When She Came Home

by Drusilla Campbell

  “Couldn’t we cancel? Everyone knows I just got home—”

  “Two months. You’ve been home two months.”

  He said it like an accusation.

  “We could blame the thing at the clinic.”

  “I suppose.”

  She knew the wifely thing to say—we’ll manage fine—but there was no way she could make it sound convincing. Right now what she wanted was to get a middling buzz on and fall into bed for a long, deep sleep.

  “I could do the calling. Everyone’d understand.”

  “We were supposed to host last month, Frankie. We can’t keep putting them off. They’re our friends.”

  These were the men Rick played poker with once a month as well as neighbors and business associates they’d known since they became a couple. Their wives and girlfriends had been friends of Frankie’s before she went to Iraq. During football season they took turns hosting parties and where food was concerned, they were competitive. As the months went on the spread of appetizers and snacks became increasingly elaborate.

  “I feel like I don’t even know them anymore.”

  “Just try.”

  “You think I haven’t been?” The scotch had made her a little belligerent. “You think I’m just taking it easy? You think this is fun for me?”

  “No. I don’t think it’s fun.”

  “But?”

  “Let’s drop it, okay? You’re in therapy, you’re working on it.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Shit, Frankie, give me a break here, will you? If I say you have PTSD, you get insulted. If I say you’ve got ‘issues,’ you tell me I’m being evasive and to say what I really think. Well, here it is. I know you’re working on your shit, but it’s taking a long time.” The energy went out of his voice. “Too long. I miss my wife and I’m getting tired of waiting for her.”

  She would have to be a tin soldier not to hear and feel the love mixed with his frustration. She didn’t want to fight. “I miss me too.” Reaching across the space between them, she took his hand, and for a while they spoke of other things, eventually coming around to the events of the afternoon.

  “Harry said Glory might have some kind of delayed emotional reaction, but she seems okay to me.” It occurred to Frankie as she said this that her brother might have been speaking of her when he said it. For a minute she was distracted, trying to recall exactly the words he used.

  “If your brother would just close the damn clinic, set up somewhere else.”

  “You don’t mean that. It’s not the clinic’s fault.”

  “I know it isn’t. I know that he and Gaby are doing good down there, but if something had happened to Glory—”

  “She’s okay, Rick.”

  “I sure hope that mobile medical clinic thing comes through for them. It’d solve a lot of problems.”

  “They can park the clinic van in front of Mrs. Greenwoody’s house.”

  It was good to hear Rick laugh, even if it took Johnnie Walker to make it happen. They watched the lights of Ocean Beach flicker at the bottom of the hill. Beyond them, the ocean was a dark line under a star-speckled sky.

  “I wish it would rain,” Frankie said.

  “October’s too soon.”

  “In Iraq I dreamed about rain.”

  Talking with her therapist the other day, she had realized that though she was home, water was still everywhere in her thinking and even in her dreams: sometimes she floated on a calm sea or stood beneath a waterfall, sometimes breakers crashed with the noise of mortar fire or she was in a bathtub filling and overflowing or a swimming pool too murky to see the bottom.

  “You can’t appreciate water until you live where it’s so precious. Without it—”

  Water and love. The world would die without them.

  He said, “You shouldn’t have gone. Everything out of your mouth just makes me more sure it was a mistake.”

  “You had Melanie to keep you company,” she said, half teasing.

  He looked at her sharply.

  “Kidding.” She waved her hand as if to erase the words and then swallowed the last of her drink. There was something she had to say.

  “Melanie’s filled Glory’s head with a lot of crap about homeless people and religion. I don’t like it.”

  “Don’t go off on Mel. She’s a kid, a good kid with a big heart. And she’s smart. My office has never been so organized.” His voice grew husky. “And when you were gone she made me laugh. That’s all. I needed that.” He stared into his empty glass. “I was thinking about you all the time, wondered how you were getting along and if you were in danger. Having Melanie around just made it a little easier. But Glory always knew how I felt. I couldn’t really fool her.”

