Unremarried Widow

by Artis Henderson

  I stared across the cliffs without answering, and the wind picked up and scattered the leaves at our feet.

  “I’m just worried,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “That Fort Hood will be like Fort Bragg. That I won’t be able to find a job, that I’ll be sitting there every day waiting for you to come home. That you’ll always be gone.”

  “Don’t make this my fault.”

  “I’m not saying it’s your fault.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Miles stood. “Then how can I fix it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said again. “But later, when this is all done, I want to have a say in what we do, in where we go.”

  “Of course. What do you think? That I’m not going to take what you want into consideration?”

  I turned the dirt with the toe of my shoe.

  “I’ve seen how some guys in the unit are. It doesn’t matter what their wives want.”

  “Well, that’s not me.”

  “I know, but I worry—”

  “Stop worrying, babe. We’ll make it through Hood together. We’ll make it through the deployment. When I get back, we can talk about what base we want to go to next.”

  “But what if all the bases are the same?”

  * * *

  The city of Killeen crouched at the edge of Fort Hood the way Fayetteville loitered outside Fort Bragg. Its streets smelled of hot concrete and old grease, and the city was pocked with fast-food joints and pawnshops. Plastic bags blew through empty parking lots and roaches crawled across the sidewalks at night. Killeen had a high murder rate and hookers on the corner of Rancier and Second Avenue, where Miles and I found an apartment. It was cheap and convenient and already furnished. Anyway, we told ourselves, we’d only be there nine months. I found a job at an elementary school as a second-grade teaching assistant making less than eight hundred dollars a month. Every Monday I prayed my old Saturn would limp through anther week.

  Our first month at Fort Hood, Miles trained every day. At night he only wanted to eat dinner and go to bed. He laughed less; he was always exhausted. Even on the weekends, the unit worked. I’d sit by the pool and read until my eyes ached. I’d move inside and watch news reports from New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina had recently passed through, pulverizing the city. By the time Miles came home I would have the restless, irritable feeling that comes with unfilled days. One Saturday morning, as I scooped cat food onto the sidewalk in front of our apartment for the strays who lived in the complex, I had a sudden thought. I stood and dusted my hands on my shorts.

  “You know what?” I said to the scattered cats. “I don’t have to stay here today.”

  I traced the route from Killeen to Austin on a map. I showered, brushed my hair, and dressed in my nice clothes. The morning was clear and fresh, and I cracked the windows of my car on the drive to let the air blow through. In Austin, I parked downtown and walked the empty streets. I ate lunch in a small Korean café and listened to the sound of my footsteps echo off the marble floors of the capitol building. It was lonely in a way, but I’d forgotten the joys of discovering a place on my own.

  Miles called as I headed back to the car.

  “Hey,” I said. I smiled into the phone. “How’s your day going?”

  Miles sounded angry. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Austin,” I said brightly. “Where are you?”

  “I just got home from class.”

  I looked at my watch. “Already?”

  “We got done early,” Miles said. “I thought we would spend the rest of the day together. But I guess that’s not what you want to do.”

  “I’ll come back right now.”

  Miles sulked. “No, no. Take your time.”

  “I’ll be home in an hour,” I said, the day suddenly spoiled.

  * * *

  At school one afternoon during cafeteria duty, I sidled up to another aide, Kelley, who wore her red apron over tailored clothes. She had just turned forty, sported an athletic build and perfectly highlighted hair, and was in every way the kind of woman who makes other women say, I hope I look like that when I’m forty.

  “Ready for this day to be over?” she said.

  “Been ready.”

  Three tables away, a hand shot up in the air.

  “I got this one,” I said.

  A girl lifted a milk carton and I pulled out the snub-nosed scissors I carried in my apron pocket. After I cut open the cardboard and passed the milk down to her, I walked the length of the table. Small hands reached out to pat me on the way by, leaving sticky handprints on my pants. When I got back to Kelley, she started up the story she’d been telling me all day. We talked like that, in fits and starts, picking up threads where we could. Her husband had come home from Iraq over the summer, she told me.

  “And do you know what that bastard did?”

  I scanned the cafeteria, trying to look busy.

  “He told me he was leaving me.”

  I looked at her, all pretense of work gone.

  “He did what?”

  “He told me he’d met someone else.”

  “In Iraq?”

  “One of his soldiers. A young woman.”

  “Shit.”

  “Guess how old she is.”

  “Tell me.”

  “She’s twenty-five.”

  “Jesus.”

  On the far side of the room, Ms. Walker ushered her second graders through the line and waved at me across the cafeteria.

  “How are you doing?” she yelled.

  I gave her a thumbs-up.

  “You coming by my classroom later?”

  “This afternoon,” I said.

  “Good. I got a bulletin board I need you to hang.”

  In the opposite line, a tall girl with her hair in braids whacked the boy behind her with a tray. He leaned forward and karate-chopped the girl in the stomach.

  “Second grade!” Kelley shouted across the cafeteria as she strode toward the pair. “Cut that out.”

