When She Came Home

by Drusilla Campbell

  In her parents’ house the living and dining rooms had been decorated for Christmas in red and green and gold. On the dining room table surrounded by plates of sizzling canapés, the centerpiece was Great-grandmother Byrne’s gleaming silver service surrounded by red glass balls and tiers of candy-striped tapers. Candlelight. The glow of Navy and Marine brass. She and Rick had seen each other across the room. He was the tallest man there, she the tallest woman. They came together like pages in a book. As soon as they could politely escape, he had walked her across the street and up through the three levels of his partially constructed house.

  Frankie already knew from her mother that neighbors up and down the street had not been happy when wreckers demolished the midcentury house on the property and the new structure began to rise, bigger than any other on the street. But none of them had seen it as Frankie did that night by cold Christmas moonlight. Rick pointed out the rooms, the decks, the wide windows; and Frankie knew that Rick’s house would be beautiful, not garish or ostentatious as the neighbors whispered.

  On the third floor where the bedrooms would be, he found a pile of old blankets and they sat on the plywood subfloor wrapped in them and talked until almost four a.m. He had been less of a mystery at the end of that first night than he was now, lying in bed beside her. He had escorted her back across the street to the house where she had grown up, and they sat on the porch and talked some more, and when the sky in the east turned yellow they went inside and she fixed them both coffee and breakfast and they kept talking. Frankie had believed they would never run out of conversation.

  “Talk to me, Rick.”

  “I’m past talking, Frankie.”

  “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “You don’t want to know.” He half laughed. “Or maybe you do. Maybe the suspense is killing us both.”

  She wasn’t sure what this meant, and she didn’t want him to explain.

  “Don’t give up on me, Rick.”

  He propped his pillow against the headboard.

  “Before you went to Iraq, if Glory was having trouble at school, if this Colette had been giving her a bad time, you would have been on the phone to me right off. And mad as hell, I know it. I would have had to calm you down just so I could understand what you were saying. But I barely heard one word about this before she was suspended. The other night you made it sound like some nothing problem. When you told me about the camera in the playground, all that, I distinctly remember you telling me it wasn’t a big deal. That was a lie, right?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Bullshit. You don’t know what matters anymore. Before, you never would have done that. I could have counted on you—”

  “You still can.”

  “No. No, I can’t. Not anymore. You’re different. You’re not Frankie anymore.”

  She had to say something but a boulder had lodged in her throat.

  I’ll do everything. I’ll never miss therapy. I’ll fill a dozen journals and I’ll go to group, I swear I’ll be the way I was.

  Except she knew that no matter what she did, there was no going back. The war had changed her in the same way a dose of radiation alters a person’s atomic structure and causes a mutation. That’s what she was, a mutated version of her old self. The old Frankie was gone, another person she could not save.

  Next morning Rick and Glory concocted a villainous breakfast of pancakes layered with blueberries and whipped cream. Glory was ebullient.

  “We know you don’t like sweet stuff, Mommy, so I made you a soft-boiled egg and soldiers.” Soldiers were what Frankie’s mother called the buttered toast cut in strips for dunking in the soft yolk.

  Frankie corrected her. “Egg and Marines.”

  Glory’s smiled widened. “Right, Mom.” She rolled her eyes. “Sorry, Mom.” High five. “Semper Fi, Mom.”

  The moment freeze framed: Glory sweet and spunky and dressed for suspension in shorts and a tee, no shoes on her feet, whipped cream at the corners of her mouth. Rick, handsome in his white shirt with sharp laundry folds, a red silk tie, his springy ginger and silver hair still damp from the shower, lying flat as it never would when it dried. If this was the end she wanted to remember everything.

  Glory didn’t seem to have noticed that her parents weren’t speaking to each other. “Can we go to the beach? I heard on the radio that this is the hottest October in nine years. We could go to Dogs’ Beach and take Flame. She’d love that.”

