The kiss he gave her was butterfly light. The kind of kiss a man would give an old woman, or a dying one.
From her chair, she watched him leave the house. When she heard his car start up, she snapped out of it. “Okay, girls, go get dressed for school. I’ll have breakfast ready in no time.”
She rolled into the kitchen, surprised to realize how small it was from chair level. There was barely room for her to maneuver, and the counters were too high; she couldn’t reach them easily.
She was still trying to figure out the logistics when the girls returned to the kitchen and sat down at the table. Jolene glanced at her calendar, the one she’d left for Michael. Today was oatmeal and wheat toast with sliced bananas.
She climbed out of the chair and clung to the counter with one hand while she tried to dig through the cabinet for a pan. The clanging of metal got on her nerves, made her think of gunfire and cement cracking …
“You want help, Mom?” Betsy asked.
“No,” Jolene said. “I can make a damn pot of oatmeal.”
“Well, excuse me,” Betsy said, stung.
“Mommy said a bad word again,” Lulu said.
Jolene found the pot, grabbed it, and looked over at the sink. There was no more than ten feet between her and the faucet, but the distance seemed to swell before her eyes. God, how she wanted to just walk over there like she used to, laughing with her girls as she cooked.
Instead, she gritted her teeth, lowered herself to the chair and wheeled herself to the sink. There, she climbed to her feet again, turned on the water, and held the pot under the faucet.
Blood spurted out, poured down the soldier’s face. Jolene yelled, “Smitty, get the medic, this man isn’t going to make it—”
“It’s seven fifty-seven,” Betsy said sharply.
Jolene came back to the present. She wasn’t in Iraq, flying a medevac mission. She was in her kitchen. She looked down; the pot was overflowing with water.
“Mom, it’s—”
“I know,” Jolene said. She turned off the water and set the pot on the counter. Pivoting on her foot, she repositioned the wheelchair.
“Dad has oatmeal ready by now,” Betsy added.
Jolene grabbed for the pot without thinking, using her right hand. It happened in an instant, her losing her grip, but she saw it in slow motion: the grab, the turn, the fingers failing her, opening, the pot falling …
It hit with a
clang.
“You got water all over me!” Betsy screamed, scrambling back from the table. “Oh my
God
. I have to change—” She ran out of the room.
Jolene slumped into her chair.
“You made a mess, Mommy,” Lulu said, frowning. “The floor looks like a lake.”
Jolene just sat there, stunned.
“Mommy? You made a mess,” Lulu said again, sounding scared. “I want my daddy.”
“Who gives a shit?” Jolene snapped.
Lulu started to cry. “I want my daddy NOW!”
Betsy came back downstairs, dressed now in jeans and a white hoodie. She picked Lulu up. They stared down at Jolene.
“Well?” Betsy said to her mother.
“Well what?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Jolene felt bitterness well up. She wanted to hold it back, be a good mother, but she couldn’t stop herself. The anger and edginess overtook her. “What’s wrong with me?” She held back from screaming
do you not see
?
Outside, the school bus chugged up to the driveway, gearing down to a stop.
Betsy screamed and dropped Lulu, who hit the ground hard and started to cry. “She hurt me! She hurt me!”
Betsy ran to the kitchen door and flung it open. “Wait! Wait!”
But it was too late. Jolene heard the bus driving away.
“I’m
late,
” Betsy shrieked, stomping over to her. “Now I’ll have to walk into first period
late
. Everyone will stare at me.”
Lulu wailed. “I’m hungry. I want my daddy.”
“Well?” Betsy demanded. “Are you just going to sit there?”
That did it. Jolene grabbed the chair’s wheels and spun around. “What the hell did you say to me? Believe me, being late to school is not a tragedy, Betsy.” She lifted her residual leg up. It twitched upward; the empty pant leg did a little dance. “
This
is a tragedy. Make your sister breakfast.
Yia Yia
will be here in a little while. She can take you to school.”
“You said you’d be fine,” Betsy yelled, her cheeks pink. “But you’re not. You can’t even take care of us. Why did you even come back?”
