Homefront

by Kristen Tsetsi

  But I did stay a while, and we did drink together, and he drew me. It’s the most beautiful drawing, Jake. Not because it’s of me, obviously, but because of the way he did it. If you saw it you would think so, too. But he has this horribly pained soul, is the thing, and it came out in his drawing, I think. I am pained, in the picture. I think I am him. Or he thinks so. I don’t even know. You have to see it, Jake. It’s beautiful.

  Did I already say that?

  Olivia doesn’t know anything. You have to believe me. I told her all about it—because, yes, he called—but she didn’t believe me, and I don’t think she ever will. She doesn’t like me. She doesn’t like me with you, but I don’t care. I like me with you. And I wish you would call and I wish you had told me about your dead sister and I wish I could be buried beside you and I wish we had gotten married before you left. Will you marry me, Jake? Will you do it through the mail? No. That’s stupid. Forget I asked. I don’t know what I want.

  You. That’s what I want. And I want your mother to explode.

  Not really. But I would like it.

  Jake.

  I’m drunk, now. But look! No typos! That must mean I need more. I’m drunk a lot, though I probably shouldn’t tell you that. Don’t worry, okay? ‘A lot’ still isn’t very much if you compare me to the blonde woman.

  But you don’t know the blonde woman.

  I still love you.

  Mia

  ________

  Safia—wasn’t it?—said something about writing by hand. More personal, she said, so I try. I try to write Jake but it won’t come, looks like Yuri then fuze, and then I remember the letter I wrote earlier and put downstairs for tomorrow. Sealed and stamped—the front twice-kissed with lipstick—and I can’t send it, not that one. My chair skips, groans rough when I slide it back, and the table isn’t heavy enough, pulls toward me when I try to stabilize myself with it, and three inches off the chair makes me dizzy. Fall soft, my father said when I was little and liked falling, fall soft, sideways, and bend your legs. I try it now, and yes, it is softer that way. Still fun.

  “…candles and wine? Come…one year anniversary. Don’t you want…me and you?”

  “I…but—”

  “But what?”

  “If…woods, we have a tent, and…when…pictures, they…better.”

  “Than what?” he says.

  Safia is not so easy to hear, even with my head pressed flat to the floor. “Speak up!” I say and shift and slide, looking for ear-suction. I stick my finger in my other ear.

  “…if we are just sitting at our table…can take…sitting… means nothing…that movie?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “…thing.”

  “Safia.”

  “Nothing, I…Okay?. . .not be an asshole.”

  Chancey’s nose tickles my hair when he sniffs it and I laugh. They stop talking. I hold my breath, listen, but there is nothing for several minutes, and soon I forget I’m listening and their voices, up again, scatter like words tossed around in a crowd of foreigners, and I wish he were here to hold onto.

  APRIL 21, MONDAY

  The sound of their door slamming through the floor wakes me, face flattened and head spinning, and her laughter and his cheery “Of course, doll!” has me following them down the stairs, in my mind, to the bottom landing, the door. To the mailboxes and my letter. My head is in a sunspot, hot, hair wet around my face, and I know, I know it’s too late, that it must be four, at least, and that he must have already come, but maybe once, maybe today, he is not on time. I crawl to standing and wipe my face and take the two flights down to the boxes, some of them—not mine—stuffed so full with envelopes they’re not latched, and the outgoing is bin empty.

  I run outside, across the lot and to the neighbor’s porch where he’s slipping letters into boxes and I beg him, on my knees, even, please, but he says “Sorry, no. I can’t.”

  APRIL 23, WEDNESDAY

  Late April, and already July’s humidity saddles the spring heat. I wipe at a moisture ring with my sleeve cuff, back, forth, back, forth on the table with the wall clock’s tick tick. Later, maybe, the batteries will have to come out.

  The sheet of paper in front of me says, “I’m sorry sorry sorry so so sorry.”

  I crumple it, tear it, and throw the pieces on the floor.

  From as far away as the kitchen, the gun from the grocery store’s junk aisle—“What’s that for, hon?” Olivia said—loses a lot of accuracy. I miss the Vice President’s head entirely, and instead cover the current time with the rubber suction cup.

  One in the morning, there, which means he is sleeping.

  I wonder if he’s called Olivia again.

  She would have called me. Maybe.

  It’s lonelier when he sleeps. Four more hours, or so, until his alarm goes off, if he does indeed wake up at five. Five sounds right, sounds good. He wrote in his letter that he was up for sunrise, but maybe he was awake before that, since he was already drinking coffee at the time.

  Jake (tick)

  Jake (tick)

  Jake (tick)

  Jake (tick)

  Not his face, not memories, but the name, repeating and repeating like a compulsive twitch, a skipping lyric. I whisper—to the air that just might someday reach him—“Sick, sick, sick of you.”

  I use my last dart when the anchor’s head fills the screen, but miss and hit the blurry space beside his ear.

