A Soldier Comes Home

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“Why were you away so long?”

T.J.’s question brought Ray upright again. “What did your mother tell you?” he asked.

“She said you went away to fight.”

He nodded. “I’m a soldier. My job is to fight our enemies.” He tried to reduce the concept to something a three-year-old could understand. “The bad guys.”

“Are you going to leave again?”

He could hear the fear behind the question. This was probably the kind of situation where the wrong answer put the kid in therapy for years as an adult. He shifted position, sloshing water over the side of the tub. “I don’t want to,” he said. “But I might have to.” He wouldn’t lie to the boy, though lying would certainly make things easier. He bent forward, looking T.J. in the eye. “My job is to go where I’m told to go.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He felt so small and slight. “But I just got home. If I have to leave, it won’t be for a long time. And maybe I won’t have to go at all. I hope not. Now turn your head and let me make sure your ears are clean.”

T.J. ducked his head and allowed Ray to inspect his ears. The bubbles were beginning to dissipate, leaving the water cloudy. T.J. giggled. “You have a wee wee, too,” he said.

Ray looked and saw the boy was pointing to his penis. He grinned. “Yeah. And it’s called a penis.” Might as well give the kid the proper words for things.

“Pea-ness.” T.J. tried out the word. He looked up at Ray. “Mama doesn’t have one.”

“No. Women are made different.” He had a sudden image of Chrissie standing in the kitchen, the soft curve of her breast brushing his arm as she reached for the salt.

She’d thrown him for a loop when she’d said she was a widow. A soldier’s widow. She’d said she didn’t approve of what Tammy had done. Did he believe her?

She’d been so soothing and competent. Down-home. Making mac and cheese from a box seem like a gourmet meal. Her presence had calmed T.J., but it had calmed Ray, too. And made him aware of how long it had been since he’d been alone with a woman.

“Yours is getting bigger,” T.J. said, his eyes wide.

Oops. “Time for bed.” Ray stood and lifted T.J. onto the bath mat, then climbed out after him. He wrapped a towel around his waist, then dropped another over T.J.’s head.

“Hey!” Giggling, the boy swatted at the towel.

Ray knelt and they mock-wrestled, laughing. When T.J. was all dry, Ray turned him toward the bedroom. “Let’s get some pajamas on you. What story do you want me to read?”

T.J. spread his arms wide. “I love you this much!”

Ray stared down at his son, swallowing past the sudden lump in his throat. “I love you, too, son,” he said, his voice rough.

T.J. giggled again. “It’s a book. I Love You This Much. It has rabbits in it.”

“Oh. Yeah. A book.” He pulled the towel at his waist tighter. “Yeah, I’ll read it to you.” And mean the words in a way he never had before.

WHEN SHE WAS A GIRL, Rita would have laughed if anyone had told her she’d enjoy cleaning people’s teeth for a living. But she did enjoy her job. Her patients were usually nice, her boss was pleasant and her coworkers were friends. Now that Allison had returned to work after a week off, things had settled into the normal routine. Rita looked forward to showing up for work each morning, plus the job helped fill the hours while she waited for Paul’s return.

“Good to have you back, Allison,” Rita said as she collected the file for her first patient of the day.

“It’s good to be back,” Allison said. “Not that I didn’t love being home with Dan, but it’s nice to get into a normal routine, you know?”

Rita nodded. Normal was something they all wished for.

“We’ve got a full schedule today,” Chrissie said, leaning over Allison to check the appointment book. “Let’s try not to get behind.”

“Tell that to the dentist,” Rita said. “I’m always on time.” She nudged Chrissie with her elbow. “So what’s new with you and your hunky neighbor?”

Allison swiveled her chair to face them, eyes wide. “You have a hunky neighbor?” she asked. “What did I miss while I was away?”

“Nothing,” Chrissie said. “My neighbor is in the same company as Dan so he just came home. That’s all.”

“Oh my gosh.” Allison put a hand to her mouth. “Do you mean Captain Hughes?”

Chrissie nodded. “You know him?”

“Sort of. Dan and I gave him a ride home from the reunion ceremony. I thought his house looked familiar, but I was so excited about having Dan home I didn’t pay that much attention.”

“Chrissie had dinner with him,” Rita said.

“I made mac and cheese for him and his little boy.” She glanced at Allison. “His wife walked out and the little boy was crying and I helped calm him down. I haven’t heard anything from him since.”

“I figured something had happened, for him not to have anyone to meet him at the reunion ceremony,” Allison said. “Maybe you should go over and see how he’s doing. You could say you were worried about his kid.”

