She mumbled good-bye and went back to her car. By the time she got home, she was sick to her stomach.
This deployment changed everything. He would see that. Whatever their problems were—had been—they would have to be set aside. She and Michael would have to come together now, for the children, for their family. And she would need him now, really need him. His love would save her over there, keep her warm at night, just as her children’s love would bring her home.
She thought about what Tami had said. Couples fight. They say things they don’t mean; they stomp off.
They come back.
She wanted to believe that, believe in that, even though she’d never seen it. She wanted to forgive Michael and find a way to scrub his declaration from her brain so they could go back to who they’d been.
All she had to do was give him a chance.
She could do it; she could be strong enough to let him know she still loved him. These were the things she told herself as she waited for him.
And waited.
Finally, at seven o’clock, he came into the kitchen and immediately poured himself a scotch.
“Hey,” Jolene said, rising from her seat on the hearth.
He turned. In the ambient light from above the stove, he looked more than tired. His hair was a mess. The skin beneath his eyes had a violet cast, as if he’d slept as badly as she had last night.
“Jo,” he said quietly; there was a gentleness in his voice that surprised and saddened her. It swept her back, in a breath, to who they used to be.
She ached for that—needed it, needed him. “I’m being deployed.”
Michael went so still it was as if he’d stopped breathing.
“You’re kidding, right?” he finally said.
“Of course I’m not kidding. Who kids about going to war?” Jolene’s voice cracked. For a split second, her strength wavered. She realized how desperate she was to have him take her in his arms and tell her they’d be okay through this. “I’m going to Fort Hood first for combat training, then it’s off to Iraq.”
“You’re in the Guard, for Chrissake. You’re not a real soldier.”
Jolene flinched. “I’m going to do you a favor and forget you said that.”
“You are not going to war, Jo. Come on. You’re forty-one years old—”
“Now you remember.”
“People are dying over there.”
“I’m aware of that, Michael.”
“Tell them you’re a mother. They can’t expect you to leave your children.”
“Men leave their children to go off to war every day.”
“I know that,” he snapped. “But you’re a mother.”
“I was a soldier first.”
“This is not a damn game, Jo. You are not going to war. Tell them thanks but no thanks.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “I would be court-martialed for that. I’d go to jail. You don’t say no.”
“Quit then.”
He didn’t know her at all if he could say that to her. Honor was just a word to him, and lawyers made a game of playing with words. He had no real idea what a dishonorable discharge meant. “I gave my word, Michael.”
“And what was ‘I do’?” he snapped back.
“You son of a bitch,” she yelled at him. “For all these years, I’ve loved you. Adored you. And last night you tell me you don’t love me anymore, that maybe you want a divorce. And then, because you’re a selfish prick who doesn’t know me at all, you tell me to quit the Guard.”
“What kind of mother could leave her children?”
She drew in a sharp breath. It would have hurt less to be smacked across the face. “How dare you say that to me? You, who are the least reliable person in this family. It breaks my heart to leave them, but I have to.” Her voice broke. “I have to.”
“So you’re going to war,” he said.
“You make it sound like a choice, Michael. There’s no choice here. Either I go to war or I go to jail. How can you not understand this? I’m being deployed.”
“And you’re surprised I’m pissed off. I never wanted you in the stupid military in the first place.”
“Thanks so much for minimizing what I do.”
“War—and this war in particular—is a waste, and I might not be Colin Powell, but I know that helicopters are big targets in the sky that get shot at. What am I supposed to say? ‘Good for you, Jolene. You go off to Iraq and be careful. We’ll be waiting for you.’”
“Yeah,” she said quietly. The fight drained out of her. “That would have been really nice.”
“Well, you married the wrong man then.”
“Obviously. Look on the bright side, Michael. You wanted time apart.”
“Fuck you, Jo.”
“No. Fuck you, Michael.” On that, she turned on her heel and walked out of the room. She didn’t run, although she wanted to. She kept her chin up and her shoulders squared as she walked up the stairs and into her bedroom.
Downstairs, a door slammed. She was reminded of her childhood and all the fights she’d heard from a distance. She’d never imagined she would grow up to be a wife listening to her own husband leave. But even with the pain of that sad and pathetic echo, she thought Go, Michael, run.
She should have known better anyway. She knew better than to count on anyone to stand beside her, to stay. And yet even knowing that, knowing that she was alone again and that she was strong enough to take it, she felt herself breaking inside. She sat down on her bed, unable to stand any longer.
