Stepping Into Sunlight (22 page)

No matter how well a day goes, we have a huge gaping hole in our
family without you here. Bryan and I can’t wait for your return.

A million hugs, and a few too-passionate-for-a-chaplain kisses.
Your Penny

This time I didn’t delete the e-mail. I read it a few times and decided it didn’t sound too weak or needy, so I hit Send. I’d finally had the courage to share some of the struggle with Tom.

Still wide awake, I began my search of Navy-spouse blogs, hopscotching from one to another via recommended links. I also found several sites about post-traumatic stress and nodded in identification as I read about experiences that the bloggers shared. When I paused to stretch out a kink in my back, I was surprised to see that it was two in the morning.

I took a moment to check for new e-mails, not that there was much chance Tom could have replied already.

But he had! My fingers flew to click it open.
Auto response.
Communications will be unavailable until further notice. I’ll respond to
your message when they are restored.

chapter
19

D
ESPAIR CAME OUT OF
my throat as a low moan. Tom had warned me that there would be times during his deployment when communications would be locked out. They might be doing maneuvers. They might be headed for a hot zone. I understood the need for security. But this couldn’t have hit at a worse time. My body slumped with exhaustion, but my neurons fired off fragments of loud, chaotic thoughts. A cold, empty bed held no appeal, and sleep would probably evade me again. Instead, I opened my browser. Yahoo! Games sprang open to the book-marked Spider Solitaire. I sighed with the pleasure of the familiar and rested my chin in my left hand while the right guided the mouse. The cards flipped and moved, and the patterns created a mental Novocain. I played the game over and over, enjoying the way my nerve endings deadened more and more with each repetition.

Just one more try. Almost won that one. Let’s try it again.
Seven onto eight. A full row of hearts. Again. Again. I slipped into a gambler’s trance.

After winning a long round, I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock. Three thirty? That couldn’t be right. I stretched and turned off the computer. Some folks might criticize all that wasted time, but it was either that or tossing in bed for hours. Solitaire was healthier than sleeping pills, wasn’t it?

When I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, black and red cards flashed across my mind’s screen. Maybe I
had
played too long. I pushed out of the chair, stumbled to the bedroom, and collapsed on the bed without bothering to change into pajamas. Alex used to struggle to sleep at night, too. For the first time, I realized how much that must have added to his loneliness. Since the shooting, my body rebelled against the same schedule as the rest of the human race. Tired all day, restless all night.

I began the drift down toward unconsciousness. Suddenly, my muscles gave a reflexive jerk and startled me awake. With a deep breath, I coaxed my limbs to relax again, and thought about a verse from Psalms, letting it chant soothingly to my brain cells.

Hovering on the edge of sleep, I might have dozed for a few minutes. Then my heart suddenly lurched against my ribs, stuttering into a frantic race that jarred me awake. Adrenaline surged through me in pulsing waves with nowhere to go. No nightmares had triggered the sensation. The terror was just suddenly
there
. I hugged my pillow and prepared to ride out the feelings. Cold sweat and shakes shut out all logical thought. I wanted to pray, but all I managed to say was, “Jesus. Help. Please. Jesus, help.”

Again and again I said the words, grabbing the hem of His robe, ignoring all the scornful disciples who stood in my way on a dusty Palestine road.

This isn’t fair. There wasn’t even a trigger this time. No sound of a
gun, no sight of a teenage thug. Just a panic that jumped from zero to sixty
in a millisecond.

When I thought the horror couldn’t grow worse, my mind added a torment along with the physical sensations. The orange peel texture on the bedroom ceiling created shapes in the darkness. Distorted memories flickered through my mind. Bryan’s disappointed eyes. The old woman in the lavender blouse falling backward. The swirling red police lights. Camille’s bruised face at the support group. Blood spreading across the glossy linoleum like a child’s finger painting.

