Blue Stars (4 page)

Aside from that? She went out, alone, to bars. Met men who could barely hold up their end of a conversation when sober, and slept with too many of them. Lacey was trying, in her way. She wanted Otis to have a dad someday, a good one, and there was a long way to go in that department. She and Otis would have to overcompensate for his genetic legacy, thanks to the Asshole. But the pickings were slim in all seasons at Mazzy’s, at the Bayou, no matter how many Jack and Cokes she let men buy her.

Then she said yes, once or twice, to clients who asked her out. On paper, they were better—these men were usually divorced locals with thinning hair and tight shoulder muscles. Decent jobs. But they either bored Lacey or were taken aback by her loud laugh, her messy life.

By the time Gwen and the desk girls called her over to the front counter one slow afternoon, Lacey was done. One of Otis’s preschool teachers used to have a singsongy mantra:
You get what you get, and you don’t get upset
. Annoying as hell, but … something to think about. She had a job—best she could expect after squeaking through Iona—she had this beautiful chubby smart-mouthed kid, she had some crazy fun girlfriends and maybe that was it for her, you know? Despite the nagging feeling that she was meant for more.

But the desk girls had too much time on their hands, and had mocked up a whole page for Lacey on Match.com. She couldn’t be too pissed: “Smoking physique of a girl who still holds the state record for most steals in a playoff game.”

“Oh the glory,” Lacey muttered, scrolling up and down the page. “What do you think the ratio of skeevy to normal is here?” But she was touched, and that night fell down the online dating rabbit hole, which called for multiple vodkas with orange juice. As expected, there were too many “winks” and “waves” from desperate losers, long unhinged messages from the nut jobs, and just a staggering number of people out there in greater New York who wanted sex and love.

She was one of them, after all. So Lacey scrolled and clicked and deleted and narrowed it down until the same guy kept popping up, kept catching her eye. It wasn’t so much his photo, although she liked his serious face and even that mustache—bold choice! Nor did it bother her that he didn’t have kids, and had never been married. What drew her attention was his army job, and the way he wrote about it: “As a major in the Army Reserves, my MOS is infantry. That means I command men and women on missions that could put their lives in danger. They depend on me, and I’ve got their back. It’s an honor to lead them. Nothing or nobody could take away what that means to me.” There was a photo of him in uniform, kneeling down and handing out soccer balls to a group of kids in sandals, somewhere in Iraq she guessed. “My goal in life is to find a woman who can be my partner, someone I can depend on. Someone who understands what it takes to be part of something bigger.” For hobbies, he’d put, “sometimes.”

That was Eddie, six years ago.

Lacey, in a moment of vodka-fueled inspiration, wrote this army guy a note—
she could be part of something bigger, after all!
He wrote back. What started as a dare to herself—playing up her responsible-mom side, using the words
aspiration
and
dedicated,
cramming on politics—became exciting in and of itself, became a habit. Changed her. So that by the time they met, Lacey had already begun the long process of shifting toward someone she thought he’d like her to be. Which mostly fell in line with who she wanted to be too.

So what if this was the best thing she’d get out of it all, this marriage? I mean, who wouldn’t take it, the last-ditch chance to pull yourself together, to go from being the last girl at last call to someone who knew her Sunnis from Shiites and why they were all screwed? Who could explain it to her ten-year-old, using age-appropriate terms, while cooking a hot meal for the man who brought home a steady paycheck and the respect of their neighborhood, not to mention of the whole nation? Lacey saw it as her ticket out, maybe the last one she’d be offered. She knew when to cut her losses. Those sloppy mistakes she’d made, the bad decisions, the wince-inducing scenes she’d caused … they could be erased in this trade. As it turned out she liked being the one to organize other wives, to set up potlucks and babysitting co-ops and prayer groups. They needed her. She was good at it.

Plus, what did she think she was entitled to, true
love
?

*   *   *

She pulled over, agitated. Her hands were cold; she shoved them under her thighs. What made her think she could play this role, upstanding do-gooder army wife? She wasn’t real, not like Martine and Felicia. She was faking it and someday they’d find out. Also, what if those photos embarrassed Eddie, made him see her as some kind of flighty slut? Lacey rocked a little, back and forth. She should get going.

