“I do,” he says. “You think I don’t mean it? Why’re you smilin’?”
“When someone says they love you, you smile.”
“Naw,” he says. “You’re laughin’ at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you.”
“You’re goddamn laughin’ at me.”
“Donny.”
“Forget it.” He stands up to look out the window.
“That’s a nice plant,” I say.
“Forget it. It’s a fuckin’ plant. Who cares? I won’t ever get out of this place.”
“Aren’t you still working?”
“Do I look like I’m workin’?” He turns back to me. “What, you tryin’ to help me? What do you think you can do? I ain’t gettin’ out of here ‘cause I got fired. All that shit with Emily. I told her to take the house, but she wouldn’t, and I don’t got the money to pay what’s left of the goddamn mortgage.” He finishes off his glass and says, “I’m out. Take me to the store.”
“‘Take me to the store’?”
“Aw, well,” he says and bows, but only a little before he has to grab onto the table. “I’m so sorry. Mia, my darlin’ angel, will you pleeeease take me to the store?”
I drive him to the nearest one, a dingy building the size of a kiosk with a blinking ‘Q’ on the sign and a skinny man in torn jeans standing by the front door. I forget his name, but he lives on Lucy Drive. He nods at me and I nod back.
When we get back to the hotel parking lot Donny says, “You comin’ in?”
“I don’t think so.” I haven’t been home all day. I want dinner on my bed with a movie playing on TV, Chancey purring somewhere I can hear him.
“Come in. I got cake.” He smiles.
We eat half of it. I drink water because he doesn’t have milk, but he sticks with bourbon until he can’t stand at all, anymore, without having to steady himself on a chair or the table, or slide along the wall to the end of the bed.
“I’ve had it,” I say with my hand on my stomach. “Time to go.”
“You’re leavin’?”
I check my watch for show. “It’s late.”
“Aw, it ain’t late. C’mon. Have a drink.”
“Donny, I’m really tired.”
“Five minutes! Stay five minutes. I have to show you somethin’. From the war.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a—well, damn it, you’ll see what it is when I show you. You keep askin’ me where I was and so I’ll show you. If you stay.”
“Okay,” I say. “Five minutes.”
“Five minutes! Well, that hardly gives me enough time to—”
“Five.”
“Have some more cake. You only had a little bird bite. Lookit that.”
I stand. “I’m going.”
“Wh—? What for? Are you mad ‘cause I kissed you?”
I’d let it slip my immediate memory, but now that I’m reminded, I don’t like the way it feels. Not quite as uncomfortable as having been molested by an old family friend, but maybe as uncomfortable as having been flirted with by that old family friend. “No. What do you have to show me?”
“Damn. Why’re you in such a hurry?”
“Because,” I say. “I’m tired.”
“Well, you don’t got to be like that.” He takes his time lighting a cigarette. “Ain’t you goin’ to sit down?”
I sit and fold my arms on the table.
“I miss my wife,” he says.
“I know you do.”
“She’s gone.”
“I know.”
“What d’you mean, you know? I’m tellin’ you.”
“Donny, you already told me. We talked about this ten minutes ago.” I get up and push my chair under the table. Through the window the sky is purple-blue.
“Where’re you goin’?”
“Home.”
The canvases are awkward to carry with one hand, but I can’t count on him to open the door for me. I set the smaller on top of the larger and flatten my hand against the bottom, a server with a tray.
Donny leans forward in his chair. “I’ll take those back.”
“You can’t. You already gave them to me.”
“I can take ‘em back right now.”
“Nope,” I say, turning the knob. “Too late.”
He kicks over a chair. “You can’t do that. You can’t take a present from someone and leave. Ungrateful. Bitch!”
“Nice try.” I open the door. Even if he won’t remember any of this tomorrow, I say, “I’ll come over again soon, okay?”
“Sure. Soon. Right. But, where’re you goin’, now? What do you have to go home for? You hear from your husband lately?”
“He’s not my husband.”
“Awww,” he says. “I see. I see. How long’s it been? Days? A week? Month? What, d’you think he’s out bangin’ someone else? Some of them soldier girls ain’t bad lookin’. Wouldn’t want you to worry, though. C’mon. Talk to me. Tell Donny.”
“Fuck you.” I toss the drawing across the room. A corner of the canvas ricochets off the wall and my face lands undamaged on the bed.
“Hey!”
I step outside, cut him off when I slam the door.
I set the painting against my car—carefully—and check on him through the motel window. He sits at the table in dim lamplight with his legs out straight, drink balanced on a narrow thigh. He picks up the remote control, points it at the TV, shakes back his hair and watches the channel guide.
JUNE 13, FRIDAY
“Mia, hon, it’s Olivia. Are you there?. . . I’m just checking in to see how you are…You know, this kind of thing can be very stressful…Anyway, hon, I hope you’re well and that you’ve started eating better…Oh, and thank you for sending Jakey that last package…That’s one less trip to the grocery store for me! So… …Okay…Well, you take care, and make sure to tell my Jakey that I love him…See you soon, all right?”