  I circulated through the back tables and she eventually worked her way over.

  “She’s pregnant,” she picked up.

  “The soldier?”

  “She got pregnant while they were over there.”

  I shook my head. “Kelley, that’s unbelievable.”

  We stood side by side, our backs to the painted cinder-block wall, surveying the open space of the cafeteria.

  “You know the worst part?” Kelley said.

  I looked away from the racket and directly at her.

  “I went to college. I studied art history. I had plans for my own life, but I gave them up for him. In the military, you know, his career would always come first.”

  She pushed her hair behind her ears and tucked her hands into the front pocket of her apron.

  “Now look at me.”

  I did. She was beautiful and smart, overeducated and working a dead-end job. She turned and laid a hand on my arm.

  “Don’t let this happen to you,” she said.

  * * *

  A new soldier came to the unit—Troy, a CW2 straight out of Rucker—and he brought his wife, Crystal. She had black curly hair and beautiful skin and she peppered her conversation with Spanish words from her Panamanian mother. We were the same age, neither of us had children, and Crystal knew less about the unit than I did. In the ways that counted in Army life, we were practically the same person.

  When the unit went into the field and Miles and Troy were gone for weeks, I called Crystal on the weekends and we drove down to Austin together. Sometimes we played tennis at the courts on base. When Crystal sprained her ankle, I was the one who drove her to the emergency room. When my car broke down, she was the one I called for a lift to the mechanic. We took a country-western dance class together at the local community college and Crystal turned out to be a graceful dancer. She picked up the two-step in one night, and because the class was always short of me
n, sometimes the teacher paired us together. She led and I followed, spinning around the dance floor, both of us laughing. I thought of the other wives from the unit, the ones who had stayed at Bragg, and I realized why they were so close. With the men gone, we would only have each other to rely on.

  On a Friday evening I sat on the bed in our apartment, still in the house clothes I’d changed into after work.

  “I don’t see why we have to go,” I said. “They can’t tell you what to do when you’re not on the clock.”

  Miles slipped the top half of his BDUs over his head and started unbuttoning his pants.

  “You don’t have to go,” he said. “But I do.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “They can order you to go to a bar?”

  He stepped into the bathroom and I could hear the faucet on the shower crank on.

  “It’s mandatory fun,” he said over the pounding of the water.

  I followed him into the bathroom and lowered the seat on the toilet. I raised my voice to be heard over the shower.

  “But I’m tired, babe,” I said. “I was hoping we could just go to dinner. Maybe that Thai place? Or the good Mexican restaurant you were talking about?”

  Miles pulled back the edge of the curtain to look at me, and steam billowed over his head.

  “I’m tired, too,” he said. “You think I don’t want to stay home? Look, this is how it is. I have to go. If you want to come, you need to hurry up.”

  I almost managed to wipe the sour expression off my face by the time we made it to the officers’ club on base. The inside felt like any bar—varnished tabletops, two pool tables in the back, a dartboard by the door—except that there were almost no women. Not that anyone at the O club seemed to mind. The soldiers drank and joked, and you’d have thought this was the way things ought to be. The way they’d like them to be, anyway. I followed Miles out the back door to the fenced-in patio where the guys from Alpha Company sat on plastic chairs. They yelled out a greeting to Miles and he grinned. Captain Delancey came around with a pitcher of beer.

  “Where’s your glass?” he said to Miles.

  “Just got here, sir.”

  “Well, don’t fucking stand there. Find a glass.”

  Miles looked at me and smiled sheepishly.

  “I’ll grab us some chairs,” I said.

  I saw Crystal across the patio and pulled an empty chair beside her.

  “Friday night at the O club,” I said.

  “I know, right?”

  She stuck out her lips in this funny, pouty way she had.

  “Think we’ll go out later?” I said.

  “I heard some of the guys were talking about going to Wild Country.”

  “That place is so trashy.”

  “I know.”

  When she stood up to find the bathroom a little later, one of the soldiers from the unit—a guy Miles didn’t particularly like—came and sat beside me.

  “How’s it going?” he said. “Miles dragged you to this thing?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t have much of a choice.”

  We sat there talking while Miles made the rounds. By the time he came out, he was on his third glass of beer.

  “Here’s your chair, man,” the guy said, standing.

  “No, stay,” Miles said. “I’m going to say hello to the captain.”

  I watched him walk across the terrace and give Captain Delancey a light punch on the arm. The captain turned and draped one of his big arms across Miles’s shoulders.

  “Finish that beer,” the captain said.

  Miles raised the glass to his mouth and downed the beer in one long swallow. The captain refilled his cup and Miles made his way back to drop into the empty chair beside me.

  “Having fun?” I said.

  He closed his eyes and a smile spread across his face.

  “This is great,” he said.

  On the far side of the patio, the colonel stood to speak. When the chatter didn’t die down, he said in a loud voice, “All the wives out there, shut the fuck up.”

  Everyone laughed. He said it every week.

