Blue Stars (3 page)

“It’s not bad. The texture’s a little weird. Like, gummy.”

He put the TV sound back on. “We can change this,” he said, picking up the remote. She shook her head, mouth full of toast.

“Whatever you have on is fine.”

He flipped through the channels, pausing briefly to assess. Cable news; shots of Iraqis holding up ink-stained forefingers.

“No.”

Mike glanced sideways at her. In the end, they settled on a
Law & Order
rerun, one of hundreds they’d seen together. It was an episode from the mid-1990s, with coiffed hair and cell phones the size of a man’s shoe. Briscoe and Curtis wandered around a stable.

“This is the one about the horse?” Ellen said.

“Mr. Wicketts.” Mike made a sad face.

She ate some cake, he dozed off. After a while, she shut off the TV and shook him gently.

“Bed stuff is in the laundry room.” Of course he knew that. He hadn’t stayed over much in recent months, but for a long time this basement had been his room, the pullout couch his bed.

Mike didn’t open his eyes. “You okay with that?”

She ached, she ached. Ellen punched him in the shoulder, and went up to bed.

2

BRONX, NEW YORK
JANUARY 2005

Lacey Reed Diaz unzipped her Yankees sweatshirt and laughed. “So I just strip, right here? Three o’clock in the freaking afternoon. Totally sober.”

“That’s your own fault.” Martine drank straight from the champagne bottle. “Let’s see it, girl.”

Lacey took a deep breath, dropped the sweatshirt on the floor, and shimmied out of her jeans. “I get called a lot of things but you know—” T-shirt over her head, she tossed it aside, with a flourish. “Prude ain’t one of ’em!” She shut her eyes and struck a pose to the cheers of her friends, the snap of the shutter.

It was called “a boudoir photo shoot.” Somehow the classy French word made it sound more trashy. The upshot was $250 split three ways bought ninety minutes of studio time with one photographer, one “set assistant,” one bottle of cheap champagne, and a handful of six-by-eights plus the hi-res digital files. It had been Mart’s idea, of course. The week their husbands got the official orders—they had all known another deployment was coming—she booked it, using an online coupon to reserve this second-floor studio on Baychester. Lacey said what the hell, and then they somehow roped in devout, petite Felicia.

Lacey perched on the edge of the frilly cushioned chair, knees together, back arched. It was easier to watch herself in the tilted oval mirror than to look into the blank black eye of the camera. It wasn’t fun to have these hot umbrella lights shining down on every bulge and wrinkle, but they could do a little retouching, right? Actually, when she sucked in her middle, she looked pretty good. For getting toward forty, anyway. Lacey had always been one of the tallest girls around—and the toughest. Even now, in this froufrou setting, her bare arms and legs showed their strength. Great tits, good hair, nice eyes. She didn’t love her ass, or how it had spread over the years, but that’s why she was on the chair. The other girls had splurged on new lingerie, but Lacey posed in her own: white cotton panties and matching bra. She wanted Eddie to think about the real her while he was gone, not some fantasy.

“I’m out!” Lacey hopped off the stage with relief. “Who’s next?”

“I gotta get this over with,” Felicia said, sighing. “Before I come to my senses.” They helped her up the platform in her three-inch heels. She let her silky robe slip off her creamy black shoulders and aimed a fierce pout right through the camera. She knew what to do. “Vanessa Williams? Eat … your … heart out!” Lacey and Martine whistled and clapped while little Felicia, in nothing but a camisole and a red lace thong, worked it with pose after pose.

The three knew each other from the well-organized branches of a Family Readiness Group that served the army families who lived north of the city. Lacey and Edgardo lived in Mount Vernon, with Lacey’s twelve-year-old son, Otis, in a two-bedroom condo just off Gramatan. It was a long commute to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, where Eddie was based, but he insisted on being near his mom, who still lived in the City Island house where he grew up. Unlike the others—Martine and Felicia were well into double digits with their husbands—Eddie and Lacey had been married for less than five years, or one deployment (Iraq, Sixth Battalion, Twenty-seventh Field Artillery). In fact, they had been apart more than they’d lived together.

