It’s gotten dark enough outside that I have to turn the bedroom light on to find the pair of jeans I want. This also means we’re running late. Again.
“Brad! We’ve got to go. Hurry up!” I cringe at the words coming from my mouth. I sound, if not like my mother, then very much like someone’s. But Darcy is inexplicably holding her annual Christmas party this year just weeks after burying her husband, and I’m wary of how this is going to go. I want to be there early to help her—to keep an eye on her. I wanted to have arrived at her house a full hour ago.
“The top doesn’t work,” he says.
“What top?” I yell down the hall.
“I can’t get the toothpaste to work.”
I storm into the bathroom and grab the tube from him. It has a protective seal that needs to be peeled off before use, which I do before handing it back to him. True, it’s a different brand than we usually buy, but my husband is a Rhodes scholar who specializes in Russian and spent the better part of last year operating complex machinery such as guns and rockets. “It works fine,” I say. “Be smarter than what you’re working on.”
It’s a phrase I’ve used a million times. It’s an old habit, is all. But Brad looks instantly angry. “Were you always such a bitch?” he asks. “Or is that a new thing?”
We drive to Darcy’s house in stony silence, and when we arrive, already there is nowhere to park. Though I can usually find a spot immediately in front of Darcy’s house, tonight the street is packed and the only open space is more than two blocks away. While we walk, I try to talk myself out of being upset. I think back to all of the pamphlets and newsletter articles I’ve read on deployment and return, and remind myself that there’s always an adjustment period. All those reunion videos—couples jumping into each other’s arms, the hanging on to each other for dear life, the tears and kisses and more tears and then more kisses? That’s real. But so is this—all that comes after the cameras stop rolling.
As we make our way up the front walk, I place a hand on Brad’s back and let it linger there—a conciliatory gesture, though maybe one that is too subtle. Darcy flings the door open when we knock, as if she has been just behind it, waiting. Her house is warm with laughter and bodies. The skin on my fingers and cheeks smarts from the sudden change in temperature. Darcy hugs each of us and I hug her back, lingering. She has gotten thin. I can feel bones where pillows of flesh used to be. Brad and I shrug out of our jackets and hand them to Darcy.
“Drinks are in the kitchen,” she says. “There’s beer, wine, eggnog.” She throws the “eggnog” in Brad’s direction, given that he doesn’t usually drink much and also loves her eggnog.
“Eggnog?” I say. “You made your eggnog?”
Darcy shrugs. “It’s easy,” she says. And although I believe that it’s not a complicated recipe, this is her first holiday alone, so soon without Collin. Nothing is easy. Not even eggnog.
Beyond Darcy, I see that garland and colored lights have been strung over windows and doorways, and a decorated tree fills one corner of the living room. I know it was Darcy and Collin’s tradition to select and cut down their own tree at one of the surrounding tree farms. They did this every year on the first weekend of December. Not wanting to call and broach a subject she’d rather avoid, I have been wondering what Darcy did this year. And now I picture Darcy with Mia in a sling, trudging around the tree farm and sipping hot cocoa while waiting for her tree to be wrapped and loaded, watching all the families—similar to the one she had only months before—come and go. Or worse, she might have driven to one of the many temporary Christmas tree sales posts that spring up in gas stations or grocery store parking lots in the weeks surrounding the holidays, paid forty dollars, and loaded and unloaded the tree herself, decorating it with only Mia’s cooing to keep her company. My breath hitches in my throat. I cough hard to dislodge it, along with those pictures of Darcy stuck in my mind.
I circle my friend’s shoulders with my arms and she puts her arm around my waist. Brad goes ahead into the kitchen while Darcy and I hang back, surveying the crowd. “You’re crazy, you know that?” I say to her. She nods and I catch the faintest tremble pass over her lip just as she bites down on the bottom one. “But I love you anyway,” I tell her.
“So I’m a charity case?” she asks, incredulous, but a hint of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.
“Are you kidding? I’m the charity case. You know what we’d be eating tonight if it weren’t for you? Canned soup and grilled cheese. That is, if I managed not to burn it.”
“Which?”
“Both.”
“It’s almost impossible to burn soup,” Darcy says.
