Authors: Kimberly Belle
“No.” By now Gabe has moved beyond scruff into something bordering on Zach Galifianakis territory. “I can’t remember what I told Graciela my fiancé’s name was.”
“Oh, Jesus.” He turns in his seat to face me. “You’re shitting me, right?”
I glance at him as I surge past an 18-wheeler. “You were standing right there when I said it. Don’t you remember what it was?”
“It was your story, not mine. I figured it was some old boyfriend or something.”
“Oh. Well, then. Let’s see.” I cock my head to the side and pretend to think. “Brooks? Justin? Scott? Dylan? Aiden? Shaun? Trey?”
He gives me an incredulous look. “Seriously?”
I roll my eyes at the same time I reach for his thigh. “Of course not. Loosen up.”
“Sorry.” He sucks in a deep breath and blows it out. “Well, it must have been somebody you know, and pretty well, by the way you just threw it out there.”
“David,” I say, suddenly remembering.
“Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“David runs the rowing program,” I explain, even though Gabe hasn’t asked. “Makes sense. I’d just spent the entire morning on the boat, and his was the first male name that popped into my head.”
My cell phone chirps, and my mom’s name slides onto the screen. I suspect she’s calling to talk about my fight with Dad, and for some reason I don’t have time to analyze, I would really rather this conversation not be broadcast over the car speakers. I attach my headphones to my cell, pop one in my ear and pick up the call.
Mom and I spend a few moments chitchatting and covering the basics—Betsy and Mike, everyone’s health, neighborhood gossip—and then she gets down to the reason for her call. “Do you have time to meet me for lunch tomorrow?”
I do the math. Even if we spend only an hour with Graciela, it will be past midnight by the time we make it back to DC. And though I’m currently jacked up on adrenaline and anticipation, I suspect by then I will be ready to crash, especially after the few hours of sleep I got last night. I steal a glance at Gabe, staring out the side window at the roadside scenery whipping by, obviously trying to give me some privacy. “Um, tomorrow’s not so great for me. How about later in the week?”
“Please, dear. I have something very important to talk to you about. We could do tea or coffee if that works better for you, or I could swing by your house. I can come by anytime.”
I fall silent, thinking. Though I don’t know what she intends to tell me, I suspect it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of a scolding for confronting Dad about the memo or for sending it over to Victoria, which I’m certain he very well knows I did. After all, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out her connection to the story.
So if it’s a scolding I am to get, I would much prefer to get it in public, where Mom is far less likely to release the full extent of her fury.
“Fine,” I concede. “But just a quick lunch, okay? I’m way behind at work.”
“Wonderful! I’ll make the reservation. How about that cute little bistro on the corner of King and Fayette? Is one o’clock okay?”
I confirm the time and place, and before she can launch into a new topic, I tell her I have to go.
“Sorry,” I say, glancing at Gabe. “My mother.”
He doesn’t turn his head. “I got that.”
“I’m having lunch with her tomorrow.”
“I got that, too.”
I pause, casting a series of glances in his direction. “Everything okay?”
“Sorry.” He blows out an endless sigh. “Just nervous.”
“It’s okay.” I look over with a reassuring smile. “It’ll be okay.”
He reaches for my hand, lacing his fingers through mine, and presses a kiss on my knuckles.
As we near Richmond, Gabe and I fabricate a story for Graciela. Gabe is my brother, a falsehood which is both laughable and disgusting at the same time, and is lending me moral support in my quest to keep my fictional fiancé’s memory alive. David, we decide, was good friends with Zach and fought alongside him on the day that he died. David was devastated by Zach’s death and corresponded with me at length about it. In one of the many letters he wrote, he mentioned another friend by the name of Ricky Hernandez.
Once we have our story straight, I reach into the backseat, pull a pad of paper and a pen from my bag, hand both to Gabe and start dictating.
21
“My fiancé was stationed in Kabul until late last year.” I smooth my sweater, cross my hands in my lap and try to look a very tiny, very pregnant Graciela in the eyes as I say the tale Gabe and I rehearsed to perfection in the car. “From what I understand from his letters, that’s where he met Ricky.”
