Going Overboard (7 page)

Dustin put his free arm around the back of my chair. “Sarah, try not to dwell on it,” he said. “Remember what your mom always says: ‘Plan for the worst and wait for the best.' Or is it: ‘Wait for the worst and plan for the best?' Anyway . . .” He grew quiet and looked down at Ford. “I know that doesn't help, but . . .”

Near the double doors, I saw Kate, dressed in black slacks and a red boatneck sweater, kiss her husband and then walk out to the parking lot without looking back. I wondered if she had the right idea, to leave before the scene got worse.

Dustin glanced at his watch. “They'll be boarding soon. Take care of the boys for me, you hear? And remember that e-mail takes a while to get set up on board. You may not hear from me for a while.”

I nodded, but stared straight ahead.

A man in a flight suit and heavy black boots walked briskly between the families. “One more minute, folks,” he called out. “Say your good-byes and wrap it up!”

Dustin stood up with Ford still cradled in his arm. “I've got to go,” he said and took my hand to help me stand.

“Just a few more minutes,” I begged.

“Sarah, I can't. You know that. When it's time to go, it's time to go.” He drew me close and kissed my forehead. “I love you,” he whispered.

I heard Courtney break down across the room. Her sobbing was like a wounded animal: “Don't go! Please don't go,” she cried.

Tears started running down my cheeks again. My eyes were beginning to sting. How many times had I done this—as a child and now as an adult? I wondered, growing more weary. How many times had I witnessed this same dramatic scene?

“It's only two weeks,” Dustin whispered.

“Let's go, folks!” the man with the boots shouted again. “Time to get on the plane!”

Dustin hugged me with one arm, squishing Ford between us. “I've got to go now. Hopefully, I'll see you in a few weeks, OK?”

He transferred Ford still sleeping into my arms and kissed both of our heads before leaning down to kiss Owen. He lifted the bulky green seabag and threw it over his shoulder like a sack of flour, then straightened and gave me a thumbs-up sign, before smiling and turning to leave. I waved halfheartedly and smiled. He turned around and fell in line with the other men.

When a set of double doors opened, allowing the men to spill out onto the runway, the whistle of a waiting transport jet filled the lobby. I picked up the boys and moved closer to the door. Jody and Courtney came to stand next to me, but no one said anything.

Outside the large-paned window I saw clusters of men in green making their way across the tarmac to the jet. One figure turned around, stared back at the building, and waved. Was it Dustin? They all looked the same. But I raised my free hand and waved anyway. “Good-bye,” I whispered.

The man turned back around and boarded the airplane.

And just like that my husband was gone.

4
A WOMAN WITH JUMPER CABLES

T
he first day was easy. It always is. I could almost imagine Dustin was simply at work . . . then late for dinner . . . and then doing a night flight.

It wasn't until I woke up alone the next morning that things began to seem real. It wasn't until I rolled over in bed and snuggled up to a pile of clean laundry instead of my husband. It wasn't until then that the situation was undeniably not like those routine late-night shifts, when Dustin was required to fly by the light of a full moon with night-vision goggles and didn't come home until after I was asleep. All those times, I woke up with him next to me, despite going to bed alone.

So it was the second day—specifically the second morning—when I started to freak out.

Had it really happened? The day before seemed like a dream. I tried to remind myself that Dustin would be back “in two weeks.” (So why was my stomach churning?)

Courtney called that afternoon to check on me.

“Do you want to come over for lunch?” she said.

“No, I think I'll just stay here.” I didn't feel like getting out of my pajamas.

“How was your last night?”

“Terrible. We took down the Christmas decorations—don't ask me why—and then just when we were getting into bed, Dustin decided to call his parents.”

“His parents?”

“Yeah, well, you know how he worries about whether or not he's doing enough for them and all that. Everything has to be fair, right?”

“But still!” Courtney said. “On the last night? Well, that was just churlish, now, wasn't it?”

What-ish?

“I make Derek call his parents after dinner,” she continued. “Then we take the phone off the hook.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” I said. And then, “Hey, Courtney, do you think I talk through Tanner? You know, use her to express my feelings?”

She laughed. “Well, sometimes, yes. Why?”

“Yesterday morning, before we went to the terminal, Dustin accused me of talking through ‘the damn dog.' ”

“Oh no,” she cried. “He actually said that? He called Tanner ‘the damn dog'?”

