Purple Hearts

by Tess Wakefield

  “Yeah,” he said, resting his forehead on his hand.

  “Sorry I haven’t really been around.”

  He turned his sleepy eyes on me. “You don’t have to say sorry.”

  “I know, but.” I wanted him to know that I could tell that something was wrong. Maybe he needed to talk. Rita wasn’t exactly an ideal conversationalist. “So, um, how’s the physical therapy going?”

  “Very good, Cassie, thank you,” he said.

  What was with this weird, polite tone? I almost preferred him sullen. At least that was closer to his real self.

  I resisted the urge to bend over and pull his chair so that he was facing me. “Has Rita been okay at helping you up, or would both of us be better?”

  He bounced his tennis ball. “It’s fine.”

  “So you did your therapy this morning?”

  He was quiet. “Yeah.”

  “Have you gotten hold of your brother?”

  “A couple of times. But I didn’t want to invite him over to your house.”

  “You can if you want to.”

  Luke sighed, as if he were tired of talking. “Sure, thank you for offering.”

  My sympathy was running out again. I was trying, I was giving him a lot to work with, I was making it easy, and he was pushing me away. “Is there something wrong?” I offered.

  “Nothing’s wrong. Thank you.”

  That politeness again. It was like a screen. I tried again. “Is it money?”

  “Nope,” he said, almost too quickly.

  It wasn’t like we were best friends or anything, but he was so different from the Luke whom I had Skyped with, who had stories to tell, or even the Luke who’d sat next to me at the hospital cafeteria, the eager listener, or the person who made me feel like my ideas were magic. “All right, so, then, what’s going on?” When he didn’t answer, I raised my voice. “What do you need?”

  He groaned, turning jerkily to face me. “I need to have never gotten myself into this situation in the first place. How’s that?”

  “Well, I can’t help you with that one.” I grabbed my purse from the couch, heading toward the door. I needed out of this den of sadness, what used to be my haven. Where I was now apparently a situation.

  “I didn’t mean you.”

  “Right.” Before I slammed the door, it slipped out. “Enjoy wasting away.”

  As I stomped down the stairs, I didn’t know if the guilt in my gut was stirring because it was a mean thing to say, meaner than his silence, or because I knew that no matter what I said, no matter whether he would respond in anger or just ignore me, I would always have the upper hand. I would always be the one to move on with my day, to try to forget and move forward, to slam the door and stomp down the stairs and get in my car and go. Because I could.

  Luke

  Cassie was practicing that song again. She kept getting caught up on one part, where the notes jumped from low to high. It made it hard to concentrate on what Yarvis was saying as he sat across from me on the couch, his feet in a spot where, not eight hours ago, I’d pissed myself.

  “You catch any of the game?” Yarvis asked.

  Bum bum bum be dun, ba ding. Ba DING. Ba ding ding DING.

  “Damn it,” we could hear her say.

  I didn’t know which game he was talking about. No TV here. And faulty Internet. And even if I could watch sports, it pissed me off to watch clips of people running and jumping like it was nothing. “Um, no.”

  Yarvis had come over for a check-in, though it was supposed to have happened three weeks ago. He’d given us only about an hour’s notice to get rid of the blankets and pillows on the couch, put the overflowing bag of my stuff out of sight, throw away the sweatpants I’d pissed in because I couldn’t get to the bathroom in time. I was supposed to be able to hold a certain percentage of my weight by now, but I hadn’t been doing the exercises. So I could hold zero percent, and fell. That was when I’d hated having cloud head. Regular head knew I should have just yelled to Cassie to help. Cloud head told me no, it was the middle of the night, I’d be fine.

  Bum bum be dun dun.

  I wasn’t fine. I’d peed on the floor. That was the tough part about cloud head. Cloud head was calmer, but maybe a little too calm.

  Ba ding DING ding. “Damn it!”

  “Cassie, are you going to join us, or what?” I called to the other room, my voice sharper than I’d intended.

  “In a second,” she called.