On the hard-backed chair across from me, Graciela gives me a could-be shrug. “Ricky was there for Intergon. He was a contractor, but he was in close contact with the troops.” She’s dressed up for our get-together, in a floral dress and low heels, pale blue eye shadow and a strand of pearls, and the notion that she’s made an effort for us to come over and lie to her face presses down hard on my chest.
Why did she have to be pregnant? Lying to the sister of a dead man is hard enough, but lying to his pregnant sister...excruciating.
Next to me on the plaid squishy couch, Gabe ducks his head so most of his face is hidden behind the bill of his ball cap. Still, those stubborn Armstrong genes push up through the thick scruff. So much so that Graciela’s eyes widened just slightly when we walked through her door, though I can’t be sure if it was from recognition or admiration—he isn’t the type of man a woman easily overlooks, not even a married, pregnant one. Now she tilts her head and squints at him, and I’m suddenly positive she knows.
“Did he ever mention David?” I ask, pulling her focus back onto me. “David Shepherd, but some of his friends called him Dave.”
Graciela takes a moment to remember. “I don’t think so. But it’s been so long, you know.”
“I do know.” I pull the letter from my bag and pass it across the coffee table to her. “Perhaps this will help.”
I give her a few moments to read the letter, the text of which I know by heart. After the mundane bit about the heat and the sand and the greasy food, and just before the paragraph in which Dave extols how much he worships and misses me, are the following ten sentences:
Yesterday was the hardest I laughed since the time you accidentally tripped that waiter with the tray full of desserts, remember that? Ricky, that’s one of the guys here, got his hands on one of those inflatable dolls. You know the type? Big boobs, bigger mouth. Yeah, that one. Anyway, he somehow figured out a way to inflate that thing by remote (the dude is brilliant like that) and hid it in Zach’s hooch. A few of us, including our commanding officer, were hanging out in there last night when all of a sudden, the lights go out and stripper music starts blaring. Zach throws open the door and there she is, in her full naked glory, lying on his bed. We found Ricky rolling around on the ground just outside. I thought I was going to bust a rib.
Not knowing Ricky, Gabe and I had a long, extended discussion about whether or not a practical joke involving a blowup sex toy would be a good idea. What if Graciela, or Ricky for that matter, was a total prude? But Gabe insisted that practical jokes are a frequent and welcome distraction for overseas soldiers, and he would certainly know better than I. In fact, the blowup girl incident really did happen to Zach just as my fictional fiancé described in the letter, except the jokester was a soldier named James.
But as I sit here, watching the corners of Graciela’s mouth for any sign of reaction, positive or negative, I’m beginning to doubt the wisdom of including such a racy joke. What if Ricky’s lifelong dream was to be a priest? It’s a possibility we hadn’t considered.
And then Graciela drops the letter to her lap and smiles, her eyes shining. “That is just like Ricky. He was always playing practical jokes, on everyone.”
Relief hits me like a Valium to the jugular, and my shoulders descend from where they’d been hovering, up by my ears.
“Did he ever mention Dave or Zach or any of the other soldiers?” I sit up straight and pause, swallowing. This is where things could get hairy, so I choose my words carefully. “The Zach in the letter was Zach Armstrong. You may have heard of him. The actor who was killed right around the time Ricky was.”
Recognition illuminates Graciela’s face. “He talked about Zach all the time. Ricky was devastated when he was killed. He said he saw it happen.”
I notice Gabe’s thigh muscle clench through the denim, but otherwise, he doesn’t move.
“That must have been horrible,” I tell her.
“It was. I remember wondering, when they started handing out all those medals, what his family would think when they learned Zach’s death was from friendly fire. Ricky said they all knew it that same night. What a mess the army made of that, huh?” She shakes her head as if to flush it from her mind. “But you’re not here to talk about Zach.”
“That’s okay. Any stories that help jog your memory are welcome,” I say, reviving one of my old standbys from my journalism days. It’s kind of like that word-association game, where one thought serves to spark others, even seemingly unrelated ones. It was my favorite and most effective technique to get sources talking.
