by Serena Bell
According to the article she was reading, his leg had been mangled by an IED. The article was full of praise from his teammates and superiors: Impeccable judgment. Strong, agile, a leader. Loyal, brave, kind, cool under pressure. Great guy. The best. Working his butt off to walk again.
Not a grumpy asshole. At least he hadn’t been, back on the ground in Afghanistan, where, apparently, he’d saved a badly injured teammate’s life by carrying him to safety and medical care under a rain of PK fire, whatever that was. It sounded horrifying. And a lot harder than keeping even a challenging seven-year-old safe for nine hours.
Her email pinged again. The attachment turned out to be a partial scan of some kind of hospital admission notes. The email’s subject line was: Officially: A sane asshole.
She laughed aloud in the silent room.
Clean, neatly dressed … no visible psycho-motor agitation … no obvious evidence of PTSD … psych consult not warranted at this time.
The third email was a video. Subject: Not always this grumpy.
Jake, leg still intact, playing soccer with several other men—teammates, she guessed, from the fact that their bodies echoed Jake’s ridiculously ripped physique—and a horde of kids, ages toddler to teen. He was grinning, joking with the kids, passing them the ball. Punching a shoulder here and there, shouting instructions. Gently. He looked amazing. Strong and virile, and those white teeth in that brilliant grin of his did something all wrong, and all right, to her. Had he smiled at her once yesterday? She didn’t think so.
At a picnic table in the background, women—wives and girlfriends?—laid out food.
With a pang of loss, it occurred to her that in a different life, she might have been there.
The fourth email. Subject: For what it’s worth, my mom likes me.
A forwarded email from his mom. Hey, hon. Hope you got the care package. As you asked, no nuts in the cookies. Stay alive. That’s my request.
Her eyes filled with tears. There was no explicit apology here, no acknowledgment that he’d rejected or hurt her, but still, there was something so tender and vulnerable about this gesture. It said, without words, that he’d been thinking of them since he’d seen them yesterday. That her dilemma was on his mind. That he respected her fears, wanted to help, understood what she needed.
That he wanted to know Sam badly enough that he’d be willing to expose himself for a chance.
That he understood what it meant to have, and be, a mother.
A fifth email dropped into her in-box above the others.
I can babysit Monday if you still need me.
Chapter 5
Sunday morning, Jake took the 29 bus from Belltown, his downtown Seattle neighborhood, to Mira’s house in Ballard.
Her reply text had said, Thanks for the emails. Do you want to come meet Sam tomorrow? I can’t just leave my kid alone with you because he happens to share your DNA and your mom loves you. I think there are some serial killers whose mothers staunchly defend them.
He hadn’t been able to argue with that. He could only be glad the recipient of his DNA was being cared for by a woman with a good head on her shoulders.
Still, riding the bus to the address she’d given him was an ordeal of step-climbing and enduring the stares of fellow riders. Weeks ago, he’d made the stubborn decision that he wouldn’t try to hide the fact that he was an amputee. He never wore pants to cover his prosthesis if the weather called for shorts, and he almost never wore his dress leg. None of that molded flesh-like silicone for him, thank you very much. He thought it looked more eerie than his mechanical leg, because for a moment your eye would be fooled before it realized no one’s skin was that peach-colored, that smooth, or that flaccid.
The trade-off for not hiding his prosthesis was curiosity and pity and, occasionally, unwanted conversation with someone who was bold enough to ask what had happened or who had an uncle or a brother with an amputation. He didn’t mind that latter category so much, because those people mostly understood—that his life wasn’t over but profoundly altered, that a prosthesis wasn’t a smooth path back to normalcy but more like a rickety rope bridge.
That was what he was supposed to be doing now on his Temporary Disability Retirement, getting back to normal. If he did a good job of it, he could head back to a job in the army, where he belonged.
Or where he’d once belonged. Now he didn’t know.