“No!” Chrissie protested. “Besides, technically he’s still married. And I’m not interested anyway.”

“Liar,” Rita said as she opened the door for her patient, George Freeman.

She was finishing up the X-rays of Mr. Freeman’s teeth when Chrissie poked her head around the partition. “There’s a telephone call for you.”

“Tell them I’ll call them back.”

“No, you need to come to the phone now.”

Something in Chrissie’s voice made Rita go still. Her heart pounded and she struggled to breathe, and her vision went fuzzy at the edges. Oh, dear God, no!

“Paul’s all right,” Chrissie said. She grabbed Rita’s arm. “He’s okay. He’s the one on the phone.”

She nodded and allowed Chrissie to lead her to the office. She picked up the phone and punched the line button. “Hello?”

“Rita, it’s me, Paul.”

As if she wouldn’t recognize his voice. He never called except for rare special occasions and holidays. And then she could almost feel his excitement through the phone lines. Now he sounded different. Distant. “What is it?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”

“No.” He coughed. “Jeremy’s gone. He was killed in a firefight near Kirkut.”

“Jeremy?” Rita blinked. “Your brother?” Jeremy was in the Marines. The brothers were always giving each other a hard time about which branch of the service was the best. “That’s horrible.”

“Yeah.” He coughed again. “They’re giving me leave for his funeral. Will you meet me up there?”

Up there was the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where they had both grown up. “Of course I will.”

“I should be there in a couple of days. I’ll e-mail when I know more. I gotta go now.”

“Paul, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. See you soon.”

She set the phone in the cradle and stared at the desktop, not really seeing. She thought of Jeremy the last time she’d seen him, at a dinner at his parents’ house right before he shipped out. Paul had been home, too, and thirtyfive of the young men’s relatives had crowded into their parents’ trailer home. The men had teased him about his short hair and the women had urged him to “Eat, eat.” No one wanted to see him leave, but everyone was proud of him following in the footsteps of his ancestors, who had fought in every conflict since World War I.

There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she said automatically.

Chrissie and Allison came into the room. “Is everything all right?” Chrissie asked.

Rita nodded, then shook her head. “Paul’s brother—Jeremy—he’s dead. Killed in a firefight near Kirkut.” The name was familiar from news reports, but she had no idea where that really was. It was just another foreign-sounding name in a list of foreign-sounding names in the papers and on television.

Chrissie hugged her and Allison squeezed her hand.

“I’ll need time off to go to the funeral,” Rita said, beginning to come out of the shock a little. “They gave Paul leave to come home for it.”

“Of course,” Chrissie said. “Let us know if there’s anything else we can do.”

“Thanks, but it will all be taken care of. There are groups on the reservation that will organize the funeral. It’s a big ceremony. It goes on for days.” She was thinking out loud now, hardly aware of their presence.

“Does Paul have other brothers and sisters?” Allison asked.

“No. Only Jeremy.” She bit her lip, thinking of his mother, Donna. Jeremy was her baby. The spoiled one. She would be beside herself with grief. “I—I’d better go finish Mr. Freeman’s teeth,” she said.

Chrissie stopped her. “No. We’ll explain what happened and ask him to reschedule. He’ll understand.” She patted Rita’s shoulder. “You go home. Do what you need to do to get ready.”

“I’ll pray for you and your family,” Allison said.

Rita nodded. More of the numbness was receding, replaced by the knowledge that in a few days she’d see Paul. She felt almost guilty but not for long. She would see Paul. She would touch him, hold him, kiss him, make love to him. Yes, they would grieve. But they would also comfort each other. In the midst of such sadness was that joy.

CHAPTER FOUR

CHRISSIE’S FAMILY HOME was a two-story cedar-sided house in the shade of tall pines on the east side of Colorado Springs. Overgrown lilacs, heavy with the promise of purple blooms, crowded the driveway along one side, and patches of dirt showed through on the lawn, remnants of years of tag and touch football games played by Chrissie, her two brothers and their friends.

Chrissie couldn’t help smiling as she pulled into the driveway. While she loved her little house on Kirkham Street, this was home, every part of it as familiar to her as a favorite pair of jeans. There was the big oak where her father had hung a tire swing when she was six. There was the space under the porch where she’d fashioned a secret play house. Lilacs from these very bushes had decorated the tables at her bridal shower, and that side window marked the bedroom where she’d spent the first six months after Matt’s death. Though she’d been glad to move out on her own once more, it was comforting to know this sanctuary was here if she needed it.