“Yep.”

“I can only imagine your face. I mean, I know how you are about Tanner.”

“I know. It ripped my heart out.”

“Well, I'm sure he didn't mean it,” she said. “It was probably just stress.”

“Sure, stress.”

That night, after Ford went to sleep, I settled into the living room to feed Owen. The warmth of his tiny pink body bundled in blue
footed pajamas, plus the sound of his delicate sucking, made me feel almost drunk with tiredness. I sank farther into the couch, hugging him against my chest and smoothing his unruly fuzzy hair.

Babies have it so easy, I thought. They don't know enough to feel alone or afraid, and they always have someone taking care of them. Oh, to be that oblivious!

Once Owen was asleep and soft purring noises came from his open mouth, I turned on the television and flipped through channels mindlessly. I was enjoying the way each blurb faded into the next, making funny sentences (
Colgate toothpaste for—fresher kitty litter—during tomorrow's storms
), until I came across the news.

Admittedly, I'm someone who should never watch the news—especially the evening news—because then I might contract all the terrible afflictions mentioned in the health segment. Yet while Dustin is away I feel more vigilant if I keep abreast of world events.

So I was half listening and softly patting Owen's back, when a reporter with a solemn face and dark suit came on the screen. He looked important, so I turned an ear to hear. There was a lot of political jargon and other nonsense, but what caught my attention was this: Representative Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, had introduced a bill in Congress to reinstate the draft.

And all at once . . . I knew.

I knew by the way my hands turned cold and my body froze. I knew by the way my cheeks tingled and my mouth became dry. I was breathing too fast or too slow (I wasn't sure).

I knew I should be worried about the greater implications of the news—about world peace and a war with Iraq—but in that moment . . . well, I just wasn't. I couldn't see beyond myself or beyond my family.

And then a few days later, CNN reported that the United
States had begun “psychological warfare” against Iraq. E-mail messages were sent to Iraqi servers with information about how to defect and appeals to the Iraqi people to turn over biological weapons.

Jody was the first one to call. “Did you see the latest?” she asked.

“Yeah, what do you make of it?”

Jody paused. “I'm finding it harder to believe they'll send our guys home.”

“Have you gotten an e-mail from Steve yet?”

“No, nothing,” she said, then quickly changed the subject: “Did you see our crazy neighbor has a pink flamingo in her yard now?”

It was as if we were treating the idea of war as “innocent until proven guilty.” Until we had definitive information, we were going to believe the detachment was a short one.

Increasingly, however, all evidence indicated otherwise, and like a losing defense team, our spirits sank. We held our breath for the verdict.

It came soon after.

“Sarah? Are you busy?” Kate's voice came over the phone with a flatness that made my heart race.

I looked up from my spot at the kitchen table and watched Ford dump a box of sixty-four crayons on the vinyl floor. “No, not at all,” I said, snapping my fingers and glaring at Ford. “What's up?”

“Well, it's nothing to get excited about yet,” Kate said, “but there's been some—how should I say this?—there's been some . . .
developments
.”

She said “developments” in a slow, deliberate way, and I smelled a cover-up.

“Developments, Kate? Are we talking new-Super-Target-going-up-on-Tenth-Street developments, or our-husbands-aren't-coming-home developments?”

She laughed. “I can't say for sure just yet, but I'm hosting an emergency meeting at my house tonight. Can you make it?”

“What about the kids? Can I bring them? I don't have a regular babysitter.”

Kate didn't have kids of her own, and her house was filled with beautiful, delicate things, so she hesitated, if only for a second, but her pleasant voice never faltered. “Oh, sure! Yes, bring them,” she said. “We'll figure something out.”

So at four o'clock, I bundled Ford in his jacket and Owen under a blanket in his baby carrier. The car was parked on the driveway instead of in the garage because the day before I'd found a frog sitting atop the lawn mower, and because frogs make me think of snakes, I was afraid to go back inside.

I shuttled the boys to the car one at a time in the cold, all the while cursing Dustin for not letting me spend money to hire a babysitter.

Across the driveway my neighbors Brent and Danielle pretended not to watch me. It's a typical civilian reaction; people don't know what to say, but they are curious, so they wind up making you feel like a spectacle.