It was a long, hilly walk from the bus stop on 15th Avenue to Mira’s house back in the residential grid. His leg ached and sweated. Maybe he shouldn’t have sent those emails after all. Maybe he should have stayed home and ticked the hours off in his mind.
Friday night, after he’d seen Mira, he’d stared into the empty lowball and thought about his rules. Another hour before he could pour another glass. A night of hours, one after the other, Gentleman Jack the only punctuation between sentences. All the hours of this night lined up next to all the empty hours of tomorrow and all the hours of tomorrow night, of all the days and nights into the foreseeable future.
Who was that guy?
Some jerk.
Effectively, he had three choices. He could choose not to live. He had thought about it many times—most often in the earliest days, before he’d seen that he would be able to walk again. But he still thought about it, occasionally, when the calendar day clicked over, 12:01, and nothing had changed—not time’s plodding pace; not his persistent, raging anxiety; not his deadly boredom.
He could choose to live like this, yield to the way the hours followed one from the next with no true distinction, no meaning. If he did that, it would also mean he accepted what she’d said about him. What he’d said about himself. Grumpy. Gimpy. Asshole.
Or he could believe that Sam and Mira had turned up in his path yesterday for some reason he couldn’t fathom yet. That he hadn’t merely stumbled across them; he had stumbled straight into their need, a need he was perfectly positioned to fill. Sam needed to be watched; Jake needed something to do.
Of all the unexpected emotions he’d felt yesterday in their presence—attraction to Mira, curiosity about Sam—the most unexpected of all had been the pure will he’d felt to claim this new possibility that had presented itself. Jake was so distant from the notion of wanting something that he almost didn’t recognize it at first. The words had to come out of his mouth—“I’ll watch him Monday”—before he knew the impulse was there. But after he’d offered himself and she’d turned him down, he’d wanted to fight—for the right to be with Sam in a way that would be useful. And he recognized that, that will to fight. He recognized it as the purest core of himself. A notion worth guarding. A goal he regarded so highly, he’d be willing to slough off his numbness to have it back in his life.
A goal that would reassemble the endless collection of hours into a life.
Purpose.
But maybe that was only whiskey’s special form of delusion. He was so tired now, so unsure that he could handle what he’d signed himself up for, that he wanted to turn around and go home.
Instead, he gathered his strength and made himself walk up to the dumpy little Roman brick single-story house that he assumed was a rental based on the unloved appearance of the yard. The grass was dull and dry, the gardens overgrown, the front steps broken concrete.
The cast-iron railing on one side of the too-high steps wiggled when he grasped it. Fine. He gave it a mental fuck-you and turned his body a quarter turn so he’d have to bend his robo-knee slightly less as he climbed.
It wasn’t a natural-looking way to climb stairs, but it was how things worked now.
The door opened a split second before he could raise his hand to ring the bell, and Sam stood there, looking at him suspiciously. He couldn’t blame the kid. Who wanted some guy—some jerk—as a babysitter? He suspected Sam’s former babysitters were young and female, with soft hair and soft hands and soft other stuff that would look like a hell of a lot better substitute for his mom.
“Hi,” Jake said.
; “You’re not really a babysitter, are you?”
“Not really,” he admitted.
“Who are you?”
He hadn’t expected to have to confront that question so quickly. He knew he might have to answer it eventually, but he’d hoped he’d have at least been admitted through the front door first. He should have asked Mira what she was planning to do about telling Sam the truth.
“Who did your mom tell you I was?” He hoped Sam wasn’t old enough yet to get pissed at Jake’s caginess.
“She said you were a friend. But I didn’t exactly believe her because she also said you were a jerk.”
“Sam,” Mira said from somewhere behind the front door. “I said I shouldn’t have said that and neither should you.”
“I was just telling him,” Sam protested.
“You don’t need to tell him that,” Mira said. “He already knows.”
But she was smiling as she held the door open for him. “Sam, do you want to help me give him a tour?”