That first deployment had gone by in a blur—it always does, Martine told her—but now Lacey knew what to expect. Although that, she thought, watching Felicia show off her ample curves, wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“Me, me, me,” Martine said and killed what champagne was left in the bottle. Felicia conceded the stage and Mart took off her shirt. “Check this out, you guys.” She motioned the photographer to come closer, and turned around. Then she tugged down her tight jeans to reveal the top of a multipart tattoo, rippling U.S. flag, dog tags, eagle. And some cursive lettering.

“What’s that say?” Felicia asked.

Lacey leaned forward. “‘Proud Army Wife’ … nice … what are you laughing about, Mart?”

Martine stepped out of her jeans and there, on her bare ass cheek, was a cartoon Iraqi insurgent caught in the crosshairs, and a big red-white-and-blue smooch across his face.

“‘Kiss My USA Ass,’” Felicia read out. “Lord, lord. Tell me that’s not on your body forever.”

“Why? Doesn’t every girl want a little rag-head art on her behind?”

“Martine.”

“No, no, of course not. It’s that kind they airbrush on; it’ll be off in a few days. Thing is, I want it to be a surprise for him—for when he’s over there. Right?”

“Yeah, so what’s the problem?”

“Keeping him out of my pants until I can scrub this thing off!” They all cracked up.

After the shoot, they waited while the studio assistant processed their forms. Lacey was dressed but barefoot, and Martine and Felicia wore various combinations of underwear and clothes. Outside, the winter sun had disappeared.

“I got to go pick up my kid,” Lacey said. But she didn’t move.

“Crap,” Martine said. “I forgot to take the chicken out to defrost. Oh well, pizza night. They’ll be—hey, what’s going on? You okay?”

Felicia had her forehead on the heels of both hands. Tears slid down her wet cheeks. “I hate it. I hate it. I want to be strong, but God knows, each time I just hate it.”

They rubbed her back. They told her, It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

“We’re pushing our luck.” She sobbed. “Third time out, second to Iraq? Deployment’s fifteen months now? How much longer before…”

“You can’t think that way,” Martine said.

“But it’s the numbers,” Felicia said. “The odds. Probability. It gets harder and harder to ignore!”

Now even Martine grew serious, quiet. Lacey stood up and went behind the studio desk to the minifridge, where she took out another bottle of champagne.

The assistant was dubious. “Actually, your package only comes with—”

“Please. This stuff goes for five dollars a bottle.” She gestured toward Felicia’s cup. “Come on. It’s medicinal.”

“She’s the boss.”

Once they each had a refill, Lacey got down to business. She took out both her phone and her overstuffed day planner. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Get your calendars, come on.” Felicia and Martine, sad and in lingerie, hadn’t moved. Lacey went and got their purses and dropped them in their laps. “You remember what that crazy girl did last time? From our group?”

“Which one?” Martine said, and Felicia had to laugh. There was a mostly unspoken divide in their military wives support group between the more mature and settled women like themselves and what they called the “girls”—nineteen- or twenty-year-olds who had married too young, got pregnant before they should, and generally went haywire in one way or another after their PVTs shipped out. They bailed out of college courses, partied too much, mismanaged the budget, or Skyped soldiers nonstop with daily complaints. Lacey thought of it as her job to teach them how to behave, how to earn the trust and respect a military family deserved. She may have been new to the army herself, but it had given her life more purpose and meaning than she’d ever known—except for raising her son.

“You know which one. Went with her girlfriends to Ladies Night at that topless place on North Avenue? Brought in by the cops for—well, I don’t know what exactly. Being a drunk fool.”

“Lewd acts in public,” Felicia put in glumly. “Wandering around the parking lot with her boobies out.”

“It got online too.”

“Most of them can’t handle the pressure of being on their own for a year,” Lacey said.

“Quickie benefit marriages.” Martine scowled.

“Maybe so. Either way, they’re in it same as we are. So it’s up to us, unless we want these girls causing drama and embarrassing us all.”

“She’s right,” Felicia said. She shrugged out of her silk robe and pulled on a sweater. “I’ll head up Bible study again, unless you know of someone else.”

“No, that’s perfect.” Lacey flipped around in her daybook. “And I was thinking, Felicia … do you feel like doing something about Facebook, social media—what’s appropriate, what’s not? Either a onetime workshop or a short class?”