  APRIL 24, THURSDAY

  The lobby is blue. Gray-blue, rain, the same as the cubicles beyond the reception desk. Five minutes ago it was “Just another minute” and there are no magazines on the coffee table, or on the spill-spotted counter with the cups and coffee pot, or on the end tables with the dust-covered, plastic plants on skid-proof mats. Behind the receptionist speaking into a shiny black phone, a man and a woman stand just outside the entrance to a cube. He holds a small Styrofoam cup and curls a hand over the top of a wall. She stands with one leg bent, one skirted hip thrust, a one-sided smile working.

  My résumé starts to wrinkle between my thumb and finger, so I smooth it, set it on the chair beside me.

  There is a buzz and the receptionist says, “Oh, will you hold on? Just a minute,” then presses a button. “Yes, sir…yes…okay.” She presses something again. “I’ll call you back.” Her finger beckons and I get up and stand at a counter as tall as my chest, a small child’s big-people table. “He’s very sorry,” she says. “He thought he would be able to meet with you, but something’s come up. You can leave your résumé…” She raises a beauty-queen palm over the counter and takes my resume and glances at it, then sets it somewhere underneath, where I can’t see. “Thank you. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Before I go,” I say, “what—just so I know—exactly would my duties be?”

  “Basic administrative.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Data entry. Answering phones. Filing. Printing. Copying. Appointments. Collating. Envelope stuffing.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s work,” she says, and more quietly and with a look around, “Work is work, right?”

  “I guess it is.”

  Today, there is a letter. Thin, the envelope containing not my real name, but his play on it, “Mi Amore.” I smell it, and it smells like sweat and mud. Aainst my cheek it is soft with fine grit. Too short to read now, because as soon as I open it, it will be over, so I sit down, first, to write my apology.

  April 24

  Jake,

  Please, please, please ignore my last letter. I didn’t mean to send it. Or to write it. Too much to drink—it’s not a good excuse, but it’s mine. I honestly don’t remember much of…I’m lying. I do remember. All of it. I’m so sorry. She’s really a perfectly lovely person, and…well, you’re not going to believe that, either. But I am grateful to her for driving down to see me! Jake, if I could write “I’m sorry” as many times as I want to, this letter would reach from me to you. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!!! Ther
e’s really nothing worse than having that letter out there floating around between us on top of everything else. It’s killing me. You’re mad at me about something new and you don’t even know it, yet!

  What does an ulcer feel like?

  Don’t hate me. Read my mind! Read it right now and call me! Call me today. Call me tomorrow. Any time before that letter gets there.

  I have to talk about something else, now.

  So! The weather has been beautiful. A little too warm—you can’t kick me from there, ha!—but beautiful, anyway, and not at all humid today, for once. You should be glad you have a dry heat.

  One season down, Jake!

  I miss you!

  Oh! Denise said you might be coming home sometime for leave. Is that right? You must have forgotten to tell me on the message you left.. I asked your mom about it (leave), and she seemed not to know anything. In fact, she said she hadn’t heard anything about it at all. Maybe you’ll actually tell me something first. (Just kidding! Ha!) Anyway, Denise really wants to know if you have any idea when you—or William—will get to come home. I do, too, of course. I’m just trying not to get excited until I hear something from you.

  This letter won’t be very long. My head won’t stay straight, today… I’m in such a wonderful mood. The windows are open and the curtains are swaying and everything feels like spring, SPRING! I want to go for a walk, or go for a drive, or something. You know how it is when you just can’t stay inside, anymore?

  (I hope this doesn’t make you think I’m not still sorry. The whole letter shouldn’t be about that, though.)

  I might finally take down the tree (even if I have grown used to its bulk in the room, and the brown color is really kind of nice and nature-y, in an autumnal way).

  I still read the note you gave me in the hangar, sometimes. And I’m trying not to care so much, Jake. I’m really trying not to take it personally. I want you to know that.

  Love,

  Mia

  P.S. Did I tell you I quit driving? I did. I almost had an interview today, but I didn’t. I didn’t make an appointment, or anything, but just walked in, so I was lucky they even took my resume. They said they’ll call.

  When the letter is addressed, stamped, and left downstairs for pickup, I read Jake’s.

  Mia,

  You know I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing if you wrote again. I miss you, M. I’m starting to think I made you up. If I did, I’m surprised I haven’t gotten awards for my superior original design. Specifically in the breast area. (I miss your breasts. I could write about them for pages.)

  Seriously, though. It’s not about wanting letters or keeping up with William’s six letters a week from Denise. It’s really about wanting to know what you’re up to and how you’re doing and getting your thoughts. I tried to call after I got here, but the line was busy. From now on I’ll try to write more often, too. I could probably do more of it than I do, seeing that I seem to have enough time to stare at the pages of this book I’ve been trying to read. I’ve been on page 97 for twelve days.

  Today is April 16th. Late. Did the news cover the capture of the guy they’re calling “the third in command”? It happened this morning. William and I were part of it and we’re still so pumped I doubt we’ll sleep tonight. We’ve been on plenty of missions since we’ve been here, but when it’s something like this and something that’ll be in history books as a huge point for our side…he was bad, M, so I don’t feel wrong for having killed him. Or for having helped kill him. I don’t know if I did it or if someone else did, but if it was me, it was me. And if it wasn’t, maybe I kind of hope it was. Fuck him. He deserved it. He deserved worse. I know I was against all this before, but I don’t know anymore. It’s starting to feel different.