  She walked out in the same band T-shirt she wore yesterday, her hair falling out of her ponytail. “Hi,” she said, breathing deeply, as if she were about to take a big leap, bracing herself. “Sorry for the delay. Good to see you.”

  Yarvis looked back and forth from me to Cassie as he scooted to make room for Cassie on the couch, puzzled. “How are we?”

  Out of obligation, I reached for Cassie’s hand. It was limp in mine. “Good,” I said.

  “Great!” Cassie said, her enthusiasm flimsy.

  “Well, good,” Yarvis said, putting on an amused smile. “I’m here to check on Luke’s progress. And,” he said, pausing to pull out another folder from his shoulder bag, “bring you the next stage in Luke’s PT, since it appears you haven’t taken the time to go to the VA.”

  Cassie shifted in her seat, letting go of my hand to bite her thumbnail. I avoided his eyes.

  “Did you find help elsewhere?” he continued.

  “Yeah,” I said, swallowing, hoping he wouldn’t get too curious.

  Cassie took her thumbnail out of her mouth, her brow furrowed. “Yeah, I mean, we’re doing what we can. It threw us off when you didn’t show for the first week.”

  Yarvis let out a whistling sigh. “And I’m sorry about that. There’s only two of us for hundreds of families.”

  Cassie leaned forward. “Two social workers? For a hospital that big?”

  At Yarvis’s surprised face, Cassie tensed. She checked herself. She put her hand back in mine.

  Yarvis continued, “Resources are scant. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m on your side. Veterans need to be made a bigger priority. There are serious mental and physical health repercussions for entire generations if they don’t get the help they need.” He leaned in for emphasis. “But you all have to at least try.”

  I looked at Cassie. Her eyes were narrowed at Yarvis. “I work a minimum-wage service job, I have to check my blood sugar eight times a day, and neither Luke nor I have the money to buy or rent a vehicle that can transport him across the river to the, uh, what’s it called, the Veterans Center on South Congress. So.” Her words caught. She took another breath, trying to calm herself, and put on a strained smile. “What do you recommend as far as trying?” Then, after a pause, she pushed out a sarcastic “Sir?”

  Some sort of buried conditioning from a year of army training moved words out of my mouth before I could realize what I was saying. “Don’t, Cass.”

  “Thanks, Private,” she snapped.

  I pressed her hand. She pressed back. She wasn’t only being disrespectful to the one person trying to help us, she was blowing our cover. We weren’t acting like a married couple, just bickering a little. She was on the verge of full-on fed up.

  “It’s all right, Luke.” Yarvis looked at Cassie. “I’m sorry. I know it must be hard. I didn’t mean to lecture you.”

  Cassie’s eyes softened, though she was still breathing hard. “It is hard.”

  He turned to me. “Have you at least been doing your basic PT at home?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  I could feel her eyes on me, debating whether to call me out. Don’t push it. Please. We have to sugarcoat things so he can get out of here.

  “I’m still getting used to things,” I added, resisting looking back at her.

  “Yeah, well,” Cassie said, sensing my thoughts. “We’ll get him up in no time.”

  “You poor kids,” Yarvis said. “You’ve both got dark circles under your eyes. It’s going to get easier.”
>
  “I’ll be right back,” Cassie said. She fluttered her hands toward the two of us. “Can I get either of you anything? Honey?”

  “No, thank you,” Yarvis said.

  I shook my head, though what I wanted was a pill. This was too much. My hand started moving toward my pocket, where I’d started keeping them in my sweatpants.

  “Hey,” Yarvis said, leaning close to me, snapping his fingers. I looked at him in his pool-water eyes. “What’s your deal?”

  “Nothing, sir. Just tired.” My pulse quickened.

  “Your pupils are tiny.” His smoky voice was harsh. “Are you taking opiates?”

  I swallowed, jerked my hand away from my pocket to my knee. “For the pain.”

  He raised his bushy eyebrows. “And only as prescribed?”

  “Only as prescribed,” I repeated, hoarse. I suddenly remembered what the surgeon said. Pain is the alert system. Maybe I’d fallen because there was slippage and I couldn’t tell.