Danielle, in blue jeans and a white cable-knit sweater, was kneeling in the flower bed pulling weeds. Brent wound red Christmas lights around his arm. When I looked up, they both quickly looked away. I glanced back down and felt their stare. I knew I'd have to be the one to speak up first.

“Hi, guys,” I shouted across the yard. “How are you?”

Brent looked up from the tangled mess of lights and said, “Oh! Hi, Sarah. Didn't see you there.”

“Where ya headed?” Danielle called out.

I snapped Owen's car seat into place and talked over my shoulder. “To a Spouse Club meeting across the river.”

“I thought you went to one a few nights ago,” Brent said. “How often do you gals meet?”

Brent was a car salesman, and he and Danielle had no concept of military life, so I guess I was their token connection to all things Navy.

“Usually we meet once a month,” I said, “but there's, ah . . . stuff . . . going on.”

Brent put down the lights, and he and Danielle walked across the yard. “Yeah, we've been watching the news. Have you heard from Dustin yet?”

“Their e-mail won't be up for a few more days,” I said. “It takes a while. But he probably couldn't tell me anything anyway.”

Danielle ducked her head into the car and waved at Ford. As a nurse and mother, she took particular interest—and possibly pity—in the fact I was raising two children virtually by myself.

“Say, do you want Brent to watch the boys while you're out tonight?” she said. “I'll be working late, but Brent and Blake will be home. Blake just got a new train table that I bet Ford would love.”

“Ford does love trains,” I said absently, reviewing Brent in my mind. Brent-the-Neighbor was someone I could call at two o'clock in the morning to kill a spider when Dustin was gone. (He would likely show up in his pajamas and mismatched shoes and wouldn't care that he forgot to take out the retainer in his mouth.) Brent-the-Dad encouraged his four-year-old son to watch professional wrestling. And Brent-the-Man pretended to leave the cul-de-sac for a “jog,” but stopped and walked the rest of the way as soon as he was around the corner and out of Danielle's view.

I looked at him now, standing there next to Danielle in a gray sweat suit and a backward FSU hat, and smiled. Brent had a wonderful way with children and Ford loved the fact he let him ride Blake's go-kart (even though it was clearly marked for ages four and up), but for some reason I felt compelled to keep the boys with me. Maybe they were even a comfort to me.

“I really appreciate that,” I said. “But I think I'll take them with me tonight.”

“All right then,” Danielle said. “I've got to go get ready for work, but you just let us know if you ever need anything, OK?”

“I will.”

They waved and turned to walk away. Then at the grass, Brent stopped and turned around again. “Hey, you want me to fix that squeak in your garage door while you're gone?” he said.

Brent had been my resident handyman for some time. He mowed my lawn when Dustin was away. He chopped wood. He trimmed bushes. He killed fire ants on the sidewalk and treated my plants for fungus. He also once touched Ford's infant hand after setting a rodent trap in the garage, and I nearly fell to the concrete in horror before rushing inside for the disinfectant. I had never met anyone like Brent, and I had no point of reference for his character. Yet his presence next door gave me an odd sense of security.

“I do need to get that door fixed, don't I?” I said, turning to look at it. “How about this weekend though? I really should get going now.”

I opened the car door and hoisted myself inside.

“All righty then,” Brent said, waving. “You have a good time tonight.”

I shut the door and put the key in the ignition. Brent was still waving on the driveway. I smiled and turned the key, but the engine wouldn't start. I turned the key again. Nothing. Brent looked concerned. I waved and smiled. “Engine must be cold,” I said through the window, but he couldn't hear. I turned the key one more time. Still nothing.

Brent motioned for me to open the door.

“Looks like you've got a dead battery,” he said. “Pop the hood.”

I pulled a lever beneath the steering wheel, and when Ford heard it pop, he wiggled in his seat and whined, “Momma? What wrong? Let's go.”

“The car won't start, honey. But it's going to be all right. Brent will fix it.”

I looked at him in his car seat in the rearview mirror and saw Jody's purple minivan coming around the corner. “Oh, thank God,” I said, reaching for the door handle.

Jody circled the cul-de-sac and pulled up to the end of my driveway, kicking up rocks and gravel with her worn tires.

“I thought you were coming to pick me up,” she yelled out her window.