When She Came Home

by Drusilla Campbell

  The kitchen was hot and the fresh cookies smelled too sweet. Maryanne leaned across the sink and shoved up the window, letting in a gust of salt-smelling westerly wind.

  She told Frankie to go into the room off the kitchen where there was a bed. Originally intended for a maid—though the Byrnes family had never had live-in help—it had been converted to a catch-all room for laundry, mending, and sometimes a quick nap.

  “Whatever’s on the bed, just push it off and lie down. When do you want me to wake you?”

  “Rick’ll worry. I should call him.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he can figure out where you are.”

  Maryanne returned to the living room where she folded the lap rug and fluffed the couch cushions. She remembered Harlan telling her when they were first married that she should keep the house in such order that if the base commander were to walk in without notice, she would have nothing to be ashamed of. Maryanne had taken his words to heart and, in retrospect, she knew that by such efforts—plus all the officers’ wives’ meetings she had attended, the committees she chaired and all the dinner parties she gave—she had contributed to her husband’s success.

  But she had failed Frankie by letting her believe that the General’s impossible standards were the only ones that mattered. The truth was that the base commander was never going to drop in unannounced and perfection was overrated unless you were a sniper. Ease of mind and personal satisfaction counted much more, and Frankie had never had much of either.

  Maryanne was standing at the kitchen counter thumbing through a cookbook trying to summon some interest in food when the clock at the top of the stairs struck six and Rick and Glory walked in.

  “Is she here?” He looked haggard.

  “Sit down, Rick. You too, Glory.” Without asking if he wanted tea, she refilled the electric kettle. “Glory, get me two cups out of the dishwasher. They’re clean.”

  Glory handed them to her. One second of eye contact with her grandmother and she began to cry an eight-year-old’s galloping, gulping sobs, and Maryanne heard all over again the story of the vegetables, the stink, the bite, and the slap.

  I’m too old for this.

  She put tea bags and a teaspoon of sugar in the cups and poured boiling water over.

  “Is she here?” Glory asked. “Where is she?”

  Maryanne put a finger to her lips and then pointed at the closed door to the maid’s room.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Rick took his tea without looking at Maryanne. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do. She’s been crazy all day.”

  Maryanne wanted to counter this statement with a few hard words, but now wasn’t the time.

  “What does her therapist say?”

  He didn’t know.

  “Well, I think you’d better call her, Rick. Maybe she could suggest someone for you to see while this is going on.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not the problem here, Maryanne.”

  “She’s your wife, Rick. I’m her mother and that man upstairs is her father. We’re all part of this and it’s no good pretending we’re not. And I don’t want to hear you say she’s acting crazy. She’s been through things you can’t begin to imagine.”

  The little speech left her quite breathless.

  “I never told her to go.”

  “Her conscience did. And you should be grateful you have a wife who’s not afraid to do the right thing.” She wanted to add stop feeling sorry for yourself, but that would be pushing too hard. She loved her son-in-law and did not wish to be unkind.

  “What about me?” Glory asked. “She slapped me. That’s child abuse.”

  “From what I hear you deserved what you got, young lady. You’re not a German shepherd. You do not bite unless your life depends on it.”

  Glory shoved a sugar cookie into her mouth and sulked.

  Rick said, “I want to take her home, but I’ll leave her hear if she’s sleeping—”

  “She belongs at home. With you.” Maryanne pointed to the closed maid’s room door. “Go wake your mother.”

  Glory sucked in her lips and shook her head.

  “Now.”

  She walked with her back straight, her shoulders squared like a T. It took only a slight blurring of Maryanne’s vision to see Frankie at the same age, trudging off to do something she didn’t want to do.

  “Close the door behind you,” Maryanne said. “Give yourselves some privacy.”

  It was warm in the maid’s room, but Frankie had slept.

  The door opened and the air freshened a little. Glory stood at the foot of the bed and details of the party came back to Frankie and there was nothing she could say that would change the stubborn and miserable look on her daughter’s face. She sat up and opened her arms. She saw Glory flinch and her shoulders round in reflexive self-protection. And then she seemed to have a second thought. Water shimmered in her eyes and she dropped onto the bed and into Frankie’s arms.

  “I’m sorry, baby. So sorry.”

  Chapter 24

  They sat at the table and picked at leftovers. To Maryanne the moping and misery had begun to reek of self-indulgence and she wanted everyone out of the house. Admittedly it had been a bad day, a bad series of days, of weeks even. But she could tell Frankie and Rick about bad times.

  The decades had vanished behind Maryanne, taking with them more than forty anniversaries and hundreds of orchestrated birthday parties, New Year’s celebrations, and galas in aid of causes that had seemed worthy at the time. She had forgotten them all but the night when the General loaded his Beretta and threatened to shoot the dog for waking him out of his first sound sleep in a month, that she remembered in three dimensions and Technicolor. After she stood between him and the dog, crying shoot me! shoot me! he fled the house and was gone three days; and when he came home he never talked about where he went or what he did, and she was too angry and scared and relieved to ask him.