  Hey! Now April 16th is a day to remember for two reasons. You remember the 16th, don’t you? I remember your skin against those black sheets of yours. The best first time, have I told you? It took years, but it was worth the wait, I tell you. Well worth it.

  Sometimes there’s so much time to think that all I do is remember, and it’s like taking a vacation and coming home for just a few minutes. (Before William comes in and knocks something over, or just makes loud noises in general. He has this picture of Denise in a heavy as shit frame, and he knocks it over every day. I’m not kidding. Every single day. I’m starting to wonder if maybe he does know about that guy from last year, because how many times can someone accidentally knock over the same thing? But it hasn’t cracked yet).

  Anyway, those few minutes with you refresh me like you wouldn’t believe.

  Speaking of William, he just came in and now we have something to do in a few minutes. Meeting, he said. Surprise, surprise. More later. -J

  APRIL 26, SATURDAY

  Out. Going out, getting out, doing something new, and giddiness—foreign, now—pinkens my skin; no need for lipstick-rouged cheeks. Just the lips, full and soft-looking, the stick labeled kidney-bean red.

  Fifteen minutes until Denise is due. I slip in another quick drink and it spills, some, down the front of my dress when I try not to ruin the lipstick. A blow dryer takes care of most of it; the stain is hardly noticeable.

  In the mirror, makeup is good. Breasts are successfully lifted to crescent shadows. I covered dark eye-circles with a skin-colored stick, and though the dress bunches differently now that it’s home, it still works and is still, as Denise said, stunning.

  I put the glass on the counter, pet Chancey, and go downstairs to wait behind the door.

  ________

  “You’re so fucking skinny!” she says through her open passenger window. “How are you keeping that thing on?”

  Her date smiles from the driver’s seat and then looks away, puts the car into gear.

  Denise grips the pewter flask in her lap. “You’d look so much better if you had a flower to tuck in your hair. Remember I said—? Don’t you think so, Brian? Or…I don’t know. Is that a stain? What happened?”

  I wait for one of them to unlock the back door.

  ________

  Cheap, wrinkled velvet curtains the same bright red as my tree skirt hang from rods draped with uneven light strings across tall living room windows. Good furniture has been carried away to make room for white plastic patio chairs edging the walls like school-dance benches, and the dance floor is a bamboo area rug. A man and a woman Denise introduced using names I’ve forgotten are the only two bouncing to reggae; the rest mill at the edges.

  Before the reggae it was country and synchronized line-dance stomps, Denise stumbling over Brian and Brian curling her to him, guiding, spinning her when the step called for women to be spun. She looked over once, over his shoulder, and smiled and winked and mouthed to me, Just a friend, laughing when his hand moved from the small of her back to the satiny lump of her behind. I laughed back and raised my drink, and now they’re I don’t know where.

  “…needed something like this,” says the girl to my right. She is nineteen, maybe twenty, with yellow hair and blue eyes. “I just got so sick of being at home all the time, you know? He called, like, once, and that was about a month ago.” She shrugs and closes her lips over a narrow straw, sucks some punch, then pushes the straw away with the tip of her tongue. “I love him and all, but whatever. If he’s not going to write… You know?” She is not addressing any one person, but our two-man, three-woman cluster, most of us preferring a punch bowl and the crackers-and-nuts platter to dancing. The third woman, who introduced herself as “Dick’s Fiancée,” wobbles in her heels and wrings the ends of her silk wrap while searching the room for something. Not Dick, because he’s gone with the rest of them—“Convoys ‘round the clock, the way he puts it,” she said—but something, constantly something.

  “You’ve already defended yourself ad nauseam, Charlene,” Dick’s Fiancée says. “No one is judging you, okay?”

  “Of course they are,” she says. “And they’re judging you. What do you think this whole th
ing is for if not to see who’s doing it?”

  “If that’s what you think,” Dick’s Fiancée says, “then why did you come?”

  “Well, obviously, I was curious.”

  The man standing next to Charlene says, “I’m glad you’re here, baby.”

  “Oh, shut up, Rick.” She stirs her drink. “I just wanted to get out of the house.”

  “And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Thanks, but I wasn’t looking for permission, or anything.”

  “Of course you were,” says the other man. Mick, or Marc.

  New song, now, this one a dance craze, and bodies crowd the space in a wave of claps and twirls.

  Dick’s Fiancée fills a plastic cup with punch and says, adjusting her wrap, “Country and reggae. I’d go out there if they would play something I can dance to.”

  “Anyway,” Charlene says, “I don’t think you should talk to me like that while my husband is deployed. What are you, anyway, a Judy?”

  “A what?” Rick laughs.

  The other man says, “I think you mean ‘Jody.’”

  “Judy. Jody. Whatever. Either way, I just want to have some fun. I’m not here for bad reasons.”

  “Neither am I,” Rick says. “As soon as my shoulder heals, I’m off again to fight for your right to turn me down. But, since I’m here now, how about a dance?”

  I fill my glass, which seems to be emptying quickly. The punch is tasty, not too sweet.