Authors: E. M. Kokie
Tags: #Social Issues, #Family, #Juvenile Fiction, #Military & Wars, #General, #Homosexuality, #Parents, #Historical, #Siblings, #Fiction, #Death & Dying
We drive through for some snackage and then park in the small gravel lot near the bend in the river where it’s shallow. A picnic table in the shade is perfect and quiet.
I take my time eating, trying to work out how to start or what to say. Shauna’s done and waiting for me before I’ve eaten much at all, which pretty much never happens. When the waiting gets to be too much, she makes a frustrated yelp and smacks my arm.
“I can’t take this anymore! What’s going on?”
I push the rest of my burger away and wipe my hands on my jeans. I reach for my shake, hit the cup, and scramble to right the cup before it spills all over. Then I move it away from me, so I can’t knock it over again.
“Matt, just tell me.” She takes a deep breath and then lets it out with a shaky sigh.
I work my throat to get it out, the words crammed in and jumbled. “We got T.J.’s stuff.” I suck in some air. “His personal effects.”
Shauna’s eyes go wide. “But I thought . . . that bag . . . from —”
“So did I. But Cooper showed up Friday with three footlockers.”
She grabs my hand and squeezes it. “Did your dad go crazy, or . . . ? Wait, he did let you see them, right? I mean —”
“He, uh, didn’t. He just put them away, in T.J.’s room. But —”
“You have to go through them!” She jumps up, then sits down again to grab her backpack, preparing to jump again. “I’ll help you, or be your lookout, or . . . we could wait for poker night, and —”
“Shaun, I already did.” She drops her bag and flops back onto the bench. “I went through everything Saturday night.”
She settles in, eyes huge. “Oh, my God. Does he know?”
“No. I snuck in while he was out.”
“Shit.” She looks impressed. And all’s forgiven.
“Yeah, well . . . I figured I’d better look through it all, and fast, just in case.”
“Yeah.” She reaches for my hand again. “And?”
I shake her off — too distracting. “And . . . his uniform, clothes, iPods, books, photographs, games, CDs . . . all kinds of stuff. The letters people wrote him.” I reach into my backpack and pull out the heavy plastic bag. “Including these.”
Her eyes dart back and forth between the letters and my face. “From?”
“T.J.’s girlfriend.”
“Get out!” she yells, slapping my arm again. “Who . . . I mean . . . Where? Girlfriend?”
“Yup.”
“And she wrote him letters? You have letters from her?”
I pick at the edge of the table. “Yeah.” I look back up at her. “Some of them are, um, kinda . . .” I can’t say it, even if I can’t scour the sexy parts from my brain.
Her cheeks go suddenly pink. She gets it.
“Want to read some of them?” I ask quietly, pushing a bag with some of Celia’s letters — sort of a best-of-Celia selection — toward Shauna.
“Seriously?” She reaches for the bag between us, but pauses when her fingers touch the plastic. “I mean, it’s OK?”
“Yeah.” I need her to read them, to see her reactions.
She starts pulling them out of the bag.
“They’re in order by postmark, so . . .” I sit on my hands to keep from reaching for them, to protect them.
She smiles. “Keep them in order. Check.”
I turn my face away, hot at her teasing. But while I sort through a few of the pics she should see, I watch her carefully pull them out in small groups, keeping them in order.
When I was reading them the first time, words kept ricocheting off my brain and bouncing around the inside of my skull. Words like
love
and
bed
and
kisses. Hands. Sheets. Sweet. Sexy. Touching. Missing. Worry. Sad.
Phrases like
be careful
and
come home
and
love you.
It’s easy to see the letters that are extra worn, with creases and marks and edges frayed from careful, but repeated, handling. T.J. read those letters over and over. They were always the really sexy ones. Which was weird, like spying on him, on them.
There were just so many. She had to have written him a couple times a week. And so many didn’t have envelopes, and others were stuck into cards, meaning she had to have sent more packages, too. As many letters from Celia as everyone else combined. I skimmed some of the other letters, but compared to Celia’s, they’re pretty boring. I left them in the box under my bed.
Shauna unfolds the first one, postmarked right after T.J.’s unit deployed. The last one’s postmarked a few weeks before T.J. was killed. I keep hoping that Celia didn’t find out he was gone by her letters coming back.