She wore a pair of jeans and a tight tank top with skinny little straps that were loose on her shoulders. They looked in danger of slipping down. It wouldn’t take much—the brush of a hand, a finger hooked underneath. Teeth.
Jesus. If this continued, he was going to be wishing he were still sexually dead. Nothing like interviewing for a babysitting position with a boner.
“This is the living room,” Sam said unnecessarily.
In contrast to the shabby feel of the outside of the house, the interior felt neat and cozy. Light flooded in through a huge front window, illuminating a white room with a pastel, geometric rough-surfaced rug, a comfy gray couch, a matching armchair, and a glass coffee table. There was a game spread out on the rug, something with tons of teeny-tiny plastic pieces that looked complicated. Jake wasn’t sure how he felt about playing board games. He’d always avoided doing it with his niece and nephew, but that had been before. When his soccer-ball-kicking foot had been made of flesh and blood and hitting a baseball wouldn’t require several dedicated physical therapy sessions to work out the logistics.
There were books all over the coffee table, more than one left facedown and open. Mostly kids’ books, fat-chapter books he would have guessed were too difficult for a seven-year-old. Apparently his son was an advanced reader. He felt a peculiar, unwarranted sense of pride. He’d done nothing, other than make his unintentional and (if you considered the volume of fluid involved) piddling genetic contribution, to deserve any pride, but he figured maybe that was one of those things you couldn’t help. That’s my boy. Not that he’d been a great reader himself, not until high school, when he’d begun gobbling up nonfiction, mostly war histories.
“You like to read?” he asked Sam.
“Yeah.”
“What are these books about? Warriors?”
“About clans of cats who fight each other.”
“Oh, yeah? Like mountain lions and stuff?”
“No, like cats. You know, like pet cats, but these ones don’t live with people.”
“That is seriously weird, dude,” Jake said. “Warriors are wolves and lions and soldiers in Black Hawk helicopters, not fluffy house cats.” Any son of his should know that.
Son. His.
It was starting to get through to him, starting to penetrate. He had a kid.
“They’re not house cats. They’re wild.”
Sam glared at him, his gaze never faltering, not even when Jake leveled a glare right back at him.
That’s my boy.
My boy.
Holy shit.
He had a son, this miniature man who was meeting his challenge without flinching.
“Maybe you can read that to me later.”
“Or you can read it to me.”
Stubborn son of a bitch. A good trait. “Or we can take turns.”
“Maybe,” said Sam, but Jake thought he might be smiling.
Mira was watching him. He could feel it. He snuck a glance at her, at the scoop of her tank, the beckoning V of cleavage. He could seriously deal with taking some quality time with that top. He could just make out the bump of her nipples under the fabric, and he speculated that it would take just a touch to bring them to attention. She’d been so responsive.
You don’t deserve—you have no right—Mike can’t—can’t—not that, not anything.
Was it his imagination, or was that chant getting softer, the clamor in his body louder?
Mira was watching him with a look on her face that he couldn’t interpret.
“Show me the rest of the house?” Jake asked Sam.
Sam led him into the kitchen, which was small but serviceable, with wood cabinets painted white and speckled Formica countertops. The appliances were newer, and there was a small round kitchen table that still held breakfast dishes. “The snacks are here,” Sam said, and opened a cabinet at knee height.
“Very important,” Mira said. “Sam has serious nut allergies, so he needs to have snacks from the house. He can’t go out for ice cream and donuts and treats like that, because most of that stuff isn’t prepared nut-free. He can safely eat anything in this house, though, so you don’t have to worry about anything you feed him here.”
She was talking now like she was leaning toward leaving him with Sam.
“You said he has asthma,” Jake said. “Is there an inhaler?”
“I’ll get it.” Sam dashed off.
“He likes you.” Her arms were crossed, but her expression was the softest he’d seen it. So soft it moved something behind the cage of his ribs. So soft he could feel it sinking into the base of his spine.
