You Know When the Men Are Gone (17 page)

Goose bumps fluttered across Kailani’s skin and she ran a hand down her arm, trying to rub them away. She waited until Manny’s breathing evened out and then she put her arm around his sharp hip, trying not to cling too tightly, needing to feel the wholeness of him next to her, his heat and breath, his flesh and bone.

She never did bring it up; never again did either of them mention [email protected]. Even after the men had been home for a month and Manny had gained weight and grown out his hair long enough to have gotten reprimanded by his first sergeant for letting it touch his ears. Even after their block leave spent in Florida, at Disney World, and then a few days at the beach, where they managed to “surf”: Kailani bringing Ana out on a rented boogie board and riding the waves back in with her shouting in delight. Even after Manny was promoted and Kailani, ignoring the advice from Finance, told him to buy himself a new truck.

One afternoon, Kailani and Cristina sipped coffee, watching the kids on the playground, and Cristina leaned forward to say, “Girl, have I got some gossip for you.”

Kailani stretched her legs out in the sun and nodded at Ana, who was at the top of a slide, jumping up and down and shouting, “Mom!”

“What gossip?” she asked, kicking off her flip-flops and burying her toes in the sandbox, loving the feel of it even if it was clumped and damp. Javier was at her feet playing with a plastic shovel, alternately gnawing the handle and then banging on the flattened sand.

Cristina licked at the foam of her latte, clearly delighting in her news. “There’s this private in supply; she was with the guys in Iraq. She some blond little
puta
that everybody been calling a home-wrecker. Every married
chica
got to watch out for their husbands ’cause this private, she only like married men—”

“Don’t tell me,” Kailani said softly.

Cristina blinked her thick lashes. “You got to know. You got to be aware.”

Kailani carefully took a sip of her coffee. “Don’t even tell me her name.” She looked at her toes deep in the sand and thought of body parts, hands and feet separated from limbs, lives and identities lost, bits and pieces left behind and buried in Baghdad. Her husband had just spent a year of his life there, a year she would never know or understand. There were things he had seen and done that he could tell her about in the middle of the night, and there were things that he could not.

The year was over. He had returned to her. He was home.

Kailani imagined going back to Oahu, maybe when Manny retired. They would barbecue at the beach across from her mother’s backyard, the breeze pushing the palm trees against the horizon. They would watch the waves come in, blue and limitless, the rhythm hiding the tumult underneath, and they would know how lucky they were to be there together, intact.

“But—”

“I said I don’t want to know,” Kailani said firmly, her voice suddenly too loud. Cristina sat back into the bench, her eyes wide and disappointed. Then Ana started waving wildly, her small hand arcing for her mother’s undivided attention, and, as Kailani watched in silence, the child slipped safely down the slide.

THE LAST STAND

S
pecialist Kit Murphy entered Abrams Gym slowly, still getting used to the hop and swing of his crutches, the pressure under his armpits, and the jerking motion of his injured foot. Everyone was acting as if this was a normal welcome home ceremony—there were unit banners and flags on the wall as well as a DJ with a red, white, and blue cowboy hat yodeling nonsense into his microphone. But no one was fooled, not with the doctors standing around. Kit could spot medical corps even though they wore their camouflage uniforms: the medics watched the thirteen returning soldiers too closely in that impatient-doctor kind of way, like they were hoping someone would fall over and make their valuable presence worthwhile. And the waiting family members cheered daintily rather than that stomping, raucous, happy-to-be-alive way that crowds usually behaved, all of them trying to keep the horror of the moment to themselves, not sure what to expect or wish for, watching their wounded slowly making their way back to the land of the whole.

Kit wasn’t sure what to expect or wish for either as he scanned the crowd for Helena. He hadn’t been able to get in touch with her for over a week; lately it was her mom, Linda, who cooed at Kit over the phone as if he were a colicky baby in the throes of a tantrum rather than a husband trying to have a word with his wife. On the bus ride from the airport, he had been dreading this moment of standing alone, of being selected to get a pity-hug from the too-dressed-up FRG leaders or too-dressed-down Red Cross volunteers who greeted the soldiers standing unloved amid the embraces. But behind the loose-necked gaggle of veterans waving their made-in-China American flags, he saw Helena’s red hair, the lift of her chin, and the widening recognition in her eyes. Kit felt his cheeks blush hot with embarrassment; he kept his eyes on her hair and wouldn’t look around, afraid another soldier would see how relieved he was to find someone waiting for him.