“Holy shit.” Shauna looks up from the letter, her eyes blinking rapidly.
“Theo?”
It’s kind of fun, watching her. “I know. Keep reading.”
She clears her throat and starts to read aloud, which feels weird, but I can’t tell her to stop. I want to hear her read them.
“I just this morning answered your latest e-mail, so it feels stupid to write again already, but this is a letter day. And I never miss a letter day. Even though these take so long to get to you, I can’t help it. There’s something NOT ordinary about writing you a letter. Picking out the paper, touching it, tucking in a treat, an article or a picture. Giving you some part of me to hold. To feel. [Insert deep sigh here.]
“I miss your hands, holding me, touching me. Don’t get me wrong, I love your e-mails (and don’t stop sending them), but I love the letters more, for having something from you to hold.
“So when you get this letter, and all the news is not really newsworthy anymore, just think about how I picked out the paper and paused over the words and signed it, knowing you would be able to feel me . . .”
Shauna trails off, waving the letter at me. “When you said he had a girlfriend, I thought, I guess, like”— she leans a little ways back from the table —“some kind of . . . fling, but . . .”
I nod.
“Matt! I thought, like . . . Holy shit!” She laughs, hits the letter with her hand. “This . . . She . . . Matt!”
The laughter ripples through my chest, too, because of all her possible reactions, this one is the best, the most fun. This one is pure Shauna. My Shauna. It’s strangely calming, like pretty much nothing else has been.
“Now you understand why I’ve been weird?” I ask.
“No shit. But, Matt, she loved him.”
“I know.”
“And if she was writing this, then T.J . . . .”
“Loves, or, uh, loved her? Yeah,” I say. “I’ve figured that part out. Keep going. There’s more.”
“More?”
She dives back in. Reading me bits from time to time. Other times curling in on herself and reading with her fingers pressed to her lips. She hands me a candy to unwrap, too engrossed even to deal with the wrapper. After I hand her the candy, I chew the bits of sticky grape off my fingers and continue looking through the pictures.
“Are any of those of her? Do you know?”
I hand her the one of Celia in her uniform. “I’m pretty sure this is her. I Googled around, found a picture of her on a website for a university — I think she works there.”
“Wow.”
“There’s a bunch of pictures of her, at different times. Not a lot of anyone else. And I just . . . I don’t know, but I instantly knew it was her. And then the picture I found online confirmed it.” I stare at the picture of her at the picnic table. “I’ve been thinking that maybe that’s why he didn’t tell us.”
“Huh?”
My face gets hot in a different way.
“Oh,” Shauna says. “Because she’s black? You really think he would think that would matter to you?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe Dad, but . . . T.J. didn’t tell me, either, so . . .” I hand her the next couple of pictures so I can stop talking. “I found those, too.”
“Do you know any of the guys?”
“No. But these two,” I say, pointing to the guys outside the restaurant with her, “I think they’re Army, too. Probably all from his, her — I don’t know, maybe their — unit.”
“What about them?” she asks, pointing at the two guys at the umbrella table with them.
I look at their faces again — could be more of the unit, I guess, but on leave. Or friends. The guy on the other side of T.J. could be Army. He has that look: short hair, strong, something about the way he’s sitting, too. His skin is almost as dark as hers, but not all suntanned like she is. Can’t tell if that means he doesn’t spend a lot of time outside or just never really tans. But the guy on the other side of Celia doesn’t look Army. And his skin’s light enough that it’s even kind of sunburned, especially his nose, so he doesn’t spend much time outside. And his hair is way longer than regulation. No, I’d guess not military.
I blow out my breath. “No idea.”
She goes back to the letters. I wait. She’ll come to it soon — maybe three or four letters down.
The closer she gets, the harder it is not to jump ahead and just force her to read that letter, to ask outright. But I need to see her find it, figure it out for herself.
When the small square flutters out of a letter and falls face up on the table in front of her, I brace for it. She turns the photo around. Her brow creases. Then her face smoothes out and rounds with her smile. I know what the picture looks like — I’ve stared at it for hours. Celia — softer and more relaxed than the other pics, but definitely her — holding a little girl.
“Matt?”
“Read the letter.”
T.J. read this letter many times. He opened and refolded it again and again, the edges fuzzy from his hands, each time tucking it safely back in its envelope, picture and all.
