Learning to Stay (23 page)

“You tried to tell me—at Darcy’s party, didn’t you?”

Sondra nods and again smiles sadly at me. “I did,” she says.

“I should have listened.”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t,” she says. “No one does.”

“PTSD?” I ask.

Although it’s a generic question, Sondra knows exactly what I mean. “Yup—textbook,” she says. “Hypervigilance, inability to sleep, flashbacks, disassociation.” She laughs. “I sound like a freaking psychology textbook, don’t I? They make it sound so clinical. So manageable. But they don’t tell you that eating out at a restaurant now means your husband stares past you, constantly surveying all the entrances and exits while you keep up a completely one-sided conversation. They don’t tell you that it’s going to end up costing two grand to fix the air conditioner that he shot with his pistol when it made a strange noise. Or that you’ll never get a birthday, Christmas, or anniversary gift again because malls are nothing more than giant triggers for him.”

Sondra’s eyes are wet now. She’s biting her lip and shaking her head. I’d like to hug her. I’d like to hug us both. But I stay put. I can sense she’s not done. I sense she wouldn’t necessarily like me to do that anyway. So I offer encouragement in the form of a sympathetic nod.

“‘But not to keep,’” she says softly.

I cock my head, not sure I heard her correctly.

“They give them back,” she says, “but not really. It’s from a poem: ‘And with his eyes he asked her not to ask. They had given him back to her, but not to keep.’”

Not to keep
.

“A lot of times, by the time you get to rehab, sometimes before, the doctors won’t even talk to the spouses.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because of the washout rate.”

“Washout?”

“Divorce. Some ridiculously high percentage of spouses who are there when the soldier gets off the plane on a stretcher have hit the road by the time they’re wheeled into rehab. So the docs deal with just the patients from the get-go. Hard to blame them, really.”

I tell her then what I haven’t been able to tell anyone else. I tell her about the nightmares Brad has, about the one that was so bad I woke up with him straddling me, choking me, and how the next morning he didn’t remember doing it. I tell her about how he’s slept on the floor since he’s been back. I tell her about his tattoo, the smoking, Mrs. Valhalla and the incident at the grocery store, and then finding him in the garage with that noose hanging over him. I tell her that I took him to live with Mert—and that I’m not sure for how long—because I’m afraid to leave my husband alone and I’m afraid to be with him. I tell her how guilty I feel every second of every single day, and how terrified I am that this might never change, that this might be our new normal—my new life.

“You know the first thing Antony said when he got out of surgery?” Sondra asks, none of what I’ve said seeming to faze her. “First words, honest to God: ‘When can I go back?’ He said his guys needed him. Never mind that I was his wife and that I was standing right there next to him. Never mind that he didn’t even have a hand left for me to hold, or that
I
needed him. No, he wanted to get on the first bird back.”

“‘But not to keep,’” I say quietly, noting how the words feel as they form on my tongue.

Sondra stares into her glass as if trying to divine guidance from the liquid inside, to read it like tea leaves. The waiter stops at our table and delivers a new round for each of us.

“We didn’t order these,” I tell him. I’m instantly angry with Sondra and her stupid one-drink “promise.”

“No,” the waiter says. “That guy sent them over.” He gestures to the end of the bar, where Zach Newsome is sitting with only a sweating glass of stout for company. Zach lifts his hand into a feeble wave.

Sondra looks back and forth between Zach and me. “Do you know him?” she asks.

I nod. “Coworker.”

She chews the inside of her cheek. “Good guy?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Fantastic attorney.”

She looks at me, then at Zach, and then back at me. “Ha!” she laughs. “And what else?”

“I wouldn’t know!” I say, mostly in mock offense.

Sondra’s face clouds with an unexpected solemnity. “There’s no shame in it, you know, Elise. Sometimes you fight the good fight and sometimes the good fight wins. It happens,” she says, nodding thoughtfully. “And sometimes, it’s for the best.”