Graciela, though, doesn’t take the bait. She shifts in her chair and gives me a kind smile. “I’m really sorry, but David, or Dave, is not ringing any bells. Maybe Ricky mentioned him on his blog.”
Gabe and I share a look, and he is clearly as stunned as I am.
I clear my throat. “Ricky had a blog?”
Graciela’s silence spikes my pulse, especially when I look back to find her staring at Gabe, her slightly squinted eyes studying his face. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
My heart stutters to a stop, then kicks into triage territory.
Shit. Shit.
Shit.
I
told
Gabe to wait in the car,
told
him that Graciela would recognize those famous Armstrong genes. Even with the mountain-man beard, he looks so much like his big-screen brother that Graciela would have to be either blind or Amish to not make the connection.
“I don’t think so,” Gabe says, his tone easy and light.
She tilts her head and studies him some more. “You just look so familiar.”
“I get that a lot.” He lifts a casual shoulder. “But
you
look exactly like my high school girlfriend, so I definitely would have remembered meeting you.”
“I’m sorry, Graciela,” I say, hijacking her attention, pulling it back to me and to the reason we’re here. “You said Ricky had a blog?”
She tears her gaze from Gabe and nods. “Blogspot lost it, though. They told me it was a computer glitch. One day it was there, and the next it just vanished from their system. Thank God I made a printout of all the entries for our grandmother. She doesn’t have a computer.”
Deep breath. Calm down. Focus.
“Could I maybe take a look at those printouts?”
“Sure. Be right back.” She hoists herself from the chair and waddles off, leaving Gabe and me alone in the tiny living room.
“Mother mother motherfucker,” Gabe whispers.
I don’t dare to respond, don’t dare to even look at him for fear of losing every last bit of my cool. We sit there in silence, the weight of what we just heard pushing down on us from all sides, until Graciela reappears, toting a three-inch binder and a short stack of well-thumbed envelopes.
“I brought a few of his letters, as well, from May of 2010 on. That’s when he went to Baghdad. Maybe we can find something about Dave in there, too.”
I look up at her gratefully, a sudden pang of guilt at her kindness curling at my belly. This is where the lines
really
get crossed, I think, where personal relationships skew integrity and lead to questionable behavior, like lying to a poor, pregnant woman grieving her dead brother.
“I’m so sorry to intrude on you tonight, Graciela.”
She waves off my apology, and I swallow down my remorse, concentrating instead on the letters. There is, of course, nothing in any of them about Dave, but we do find a few mentions of Zach and Nick. That the three of them waited out a late-spring sandstorm by arguing politics. That Nick came down with a mean case of food poisoning. That Zach was learning Arabic.
And then finally, Gabe passes me a letter, pressing his knee against mine as he does so, that almost makes me gasp out loud. He catches my eye after I’ve read it, and I know what I need to do. I place the letter atop the pile on the coffee table and push to a stand.
“Graciela, could you please show me to your restroom? I could use a little break.”
“Of course.”
I help her heave her enormous belly out of the chair, and she leads me down a short, dark hallway, flipping on lights as we go. We pull to a stop outside a plain, wooden door halfway down. It’s taken us all of three seconds to get here. Not nearly enough time.
“I really can’t thank you enough for everything you’re doing,” I say, stalling. “I know it’s painful, and that you probably have a million things you’d rather be doing than carving open old wounds, but—”
She stops me with a palm to my arm. “If you and I don’t talk about Ricky and David, then who will? Talking about them is how we keep our men alive, keep their memories fresh in our minds, right?” When I don’t answer, she tilts her head and gives me a sad smile. “Right?”
“Right,” I whisper. Hot tears spring to my eyes, not because of all the reasons she thinks, but because I so thoroughly, completely, desperately hate everything about this conversation. The lies. The faking. The bullshit fictional fiancé that brought me here. I hate everything about it.
“Oh, sweetie...” Graciela pulls me into an awkward embrace, smoothing a petite palm across my back. “I’m sorry. I know how hard it is to lose someone you love.”
