by Sarah Smiley
I started to cry and buried my face in my hands. “Why are you so nice to me?” I cried. “Why? Why?”
“Sarah, tell me what’s going on,” Dr. Ashley said and got up from the stool.
Of course, I couldn’t tell him exactly what was going on, because that would mean admitting that I had dreams about him instead of my husband; that I wished he was the one who had come into my house in the middle of the night when the alarm went off; that I looked forward to my visits with him; and that I wasn’t sure what all of it meant for my marriage, or why he represented everything my husband was not. So I went for the safe confession.
“I’m just not cut out for this,” I said. “I’m not cut out to be a military wife. I hate it. I hate that my husband has missed half our marriage and most of our children’s lives. I hate that my own dad was gone most of my life. I hate that Dustin calls me from foreign ports, when he’s laughing and having a great time, and I’m here dealing with the boys and feeling so alone that I’m terrified!”
I was talking more emphatically than I had meant to. Did I really want to tell this man all my innermost thoughts? I felt as exposed as . . . well, as a girl in a backless hospital gown.
But Dr. Ashley was watching me with that same lips-turned-down thoughtful stare I had grown to expect from him. “These are all very natural reactions,” he said. “And don’t forget that you have a newborn baby, so your emotions are a little out of balance right now.”
“No,” I cried, pacing back and forth. “It’s not my hormones. Don’t say it’s my hormones.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s that I’m raising two kids by myself, and I’m living alone, and I feel so disconnected from my husband right now. We’re more than oceans apart. We’re light-years apart.”
I sat back down in the plastic chair with my shoulders slumped forward. Again, I felt a release in the muscles of my back. Dr. Ashley handed me a tissue and I dabbed at my eyes.
“You know what happened to me one day?” I said through sniffles. “I locked myself out of the house. And you know who had to help me? My neighbor Brent and a policeman, that’s who. Two married men with wives and families of their own. Someone else’s husband had to come help me because mine’s not here. And I know you’ll say Dustin’s serving his country and that he’s making sacrifices and protecting our freedom. I know all that. But frankly, none of that made me feel any better when I was standing on the back patio in my nightshirt and flip-flops!”
I saw Dr. Ashley bite his lip. Probably trying to keep from laughing, I thought. Why was I always the clown?
I grew more angry and determined. “And at BUNCO one night, my friend called me a ‘walking calamity.’ And you know what? She’s right. I’m someone who needs help . . . a lot of help. I’m no good by myself. It’s a wonder I haven’t gotten lost on my way to the grocery store or something. I don’t even mow my own lawn. My neighbor does it for me.”
Dr. Ashley put his hand on my knee again. “I think you’re stronger than you realize, Sarah. In fact, I think you are one of the strongest patients I’ve got!” He laughed. “You can be a pistol sometimes—do you know that? I’ve never had such a hard time getting someone to take their medicines. And not many of my patients research their prescriptions as well as you do.”
“Oh, see, you have me mistaken again,” I said. “I do all those things because I’m afraid—afraid of everything. I won’t even get on a plane to visit my husband in France.”
“We have drugs for that,” he said. “I can get you a prescription.”
I groaned and stood up again. “I’m not even sure I want to go, even if I wasn’t afraid of flying.” I was pacing again. Then I shook my head. “You know, I’ve gone my entire life being under someone else’s care. I went from my parents, to a sorority, to Dustin. I’ve never taken care of myself. Do you realize that? It’s pitiful.”
“Of course you have. And you’re an excellent mother, too.”
“Well, besides my children, who don’t know any better, who would actually depend on me?”
“You did a great job taking care of Melanie that night in the ER,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. Hadn’t I tried everything to get out of taking care of Melanie?
He was scratching his chin and staring at me. I looked at the floor. “Anyway, Sarah, it doesn’t matter why you do the things you do,” he said. “What matters is that you do know how to take care of yourself. So what if your neighbor mows your lawn? At least you’re getting it done. Everyone has their limits. You may not recognize this, Sarah, but it’s a strength that you know what yours are.”
I collapsed into the chair again and thought it over. I felt a rush of relief like the giddy feeling after an important test is over.
Then I looked up and smiled at Dr. Ashley. “How do you always know exactly what to say to a woman?”
He laughed. “I don’t always know. Otherwise I might actually be married!”
“Getting married has nothing to do with saying the right thing,” I said. “Otherwise Dustin would still be single.”
Dr. Ashley looked at me and cocked his head to the side. “Are you going to be all right?” he asked.
I rubbed at my eyes and took a deep breath. “Yes, I’ll be fine. I may look like a mess, but that’s just the state of my life, really.”
Dr. Ashley looked at his watch and frowned. “I have another appointment waiting, so I need to go, but I want to see you again soon.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
He gathered up my chart and tapped it on the counter to straighten the pages. “Take care of yourself and call me if you need me,” he said, and then, “Go to France and see your husband. It might be just what you need.”
I went to pick up the boys at Courtney’s house and she invited me in to split a turkey sub—real, homemade subs, with fresh turkey, unlike the frozen chicken tenders and hamburger patties I had been eating at home.
