Unremarried Widow (9 page)

I covered the mouthpiece with my hand. “Is everything okay?”

“No worries,” he said.

I held the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

Terry was on the other end.

“Hey, girl,” she said. “This is great news. We're so happy for you.”

“Really?” I said. “You guys are okay with this?”

“Sweetie, we just want you married.”

Three months before our real
wedding, Miles and I drove to the courthouse in Killeen, a squat building in red brick that was bland in the way of government offices everywhere. Miles came straight from the base, still in his uniform, and I wore jeans and my cowboy boots. When we approached the administrative window, the clerk behind the glass slid out a paper form.

“You'll both need to sign this,” she said. “We'll need thirty-two dollars for the ceremony and sixty-seven for the marriage license. No personal checks.”

I looked over the form and signed with a pen tethered to the counter. I passed the page to Miles and he placed his signature next to mine. He slid the paper through the slot along with a money order. The clerk ran her eyes over the page.

“Have a seat,” she said.

We sat in plastic chairs bolted to the floor as the lights overhead reflected off the linoleum that ran the length of the hallway. After a time a door opened to the judicial office and a secretary in a pink sweater stepped out.

“Henderson?” she said.

Miles looked at me. I gave him a nervous smile.

“That's us,” he said.

“You all can follow me back.”

We walked through the lobby with its Texas seal on the wall, over beige carpeting that absorbed the sound of our footsteps. I hooked a finger in the collar of my shirt and pulled, trying to vent my neck as the secretary led us into the courtroom chambers.

“The judge will be right in,” she said.

I leaned into Miles and he placed his hand on the small of my back the way he did when I was scared. The judge stepped into the room. He had traded his judicial robes for a pair of stonewashed jeans and low-heeled cowboy boots. He was a large man with round cheeks that were red, as if someone had just pinched them. I could see the appeal. He had a thick drawl and I imagined he kept a Stetson hanging on the back of his office door.

“How you all doing?” he said. “Ready to get this done?”

We nodded.

“Good. I can see you all are holding hands. That's a good sign. Sometimes we get people in here and one of them looks like they might bolt out the door. It's good to hold on to each other. Keeps you both here.”

Miles gave my hand a squeeze.

“You all want to go ahead and face one another,” the judge said. “I'm going to run through this. It'll be quick. You got rings?”

“No, sir,” Miles said.

“That's all right. Don't need them anyhow.”

The judge covered all the bases and asked if we agreed to the terms.

“Yes,” I said in a tight voice.

“Yes,” Miles echoed.

“Then by the power vested in me by the state of Texas, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Go on and kiss now.”

We gave each other a chaste peck and the judge shook both our hands. We walked out the way we had come in and the secretary handed
us our marriage certificate. We left the carpeted office and followed the linoleum back to the front entrance, walking without speaking, dazed as if we had just survived a wreck. On the steps to the courthouse we stopped and looked at each other.

“Holy shit,” I said. “We're married.”

Miles pulled a camera out of his uniform pocket and stopped a man walking into the building.

“Would you mind taking a picture for us?”

We stood together in front of the courthouse wall and the man took a close-up shot as we smiled big brave smiles into the camera. When the newspapers ask for a photo of Miles, this is the one I send. They crop me out so that Miles is alone, looking unaccountably happy on the courthouse steps.

Spring gave way to early
summer and we were suddenly, finally done with Fort Hood. We loaded Miles's truck and hitched my car to the back in a drill we were starting to perfect. I sat beside Miles in the cab of the pickup and we both felt free. Free of Killeen, free of Fort Hood. Yes, we were headed back to Fort Bragg and all the coarseness of that place, but in the interim—in the liminal space between one base and the next where the future was stacked with limitless possibilities—we were free. Or I was free. And Miles beside me with his uncomplicated air and easy laugh, I think he was free too.