  “I’ve seen kids better off than you go down a dark path. Don’t do that,” he said, pointing right between my eyes. Right between cloud head and regular head. “If you don’t believe you’re going to make a full recovery, you won’t. Do it for her,” he said, nodding toward the kitchen.

  Cloud head almost laughed. As if Cassie would want me to do anything for her, let alone clomp around her apartment doing pony exercises. I’m pretty sure the only thing Cassie wanted was a time machine to take her forward to the day when I’d be gone.

  Cassie came back, sipping water. Yarvis sat back in his chair, a smile on his face. “You know what you two need?”

  “A farmhand?” Cassie asked.

  “A dog.”

  Cassie snorted. When Yarvis got up to use the bathroom, I slid a pill from my pocket, swallowing while Cassie was looking the other way. Yarvis was right about me, but it was too late. I was already on a dark path. But I’d be fine. I’d figure out what lay on the other side of it once I got out of here.

  The rest of this interview was going to get a lot more pleasant for everyone with cloud head around. Best to just ride it out, smiling. Best to just become furniture.

  “Huh,” Yarvis was saying, looking out one of Cassie’s windows down at the street. “Wonder what that Bronco is doing.”

  “What?” I said, almost a whisper. I wanted the Oxy to hit me harder, to slow down the pumping of blood.

  “Oh, it was idling out there when I came in, and it’s still there,” Yarvis muttered.

  Cassie joined him at the window. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  Johnno. He found Cassie’s house. I didn’t have the money. Why couldn’t he get that through his head? I didn’t have it, and I would pay him when I did. But facts didn’t matter in Johnno’s chaos. I couldn’t see out the window, but I could imagine his twitchy face in a cloud of menthol smoke, ready to hop out with Kaz behind him, ready to snap.

  He could come up here at any time. He could hurt Cassie.

  “It’s leaving,” Yarvis said, his voice far away.

  I clung to my wheels, my wrists pulsing on my useless legs. If he came back, if he came up here and tried to hurt me—tried to hurt Cassie—all I could do was watch.

  Cassie

  “Mm.” Toby kissed my neck as I tried to get the notes right. “Do you have to practice? We practice enough.”

  “Of course I have to practice,” I said. “You know that better than anyone.”

  After Yarvis left, Luke had started wheeling around the apartment with his phone in his lap, muttering to himself. Whenever he saw me, he seized. I’d thought about calling my mom, going over there for dinner, but instead I’d called Toby.

  “You like your keyboard more than me?” he said, making a trail with his mouth to my shoulder, the tips of his hair brushing my skin. “I’m just kidding,” he added, between kisses. I couldn’t help wondering, then why did you say it?

  “It’s just hard to play over there right now.”

  “You should just live here!” Toby said, standing up.

  I smiled. “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious. It’s only been a few months since we got together, but we’ve known each other now for almost two years.” He gave me a small smile.

  I looked at him, unable to mask the surprise on my face.

  He shrugged, clearly trying to sound casual. “We could jam all the time. All you wanted. It would be so fun.”

  Suddenly the room felt smaller.

  “This is a great place. And I like you a lot.” As Toby began to rub my neck, I said gently, “But I can’t move in with you, you know that.”

  He was quiet then, still massaging. I had hurt his feelings. Always hurting feelings. That’s me! Mean ol’ Cassie. I remembered how kind he had always been. I knew he was just trying to be supportive, but Nora’s look came back to me, her silent message.

  Toby’s hands dug harder, moving down to my shoulders. I dipped out from underneath his grip and stood up. “I mean, come on, Toby. As if I could just breeze over here.”

  He lifted his hands and left the room. I took a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry,” I called. “You know I have to keep up appearances with Luke.”

  “Of course. You have to keep up appearances with Luke. Your husband.” Something banged in the kitchen. I sighed and padded into the other room. When he saw me, his face tightened further.

  I paused in the doorway. “I’m giving everything I have to make a career. This is already not easy, and I can’t take on anything else right now.”

