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When I realize she’s waiting
for an answer, I say, “I don’t know.”

“If he’s not, and if he does
know what’s going on—or even that
something
is happening, whatever it
is—he’s never brought it up again. And,” she shrugs, “if he doesn’t
say anything and I don’t say anything, it isn’t really happening,
is it?”

“No,” I say, “I mean yes.” I
set down my mug, wipe my face, sticky and cold. A week, maybe two,
before he left, Jake was quiet. Where we usually kissed or groped
one another in passing in our narrow hallway, he walked right by.
And he worked late. “We’re loading up, so I’ll be busy,” he said.
He could have someone, someone he knew here and who has gone with
him, someone he laughs with at night after flying, before going to
his tent, someone whose hair he touches when they have a moment
alone, someone he tells stories and wants to kiss, someone he
smiles at over the table at lunch. She, that woman, could be his
reason for not wanting to get married, but I don’t—won’t ever—know,
and for a moment—small, less than a second—I wish he were
dead.

“Are you going to tell
William?” I say.

“What other choice is
there?” She says this while pulling the band out of her hair and
shaking her head, raking her fingers over her scalp. “If I don’t,
we’ll just end up throwing away more time. So, yeah, I’ll tell him
I don’t love him anymore. But I won’t tell him about Brian, because
Brian has nothing to do with any of this.” She flips her hair
behind her shoulders.

“Doesn’t Brian—I mean, it
sounds like he has everything to do with it.”

“I would still want to
leave, with or without him. William’s not right for me, period. In
any case, I doubt Brian will still be around when William gets
back. He—Brian—said that if I loved him, I would have already left
William. He doesn’t trust me, anymore.” She laughs. “Maybe he
shouldn’t. I didn’t leave, did I? It’s been a year and a half, and
I’m still married. He has no reason to think anything will
change.”

“He should have left in the
beginning.”

“William or
Brian?”

“Brian. Or
William.”

“You say that because this
is all so simple, to you. Black and white.”

“Sorry.”

“Mia, what you think about
all of this—how you’re judging me right now—doesn’t matter. I know
you think I’m a…that I’m an
adulteress
. Don’t you love that word?
These women—the ones who get in their groups and talk about other
women, other wives—they love that word because it sounds so
scandalous.” She laughs again, and there’s little fun in it. “Check
their scrapbooking rooms and I bet you a million dollars you’ll
find little stacks of red, velvet A’s in their fabric drawers.
Anyway, you probably think I’m rotten, the worst person you’ve ever
known, because I’m cheating on my husband—my husband who’s at war,
no less—and I understand. But—and don’t take this the wrong way,
okay?—I don’t care. I don’t care what you think, I don’t care what
they think, and I doubt when I finally tell William whatever I tell
him that I’ll care what he thinks. What he feels, yes. What he
thinks,” she lights a cigarette, “no.” Smoke curls in wide loops
from her nostrils. “But if you feel like you have to write Jake
about this, at least include the most crucial piece of truth: I
never meant to fall in love with Brian. Ever. He was…he was someone
to talk to, is all. I never meant for it to get past a passing
friendship, and I certainly never meant for it to last this
long.”

Who, I wonder, is Jake
talking to? What if he does have a woman friend, a woman he doesn’t
mean to turn into more than a friend?

“And by ‘it’,” she
continues, “I actually mean my marriage. If I weren’t still
married, there’d be no affair to have. I meant to leave William a
while ago because I wasn’t happy, and then again, later, because I
felt things for Brian I’ve never felt for anyone before. And
because this is my life. My happiness has to come first. It just
does.”

“Why didn’t you leave him,
then?”

She throws up her arms.
“Because he’s always deployed!”

“Well.”

“Oh, Mia, don’t—are you
okay? Here, let me…” She digs through her purse and pulls out a
pack of travel tissues and hands it to me. “You know, don’t you,
that this isn’t about you and Jake, and that what’s happening with
me and William has been happening for years? It has nothing to do
with him being deployed. You know that, right?”

I don’t know. I don’t know
anything. I tell her, “I know.”

“If you feel sorry for him,
just know he’s not perfect. We had problems before I met
Brian.”

“Why is Brian always here,
anyway? Why isn’t he deployed with the rest of them?” I sound and
feel like a child.

“Oh, he isn’t always here.
He’s been to Korea, and now he’s getting ready to PCS to Alaska,
which is why he’s not deployed. Timing.”

“If it was has hard as you
say—can I have another cigarette?—you couldn’t have held it in for
so long.”

She tosses one over the
coffee table, then kicks a silver lighter across the floor. “It
seemed easier than breaking things off with someone who’s at war.
How do you tell someone when they finally get home to the life
they’ve been dreaming about that the life they’ve been dreaming
about doesn’t exist?” Denise yawns. “I’m starting to understand why
some women pack up and leave while their husbands are
gone.”

“That’s awful.”

“I know. I don’t mean it,”
she says. “But when no time is right, what do you do?”

“You wait.”

She gets up to stand at the
window and looks outside, taps her ash between the ledge and the
screen. “You’re right,” she says. “Of course I’ll wait. For the
next goddamn year, I’ll confine myself to a life I haven’t wanted
since I fell out of love with him almost two years ago. I’ll do it
because William is in the Army, and because William’s decisions
have sent him to war twice. I’ll keep suffering—silently, the way
‘good’ wives are supposed to—for his choices and put my life and my
needs on indefinite hold so his aren’t disturbed. Brian will leave
me—I’m sure of it—and I’ll just have to deal with that, too, so my
dear husband doesn’t suffer any inconveniences or undue pressure.
Can’t trouble the boys while they’re at war. The world must revolve
around them and around maintaining the illusion of a happy
home-life—like a protective bubble—even though they’re grown men,
trained professionals, who should be able to handle…”

She trails off and shakes
her head and covers her eyes. “That was wrong. Selfish.” She sighs.
“I’m just—I’m just so tired of his life being more important than
mine.”

