Learning to Stay (22 page)

“Then he quit. So he could roll around with guys in tights,” Mert says after a while.

Perhaps I haven’t given Mert a fair shake in the past. Perhaps I’ve been poisoned by my husband’s dejection after almost every interaction he’s had with Mert, by the almost palpable hurt that’s evident in his voice when he says, “Just once, I wish he’d say he was proud of me.” To my knowledge, Mert never has said those words to Brad. He has never told his son that he loves him. And during those times when the gray cloud of Mert settles over Brad, and by extension over me, I can’t help but ask God why he chose to take my parents and leave Mert. I was my parents’ only child, and they never missed a chance to shower me with love. Where is the fairness in that?

Maybe it’s the discomfort of this situation, or the long drive that preceded it, but what comes out next surprises even me: “You know he did this for you, right?” I ask, lowering my voice to an angry whisper. “That he enlisted to prove himself to you? To make you proud. He was blown up by a bomb while trying to make you proud of him, Mert.”

Brad never said this, but I saw his face the night he called his dad. I heard the excitement in his voice, the certainty that this would be the time Mert gave him a verbal pat on the back, told him what a great son he was. And I watched Brad’s face fall as Mert replied it was good he was finally coming around to taking his patriotism seriously, that Rick had already tried enlisting the day after 9/11 and that he’d still be serving his country if they hadn’t turned him away. Mert still claims Rick was rejected because of his eyesight. Brad and I have always
had a sneaking suspicion it had more to do with a drug test gone wrong.

“If he was hit by a bomb, he’d be in itty-bitty little pieces all over the desert. He got knocked around by the blast, is all. Got a few pieces of metal in him. That’s war. What did he expect—a pony and some cotton candy for his troubles? Besides, it might toughen him up some—might be good for him.”

These were all of Mert’s complaints about his son rolled up into one neat package: He was too pretty, wasn’t macho enough, and didn’t have any actual skills past being smart, which didn’t hold much water with Mert. Never mind that Brad had almost a perfect score on his SATs and a 4.0 all through college. He was no good with a carburetor, like Rick, who could straighten out the problem of any vehicle—foreign or domestic—blindfolded and with a hand tied behind his back. When Brad called his dad to tell him that he was one of thirty-two people in the country chosen for the Rhodes Scholarship that year, Mert said, “Well, if you get tired of playing grab-ass over there in England, you come on back and help Rick at his shop. It’s going gangbusters, you know. He’s hired on three mechanics already.”

I shake my head. “He’s different,” I say. “He’s like a different person.”

Mert squares his shoulders and then his chin. He meets my gaze, boring into me with his eyes. “Princess,” he says, “does it ever occur to you that sometimes you don’t have a goddamn clue what you’re talking about?”

The next day I help Brad settle back into the house he grew up in. Mert hasn’t changed a single thing since Brad last walked out. Old wrestling trophies line a few shelves tacked to the wall with no discernible pattern, and crooked to boot. If the house settles any more and in the wrong direction, the shelves will become wooden slides. Varsity letters are pinned haphazardly around a mirror, where there’s
even a picture of one of Brad’s high school girlfriends wedged into a corner. I wonder which one this is—Jocelyn? Cagney? Renée?—and after wondering how Brad never managed to pick a girl with a more normal name like Jennifer or Nicole or some variation thereof, I wonder what this girl in the picture, whatever her name is, is doing now.

I used to be so smug when I would ask about these girls, loving to hear Brad tell me about them, to piece together my husband’s life before it intersected with mine. I was always so confident that no matter whom these Girls of Brad’s Past had married or how many wonderful children they’d had, they’d swap places with me in a heartbeat if given a chance. Now, as I look at this girl with her long, flaxen hair and pointy chin and earnest smile, I think about what I’m doing here, and a jolt of envy runs through me. Maybe Mert is right: Sometimes I really don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

Given Mert’s disinclination for entertaining houseguests, I don’t know how long it’s been since someone has slept in this bed. It could easily have been years ago, and so I strip the bed even though it’s neatly made and I toss the linens into the wash. The quilt I take out back and hang from the porch. I beat the pillows against each other, trying to both rid them of dust and infuse them with cold, fresh air. These are not things men think to do. These are not what they care about. But I will feel better knowing that, at the very least, I’ve left my husband here with clean sheets, even if he pulls them into a heap on the floor tonight.

