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“
What’s funny?” Olivia
says.

“I was just
remem—”

“It’s true,” she says. “I
would do anything for you and Jake. I hope you know
that.”

“I do.” My tongue feels like
jerky. I get up for a glass of water and drink it fast. Some of it
spills down the sides of my chin and I try to wipe it away without
her seeing.

“Water,” she breathes. “That
must be how tired I am! It hadn’t even occurred to me, and I’m
absolutely parched. May I have a glass?”

The glass I used was the
last clean one. I wash it, fill it with water, drop in an ice cube
and put it in front of her.

She drinks half of it. “He
sounded wonderful, by the way. Oh, I’m so sorry you didn’t get to
talk to him.”

“That’s twice you’ve talked
to him…?”

“Three times, I think. Let
me see…once when he first got there, the second time I told you
about, and then this time. So, yes. Three. I’ve been very lucky.”
She dips a finger in her coffee and gets up to put it in the
microwave. “I hope you don’t mind me telling you this. I know you
haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet, but I think the important
thing is that he’s safe. And, well, he did try to call you
yesterday, after all, but I guess you weren’t home.”

“No.”

The microwave stops and she
pulls out her mug. “Well, like I said—and I know you agree, hon—all
that matters is that he’s okay. I listen to the news every day, you
know, and not a day goes by that I don’t hear about someone being
killed one way or another. Did you hear about the
crash?”

“No.”

“Well, when I hear or see
things like that I just think, ‘At least it’s not Jake.’ I feel so
horribly—

(
Horrible
, I think)

—for those poor, other
mothers—”

“When was it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The crash. When was it?
What kind of helicopter?”

“Don’t worry, hon. It wasn’t him. It
was a Blackhawk, thank God.”

“Is
that
all?” I wait, but the sarcasm is
lost on her. “Were there survivors?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so.
There rarely are, you know. But you and me, and all of them, we
have to stay strong. Have to believe in our President, and believe
in the work they do over there and know that they wouldn’t be there
if it weren’t for a good reason. You just have to trust that, and
know that no matter how many die, it’s for a reason. Even if it’s a
hundred. Four hundred! You’ll see. We’ll visit the memorial
tomorrow, and you’ll see. And it’s not too bad, you know. The
number. Fifteen, maybe? No—I believe it was…eighteen?” She rolls
her eyes. “I can’t remember. Can you believe it? And I just saw it
on the news this morning.”

She watches me over her
coffee. “It’s hard. I know.” Her hand slides toward mine on the
table, just to the center, and her fingers, the skin shiny like wet
dough, beckon. I let her grip mine loosely. “You just have to have
faith that he’ll be okay,” she says. “That’s what I do. I feel so
badly that other mothers are losing their children to this war
every day, I do, but I’m also so blessed that Jake has made it this
far, because you never know. You just never know when and if it
will be him.”

No good response for this,
so I say, “He’s a good pilot.”

“I know he is, I know,” she
says. “But sometimes, it just doesn’t matter. They have those
little guys shooting them right out of the sky.”

Coffee. I take a long drink
to dilute the acid in my mouth. “What were you saying earlier?
Something about a memorial?”

“You know it,” she says.
“The one they’re building just off the bypass.”

I shake my head,
no.

“I came that way on purpose
because I read they were going to build something for the boys—and
girls—from this post who don’t make it back. It’s lovely. A
beautiful thought. They deserve something like that, a testament to
their honor, a show of belief in their cause. I know our Jakey will
have thought it was worth it if he doesn’t come back.”

“Yes.” I wish I had a
cigarette. “A memorial. Well worth it.”

“Yes. Well.” Olivia pushes
her coffee aside and stretches and asks if there’s anything
stronger, “Something with a bit of a bite, maybe?”

She only sips at her wine on
holidays, rarely finishing even half of what she gives herself. “I
have—we have vodka. Left over, that is, from New Year’s
Eve.”

“That would be just
fine.”

I wash another glass and
pour her drink, but she waves it off as too strong. I add orange
juice.

“Don’t you want a drink,
dear?”

“No, thanks…we really only
keep that stuff around for special occasions.”

We move into the living
room. She pauses at the Christmas tree and I wait for her to say
something, but she doesn’t. Too tired, maybe, or at a loss. What’s
there to say? It’s just a tree, an old tree, and people forget to
drag out their Christmas trees all the time. But then she touches a
branch, and needles fall. She takes a sip of her drink and sighs,
then sits and slips off her shoes and stretches out on the couch
with her feet propped on the arm, her glass where she can reach it
on the coffee table. I bring my coffee to the chair and wait for
one of us to talk. She looks around the room.

“You have nice pictures of
him,” she says. “I’d like copies, if you can.”

“I’ll send them to you this
week.” But I doubt I will. Jake and I put all of our negatives
together in a shoebox, unlabeled, unorganized. It would take time,
and I need to find a job, clean the house, get rid of the tree.
Take Chancey to the vet. A notice that came last week—or was it two
weeks ago?—said he’s overdue.

“The most recent picture I
have of him is from high school,” she says. “He never sends me any
of the pictures they take of them in their uniforms. ‘The man in
those pictures is only part of me,’ he always says. I think he just
doesn’t like the way they turn out. But, oh, how handsome he is in
uniform, isn’t he?”

He is. “Yes,” I say. “And
no, he doesn’t really like them, the pictures.” Something about the
way his mouth sets when he’s not smiling. He brought one home for
me to see, said, “Get a good look,” then tore it in half and
dropped it in the trash.

“I’ll be right
back.”

In the bedroom is a
years-old picture of Jake in his BDUs embracing his car when it was
new, the first morning he took it to work. Chrome glints in flashes
here and there and the roof reflects his face from the chin up.
That was two years before I moved in, when he had the other
girlfriend. I unfasten the back and peel out the picture and bring
it to Olivia. She smiles and presses it in her palms.

