While He Was Away

by Karen Schreck

  “He just left.”

  “Mine too. For the second time.”

  Before I can think, I’ve touched her arm. “Second time? I’m sorry.”

  Jules shifts in her chair. For a minute I think she is drawing her arm away from my hand, and I feel stupid. But then I see she’s showing me something on her wrist.

  “See, two bracelets. One for each deployment.” Jules jingles the two red, blue, and silver-beaded bangles, and I see lettered charms as well: Zach.

  “Nice,” I say.

  Jules nods. “Caitlin told me you guys got tattooed. Beats a bracelet any day in my opinion.”

  I flash my right ring finger, the beautiful braid there. “Whatever works, right?” My mouth twists, suppressing a goofy smile. I never thought I’d feel so proud of a couple of tattoos—like I won or something. “We probably would have done it sooner or later anyway.”

  “But you did it because he was going, right?” Jules leans forward, peering at me. It seems important to her that this is the case.

  “Well—” I consider this. going made everything so intense, you know?”

  “I sure do.” Jules turns the bracelets on her wrist. “I was like that the first time. I went through every typical response in the book, actually. I got all reclusive. Not a good choice. Then I turned into a party animal. A very not good choice. Then I got some new hobbies. A better choice. Then Zach came home the first time, and that was a whole other challenge.” Jules sinks back in her chair.

  I must look like I’m feeling: sick with sudden worry. Jules gives me an encouraging smile.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “I survived. We survived. Now I’m working, and when I’m not working, I’m over at the community college taking classes, so that helps.” She clasps her hands to her chest, suddenly overcome by excitement. “Zach’s back in six weeks, and that should be it for him for a while. I can’t believe it really. With the National Guard it’s been feeling like it’s never over. And I guess it never really is. You know.”

  “It’ll be over for us after this deployment,” I say firmly. “That’s all David’s in for.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jules shakes her head. “Honey, it goes on and on. If I didn’t believe in what Zach was doing—”

  “I’m just in it because David is in it.”

  Jules stares at me, open-mouthed, confused now.

  “I mean…” I hesitate. What do I mean? It sounds like I don’t believe in what David is doing. Is that the case? I pull on my socks again, buying time. I’ll explain. Or cover my butt. One of the two.

  “I just never thought I’d date a soldier, that’s all,” I finally say. “And he’s not a soldier. Not totally. He’s David.” I give a pathetic little laugh. “Honestly, I don’t even know that much about what it’s all about.”

  Jules stands. She leans against the porch railing, folds her arms over her chest, and stares down at me. “What what’s all about?”

  This is what I’ve been dreading, I realize. Interrogation. Like I’m not good enough, or I’m not doing this right or something. Suddenly I feel angry.

  “This war. Any war.”

  “Well, I know what it’s about. I’ve worked hard to know.” Jules clenches her jaw until tiny cords of muscle ripple beneath her cheeks.

  “Good for you.” I glare at her. “I just think there’s lots of ways to be, you know. Bottom line, I love David, and that’s what matters.”

  Jules studies me, her eyes narrowed. “I guess.”

  Caitlin bursts through the back door, closes it behind her, and leans against it. “Get me the heck out of here!”

  Jules and I look at each other. We start to laugh.

  “What? What?” Caitlin says.

  Jules and I can’t stop laughing. We’re wiping tears from our eyes.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Caitlin huffs. “Connor spilled milk all over my shirt. I’m changing my clothes. And then we’re out of here.” She turns back to the house, then glances over her shoulder at us. “See? I knew you all would get along.”

  With Caitlin inside again, we finally stop laughing.

  “So, bottom line, the real bottom line?” Jules fiddles with her bracelets again. “You hanging in there? I ask because a lot of times that’s all I ever want anyone to really ask me. How are you holding on?”

  I catch my breath. Holding on. Holding on across continents and the oceans in between. I say, “I don’t know.”

  Jules sighs. “It sucks, doesn’t it? I’m on this message board that really helps—Girlfriends of Soldiers in Iraq. They’ve got one of those for practically every country in the world, in case you know someone who’s got someone in, like, Panama. And there’s Army Girlfriend Support. I like that one too. And I send Zach lots of packages, which he says helps.”

