When She Came Home (7 page)

Why was he talking about Domino now? Either he was angry or rubbing sticks together, but starting flash fires at the dinner table wasn’t Rick’s style. He’d grown up in a big Boston family where cooperation and good manners were praised virtues. If he and his brothers wanted to fight, they were told to “do it in the basement and don’t forget to wash up before dinner.”

“Her name’s Domino,” Glory said. “And they don’t live in a car, Daddy. They have a cool van with shelves for stuff. Her daughter? Candace? She’s almost eight and she’s never been to school but she’s a really good reader cuz Domino’s taught her how. She’s my best friend.”

The General looked up from his roast beef. “Your best friend lives in a car?” The General’s cheeks were rosy in the candlelight. “You go to the best school in the city and your friend sleeps in a car?”

“A van, Grandpa. And it’s really a good idea. Domino works at Jack in the Box and she parks behind so she doesn’t have to get a babysitter.”

“God Almighty.”

“Right now her and her mom are hiding out from Jason, he’s Candace’s father and he’s really mean sometimes.” Glory was matter-of-fact, as if violent fathers were something she knew all about.

Frankie spoke up. “Glory, it’s not polite to talk about Domino and Candace when they aren’t here.”

“And they never will be,” the General said.

“I know Domino,” Harry said. “She’s plenty smart and she’s a good mother.”

“In a van?”

“Don’t be a snob, Dad,” Harry said. “It’s un-American.”

Emboldened by her brother’s support, Frankie said, “Domino served in Iraq, sir.”

“Then she’s got benefits coming, Francine.”

“Benefits aren’t always easy to get,” Harry said. “The VA can run you ragged, Dad. You had it easier in your day.”

“I’m not saying anything against Domino,” Rick said. “I don’t even know her, but some of the homeless are genuinely creepy. A woman who works with me, my assistant, owns a house on the flats—”

“Her name’s Melanie,” Glory said. “She’s my other best friend. Her house is next to the beach and one time me and Daddy were there and we saw this man do a dirty thing right in the yard.” She looked at her father. “It was gross huh?”

“Yes, it was, sweetheart.”

“Can’t we talk about something more pleasant?” Maryanne asked. “Taxes, maybe?”

Harry laughed.

Glory said, “Melanie’s got a Jacuzzi in her backyard but she can’t use it anymore cuz of the creeps.”

Rick raised his glass. “I rest my argument.”

“Creeps?” Frankie said. “You don’t call people who are less fortunate than you are
creeps
, Glory.”

“That’s what Melanie calls them.”

“I don’t care—”

“We’re thinking about getting a Jacuzzi,” Maryanne said, smoothing the way onto a different topic. Should they have it installed in the backyard or the bathroom? How much did Rick think it would cost? Would it really help the General’s pinched vertebrae?

Glory dropped her fork on her plate and made a face. “I don’t like pink meat.”

“Yes, you do,” Rick said.

“She doesn’t have to eat it,” Frankie said, still ticked off at Rick for bringing up Domino when he must have known that it would upset the General. “Rare meat isn’t everyone’s taste.”

Now it was Bunny’s turn to change the subject, which Frankie wouldn’t have minded except that he turned the floodlights on her. “How much more time you got?”

“Too long,” she said.

“Don’t complain at this table. I never wanted you to enlist in the first place.” After six years the General still never missed a chance to remind her of his opposition. “And I absolutely did not approve of you taking TAD so you could go over there where you didn’t belong. But since you did, you might as well reenlist and take advantage of the experience.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Maryanne said quickly.

Bunny was amused. “She doesn’t want to sit behind a desk processing pay vouchers ’til she’s forty. She’s your
daughter, my friend, and she’d die of boredom. Right, Frankie?”

Frankie felt defensive on behalf of her shop. “If it weren’t for the finance office, no one would get paid and the Marine Corps would grind to a dead stop, believe me.”

“You’re right there. Money makes it all happen.” Bunny rubbed his index finger and thumb together.

Frankie clenched her fists on her lap and thought about punching her godfather in the jaw. In the time before she went to officers’ school at Quantico, she had worked out every day, loving especially the boxing lessons she’d taken at her gym. By the time she got to Virginia she was in the best physical shape of her life. Since then she had stayed fit and could still do some damage. If she wanted to.

