Home Front (32 page)

“I do. But she won’t believe me. Not now.”

“Who would? You have been foolish. You will have to swallow your pride and convince her … and yourself, perhaps. It will not be easy, nor should it.” She patted his thigh. “And now, you will go up and tell your daughters that their mother is coming home from war.”

“Are they in bed?”

“They’re waiting for you.”

He sighed at that, feeling instantly tired, weighed down by this new burden that seemed to be his alone to carry. He leaned sideways, kissed his mom’s cheek, and headed for the stairs.

Outside Betsy’s room, he paused, gathering up his courage. He knocked on the door and went into the room. The girls were on the floor, playing some board game.

Michael knelt between them. Lulu immediately climbed onto his bent knees and looped her arms around his neck, leaning back like a pair’s ice-skater in a twirl. “Hi, Daddy!”

“How is she?” Betsy asked warily.

Lulu bounced on his lap. “You wanna play Candyland, Daddy?”

“Dad?” Betsy said. “How is Mom?”

He drew in a deep breath. “She lost her leg.”

Lulu stilled. “Where is it?”

“They cut it off, stupid,” Betsy said, scrambling backward, getting to her feet.

“What?” Lulu shrieked.

“Betsy,” Michael snapped, “don’t scare your sister. Lulu, Mommy’s going to be fine, she just lost part of her leg. But she’ll still be able to walk and everything. She’ll need our help for a while, though. She’s coming home in three days.”

“Mom lost her leg and Tami is in a coma, but everyone is going to be fine. We’re all going to be fine, just like we were.” Betsy’s voice broke, and she ran to the door, yanking it open. “You and Mom are both liars,” she said, wiping her eyes. Then she walked out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her.

“But where’s her leg, Daddy?” Lulu said, starting to cry.

*   *   *

“Jo?”

She heard Jamie’s voice and opened her eyes.

Jamie stood in the doorway, dressed in his ACUs.

“Hey.” She smiled at him, tried to look strong. She had no courage these days, it seemed, no inner strength. It was just so damned good to see him up and walking, even if it was with a limp. He’d visited her yesterday, too.

Closing the door behind him, he walked into the room. The look in his eyes was so compassionate she almost started to cry again. He knew what she was feeling.

“It’s not your fault, Jo,” he said.

“Smitty’s gone. Tami’s in a coma. I was flying the aircraft,” Jolene said.

“You carried her out of the helicopter, Jo. You.” He looked down at her amputated leg. “On that. You carried your best friend. I saw you, as I was scrambling, trying like hell to get Smitty out. I got him out, but it was too late.”

She saw the guilt Jamie carried.

“I saw him, Jamie. He was already gone.”

He stared down at her. “Don’t you give up,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“I don’t know how to be this woman.” She indicated her ruined body.

“You’re a soldier, Jo. That’s inside.”

“Is it?”

“I’ve been ordered back to Iraq,” he said at last.

She nodded, a lump in her throat. It occurred to her that she had just been more honest with this man than she’d ever been with her husband. “Be safe, Jamie.”

He stared down at her a long time. “You’re my hero, Chief. I want you to know that. And I’ll miss you up there in the sky.”

Then he was gone and she was alone.

SEPT.

I’m supposed to be glad I write with my left hand. I hear that a lot. But how can I be happy about anything?

I’m going home tomorrow and Tami still hasn’t woken up. Carl says the doctors have started to shake their heads and “prepare” him for her death. How can we prepare to lose her?

Tami, who sings off-key and loves mai tais and never knows when to quit. My best friend. She won’t quit now. That’s for sure.

Carl came to say good-bye to me this morning and the fear in his eyes was enough to make me sick to my stomach. He said, “Her heart stopped today. They got it going again, but…” and by then we were both crying. He doesn’t know what Tami thinks of “heroic measures,” and I told him she was a hero herself and you never stop trying. Never.

*   *   *

Jolene came awake with a start. She had a perfect instant in which she forgot where she was—then the truth muscled its way in. Tami lay in a bed down the hall, and Michael was gone, and she was getting ready to go home.

Home.

She opened her eyes and saw a female soldier in dress uniform standing at the end of her bed reading the latest issue of
Stars and Stripes
. Jolene hit the button beside her bed, which slowly angled her up until she was looking at the marine.

“Hello, Chief,” the woman said, putting the newspaper down on the flat blankets at the foot of the bed. Not quite where Jolene’s leg should be, but close.

“Do I know you?”

“No. I’m Leah Sykes. From North Carolina,” she said in a pretty, rollingly accented voice.

“Oh.”

“This is the first time I’ve been back to Landstuhl in more than nine months. Some things take a while to confront.”

“You’re a morale officer?”

Leah laughed. “Hardly. My husband would certainly tell you that I’m far from an inspiring kind of woman. But you. I hear you are a helicopter pilot.”

Jolene looked down at the place where her leg should be. “I don’t want to be rude, Leah, but I’m tired—”

“You ever hear of the Lioness Program?”

Jolene sighed. “No.”

“It started a while ago, a few years, I think. I’m no historian. The point is, when the marines did their ground searches, they encountered real resistance from the Iraqi women, who refused to be searched by men. Women soldiers were needed, so they asked for volunteers. A bunch of us who were tired of supply work and such signed up. I was one of the first.”

Jolene looked at the woman more closely. She looked like a sorority girl, with her dyed-blond french braid and mascaraed eyelashes.

“We were attached to marine combat units and sent out. We got some special training—not enough, really, a week—but we went. I liked it. Combat, I mean. Who would have thought? Not my cheerleading coach, that’s for sure. But
you
know.” Leah moved away from the end of the bed. Her movements were awkward. She had a strange, hitching way of walking, and as she did her pretty face grimaced.

