up.” He pointed upstairs. “She’s sleeping.”

  Alice nodded and checked her watch, 8:17 P.M. “Well, it’s not exactly bedtime. Let’s wake her up and get her back on track.”

  “Do you think we should? She’s not exactly doing well.”

  “I’d imagine she’s not,” Alice said, matter-of-factly. “And how are you doing? He was your best friend,” she said kindly.

  “Good. I’m good,” he walked to the bottom of the stairs. “I miss him. I mean, every time I read my email, I look for one from him, but I think that will fade once they have the funeral. Closure, you know?”

  Alice nodded. “That’s exactly what I think is going on with Tess. Imagine suddenly losing the one person you’ve woken up to for years, the person you confided in. I can’t imagine,” she said, hoping she was convincing. The truth was Alice couldn’t imagine wanting to spend all that much time with anyone.

  Kevin swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He followed Alice upstairs. Tess looked like a teenager, curled around Beau’s pillow and wearing his shirt.

  Alice walked over to the bed and crouched down. “Tess, honey, wake up.”

  Tess curled more tightly around the pillow.

  Alice shook Tess’s shoulder, “Tess? Come on, time to get up.”

  Tess’s eyes slowly opened. Alice? She turned her head and saw Kevin standing at the foot of her bed. She sat up, wanting nothing more than to lie back down and go to sleep.

  “You okay?” Kevin asked. “I asked Alice to come over, in case you wanted to talk.”

  Tess nodded.

  “Tess, you need to get up,” Alice said, as a mother might instruct a child. “It’s only eight, not bedtime. C’mon.” She tried to lift Tess to her feet, but Tess’s body went limp.

  “I don’t want to get up,” Tess said quietly.

  “You have to. C’mon, you have to get back to your life now. We’ll help you. Let’s go,” Alice’s voice left no room for negotiation.

  Kevin held Tess under one arm and Alice held the other. Together, they lifted her to her feet.

  “I can stand,” Tess shrugged them off. “I just don’t want to.”

  “We know,” Alice said, “but you have to. Now c’mon, let’s get you showered and back in the real world.” She guided Tess toward the bathroom, and looked over her shoulder at Kevin, nodding toward the bed.

  Kevin took the hint and made the bed.

  Alice came out of the bathroom giving more orders. “Good job, Kevin. Can you go downstairs and order some food? I don’t think she’s eaten in forever. I’ll get her dressed and be right down.”

  Kevin left the bedroom, again thankful that Alice was taking control. Chores he could handle, but women, well, they had a full range of unpredictable emotions with which he would rather not tangle.

  ***

  Tess poked at the sesame chicken and rice. She was cleaner than she’d been in weeks, and so, felt more awake. The house was clean, and for that Tess was thankful. It had become overwhelmingly dirty and in such disarray that she couldn’t fathom the idea of mustering the energy to set it right.

  “Thanks, you guys,” she said.

  “That’s what we’re here for,” Alice said easily.

  “Are you okay, Tess?” Kevin had asked her that a hundred times, but he didn’t know what else to ask. That’s what he wanted to know. Was she okay? Would she be able to break out of this lost place she’d found?

  Tess nodded, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “Of course she’s okay!” Alice said, as if by not paying attention to Tess’s pain it would not exist. “She just needs to find herself again, to get moving.” Alice put down her fork and looked at Tess; her cheeks had become hollow, her skin deathly pale. “Right, Tess?” she asked hopefully.

  Tess nodded and forced down a few more bites. She leaned her chin in her palm and asked, “How do I do this?”

  “Eat?” Alice joked.

  Kevin gave her a disapproving look. She shrugged.

  “No. This…life?” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “How do I do it without him?”

  Kevin reached out and touched her arm.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Alice said with surety, although she had no idea how to go about helping Tess, or if she should be the one to do it—but she’d sure as hell try. Whenever Alice had been in crisis, her mother would tell her to push through it (whatever it was) and make it happen, and that’s just how she’d help Tess. She’d push Tess through this awful situation.