I’m about to ask her what she means, exactly, when she says, “Why
don’t you invite him over?” and without waiting for me to respond, she gives Zach a come-hither look and a wave. He wastes no time.

“Ladies,” he says, pulling out a chair and sitting down. He’s beaming at me in a way that, even if he was angry about being stood up at breakfast last week, says he’s long since forgotten it.

“Thank you for the drink,” Sondra says, raising her glass.

He clinks his pint against her tumbler. “Thanks for inviting me over.”

“Sondra, Zach,” I say. “Zach, Sondra. Zach is my go-to guy on all things related to Early, Janssen, and Bradenton,” I say to Sondra. “Sondra is—” I stumble, wondering how to introduce her. An old friend? No. A good friend? Nope. A fellow Guard spouse? Not really. “I met Sondra through my friend Darcy,” I say, finally. “She’s in from sunny California on business.”

This delivery is not smooth, but it is effective. Zach asks her what kind of business, and where she lives in California, and the two of them are off and chatting, leaving me to wonder how Brad is and what he’s doing right now.

I think about ducking out to call him, when out of nowhere Sondra says, “I read this book by some Harvard psychologist or psychiatrist on the plane ride here whose theory is that we all just need to have lower expectations in order to be happy. That we need to visualize the reality of our situations and not what we’d ideally like to have happen. I think there’s something to that.”

I look at Sondra, wondering where this non sequitur has come from or if I’ve missed more of the conversation than I thought I have, but Zach is nonplussed. He shrugs, takes a sip of his Guinness, and dives right in. He loves a good philosophical discussion, I’ve learned. “I think you’re right. I saw something on
20/20
or
60 Minutes
on this very thing. I think Denmark was the happiest country on earth for like the millionth year in a row, and not because it’s some sort of
tropical paradise—clearly—or has a cure for cancer. People there just have a lower bar as far as what they expect out of life. Garbage picked up? Check. Buses run on time? Check. Population elation? Check.”

“That’s sad,” I say. “That’s contentment, not happiness.”

“One and the same, no?” Zach says.

I shake my head with vigor. “Absolutely not. It’s all practicality. Where’s the room for dreams?”

“Do you really need that, though?” Sondra asks. “Aren’t you just setting yourself up for disappointment? If you don’t have hopes and expectations, contentment can pass for happiness.”

I feel my face scrunch and I recoil. “Are you serious? You really want to look back at the end of your days and say that nothing all that bad happened? Or things could’ve been worse? What kind of life is that? Don’t you want more?”

“I do,” she says. “Beats the hell out of wishing for things to be different from what they are. But what if you know you’ll never get it? If you know you’ll never have what you need to be happy?”

“Then I’ll keep trying,” I say, though I’m not sure I believe myself. If I know that I’m not happy and that nothing is likely to change, will I keep my head down and simply soldier on, hoping for the best? I owe it to Brad to do that, but what about me? Don’t I owe it to myself to do what I need to be happy?

“Trying is good, but so is hoping,” Zach says. “Being happy isn’t too much to hope for if you’ve got one of the good ones.” And as he says this, he places a hand on my knee under the table and lets it linger there.

A waitress arrives and Zach orders Scotch eggs. I’m so thrown by the disconnect between his matter-of-fact order and the warm trail left by his hand on my leg that I don’t ask what Scotch eggs are or try to request fries instead. Then he excuses himself to the restroom.

As soon as Zach is out of earshot, Sondra smiles at me with a knowing, sly look. “Someone likes you,” she whispers, leaning forward. “So is he?”

“Is he what?” I ask, still annoyed—or reannoyed—with her.

“One of the good ones?”

“We work together,” I say. “Zach would flirt with Arnold Schwarzenegger if he were wearing Eau de Estrogen.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I think so.”