Or …

Belluzzi’s Lounge, right up the block. She’d even parked in a fifteen-minute flashers zone. Gathering scarf, keys, purse, and phone, Lacey told herself,
just one.

Standing at the bar she texted Sue:
Running late, okay if Otis eats with you guys?
Reply:
He already did.
Lacey squelched the guilt, because she could, because the bartender had just set up her double Macallan, straight, because she knew she could handle this. Lacey could handle all of it: these happy-hour winos eyeing the tall blonde, drinking alone; that dip in Otis’s grades (she’d confiscate his DS until they came up); the mess in the house (she’d clean at night! instead of TV!). Most of all, she could handle Eddie, and the deployment. She’d prove herself this time.

Meanwhile, this guy who’d sidled up next to her clearly thought they were in the same camp. “So I was telling my friend over there that you’ve got to be the only—”

Lacey put a twenty on the bar and finished her drink. “Another time, all right?”

“C’mon, you’re not leaving yet!”

The fiery glow of the drink and her newfound calm kept Lacey from all the cutting remarks she could have chosen. Nothing could touch her. She shouldered her bag and gave him a dazzling smile. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

“Seriously?”

“Save my seat,” she called back, pushing out the door onto the windy dark street. There was so much to do.

3

“I’m going to stay out of it.” Ellen could barely hear her own voice over the lunch hour din at Memorial Union, the U’s dining center. Red and pink paper Valentine’s Day decorations were taped to the walls; a flyer on their table urged everyone to attend Sex Week’s different events.
Learn about the REAL “Student Body.”
She tried a bit of humor. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.”

“What?” Serena frowned at her chef’s salad, using a knife and fork to transfer pieces of ham off her plate onto a napkin.

“Isn’t that how he put it, Muhammad Ali?”

“He was about to be drafted,” Serena said. “There’s a difference.” She blew on her coffee before taking a first sip. Ellen wasn’t sure what difference she meant, and didn’t ask. She thought about how similar she and her longtime friend must look to the others, mostly students, crowded at tables in the Rathskeller’s big drafty dining room. They had a standing date for lunch on Wednesdays, after Ellen’s morning lecture and before Serena’s afternoon seminar. Serena was a George Grosz specialist in the art history department. Years ago she and Ellen had served on a committee on student retention in the liberal arts; the two of them had bonded over the pointless academic bureaucracy and the chair’s disgusting habit of slipping off his smelly shoes during the long meetings. Serena wore her silvered hair short, in a bob—not quite as short as Ellen’s crop—and liked severe, modern jewelry and eyeglasses, which she had picked up on sabbatical in Berlin. That said, today she and Ellen were both wearing good leather boots and warm, understated pieces in cashmere and herringbone. Each woman had a stack of files and books on the table next to her tray and, hanging off the back of a chair, a handsome briefcase that she had bought herself in order to celebrate a personal academic achievement.

“I just can’t get involved.”

“You are involved. He’s already over there, isn’t he? I mean, he will be soon.”

Ellen stared. “He’s just in training,” she said. “It’s exercises, classes.”

“It’s boot camp. And then Iraq. Don’t pretend—it’ll make it harder for you.”

Ellen shook her head. “The next step isn’t to go overseas anywhere. They get stationed to a base, and his would be in North Carolina, Mike says. The point is, I’m not going to get all wrapped up in what might happen, or get fixated on the worst-case scenario when for all we know he could get a job driving a truck around North Carolina … or Europe … and end up with a shaved head and a savings account and some new identity after having spent a year or two playing soldier.” She let out a long breath and bit into her turkey and avocado sandwich, trying to steady herself.
A year or two playing soldier
. How stupid that sounded, how willfully misinformed. Of course it would be more than that. But this was why she couldn’t get into it, what Mike had done, even with someone as close as Serena. There was so much she didn’t understand, and Ellen had the stubborn sense that if she kept herself from knowing too much, then there could exist all other sorts of possibilities for what would happen next. Not
all
Marines were going to Iraq, surely. And by the time he finished boot camp—Mike’s letters from Parris Island were brief, misspelled, and mostly about food he missed—well, it could be that the entire situation would have changed for the better.

