In a Book Club Far Away

by Tif Marcelo

  That wry expression made Adelaide laugh out loud. How she’d come to rely on Sophie and that grin of hers. She had been the beacon of calm, Adelaide’s rock when she’d begun to grow unsteady.

  In the phase of pre-deployment, there was no time to get upset or to cry. It was straightforward: The spouse was to be unflappable. They had to keep it together. It was just good luck that her pregnancy nausea had abated a little, and she’d found the trick that a couple of crackers in the morning made all the difference.

  Adelaide hugged Jasper, Sophie embraced Matt, then the two men sidled up to each other, a smile on each of their faces.

  “Platoon Sergeant.” Matt nodded to him.

  “XO,” Jasper said.

  There was a bromance between the two men. They’d bonded over their love of the gym and football. Their relationship had given Adelaide some solace that Matt would deploy with someone he could consider a friend.

  Sophie shook her head. “These two.”

  “Like peanut butter and jelly,” Adelaide said.

  “I’m the jelly, because I’m sweet,” Jasper said. “Right, Soph?”

  “Sure, if you say so.”

  “So what does it mean if I’m peanut butter?” Matt asked.

  “Hm… that you’re sticky?” Adelaide said.

  “You’re stuck with me!” Jasper added. The two men fell into laughter.

  Sophie barked out a laugh. “Wow. That was a dad joke if I ever heard one.”

  “Speaking of, we’ve got about ten minutes before manifest, sir,” Jasper said. His eyes jumped to Adelaide and then to Sophie. “Let’s go find our girls?”

  Sophie heaved a sigh. “Okay. Ad, I’ll see you?”

  “Yeah, of course.” She feigned strength, though her voice cracked.

  Three hours. They had been at this field for three hours, and it would all come down to these next ten minutes. In the distance, she could see the white buses that would take their soldiers to the airfield. And she hadn’t been the only one to notice. The crowd around them quieted, and one by one, uniformed men and woman separated from their groups and headed toward the green space in front of them, where the final formation would be.

  Pressure filled Adelaide’s chest. She gripped her husband’s hand tighter. She kept her eyes on him as he surveyed the goings-on, because she wanted to memorize every groove on his face. True, there was video chat. Yes, she would “see” him, but it wouldn’t be like this.

  Could she do this? Could she do this again? Nine months was a long time. Nine months felt unfathomable. How did her mama do this? How did Nana? How did they keep a straight face and wear their smiles and serve their meals and meet with people? In the media, in history, what was glorified were the military men and women who left, who fought wars, who put their lives on the line. Not often was it understood, was it shown, the mixed fear and pride of those who were left behind.

  Finally, Matt looked down at her. He was a tough guy, always had been, always would be. Rough-and-tumble, rarely romantic. He’d choose outside activities over indoor ones any day of the week. He was also the first to laugh, and his booming personality filled their home.

  Without him, the house would be empty.

  “Hey, hey.” He set down his duffel and rested both hands on her shoulders. He smoothed them down.

  “It’s just the worst possible time.” The words slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them. They were whiny, accusatory, shaking from her desperate attempt to be the positive person her mother raised.

  “I know. But I’ll figure out a way to get back in time.” His gaze dropped briefly to her belly, and a hint of a smile bloomed on the corner of his lips. “Until then, you’re going to take care of you. The both of you.”

  She nodded and shut her eyes. “It’s only been seven weeks. My first appointment isn’t even until next week.”

  “Each day is another step closer. And we’re going to celebrate every milestone.”

  She felt him tip her chin up.

  “Open your eyes, babe.”

  She did and found his expression as loving as ever, even as the crowd began to clear around them. “How do you do that? Be so optimistic. After everything you and I have gone through? This could all be nothing. And we could end up disappointed, again.” More than disappointed. Heartbroken was more like it, but she couldn’t put words to the loss.

  “We could, but we might end up being the happiest parents on the planet.”