  “I should do that.” My words surprise me—their urgency—and then the sudden rush of guilt I feel. My cheeks burn with it. “I don’t know why I haven’t done that. I’ve had other stuff going on, I guess.” I pause for a breath. Breathe in, breathe out. “How long does it take for a package to get to Iraq? What should I send?”

  Jules shakes her head. “It can take forever sometimes. But it’ll get there eventually. Listen. Give yourself time, Penna. It’s takes a while to figure things out.”

  “But…what should I send?”

  “Oh, anything he likes.” Jules smiles reassuringly. “Let’s see. Shampoo, soap, razors. That’s always good. But send big bottles because they share. And send his favorite magazines. No porn, though, okay? One tool in Zach’s troop hid porn behind a ceiling tile, and when the sergeant found out about it, they were seriously disciplined. Send some good books. Oh, and beef jerky—not pork, because they don’t allow any pork in Iraq.

  “Beef,” I murmur, making a mental note.

  “And especially cookies! Send cookies—but not like a dozen, because those will be gone in five minutes. I learned what a ‘gross’ is, sending cookies to Iraq. It’s about one hundred and forty-four nice-sized cookies, FYI. Last time I sent a package, I sent one hundred and forty-four peanut butter and chocolate chip. Jack said they actually lasted his unit for almost two whole days.”

  “Cookies.” I sound as dazed as I feel.

  But then I look at Jules, and I say it again, and I don’t sound dazed at all. My head is as clear as clear can be.

  •••

  Outside the all-night grocery store, Jules and Caitlin help me make a list on a wrinkled Red Earth cocktail napkin that Caitlin scrounges from the bottom of her bag. On the other side of the napkin, they both write their phone numbers.

  Inside the all-night grocery store, Caitlin and Jules pitch things into my shopping cart as I check them off the list.

  I spend that night’s tips on:

  1. Two big bottles of shampoo.

  2. Two big bars of soap.

  3. Two packages of David’s kind of razors.

  4. Ten packages of beef jerky.

  5. The current issues of Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, and, as a joke, the National Enquirer.

  6. Five packages of turkey jerky. What the heck?

  7. Chocolate-chip cookie ingredients—enough to make at least a gross.

  8. A small stuffed dinosaur, because he had a thing for dinosaurs when he was just a kid.

  They come to my house. We bake chocolate-chip cookies until three in the morning. We play loud music, dance, and laugh a lot. We don’t eat too much of the batter. I make popcorn instead.

  When they leave, Linda still hasn’t come back.

  I decide not to worry about this. Linda has her life. And, looking around the kitchen at all the cooling cookies, I realize that even with David gone, I have mine.

  Fourteen

  Late the next morning, I stumble out of bed, tired but happy. It’s hard not to smile when the scent of fresh-baked cookies lingers in the air. Knowing Linda, she probably sampled some when she got home. I hope not too many.

  I go to her room, only to find her bed still pristinely
made. It appears Linda didn’t deplete my cookie stock, because it appears Linda never came home. Fine. I have things to do too.

  I go into the kitchen, eat a single cookie for breakfast, and then pack the rest of them, along with the rest of David’s care-package items, into one of the boxes we used to move dishes from Chicago to Killdeer. I seal the box with some of our leftover packing tape.

  Linda never throws away packing stuff. “You never know,” she always says. I should remind her of this, next time she promises that Killdeer will be our permanent home. I should say, “Hey. If you really mean it, then recycle, why don’t you?” And I’ll point her to the pantry, where the rest of the boxes are stashed.

  I’m addressing the box at the kitchen counter when I look out the window, and there she is, the clockwork lady, passing by. Doing her bit as I’m doing mine. The wind whips her pale yellow dress. She leans into the wind, her thin arms lifting from her sides with its force. I wonder if the clockwork lady could use a steadying hand.