This last thought was so tempting that Ellen made a mistake. “It’s becoming more stable,” she said. “With Saddam Hussein captured, and the Shiites winning the election … most likely they’ll draw down forces until it’s nothing more than policing. A peacekeeping mission.”

“More stable?” Serena stopped, her fork in midair. “This helicopter that was shot down—that happened
because
of tensions rising around the election! Things are more volatile, if anything. Ellen, thirty-something Marines died on that one day alone—”

“We don’t know it was shot down!” Ellen noticed glances from other tables and modulated her voice. “They think it was just sand in the rotors. Or the motors. I heard it on NPR.”

“All the more reason to agitate against this war in any way we can. Cheney keeps sending them there in droves, unprepared, unequipped—it’s Vietnam but worse. Urban fighting, a civil war that’s going to stretch out for decades. Absolutely no reason for Americans to die there.”

“I know, of course.” Ellen pushed her tray an inch away. They had spoken like this before. She knew how active Serena was in the university antiwar effort; both Serena and her partner, Jill, were on all the faculty-student committees that organized vigils and protests. They wrote defiant letters to the administration whenever the president made moves to quell large gatherings at Memorial Union, or in the quads. Ellen signed every one of these petitions when they were e-mailed to her. She felt like reminding Serena of that now.

“You can use this.” Serena leaned forward, over her plate. “Incorporate it into your work. Make connections across the … didn’t Wharton write about World War I? She did, didn’t she? She had the perfect vantage point on the ramp-up to war as an American in England—”

“Paris,” Ellen corrected.

“Well, it’s ideal!” Serena exclaimed. “For an essay, an article. You’ve never written about this aspect before, and you yourself said you’re looking for a new project—”

“I don’t really think—”

“A comparison between then and now. How nothing’s changed. The horror of war, the useless waste of an entire generation of young men—”

“Serena,” Ellen said, more sharply than she’d intended. “Wharton was avidly
prowar
. She was furious at how long America stuck to neutrality. Her texts around that time are full of borrowed French nationalism, she practically beats the drum for engagement—” Ellen snapped the plastic lid onto her soup container.

“Oh.” Serena’s disappointment shaded into further strategizing. “I suppose you might work that in somehow…”

“Do you actually…”

“What?”

Ellen shook her head, ashamed. Had she really been about to ask if Serena herself knew anyone in the war? As if that would or should temper her friend’s own ideas about the matter, as if it gave Ellen some moral high ground to have Michael away at Parris Island. Her hands went cold and suddenly she wanted him away from there so badly she thought she might cry.

Serena reached out and touched Ellen’s arm. “Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about Jane. What is the latest?”

Ellen straightened her back. It was a peace offering. Only with Serena was she comfortable enough to complain—in a loving way—about Jane. Serena herself had no children, but her partner Jill’s daughter, now grown and living in New York, had also been a wild one, and so she could understand.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I’m not happy about this place she’s in, that’s for sure.”

“The Friends co-op? On Johnson? They’re not bad kids. I have a couple in my senior seminar.”

“It’s not Friends, it’s a new place. An apartment on Denham Street. She moved there a few weeks ago with … well, how many people I don’t know. Nor who they are. Whenever I ask for details she says, ‘They’re just, like, normal people,
Mom
.’”

At this, Serena matched Ellen’s expression. “Have you been over there?”

“No, because she says it’s not clean enough for me to visit. Having been over at the co-op when she called it ‘clean,’ I can only imagine.”

“Be grateful.” Serena laughed. “Shudder.”

“But I’ve driven past it. A run-down house, bikes everywhere out front, a ripped-up couch on the porch. None of the neighbors, no one on the block, looks connected to the university. It bothers me, of course. Wes says I shouldn’t pick this battle. He’s right. We’re not on great terms and I get the feeling that one more blowup between us…”

“Oh, they always come back,” Serena said. “Nothing’s irrevocable. It’s a phase. Like the terrible twos.”