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________

June 13

Jake,

I get up to heat my coffee,
then sit back down and move the candle to spread more light on the
paper. Normally, late morning sun would light the desk, but today’s
clouds and rain make the apartment dark, dreary, cozy.

I’m looking at your letter
on the computer screen. I know. I should have written days—a
week!—ago, but I couldn’t.

Thanks for the message you
left on my birthday.

In truth, Jake, I put off
writing you on purpose. How was I supposed to talk or write you
without saying something about what you wrote about the
Army?

Oh, and I’m sorry about
ditching you when we were emailing. I was avoiding you.

But I’ll tell you
now.

At first, I was angry. You
were
sure
you were
getting out, you said. I told you how I felt when you first joined,
and you said you felt the same way. It was something you needed to
do, but there was also more we wanted to do together that included
being rule-less, remember? And then I got your email and I felt
like I was being grounded, or something. How many more years did I
want to have to rely on you getting weekend passes any time we
wanted to leave the area (I know, they’re not hard to get, but
still, you have to), or let the Army decide were we live? All of
this affects me, too. I thought we were going to see the country
before finding a house somewhere. Yes, the Army moves us around,
but we wanted to make all those choices that are made for us
now.

I know people change and
minds change and I can’t count on anything, but I thought I should
at least be able to count on you. (I’m not trying to make you feel
guilty; I just want you to understand what I was thinking when I
was avoiding you.) I thought I should have been able to trust you
to not do anything to hurt me. But then you told me about your
decision to stay in the Army, and I actually hated you for a
minute.

I scratch out the last
sentence with heavy lines and loops so he can’t make it out even if
he flips over the page to read the backward pen
impressions.

But then you told me about
your decision to stay in the Army, and it hurt.

Now it’s the creamer in my
coffee making me nauseous (can I drink nothing I like, anymore?). I
go into the bathroom, bend over the toilet, vomit, flush, and brush
my teeth. I bring the roll of toilet paper with me to the
desk.

Now, though… I’m not mad,
now. I saw this flower, Jake, this one purple flower just growing
there all by itself on a trench at a Civil War battlefield. The
petals were so vibrant and soft and beautiful and I almost, almost
picked it and took it home. The same way I picked a clump of grass
from the trench and stuffed it in my pocket. Do you know what,
though? What if a piece of a soldier’s soul was in those blades of
grass? What if it’s all there because that’s exactly where it’s
supposed to be?

The thing is, Jake, I
understand. I really do understand, now. Before, I would have tried
to get you to quit the Army. If you can’t empathize, it’s easy to
ask for all kinds of unrealistic and unfair things. (I still wish
you would have asked me what I thought before you decided to stay
in. In case you’re thinking, “But, I asked you what you thought,”
your asking me after the fact is a little different from having
asked me about the possibility, before the decision had already
been made.)

And I understand your
thoughts about marriage, too. People
shouldn’t
get married unless it’s
because they want to. Nothing, no outside force, should push them
into it.

Which brings me to this: It
won’t work for me, you staying in the Army. I can’t…I
can’t
, Jake. It sounds
crazy, but I love you too much to be with you through that many
more years of Army life. I’m just not cut out for it. Some people
aren’t, you know. That’s forgivable, isn’t it? Maybe if we knew for
sure there would be no more deployments… (Well, okay—that’s a
ridiculous line of thinking.)

You don’t know what I’ve
gone through, what I’m going through. I know – you’re going through
things, too. And I know, they’re bad. You’re the one doing war
stuff, you’re the one who lost a friend. I’m not discounting that.
But this, right now, is about me. And I think my stuff is just as
hard, but in a different way.

But it’s okay. You were
right. Your life is yours, and my life is mine, and we need to live
them the best way we can. Everything you wrote in your
letter

I’m interrupted by the
phone. Shellie asks if I’ve started feeling any better since
calling in this morning.

“I wish I did. I know you
guys are short.”

She tells me to keep up with
the garlic, and in the background, before she hangs up, I hear
Lenny say, “She’s a liar. She ain’t sick.”

makes sense. Which is why
I know we should

I wipe my eyes and blow my
nose, and the force of it presses everywhere inside my head. Lenny
was right. I am a liar.

not be together anymore. We
got a little practice these last few months, so it’s not like much
will change, right? Jake, I don’t want to hurt you. I never, never
want to hurt you. I love you so much.

Love,

Mia

p.s. I hate that I already
feel better. I had hoped I would be wrong.

The mailman—early,
today—arrives in his white truck just as I’m about to put the
letter in the outgoing bin. Denise follows him up the
walk.

He opens the door, nods,
“Mornin’,” and sticks out his palm. “Goin’ out?” He points at the
envelope while wedging a foot in the door.

Denise says, “Excuse me,”
and squeezes past him and waits behind me on the
landing.

“Sure,” I say.

He takes the letter from my
hand, then deposits incoming mail in the boxes on the wall. Mine
stays empty.

The rain starts fast, falls
heavy, and he runs to the house next door.

“Sorry,” Denise says, her
hands in her back pockets. “There’s nothing worse than an empty
box, is there?”

We look at each other. Her
mouth twitches.

“No,” I say, “there
isn’t.”

We’re still laughing when we
get to my kitchen, and I learn that Denise tends to
snort.

“
Coffee?”

We sit at the table with our
hot mugs, neither of us saying much. Denise’s bronze-brown lipstick
collects at the corners of her mouth and in the thin lines of her
lips.

“Isn’t that…?” Denise points
behind me at the far livingroom wall where Donny’s painting
hangs.