  “If you don’t want to commit to me, that’s fine, but don’t pretend like I’m the cause of more stress,” he said, pouring olive oil into a pan. “I’m a good thing in your life. Not that bullshit you have to do with Luke. I’m real.”

  I stepped toward him. “I’m not saying we aren’t good together. I’m just . . .” It wasn’t about just keeping up the lie anymore. I was worried about Luke. He wasn’t the same. And it shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. I didn’t want to create a bigger gap between us than there already was. Luke and I had to get through this together. Or we at least had to try. “I just like it the way it is with us.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, throwing garlic in the pan. “You always tell me how you’re doing this for me and The Loyal, but when I’m offering to make it easier for you, you refuse.”

  I remembered Nora’s hands on Fleetwood Friday, the choking motion. He’s going to try to lock you down. “I’d rather no one ‘offer’ me anything. I’d rather make it for myself, thanks.”

  He turned on the gas, staring at the flames licking. “Well, good luck with that.”

  My capacity was full. Luke, Yarvis, the band, work, health, Mom, everything. Toby had his piece of my attention, but he wanted more and I couldn’t give it to him. I had no more left.

  “Don’t insult my choices.”

  “I wasn’t—” Toby started, but I was already in the living room, putting my keyboard in its case. I had a song to master.

  “I have to go,” I called to him. I could hear the oil searing. He didn’t follow me out.

  Luke

  Cassie burst through the door, talking on the phone, her steps rushed. The door slammed behind her as she kicked off her Converses, her keyboard case on her back. She looked at me, probably aware, as always, that I was in the same position I’d been in when she left.

  All I’d been doing was feeling. I’d been sitting here, thinking of closing Frankie’s eyes. Thinking of my mom. The outline of my mom. Of everything, everyone, I’d lost.

  And now Johnno was back. It could have been someone else, but even though I didn’t see the Bronco last week, I’d known it was Johnno. He had not only misunderstood what severance meant, he also couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that I couldn’t give him the amount he wanted until I was discharged later this year. Time didn’t matter to Johnno. Other people’s lives didn’t matter to Johnno, unless he was at the center. And now he was coming for mine, for Cas
sie’s.

  “I’m just saying, maybe you were right about Toby,” Cassie said into the phone, and hushed her voice when she saw me. “I just don’t know what we would do about the Sahara show. That’s the one the Wolf Records guy is going to be at. I mean, do I throw it all away because I’m mad?”

  Cassie’s friend’s voice mumbled on the other end.

  “Right,” she said, pulling the strap of her purse over her head, setting it down. “Yeah.” She tossed her keys on the table. “Okay. Love you, Nora. Bye.” She hung up.

  I heard her start to set up her keyboard in her room.

  The buzz from this dose was glorious. This was a whole new level of cloud head. And Cassie was in a fight with Toby. I didn’t know why this made me happy, only that it did.

  “Everything okay with you and Toby?” I called.

  Cassie poked her head out of her room. “Hey, Luke?” Her voice was clipped. “Can I have a moment to myself? Without someone needing something from me?”

  “I don’t need anything,” I said. “I just thought you might want to talk.”

  “Oh, all of a sudden you’re Mr. Sensitive? Give me a break.” She laughed, mirthless.

  I felt a puffy, sticky version of regret. The words kept coming. “I didn’t like how I was acting, either.”

  She stepped out of her room fully. The late-afternoon light caught the tips of her hair, her gold-brown eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Well,” she finally spoke, quiet. “You might as well know. Toby asked me to move in with him.”

  “What did you say?” The words still felt distant coming out of my mouth, like someone else was saying them. Cloud head assured me they were the right thing to say.

  She looked at me, her eyes red around the edges from crying. She was so pretty. “I said hell no.”

  “You didn’t have to do that on my account.”

  “This is my home.”

  “I know.”

  She went back into her room, beginning to play scales. Her home.

  God, what if Johnno broke in? What if he hurt her? Regular head crept back. You couldn’t do anything if he did. You’re useless.