________
June 13
Jake,
I get up to heat my coffee, then sit back down and move the candle to spread more light on the paper. Normally, late morning sun would light the desk, but today’s clouds and rain make the apartment dark, dreary, cozy.
I’m looking at your letter on the computer screen. I know. I should have written days—a week!—ago, but I couldn’t.
Thanks for the message you left on my birthday.
In truth, Jake, I put off writing you on purpose. How was I supposed to talk or write you without saying something about what you wrote about the Army?
Oh, and I’m sorry about ditching you when we were emailing. I was avoiding you.
But I’ll tell you now.
At first, I was angry. You were sure you were getting out, you said. I told you how I felt when you first joined, and you said you felt the same way. It was something you needed to do, but there was also more we wanted to do together that included being rule-less, remember? And then I got your email and I felt like I was being grounded, or something. How many more years did I want to have to rely on you getting weekend passes any time we wanted to leave the area (I know, they’re not hard to get, but still, you have to), or let the Army decide were we live? All of this affects me, too. I thought we were going to see the country before finding a house somewhere. Yes, the Army moves us around, but we wanted to make all those choices that are made for us now.
I know people change and minds change and I can’t count on anything, but I thought I should at least be able to count on you. (I’m not trying to make you feel guilty; I just want you to understand what I was thinking when I was avoiding you.) I thought I should have been able to trust you to not do anything to hurt me. But then you told me about your decision to stay in the Army, and I actually hated you for a minute.
I scratch out the last sentence with heavy lines and loops so he can’t make it out even if he flips over the page to read the backward pen impressions.
But then you told me about your decision to stay in the Army, an
d it hurt.
Now it’s the creamer in my coffee making me nauseous (can I drink nothing I like, anymore?). I go into the bathroom, bend over the toilet, vomit, flush, and brush my teeth. I bring the roll of toilet paper with me to the desk.
Now, though… I’m not mad, now. I saw this flower, Jake, this one purple flower just growing there all by itself on a trench at a Civil War battlefield. The petals were so vibrant and soft and beautiful and I almost, almost picked it and took it home. The same way I picked a clump of grass from the trench and stuffed it in my pocket. Do you know what, though? What if a piece of a soldier’s soul was in those blades of grass? What if it’s all there because that’s exactly where it’s supposed to be?
The thing is, Jake, I understand. I really do understand, now. Before, I would have tried to get you to quit the Army. If you can’t empathize, it’s easy to ask for all kinds of unrealistic and unfair things. (I still wish you would have asked me what I thought before you decided to stay in. In case you’re thinking, “But, I asked you what you thought,” your asking me after the fact is a little different from having asked me about the possibility, before the decision had already been made.)
And I understand your thoughts about marriage, too. People shouldn’t get married unless it’s because they want to. Nothing, no outside force, should push them into it.
Which brings me to this: It won’t work for me, you staying in the Army. I can’t…I can’t, Jake. It sounds crazy, but I love you too much to be with you through that many more years of Army life. I’m just not cut out for it. Some people aren’t, you know. That’s forgivable, isn’t it? Maybe if we knew for sure there would be no more deployments… (Well, okay—that’s a ridiculous line of thinking.)
You don’t know what I’ve gone through, what I’m going through. I know – you’re going through things, too. And I know, they’re bad. You’re the one doing war stuff, you’re the one who lost a friend. I’m not discounting that. But this, right now, is about me. And I think my stuff is just as hard, but in a different way.
But it’s okay. You were right. Your life is yours, and my life is mine, and we need to live them the best way we can. Everything you wrote in your letter
I’m interrupted by the phone. Shellie asks if I’ve started feeling any better since calling in this morning.
“I wish I did. I know you guys are short.”
She tells me to keep up with the garlic, and in the background, before she hangs up, I hear Lenny say, “She’s a liar. She ain’t sick.”
makes sense. Which is why I know we should
I wipe my eyes and blow my nose, and the force of it presses everywhere inside my head. Lenny was right. I am a liar.
not be together anymore. We got a little practice these last few months, so it’s not like much will change, right? Jake, I don’t want to hurt you. I never, never want to hurt you. I love you so much.
Love,
Mia
p.s. I hate that I already feel better. I had hoped I would be wrong.
The mailman—early, today—arrives in his white truck just as I’m about to put the letter in the outgoing bin. Denise follows him up the walk.
He opens the door, nods, “Mornin’,” and sticks out his palm. “Goin’ out?” He points at the envelope while wedging a foot in the door.
Denise says, “Excuse me,” and squeezes past him and waits behind me on the landing.
“Sure,” I say.
He takes the letter from my hand, then deposits incoming mail in the boxes on the wall. Mine stays empty.
The rain starts fast, falls heavy, and he runs to the house next door.
“Sorry,” Denise says, her hands in her back pockets. “There’s nothing worse than an empty box, is there?”
We look at each other. Her mouth twitches.
“No,” I say, “there isn’t.”
We’re still laughing when we get to my kitchen, and I learn that Denise tends to snort.
“Coffee?”