  “No way,” Rick said. “Check your dictionary. Suspension and vacation aren’t synonyms.”

  “You’re going across the street for the day. Grandma’s going to put you to work polishing silver.”

  “I hate that job.”

  “Too bad,” Rick said.

  “I can stay home alone. I’m eight. I know the rules.”

  Glory had been angling for more independence and sooner or later they would have to begin to grant it. But trusting Glory alone for those first few hours was a momentous step. Like learning to walk in the first place, there would be no undoing it.

  “Absolutely not,” Rick said.

  “How come you’re mad at me, Daddy?”

  “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Yes, you are. I can tell.”

  “Leave it alone,” Frankie said.

  Glory flopped onto a chair dramatically. “Can I at least write my Christmas list today? I want a wet suit this year so I can surf in January.”

  “I thought you wanted to be a kickboxer.”

  “Daddy, I can do both.”

  Frankie looked at Rick, ready to take her cue from him; if he smiled, so would she. But he had tuned out his family. He stood in front of the microwave studying his stern reflection in the glass door, tying his tie. She wanted to stand behind him and rest her cheek on his shoulder but she knew that if she did, he would move away, and that would break her heart.

  Chapter 27

  The MCRD was fifteen minutes from home on a good day, just over the hill off the Pacific Highway. Somewhere between Ocean Beach and work, Frankie’s Nissan developed a rattle. A finger-snapping click that twitched under her skin, telling her hurry-hurry, busy-busy to a rap beat. Stuck in a line of cars at the light at the bottom of Nimitz, she swore at a driver trying to make a U-turn in rush hour traffic. She was late getting to the shop, and once there she rushed to catch up, and her day careened downhill.

  The office troops were slower and more careless than usual. She had to explain the limitations of spell check to one young recruit who took the inability of the software to second guess his thinking as a personal betrayal. He seemed younger than the legal age for military service, and she wondered who had sent him to her, what malign deity had thought it would be amusing to watch him mess up the finances of the United States Marine Corps. Probably the same one that deleted a document she needed, forcing her to waste an hour getting it back. Her staff sergeant, Donovan, was hungover, taciturn and uncooperative, and when she didn’t have a chance to eat lunch and it was almost two in the afternoon, she couldn’t take his scowls and self-importance anymore and laid into him. Immediately she regretted losing her cool. Under the best circumstances he resented having to take orders from a woman. As payback he or one of his buddies would feed something unflattering, maybe downright insulting, about her into the rumor mill.

  In some ways the Marine Corps was as bad as Ms. Peters’s third grade.

  Olvedo called her into his office and told her to sit down.

  “You getting a cold, Captain Tennyson?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Lately you’ve been sounding like a frog.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She focused her eyes on his graying buzz cut.

  “I heard you reaming out Donovan.”

  “You know how he is, Colonel. He’s insolent and he’s a gossip and I got tired of putting up with it.”

  “Something worrying you?”

  “No, sir.” She was aware of sounding like ninety-day wonder in a recrui
tment video. Yes, sir. No, sir.

  “What happened at your kid’s school yesterday?”

  “She got suspended.” Quickly she filled him in, an abridged version that omitted stinky butts and biting.

  “So she’s home now? Who’s taking care of her?”

  “My folks.”

  “You need time off?”

  “I don’t want leave, sir.” Her struggling sanity required the distraction of work. She welcomed the order it imposed on her life when everything else was falling apart.

  “I didn’t ask you if you want it. I asked if you need it.”

  Frankie had known Olvedo since before she deployed, and they had always worked well together. He was a devoutly religious man and devoted to his wife and sons. It made no sense to go on pretending to him. He knew her. He saw through her.

  “I’m a wreck.”

  “It shows.” He pulled out a bottom drawer of his desk and used it as a footrest. “Frankie, finance isn’t an easy MOS. There’s no glamour, no heroics. To work here takes an eye for detail and precision and you’ve got to like structure to do it well. Come the day you’re out, we’re gonna be in big trouble around here because I don’t think you can be replaced.”