“How can you tell?”
“I just can. He’s slow to warm up, but he likes you. He doesn’t usually engage this fast.”
He likes me. It was an unexpected boon, a sudden, strange, sharp almost-pleasure. He caught himself feeling something that, if it were indulged, might be called happy.
Then he remembered. That there were kids in the world whose father would never come home again, because of him. That there was a father—one who had been a real father, who had wanted to be one—who would never see his kids again.
Sam came back with the inhaler in the palm of his hand.
“Do you know how to use it?” Jake asked Sam.
“Yeah,” he said. But Mira took it from Sam anyway and demonstrated it to Jake. “Inhaler in the spacer, like this.” She showed him how they fit together. “Squeeze once, breathe in and out five times. Squeeze again, five more breaths. He hasn’t had an asthma attack in more than a year and a half, though. Kids do sometimes outgrow it. I remind him not to overtax his system, though. If he’s running really fast, or whatever, I remind him to take it down a notch.”
“Really?” Jake asked, before he could think better of it.
Her face darkened.
Okay, that had been a dumb thing to say. But really? A seven-year-old kid who hadn’t had an asthma attack in over a year, and she was discouraging him from realizing his full potential? It went against everything Jake believed about people, everything he’d been taught in training and in war. You pushed yourself to the limit and you saw what your limits were. You saw that everything you feared at the furthest edges of your capabilities wasn’t to be feared. That there was nothing to fear in yourself.
Until you weren’t yourself, because the thing you’d believed made you you was gone. Then it was appropriate to be scared shitless.
There was a dark rut in his mind where he used to be sure he knew what he was doing. Sometimes, when his thoughts went there, he had trouble pulling them back. Maybe if I went back to war, I’d find it again. The rhythm, the reason. The thing that made me feel like fighting was worthwhile. It was as if he were watching a jerky filmstrip of his life as a soldier, the rah-rah, the gung-ho, then the early edge of doubt, how the first thing he’d thought the first time he’d seen Mike hesitate under fire was, That could be me. That’s what happens when you aren’t sure anymore.
He could feel the groove
worn in his brain by this line of thinking, and he could get stuck there for hours. Could be me, should have been me.
She was watching him carefully. “Sam has to be cautious about physical activity right now, anyway. He’s a lot better than he was, but he’s supposed to take it easy for a few more weeks. The reason we were at PT is he fell out of a tree. That’s the whole reason we’re in the fix we’re in. He was supposed to go to this tennis and golf camp all day the last two weeks and the next two until I could work out sitting arrangements. But he’s too banged up.”
“He seems pretty good now.” He hadn’t seen evidence of a limp or any other injury.
“He’s a lot better. That was probably our last PT session. But like I said, with the asthma, anyway, I want him to take it easy.”
There was nothing, per se, wrong with tennis and golf. It just rubbed him the wrong way, somehow. There was more to life, more to being a boy and a man, than hitting little balls at a country club. Not that Sam had to love football or hockey or riflery or archery. But he deserved a chance to figure out for himself what he did love, what his body could do.
“Take it easy” wasn’t a credo Jake knew anything about.
“You’ll bring your phone, right, if you sit?”
He nodded.
“So we have each other’s numbers.”
“Yeah.”
“I also have a landline in case the power goes out.” She showed him. Above that phone, she’d listed emergency numbers. Her home number, cell, and work. Her parents’ number, with the note “long distance, but knowledgeable.” The pediatrician, 911, poison control.
“Can I show Jake my room?”
Mira looked at Jake, and he shrugged. “Sure.”
Sam led him down a short hallway to a small bedroom littered with Legos and other building toys. Jake’s first impulse was to kneel and begin playing with the toys, but kneeling wasn’t easy for him. It still involved an embarrassing amount of effort and the potential loss of balance. He didn’t want that to happen to him in front of Sam and Mira. So he stayed standing. “I like Legos,” he said.