We sit at the table with our hot mugs, neither of us saying much. Denise’s bronze-brown lipstick collects at the corners of her mouth and in the thin lines of her lips.
“Isn’t that…?” Denise points behind me at the far livingroom wall where Donny’s painting hangs.
“Yeah.”
She laughs. “But, why? It’s so…it’s so…well, you like it, so never mind. How did you afford it, anyway?”
I tell her I got a deal.
She says, “I do miss snow. Looking at that reminds me of what winter is supposed to look like.”
Rain splashes from the sill onto my arm, and since Denise hasn’t lit a cigarette, yet, I close the window.
“Anyway—” she says, and from downstairs we hear, “You ready?”
“In one second!” Safia screams.
“The door is open.”
“Asshole!” she yells. “We cannot go without my Visa, and you know.”
“Call me an asshole again and we won’t go at all.”
“Oh, Paul, you do not mean that. You know I love you, my bear.” We listen through the pause. “I found it!” she shouts.
“Well, hurry up,” he shouts back.
Keys jangle in their lock, she pounds down the stairs, and the main door slams.
“What was all that about?”
“I don’t know,” I say, though, now I do. I wonder if they’ll pass. We watch their car speed to the intersection, wipers on high to fight the downpour.
“Anyway,” Denise starts again, “if Brian comes by—”
“Why would Brian come by?”
“I don’t know. He’s crazy. He calls all the time and begs me not to leave.”
“Well, you’re leaving tomorrow. He’ll have to get over it.”
She nods, her eyes on the painting. “I guess he will.”
“You were saying, though, that should he come over…?”
“Oh. Right. Don’t answer the door, if he does. He’ll trap you in a sad story and won’t leave for hours. He’s done it to Marc—do you remember Marc from that party?—and Marc has called me to plead on Brian’s behalf. It’s pitiful, really.”
“I think it’s kind of sweet.”
“That’s because it’s not happening to you.” She holds out her cup for more coffee and I point at the machine. She gets it for herself. When her back is to me, she says, “Maybe it is kind of sweet, huh?” She sits back down and says it’s too late, anyway. The movers came this morning and by early evening tomorrow, she’ll be somewhere else, hours away.
I want to ask her if she already gave him the driving directions.
We talk about her plans, which include not only buying a house, but a new car. “A used new one, because you really have to think about depreciation. Can you believe how responsible I sound? Do you even recognize me? And I’m going to have a child by the time I’m thirty-two—in case I want two, you know, because after that,” she says, munching a cashew from a tin I set on the table, “your eggs dry up little by little. It’s true. You can’t even sell your eggs after twenty-nine because they’re practically worthless. You have to sell them while you’re young. Like you.”
“I’m not much younger than you are.”
“Three years is three years.”
I get up for a glass of water and she watches me walk from the chair to the refrigerator and back to the chair.
She says, “No one wears overalls anymore. What is this, ninety-seven?”
“They’re comfortable.”
“I bet.” She tosses a nut in her mouth. “So?”
“I’ll be right back.” I go to the bathroom and close the door and run the sink. I hear her chair slide back from the table and her weight shifting the floorboards as she walks around, browsing the way she does. Hallway, bedroom, hallway, living room. Then the noise stops. I flush the toilet and turn off the water and open the door. Denise sits at the computer with her fingers on the keyboard’s arrow pad.
“What are you doing?”
Her face
is white, a reflection from the monitor. “He’s so…communicative. William was never able to express himself very well in letters.”
I walk over to the desk and see that she hasn’t read beyond the first screen.
“William didn’t really write much about what he felt. Just, ‘I woke up at this time, then I had breakfast, and then I went to a meeting. The meeting was boring.’ I don’t know how long it would have taken me to find out about the twelve-month thing.” She shrugs. “I enjoyed getting his letters, but I wish he would have…I don’t know…told me more.” She presses the down arrow until the next page comes up.
“If you don’t mind,” I say, turning off the monitor before she can read Jake’s question about her letter to William.
“No, no. I’m sorry. I had no business…really.” She gets up and smoothes her pants and asks if she can stay a while. She gets pretty sore sitting on the floor for more than fifteen minutes, she says, and she never knew she could miss her furniture so much. “It hasn’t even been a full day!”
I sit on the oversized chair and she curls up on the couch and I ask her if she wants to watch television.
“Anything but the news,” she says, so I find something equally mindless, but more upbeat. We laugh when we’re supposed to and sit quietly during commercials until she says, at the end of an advertisement for a new plastic mallet-and-bolt set, “I envy you.”
Two hours later, Denise and I are folded in the quiet peace of an hours-long rain, warm and dry inside while, outside, occasional lightning strikes whiten the room, and strong winds whip branches against the side of the building. Denise snores on the couch, turned toward the wall in a fetal position, and I watch TV while falling in and out of sleep, a screamer in the laugh-track audience pulling me from fleeting dreams. When I open my eyes, it’s to the painting, always the painting, and I can’t help but imagine Emily in her slippers and robe and the man standing at the end of the drive and that, someday, his big boots will disturb the snow on the way to ring her doorbell.
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