Our second time at Fort
Bragg, we stayed out of Fayetteville. We rented a trailer north of the base off a dirt road that ran beside a cornfield. The earth had been newly planted when we arrived and young seedlings
pushed out of the dirt in neat rows. Insects hummed in the fields during the early afternoons when the heat set in and the trailer baked beneath the sun. Our place had brown carpet that had once been plush, old furniture that had seen generations of tenants, and pink toilet seat covers that made me think somebody's grandma had once lived there. We unloaded the boxes we had packed in Killeen; the Crock-Pot made its way onto the counter and the dish towels went into a side drawer. I pulled out my rolling pin, our salt and pepper shakers, the green ceramic mugs. Miles carted armloads into the spare bedroom: his extra uniforms, a second set of desert boots, the Gore-Tex jacket in green camo. In that way we set up house—again.

There was a sweetness to the time Miles and I spent in the trailer next to the cornfield, even as the deployment loomed. The unit was scheduled to ship out in three months, in late July, but we pretended not to notice. The air was soft and clear as if all the turbulence of the previous season had blown over. Miles and I slept in the back bedroom in a white-framed double bed. We held hands in the night. One morning I woke with my nose pressed against his neck, my face tucked into the space beneath his chin, and blinked in the feathered light of early day.

“You're sweaty,” I said.

“
You're
sweaty.”

I pulled away from his pillow and rolled onto my back, and he rolled onto his and reached across the bed for my sweaty hand.

Once a storm blew through in the night and I woke with an inexplicable fear inside me. Rain roared against the walls of the trailer and wind shook the oaks in the front yard. Their branches dragged across the roof like the tines of a rake, and I lay beside Miles filled with a nameless dread. In the morning we walked the rutted dirt road that ran beside the trailer. Stalks of corn shot into the sky, hopped up on rain and fertilizer. The gravel that pocked the road crunched under Miles's boots as we debated the question that hung over everything: what to do with me while he was gone.

“You could go to my folks' place in Texas,” Miles said. He walked with his hands shoved down in the front pockets of his jeans.

“Why would I do that?”

“I don't know. To be close to family.”

“My mom is my family.”

“Maybe you should go home to live with your mom, then.”

We continued in silence for a bit, both of us turning over the idea.

“I could go back overseas,” I said unconvincingly. “Teach English somewhere.”

I had already given up on the idea of that life, but it felt wrong not to say it, to pretend like it wasn't even an option. But Miles shook his head.

“You don't want to be that far away. Not while I'm gone. Not in case something happens.”

“Nothing's going to happen,” I said. “But if I lived with my mom, we could save some money. You'll be earning hazard pay and I'll get a job. We could put a lot of money in the bank and maybe when you get back we could buy a house.”

“It would be nice to have a place of our own,” Miles said.

“Plus my friends are in Florida. It might be okay to be back there.”

“It might.” He smiled slyly. “You could always stay here.”

I gave him a push with my elbow. “What would I do here?”

“Hang out with the other wives. Get tangled up in the FRG drama.”

“That's my worst nightmare,” I said. I shook my head as I imagined the infighting, the backstabbing, the rampant gossip. It never occurred to me that those women might be a source of support while Miles was gone, that they might comfort me if the worst happened.

“No, send me home,” I said. “Get me away from the military. Let me live with my mom. That way, when you get back, we can buy our own place.”

“And if something happens—”

“Nothing's going to happen.”

“But if something happens,” he said, “you'll have everybody there.”

On the first day of
July, three weeks before Miles deployed, we held our wedding at my mother's beach house in Florida. My best friends were there, Heather and Annabelle and Stacy, young women I had known all my life. They joined me in my bedroom as I nervously dressed and fixed my makeup. My mother stepped into the bathroom, tugging at her hair. She still wore it long and parted down the middle, like the day she met my father. Like the day he died. Though her hair had gone gray in places, its weighty power remained unchanged.

“How do I look?” she said to Annabelle.