“And you’re a spoiled brat.” Jolene gripped the wheels and rolled away from them. As soon as she was in the office, she slammed the door shut. Getting up, she hopped over to the bed and fell into it with a groan.
She wanted to call her best friend, say
I just yelled at my daughter and she yelled at me. Tell me I’m not a bitch … tell me she is … tell me I’m going to be okay …
Through the closed door, she could hear Lulu’s crying. Betsy was trying to soothe her. They were probably huddled together, looking at the closed door, wondering who in the hell the woman behind it was. They knew their mom hadn’t come home from war. Not really. The woman who’d come home was a stranger to all of them, herself most of all.
I want my daddy.
When had Lulu ever wanted comfort from Michael?
It was yet another change. While Jolene had been gone, the heart of her family had shifted. She’d become marginalized, unimportant. Michael was the parent who comforted and cared for them now. The parent they trusted.
She heard a knock at the door and ignored it.
The door opened. Mila came into the room. She was dressed for work in jeans and an oversized denim shirt and the green canvas apron. Her black hair was hidden beneath a blue and white bandanna. She walked toward the bed, sat down on its edge. Leaning forward, she brushed the tangled hair from Jolene’s eyes. “A warrior doesn’t run to her bedroom and hide out after one lost battle.”
“I’m not a warrior anymore, Mila. Or a wife, or a mother. In fact, who the hell am I?”
“You’ve always been so hard on yourself, Jolene. So you’re having a hard time and you dropped a pan of water and you yelled at your daughters. Big deal. I yelled at Michael all the time when he was a teenager.”
“I didn’t used to yell at them,” Jolene said quietly, feeling a tightening in her stomach.
“I know. Honestly, it wasn’t natural.”
“They’re scared of me now,” she said, sighing. “
I’m
scared of me.”
Mila gave her a knowing smile. “We all knew it would be hard to have you gone, but no one told us how hard it would be when you came back. We’ll have to adjust. All of us. And you’ll have to cut yourself some slack.”
“I’ve never been good at that.”
“No, you haven’t. Now, get up and get dressed. We’re leaving for PT in twenty minutes.”
“I’m not going today. I don’t feel well.”
“You’re going,” Mila said simply.
Jolene thought about making a scene, getting angry, but she was too worn-out and depressed to do anything but comply.
* * *
Michael spent most of the day in court, questioning potential jurors. Of one person after another he asked probing questions, trying to get to the heart of bias. When court was adjourned for the day, he returned to his office and worked for an hour or so on his opening statement.
He knew the prosecutor’s opening in the Keller trial would be matter-of-fact. Brad would begin with the damning facts of the murder, repeating often how Emily had trusted her husband and loved him and how Keith had shot her in the head. He’d hammer home that Keith had never denied shooting his wife. He’d lay out the forensics of the case, layer fact upon fact until the jury would more than halfway believe that there was no reason for them to be there. They would be told that Keith’s memory loss was “convenient” and no doubt a bald-faced lie. He’d probably close with something along the lines of: “Who wouldn’t want to forget that he’d shot his young wife in the head? Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’ll tell you who
won’t
forget.” Then he’d turn to Emily’s weeping parents. “I don’t want to tell
them
their daughter’s murderer will go free. Do you?”
Usually, Michael would refute every piece of evidence in the opening, try to plant doubt about the case both in its specifics and in its entirety.
In this case, however, Michael was going to take a calculated risk. He wouldn’t refute that Keith had killed his wife. What he wanted the jury to understand was why. In Washington State, it fell to the state to prove each element of the crime, including intent. Put simply, the state had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Keith had intended to kill his wife.
Intent.
That was the crux of it.
He was still mulling it over at five thirty, as he drove off the ferry and headed toward home. As he turned into his driveway, he wondered how Jolene’s day had gone. For once, Mila wouldn’t be here, taking care of the girls after school. They were with Jolene again for the first time.
Pandemonium greeted him.
Every light in the place was on, the TV was blaring some movie with teenyboppers dancing together, and the girls were fighting. He could tell by the wild look in Lulu’s eyes that she was seconds away from a screaming fit, and Betsy looked pissed.