  I tap on the glass, but she doesn’t hear. I start to go outside, but then I realize I’m still in my pajamas, or what constitutes my pajamas: an old T-shirt and my panties. I run to my room and throw on some clothes. But by the time I step outside, the clockwork lady is gone.

  I’m sure she’ll be fine. So it’s a windy day. It’s sunny too. She’s walked in worse weather than this. Once I saw her pass as heat lightning skewered a yellow sky. They were predicting tornados. She’s not the kind of lady who lets a little wind get her down.

  I won’t go looking for her. I’ll mail David’s package instead.

  •••

  By the time I get home from the post office, it’s nearly one in the afternoon. If Linda comes home at all, she’ll arrive in the next couple of hours, in time to take me to work. If she doesn’t come for me, I guess I’ll have to call her and remind her that I’m kind of stranded here. I’ll lay on the guilt, what the heck. She owes me a little guilt. If she says, “Bike it,” well, then I’ll be late.

  For once, though, I’d like to be on time. I’d like to share a Coke with Caitlin before our shift starts, tell her I got David’s care package in the mail.

  I realize I haven’t checked my phone since last night. I find it lying in a pile of cookie crumbs on the kitchen counter.

  There are three new messages.

  I will never leave my phone at home again. I will never let it out of my sight.

  I play the first message.

  “Hey, Penna. It’s Jules. Now you have my number in your phone, so you have no excuse not to call me! I had so much fun last night. When Caitlin dropped me off, she said something about going out again. There’s this new place we love—you’ve got to come. You’ll have a blast. Maybe tonight? Call me! Bye.”

  I call her back and get her voice mail. Without hesitation I say I’d love to do something tonight.

  Feeling almost giddy, I play the next message.

  “Hi there. I’m sitting in ’Round the Clock. Where are you? We said nine, right? Did I get the time wrong? Anyway, I’m glad you suggested this place. There’s this treasure chest, and when a kid jumps on it, the lid opens and the kid gets to choose a prize. It’s kind of magical. I would have loved it when I was little. Someone’s got to be pushing a button somewhere, but the kids don’t know. I’m thinking maybe we said ten. I’ll hang out. They keep bringing me coffee, so I’m good. See you soon.”

  Ravi.

  I completely forgot.

  I play the next message, which is not a message, only the sound of someone hanging up, who is Ravi.

  I call his cell, but he doesn’t answer. I don’t leave a message. I call ’Round the Clock instead. I describe Ravi to the husky-voiced woman who answers the phone. She says, yeah, he was there. He drank about a gallon of coffee, ate some toast, paid his bill, and left.

  They can’t even make a decent piece of toast, David said.

  I feel a little sick to my stomach. I’d better eat something besides a cookie.

  But first I call Ravi’s cell again. This time I leave a message. A long, apologetic one. I was up late baking cookies, I overslept, blah, blah, blah.

  I don’t tell him I completely forgot that we were going to have breakfast (not a date, no, definitely not a date), I was having too much fun with some friends, I was thinking about this old lady who walks by my house, I was thinking about David.

  “Any chance you’re off work tonight?” I say. “I’m going out with some friends. It’d be great if you came too. Call me, okay?”

  Somehow I doubt he will.

  •••

  I’m in my room getting ready for work when I hear Linda come in the front door.

  “Yum,” she says brightly. “It smells great in here! Have you been baking?”

  I don’t answer.

  I hear her go into the bathroom and start the shower. She must really be grungy if she’s been at Red Earth since yesterday. Now she’s the one who’s going to be rushing to get it together for the evening shift. She’s the one who’s going to make us late.

  I finish getting ready. I glance in the full-length mirror that hangs on the back of my closed bedroom door, slick on some lip gloss. There I am. All black all the time. Red Earth ready.

  Linda turns off the shower. The hair dryer goes on.

  I sit down at my computer, check email. And there’s David.

  No message. Just three attachments.

  I open them all. Then one by one, I take them in—David’s drawings.

  The first drawing is silly, a collage of sketches of David, my manga superhero, doing various menial chores: fixing a shower, plunging a toilet, digging a trench, his cape snapping heroically in the invisible wind.