“He wasn’t my first, of
course you know.”

“Your first?”

She sits up and drinks from
her glass like it’s straight orange juice. “I was eighteen when I
had her, and she died seven months later. Seven months. Shelbi.”
She died in her sleep, Olivia says, and she knew right away, woke
straight up from a dream. She’s buried in a cemetery in Granby,
Colorado, plot 87. Just her name, Shelbi Lakeland, but no dates,
Olivia says. “A soul is ageless, timeless, don’t you think? And to
tell her age, well, that would just make people stop and think,
‘Oh, how young, how sad,’ but no one would remember her
name.”

I don’t remember ever having
heard about a sister.

Olivia’s husband is buried
beside his daughter in a family plot with a Rocky Mountain view.
Olivia and Jake will end up there, too, she says. When the time
comes. I don’t tell her about his Arlington plan. She’ll be long
gone by the time his turn comes around, and if it makes her happy
to believe he’ll be buried in Granby, so be it.

“Jake did tell you about
Shelbi,” she says.

“Of course, yes. Very
sad.”

“You looked surprised, is
all.”

“Oh, no. No, I just—it’s
just a fresh feeling of sadness every time I hear it.”

Olivia says I can’t imagine
the pain of losing a child. I agree. She says I can’t imagine what
it’s like to worry she’ll lose another. I nod. “Jake is all I
have,” she says, both hands circling the glass. “Someday, hon,
you’ll know. If he makes it back and you two have kids of your
own.” She sighs. “Jake would make a wonderful father.”

“Yes,” I say.

“You would have to see him
with his young cousins to know, dear, but he really—well, you’ll
learn, in time. What’s it been, just a couple of years?”

“Three.”

“And you want children, of
course.”

Not sure what to say, I
smile at her.

She waits, looking at me.
“Well.” She rubs her hands on her pants. “If you’ll excuse me.
Sometimes I think I’m nothing but a funnel!” She jostles the table
when she stands and her drink splashes over the rim.

“I’ll take care of it. You
go ahead.”

I wipe up the spill and
avoid thinking about children, the one I don’t plan to have, the
ones she’ll never get from Shelbi. When she returns she says “Yes,
thank you” to a refill. She stirs it with the spoon I left in the
glass. “Jake tells me he’s only received one of your letters,” she
says. “Have you sent many?” She sets her spoon on a piece of paper
towel left on the table.

“Two or three.”

“Oh?”

“I think it takes a long
time for mine to get to him.”

“That could be.”

“It would have to
be.”

“He’s received all of mine,”
she says. “I think I’ve sent him…let me see, now.” She mouths the
numbers while counting on her fingers. “Eight. I know it’s not
many, but I’m so busy at work and taking care of things around the
house, and…well,. I write when I can.”

My coffee is cold, now, but
I drink it anyway. The living room falls quiet minus ticking from
the helicopter clock on the shelf. A gift from Olivia for
Christmas, crystal and brass. Not Jake’s taste, and not an Apache.
“It’s a Huey,” Jake said, looking at it with half a smile, “but to
her, a helicopter is a helicopter.”

“When did you say you mailed
your last one?” she says.

“Excuse me.” I get up. “I
guess it’s contagious.”

I lift the lid so that it
taps the tank in case she’s listening from the living room and sit
on the floor.

The phone rings. I haven’t
been in long enough to go back out there naturally, so I wait for
the machine. It’s most likely Denise.

If it is Jake, Olivia will
pick up, and I’ll still get to talk to him.

“Mia, hon, your phone is
ringing.”

“The machine will get it.”
The bathtub presses hard on my back, but the throw rug is soft and
I am alone, the bathroom a vault, a cave, a haven. I reach up to
turn off the light and a low moon shines through the
window.

“What if it’s Jake?” she
calls.

“Please answer, if it
is.”

The phone stops ringing and
the machine answers, plays my recording, beeps, and a voice says,
“Mia,” and now it’s too late. To run out would look suspicious,
especially now, so I wait it out and run through a list of
explanations while he talks.

“Hey…You there? You
workin’?—Course you’re not. Charlie drove me this mornin’—hey, when
did you leave? He said you quit…I’m goin’ to miss my mornin’ angel.
You think I like lookin’ at that bearded bastard every day? Come
over. You left your picture…Or don’t. Free
TV Guide
. Bye. Donny.”

APRIL 20, SUNDAY

The grocery store is, at six
in the morning, empty and fluorescent-bright. Generic
easy-listening tunes play soft through the overheads. No cashiers
stand guard behind the only two open registers; rather, they roam
the aisles, re-shelving expensive items discarded at last minute
and replacing products carried aisles over before becoming
second-thought castoffs. Olivia walks in front of the cart with two
fingers curled in the corner grating and pulls it behind her. I
rest my hands on the guide bar and tap the plastic with the rhythm
of the squeaking wheel.

“He likes these,” she says,
pulling a box of chocolate-covered wafers from the
shelf.

“I know,” I say, but I don’t
remember having seen them in our cabinets.

She slides the wafers
between a can of soup and a box of dog-shaped crackers. She drops
in a bag of candy. “He went just crazy for these when he was ten,”
she says.

She doesn’t look at me,
hasn’t since last night when the argument about Donny ended without
resolution. Afterward, Olivia stared out the window, the way Jake
does when he’s angry, and then spent close to an hour in the
bathroom. Sleep tempted while I waited, but coffee without sugar or
cream, hot and pouring fast, kept me awake. When she came out, she
stood by the door and wiped at her nose and said, “Good night,” and
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow, in the morning. I’d like to get the
shopping done early. If you’ll still be sending him a package, that
is.”