Sondra leans forward. Her face is hard set. “You know you’re not going to have it all, right? Your American dream with the kids and the fence? Not with Brad. I’m sure he was a great guy once. But can you look me in the eye and say that you’d leave a baby with him? A toddler? Hell, you said yourself that you can’t even trust him alone. Have you thought of how you’re going to raise a kid and work full-time and take care of Brad, too? How you’re going to keep everyone safe and happy and keep yourself sane, too? It’s impossible, Elise. It just is.”

I stare back at Sondra, shocked at her directness.

“How do I know all of this? How dare I just put it out there? Because I couldn’t do it, either.”

I look up to see Zach approaching the table, and behind him, the waitress with our Scotch eggs. I have a nearly full pint in front of me and could use the sustenance of a late-night nosh. But Sondra’s words are clanging like cymbals in my head, and I’m suddenly past ready to go home. Scratch that. I’m suddenly past ready to already be between the sheets, fast asleep.

I shrug my coat on and button it. I half expect Sondra to backtrack, to apologize. Instead, she says, “You know I’m right, Elise.”

At the same time Zach asks, “You’re leaving—already?”

I look at Sondra and nod, and I look at Zach and nod.

“I’ve had a long day,” I say. I fish a hat from my jacket pocket and pull it over my head and ears.

“You shouldn’t drive,” Sondra says.

Zach jumps up and reaches for his jacket. “I’ll give you a ride.”

I shake my head and motion to the table. “You have full drinks and eggs to munch on,” I say, waving them off. “Stay put. Get to know each other. I need to do some walking.”

“It’s freezing out,” Sondra says. She stands to hug me and when I hold out my arms, she draws me close, rubbing my back. Then she pulls back and lifts my jacket hood over my head. “Bundle up,” she says.

I smile at her. She might feel sorry for me right now. Or she might believe she has everything figured out. Maybe she does have everything figured out. But that’s her life; it’s not mine. And the way she’s figured it out, I feel just as sorry for her.

Walking home, though, I can’t seem to exorcise her words. They play loud and constant on a loop in my head. There is no
PAUSE
button, no volume control.

It’s snowed since we’ve been in the pub, and flakes keep falling haphazardly. My footfalls against the concrete sidewalk are muffled, and they remind me of the night I first met Brad so long ago, back in Marquette. The me of that memory seems like a different person altogether, so carefree and certain that there were better days to come.

I walk past a house where someone has forgotten to draw the curtains, and inside I see a man about my age, a few pounds over chubby and wearing flannel pajamas, dancing around the living room with a baby who seems at a glance to be fighting sleep. Its little fists flail at his shoulders and the air. I stop and I stare, and I don’t realize that there are tears in my eyes until they spill over, already almost frozen, and onto my cheeks.

I want that man to be Brad. I want that baby to be ours. I can see
it clearly: a parallel universe in which that is Brad and I’m up in bed listening to him sway our child to sleep in our darkened living room while snow coats the world outside a striking white. And even as I see it, watch it so clearly, a part of me deep down recognizes that scene for what it is: a mirage.

I hardly remember much of the rest of my walk home, and by the time I reach my driveway, my fingers and toes and cheeks tingle and oh, how I love that feeling. I decided long ago that I would hate to live somewhere warm, where you can’t test yourself against the elements like you can in the Midwest. Maybe I’m the only one, but I can’t help feeling a sort of accomplishment on nights like tonight when it’s cold and the easiest thing to do is to huddle inside, somewhere warm. But when you don’t, when you head out into the cold and snow, sometimes you enjoy it. Sometimes it makes you feel more alive than much else probably could. And that’s worth a whole lot of being comfortable.

As I climb the steps and fidget my key into the door, I notice a car parked half a block down, idling with its lights off. When I push the door open, the car’s lights come on and it eases into the street. It turns the corner just shy of my house and speeds off. Just before it does, I catch sight of the license plate: Nwsom1.

Zach.

One of the good ones.

The first major snowstorm of the year has picked tonight to hit the Midwest. I have the television on and I watch the hazy white mass on the weather map hover over the upper plains states like a poltergeist as I pack my bag for a short trip to Marquette—up today and back tomorrow—to see Brad.