It’s late afternoon when I finish making the bed, and by the time I kiss Brad good-bye—a subtle, last-minute shift causing my lips to land on the stubble along his cheek instead of his lips—the sun, low and cold in the sky, looks like a worker waiting out the last five minutes of an overtime shift. And by the time Brad, hands in pockets and shoulders squared against being a figure in my rearview mirror, disappears from view, so, too, has the sun.

Part of me feels like I’m dropping a child off at college for the first time. Driving away, I’m bombarded by conflicting emotions: I have an overwhelming urge to turn around and take him home with me, to try again—to try harder. And I feel lighter, freed from the constant worry and supervision of my husband. As I speed down M-95 away from Marquette, Michigan, through a tunnel of evergreen and white, I think that one fact lies at the very root of the problem. I don’t actually need to have a child; between the Army and this godforsaken war, one has already been provided for me.

I pull into the driveway and shift into park. My sole thought is of a warm shower and sleep. As I turn off the car, though, I notice someone sitting on the darkened front steps. Even though she’s cloaked in shadows, I can tell it’s Sondra: her long, thin limbs; the regal carriage of her head and neck, like a beautiful flower on a slender stem; her hair sculpted into a stunning Afro, like an exotic Japanese tree.

“What are you doing here?” I ask as I walk up the sidewalk.

“I was in the neighborhood,” she says. “I sent you a message.” And when I check my phone, I see that she did—ten minutes ago.

Sondra gets up as I climb the stairs and steps aside for me to unlock the door. I hold it open for her. “Come on in,” I say, though my tone isn’t at all hospitable.

I march back to my bedroom to drop my overnight bag and leave Sondra milling around the living room, looking at the photos of me and Brad that adorn the mantel and surrounding shelves. One day while visiting my grandparents—my father’s parents—I realized that every photo in the house was of the two of them, and I remember how odd I found that. Everywhere you turned—living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom—only my grandmother and grandfather smiled
back. Now that I am older, I can see how it happens, because it’s starting to happen to me. I don’t keep photos of my parents outside of my bedroom, lest it start a conversation about what they did and where they lived, and the awkward, stuttering recovery that people always attempt when I say that they died. I’m not sure Brad even has any family photos, or at least, none that I’ve ever seen. Neither of us has nieces or nephews to memorialize, and there aren’t even pets to dote on. So, it is photos of the two of us or none at all.

I hear Sondra call out, “I want to thank you—for taking care of Antony like you did.”

My head snaps up from rifling through my bag for a hair tie. I’m not prepared for the small talk to end so soon. I wonder how she knows that I saw Antony after she left. And then I realize that she’s been talking to him.

I let her words linger until I’m back in the living room. “I didn’t really do anything,” I say.

Sondra is sitting in the recliner, her legs folded under her like a fawn.

“Oh, but you did,” she says. “You kept him company, made him feel like he mattered that day. He was in a bad spot. He’s grateful for what you did.”

I find it hard to believe that I was able to do all that for Antony in the two hours I spent with him, but at least her use of past tense indicates that he’s feeling a bit better. Right now, though, I’m livid with Sondra. “It wasn’t really my place,” I say, “but I suppose someone had to.” It’s a cutting comment, and I mean it to be.

Sondra gets the dig. I see it register in her eyes. Her smile is sad. “Still angry, I see?”

I shrug. It’s hard to be legitimately angry at someone over a very personal choice made about her very personal life. But I can’t seem to shake the image of Antony sitting there in his wheelchair, staring out
the window and into the sun, with air and bandages where his two arms should be.