  After dinner, Alice washed the dishes while Kevin brought stacks of mail into the kitchen. Alice was secretly pleased when she noticed Tess inspecting the tabletops for water rings.

  “Tess, I’m really sorry about Beau,” Alice watched Tess move from inspecting the coffee table to inspecting the kitchen counter.

  “Oh, he’ll be okay,” Tess said as she settled onto a wooden chair.

  Alice shot a look of concern to Kevin.

  Tess caught the glance and cocked her head. The right side of her face showed a hint of a smile. “You know Beau, Kevin. He’ll be fine. He always is.”

  Alice knelt before Tess. “Tess, Beau’s gone. You know that, right?”

  Tess made a little laughing sound under her breath. “I know that.”

  ***

  They sorted through the mail in silence. The drawn tightness that had pulled Tess’s features down had softened. Tess found two successive unpaid bills and hoped the electricity wouldn’t be turned off. Thankfully, her mortgage was taken directly from their checking account. She wished Beau were there. He always had the patience to deal with the bills. Tess hated the time it took to get online and make sure the payments were being made to the right companies. Too many times she’d paid her Sunoco bill to Sprint, and her Direct TV bill to Dr. Roberts. She took a stack of bills into the den.

  Tess pulled her laptop onto her lap and realized that she’d been spending every evening in that exact position since Mr. Fulan had come to her house. Mr. Fulan. Just thinking about him brought the urge to hold her breath against his scent and made her stomach hurt. How could they tell her that Beau was dead if they didn’t even find his body? The Skype website greeted her, bright and welcoming. She clicked on BethesdaShooter, biting her lower lip and allowing hope to swell in her racing heart. The connection failed, and her shoulders dropped. “Oh, Beau,” she said quietly. “When are you coming back?” She rested her hand on her belly.

  “Tess?” Kevin said from the doorway. He spotted the light blue screen and went to sit next to her.

  Tess shrugged. “I thought he might be on.”

  “Tess, Beau is dead. He can’t be—”

  Tess interrupted, “Stop saying that! You don’t know. They never found him. Maybe he’s not…” She could not bring herself to say the word. How could she tell Kevin that she would know if Beau were gone? She’d feel it, like a dark abyss in her soul. She didn’t feel that emptiness. Beau’s presence still remained in her heart.

  Iraq

  The memory of twelve-year-old Samira, torn apart and bleeding between her legs on the night of her wedding, came rushing back to Suha. Her face reddened. She turned toward the injured man, her back to the children, and willed the images to leave her mind. Samira’s husband, the louse, had violated Samira roughly and left her in her marital bed to roam the streets with his particularly offensive friends, other adulterous men, looking for loose women to fill their insatiable sexual appetites.

  Suha had spent her younger years in fear of Iraqi men that were outside of her community, as her father, a well-respected physician, had warned her of the demeaning, discriminatory lifestyle some led and the all-too-often harsh treatments some women, Iraqi and otherwise, endured at their hands. He did not agree with the humiliating lifestyle enforced upon those ill-fated women. Suha knew this was a gross generalization, but she’d s
een it far too many times to chance her own future.

  Years of witnessing this disrespect and disregard had led Suha to realize that the kindness and generosity her father displayed toward women was rare. She thought her mother, Farrah, had been a very lucky woman indeed. She had been a joyful person. Suha had fond memories of her mother’s contagious smile, the way she’d touch her father’s shoulder, and the way he would look at her with adoring eyes. She remembered her mother’s long hair, let loose in the evening and combed all the way to the tips, which fell just below her waist. She used to long to be just like her and was disappointed in herself when she had become coarse, guarded. Her mother did not show that tension in the easy, loving way she spoke to Suha, and Suha felt the difference.

  When she’d lost her mother to pneumonia at the tender age of seven, she’d had no time to mourn her loss. Her father had been devastated, taking to his room for the first month after her death. Suha had cared for him as best she knew how, and eventually he found his feet again. As the years progressed, she and her father became very close, sharing their time and discussing her father’s patients well into the evenings. Even as a young girl, Suha had understood the importance of her father’s profession and had longed to follow in his footsteps. She’d pored over his medical textbooks, asking in-depth questions that had caused her father to sometimes raise his eyebrows, but he took the time to answer, and his answers carried not just explanations, but lessons, as well.