  Adelaide felt a surge of panic rush through her. “We need more time. Because if it doesn’t happen, that’s another nine months when—” Her fears spilled out. Six years they’d tried to have a baby, ever since they’d gotten married. And yet…

  “Adelaide.” He smiled thinly. Now she looked around and realized that they were truly the only ones still together. Off to the side, Jasper was waiting. Sophie had taken up a spot in the first row of the bleachers, an empty seat next to her for Adelaide.

  “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Adelaide wrapped her arms around his waist, feeling foolish at their wasted time, not just today but all the days they’d had since their last deployment.

  He ran his fingers through her hair, then brushed her cheek with a thumb.

  I’m not going to cry. I refuse to cry.

  Matt kissed her on the lips, sweet and chaste. “I love you forever.” Then he picked up his bag and walked away.

  The rest of the morning was a blur. Adelaide only remembered Sophie’s warm hand in hers throughout the formation, and Regina, who she hadn’t seen in days, sobbing on her other side. The march of soldiers to the buses, the trail of buses leaving the quad. Scout’s cold nose against her elbow while she soaked in the tub later on that evening.

  And starting to bleed that night.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sophie

  “It’s time to get ready for bed. Unlock this door, right this second, you two.” At 2101 Liberty Road, Apartment B, Sophie pounded on the bathroom door, her ear pressed against the wood. From the other side, she heard the giggles of little girls, the water running, and the clattering of something on the linoleum. “Olivia Renee Carmela Grace. I swear to God above.” She raised her eyes heavenward in a silent prayer and caught sight of the heating vent that was surely taking the sound of her voice and probably her very loud and frustrated thoughts up to her second-floor neighbor.

  “‘Having kids is the greatest gift,’ she said. ‘Twins? Double the fun!’ she said. You lied, Auntie May! Do you hear that, you two? Your great-aunt lied because she only had me to raise and had no idea that double the fun meant double the trouble!” She took a breath, then crossed herself for good measure, just so she wouldn’t be proven wrong in her belief that ghosts didn’t exist and superstition was a simple way to explain life’s hard lessons. “Rest in peace, Auntie May. I appreciated all the love you gave me. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  The door clicked open, halting Sophie’s tirade, and she watched it widen to reveal two seven-year-old little girls, each with a face full of makeup.

  “Oh… oh my!” Sophie rushed to the sink to turn off the faucet, which was on at full blast. She palmed her forehead, which was still damp with sweat. She’d accidentally taken a late-afternoon nap—her insomnia had been at full throttle since Jasper left a week ago—and mid-dream she was startled awake by what could’ve only been her sixth sense. Her mama sense, honed over the years of raising two very mischievous, like-hellions-when-they’re-together little girls.

  She took another deep breath to calm herself. Let it out slowly. This wasn’t a big deal. Just because she’d spent a small fortune on her makeup didn’t mean she needed to overreact. “Let’s get you both cleaned—”

  When Sophie turned around, she discovered the girls had taken off. But before she could formulate her next step, the cordless rang in her pants back pocket. She had a habit of carrying the cordless with her around the house, since her cell phone had horrible reception.

  She pressed the on button.
“Hello?”

  “Hey, babe.”

  Sophie melted, right there on the lineoleum tile. Despite their decade-long relationship, she never got tired of this—his phone calls. There was something romantic about his voice in her ear, when she let her imagination wander to what Jasper was doing right at that second. Besides, it was easier to multitask on the phone; this moment was the perfect example.

  “You have perfect timing.” She tore a paper towel from the holder and dampened it with water to wipe down the smudges of lipstick and foundation in the sink. She hooked the phone to her shoulder, and tilted her head to secure it. “How are you?”

  The girls cackled like hens in the background, and a second later, someone was screaming “Mama!” so she quit her attempt to clean up and padded to the kitchen, where Olivia had commandeered a boxful of fruit snacks. Olivia was two minutes and six seconds older than Carmela and was, as usual, attempting to assert her dominance.