  She blushed. “Thank you, Colonel.”

  “It’s not a compliment. It’s a fact.” He heaved his large body into a new position. “But lately—the last couple of weeks especially—you’re making mistakes. Like that dustup with Donovan this morning. So he’s a jerk, we all know that, but he’s been around the corps since you were Glory’s age. A guy like him’s never going to accept you. You know that as well as I do.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but the look on his face—he’s got a permanent scowl.”

  “Oh, yeah? Look who’s talking.”

  She managed a weak smile. “I think I laughed last week.”

  “Happy to hear it. Take the rest of the week off and see if you can do it again. Then come back ready and do the job right. Understood?”

  “Sir, I don’t—”

  “Tennyson, you can take your kid to the beach or drink a bottle of NyQuil and sleep for four days, I don’t care. But next Monday I want you in your boots, healthy and focused. Are we clear?”

  Master Sergeant Donovan didn’t look at her as she left, nobody did. She told herself not to care.

  The recently resurfaced parking lot smelled of asphalt and gave beneath her boot heels like a wet sponge. Walking toward where she could see her car cooking in the sun, she scanned her cell phone messages and saw two calls from Harry. She was about to key in her brother’s number when she heard a car behind her and stepped aside to give it room to pass. She heard the hum of a window going down and turned as the charcoal-tinted back window of a Lincoln Town Car dropped out of sight.

  “Good afternoon, Captain Tennyson.”

  The New York accent was familiar but the thin, lined face and large sensual features weren’t immediately identifiable. It was a matter of context. Senator Susan Belasco did not belong in the parking lot of the San Diego MCRD.

  Frankie spoke automatically. “No.”

  “Am I such a monster we can’t even talk?”

  “I told your guy. Jared Whatever. I told him, I don’t want any part of your hearings.”

  “And I’m delighted to meet you as well.”

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  “I suspect you don’t want to be seen with me. Especially here. May I suggest we drive around the corner and meet in the post office parking lot? My driver tells me there’s usually a shady spot there.”

  Frankie walked toward her car and the Lincoln kept pace with her.

  “I made this trip down from Los Angeles especially to see you. You’re curious, aren’t you? Just a little?” The senator’s teeth were square and even and professionally white.

  “I want to be left alone, Senator.”

  “Ah, well, who can blame you for that? It may surprise you to know that, from time to time, I share your desire. But I’m afraid that’s not possible. This matter is too important.”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “Oh, you have a lot to say. Let’s at least agree on that.”

  Frankie stared at her boots. Sweat prickled at the back of her neck.

  “I can subpoena you, Captain. But let me be clear, I really don’t want to do that. I would like you to come forth of your own volition and tell the committee what you saw.”

  “I don’t know what I saw.” The words had fingernails that scratched her throat.

  “That can’t be true. Your memory was perfectly clear when you spoke to the chaplain and your CO on Redline.”

  Did everyone over the rank of private know that she had gone to the chaplain and then her CO for advice?

  “Why don’t you subpoena them?”

  “I will. The chaplain would claim privilege so there’s no point there. But the fact that you went to them both with your story is one of the things that makes you a most credible witness.” Senator Belasco removed her dark glasses, blinking in the bright autumn light. “I would also like to speak to your interpreter, Fatima, but she is, unfortunately, out of my jurisdiction.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s been paid well for her silence.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “If you mean I haven’t seen the actual cash, you’re right. But we both know that for her to have gotten out of Iraq safely with her family, to find good work and a place to live—”

  Sunlight ricocheted off the Town Car’s polished chrome and bull’s-eyed Frankie’s right eye. She pressed the ball of her thumb against the eye socket.