I raise an eyebrow. “You really want to challenge me on kitchen disasters? I have an intimate knowledge of all things burnable.”
“But you have so many other good qualities,” she jokes. “Now go eat.”
Darcy gives me a gentle push toward her kitchen table, which is overflowing with plates of stuffed mushrooms, mini quiches, baked cheeses and dips; vats of Swedish meatballs and garlic-sautéed shrimp; platters of bars and holiday cookies any bakery would be proud to serve. She has been cooking her way through the stages of grief and is, quite possibly, the first widow to have sent visitors home with food instead of the other way around. I pick up a mushroom and half expect to taste the bitter tang of mourning, the saltiness of tears in it right along with its usual earthy, savory flavors.
A quick scan of the faces in Darcy’s living/dining room reveals that there are a lot of people here I don’t know, or have met only briefly, and I’m reluctant to wade out into that sea of small talk. Throughout Collin’s time in the Guard—a decade or so—Darcy has collected friends from a variety of different eras, and most of the crowd consists of people Darcy and Collin both worked with. From a quick survey of the room, it seems that, aside from some of the teachers, not many in attendance here know one another all that well. The party is missing that hum of constant conversation, and more handshakes than hugs are being exchanged. I get the sense that they’re here for Darcy, and not really for the party.
“Is Mia at her grandma’s?”
“She’ll bring her by later on. They were all going shopping and then for dinner.”
Just the mention of Mia makes me smile. I never thought it possible to love someone else’s child so much. “I’m so glad I’ll get to see her,” I say. “But promise me you’ll let me know if you need some help with her, too. I’ll take her anytime, you know.”
Darcy gives me a look. “And do what—prop her up in a file cabinet?”
“Ha, ha, ha,” I say, deadpan. “Very funny.” But Darcy has a point. Despite how close the two of us are, and despite my regular offers, Darcy has never asked me to watch Mia. But that’s probably just as well, because as appealing as spending time with her sounds, once I’m into the thick of the week, something always comes up. Last year I billed somewhere around two thousand hours, and the only full day I took off was for Granna’s funeral. I took the job at Early, Janssen, and Bradenton because I was promised a lot of client contact and because, since it was a smaller firm, I thought I was signing up for less of a corporate culture. Instead, I’ve landed in a small firm with a big-firm attitude. It’s a place that demands the same hours as a big firm, but without any of the support, such as paralegal teams, an on-site mail room, messengers in an instant, or a team of reference librarians to find that one obscure statistic or case, which I could spend an afternoon or more searching for when I should be doing a million other things. It’s a firm that also comes with the implicit understanding that although vacation or sick time—or weekends—might technically be part of the benefits package, you shouldn’t actually take any of it—not if you want to be there for long.
Brad sidles up to us, and I can smell his drink before I see it: some sort of dark liquor—whiskey or brandy—cut with little more than a few ice cubes.
“Brad,” I say under my breath. I shoot a glance down at the plastic tumbler he’s holding.
“What?” he snaps.
“Nothing. It’s just a little more drink than you usually have.”
He eyes me, and his mouth sets in a thin, hard line.
“Maybe I have a different usual,” he says.
I shrug, relinquishing any hope of not having to be the one to
drive us home tonight. But Brad has been out of the country—in the Middle East—for nearly a year. Brad is home alive. And I can hear Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” coming from the Sounds of the Season channel on Darcy’s television. Driving us home is the least I can do.
“Go for it, then,” I tell him. “You’ve earned it.” I stretch up to kiss his cheek, but he turns at the last second, and my lips grace only air.
I do my best to mingle. I would rather we were here for dinner with just Darcy, but for her I will make the best of it. However, making the best of it mostly involves keeping an eye on Brad, because every time I look over at him, he is standing by himself. Some people come up to him. A few Guard people who seem to know him, or at least of him, give him a one-armed hug and tell him they’re glad he’s back. Those who don’t know him shake his hand and thank him for his service. Every time someone touches him, I see Brad shrink back, then fight the urge by nodding and smiling, trying to cover it up.
Still others—friends and acquaintances alike—keep their distance from Brad, regarding him from afar. It would be a different scene if some of Brad’s unit were here, but they’re still over there, working to hand things off before they return in a week or two. Most of the guests are from other areas of Darcy and Collin’s life—neighbors, family, and coworkers—who don’t know quite what to say to Brad. Because it’s not as if he’s back from vacation or a work trip, and there are no easy questions to ask to keep the conversation going when someone has returned from war.
