While He Was Away (30 page)

“Oh, Penelope,” Linda says. “Is this what you really want?”

I nod.

Linda hugs herself. This is what she’s always done. She’s held herself. Since she was a very little girl. She’s held it together. For herself, for me, for us. Now she’s doing it all over again.

Justine holds out her arms to Linda. “Please,” Justine says.

Slowly, one step at a time, Linda walks toward Justine. Linda’s still holding herself tight. But she lets Justine hold her too.

Thank
you
. I think I say this aloud. But I can’t be sure.

Only a moment passes before Linda quickly pulls away. Linda’s face is flushed now. Her gaze darts nervously, lighting on anything but Justine.

“Why don’t you all just sit down for a little bit?” I sound like some kind of hoity-toity hostess who barely knows her guests. When I gesture toward the living room, I might as well be made of rusted metal—my arm moves that clumsily. “Take a seat,” I actually say.

Justine and Linda seem grateful for any direction. In an awkward manner that rivals my own—like daughter, like mother, like grandmother—they turn, Tom’s steadying hand at Justine’s elbow. Like that, they walk into the living room. Tom settles Justine on the couch. Linda sits a safe distance away.

•••

Tom and I bumble around the kitchen, making lemonade, putting cookies on a plate. Tom wonders if maybe somebody needs something more substantial to eat. We decide to make sandwiches and soup too.

“You really need to do some shopping.” Tom is scrounging through the refrigerator.

“I haven’t exactly had a lot of leisure time these last few days.”

“No need to get snappish.” Tom shuts the refrigerator and turns to me with what’s left of the ham-and-cheese deli packets in his hands. “You holding up otherwise? I mean, except for provisions?”

I dump some ice cubes into the pitcher of lemonade. “Guess so.”

“You heard from him?”

I keep my gaze on the ice spiraling in the powdery, yellow drink. “Some.” Tom drapes slices of ham and cheese across a plate. The deli packets empty now, he tosses them into the garbage and then pulls what’s left of a loaf of bread from the pantry. “Want some advice?” Tom doesn’t wait for my answer. “Don’t take it personally.”

“How should I take it?”

Tom starts to answer, but I don’t hear him. I hear only my cell ringing from the living room.

I run toward the sound. I find my cell in my bag beside the couch where Linda and Justine sit at a safe distance from one another. They are talking in herky-jerky phrases, brief questions and halting answers.

At least they are talking.

This thought flashes through my mind, and only this, before I grab my cell from my bag and head toward my room, saying all in a rush, “Hello, hello, hello. Are you there?”

“I’m here,” David says.

“And I’m here,” I say.

I wish one of us would laugh. But we don’t.

I drop down on my bed and wrap Plum Tumble around my shoulders.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” David says.

“Like,
everything
. Tell me everything. It’s been so crazy here. I know it’s been crazy there too.” I loop my thumb through Owen’s ring. I pull down until the necklace digs into the back of my neck. “But now we can talk. Finally. Tell me. And then I’ll tell you.”

Positive. Encouraging. Loyal. I am these things.

David draws in a sharp breath.

I feel suddenly ill.

I think it.
Oh
no
, I think.
Here
it
comes
.

David says, “All these guys have been getting these Dear John letters. Some of the girls here are getting them too. Dear Janes.”

“Weird. I don’t know that many Johns. Or Janes.” My laughter sounds like crying. “They all must be in the army.”

David doesn’t laugh. “Guess you don’t know what a Dear John letter is.”

I shake my head. “Guess I don’t.”

“It’s crap like, ‘Sorry. I can’t handle this. Maybe we’ll hook up again when you get back. But right now it’s over between you and me.’ Crap like that.”

David waits for me to respond. I can’t.

“It’s a break-up letter,” he says.

Something burns at the back of my neck, and then my necklace snaps and puddles in my hand. I was pulling on it that hard. The thin, gold chain slips to the floor, but Owen’s ring stays hooked on my thumb.

“What does that have to do with us?” I hear myself say this. I sound distant, as if I’m in a different room or calling from another continent. “I only write Dear David letters.”

“But what if you change your mind?”

I clench Owen’s ring tighter. “I won’t.”

“There are people dying over here, Penna. And it’s not always from IEDs. Lately it’s mostly been from Dear John letters.”

He’s almost crying now. He’s trying to hide it, holding the phone at a distance, muffling it with his hand. But his voice is thick with tears.

“I can’t do this,” he says.

He says other stuff too. He says he’s still glad he enlisted. That’s not it. He still believes in what he’s doing. That hasn’t changed. He still loves me too. As much as ever. But with fear attached. He can’t go any deeper right now. That’s it. That’s all. That’s all there is to it. He can’t go on any longer. He’s too scared—not of fighting a war, but of being in love.