  As if her thoughts had woken him from his nap, the General called to her as he came downstairs. At the sound of his voice the air in the kitchen stiffened and everyone around the table sat up straighter. He shambled into the room barefoot, wearing sweatpants and an ancient Marine Corps T-shirt. “… damn dream about that Belasco woman. General MacArthur was there. I haven’t thought of that son of a bitch in at least ten years. Belasco had him in one of those old-fashioned witness boxes….” He stopped talking when he saw Frankie and her family around the table.

  “I didn’t know you were coming to dinner.”

  No one answered. He poked Frankie’s shoulder with his index finger.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “It’s not important, Harlan. Go back upstairs.” Maryanne ran scalding water into the sink and began noisily washing teacups by hand. If the hair on her head had stood up and sparked, she would not have been surprised. With her hands in the water, she could be electrocuted.

  “I’ll bring you some dinner on a tray.”

  “Am I sick? What’s going on around here?”

  “Mommy has PTSD,” Glory said.

  The General narrowed his eyes. “PMS?”

  Glory giggled. She thought he was teasing, pretending not to hear correctly. Maryanne didn’t know if he was playing or not. The General had never been a good listener and nowadays he was half deaf when he wanted to be.

  “P. T. S. D,” Glory said again, enunciating carefully. “She got it from Iraq.”

  The General appeared to think about this, turned, and left the room. Over his shoulder he told Maryanne, “You can bring me scrambled eggs. And some of those sugar cookies.”

  He was back on the bed watching 60 Minutes when she came in thirty minutes later.

  She turned off the set and stood in front of it.

  “Hey! Mike Wallace is going to talk about G4S. I want to see that.”

  “I don’t care if he’s talking about the Second Coming.”

  “You said you’d bring my dinner.”

  “That ca
n wait.”

  She hadn’t planned this and she might regret it; but Harlan, for all that she loved and respected him, had taxed her almost to the limits of her capacity. Until that afternoon she hadn’t believed it was possible.

  “I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Can’t do what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I won’t keep on stuffing my feelings so you can have the world the way you want it. I’m finished. I’m done. For the last forty plus years I have kept my mouth shut but tonight… tonight, I’ve had it. Your daughter is suffering, that whole family is in pain, and all you can think about is getting your dinner and watching 60 Minutes.” She gestured toward the house across the street. “You’re either blind or you don’t give a damn.”

  He looked as surprised by her outburst as if he’d been lassoed from behind.

  “It’s time for you to man-up, Harlan. You want to be the big shot in this family, start behaving like one.”

  “What the hell have I done to set you off this time?”

  “You could help her if you wanted to.”

  “Is this about Frankie?”

  “Damn you, Harlan, have I been talking to myself?”

  “She’s a grown girl. She can take care of herself. Or she should. Maybe Glory’s right. Maybe she is crazy.”

  “PTSD isn’t crazy. It’s normal. War is a trauma, Harlan, and you know that better than most.”

  He talked right through her words. “Going off to Iraq like she had no responsibilities, if it wasn’t crazy it was unnatural.”

  “Don’t use that word.” She clenched her teeth to keep from screaming at him. “I swear, if I hear you use that word to describe Frankie again, I will stop cooking for you. I mean it. You will have to exist on Cheerios and toast.”

  Now he looked like Glory. Pouting.

  “Can’t you see how much she loves you? Can’t you feel it?”

  “She wanted to be a Marine so I treat her like one.”

  “That’s bullshit and we both know it. You’ve been hard on her since she was a toddler. You’ve never missed an opportunity to criticize her.”

  “Be fair, Maryanne. You make me sound like a monster.”

  He wasn’t that, nothing like it. And he was right, it wasn’t fair to take off on him after letting him get away with egregious behavior for so many years. They should have had this conversation years ago.

  “She’s brave, Harlan. And strong. She listened to everything you ever said about honor and duty, she sucked it all in.”

  He leaned against the headboard and picked at a tiny hole in his T-shirt. Once he had a dozen identical to this one, but over the years they had grown holey and been consigned to the rag bag. This was the last one, washed so many times it felt like silk under Maryanne’s hand when she folded it. She would be sad to see it go.

  She sat beside him and tried to hold his hands but like a bad-tempered child he pulled them out of reach.

  “You are a fool, Harlan Byrne.”

  He gave her his little boy look, equal parts endearing and maddening. “But I’m your fool, right?”

  “You don’t deserve Frankie or me either. We’re both way too good for you.”

  “That may be.”

  She grabbed his hands, he pulled, there was a tug-of-war, and he gave in.

  “I’m just the way I am, Maryanne.” He looked away. “I can’t change.”

  In profile he was as handsome as he had been when they met. His jaw was still strong, his nose still straight. Against the light from the window she could see his eyelashes. Still long.

  “Do you remember the worst night we ever had?”

  “You don’t have to remind me.”

  “Frankie’s where you were then, Harlan. Different, but the same.”

  He picked at his T-shirt.

  “What was that dog’s name?”