“You look nice,” Annabelle said, moving into the bathroom to look her over. “Maybe a flower?”

She chose a rose from a stack on the bathroom counter, snapped off the stem, and worked the bud into the long loop of hair my mother had pulled over her right shoulder.

“That looks better,” Annabelle said.

My mother eyed herself in the mirror as I leaned forward to dab gloss on my lips.

“You look beautiful, Mommy,” I said.

“Really?”

I twisted the cap back on the tube and looked at my mother. People say I look like her but mostly they are talking about our hair. Mine is long too. It never feels long enough. I smiled and she dabbed at her eyes with a balled-up piece of toilet paper.

“I'm so happy for you,” she said.

The tip of my nose went red and I wiped at my eyes with my fingers.

“Don't get me started,” I said. “I'm already a mess.”

My mother checked herself over one last time before heading downstairs.

“Five minutes,” Annabelle said.

“Shit,” I said. “I'm not ready.”

I smoothed my dress to my body. It was floor-length silk, off-white, bought at J.Crew. I didn't wear shoes. A pearl on a silver chain hung around my neck and small diamond earrings dangled from my ears, both gifts from Miles. Somewhere downstairs he waited in a blue button-up oxford shirt from the Gap and green chinos he had rolled to his ankles. He wore flip-flops. When we decided to get married, I said I didn't want tulle or a reception hall or plates of salmon served by waiters in black ties. I wanted a moment where our friends and family could eat good food—we had arroz con pollo, black beans and rice, sweet plantains—and dance to my favorite songs. If people told me I was glowing, I didn't want it to be because I had my hair done at a salon or makeup spray painted over my skin, but because I was young and happy and in love.

I turned to Heather and Stacy, who sat on the bed, and it struck me what beautiful young women my friends had become. They were all three lithe and long-haired, well-spoken and well-read; they had good jobs and stable lives.

“What do you think?” I said.

Heather stretched her feet to the floor, hopped off the bed, and fitted her toes into her high heels. “I think it's time to go. Let's get this party started.”

The day had been clear and hot, the Gulf green and flat, but a storm rolled in as Miles and I said our vows. The water went gray and the petals in my hair trembled. The storm broke after the kiss and people dashed for cover as rain came down in fat warm drops. After dinner and cake, people made their way to the dance floor. The Priestners had driven in from Fort Bragg and Captain Scott Delancey came too. In the half-light of torches stuck in the sand, Miles and I watched John and Teresa sway to Marvin Gaye.

“Check out the captain,” he said.

In a dark corner, Captain Delancey danced close to Heather.

I laughed. “Same old, same old.”

The rain had left standing puddles of water that caught the light from the torches, and the damp air soaked up the scent of lilies from the side yard. I could hardly make out Miles's face in the dark, but I could feel him there beside me. My worries from the last few months seemed small and distant and a tender gratitude welled in me. I felt a sense of homecoming not because of the salt air or the pounding tides but because of Miles, a man of gentleness and courage whose goodness emanated from him like heat. His strength would protect us, I was sure, and I let myself believe we were safe.

The night before Miles left
for Iraq, two tough bins sat open on our living room floor. I watched Miles race around the trailer, pulling clothes out of closets, sorting through important papers.

“Don't worry,” I said from the couch. “You'll get everything.”

He stopped long enough to give me a look.

I laughed. “Maybe we should have done this a week ago.”

When Miles moved into the bedroom around midnight, I followed. I climbed into bed and opened a book in my lap while he pulled another shirt out of the closet and threw it in a pile on the floor.

“That's for R & R,” he said. “You'll keep them at your mom's place?”

“I'll have them waiting for you.”

He picked up his bottle of cologne and set it in the R & R pile. “This too.”

My eyelids were heavy as I sat on the bed, and when Miles left the room they drifted shut. I lifted them when he walked back in.

“You're going to feel bad if something happens to me over there and you spent our last night together sleeping.”

“I know,” I said and fell asleep.