“Yes,
please,
” Martine begged. “They post dates and locations of missions. All the wrong info, of course, but still. ‘Godspeed two/three! Send good thoughts, they’re heading out tonight in Anbar!’ Makes me want to throttle someone.”

“I don’t know…” Felicia said. “I’m not on Facebook much. Now that my teenagers are all over it.” She thought a minute. “But my team did a security presentation at work last month. I could adapt that for us, probably.” She tapped quickly on her phone’s screen.

“I’ll run the kiddie co-op again,” Martine said. “I had a toddler in diapers during last deployment, got another for this one. Kill me now.”

“And the parenting support groups,” Lacey said, consulting her list. “Break it down by ages again? Think we can get a few speakers this time?”

“Sign me up for the smart-mouth teen group. I’ll bring the wine.”

The studio assistant handed out copies of their receipts and then pointedly began to straighten up her desk and switch off lamps.

The women put on their coats, exchanged hugs, laughed at the prospect of getting their portraits in the mail. They went out to the street and hugged again in the windy dark, under a streetlight. Martine and Felicia went arm in arm to their cars around the corner. Lacey watched them go.

Rush hour traffic didn’t get really bad until she crossed Nereid Avenue. Lines of red headlights waited to crowd onto the Bronx River, crossed with white headlights backed up getting off the Cross Bronx. Plus you had Metro-North, people picking up commuters at Nereid or the Wakefield stop. In her overheated Pontiac Lacey used the time to mess with her bangs, arranging and rearranging them in the visor mirror. She kept the radio on scan, singing along to almost every scrap of song before it disappeared. Redid her lip color. Got honked at for lagging. Honked at some guy who tried to cut in.

She was buoyant, hardly feeling the effects of yesterday’s double shift at the gym. (All those New Year’s resolutions meant a swarm of new clients and full classes.) So many plans, so many ideas. That extra cash could go to that mil-kids spring break camp Otis had wanted to go to last year, the one in New Jersey. They should start writing letters for Eddie now, considering how much Otis dragged his feet on that. Tonight he could help her get out that whiteboard from his closet—she would set it up in the kitchen for lists, notes, group phone numbers. And how about a family social one night closer to deployment? Probably Nathan’s on North Avenue would give them a good deal, let them take over the back room. The kids could play in the arcade.

When that Destiny’s Child “Soldier” song came on, Lacey turned off scan and spun up the volume. She pretended she was street, singing along. She pretended that she was twenty years younger, and a whole lot dumber. Like those girls, the ones they had snarked about in the studio.

Thugs and gangs and street life. “Soldiers.” Lacey made a slow right onto Fifth Street. Her face grew hot and she snapped off the radio. What was she doing? Eddie wasn’t in the car, but it suddenly felt like he was, and what would he think if he saw her bopping along to this stupid song that was the antithesis of everything his disciplined career stood for.

It wasn’t just the army. Ever since Eddie got the promotion at his civilian job—he was now regional safety manager at Hess—it was like he’d climbed up to a level where he had a better view, where he could find more problems with Lacey. He didn’t even have to say anything, she could just tell—feel his eyes on her when she went for that weeknight third beer, turn the music down when he came in a room, frown at the take-out containers. She knew what Martine would say:
They always end up wanting their mom, no matter what they tell you in the beginning
.

She should have seen it from the start, their fundamental incompatibility. After all, she picked him off a list
because
he was in the army. So who’s the dummy here?

Before she’d started getting her own clients, before she’d moved heaven and earth to get the coveted part-time schedule she had now, Lacey had been full-time at Rudy’s Gym in Pelham. Four days a week she got there at 4:30 a.m. to unlock the doors, turn on the lights and heater, start up the computer system for the front-desk girls who never rolled in before they opened at 5:00 a.m. When she couldn’t get a sitter, Otis would sleep on a sit-up mat back in the office. Then she’d partner with Gwen to work out the onslaught of commuters who had exactly fifty-five minutes each for cardio, machines, stretching, body-weight exercises, and a shower. Slowdown after that, a couple of walk-ins maybe, people cashing in those endless damn coupons for a free session, then it would pick up again at lunch, a group class for the stroller mommies and some lunch-hour locals. Early afternoons were for one or two regulars and the inevitable freak—you could tell right off the bat, the ones who stood too close and requested a lot of “adjustments”—before clocking out and racing to get Otis after school.