“Dr. Ashley actually suggested I go see Dustin overseas,” I said with my mouth full. “Why would he say that?”
“Because you’re married,” Courtney said. “And because all the other wives are going. Because obviously he’s not caught up in this same fantasy with you.”
Her observation crushed me. Was she saying Dr. Ashley didn’t like me after all? Why didn’t she also just go ahead and tell me that reindeer can’t fly or that frozen yogurt is low-fat but not low calorie?
“You really believe that?” I said. “You don’t think he likes me?”
Courtney put down her sandwich and stared at me with a look of disappointment and frustration.
“Are we going to go through this again?” she said.
“Go through what?”
“This whole thing—that’s what. I mean, what do you want me to say, Sarah? What is it you want?”
“I don’t want anything. I just—”
Courtney shook her head. “Do you want me to say the man is in love with you? Do you want me to say you should leave your husband? Is that what you want me to say?”
“What? Of course not, Courtney! You know I love Dustin.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Why are you so angry at me?” I asked.
“Sarah, do you think you’re the only wife who’s suffering? Do you think you’re the only one who’s lonely? Do you think the rest of us don’t hate that our husbands are gone six months out of the year? Do you even think about anyone else at all? Because, honestly, Sarah, I think you’re using this whole doctor thing as an escape. You’re using it to hide from what’s really going on.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. “Courtney? What do you mean? I . . . I . . . I’m sorry. . . .” I didn’t know what else to say.
Suddenly she stood up and pushed her chair away from the table. “You know what I think, Sarah? I think you need to grow up! Quit relying on other people. Quit waiting for a rescue. I mean, really!”
She stomped out of the room. I waited for her to come back and trie
d to think of an apology, but when I heard the bedroom door slam closed, I knew I should leave. I gathered up Ford and Owen and quietly closed the front door behind me.
I was shaking on the way home. From fear or anger, I don’t know, but my head was spinning, and I was beginning to feel overwhelmingly tired.
Where is Mom when I need her? I thought. Oh, how I longed for her to visit again and help me get things in order.
When I opened the front door of the house, there were three piles of dirty laundry on the floor in the foyer. There were stacks of dishes towering in the sink, waiting to be cleaned, and a mountain of mail—mostly bills—was scattered across the sideboard underneath Doris’s oil painting.
Tanner sulked around the corner and I knew immediately by the way her tail was pushed between her legs and her head was hanging low that she had done something. Something bad.
“Tanner,” I said with my hands on my hips. “What have you done, girl?”
She whimpered and cowered behind the legs of a chair.
“Tanner? What’s going on? What did you do?”
I crept around the corner, walking slowly and watching the ground with each step. Then just as I came into the living room, I saw a pile of brown vomit on the carpet. Tanner rarely had accidents, and I couldn’t remember the last time she had gotten sick in the house. I closed my eyes and sighed.
Ford ran off to his room, talking a mile a minute about Superman and Batman and the Flash. I put Owen in his crib for a nap; then I went back into the living room.
Tears rolled off my cheeks as I scrubbed at the stained carpet. There was so much that needed to be done. The bills. The laundry. The dishes. It was all piling up and making me feel tired. I wanted to go to sleep.
Then I heard Tanner making coughing sounds in the other room and I paused to listen. She was getting sick again. My heart beat faster. Somehow, in the back of my mind, I knew. . . .
I walked toward the sound coming from my bedroom and saw Tanner lying on her pillow under my bed. But she was facing the other way, and I couldn’t see her eyes. The air smelled like vomit.
“Tanner girl?” I said softly, but she didn’t move.
“Momma, come see Superman,” Ford yelled from the living room.
“Just a minute, honey,” I said over my shoulder and walked farther into the bedroom.
The room was cool and dark—I had forgotten to open my blinds that morning—and Dustin’s alarm clock cast a greenish light across the bed.
“Tanner?” I said, crawling under the bed toward her.
She didn’t move. She was lying with her head in a pool of spit-up. I instinctively reached out to check her breathing. It was shallow and fast. Her delicate ribs were pumping up and down, but her body was absolutely still.
“Tanner!” I yelled as tears ran down my cheeks. I slid her pillow out from under the bed with her still on top and bundled her in my arms. Her body was limp and she sighed when I pressed her against me. I sat back against the dresser and buried my nose in her fluffy fur.
“Tanner, no,” I cried. “Hold on, Tanner. Don’t leave me now. Not now, girl.”
She was whimpering, but the sound was weak and almost inaudible. I stroked her back and cried, “Please, Tanner, not now. Don’t leave me now.”
“Momma!” Ford yelled, running into the bedroom. “Momma?”
I held up a hand and said as gently as I could manage, “Not now, Ford. Go to another room. Mommy will be out soon.”
He considered me for a minute and his eyes got wide. “Momma? Tanner?”
“Ford, go to the other room,” I said. “Right now!”
He ran back into the living room yelling, “Superman! Don dee da . . . Superman!”
“Please, Tanner, please,” I begged, and she started quivering. Her breathing was getting even faster, but her body was as limp as a wet piece of paper. Her bones felt like toothpicks.