For a moment she was distracted, imagining the riot that would ensue if she did actually punch her godfather.

Glory showed Rick her plate. “Is this enough?” She’d eaten half of what he’d cut up. “
Now
can I go watch a video?”

“I’ll go upstairs with her.” Frankie wanted to get away from the table as much as Glory.

“She doesn’t need help, Francine. When you were gone, off playing war”—the General couldn’t let the topic go—“the girl practically lived in our guest room. She could start a video blindfolded. Isn’t that right, L’il Dynamite?”

“You’ll tell me when it’s time for cake, okay, Grandpa?”

“And you’ll come down and sing to me. You can sit on my lap and help blow out the candles.”

“I’m too big for laps.”

“How old are you, anyway?” His gruffness vanished as he played at being astonished. “Maybe five? You look about five. I bet you can’t even spell.”

“I can too.”

“Can you spell
loquacious
?”

“Grandpa, that’s not fair.”

“How ’bout
ostentatious
?”

“I’m in the third grade not college.” Glory punched the General’s shoulder gently, then hugged him, squeezing tight, and Frankie felt a sharp flash of envy.

“I’ll get you settled.”

“I don’t need settling.”

Rick said, “Go with your mother, Glory.”

“You come, Daddy.” She tugged on his hand.

Harry came around the table. He was so accustomed to his prosthetics that his gait looked no more awkward than if he had a mild charley horse. “You’re with me, kid.”

Glory didn’t object. She was crazy about her uncle Harry.

In the moments of silence after Harry and Glory left the table, the murmur of the television talking to itself in the den reached the dining room.

“I thought I’d shut that damn thing off,” Maryanne said and excused herself to do so.

Conversation turned to the Belasco hearings. Bunny had a few dozen opinions. As he talked he ate and gestured with his fork, stabbing the air as if he were inflicting wounds on the senator.

Rick said, “What I don’t understand is why we need these special security outfits in the first place. How’d the military get along without them before?”

“Iraq’s a whole new kind of war.”

“I’m aware of that, Bunny. And you don’t have to tell me that most of the contractors do routine stuff like food service and construction, sanitation.” Rick sounded irritable. “But some of those guys are just mercenaries.”

Frankie had met a couple of G4S employees back in the spring when they came through FOB Redline for a few days. Several of them shared an apartment not far from the Green Zone where they made their own beer. The idea of making beer in Baghdad had amused everyone. One man, a Brit with special service experience, had told her he was making more money than he’d ever seen in his life, but he wanted to make clear that the paycheck came at a cost. Whereas Marines never left anyone behind even if it meant returning to the scene of a battle days, weeks, or even years later, the Brit knew that if he were kidnapped or wounded, he was on his own.

“
Mercenary
is a word I don’t like.” Bunny put his fork on the edge of his plate, lining it up precisely parallel with the knife. “You say the word—
mercenary—
and you think about killers for hire, assassins, or something, right?” He raised his fork again. “But the guys who work for G4S, they just want to get the job done, same as Marines.”

“Whatever they do, they make a whole lot of money,”
Harry said, resuming his seat at the table. “Some of those guys are pulling down two-fifty K a year.”

“There’s nothing wrong with making money when you fight the enemies of democracy,” Bunny said. “It’s either we hire contractors or we bring back the draft. That’s what it comes down to. Manpower. This country can’t fight a war with a volunteer army.”

“Would that be so bad? The draft, I mean? Why not national service for everyone over the age of eighteen, male and female? Even a gimp like me can do paperwork.”

“Never going to happen, Harry. Nation hasn’t got the stomach for it.”

“This G4S thing.” The General spoke up for the first time. “Americans should be grateful for the help they’re giving us over there instead of wasting a truckload of taxpayers’ money to investigate them. They risk their lives same as any fighting man.”

“Amen, brother.”

“Mind you”—the General raised his glass for emphasis, sloshing the wine dangerously close to the rim—“if G4S has broken any laws they have to be called on it. But the Senate should keep its nose out of it. That Belasco woman’s been against the war from the start, and now all she wants to do is make trouble.”