“I was going to leave him anyway. You should know that. And not because he was injured. Not his arms, anyway,” she says.

“You don’t have to explain.”

“No,” Sondra says, “I feel like I sort of do. Do you have any tequila?”

I shake my head. Brad and I enjoy the occasional beer, but we don’t have liquor around because we just don’t often drink it. Well, we didn’t, anyway. “I can offer you a bottle of beer with an undetermined purchase date or watered-down Jack Daniel’s. Bet you’re glad you showed up here, huh?”

“You’re lucky he doesn’t drink it straight.”

I look at Sondra. I tip my chin to the side to study her. I didn’t say that the Jack was Brad’s. I didn’t tell her who had watered it down. Yet, she seems to know. “Indeed,” I say, still eyeing her. “Just wish I didn’t have to.”

“Indeed,” Sondra says. She chews on her lower lip for a moment and makes an offer. “Why don’t we go somewhere—grab a drink? Catch up.”

I shake my head. “It’s late. Not tonight. Maybe some other time.”

Sondra gets up, fetches her boots, and sits back down in the recliner. She pulls one on and zips it, and then the other. Then she grabs my shoes.

“It’s ten thirty on a Saturday night. Your husband is gone. I’m in town visiting. And we probably have some talking to do.”

I think of the shower I want so badly to take. I think of climbing between the sheets and closing my eyes and forgetting, for a handful of hours, the sight of Brad in my rearview mirror.

I shake my head again. But Sondra holds my shoes out to me and shakes them at me. “One drink,” she says. “I promise. After that, you don’t ever have to talk to me again.”

She shakes my shoes at me again. This time I take them from her.

“One drink,” I say. I slip on my shoes and grab my keys.

I’m chilled to the bone, which tends to happen when I’m overtired and also when it’s winter in Wisconsin, so I pick a cozy Irish pub on the square with a real fireplace and Smithwick’s on tap.

In the span of one drink we cover what has brought Sondra to town (work meetings), what she’s doing now (sales for a medical record software developer in California, learning to surf), how Darcy is doing (hanging in there, busy with Mia), and how I’m doing (fine, fine).

After the second round of drinks arrives, Sondra takes a sip of her mescal on the rocks. She places the glass back on the table and says, “I’m sorry for leaving you like that.”

I take a sip, delaying having to respond, because I don’t know what to say. So many thoughts are competing for airtime—that she should be sorry; that she didn’t only run out on me that day; and that she’s selfish and self-absorbed. I want to ask her if she planned to leave both Antony and me there, and how, in light of my difficult afternoon, she found the strength to point her car westward and drive away. I want to know if she ever looked back.

“It’s fine,” I tell her. “Really.” For a long time, I craved an explanation from her. In the past weeks, though, I’ve been so fully focused on Brad that I haven’t had time or energy to sustain my judgment of Sondra.

We stare at each other. The tone of my voice betrays everything I’m thinking.

Sondra takes another long sip of her drink and shifts in her seat to tuck one leg underneath her.

“This was Antony’s third tour. You know, that’s almost four years of deployments. Almost four years of the hellish waving good-bye and wondering if he’ll be coming back. Four years of learning to live
without him, of doing every last damn thing myself, only to then have to turn around and welcome him home and figure out how to live with him all over again. It was exhausting. But I would have done it.”

“Except?” I ask.

“Except each time, it was like he left a piece of himself over there. Each time, he was a little less Antony. Until he wasn’t really Antony at all—at least not my Antony. Some of them manage not to let the war get to them. Some of them come back like they never left. But not all. And the ones that don’t, it’s hard. It’s real hard.”

I nod. Brad hasn’t just let the war get to him. He’s soaked it in like water to a bone-dry sponge. He’s let it infiltrate every last cell of his body, every last thought, every waking moment—and those in his sleep, too. Hard? I think. Calculus is hard. Running five miles is hard. Baking a layer cake with homemade frosting is hard. But this? This is something else altogether.