Unremarried Widow

by Artis Henderson

  At the hangar on base, Miles dropped off his tough bins and loaded his rucksack while I leaned against the truck. People from the unit milled around the parking lot and I watched the wives whose husbands had been on previous deployments. They had learned to be still and wait. I saw Crystal across the parking lot and waved.

  “How’s it going?” she said when she came over.

  I shrugged and we stood beside each other for a long minute without talking. Across the parking lot Troy called out to her.

  “I better go,” she said. “I’ll come find you when the buses leave.”

  Miles came back to the truck and I followed him into the hangar. The helicopters were already gone, sent on a boat halfway across the world. Miles and I sat facing each other on the cool concrete and I tried not to watch the other families. I saw the men hold small children and touch the shoulders of their wives beside them. They sat in tight groups, wagons circled against the night. Miles and I formed our own circle. He ran his fingers along my arm in a way that made me shiver and I rested my hand on his knee. We hardly spoke.

  When the buses rolled up outside, Miles stood and I stood with him. We made our way back into the parking lot. I wrapped my arms around his neck and felt his body beneath my hands, the muscles of his back, the hardness in his shoulders, and realized this would be the last time I would touch him for a long while. Fear filled me then, hot and raw, and swept through my body, leaving me shaken and hollowed. Miles held me close before he turned and stepped onto the bus. He took a seat near the back beside a window while I waited on the ground outside. Crystal stood to my right. With the men gone, the wives had regrouped. Miles waved to me from his seat and I waved back, waved the entire time the bus rumbled away. When it had disappeared around the corner I thought to myself, Not all of them will come home. I hoped it would not be anyone I knew.

  * * *

  In the month after the unit deployed, buyers everywhere paid too much for property they couldn’t afford. Police arrested Mel Gibson in California and readers cried over Marley & Me. An article in the Atlantic discussed the possible pullout of troops from Iraq and the death toll reached more than two thousand. I did not hear from Miles for more than two weeks, and then one afternoon my phone rang with a number I did not recognize. My mother was driving us down Daniels Parkway, a strip of land that once was scrub brush and palmetto hammocks but like most of south Florida had given over to strip malls and subdivisions.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hello, babe?”

  “Oh, my God.”

  My mother looked at me, at the road, back at me, and she was already slowing down and putting on her blinker. She turned into a new housing complex, past the ornamental landscaping at the entrance, and put the car in park. I pointed to the phone and mouthed I’m sorry but she shook her head and waved me out of the car. Go.

  “How are you?” I asked Miles as I opened the door.

  “Doing all right,” he said.

  I sat on the smooth lip of the concrete curb and watched waves of heat roll off the asphalt. There were plumbago bushes at my back, their tiny purple flowers vibrant, and red blossoms on the ixora plant. Round-bottomed clouds billowed across the blue sky.

  “How was your trip over?” I said. “Did everything go okay?”

  “Everything was smooth. No problems getting here.”

  “And now you’re there? In Iraq?”

  “We’re here.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “They have us in barracks. Two to a room.”

  “Who are you rooming with?”

  “Troy.”

  I laughed. “No kidding.”

  “Chow’s pretty good.”

  “What are they feeding you?”

  “The normal stuff. We had pecan pie the other night.”

  “Not bad,” I said. “How’s the weather?”

  “Pretty hot. But listen, babe, tell me about things there. How are you doing?”

  “Me?” I said. “I’m fine. Missing you.”

  “I miss you too.”

  The phone line lagged and we were both quiet, waiting for the other person to speak.

  “Did you—”

  “How are—”

  We laughed and the phone went silent again.

  “You talk,” Miles said. “I want to hear what’s going on with you. How are things going with your mom?”

  I glanced at the car, where my mother flipped through a newspaper. It was ninety-five degrees and she had the engine off but kept the windows rolled up to give me space.

  “Great,” I said. “We’re doing great. It’s been surprisingly easy to be back home.”

  “Good, good.”

  A line of ants marched out of the cracks in the pavement and into the recently laid mulch. One crawled over my painted toenails and tickled the skin there. The traffic on Daniels hummed past and I pressed my ear to the phone. If I closed my eyes and shallowed my breath so that the damp air didn’t come too close, if I ignored the fragrance from the narrow-throated flowers at my back and the acrid pinch of the tar in the pavement—if I focused just on the phone in my hand, not on the road, not on the plants, not on the thunderheads gathering in the east, just the phone—it was almost as if Miles and I were together.

  The phone line stuttered and cracked.

  “Miles?”

  “I’m here but I have to go.”

  “Already?”

  “My time’s up.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you too.”

  “Be safe.”

  “I will.”