“And she’s going to get a lot of people up to testify and half of them won’t know what they’re talking about. She sure as hell doesn’t. The woman’s stone-cold ignorant about
what it takes to win a war and she’ll sit up there lording herself over a lot of good men who, if the truth is told, are doing more for this country’s interests than she is.” Bunny looked at Frankie. “What do you think? About G4S?”

The blood rushed to her cheeks. “I don’t have an opinion.”

“Of course you have an opinion,” her father said. “Good God, Francine, you were over there for almost a year. How can you not have an opinion? What did you do? Stay in your rack the whole time? ‘Wake me when it’s over’?”

Frankie’s mother laid a hand on his wrist.

Harry said, “Leave her alone, Dad.”

“I can’t ask my daughter a question? It’s my goddamned birthday! Bunny go ahead and have that last slice of meat, you know you want it. Francine, give me your glass.” He raised the wine bottle and when she shook her head, he refilled his own.

“That’s enough wine, Harlan.” Frankie’s mother swiped up his glass and shoved her chair back. “Bunny, I don’t know what your cholesterol numbers are, but I’m sure you don’t need any more prime rib. You all just stay here and try to be civil to one another while I see about dessert.”

Frankie could not sit still, and her palms prickled with anxiety, as if she’d grabbed hold of a thistle. She knew that family occasions didn’t have to be fraught. Rick and his brothers didn’t always get along, and his sister nursed a permanent grievance, claiming no one paid attention to
her opinions. Sometimes his father drank too much or his mother got her feelings hurt because no one asked for a second helping. But the affection they all felt for each other was there at the table, no matter what. No one was judged too harshly; they teased but they didn’t insult. When Rick’s family got together, no one was bullied.

The General’s birthday cake was a many-layered splendor of raspberries, chocolate, and cream.

Frankie went upstairs to get Glory. In the empty guest room the television was on, a Pixar movie about cars boinging from laugh to laugh. She checked the bathroom and then walked down the hall, glancing into the rooms that had once been hers and Harry’s but had long been given over to an office for the General and a little room that her mother called her bolt-hole. She found Glory in the General’s office, standing in front of his towering gun cabinet.

“Cake time.”

“Did Grandpa kill people when he went to war?”

“Everyone’s waiting downstairs. We’re ready to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”

“Did he? Kill people?”

“We can talk about this, Glory, but now isn’t the time.”

There would never be a right time to talk about killing and threatening people with guns, but if ever there was a teachable moment, this might be it. Still Frankie could not begin. She wanted more than anything to be the mother
Glory needed and deserved, but at that moment the task was beyond her mothering skills. She felt a leaden certainty that no matter what she said, she’d get it wrong.

“Grandpa won’t cut his cake without you. You should see how gorgeous it is.”

“I don’t care about cake. How come I ask you stuff and you don’t answer?”

“Another time, Glory. It’s been a long night.”

“Well, did he?”

“Your grandfather was a hero in Vietnam. You know that. He saved the lives of his Marines.”

“So that means he did kill people. What about you? Did you shoot anyone?”

“No.”

Not exactly.

“But you had a gun, right? Why didn’t you shoot it?”

“I wasn’t that kind of Marine.”

Glory’s blue-green eyes seemed to turn a darker, harder shade when she was thinking.

“Did you see anyone get shot?”

She couldn’t talk about this to an eight-year-old, she couldn’t talk about it to anyone. She had built a wall in her mind so she wouldn’t even have to
think
about it.

“We’re going to sing and eat some dessert and then we’re going home. We’re not going to talk about guns and shooting.”

Glory crossed her arms over her chest and stuck out her pillowy lower lip. “I know about free speech, Mom.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Tiger, but there’s no free speech for eight-year-olds.”

“I can ask any question I want and you can’t stop me. It says so in the Constitution.”

Downstairs the doorbell rang. Frankie heard voices from the entry.

“It’s Melanie,” Glory cried. Shoving past her mother, she flew down the hall. From the top of the stairs Frankie watched her tumble into Melanie’s arms and hug her emphatically.

Melanie extricated herself, laughed, and shook back her long sheet of blond hair, almost the same shade as Glory’s. “I feel so bad busting in on you all like this.” She had a sweet high voice to match her schoolgirl hair. “Richard told me he wanted these papers signed and in the mail tonight.”