  “Pax.” The ironically named Doberman. “You went after him with the Beretta. And then you left in the middle of the night and were gone for three days and I never knew where you went and I never asked. Afterward you just said you were sorry and you couldn’t ever make it up to me, for leaving like that.”

  “Ah, Maryanne, it was a long time ago.”

  “Do you remember saying that?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “Well, this is your chance. To make it up to me.”

  “I love her. She’s my daughter, for christsake. She knows the way I am.”

  “She doesn’t know you love her.”

  “Well, I can’t just come out and say it.” As if love were the language of another species.

  “You must, Harlan.”

  She had never loved him more than she did at that moment when he was trying to understand what was expected of him, when he wanted so earnestly to do the right thing. “Stop being a stubborn leatherneck. Stop being a general. Just be Frankie’s father.”

  Chapter 25

  Frankie spent most of her Monday morning appointment with her therapist talking about the day before. Afterward she was sure the Marines in the financial office took note of her red and puffy eyes. Complaining of an allergy only made matters worse so she said nothing and went right to work.

  Colonel Olvedo’s office door was open and she felt him watching her. She dropped pencils and hit her knee on an open desk drawer, she dribbled coffee down the front of her cammies.

  All she could think of was Glory and Rick.

  He had said almost nothing to her when they came home from across the street. He took his computer to bed and played solitaire, which she interpreted as passive aggression. She was too unhappy and ashamed of herself to try to break through his frigid reserve. The truth was she was just as happy not to talk—about the scene in the kitchen or the game day party. By Monday morning he still wasn’t talking, but by then her self-defense system had gone to work; she was still ashamed and full of regret, but now she was also angry and told herself she didn’t care if he never spoke to her again. As always Glory did not want to go to school and screamed at Frankie when she told her to get in the car. Sadly the moments in the maid’s room had been less a reconciliation than a time-out between hostilities.

  Rick’s last words to her on Monday as she hurried out of the house struck her with equal parts fear and rage.

  “I can’t go on like this,” he said. “I won’t live this way.”

  She had ignored the elevator to White’s office and took the stairs, two at a time, arriving on the fourth floor with aching quads and still angry. She told her therapist the story of the weekend, front to end, without pausing. White’s response was much like her mother’s.

  “I’m sorry you slapped her, Frankie. But she’ll survive. I’m more concerned about your father.”

  “Why? No one slapped him. Who’d dare?”

  “You say Glory told him you have PTSD. And he just walked away? Without saying anything?”

  Not a word.

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “I’m used to the way he is.”

  “You weren’t angry?”

  “What’s the point? He’s a mean s.o.b.” She had spoken without thinking. “Not really.”

  “Would your mother agree? Would Rick?”

  “The General loves Glory. He treats her like his little princess.”

  “Well, that must be hard to take.”

  “The other night she told me she might be a Marine when she grew up. He’d probably go with her to sign up and then have a parade in her honor.”

  She spent most of her lunch hour running on the treadmill in the gym but even six fast miles couldn’t pacify her. She was angry with everyone including herself. At the same time she sensed another emotion beneath her anger and knew that she would rather rage at the whole world than feel whatever that was, simmering below.

  She was going through a second batch of mail when a call came from Trelawny Scott at Arcadia.

  “There’s been an incident, Frankie. I think you should come.”
<
br />   It took Frankie five minutes to explain to Olvedo, thirteen more to drive up Washington Street running every yellow light. She was standing in the school’s front office twenty-one minutes after the call.

  “Go right in, Captain Tennyson.” Dory Maddox followed her into the headmistress’s office, shutting the door behind her.

  Bad sign.

  “What did she do? Is she hurt?”

  Scott gestured Dory to the couch and Frankie to the chair across the desk. “Your daughter is fine.”

  Your daughter.

  “Where is she?”

  “Please, can we talk first?” Behind her glasses the headmistress’s eyes were kind but tired. “Glory left school without permission today.”

  “Right after early recess,” Dory said. “She passed me in the hall and when I said hello, it was like she didn’t hear me. I came into the office and then I thought about the way she looked, upset and all, and I thought I better go after her. She was off the grounds by the time I caught up.” Dory looked genuinely unhappy as she told her story. “She said she was leaving school and never coming back.”

  It was possible to walk from East Mission Hills to Ocean Beach, but it was a distance of several miles, hilly and indirect.

  “I told her she didn’t have to walk. I said we’d call you, you’d come and get her. But she was so upset, I doubt she even heard me.” Dory pulled a wadded tissue from her sleeve and patted her lips with it.

  Scott said, “There was quite a struggle.”

  “She bit me.” Dory held out her arm.

  Without thinking, Frankie’s fingers touched her own wrist. One bite could be excused, put down to impulse. Two was a pattern.

  Dory said, “I guess I screamed when she did it. A gardener came running and nabbed her before she got to the end of the block. She fought all the way back to school.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Ms. Maddox. I’m so sorry. She’ll apologize, of course.” Frankie remembered Colette. “She’s been tormenting Glory for weeks. Ever since school started. She must have done something to set her off. Did you ask her what happened? She’s turned all the girls in the class against Glory. Colette’s the teacher’s pet.”