  Suha contributed the fact that she was never pushed to marry to not only her father’s respect for her desire to be something more than a house maiden, but also to their long conversations and the camaraderie that they shared. She could never replace her mother, but she knew her father saw her mother somewhere inside her, and she also knew that he would never want that likeness far away. She had readily stepped into her mother’s shoes, cooking their meals, cleaning the house, and shopping for necessities. She did all that a daughter could do in such a situation. Her father was a man of loyalty. He’d missed her mother terribly, and as far as she’d known, he’d never longed for another. There was no need to marry Suha off, no need for extra money. The inheritance his father, and his father before him, had left him had been ample for the simple lifestyle they had chosen. As Suha grew to a young woman, her father had asked her often if she wished to be married. Suha had never longed for a different life. With her education ensured and supported by her father, and his ability and desire to protect her, as fathers (and brothers) should, she’d been happy. Eventually, her father had stopped inquiring.

  She’d enjoyed many years by her father’s side, studying, listening to the cases he shared with her, and, she realized now, learning how to be a good person. Suha’s world came shattering down around her when she lost her father in the third year of the war. He’d been eighty-six years old and taking the short walk from the hospital to their home, as he had done for all of the years Suha could remember. He’d taken that short journey so often that he’d worn a literal path in the ground. He’d insisted on walking, even after the war began and the streets had become unsafe. He’d insisted as vehemently as Suha had insisted on continuing to work in the hospital during the war, even with the unsafe conditions.

  They’d met for a brief lunch of goat stew and rice, which Suha had prepared the evening before for supper and which she had carried with her to the hospital earlier that morning. This had been their practice, meeting each day around two o’clock in the afternoon for the largest meal of the day. On that unusually warm, gray afternoon, her father shuffled down the path toward his home, too slowly for a group of angry, impatient insurgents who had been terrorizing families in the neighborhood with their guns and loud voices, scavenging and eying the women as if they were just awaiting the right moment to attack. Suha knew of women who had been raped and killed—women without husbands, fathers, or brothers to protect them. A neighbor had seen trouble brewing—loud, irate threats toward the old man. He’d run to the hospital to fetch Suha. Her father had made it to within thirty feet of their front door before the heartless insurgents destroyed Suha’s life—without an ounce of remorse. At the moment of his death, she’d been running down the path toward her home as fast as she’d been able, panting, her heavy bosoms swaying painfully against her ribcage. She’d prayed aloud for his safety as she ran. Her dark abayah stuck to her large body from the unrelenting heat of the sun. Her house had come into view. She’d thought he’d made it. As the door had come into view, her eyes drifted toward the ground, and she’d collapsed to her knees at the sight of her father’s bullet-ridden body. She sobbed, rocking back and forth, and screamed into the road, Baba! Baba! Blood pooled around him, and his face—the face of the only man she’d ever worshiped, the face of her protector, the face which, forever more, she would recall as blood streaked and lifeless—lay still, distorted and filthy, against the cold, hard earth.

  Chapter Six

  The evening loomed like a forbidding forest. Tess had known the time would come when she’d have to go back to work. Her bills would not pay themselves. She stared into her closet at her business suits, their creases fresh. The feel of them used to give her an energized high. Now, just the thought of taking charge, being responsible, pained her. How would she ever be ready to face the world by tomorrow? Tomorrow! She threw herself down on her bed and let out a frustrated sigh. Tears came easily. “Oh, Beau,” she said softly. She contemplated the bottle of Xanax that had helped her through the difficult nights, then kicked them off of the nightstand with her toes. She wasn’t going to become that woman. She dropped her hand to her abdomen. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she rolled over and punched the pillow. The thought of pitiful looks and people using words that had taken on new meanings, words like sorry, passed, and accident, made her as angry as it made her sad.

  Tess remembered Beau’s promise, made the days before he left for Iraq. “I’ll come back. I promise,” he’d said with feeling.