  “Okay. I just missed you, is all.” Jasper’s voice, a deep and sexy baritone, was smooth through the earpiece. When they’d first met, his voice was what drew her to him. Well, that, and all the sex appeal that came with him and the uniform he wore so proudly.

  She shivered at the thought of him now, at the broad expanse of his chest, at how he could move into a space and take command of it without even raising his voice. Jasper had a presence; he garnered respect.

  “It’s only been a week. Don’t tell me you’re getting soft,” she teased, wandering into the kitchen. She glanced at the calendar tacked up near the phone’s base, where seven days were crossed out in pen. On the counter was a jar of jelly beans—one jelly bean per day of the deployment, per twin—that Olivia and Carmela dipped their hands into every morning.

  “Actually that’s why I called.”

  “What’s up?” She frowned. The yelling between her girls escalated. To settle them, Sophie took the box from Olivia and divvied the bags of fruit snacks on the kitchen table, and then walked away, for space. She went to the living room windows, which looked out to Liberty Road. It was quiet, even for a weekday afternoon, with wet leaves scattering the asphalt from the bit of rain that had come down that afternoon. No one was out except for a couple of her neighbors walking their dogs.

  “Have you been hanging with Regina?”

  “Um… not the last few days. We had so much back-to-school stuff happening. And I sent out a couple of applications to clinics in town, so I was tied up with that.”

  “Oh, you sent out applications? I thought we discussed that you would wait a little?”

  “Yeah.” She paused, flashing back to that conversation. Since the girls were old enough to understand the dangers of deployment, she and Jasper’d both decided that Sophie would not work, to give the girls some normalcy by having a parent at home, if only temporarily. “Yeah, well… I miss working.”

  “Sure, but—”

  As soon as Sophie heard the word but, she launched in. “Look, it’s no big deal. If I get interviewed, I don’t have to take the job.” She couldn’t bear to hear him utter the word no. This week, she’d begun to feel caged in, helpless. To think there were eight-plus more months of waiting. Waiting for phone calls and emails from Jasper, for him to come home.

  To her relief, Jasper sensed her growing anxiety. “Yes… yeah, you’re right. I was just surprised is all. Anyway… about Regina?”

  Sophie jumped at this change of subject and dug her cell phone out of her purse and pulled up her last group text with Adelaide and Regina. “Right… I heard from her yesterday, actually. You know the Lasseters, right?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, Colleen picked a book for October called Room, about a woman who was kidnapped and had a kid in isolation. Apparently, Regina’s not in the mood to read it.”

  It sounds depressing was what the text read.

  “Can you check on her?”

  “Why, is something wrong?” Sophie stood and peeked into the kitchen at her girls—they were happily noshing on their fruit snacks—then made her way to the master bedroom. She pulled up her mini blinds, which she normally kept closed for privacy—the last thing she wanted was to be accidentally peeped on by kids playing in the communal playground behind their building—and she peered at the building across the yard, at the back windows of Regina’s apartment on Bell Street. The lights were off despite the night sky.

  “The lieutenant came in.”

  “Logan?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “I can’t say what we talked about, and he didn’t ask me to have you check up on her. But the conversation raised a flag for me. If you can swing it…”

  Sophie heard the message underneath the words: morale check. “Of course. Yes, absolutely.” With a tug, the blinds dropped closed. “I’ll get on it.”

  Right then, she texted Adelaide to set a time for them to get together. Sophie had learned that Adelaide organized her life around appointments. And these days, Adelaide seemed to be busy, even sometimes too busy for a quick sidewalk conversation.

  Adelaide

  What’s going on?

  Gotta check in on our friend.

  SOS

  SOS?

  I’ll explain later.

  Tomorrow afternoon?

  Yes. 2pm?

  Sounds good

  “You’re amazing, do you know that?” Jasper’s flirtatious voice was back.