Then Jolene saw her legs: two steel rods that ended in hiking boots.

Jolene felt ashamed of herself for complaining. She still had one leg left. “You lost both legs?”

“IED. I’m not going to lie to you, ma’am. You have a hard road in front of you. I was a bitch like nobody’s business. I don’t know how my husband stayed.”

“Will I fly helicopters?”

Leah’s sad look was worse than an answer. “I don’t know about that. But you’ll be you again. In time.”

It should have meant something to her, seeing this woman’s courage in the face of such adversity. It would have once, in a time that already felt long ago. Now all she wanted was to be left alone. She wanted to snuggle back into the warm, dark waters of self-pity, and so she did; she closed her eyes.

Every time she woke up, Leah was still there, standing beside her.

Part Two

A Soldier’s Heart

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

—M
ARCEL
P
ROUST

Nineteen

Michael and the girls had spent all day at the mall. They’d been like search-and-rescue dogs sniffing out the things on their list with relentless purpose. A new bed, new sheets and bedding, lots of pillows. Acrylic paint, a roll of butcher paper, a set of multicolored markers, both fine-tipped and fat.

By the time they’d had lunch at the Red Robin and piled back into the car, the trunk full of their purchases, Lulu was skating on the narrow edge of an adrenaline high. She was talking so much and so fast it was impossible to keep up. Michael had stopped even trying to answer her questions. Each one started with, “When Mommy comes home—”

“—We’ll sing her favorite song. What’s her favorite song, Betsy?”

“—We’ll yell SURPRISE!”

“—We’ll dance. She loves dancing. Oh, she losted her leg. What can we do instead of dancing?”

“—We’ll give her ice cream.”

Even Betsy couldn’t keep up.

Back in Poulsbo, they picked up his mother from the Green Thumb. She brought dozens of flowering plants with her—roses and orchids and bright yellow mums. She wanted to fill Jolene’s room with flowers.

“We got everything,
Yia Yia!
” Lulu squealed as Mila slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. “Mommy is going to be SO happy.”

His mother smiled. “She’s going to be so happy just to see her girls again.”

Lulu started talking again—something about painting this time—and they were off. Michael drove through town, quiet again in the off-season, and turned onto the bay road. It was late afternoon, and sunlight gilded the Sound.

Once at home, they dove into preparations. Betsy unfurled the butcher paper on the kitchen floor and knelt in front of it. Carefully organizing her acrylic paints, she began work on the
WELCOME HOME, MOMMY
sign that had required so much discussion. Lulu had demanded that there be suns all over the paper, and pink hearts; Betsy wanted rainbows and American flags. By the time they were done, there was barely a square inch of paper left to be seen.

“What do you think, Dad?” Betsy said at last, frowning, sitting on her knees and studying the banner. “Will she like it?”

It was a burst of images and color and love. Best of all was the painting in the corner—a man and woman holding hands, with two frizzy-haired stick-daughters beside them. The four figures were inside of a huge pink heart.

Is that who’ll we’ll be again, Jo?
he thought, trying to hold on to his smile. “It’s perfect.”

“Now we need to make the cake,” Betsy said. “Lemon is her favorite.”

“I get to help!” Lulu said.

Betsy gave Michael an irritated look. “All she does is lick the spoon, Dad. And she sticks her fingers in the frosting.”

“You two can work together,” he said. “This is a big day. The biggest day. Your mom is coming home from war, and we need to let her know that she’s the most important person in the world to us.”

Betsy got to her feet and walked over to Michael. “Is she excited to come back to us, Dad?”

It surprised Michael to hear his own worry voiced aloud by his daughter. “Why would you ask that, honey?”

“I wasn’t very nice to her sometimes.”

I know the feeling.
“She understands that. She knows how hard it was for you.”

“She hasn’t been writing us many letters lately.”

“She’s been so busy. The war really heated up in September.”

“Is that why?”

“What do you mean?”

Betsy looked up at him, her gaze sharp and assessing. “Maybe it’s because of that fight you had. When you said you didn’t love her anymore.”

He flinched. So, Betsy remembered that; maybe she would remember it her whole life, no matter what happened from here on. Had she been worried about it all this time? And what should he say? “Grown-ups fight; I told you that.”

“You never wrote to her. And she didn’t write to you. I’m not stupid, Dad.”

“Of course you’re not. But—”

“What if she’s changed?”

Michael had worried about that, too. He smiled down at his daughter, hoping it looked more genuine than it felt. “Your mom is excited to come home, Betsy. Don’t you worry about anything. We just have to show her how much we missed her.”

“I did miss her, too. I can’t wait to give her a huge hug. And to hear her tell me she loves me to the moon and back.”

He pulled her into a hug. “We’re going to be happy again, Betsy,” he said, his voice as strong as he could make it. “You’ll see. Starting tomorrow.”

*   *   *

Nine days ago Jolene had walked across the base with her best friend, complaining about the weather, saying,
It’s hard as hell to walk in this mud
. She’d grabbed the rim of the Black Hawk cockpit door and climbed easily aboard, putting her feet to the pedals. She had known irrevocably and completely who she was.

Now she was in the air again, but everything about her world had changed. She was in a transport plane, flying home with six other wounded soldiers, as well as some medical staff and a few civilians. The patients were in the front of the plane, in beds bolted to the aircraft’s interior walls. A pale, flimsy curtain separated them from the other passengers. In the old days, Jolene would have found a way to smile through the pain and loss; she would have worked to make sure than everyone else was comfortable. Those days were gone. She lay in the bed, gritting her teeth against a phantom pain that made her missing foot throb.