I can tell she just wants me to tell her, but she hands me the small square picture and prepares to read.
“Theo,”
she begins.
Already I pretty much know this one by heart, but I close my eyes and listen anyway.
“It’s Friday morning, just after 8am. It’s been an oh-so-long week, so I took the day off. Mom picked up Zoe an hour ago for a day with Grammy and Pops. So Missy stopped up for coffee before work, bringing fresh cherry scones, still warm. Wonderful! Especially because we could just have a relaxing morning, and talk, really talk, without Zoe’s little ears to worry about. Love the girl, but sometimes I just need some time with Missy, alone, to talk.
“Now, a fresh cup of coffee, just on the good side of too sweet, a blissfully quiet house, and a fresh sheet of paper. So, where to start?
“Sunday, Thomas stopped by with a few pictures he took on Dad’s birthday — the best one of the bunch is enclosed. Zoe looks like an angel (as you can see, it’s pre–chocolate cake and ice cream). I framed a bigger copy, but Thomas thought you’d like a smaller one — easier to have with you, to hold on to.
“Yesterday was one of those crazy unseasonably warm days where everyone forgets their troubles for a while. I was done early, so I called Missy and Mom and told them I’d pick up Zoe from day care, and we went to the park. You would not believe how much she’s grown — and how much she’s talking — can hardly shut the child up! And it’s all, ‘I do it by my sef’ (no L as far as I can tell). Baby Girl is turning into Little Miss Independent. Made me smile and wish you were here.
“She misses you. She keeps asking when you’ll be home from work. She must think you’re always at the office, like Missy, or Will, work being where the adults go when they’re not home. Yesterday she got that puzzled expression midslide, and when I caught her at the bottom, she looked around like you were just there, and she asked again. I didn’t have that talk in me yesterday, so I distracted her with ice cream. I’m sure you, of all people, could get behind that. She wanted ‘los and los and los of prinkles’ on hers — and her idea of ‘los’ is definitely in line with yours when you order lots and lots and lots. She even waved her hand for another spoonful like you do. We all thank you ever so much for teaching her that.
“I miss you, too. But that’s no secret. And, I should say that everyone misses you.
“I think yesterday was the last gasp of summer. It’s supposed to get steadily colder this week. I dread the first really cold night. I just know I’ll be huddled under the covers, probably even wearing socks, but wishing for your perpetual warmth. I miss waking up with you in the morning, and going to bed with you at night, and it will only be worse when it’s cold.
“I promised myself I’d wait to write until I snapped out of this mood, but apparently it’s back. So, let’s try for some levity, shall we?
“Missy and Will are having a little dinner tomorrow night. (Can’t really call it a party, can we?) Zoe’s excited. She keeps babbling about it, about how Missy said she could help. Not sure what she thinks she’ll be helping with, but tonight she was packing her little backpack with crayons and stuffies. And she’s insisting on wearing her pink camo overalls. Missy and I both tried to talk her into something else. No luck.
“I know I should go, but I just got the special edition DVD set of
West Side Story
in the mail. So, I’m thinking instead I’ll make a pot of cocoa (or a pitcher of sangria) and watch it all. I might even turn it off before Tony dies and pretend that Maria and Tony ride off into the sunset together (or at least across town — the neighborhood be damned). And just think, if I watch it enough times (over and over and over again) before you come home, maybe you’ll only have to watch it once or twice with me. (Stop making that face. You’ll love it. And if not, I’ll make it up to you. The way you like.)
“And a little more good news: the house — our house — is back on the market. Maybe I’ll just have to have a look inside one of these days. (I know, I know, but I can dream.)
“Well, I guess I should finish this up and get it in the mail. I know saying ‘Be safe’ annoys you, because you are always Mister As-Safe-As-Possible-Given-the-Fight, but saying it, for me, is like a prayer, or a wish. So — be safe! (Please, for me.)
Love you, C.”
I can see Shauna feeling it, that buzz, under her skin or in the air. She reads it again, more slowly. To herself. At the first mention of “Zoe” she stops.
I hand her the picture again. The little girl waving her small pudgy hand. Her eyes and skin lighter than Celia’s, but with Celia’s hair, Celia’s nose. Celia and Zoe.