  “I do know that.” She smiled. “You’re a lucky man.”

  “I know. And I was thinking.”

  “Yeah?” In perfect timing, her girls ran into their bedrooms across the hall. “Walk! Jesus, one of them is going to choke, and God knows I didn’t stay home from work to do the Heimlich.”

  The voice in her ear laughed, deep-bellied.

  “Oh, so you’re enjoying this?” She hiked a hand on her hip.

  “You know I am.” He paused, bringing the moment down to serious. “I love it, hearing you.”

  “You’re not so bad, either.” Sophie perched on the bed, and despite her attempt at deflection, her face warmed in the beginning of tears. In the four deployments they’d faced together, she’d cried twice, both during times like this, when she knew there was a novel in between his very few words.

  She also knew what was coming up.

  “Marry me when I get back,” he said.

  “Jasper.”

  “Look, I’m done with this rule you have about us not marrying while I’m still in. I’ve always said that you are first, our girls are first.”

  Sophie shook her head, eyes on the floor. At the peeling linoleum in the fifth kitchen she’d lived in since they’d been together. Five kitchens in ten years.

  Sophie had been honest from the first day of their relationship. She wasn’t convinced that marriage was necessary. Why did it take a ring and a piece of paper to declare commitment? And she was especially against marrying a man in the military for all the reasons why, despite her support of him, she was unnerved by deployment. There was simply too much upheaval, and she didn’t trust the distance or the stress placed between them time and time again.

  “Honey, we can’t have this kind of conversation over the phone,” she said.

  “And when would we do it? I’ve tried in person. Look, I’ve been doing some thinking. About us. And I think I’ll be ready to get out soon.”

  Sophie’s tongue tied into a pretzel, back going ramrod straight.

  “You’ve given up your job and career, and here I am losing time with my girls.…”

  Her heart beat hard and loud, in anticipation of the words she had been waiting for him to say for a decade though she had never demanded.

  “Soph, as soon as I’m done with this deployment, I’m out. I’m out, and we can get married, and we will live in one place and have our happily-ever-after.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Regina

  “Happily-ever-afters are lies. All lies.” Regina threw a handful of popcorn at the television as the credits for Notting Hill scrolled up.
Her voice cracked above the volume of the television, which she had set to the surround-sound speakers, and she leaned her head against the back of the couch. She wiped her cheeks with the palm of her hand.

  From her periphery she saw the shadow of, well, Shadow. The cat sat just inches from her head and stared at her.

  “Okay, yes, I’m crying because it was good. But that doesn’t mean it’s believable. Were they really compatible in the end? She was an actress, and he was a bookstore owner. How does that work, when the two of them are on obviously different tracks in life?”

  Shadow responded by lying down; her tail whipped an objection.

  “It’s all about expectations. They have different expectations. It won’t last.”

  Hearing herself saying these words, Regina threw herself off the couch. Her thoughts were meandering toward morose again. She approached the tower of DVDs and scanned the spines for another title. Except everything they owned was either a romantic comedy (her stash) or a war movie (Logan’s), and the thought of watching anyone in a uniform in physical harm gave her nausea.

  “Okay. How about Fifty First Dates? That’s neutral, right?” She looked back at Shadow, who had taken her place on the couch cushion amid a fleece blanket and her favorite teddy bear, and was now writhing on her back. “No? When Harry Met Sally?”

  Shadow had nothing to say, not even a purr. And it was just as well, because this darkness, the loneliness of movies and stale popcorn and her pajamas on the weekend, was now the essence of her life. Scratch that, the cat was probably sick of her, knowing that for the next nine months they would essentially remain in this state of limbo.

  She pressed the eject button of the DVD player, and the disk slid out. As she put it away, the doorbell rang.

  Regina frowned and straightened. She looked at the door, where shadows appeared in the sliver of light at the bottom. She’d received an email from Logan in the middle of the movie, so it wasn’t an emergency.

  “Regina?” A woman’s voice.