  Quick as a whip.

  “One time I was sitting in the living room and she came over and put her arms around me and told me not to worry. Just like that, out of nowhere, like she read my mind. She said, ‘Mommy can take care of herself.’ It was bizarre. I felt like I was being parented by my own child.”

  Another silence settled around them.

  He said, “Did she tell you that Candace stole some crayons?”

  “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Little thieves grow into big thieves.”

  He sounded so pompous, she had to laugh. “You’ve had too much to drink.”

  And so had she. She should say good night then close her mouth and stagger upstairs, leave well enough alone. But the words were out ahead of her and she couldn’t catch up.

  “Didn’t you snitch stuff when you were a kid? I sure did. When I was in the fifth grade it was like a game to see how much we could get hold of without being caught. We dared each other.”

  Her mother had found all the lipsticks and unopened packages of false eyelashes in one of her sweater drawers and guessed how Frankie got them.

  “She made me go down to Longs Drugs and hand it all back to the manager. I was mortified.”

  “I don’t want my daughter playing with a girl who steals.”

  Hadn’t he heard what she was saying?

  He went into the kitchen and brought back the bottle and divided the last of the whiskey between them. Frankie stared at her glass and thought what the hell as she drank from it.

  Down on Sunset Cliffs a siren screamed. Flame lifted her head and howled in mournful harmony.

  “What happened to you over there, Frankie?”

  Where? Oh, yeah, there. The Big Suck.

  “I barely know you anymore.”

  She told herself that was Johnnie talking, but it hurt anyway.

  “Like I said, it’s Mad Max. The country, the war, it’s all crap. Except the people.”

  In Damascus with her mother and brothers, rewarded for her silence by G4S or some anonymous arm of government, did Fatima remember that she and Frankie were a team? Did she think about Three Fountain Square? How could she not when they had been there together, and it took all Frankie’s will and energy not to remember?

  “You’ve got to help me here, Frankie. I want us to be the way we were before.” His diction had grown sloshy. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

  The before years were almost unreal to Frankie, a daydream she’d filled with so many sweet details that it couldn’t possibly be true. She and Rick had been golden together and Glory’s birth had only made them glow brighter. Frankie remembered thinking once that seeing Rick across the room for the first time had been all the proof she would ever need that the universe was powered by love. Once she had been certain that there would never be anything big enough or strong enough to hurt them.

  Rick said, “I hate the Marine Corps.”

  She closed her eyes and felt the world lurch on its axis.

  “Don’t give up on me, Rick.”

  She opened her eyes. He’d gone inside.

  Chapter 20

  Late on Sunday morning Frankie stood in the mini-kitchen in the great room preparing food for the game day party. She had turned down breakfast an
d been sipping soda water for her upset stomach since she got up. Four Tylenol hadn’t done a thing to her headache. She should have known better, should have heeded her instinct to turn down the Johnnie Walker. Her head hurt, and her stomach, and whatever interior gravity kept her organs in their right positions had stopped working. Only her skin held her intact this morning.

  The vegetables bought at Whole Foods lay on the counter. Though fresh enough, they smelled faintly putrid to her. Crudités and dips had seemed like a good idea before she was actually faced with having to peel and cut things up. In the market everything had been irresistible as she pushed the cart around pyramids of apples and oranges, boxes of blackberries that only days before had ornamented mountainous bushes in the Northwest, cucumber and zucchini torpedoes, tomatoes as red as fast cars. The experience had been kaleidoscopic and pleasantly dizzying. The colors alone made her want to buy and buy. Now she stared at two glossy Japanese eggplants before her and tried to remember what she’d meant to do with them.