I was strobing into madness. More images battered me as I squeezed my eyes shut and worked to take slow, deep breaths. It seemed like hours before the adrenaline stopped sending “fight or flight” messages through my nerves and let me sink back into sleep. But even there, tortuous images chased me. Ships exploding. Tom sinking beneath waves. Bryan tumbling and tumbling . . . the thud of his body hitting the ground beneath the jungle gym. The man with the gun. Blood coloring the sand. “No. Please, no!”

“Mom?” Bryan cried in fear, tugging on my arm from his crumpled place in the wet sand.

“Mommy? Wake up! Please.”

My eyes flew open. Bryan stood beside the bed, his hand clutching my arm. His tears caught the mottled gleam from the night-light.

“Oh, sweetie. You’re okay.” I reached for him.

He hesitated. That moment of uncertainty broke my heart.

Then he stepped into my arms. I held him, patted him, and made shushing sounds to comfort us both.

“You were screaming.” His words sounded grumpy, spoken with his mouth pressed against my shoulder. But the tremble in his small bones held more fear than anger.

“I’m sorry. It was just a bad dream. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You were screaming,” he said again. Plaintive. Declaring the injustice of it. A mother was supposed to reassure and comfort, not jar her child out of bed with hysterical screams.

I carried him back to his bed and sang his favorite Sunday school songs until my voice went hoarse. Long after he fell asleep, I continued to stroke his hair and whisper promises to him.

The next morning was a crazy scramble to make Bryan’s lunch and find his library books that were due. How did one of them end up under the bathroom rug? If I hadn’t stubbed my toe against it, I never would have thought to look there. Throughout the morning rush I kept kicking myself.
Why didn’t you lay out his
clothes last night? Why didn’t you check to make sure his bag was ready?
You should start making lunches ahead and freezing them so it’s easier
to pack them each day. You’re failing as a mom. Maybe you should send
Bryan to stay with your parents.

We only had time for a quick prayer on the front steps. Jim-Bob now pressed close to Bryan every morning and expected to be blessed as well. I placed one hand on each boy’s head, bemused by Jim-Bob’s insinuation into our family tradition. “Dear God, thank you for giving us the gift of life. Keep these two fine young men in your care today and bless their time at school.”

“Amen.” They chimed in. Jim-Bob gave a freckle-stretching smile. Then they both raced to the corner where the bus was pulling up.

I closed the door and sagged onto the couch. With closed eyes, I visualized a plan of attack. Taking a shower and putting on fresh clothes was a good idea but too much effort. Maybe I should use my tiny bit of energy to do supper preparations, so there’d be a good meal to pop in the oven tonight. And of course, I also needed to help someone today for my Penny’s Project notebook.

The weight of options pressed me down into the cushions. Finally I forced my body up. Maybe Tom had been able to send an e-mail.

I booted up the computer and tapped my fingers while my ISP collected new e-mails. Nothing from Tom, but an early-morning note from Mrs. Pimblott popped onto the screen. Tempted to shut down the program, I bit my lip and clicked it open instead.

Mrs. Sullivan, I appreciated your past e-mail about Bryan and the reasons
for his distraction. I have seen some improvements, but yesterday
we had another incident. He has been having some temper problems,
and I’d really like to meet with you in person. Let me know a time that
is convenient for you. Thank you. Mrs. Pimblott.

I groaned and rubbed my face. I was such a bad mom that now my intelligent, amiable son was having more trouble in school.

He’d never had trouble back in Wisconsin. Even when Tom was at chaplain school in Rhode Island for eight weeks, Bryan bounded through each day cheerful and secure—full of stories for his grandparents, eager for visits to Aunt Cindy’s house, delighted with first grade and all his friends at church and school.

My mom had warned me that life as a chaplain’s wife wouldn’t always feel manageable. “Wait until you’re stationed somewhere alone, where you don’t know anyone, and Tom is gone for months at a time. What will you do then? Who will baby-sit when you need it? What will you do if you break an ankle? Or if one of those hurricanes hits?”

