Purple Hearts

by Tess Wakefield

  “Depends.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I sputtered, embarrassed. “I mean, what’s happening? With the charges?”

  He smiled. “I can explain here, or I can explain inside. Whatever you want.”

  “Come on,” I said, and stepped aside. We landed on the futon.

  “How was the show?” he asked, as if he had just dropped in for a friendly chat.

  It was magic, I wanted to say, I wish you could have been there, but the words couldn’t get past the pulsing fear. “It was great,” I pushed out. “Luke, what’s going on?”

  He scooted to face me. “The lawyer said I have a case. He said it’s almost a sure thing. I’m pleading not guilty.”

  “Not guilty,” I echoed. “Wait, you keep saying I, not we. Am I not—?” I began. “Okay, start over. How did they know to arrest you in the first place?”

  His look of triumph faded. “My old dealer.”

  “But why?” I asked, sharp. Then, softer, I added, “Don’t leave anything out.”

  Luke nodded at me, eyes intent on mine. “Of course.”

  He began with how he’d met this man, Johnno Lerner. How they’d been something like friends, until Luke wanted to change his life. How Luke flushed pills down the toilet. How he ran from his debts and thought he could keep on running to Afghanistan, until Johnno found him. And then Luke found me.

  “And that’s what I focused on in the conversation with the lawyer,” he finished. “You know, like, a marriage isn’t up to what people think it should be. It’s up to the people in it. And even if we look at what’s official, like ‘in sickness and in health, richer or poorer,’ et cetera, we did all that. We were good together. We took care of each other.” He looked away, almost pained, and with a short breath he added, “So that’s everything. The lawyer said that we have a shot. That it sounded very real.”

  “And he told you to plead not guilty.”

  “Yes,” Luke said. “You probably won’t even have to testify. But if you do—”

  “The story is that we really care for each other.”

  He took a breath, struggling. “That’s the story.”

  We sat in silence. We’d had so many silences, but this one felt different. Maybe it was the first silence we didn’t have to break by lying. To everyone, to each other. Or maybe there were still lies. I didn’t know. I didn’t think Luke was lying now, or when he told me he had feelings for me. But, then again, I didn’t think he was lying when he told me he owed money to “a friend from his hometown,” either. And now, if I said in a court of law that everything we had was real, would that be a lie? I answered my own question.

  “I would come in, though,” I said, quiet. “If they need me to. I would testify that it was real, too. Or at least, it became real,” I amended.

  “That testimony would certainly help,” he said.

  “Will you let me know the minute you know the time and date?” I would need to make sure that I could drive back from wherever we were on tour. We were sticking around in Texas for a while.

  Luke nodded. The room was so silent, I could hear him breathing.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Well, we can’t get a divorce until after the hearing,” Luke pointed out. “Obviously.”

  “Oh,” I said. I hadn’t even thought of the divorce. For the minutes he’d been here, it had seemed like old times. Like the days when we were working together.

  “I mean, that’s what you want, right?” Luke tilted his head, the line in his forehead back.

  What did I want? I wanted to be careful. My feelings were huge and twisted and rushing inside me like rapids, and they were going to tip out if I didn’t tread slowly. I couldn’t let them knock me over.

  “I don’t know,” I said, staring at the wooden floor. “What do you want?”

  Luke swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  Before I could stop myself, I said, “I liked what we had. Or rather, what we had minus the lying and pissing of the pants.” Luke let out a small laugh. I looked at his lips. “And I guess you would have to take out the kissing.”

  “So you want to be friends?” Luke asked, slow.

  My insides, still floating, dropped an inch. “Yeah, but—”

  “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”

  “I can’t eat cake, period. I have diabetes.”

  Luke’s calm broke into a real laugh. I giggled with him.

  “And how are you and Toby?” he asked, trying to be casual.

  “Uh,” I said, with a quick look at the objects strewn on the floor. “Toby and I are done.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  When I caught his eyes, there might have been a look of hope on his face, a hint of a smile, then he brought it back. He shook his head. “As far as our relationship,” he started, and stopped. He seemed to have to force out the words. “I’m barely stable. The most important thing is that we stay safe and healthy, and I think that means you go on with your life, and I go on with mine.” He smiled for real, and I couldn’t help thinking that this one was wasted. It was a tragic thing, what he just said. “We’ll probably be better off.”

  “Probably.” My insides slipped another inch lower.

  His gaze locked on mine, those blue eyes rimmed with black. Then they dropped to my lips. “We’ll just have to see,” he said. “Right? After the hearing.”

  “Right.”

  All of Luke’s stammering and all the vague truisms about staying safe and healthy and him going on with his life, me going on with mine, were a far cry from what he said two days ago. Maybe he was regretting it. Maybe he was angry, considering the last time I saw him, I had kicked him to the street.

  And yet he’d said that stuff about our marriage being real, the stuff I wanted to put on pause forever, and turn over, and make sure that we were feeling the same thing.

  And what was that thing? Could I stand that he lied and feel what I was feeling at the same time? Was it just brought on by adrenaline, by the extreme? Should I tell him I forgive him? Do I?