I’m surveying the room, trying to decide how much I should interfere on Brad’s behalf, when Sondra Thompson catches my eye and waves tentatively at me. Sondra is one of Darcy’s longtime crew, and though we’ve socialized only a handful of times, I’ve always liked her.
She’s in sales of some sort—software or pharmaceuticals—and between her model-pretty looks and no-nonsense demeanor, I imagine her running circles around her male colleagues, and the poor saps she’s selling anything to. My only complaint about Sondra is that I don’t get to see her enough.
I wander over to her and she gives me a shoulder-to-shoulder hug. Sondra is tall, with impossibly smooth mocha skin, and an Afro and nails that are always manicured. No matter how great I might feel about my choice of outfit or rare good-hair day, one step into Sondra’s orbit and I’m back to feeling painfully plain. But the most beautiful thing about Sondra is her ability to make each person around her feel like he’s her very favorite person.
“I was hoping you’d be here,” she says in a way that makes me fully believe her. Sondra’s hand lingers on my shoulder for a moment longer than necessary, and she gives it an extra squeeze.
“Must be great to have him back,” she says, nodding in Brad’s direction.
“It really is,” I say. “And you, too. How’s Antony doing?”
Sondra’s husband lost both arms to an IED and has been moving through the corridor of military medical facilities stretching from Germany to Washington, D.C., to, most recently, Minneapolis, for more than five months now. Sondra nods as if agreeing with something I said, as if I hadn’t asked a question. After a few seconds she says, “He’s finally in rehab. It’s nice to be within driving distance of him.”
Later, it will dawn on me that she hasn’t actually answered the question I asked her. But I don’t think about that now. Instead, I plow full-on ahead into how wonderful it must be to have him home, making all sorts of verbal faux pas that will make me cringe at some point in the future, like saying that I’m sure his injuries will require an adjustment
but how nice it must be to know her husband is home for good, and safe.
“It’s a relief,” Sondra says. “That he’s safe. You’re right. It’s a huge relief.” She looks back over at Brad, who has positioned himself beside the sliding glass door and keeps looking from it to the front door and back again like a Secret Service agent anticipating trouble. “How is he doing?” she asks.
I nod and smile and shake my head, still hardly believing that across the room from me is Brad and that I don’t need to fear the nightly news or a knock at my door any longer. I have spent so much time lately feeling terrible for Darcy, and for just a moment, standing here beside Sondra, I steep in the knowledge that that godforsaken desert decided to spit out each of our husbands. “He’s great,” I say. “Just great.”
Sondra’s smile is tinged with something I can’t pinpoint. “I’m glad,” she says. Then she takes my hand in hers. “Just promise me one thing: When it’s not great, you let someone know. Me, or Darcy, or someone.” She squeezes my hand and before she can let go, I take it from her.
I can’t help but let my eyes narrow. My head cocks in surprise. She sees the unasked question in these movements. “It always gets hard, Elise,” she says. “You think you’ll be the only one. That your husband is the exception. At some point, though, it’ll come for you, too.”
“What will?”
A woman with severely bobbed red hair is approaching us. She probably doesn’t know anyone else here and looks to have been orphaned by a previous conversation, hovering in our orbit and waiting. Sondra takes my hand, gives it one more squeeze, then releases it. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?” she says, before fixing the red-haired woman with a toothy smile and excusing herself.
• • •
A couple hours and twice that number of Jack and Cokes later, Brad drifts farther and farther away from me, and I relax in the knowledge that he’s having a good time. Then I hear a woman, one of Darcy’s former coworkers, whose name I believe is Cheri, talking to my husband.
“And after the whole kitchen is all done, after the contractors have cleaned up and left and the appliances are delivered and installed, I go to open the refrigerator and I can’t even get my hand in. That’s as far as it would open! Can you believe it? I was so angry. I mean, I had all of these groceries sitting on the counter and no way of getting them in the stupid refrigerator.” She rolls her eyes and sighs. “It was just one headache after another. Don’t ever do a remodel—buy new instead.”