  Across the room Glory sat on the floor with Barbie and her friends arranged around her, holding the new/used bear from the clinic toy box in her arms, Zee-Zee in attendance as always, observing everything with his hooded eyes. Flame had positioned herself, frog legs, her front paws and muzzle resting on the edge of the rug that defined the play area. Glory spoke seriously to the dog and dolls; sometimes the bear seemed to be talking back. Occasionally Flame thumped her feathered tail to show that she was doing her part. Every now and then Frankie heard a few words, enough to know that the topic was, not surprisingly, the events of the day before.

  In the midst of solitary play Glory bore little resemblance to the precocious child she sometimes was in conversation with adults. She might have been an overgrown five- or six-year-old lost in make-believe. Thank goodness she had weathered the events of the day before without consequence, but Frankie couldn’t say the same for herself. Added to the hangover she had earned the night before, something wormed under her skin, a feeling familiar as the apprehension she had felt as a student, waiting for a grade on an essay or theme on which she feared she hadn’t worked hard enough.

  For almost an hour Rick had been sweating out his hangover on the treadmill in the workout center that occupied another area of the great room. They’d spoken only a few words that morning. Variations on never again.

  Stepping off the treadmill he came across the great room, shiny with sweat, smelling slightly sour. As he wiped himself with a towel he looked at the vegetables arranged on the countertop and started to laugh. Teasing he counted the cucumbers. “Ten? And all these carrots?” He counted again. “Who’s going to eat all this? Jesus, Frankie, no one even likes raw zucchini.”

  She could have interrupted right then, laughed with him, told him to get back on the treadmill where he belonged and let her feed the troops. She should not have stood silently, letting his words abrade her like wind and sand.

  “Did you just walk through the store, tossing in whatever you saw? ‘Here’s a nice cauliflower; the guys always go for cauliflower! Oh boy, eggplant!’ ”

  He thought he was hilarious.

  She could have thanked him for sharing and gone upstairs. Why hadn’t she done that when all she really wanted was to lie down with a cool washcloth on her eyes?

  “Frankie, can’t you even buy food anymore?”

  He wasn’t teasing now. In his voice she heard disappointment and confusion and anger. Frankie sensed Glory listening from across the room.

  “Here’s what you do.” He took charge. “Slice up a couple of cucumbers, half a dozen carrots. Don’t go overboard. Tomorrow you can put the rest in soup or something. Or toss ’em out, I don’t care what you do.”

  As a child she had learned to stand still, feeling small, getting smaller as the General chastised her for coming second in a race or getting a B-plus grade on a test. She had not realized until now that buying food for the party had been a kind of test. She had shopped at Whole Foods and earned a B for her efforts. No, more like a C or even a D. Had she ever gotten a D on anything before? Never. But once a C, on a geography exam.

  She turned on the tap and let a stream of cool water flow across her wrists.

  She had enjoyed geography but the teacher insisted on rote memorization of everything—capital cities, rivers, principal mountain ranges. Lying in her rack on Redline, bone-weary but wakeful, she tried to bore herself to sleep by making alphabetical lists.

  Rivers: Amazon, Brahmaputra, Congo, Darling.

  “Are you listening to me, Frankie?”

  Lakes: Antigua, Baikal, Como.

  “What else did you get?”

  “Hummus, pita bread. There’s lots of cheese.” Asiago, brie, cheddar.

  “And wings? Did you get any of those? The kind you dip in ranch dressing? What about those little Chinese ribs?”

  She shook her head.

  “Frankie, this is a football party.”

  “Why didn’t you say you wanted wings?”

  “And maybe some garlic bread?”

  “I’m not a mind reader. You should have given me a list.” She drank from the tap. “Whatever you want, Rick. I’m sorry.”

  The sorry inside her went so deep and covered so many things, it overwhelmed her like the prospect of a forced march.

  “I just don’t feel like having a house full of company. I told you I didn’t. I guess that makes me the wrong person to plan the menu, huh?” She hoped he would appreciate the irony. They would smile at each other and there would be peace.

  “This has been planned for weeks, Frankie.”

  She drank again, letting the tepid water soothe her throat and wet her face.