“I didn’t know if you got word I was coming back,” Kit said from the passenger seat of Helena’s rental car. Two months ago his Humvee had been hit on Route Pluto, outside of Sadr City, surprised by a clever little Iranian bomb that had been hidden under the corpse of a skinny dog. Kit had immediately been evacuated to the Ibn Sina Hospital in the Green Zone, then helicoptered to Baghdad International Airport, then flown to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Facility in Germany, though of course he couldn’t remember any of that. The doctors in Germany let him call home when the concussion had healed enough for him to string words together. At first Helena wanted to know everything about his injury and they would talk until an orderly came into the room or Kit passed out with the phone pressed up against his ear. But when he got to D.C., to Walter Reed, when the surgeries didn’t seem to be doing him any good and nothing was healing the way it was supposed to, when a month had passed and then six, seven, eight weeks, it was harder to get in touch with her.

“I left messages with a nurse; I think her name was Valencia,” Helena said, eyes on the road. “Didn’t she give them to you?”

Kit shrugged. He knew all the nurses and they had some pretty unusual names, but none of them were called Valencia. It was the nurses who alerted him that something might be wrong, the way they seemed overly excited when handing him one of Helena’s phone messages that she had asked them to write down rather than being connected directly to Kit’s room, even though he was wide awake in his bed and playing last generation’s Nintendo:
Helena called but didn’t want to wake you up! Helena hopes you are feeling better! Helena is so happy you are coming home!
Full of exclamation marks with overenthusiastic hearts at the bottom. He would crumple the pink slips into tiny balls of anger. On his flight from D.C., his section of the plane was dotted with fellow battered soldiers leaning forward with sweat on their foreheads, all of them wondering if their wives would be waiting, and if they were, how long they would stick around when they saw the burn scars, the casts, the missing bits and pieces that no amount of
Star Wars
metal limbs could make up for.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Helena asked softly, lifting her right hand from the steering wheel and placing it on his elbow, a pat really, but that touch was everything he needed. Kit took a deep breath and knew just being with Helena again meant he was home.

They pulled into a Padre’s Motel parking lot just outside the main gate, a big sign advertising rates of $180 a week, breakfast and HBO included.

“I thought you were going to find an apartment?” he asked.

Helena shook her head. “I just got here last night.”

When they opened the motel room door, Kit immediately noticed the twin beds. He looked at Helena, who sat down on the corner of one, bouncing on the edge of the mattress like a kid with an attention deficit disorder.

“I thought two beds would be best for your foot,” she said, her voice oddly loud and cheerful. “You know how I toss and turn. You wouldn’t want me to roll over on your cast in the middle of the night!”

“Yeah, I would.” He sat down on the other bed and stared. He had been away for more than a year, he had almost died, and his wife got a room with
two beds
?

Helena stood up, flipping that waterfall of strawberry blond hair over her shoulder the way she always did when she was nervous. She went into the small kitchenette and opened the fridge with a Vanna White motion of her arm, illuminating rows of bottled beer. “You’ve got to be starving! Let’s have a drink and order pizza.”

Kit took the bottle she handed him and twisted the cap off so hard it tore little ridges from the skin of his palm.

They watched TV, ate a pepperoni pie, and Kit tried to drink enough Coors to not feel anything at all, wishing for whiskey. Helena, talking nonstop, told him about his old friends at home: how John Roark got a senior in high school pregnant and they married on the due date; how Sunny Shay was making a fortune on her sex toy website but Father Mellon refused to give her communion at Sunday Mass; how Tim Lewski got yet another DUI as he drove home after refereeing a kids’ soccer game. Kit didn’t speak or even listen, just watched her thin hands as she spoke, the way they fluttered in the air like Fourth of July sparklers.