She releases me, and I don’t have to pretend to be traumatized as I slip into the tiny bathroom, because I am. Traumatized and sick, literally nauseous from the revolting lies I just spun to this poor woman. I grip the laminate countertop, throat burning and hands shaking, glaring at myself in the mirror. Flowers, as soon as I get home, the biggest bouquet I can afford. The gift won’t smother the guilt, but at least it will serve as a miserable sort of penance.
Suddenly, getting out of here, out of Graciela’s house, out of her life, is my newest and most urgent goal.
I return to the living room, pausing at the end of the couch. Gabe’s face is buried in the blog binder, but he slides me a look that tells me he’s got what we need.
I turn back to Graciela, pinching out the first excuse I can think of to get us out of here. “Would it help if we made copies of what’s in the binder? That way we won’t keep you up.”
“Would you mind?” She rubs a hand over her giant belly, looking beyond grateful at the suggestion. “I am pretty tired.”
It’s all Gabe needs to hear; he slaps the book shut and stands, tucking it under his bicep. After a bit of discussion, we agree to leave the notebook between the front and screen doors so she can go straight to bed, and Graciela shows us, stunned and shaken and slightly giddy at our discovery, to the door.
* * *
I steer the car around the corner, slam the brakes and freak way the hell out.
“I lied to her, Gabe! About her dead brother. Right to her face. I looked her in the eyes and lied! Oh, God.” I rest my forehead on the steering wheel. “I hate myself.”
Gabe slides a palm up my shoulder, grips the back of my neck, gives it a gentle squeeze. “You had to.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe she would have told us. Maybe she would have been just as forthcoming if we’d told her the truth about why we were there. If anybody would understand, it would be her. She lost a brother, too.”
My last point hits home with Gabe, I can tell. He removes his cap, rubbing a palm over his flattened hair. “Sometimes the end justifies the means.”
The uncertainty in his tone brings fresh tears to my eyes. “That’s bullshit! It’s bullshit, and you know it. What if that had been your mother in there? What could possibly justify lying and stealing in your mind if it had been her?”
Gabe doesn’t have to think about his answer. “The truth.”
“
Your
truth. Not hers.”
Gabe’s cell rings, and both of us ignore it.
“Maybe,” he says, “but I can’t fix things until I know what Ricky knew. Not until I know what happened to Zach. We’re so close, Abigail. I can feel it in my bones.”
It’s then that the realization hits with the force of a wrecking ball. Gabe and I may say we’re on the same team, sprinting toward the same goal line, but are we really? Gabe wants the truth, and I want it for him, too. Of course I do.
But getting it isn’t game over for either of us, is it? Who knows what Gabe and his family will do with whatever is in Ricky’s blogs—seek retribution, fight for justice, demand amends. The answer for him, I suppose, will depend on the explosiveness of what we find.
For me, however, this game ends in...what, exactly? When I began, I told myself it was to seek amends, to rehab my karma. I told myself it was pure, unabashed curiosity and nothing more that drove me to find Ricky, that sent me on this quest to ferret out what he knows, to uncover what really happened to Zach. But somewhere along the way, things got personal. Emotions became entangled. My father. Jean. Gabe. It’s all so convoluted now. I no longer know what’s right, as evidenced by my repulsive lies to a dead man’s sister.
“I can’t do it, Gabe.” I shake my head, trying not to focus on the calm determination that lines his brow, trying not to think about how it must look so different from mine. “I have to go back there. I have to apologize.”
Gabe shakes his head, and he opens his mouth to answer when his cell rings again. “Hold on,” he says, digging it out of his pocket. “I just need to make sure it’s not...” He flips it around so I can see the screen, and his mother’s name on the caller ID. He holds up a finger with one hand, swipes the screen with the thumb of his other.
“Hey, what’s up?” He pauses to listen, and his gaze holds mine the entire time. “Yeah... I’m with her right now. You want me to ask?” Apparently, Jean’s answer is yes, because he drops the phone to his lap. “Mom wants to know if you’ve given her offer any thought.”
I nod.
“And?”
And I can’t even think about Zach’s story right now. All I can think about is the look on Graciela’s face in the bathroom hallway, the way her eyes filled at our supposedly shared misfortune, her voice calling me sweetie.