  “Oh, guess what?” he said, bursting my thoughts, his eyes wide and happy.

  “What?”

  “My family is having a little Purple Heart ceremony for me. Tomorrow. They wanted to make sure they got it in before the arraignment. You know—” He paused. “Just in case.”

  “That’s wonderful.” I smiled at him. He smiled back. My skin got warm.

  “Yeah, Yarvis will be there. It’s going to be really small. But nice.” He looked shocked. “Do you want to come? I mean, if you want. I would love for you to come.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, I would like that a lot.”

  I could feel my face flush warmer, this time out of discomfort. “We’re going to Galveston tomorrow,” I said. “On tour. We got a record deal out of the show last night.”

  “No!” he almost yelled, more animated than I had seen him in a long time. “Cassie, that’s amazing!”

  “Yeah,” I said, letting a grin break through my nerves. “Yeah, it’s kind of the shit.”

  His phone buzzed. He looked at it, and looked at me. “Jake’s outside with JJ in the car seat, so.”

  I stood. He stood, slow.

  “I’m sorry I probably can’t make the ceremony.”

  “No, no worries,” he said, his voice deep, restrained. “I’ll just see you . . .”

  “At the hearing?”

  “Yeah.”

  My hands twitched at my sides. His made fists. We walked side by side to the door, and he braced on his cane as he stepped down.

  On the stairs, he looked back at me for a long minute. I didn’t break his gaze. “Bye, Cass.”

  “Bye, Luke.”

  The hole in my chest was back. My ears followed the steady rhythm of his footsteps growing fainter. Tension in every muscle released at the hope that we were going to beat the charges, balled up again at the thought that he might not want to see me anymore, and released at the memory of his calm words, his conv
iction, his determination to make this right.

  “Hey!” I heard, muffled, from below.

  I panicked, dashing to the door, my heart racing. He was looking up at me, waiting, his chiseled arms resting on either side of the door frame at the bottom of the stairs, now open to the porch.

  “What?” I said, laughing a little. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry. I forgot to tell you. I did it!” he called up the stairs. He gestured toward his injured leg, where he had leaned his cane, and I gasped, knowing what he meant.

  He nodded. “I ran. I went running!”

  But before I could congratulate him, the door was closed, and he was gone.

  Luke

  A string held me to that room, where she was still sitting, wearing that silly white button-up shirt that looked nothing like the soft T-shirts she normally wore, stumbling over her words, looking at me like she had never looked at me before. Hearing that she was open to something new afterward, maybe not as friends, maybe not as husband and wife, but just whatever we were, was almost too much to take.

  I reminded myself of the rules I had come up with after being arrested. Leave Cassie alone.

  She was feeling warm toward me now because she was coming off the wake of the news that we had a chance to beat the charges. But it was just one day I had been good to her. Soon she would remember everything that came before that, that I had messed up her life. Whatever she was feeling now, she would have time to reconsider.

  And yet when the sun hit me outside as I walked to where Jake idled near the curb, a hard bright diamond bouncing off the hoods of parked cars on Cassie’s street, tinkling piano sounds drifting from her open window, I waited until the last possible moment to open Jake’s car door. I savored the seconds when Cassie was still a few hundred feet away, wanting me.

  Cassie

  The next morning, I stopped the Subaru outside my mother’s house, and got out, standing on my old street. I knocked on the screen door. When there was no answer, I let myself in.

  “Mom,” I called into the dim light that shone through the east windows, almost tinted green from her plants.

  She came out into the living room, her reading glasses dangling around her neck. I didn’t say anything. Instead, I wrapped her in my arms and squeezed.

  “Will you comb my hair?” I asked into her shoulder, too relieved to see her to feel embarrassed about making a request I hadn’t made since I was a teenager. “Once before I go?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  I sat in the kitchen, staring at the cactus clock, her fingers on my scalp giving me shivers of warmth. “I’m leaving behind a mess.”

  “Oh? You mean your apartment?”

  I laughed. My laughter stopped at the first yank of the comb. Automatic pain tears gathered in the corners of my eyes.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “Just getting out this big one.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “No, not just the apartment.” She yanked again. The tears flowed freely. I took a deep breath. “So. About this marriage thing.”

  I told her what I’d realized about Luke. About sleeping with him, and immediately meeting and falling for Toby. About the injury, Frankie’s death, and about how hard it was to fake that we loved each other. Until it wasn’t.

  By the end, she had made my hair into a sleek, damp curtain. Every time she’d paused the comb as I spoke, I wondered if she was going to throw it down and smack me on the back of the head. She didn’t, though.

  “And now I’m confused, Mom. I know I made mistakes, but I’ve learned so much. And I haven’t lost sight of my goals. And Luke and I, I don’t even know what that’s supposed to look like, but we have something very deep, you know, and— Will you say something?”

  She was quiet. I turned around in the chair to face her, looking up at her dimpled face, her eyes traveling my face.

  She put her hand on my chin. “Ay, mija. If you’re asking me for advice, this is the first time I have nothing for you.”

  “Nothing?” I felt a smile grow, despite a jump in my gut. “From the judge of all judges?”