  A car pulled into the subdivision and turned into the loop where my mother had parked. She waved the driver around but he honked his horn and she had to put the car in gear and pull forward. She gave him the finger as he drove past. The fronds of the cabbage palm behind me hung limp and a gnat hovered close to my face. I held the receiver for a full minute before realizing the line was dead in my hand.

  * * *

  Not long afterward I applied for a PR position at a research farm north of town. It was a good job, with decent pay and nice people. I’d handle the tours of the property, scheduling the groups of students and international aid workers who came to examine the tropical agriculture grown on the farm. The place had chaya and Moringa and jicama, pomelos twice the size of grapefruits, and a staff that had traveled the world. My office would have a window that looked out on a pond stocked with tilapia, and in the high season I could take home bags of mangoes and avocados. They told me I could even drive the golf cart.

  Another month passed. The Dow Jones hit stratospheric levels; it turned out war was good for business. The housing boom started to look like it might go on forever. I got the job. Miles called to tell me, laughing breathlessly into the phone, about a jog he had taken around base.

  “I wanted to get in a quick run before we went to the chow hall,” he said, “and everything started out all right. But then as I was coming in for the last leg, I saw this other guy running ahead of me.”

  I could hear him smiling across the ocean between us.

  “He looked back over his shoulder at me and stepped up his pace. By now he’s sprinting. He looked back again with this scared look in his eyes and I’m thinking, I’m going to nail this guy.”

  I laughed into the phone.

  “So we ran like that for another twenty yards and I started closing in. The guy looked back two more times and every time he had this worried expression.”

  Miles laughed to himself on the other end of the line.

  “By now people were gathered at the barracks watching us come in,” he said. “It was like Chariots of Fire. I put on an extra burst of speed and bam! I surged past him at the finish. Everybody’s high-fiving me and slapping me on the back. Then I turn around to shake this guy’s hand and I stopped.”

  His voice dropped to a whisper.

  “It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. A wall of sand.”

  A sandstorm had c
ome up during the last leg of the race and the men from the unit had come outside to see the squall move in. They saw Miles and the other runner heading to camp at a breakneck pace.

  “I thought they were all out there to see me,” Miles said, and I could hear him shake his head. “But they thought I was running for my life.”

  The soldiers had a few seconds of openmouthed wonder before the fury of the storm overtook the camp, obliterating the sun and pushing red dust into every crevice. Miles and his crew hustled inside as the first abrasive blast shook their hovel.

  “It was great,” he said to me over the phone. “I outran a sandstorm.”

  When we couldn’t speak on the phone, we talked in letters. I told him about leading tours, managing docents, and growing food in the tropics. I sent him photos of me behind the wheel of a golf cart. He wrote back:

  Everything is going alright over here. We had some rockets shot into the airfield the other day, but they were so far away we could not even hear them. I am so excited that power bars and pumpkin pie are being served in the chow hall now. I have already gathered tons of snacks for my room. I bet I have already stored up fifteen power bars, two travel bowls of cereal, and one package of oatmeal raisin cookies. If we come under siege, I want to be ready. Not much real news to talk about. Nothing new, anyway. I guess that is a good thing. Just the same old crap as always, continuous commo problems, trouble getting parts, mission planning, and of course flying is keeping everyone busy.

  I sent packages once a week. I figured out how to make a video of myself—sitting on my bed, monologuing for five minutes—and burned the short clip to a CD that I mailed with a bad batch of cookies. I wrote:

  Just a quick note to tell you how very much I love you and miss you. You are the light of my life; if I were a redneck town, you would be my Gun and Knife show. You are my free t-shirt thrown into the crowd. Enjoy the goodies. The cookies are terrible. The first batch, the few crackly ones on top, are good, but the rest are terrible. I threw some of them away, but I wanted you to know I baked for you, so I just wrapped them up and sent them anyway. My mom actually suggested I stopped baking, and said she’d throw in $5 so I could buy cookies. We got down a world map today and looked at Korea. I think there are great possibilities for adventures if you are assigned there next.

  He wrote back:

  I received an awesome package in the mail today that included a most wonderful video message. How did you do it? I would love to send you one. By the way, I tried the ginger snaps on both the top and bottom of the bag and I thought they all tasted very, very good.

  From his letters it was hard to tell he was fighting a war. But I often wondered what he did during his missions over the desert cities. And afterward? Did he count his kills like scalps after an Indian raid? Did he weep softly in his bunk at night?

  * * *

  In early October, his letters began to change:

  Today was kind of rough. All of us are doing just fine, but today was long and rough. Please remember us in your prayers, babe. Especially remember the ground guys. Remember them, babe. I love you and can hardly wait to be home with you again.

  And in another:

  We made it through one more flight here. I hate night flights, and I always will.