I stood up, still cradling her in my arms, and went to the phone to call Jody.
“Jody, Tanner’s dying,” I sobbed. “She’s dying right here in my arms. My Tanner is dying, and I can’t . . . I can’t . . . I . . . I—”
“I’m coming over,” she said and hung up.
Jody stayed with the boys and I sped to the nearest veterinarian. Tanner lay on her side in the passenger seat. I stroked her back with one hand and drove with the other. I could barely see the yellow lines on the road for all the tears coating my eyes, and I was hiccupping from the sobs.
“Tanner girl . . . Tanner girl . . .” I said it over and over again. “We’re going to make you well. I promise.”
But when I pulled into the gravel parking lot and came around to the passenger door to get her out, I noticed that something in her eyes had changed.
She didn’t have strength to lift her head; it was flat against the seat. But she moved her watery black eyes toward me, and with one tired, graceful arch of her eyebrow, I knew what she was saying: It’s my time to go now, Sarah.
She died inside the vet’s office, as I stroked her back and cried into her fur. I was too choked up to speak, but Tanner didn’t need words anymore. She didn’t need me to talk for her.
Tanner would never see Dustin again. She would never see my boys grow up. She would never again look at me with those bossy, temperamental eyes. She had brought me to this point in my life, but now she was gone, and that moment in the vet’s office may have been the loneliest I’ve felt in my life.
The vet came back into the room. Clearly it was time for me to say good-bye and leave. But how could I go back home without my Tanner? How could I leave her there? After all these years together, how could I just walk away?
The vet put a hand on my shoulder. “You must have lost a childhood pet when you were a kid, too. So you know that time heals and soon you’ll have all the happy memories of Tanner.”
I looked at him with wet, stinging eyes. “Tanner was my childhood pet,” I said and turned to leave.
Back inside the car, I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel and closed my eyes.
“Why me?” I cried. “I can’t take it anymore!”
I wanted to sit there forever. I dreaded going home to the piles of mail, dishes, and laundry, and the thought of waking up in the morning and taking care of the boys and the house all by myself again made me cry harder. There seemed to be no end.
My head began to ache. I leaned it back on the seat and sighed. I can’t go home. Not right now. But I couldn’t sit in the parking lot forever either, so I took a deep breath, straightened my back and wiped my eyes with my fingers, which still smelled like Tanner’s fur. I was holding her green-and-white collar clutched in my left hand. I kissed it and said, “Good-bye,” one last time; then I laid the collar on the passenger seat beside me and started driving. I didn’t know where I was going. And I didn’t care either. I just wanted to keep moving.
Eventually I wound up at the Navy base. I toyed with the idea of going up to see Dr. Ashley, but in one unusually clearheaded moment, I decided to go to the Fleet and Family Support Center instead. It was almost closing time, and the waiting room was empty, so I went directly to the desk of the only employee I saw there. She was a skeletal civilian with permed orange hair pulled back tight in a banana clip. She was busily writing something on a notepad, or possibly simply ignoring me.
“Can I help you?” she said in a smoker’s voice and without looking up.
My hands were shaking; it was hard to admit my failures and that I needed help. But I cleared my throat and said, “Yes, I need some help with my finances. My husband—”
“Take a number and sit down,” she said, still not looking up.
I glanced around the room. There were definitely no other people waiting in line, and she was the only employee so far as I could see.
“But I’m the only person here, and I just thought—”
The woman finally looked up with a blank expression that punctuated her lack of amusement.
I stuttered and cleared my throat
again. “I mean, I just saw that no one else was waiting, and—”
“Read the sign,” she said, pointing with her pen to a piece of notebook paper taped to the front of her desk. Written shakily in pencil the sign read:
Familys will be seen on a first come, first serve bases. Please take a number and wait your turn.
“Oh, I see that now,” I said. “But I’m the only one here, and I just thought, you know—”
She looked at me hard and raised an eyebrow. The wrinkles radiating from her mouth were like deep valleys, and there was the faintest amount of fuzzy hair above her lip. I felt a little afraid of her.
“Well, OK then,” I said. “I guess I’ll just take a number and sit down.”
I went to a red number dispenser and pulled the tab. Number seventeen. Did numbers one to sixteen go through this same ordeal? I wondered.
There was a makeshift waiting room consisting of a grouping of plastic chairs along the beige cement wall, so I found a seat and sat with my purse in my lap. I wasn’t going to get comfortable.
A few moments later, the woman put down her pen and took a breath to speak. I got ready to stand.
“Now taking number sixteen,” she said.
You’ve got to be kidding me! I glanced around at the empty chairs.
“Number sixteen,” she called again. Then she waited a minute before going back to her writing.
I was starting to get angry. This is the problem with military facilities, I thought. They follow the rules, whether they make any sense or not. Apparently the woman had been taught that everyone needs a number and everyone has to wait. Why didn’t someone empower her to make exceptions when her good judgment called for it?
I shifted in my seat, purposely making noise so she wouldn’t forget I was there. But, really, how could she forget?
The woman put down the pen again, looked out across the room, and said to no one in particular, “Number seventeen. Now taking number seventeen.”