I’d laughed at her anxiety. “Mom, God’s called us to this road, so He’ll provide what we need. I’d rather take risks for God than stay safe and miss opportunities to serve Him. Just think of how much Tom and I will grow through the experiences we’ll have. And more important, think of all the people he’ll be able to serve.”

“He’s serving people here. Our church needs him.”

With the arrogance of ignorance, I patted her arm. “Don’t worry. He’ll provide. It’s all in His hands.”

I still believed that. God was all-powerful. But apparently, I was pretty powerful, too, because I had the ability to ruin His plans and His work with my weakness and failures. Look at Bryan. His problems in school were clearly caused by the instability I’d brought into our home.

Mrs. Pimblott’s note was gently worded, but I could read behind the polite code. She was really saying, “You’re a terrible mother. Your child can’t do well in school, because you’re creating such a bad home environment. And why have you ignored my messages about setting up rehearsal times for the Thanksgiving play? You’re inconsiderate.”

I bolted away from the computer and grabbed Tom’s jacket from the closet by the front door. A short walk. That’s what I needed. Something to help me escape this prison of dark thoughts. Tom’s jacket covered my rumpled, slept-in clothes. I coaxed my hair into a loose ponytail and pushed myself out the door.

Laura-Beth was kneeling on the sidewalk in front of her double stroller, readjusting a strap on one of her twins. I tiptoed backward, retreating into my entryway.

Too late. She spotted me. “Yoo-hoo! Well ain’t this a great coinkydink? Going for a walk?”

I jammed my hands into the jacket pockets and trudged toward the sidewalk. “Just wanted some fresh air.”

“Know just what you mean. Some days I feel like if I don’t get a change of scenery I’m gonna scream.” Laura-Beth pushed her double stroller up the sidewalk, giving an extra jolt against the handle when we reached a particularly uneven seam in the concrete. “Old Mr. Simpson lived in the house on this corner up until a few years back when his wife died—rest her soul. The guy who bought it is rentin’ to some college boys. Bad for the neighborhood with their carryin’ on.”

The toddlers rattled happily along while Laura-Beth kept up a running commentary. We reached the Laundromat and she sniffed. “Don’t bring your laundry here at night by your own self. Ain’t safe.” Without taking a breath she continued a dissertation on where I should shop, what time of day to water my lawn, and which soap opera had the best actors.

When we reached the street before the mission, she stopped and turned the stroller. “Well, this is far’s I go.”

I stooped to tickle the chin of Mary-Lou, whose tuft of hair made her look like someone from Whoville. “I think I’ll walk a little longer.”

Laura-Beth shrugged but didn’t seem to take offense. I watched her head for home and thanked God for the sudden silence, then crossed the street.

Once again, I’d wandered the blocks from relatively tidy homes to more troubled and broken streets. Not so different from my life in the past weeks. My world had been a safe neighborhood with neatly trimmed grass. Now it was unkempt with cracked and uneven sidewalks, populated by poverty and despair.

Maybe Laura-Beth’s chatter hadn’t been such a bad thing. Her presence had muted my anxiety. The worries clamored back now. I was doing a terrible job of parenting. Maybe I should send Bryan to live with my parents until I got my life under control. Maybe I wasn’t fit.

My shoe hit a half-crushed lighter on the sidewalk and sent it skittering into the gutter.

Too many things were hitting me at once. Alex was back. Coming for a visit. What could I say to him? Was I about to be pulled back into cycles of hope and fear while his mental health played hide-and-seek?

And Tom. He had done all he could to reassure me, but every Navy ship was in harm’s way by nature of its role. He was a noncombatant, but that didn’t mean enemy fire would detour around him. And even if he survived his deployment, could I handle future stretches of separation? Maybe I’d never learn to cope with long-distance marriage.

I approached the door of New Life Mission. Should I drop in? Offer to help with something?