  * * *

  During Saturday brunch at Annabelle’s house, French toast sat on the table next to strawberries in a bowl and a casserole dish with grits and cheese and bacon. Annabelle stood at the kitchen counter juicing oranges while I worried the pulp might get stuck in her engagement ring. Stacy wore an engagement ring too. We were like that, all of us getting engaged at the same time, our weddings just six months apart.

  Heather sat across the table from me and fished a strawberry out of the bowl.

  “You guys are lucky to have bought this place before the prices got crazy,” she said to Annabelle. “It has to be worth twice what you paid for it.”

  Annabelle sliced an orange on the cutting board. “We got a good deal.”

  She carried two glasses of juice to the table, took a seat at the head, and passed plates down the line. Stacy leaned forward and propped her elbows on the table.

  “Everybody says real estate is a good investment right now.”

  “People keep telling me property values will never go down,” I said.

  I speared a slice of French toast with my fork and lifted it onto my plate. Across the table, Heather twisted the cap off a bottle of maple syrup and doused her plate.

  “Are you and Miles going to buy a house in North Carolina when he gets back?” she said.

  “I wish we could buy a place down here.”

  “Down here?” Heather said.

  They stopped eating and looked at me.

  “I don’t know. With Miles gone so much—”

  I let the thought hang as I reached for my glass of orange juice.

  “Well, I would love it if you were down here,” Heather said.

  Annabelle held her knife and fork motionless and looked at me as she spoke.

  “What would you do with the house when he gets back?” she said.

  I chewed for a few moments, thinking. “Rent it out?”

  Annabelle nodded thoughtfully.

  “It’s just—” I considered. “It’s so nice here. Nice to be around all of you, nice to be near my mom. Nice to be away from the Army.”

  “But don’t you miss Miles?” Heather said.

  “Of course.”

  “So, how would you have a house down here?”

  “I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure all this out,” I said, waving my fork to take everything in: marriage, real estate, the military.

  When Miles called in mid-October, south Florida had settled into fall. Sunlight poured through the jalousie windows of my bedroom and the Gulf below stretched flat and smooth to the horizon.

  “How are things over there?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty beat,” Miles said. “They have us flying all the time. Not much time to rest.”

  I worked a length of my hair around my index finger and twisted it tight against my skull. The phone line hummed.

  “Listen, Miles,” I said. “I have something I want to talk to you about.”

  “All right,” Miles said.

  “I think maybe we should buy a house here.”

  “A house?”

  “I was just thinking.” I twisted the lock of hair tighter. “My friends are here. My mom’s here. I’m really happy here.”

  A breeze blew through the open window and lifted the curtains before setting them carefully back down.

  “I mean, I’m not happy,” I said. “Because I don’t have you.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “That came out wrong.”

  I waited for Miles to speak, and when he didn’t I continued.

  “I mean, I want you here. I want to live with you. But you’re going to be gone for a year. Maybe more.”

  “Definitely more.”

  “Okay. So you’re going to be gone for more than a year. And when you come home, you’ll only be home for another year or so until you deploy again. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So maybe it makes sense to buy a house down here.”

  “I just don’t know if it’s the right decision for us right now,” Miles said.

  I looked out to the beach, where women in sorbet-colored bathing suits called out to children grouped on the sand. They answered in tiny, shrill voices. I could feel the quality of the sunlight changing as the day headed toward noon and the light pushed through the screens like honey through a comb.

  “But we’re both working now,” I said. “Together we make good money.”

  “But what happens when I come home?”

  “We rent out the house. Or—”

  “Or what, babe?”

  “Maybe I just stay here.”

  “Stay there?” Miles said. “What do you mean, stay there? Like, after I come home?”

  “Listen,
it’s just . . . I’ve been thinking. You’ve got, what? Six more years in the Army? Five after you get done with this tour? You’re going to be deployed most of the time. Look at the other guys from flight school. They’ve been home one year the last three.”

  “So, what are you saying? That you want to live in Florida and not where I am?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m just saying it’s been hard. All those towns we lived in. All those jobs I worked. Always moving.”

  “You think it wasn’t hard for me? I didn’t like those towns, either. But at least we were together. That’s what got me through. And if that’s not enough for you—”

  “It is. It is enough.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  “I just thought—”

  “I have to go.”

  “Already?”

  “My time is up.”

  “When will I get to talk to you again?”

  “I’ll try to call next week.”

  “Miles?” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  I bit my bottom lip and listened as he took an uneven breath.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  Teresa Priestner called not long after.

  “Hey, there. How are you doing?” she said when I answered.

  “Great,” I said. “Really great.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. I got a great job. I’m working now.”

  “Oh, yeah? That’s good news. Do you see your girlfriends, the ones who were at the wedding? What were their names? Heather? Annabelle?”