  In Iraq a Mercedes sedan had been the car of choice for diplomats and dignitaries. In the Green Zone everyone drove an SUV, most often a Suburban, and almost always white. Halliburton ran a car wash that was busy night and day. But the vehicles that tore into Three Fountain Square weren’t Mercedes or white Suburbans. They were Escalades, fat black beetles lined up end-to-end and surrounded by armed men in uniforms that identified them as G4S.

  Frankie drove her Nissan around the corner to the post office. Now, sitting in the dark gray leather interior of Senator Belasco’s Town Car, she felt as if she were closed in a luxurious cell where the air smelled of Chanel No. 5.

  “Ellis,” the senator leaned forward to address her driver, “would you take Captain Tennyson’s car and find us some coffee?”

  Ellis looked at Frankie. “Ma’am?”

  Belasco said, “We’ll both have one of those frozen coffee drinks, the largest size, whatever they call it. And an extra shot of espresso in mine. Do you want an extra shot, Captain?”

  “I don’t want coffee.”

  “Please. Don’t make me drink alone.”

  “All due respect, Senator, but I don’t know Mr. Ellis and I’m not giving him my car keys.”

  Senator Belasco sighed, and removed her glasses again. She pressed her fingertips against her large lids, taking care not to smear her mascara or eyeliner. “I have had an extremely difficult several days, so you will forgive me if I’m a little abrupt. Here is your choice. You may give Ellis your keys and he will return in twenty minutes with or without a coffee for you. Your vehicle will be safe with him. He’s been my driver for many years and I can attest to his excellent record. Or, if you prefer, he will sit in the front seat and listen to our conversation. Your choice.”

  Paranoid riffs played Frankie’s imagination. Ellis was going to search her car or hide something on it—a GPS of some kind, a microphone. She didn’t believe any of this, but it all crossed her mind.

  “Stay out of the trunk,” she said, mostly joking. “It’s full of guns and top secret docs.”

  Ellis left the post office parking lot in Frankie’s car and Senator Belasco relaxed into the corner of the Lincoln’s generous backseat, her hands folded in her lap like those of a proper schoolgirl, ready to learn.

  “I may never have served in the military, Captain, but over the course of my yea
rs in the House and Senate I have probably talked to more of our fighting men and women than you have. And I have considerable empathy. I think I know what you’re going through. I suspect you’ve spent the last several months reliving what you saw at the square and agonizing over what to do about it. Conflicting loyalties and all that. I imagine it’s pretty much destroyed your personal life. I don’t blame you for not wanting to revisit the scene with microphones rearing at you like snake heads.”

  Rick was ready to walk away from her, Glory was suspended from school, her voice was failing, and she could barely breathe. “I can’t deal with this. Not now.” Maybe never.

  “I’ve visited the square,” the senator said. “It’s an important part of that neighborhood’s life. If you were to go there today, it would appear to be quite an ordinary place—apart from the rubble. Untidy by our standards, disorderly, but the square itself is crowded and busy most days. There are, of course, the government buildings or what remains of them. If you were there I think you might feel as I did, a certain undercurrent, something painful about the place. It’s in the air, so to speak. As if an unreconciled ghost is lurking around, poisoning the atmosphere. Demanding satisfaction. I’ve been told that fifty years ago it was a lovely spot. There actually were three fountains once upon a time. And date palms. But between Saddam, the insurgents, and the coalition—and G4S, of course—it’s lost its charm.”

  The senator spoke like a person who enjoyed words and was accustomed to being listened to. She didn’t stammer or register even a whisper of doubt that what she thought and said was important.

  “Hearings like mine aren’t popular, in case you didn’t know. Most of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle don’t want anything to do with them. And getting witnesses to appear willingly is always difficult. In the case of incidents involving G4S, it’s almost impossible. Particularly now, in 2008 in the middle of the surge, the company has many powerful friends.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that you are. I think you agree with me that those people and that place deserve justice. Isn’t that why you left your family and went to Iraq in the first place? Because you believe in justice and because you know that despite our faults, and they are many, America is still the world’s brightest and best hope?”