“
But, I’ve gone on and on
about me,” she says. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“I know you have to miss
him.”

“I do, but. You know. It’s
gotten better. I’m pretty busy.”

“Oh? Driving?”

“Yes. No. I’m
looking.”

Denise studies her nails,
bites one she hasn’t bitten. “Having any luck?”

“Not yet.”

“Mall this
weekend?”

“Um…I don’t—no. I don’t
think so.”

“Why not?”

“I have a job
interview.”

“On a weekend?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying,” she
says.

“I’m not.”

“A job interview won’t take
all weekend. Is it because of Brian?”

“Why would this have
anything to do with Brian?”

“I think you’re
upset.”

“Denise, I’m
not.”

But, I am.

She’s worthless to me,
now.

She is one of them, one of
the others. The man she cares about is here, safe with her. She
can’t understand about dusk, the sun’s evil teasing. The time of
evening too far from sleep and an ‘x’ across another day, but too
close to darkness and the hollow air of no conversation that
amplifies the TV sounds of over-acted dialogue and rehearsed
applause. Denise doesn’t know the taunting, subtle fade that cues
the lighting of yellow windows, the drawing of curtains to hide
people living normal lives, eating dinner, yelling top floor to
bottom about who wants milk and where are the scissors. She would
have little to say about time spent staring out the window at
shapeless clouds and cracked sidewalks and meticulously trimmed
shrubs, all of it so cheerful and commonplace while over the
rooftops and trees and a plane-ride away, “everyday” is
mission-planning and mortar fire and grass is something they might
find tucked in the fold of a letter.

“It’s not Brian,” I say.
“It’s that you seem to want to find a way to—I don’t know,
legitimize?—the sex you’re having. None of what you said was about
anything but you and Brian and your ‘relationship,’ and it’s just
so fucking trivial. You know? People are dying and the…the…your
husband is over there, and he’s doing stuff, and you’re here upset
because you want to fuck your boyfriend. And quit making that face
whenever I say ‘fuck,’ because I know you’ve heard it before.” My
mouth is dry. I swallow. “What about the state of the world, the
global implications of the war.?”

She laughs. Long and hard,
she laughs. When she catches her breath, she says, “You’re kidding,
right? First, Mia, I never knew you were so naïve! It’s actually
kind of cute. But listen: sex is the only thing we have control
over. Nothing is
reduced
to being all about sex. And my relationship with
Brian is far more complex than a simple sexual…what have you.” She
leans forward. “And second, you don’t think about any of that—the
‘global implications’ of the war—any more than I do. If you do, I’m
impressed. Seriously. But I don’t think you do. Admit it—it’s not
our concern. We live in our small American neighborhood in our
small American town. All we worry about is ourselves and how this
war will affect us and the people we love.” She returns to the
couch and lets her head fall back. She looks at me through slitted
eyes. “When Jake is home, you’ll see. You’ll care less about the
war.” She shrugs. “It’s callous, but it’s true. You’ll care less
because the soldier blown up by an IED won’t represent Jake, and
the woman crying on TV won’t represent you.”

I don’t know when she put
out her last cigarette, but she lights another, and I don’t know
when I put mine out, so I ask her for one. For the next few minutes
no one says anything, and then Denise leans forward and picks up
her bag, slings it over her shoulder. “I’m meeting Brian. Wow, that
feels good to say. You know how it is when you have something
finally out in the open…? Anyway. You don’t believe me, what I said
before, because you can’t,” she says. “But when it happens—because
it will—try not to feel bad, and know you’re not the only one. It
helps to know that.”

When the door is closed
behind her, I look for Donny’s number and call it.

No answer. No answering
machine.

I pick up some cigarettes on
the way to his house and park on the street. The blue Jeep has been
moved to the curb and is clean, sparkling. Loud music comes from
his living room’s open windows. He must be in a good
mood.

I knock on the door with a
cigarette pulled and ready for him. When it opens, she—his
wife?—stands there in an oversized T-shirt and jeans, brown hair
hanging long and straight, thin and frizzed at the ends. She holds
a beer.

“Hi, darlin’,” she says.
“Help you?”

“I’m—I was—” I slide the
cigarette back in the pack. “I’m Mia,” I say. “Donny has this
painting, and—I wanted to ask about it.”

“Naw, he took all that with
him. Been gone two days, now. Livin’ on Crossland in the Duncan
Motel. You want to see him? Let me get the room number. Hold on
right there.”

I look inside, notice china
in the cabinet. The easel is gone.

She comes back and hands me
a piece of paper. “Here you go.” Room ten, and the phone number.
“You be careful, all right, sweetie?” She closes the
door.

I park in front of room ten
and the window shades to rooms nine and eleven slide open, then
close. A door opens a few rooms down and a man with a shirt hanging
open around his ball-shaped stomach smokes…something…on the
walkway. I knock on Donny’s door, listen for sounds—snoring or a
TV. I knock again.

“Hey,” the man with the
stomach says. “Who you lookin’ for?”

“Donny
Donaldson.”

He shrugs. “Don’t know no
names. What’s he look like?”

“Brown hair.
Glasses.”

“Short fella?”

“Yeah.”

“Gone. He was here two
nights ago, left this mornin’.”

“Do you know where he
went?”

“Darlin’, why would I know
that? Half times, people leave ‘cause they can’t pay for the room.
If he went anywhere, you might check the Y.”

I press my face to the
window and look inside, just in case, but the bedspread is flat and
the pillows covered. “Thanks,” I say, and the man nods. In my
rearview mirror, I watch him watching me leave.

APRIL 28, MONDAY