  Funny.

  In the next drawing, the wind is stronger. It whips Manga David’s cape over his eyes. It doesn’t seem like he’d be able to see, but still he’s firing a rifle. Chocolate bars, not bullets, explode from it into the air. The bars rain down into the outstretched hands of laughing boys who look a lot like David did when he was little.

  A little strange, but not so bad.

  I look at the next drawing, which shows David playing cards with three other soldiers, who are also wearing capes. Their capes are draped over their shoulders like blankets. If I didn’t know it’s so hot over there, I would think it’s very, very cold, from the way they’re all huddled together around a single candle. Every card in every hand is a joker.

  I shiver.

  “Penna, let’s go! We’re late,” Linda calls.

  Once again this apparently is my fault.

  Still, I take the time to write David an email. Short but sweet. That’s all I can pull off right now.

  I love your drawings. Thanks for sending them to me. Write me too, okay?

  I just sent you something special in the mail. It’s going to rock your world. Just wait and see.

  As if his world hasn’t already been rocked.

  •••

  By the time Linda and I get to Red Earth, Caitlin is in full Happy Hour mode, waiting on about twenty people at once. It’s an hour before we have a chance to talk, and then only in passing. But when she asks if I want to hang out again tonight with Jules, I immediately agree.

  Hours after this, the last table finally empties. Caitlin is arranging the table settings for tomorrow. I’m swabbing down the menus. Then we’ll be ready to go.

  That’s what I’m thinking about when Tom comes up to me, points to the fireplace mantel, and says, “You might want to check out that photograph. Linda just put it up today.”

  “Oh really,” I say.

  He takes the menus and rag from my hands. “Really.”

  I go over and look.

  Up close I realize it’s another photo of Tom as a teenager. He stands at attention in front of Red Earth’s sign. This time he’s wearing a sharply pressed army uniform. The photo has that Technicolor sheen of the 1960s, so his uniform looks lichen green. He wears his cap cocked on his head; the black bill s
hines glossily in the sun. He seems to be saluting the person who’s taking the picture. Her heavily pregnant shadow falls at his feet.

  Justine.

  Pregnant with Linda.

  I spin around and look at Tom.

  He’s watching. He jerks his head—Come on, then—and I hurry back to him before he can change his mind.

  I’m afraid he might already have changed it, from his deep sigh as I approach. But then he says, “Right after that was taken, I went to Vietnam. And then I went MIA. Justine went MIA her own way not long after that.” He’s still holding the stack of menus. He swipes the rag across the topmost one. Again and again he scrubs at it, though it’s clean enough already. “She didn’t think I’d ever come home. She called me ‘son,’ see? I guess I was the last straw.” He looks up at me, his eyes wary. “That’s what she tells me, at least.”

  I grip the edge of the bar. “Tells you?”

  Abruptly, Tom slaps the menus down on a nearby table. The rag he flings at the bar, and it lands with a thwack near the sink. He gives me a hard look then, like once and for all he’s taking the measure of my character. “She says I’m taking care of her now, but really she takes care of me just by being there,” he says. “It’s like old times almost. Justine brought me into her home when my ma died, see. Justine raised me like her son.”

  “She’s my grandmother.” My voice cracks.

  Tom nods. “You want to see her?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’ll tell her that.”

  “She’s my grandmother.”

  “I know. She wants to see you too. But I have to make sure she’s strong enough. She’s up and down, you know?” Tom glances at Linda, who is walking toward us, a tray of dirty glasses in her hands. “That one,” he says sadly, jerking his head. “I haven’t told her Justine’s staying with me. I’ve heard Linda say it often enough—she said it the first day I came in for a job interview. She doesn’t want to know anything about Justine, and she doesn’t want you bumping up against Justine either. Why Linda’s putting all these new pictures up, I’ll never understand. I asked her once, and she said they’re authentic. They’re just decoration. Seems to me Linda doesn’t know what she wants.” Tom looks at me again, his gaze softening at whatever expression is on my face. “Seems like you do, though.”