Sometime later, the floor outside her bedroom door creaked, and the door opened. Michael stood there, looking both angry and defeated. His hair was a mess, as if he’d run his hands through it repeatedly, which he probably had. It was a nervous habit. A half-full drink—scotch, no doubt—hung from one hand. She found herself looking at that hand for a moment; his fingers were long, almost elegant. She’d often said he had pianist’s hands, painter’s hands. She’d loved what those hands could do to her body.
But they were uncalloused, those hands, unused to manual labor. A thinking man’s hands, unlike her own. Maybe it all came down to that. Maybe she should have seen this scene unfolding the second she first held his hand.
“You’re going,” he said, and his voice was thin, tinged with the kind of banked anger she’d never heard from him before.
“I have to,” she said.
“Does it matter that we need you here?”
“Of course it matters.”
He finished his drink and came into the room. Putting the empty glass on the nightstand, he sat down on the bed beside her, but not close enough to touch. With a sigh, he slumped forward. The wavy mass of his hair spilled forward. Seeing him now, his sharp profile, his defeated shoulders, she was reminded of the week in which his father had lain dying. Michael had been unable to stand seeing Theo that way, gray and hollow and in pain, connected to life by machines. He’d tried to sit by the bed, but he could never do it for long. More often than not, Jolene had found him pacing in the hallways, beating himself up for his weakness. She had gone to him then, taken him in her arms and held him until he could breathe again. To her, it had been second nature, caring for him when he was hurting. But now she saw what she had never dared to see before: this love of hers was one-sided. She was the one who took care; he was the one who took.
“Okay, then,” he finally said.
Jolene felt a profound sense of relief. She didn’t realize until right now, when her breath rushed out, how nervous she’d been, sitting beside him, waiting. “So you’ll wait for me,” she said.
“How long until you leave?”
“Two weeks. That’s quicker than usual. Special circumstances.”
“And you’ll be gone for a year.”
She nodded. “I’ll get Leave in six months. I’ll be able to come home for two weeks.”
He sighed again. “We’ll tell the girls tomorrow. And my mom.”
“Yeah,” Jolene said, but it was barely above a whisper, that word; there was so much more to say, plans to be made, problems to be solved, but neither one of them said anything.
They sat on the bed in which they’d made love so many times, silent, each staring out at nothing, until it was time to turn out the lights.
Seven
The next morning, Michael and Jolene drove to Mila’s house.
He pulled into the driveway and turned off the car’s engine. For the first time all morning, he looked at her. “Are you ready to do this?”
Jolene saw the banked anger in his eyes and it made her feel empty and painfully alone. She didn’t bother to answer. Instead, she reached for the handle and opened the door and got out. As they walked to the front door, she couldn’t help noticing how far apart from her he stood.
Michael knocked on the door. In moments, the sound of footsteps came from inside. Then the door swung open and Mila stood there in a fuzzy pink bathrobe, with her black hair a tangled mess. Behind her, the room was a wash of pale green walls, windows to the water view, and rattan furniture from the fifties positioned on wide-planked pine floors. The overstuffed cushions were in muted tones of celery and rose and white. “Oh, you’re early!” she said, stepping aside to let them in to a living room strewn with toys and books and DVDs.
Lulu jumped up from her place on the cream-colored shag rug. She was wearing the kitten headband.
“Someone has embraced her invisibility,” Mila said quietly, smiling.
Jolene frowned thoughtfully and made a great show of looking around. “Hmmm … Mila, have you seen Lulu? I wonder what happened to my kitten? Has anyone seen my Lucy Louida?”
Lulu giggled.
Michael frowned. “What are you talking about? She’s right—”
Lulu whipped off the headband and grinned. “I’m here, Mommy!”
Jolene rushed forward and took Lulu in her arms. “You sure are.” Jolene buried her nose in Lulu’s velvety neck, smelling her little girl sweetness, trying to memorize it.
“Mommy,” Lulu whined, kicking to be free. “You’re smovering me.”
Jolene loosened her hold on Lulu, let her wiggle to the floor.
“Are you hungry?” Mila asked, picking up an empty DVD case, frowning, looking around for the disc.
“Actually, we have something to tell you and the girls,” Michael said tightly.
“Oh?” Mila looked up. “Is something wrong?”
Michael actually stepped aside. “This is Jolene’s show, Ma. She’s the one with the news.”
Mila frowned. “Jo?”
“Where’s Betsy?” Jolene said, unable to get much volume out of her voice. She could fly helicopters and shoot machine guns and run ten miles with a full pack on her back, but the thought of saying these few words to her children made her feel weak.
“I’ll go get her,” Lulu said and ran off, screaming, “Bet—sy! Get out here!”
Mila looked from Jolene to Michael, and back to Jolene.