  “I know you will,” she’d answered, without as much confidence as she’d hoped.

  Beau had gently pushed her back from his chest so he could look into her tear-filled blue eyes. “Baby,” he said, “what have I told you since we decided that I should take this opportunity?”

  Tess looked down at the floor and said in almost a whisper, “You’ll come back to me.”

  He tilted her chin up so she couldn’t help but look into his eyes. “And I will. I promise you that.”

  “But you can’t make that promise,” she said quietly. “There’s still a war going on, Beau.”

  “Don’t doubt me, Tessie. I love you, and I promise, come hell or high water, if I have to walk and swim back from Iraq, I will come home.”

  Tess took Beau’s hand and outlined in his palm, lightly, with her index finger, the letter I, the shape of a heart, and the letter u. He smiled and kissed her cheek. They had done this silent ritual for many years, in the darkness of theaters, reaching under the table when dining with others, in the darkness of night just before they fell asleep.

  ***

  She sat up and wiped her tears. “Goddamn it!” she yelled, and wrapped her arms around herself. “How am I supposed to do this, Beau?” she asked the empty room. Silence pressed in around her until she felt claustrophobic and hauled herself off the bed. She opened the top drawer of Beau’s bureau, reaching past his nicely-folded boxers and rolled socks, and withdrawing his unwashed blue cotton t-shirt that she’d stashed. She pressed it against her nose and breathed in the familiar smell of Beau’s scent. A smile spread across her lips, and she exhaled, as if she’d taken a deep drag of a spectacular drug. I can do this, she told herself. I have to do this.

  ***

  Alice rushed around the small office. Tess would be there any minute, her first day back since Beau had died. Alice wanted everything to be perfect. She hoped Tess would slip right back into her old routine without stress or what she feared most, having to watch her friend fall apart before her eyes. She knew Beau’s memorial was a sour
ce of contention for Tess, she’d spoken to Beau’s parents, Carol and Robert. They wanted to hold a service for Beau, and Tess wanted no part of it. She wasn’t sure how, or if, she’d be able to help with that situation. At this point, she just hoped the day went smoothly, without any tearful breakdowns. Alice was good at pushing through, but she wasn’t very good at hand holding. Her mother had never coddled her, though she knew her mother’s love was as deep and pure as love could be. One didn’t have to coddle, she reasoned. One only needed to express love for another, be there for them, be strong for them—and Alice could do that for Tess.

  She smoothed her blue pencil skirt and glanced in the mirror on the wall. She stroked her hair and smiled. She loved her hair. It was her strongest feature. Sure, she had a slim, toned body, but that was easy to come by with hard work and a little discipline. Good hair, on the other hand, that was something that you could only be born with. It fell just below her shoulders, straight and full. Her natural color, somewhere between Asian pear and just-ripe banana, was cool and soft. She had worn it in the same style since she was seven: center parted, blunt across the back. If something worked, why change it? She ran the edge of her finger under one eye, then the other, though her eyeliner never needed repair.

  Satisfied with her appearance, she pulled the new coasters she’d purchased from her Coach purse (one of her guilty pleasures) and laid it on Tess’s desk. She set a tall Styrofoam cup of Tess’s favorite drink, French vanilla cappuccino from 7-11, on the coaster. It never failed to boggle her mind that her friend’s favorite beverage could be purchased for a dollar seventy-seven from a convenience store.

  Tess stood in the hallway, staring at the office door, wishing she could just hide forever. Reality, however, pressed on, even if you were scared, alone, and spending every second of the day waiting to hear your husband’s voice. He’s coming back to me. He promised, Tess told herself. She knew she had to put on a brave face for Alice, and she was determined not to have to deal with the looks that Alice and Kevin hadn’t realized she’d seen, the eye rolls and pity-filled glances. She took a deep breath and pulled her shoulders back. Beau would expect to find her whole, with her business still intact. For him, for when he returned, she would be strong. The feigned eagerness felt like an ill-fit jacket—too loose and too tight for comfort. He’s coming back.