  “No. This is a rotten pickle.” We laughed. “And you know what? After our fight, it feels pretty good to say, okay, Cassie, you’re the woman now. Take care of your own pickle.”

  She was right. If I wanted my independence, I’d have to take it. The good and the bad.

  “All I have for you is sorry,” she continued. “And I know you think you had a fake marriage and did it for the money, and I know I’ve been hard on you, but hearing you talk just now, well, it sure sounds like something real to me.”

  Something real. Even to Mom. I smiled at her. “Really?”

  “Of course. You took care of him. He took care of you. Even though you both had it harder than most. You’ve grown up.”

  “But next time . . . ,” I began, wondering what I meant. Next time I would mess this up royally? I didn’t like putting it that way. I didn’t want there to be a next time. “Next time we’re in any trouble we’ve got to help each other out, first and foremost.”

  “I like that idea.”

  I got up. I had to get on the phone with “Young at Heart” again, figure out how to finally get that state-sponsored health insurance, and then it was time for my last practice before we went on tour.

  “Call me from the road.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “Te amo, Cass. Play well.”

  • • •

  An hour later, it was time for Fleetwood Friday. A very special Fleetwood Friday, Nora and I had decided, full of good-luck rituals and silver confetti and candles. We draped the concrete walls of her basement in a gauzy fabric we found in the bargain bin at Goodwill on North Lamar. We hung strings of beads from the pipes. Before we signed the contracts we had printed out and set in the middle of the floor, before we rented the U-Haul to load up, before we started our new lives as professional musicians, we’d play whatever we wanted, for the hell of it, for hours on end. We’d play Rumours all the way through, in whatever wonky, champagne-soaked way we felt like.

  Nora had brought three bottles of champagne, one for each of us. We popped them, swigged, and got set up.

  “Should we begin?” Nora said. “Or did you two need a moment?”

  I looked at Toby, who rolled his eyes, testing his bass drum louder than necessary. “We’ll probably need a few moments at some point,” I said. “But not now.”

  Nora raised her eyebrows, not able to hide her pleasure.

  “We’ll be fine,” Toby called over his beats. “Come on, let’s just play.”

  I lit a joint and let it hang from my mouth while I played, Marlon Brando style. I started to forage for the notes that said Yes, we’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Of course, I couldn’t find them. There was another, stronger feeling that was taking priority. The Loyal would be fine, but would I? Would Luke?

  Toby banged out a couple of triplets to move it along. Nora plunked a minor string to act as the spine. Without words to carry us over the brink into our new lives, the sorrow of what was behind us and the joy of what lay ahead, we played together instead.

  Luke

  “Ready, Mittens?” What a stupid question. I was poised with the neon-pink Buda Municipal Fire Department Frisbee; her snout was raised, eyes glued, tail wiggling. Of course she was ready.

  “Go!” I launched it high, almost wishing it would sail over the fence this time.

  Mittens beat it at an angle, leaping like a wonder dog.

  My wonder dog. I would miss her.

  We were in my dad’s backyard. Jake and Hailey would bring JJ out in a second, once they got the brownie stain off his suit. Dad was standing next to Lieutenant Colonel Yarvis in his old uniform, hands clasped in front of him, watching Mittens run around in circles. I was wearing my uniform today.

  It was weird to have it on again. I wore it at my graduation from boot camp, for special events at the base in Afghanistan. In the dorms, at Frankie’s house, on planes—this unifo
rm had hung next to Frankie’s.

  His family had received their Purple Heart in the mail.

  “We’re back!” Hailey said, JJ in a piggyback ride. “Don’t kick Mommy’s dress, please,” she cooed.

  “Okay, Yarvis, I’m ready when you are.”

  Turns out soldiers who were under investigation could still receive the Purple Heart, just not in the fancy army-sanctioned ceremony. That was just fine with me. All things considered, I wasn’t really one for official ceremonies.

  I just wished Cassie could be here.

  We gathered in the middle of the lawn. Dad lifted JJ from Hailey’s back.

  “Wait,” Jake said. “Let me grab the camera.”

  We stood, quiet, JJ making cooing noises. A motorcycle rumbled by. Someone across the way was having a barbecue.

  Yarvis looked at me. “You given any thought to what you want to do after you beat this thing?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” I told Yarvis.

  I glanced at my dad, who was staring off into space. Though he’d agreed to be here, to host us, I feared he was doing it only because Jake had asked him to.

  Every word he had spoken to me since I was released was clipped, laced with the possibility that I could fuck up again any minute. Do you have any “conflicts” for the afternoon of the gathering Jake has planned for you? Do you know what disappointment feels like?

  But that was to be expected. No matter how little faith he had in me now, he had the capacity for more. Everyone did. I wouldn’t give up.

  I turned to Yarvis again. “You said y’all only have two social workers for hundreds of families, right?”

  Yarvis nodded. “Regretfully.”

  “Well, maybe you could use one more.” It was an idea that had been sitting in the back of my head since I sat in the holding cell.

  He patted me on the back, grinning. “That sounds like a fantastic idea,” he replied.

  “Maybe I could work with vets who struggle with addiction.”