  “I don’t like crowds anymore.”

  She’d gone to Bahrain on leave. A mistake. Except in the elegant shopping district (and how many designer bags could she look at without keeling over from boredom?), the streets were crowded with pedestrians, mostly men. The air stank of their sweat and the pomade they rubbed into their beards. They pushed her aside with their shoulders and their hands sometimes touched her, and there was nothing she could do or say to these surreptitious strokes and pokes that were clearly meant as insults. She could only cringe away from them and step a little faster and pretend she was somewhere else. There was a sound they made sometimes, seeing a Western woman on the street without an escort, a hissing hidden behind mustaches and beards and almost closed lips.

  Maybe what she needed most was just to be alone. “Rick, I can’t make small talk anymore.”

  “Try, Frankie.” Weariness wounded his bloodshot eyes, and she saw that he was struggling to save the day.

  She sliced into a cucumber, cut her finger, and swore loudly. As she raised the cut to her lips, it bled onto the cucumber wedges on the counter, each drop spreading a pink stain. Pretty, she thought, and was transfixed for a moment by the sight. Like watermelon.

  Apple. Banana. Casaba.

  She wound a towel around the finger. Rick took her hand and she pulled back. “It’s nothing.”

  Glory came across the room and looked at the pink cucumber wedges. “That’s so gross.”

  “Go back to your dolls,” Frankie said. “I’ll clean it up.”

  “No.” Rick turned her so she faced the hall and guest bathroom. “There’s Band-Aids and antibiotic ointment in the cabinet. Go.”

  When she came back the vegetables had disappeared and the countertop was wiped and shining.

  “We don’t need crudités,” Rick said, wringing out a sponge. “I’ll see what I can get at Vons.”

  He held her wrist and lifted her hand, looked at her bandaged finger, and kissed it lightly. “You have to be more careful.”

  I’m a Marine. Why is he talking to me like I’m eight years old?

  She opened the refrigerator. The vegetables shoved into the crisper filled her with sadness and then an irrational protective anger, as if the carrots and cucumbers were refugees abandoned in steerage. She pulled them out and tossed them onto the
counter. A carrot rolled to the floor but she didn’t stoop to pick it up.

  “What’re you doing?”

  She looked at him, picked up a zucchini, and dropped it at his feet. Then another carrot. Rick’s expression widened with confusion and she had to look away from the damage she was doing. She dropped a handful of radishes, heard them roll, and felt herself begin to unravel like an old sweater gone to ruin. The backs of her eyelids stung and she pressed the heels of her hands hard against them until all she saw was blood red.

  With a groan of something that sounded like sympathy but might have been despair, Rick dragged her into his arms, and as much as she wanted to shove him away, she wanted to stay until time ran backward and she could start all over again.

  “I’ll go to Vons,” she said. “It’s my job. I’ll do it.”

  Chapter 21

  Frankie sat for a moment in the market’s vast parking lot and remembered what her therapist had told her. Focus on your goals, but keep them simple.

  Today she was going into the market and she would buy food, he-man football food. Sandwich fixings from the deli, potato salad and fried chicken, quarts of ambrosia for the kids. She found paper in the glove compartment and made a list of a dozen items sure to please. Her goal was to go in, buy the food, and get out without a hitch. If she used the time efficiently she might even be able to nap before the company started to arrive.

  The market was crowded, but she was prepared for this and not troubled by it, proving that when she thought things through in advance and had reasonable expectations, she could handle life as well as anyone. A woman pushing a cart full of kids and a few food items ran into her going in and Frankie only laughed and said no problem when the woman apologized.

  In the frozen food section she found the last two boxes of hot wings and the baker was just setting out fresh loaves of garlic bread. She bought eight because everyone loved garlic bread. At a display of school supplies she stopped and stared at the varieties of notebooks, any one of which would serve as a journal. She moved on and then went back and grabbed the first her fingers touched. Black. Two hundred pages. What a laugh that was.