  The drinking picked up as the sun slipped from the sky. A gray twilight fell and lingered. Someone brought out a guitar, and a drunken camaraderie settled over the bar. Miles left to play a round of pool, but not long afterward one of the guys from the unit found me on the patio.

  “I think Miles needs to go home,” he said, laughing.

  I looked at my watch. It wasn’t even ten o’clock.

  “Is he that bad?” I said.

  “He’s puking in the bushes out front.”

  By the time I got to the door, three of the soldiers had wrangled Miles into the parking lot. He laughed and tried to fight them off.

  “I’m not going to take him home like that,” I said.

  One of the soldiers stepped back and looked at me.

  “You have to.”

  “Not like that.”

  “He’s your responsibility.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and we glared at each other.

  “Well, help me get him in the truck,” I said.

  I climbed behind the wheel and one of the guys pulled Miles into the truck. The soldier sat beside me and cinched his arms around Miles’s waist. I locked the three of us in. Miles kicked at the window until his shoe slipped off and then he kicked again and left a dirty footprint on the glass.

  “Dammit, Miles,” I said. “Stop it.”

  He laughed and kicked the window again.

  “I’m serious. Cut that shit out.”

  “Just drive,” the soldier said.

  I backed the truck out of the parking space while Miles flailed. At a stoplight he tried to wrench the door open, but the soldier grabbed his arm and held it tight.

  “Jesus Christ, Miles,” I yelled. “Stop it!”

  “Hurry up,” the soldier said.

  At our apartment building I angled into a space. I ran ahead to unlock the door and the soldier dragged Miles out of the truck. They maneuvered together through the front door and all of the fight seemed to fade out of him. Miles slumped against the soldier’s shoulder and half walked, half fell into the bedroom. The soldier laid him on the bed, closed the door, and stepped into the living room, where I waited.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  “Don’t get mad,” the soldier said. “He’s just blowing off steam. Everybody’s pretty stressed-out right now.”

  “But he’s never like this. He was out of control tonight.”

  “Well, maybe if you hadn’t been flirting, he wouldn’t have gotten so drunk.”

  “Flirting?” I said. “With who?”

  He said the name of the soldier Miles didn’t like.

  “Wait,” I said. “You’re saying this is my fault?”

  “I’m just saying maybe you shouldn’t have been flirting.”

  “We had a fucking conversation.”

  “That’s not what it looked like.”

  “This is unbelievable.”

  The soldier shrugged and walked out the door.

  * * *

  The ghostly outline of Miles’s foot was still on the window of the truck when we went out to dinner with a group of pilots from the unit not long afterward. On the way to the parking lot at the end of the evening, they talked about dust-offs and night landings and the flying conditions in Iraq. I must have stiffened or a look must have shadowed my face, because one of the pilots called out to me as he unlocked his pickup, “Don’t worry, we’ll bring your boy home.”

  “You better,” I called back.

  In Miles’s truck, the two of us looked at the clock on the dash. It was still early.

  “What should we do now?” Miles asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s too late for a movie. Too soon to go home.”

  Miles gave me a sly look. “Want to go parking?”

  I giggled. “Where?”

  “I’m sure we can find something around here,” Miles said as he
put the truck in reverse.

  We found a deserted construction site on a strip of back road where the streetlights did not reach. Miles cut the engine and we faced out on a rare bit of darkness. In the distance, lights cut the horizon in two, a line drawn between the earth and night sky. Overhead, the stars glowed faintly and cast their light over the stalled front loaders and bulldozers. We scooted to the middle of the seat and Miles reached over to take my hand. We did not speak for a time, just let the place where our sides touched warm each other in the cooling cab of the truck.

  “I’m sorry about the other night,” Miles said when a long space of silence had passed.

  I shrugged. “It was no big deal.”

  “It won’t happen again.”

  “I know.”

  I laid my head against his shoulder and looked out over the black expanse, conscious of the world’s impartial turning and how we can be terrifyingly alone in it all. But Miles was there beside me, and I was not afraid.

  * * *

  At school on Monday I climbed the outdoor ramp to Mr. Ball’s portable classroom. His students were in the music room, but I knew he’d let me stay to staple artwork to the bulletin board or organize his bookshelves.

  “How are you doing, Mr. Ball?” I said.

  He sat behind his desk with a stack of homework assignments at hand, leafing through the pages and making marks with a red pen.

  “Doing okay,” he said.

  He set the packet on the corrected pile and picked up the next in the stack.

  “Can I help you with anything?” I asked.

  “You can look over that pile of geography assignments. The answer key’s on top.”

  I grabbed the worksheets and sat behind the low horseshoe table pushed against the side wall. Mr. Ball had the radio going and we listened to the music for a few minutes without talking.

  “How’s your baby doing?” I said.

  He looked up and laughed.

  “He never sleeps. Sometimes I’m like, ‘Kid, take it easy.’ ”

  He shook his head.

  “And these little people in here. Daniel’s been giving me crap all week.”

  I skimmed the page in front of me for wrong answers.