“Yeah.”

She laughs. “But,
why
? It’s so…it’s so…well,
you like it, so never mind. How did you afford it,
anyway?”

I tell her I got a
deal.

She says, “I do miss snow.
Looking at that reminds me of what winter is supposed to look
like.”

Rain splashes from the sill
onto my arm, and since Denise hasn’t lit a cigarette, yet, I close
the window.

“Anyway—” she says, and from
downstairs we hear, “You ready?”

“In one second!” Safia
screams.

“The door is
open.”

“Asshole!” she yells. “We
cannot go without my Visa, and you know.”

“Call me an asshole again
and we won’t go at all.”

“Oh, Paul, you do not mean
that. You know I love you, my bear.” We listen through the pause.
“I found it!” she shouts.

“Well, hurry up,” he shouts
back.

Keys jangle in their lock,
she pounds down the stairs, and the main door slams.

“What was all that
about?”

“I don’t know,” I say,
though, now I do. I wonder if they’ll pass. We watch their car
speed to the intersection, wipers on high to fight the
downpour.

“Anyway,” Denise starts
again, “if Brian comes by—”

“Why would Brian come
by?”

“I don’t know. He’s crazy.
He calls all the time and begs me not to leave.”

“Well, you’re leaving
tomorrow. He’ll have to get over it.”

She nods, her eyes on the
painting. “I guess he will.”

“You were saying, though,
that should he come over…?”

“Oh. Right. Don’t answer the
door, if he does. He’ll trap you in a sad story and won’t leave for
hours. He’s done it to Marc—do you remember Marc from that
party?—and Marc has called me to plead on Brian’s behalf. It’s
pitiful, really.”

“I think it’s kind of
sweet.”

“That’s because it’s not
happening to you.” She holds out her cup for more coffee and I
point at the machine. She gets it for herself. When her back is to
me, she says, “Maybe it is kind of sweet, huh?” She sits back down
and says it’s too late, anyway. The movers came this morning and by
early evening tomorrow, she’ll be somewhere else, hours
away.

I want to ask her if she
already gave him the driving directions.

We talk about her plans,
which include not only buying a house, but a new car. “A used new
one, because you really have to think about depreciation. Can you
believe how responsible I sound? Do you even recognize me? And I’m
going to have a child by the time I’m thirty-two—in case I want
two, you know, because after that,” she says, munching a cashew
from a tin I set on the table, “your eggs dry up little by little.
It’s true. You can’t even sell your eggs after twenty-nine because
they’re practically worthless. You have to sell them while you’re
young. Like you.”

“I’m not much younger than
you are.”

“Three years is three
years.”

I get up for a glass of
water and she watches me walk from the chair to the refrigerator
and back to the chair.

She says, “No one wears
overalls anymore. What is this, ninety-seven?”

“They’re
comfortable.”

“I bet.” She tosses a nut in
her mouth. “So?”

“I’ll be right back.” I go
to the bathroom and close the door and run the sink. I hear her
chair slide back from the table and her weight shifting the
floorboards as she walks around, browsing the way she does.
Hallway, bedroom, hallway, living room. Then the noise stops. I
flush the toilet and turn off the water and open the door. Denise
sits at the computer with her fingers on the keyboard’s arrow
pad.

“What are you
doing?”

Her face is white, a
reflection from the monitor. “He’s so…
communicative
. William was never able
to express himself very well in letters.”

I walk over to the desk and
see that she hasn’t read beyond the first screen.

“William didn’t really write
much about what he felt. Just, ‘I woke up at this time, then I had
breakfast, and then I went to a meeting. The meeting was boring.’ I
don’t know how long it would have taken me to find out about the
twelve-month thing.” She shrugs. “I enjoyed getting his letters,
but I wish he would have…I don’t know…told me more.” She presses
the down arrow until the next page comes up.

“If you don’t mind,” I say,
turning off the monitor before she can read Jake’s question about
her letter to William.

“No, no. I’m sorry. I had no
business…really.” She gets up and smoothes her pants and asks if
she can stay a while. She gets pretty sore sitting on the floor for
more than fifteen minutes, she says, and she never knew she could
miss her furniture so much. “It hasn’t even been a full
day!”

I sit on the oversized chair
and she curls up on the couch and I ask her if she wants to watch
television.

“Anything but the news,” she
says, so I find something equally mindless, but more upbeat. We
laugh when we’re supposed to and sit quietly during commercials
until she says, at the end of an advertisement for a new plastic
mallet-and-bolt set, “I envy you.”

Two hours later, Denise and
I are folded in the quiet peace of an hours-long rain, warm and dry
inside while, outside, occasional lightning strikes whiten the
room, and strong winds whip branches against the side of the
building. Denise snores on the couch, turned toward the wall in a
fetal position, and I watch TV while falling in and out of sleep, a
screamer in the laugh-track audience pulling me from fleeting
dreams. When I open my eyes, it’s to the painting, always the
painting, and I can’t help but imagine Emily in her slippers and
robe and the man standing at the end of the drive and that,
someday, his big boots will disturb the snow on the way to ring her
doorbell.

“You take care, Len!
Y’hear?” The yelling—and next, a slamming car door—is loud enough
to be heard through closed windows.

I lift Chancey off my lap
and get up to look outside. Donny squints up at the building, wet
hair stuck to his head. I watch him waver on the walkway to the
building and disappear through the door, then hear him dragging up
the stairs, stopping now and then to, I imagine, check numbers on
doorways.