Her mother opened the door before Chrissie was even halfway up the walk. “It’s good to see you, baby,” she said, enveloping her daughter in a soft hug. “Come on inside. Supper’s almost ready.”

“Hey, beautiful!” Her father greeted her from his recliner, which over the years had conformed perfectly to his bulky frame. A baseball game played on the television across from him.

“Hey, handsome.” Chrissie completed this customary exchange, bending to hug him.

“How are you doing?” her father asked. “How’s the car?”

“The car is fine. I had the oil changed last week.” This, too, was a familiar exchange. Her father seemed to feel that if her car was in good shape, it was an indicator that the rest of her life was going well also.

“The house in good shape?” he asked.

“The house is fine.”

He looked disappointed at this answer. “You let me know if you need me to fix anything or handle any little problems. Don’t go wasting your money on repairmen.”

“Thanks, Dad. I won’t.” She smiled and patted his hand. Her father was not one to gush sentiment. He preferred to show his love wielding a hammer or screwdriver.

She sat on the sofa and in companionable silence they watched the game. Chrissie closed her eyes and inhaled deeply the combination of scents she thought of as unique to her childhood home—pot roast, vanilla and the Shalimar perfume her mother always wore.

“Everything’s ready,” her mother called from the kitchen. “Chrissie, put some ice in glasses and we’ll eat.”

Over pot roast, mashed potatoes and broccoli, Chrissie learned about the latest goings-on at the hospital where her mother was a nurse, the retirement party for one of her father’s coworkers and his most recent attempts to defeat the squirrels who constantly raided his bird feeders. “I think I’ve licked them this time,” he said, ladling gravy over a mound of potatoes. “I’ve got the feeders out on wires, rigged with a pulley system. Even the Flying Wallendas couldn’t get to these feeders.”

Considering how many squirrels Chrissie had seen dancing along power lines, she had her doubts about the effectiveness of this effort. But she sometimes suspected her father enjoyed his battles with the squirrels too much to ever want to completely vanquish them.

“How are things at work?” her mother asked.

“Busy.” Chrissie speared a broccoli floret with her fork. “We’re a little shorthanded this week. Our dental hygienist is in South Dakota at a funeral. Her husband’s brother was killed in Iraq.”

“Oh, how awful.” Her mother laid down her fork and covered her mouth with one hand, a stricken look on her face.

“Yes, it is,” Chrissie agreed. She had cycled through all the familiar emotions in the days since Rita had left town: despair, anger, grief. She ached for her friend and at the same time recalled her own loss all over again. She hated that she couldn’t even sympathize with a friend without being dragged back into an emotional quagmire she had hoped to escape by now. But maybe that was impossible as long as the war continued. The families of soldiers shared the experience of war in a way civilians really couldn’t; through that connection, every family’s loss became Chrissie’s own. She was trying to figure out how to live with that reality.

They were all silent for a time, focusing on their food. Chrissie tried to distract herself from sad thoughts by looking around the dining room, at all the familiar things here that grounded her to her life P.M.—pre Matt. An old upright piano sat across from her. She had spent hours pounding away at scales on that piano, dutifully practicing, but never really playing well. After three years, her parents had given in to her pleas to discontinue lessons, but they’d kept the piano.

On top of the piano was a row of framed photographs, including a shot of her and Matt on their wedding day—Chrissie in a white lace gown, Matt in his dress uniform. Her throat tightened at the sight of them both, looking so very young. At twenty-four, she’d thought she knew a lot about life.

Looking back, her romance with Matt had had an unreal quality. They’d met, then fallen in love quickly, their every moment together laced with the urgency of knowing that at any time he might be called upon to leave, to fight in the impending war. Chrissie had shared Matt’s excitement at the prospect; he’d looked forward to testing all his training in combat and had assured her that, with all of the technological advances in warfare, the chances of him being hurt were slim.

She’d held on to that belief as a shield against the fear that always lurked on the edge of her consciousness. That giddy optimism had allowed her to say yes when he proposed, to ignore her natural aversion to risk. And when they’d said their vows in front of family and friends at the base chapel, she’d looked forward to the years ahead, certain of their bright future in a way that only a person who has never known tragedy can be.

“I’ve been wondering if I should take that picture down.”

Her mother’s words interrupted Chrissie’s thoughts. She tore her gaze from the photograph and found her mother studying her, worry lines creasing her forehead. “Why would you want to do that?” Chrissie asked.