At his entrance, they stopped shrieking at each other and started screaming at him.
“Whoa,” he said, raising his hands. “Slow down.”
“Mommy doesn’t like us anymore,” Lulu said.
“She was a bitch, Dad. I know that’s a bad word, but it’s true,” Betsy said. “And now she’s in her room and she won’t come out. When I went in, she said, ‘Not now, Betsy.’ She hasn’t even apologized for this morning.”
“This morning? What happened this morning?” he asked.
“We were
late
to school. We missed the bus,” Betsy said, her voice shrill with the remembered horror of it.
“She dropped the water for oatmeal and said a bad word,” Lulu added solemnly, her mouth trembling. She was seconds away from crying.
“Now, girls, you remember we talked about this. It isn’t going to be an easy transition. We’ve talked about being patient, remember?”
“Yeah, well, you should have talked to
her
about it. I even offered to help with breakfast and everything,” Betsy said. “There’s something wrong with her, Dad.”
Through the blustery anger, he heard his daughter’s fear, and he understood it. Jolene wasn’t the same woman she’d been before, and none of them knew quite how to deal with her. “We’ll be okay, Betsy.”
“You know what, Dad? I’m sick of hearing that. It’s a big fat lie.”
“She’s different,” Lulu whispered, crying now. “She didn’t even talk to us after school.”
Michael knelt down and opened his arms. The girls ran at him, throwing themselves into his embrace. He held them tightly.
When they finally drew back, Michael saw the tears in Betsy’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Betsy. I know she hurt your feelings—”
“Mine, too!” Lulu said.
“Both of your feelings,” he corrected. “But just think of how bad it feels when you get a cut or a bruise. She lost her leg. It’s going to take a while for everything to get back to normal. I should have prepared you for that. Hell, I should have prepared myself for it.”
“You said a bad word,” Lulu said.
“Thank you, Miss Word Police.”
“What if she never gets better?” Betsy asked.
“She will,” he promised. Then he kissed each daughter’s cheek. “Now, go order a pizza, Betsy.”
“She might as well still be gone,” Betsy mumbled, walking away.
Michael went over to the office. Knocking softly, he waited for an answer. Not getting one, he opened the door just a crack.
The room was dark. Pale gold light from the eaves outside provided an ambient glow, illuminating the sharpness of her cheekbone. Beside the bed, the silver handles of the wheelchair glinted like strands of mercury. On the nightstand was an opened bottle of wine and an empty glass.
Frowning, he went to her bedside, stood beside her. In all their years together, he’d never seen her take more than a sip of wine. He picked up the bottle—it was half empty, at least.
He wanted to wake her up, talk to her about what had happened today—why she was drinking wine—but he knew how precious sleep was to her.
And would she talk to him about it, anyway? Even before the deployment, back when their marriage had been intact, Jolene wasn’t one to talk about bad days or failures or disappointments. With the exception of love, which she showed exuberantly, she kept her emotions to herself.
It was part of why they’d gone so wrong. She’d never needed him.
He closed the door and left her alone.
He spent the evening with his daughters, eating dinner with them, playing a game, watching a Discovery Channel special on dolphins. They were still hurt and angry and confused when he put them to bed.
When the house was quiet again, he put on some sweats and went back to work on the Keller opening. The trial was set to start soon, and he still hadn’t figured out how to make the jurors really understand PTSD, how to put them in Keith’s shoes. He was making a note about that when a bloodcurdling scream echoed through the house.
He threw the papers aside and ran out of his room. Another scream rose up from downstairs, swelling, spiking.
He ran down the stairs and pushed open the office door.
Jolene was screaming in her sleep, writhing so much the sheets and blankets had come free of their moorings and were twisted around her. Pillows lay scattered on the floor.
She screamed, “Mayday! Tami—I can’t lift you. Damn it—”
“Jolene!”
“We need a perimeter,” she yelled, crawling across the bed toward the nightstand.
“Jo!” He grabbed her by the hand and she elbowed him hard in the gut. His breath rushed out and he let go for a second. She kept moving, toward the edge of the bed.