“When I come home again, then maybe if you want, Penna, we can try again. I’ll try again then if you’ll let me. But for now, no,” he says.

“David.”

“You don’t have to forgive me. But I am sorry, Penna. I’m really sorry. I just can’t anymore. I just can’t.”

He says he loves me. He says he’ll write me. He says good-bye. He hangs up.

I set down my phone. I slip Owen’s ring off my thumb and put it on my right ring finger.

Owen’s ring is too loose to hide the tattoo.

•••

“Penna?” It’s Justine, standing in the doorway, flanked by Linda and Tom.

I stare at them, trying to remember why we’re all here. I shiver under Plum Tumble. I draw the quilt closer around my shoulders, but this doesn’t seem to help.

“David says we’re done.”

I’ve said it.

I cast off the quilt and push past my family. My
family
. I worked so hard to bring them together. How am I all broken apart? I run to the bathroom and hunch over the toilet, sure I’m going to be sick.

Nothing happens. Nothing but the drip of water into the sink.

I go back to my bedroom. Linda and Tom are at the window, looking down through the leaves of the honey locust tree to the place where David and I once kissed. They are talking quietly. They don’t hear me come into the room.

But Justine does. She is standing at my dresser, holding her photograph. There is the girl she used to be, the girl so close to my age, running a silver brush through her hair, looking at a boy she loved and lost.

Justine looks at me. She is really here, looking at me. She is not just a photograph. I go to her. She sets the photograph back in its place. She draws me close.

She is so frail. Her mind is changing. The way she remembers—that is changing too. But I know that when she’s able, Justine will listen to whatever I have to say about love and loss. She will listen with the same care and concern that I have felt listening to her.

Only problem, I can’t imagine I’ll ever have anything to say again.

•••

The first word I say is, “No.”

Linda has given me the night offJustine is at Red Earth too, eating one of Isaac’s daily specials. Justine wanted to spend the evening with me, but when she told me so, I said no. She asked if I wanted her company, and I said no. And when Justine, Tom, and Linda finally left, I kept right on saying no to the empty house. For a while I walked from room to room, whispering, saying, shouting
no
, again and again.

I sit down at my computer and write it to David:
No
.

He doesn’t write back. It’s unreasonable to expect him to respond. So what? That’s how I’m feeling. Unreasonable. And angry.

I turn away from my computer.
I
still
love
you. I just can’t.
What kind of logic is that? What does it mean? I look down at my hands, curled like dead birds in my lap. I see my tattoo. I think,
Nothing
.
This means nothing now.
Then I see Owen’s ring, slipping away from the braid of my tattoo.

A dead man’s ring means more to me than my tattoo.

I turn back to my computer. I whip off another email to David.

How
can
you? This is ME. I held on for you.

I send this off too. Never mind the voice in my head. I ignore it. I turn on some music, turn it on loud.

You
knew
this
was
coming.

I turn the music louder.

Two or three songs later, I don’t hear my phone ringing. I see it flashing on my desk.

David
, I think.
He’s calling me back. He’s calling to apologize.

What will I say? I’ll have to figure it out as I go. Hasn’t that been what I’ve been doing this whole time he’s been away—first at OSUT, then now? Figuring it out? Winging it? There’s no map for this, what we’re doing, what I’m feeling. I’ll figure it out.

I pick up the phone.

It’s Caitlin. And Ravi. He’s there too. And Jules. They’re in Jules’s car. Jules is driving toward me.

Ravi grabs the phone from Caitlin. “Tom told Caitlin, and then he called Josh, who said he’d be glad to put in a few extra hours over the dinner shift. And Bonnie told me. Bonnie’s really worried about both you and David, Penna. And I texted Jules, though of course Caitlin already had.”

“No,” I say, because I’m in the habit.

Ravi acts like he doesn’t hear. “We’ll stay in. We’ll go out. Whatever you want to do, Penna. But we’ve decided. All of us. You’re not going to be alone tonight.”

“No. Stop. I don’t want you here. I want to be alone,” I say. “But thanks.”

After we say good-bye, I take off Owen’s ring and put it beside Justine’s photograph. If I could take off my tattoo, I’d do that too.

Of course they don’t listen to no.

They knock on the front door and fling pebbles against my bedroom window until the sound drives me right out of the house.

I find them under the honey locust tree. Looks like they found the old ladder that was in the garage when we moved here. They’ve propped it beneath my window. Caitlin is halfway up.

“Excuse me,” I say.

Ravi and Jules, who are bracing the ladder, jump at the sound of my voice. Caitlin nearly falls from the ladder. She just manages to regain her balance.

“‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’” she says, her voice dripping with dramatic longing. Then she claps a hand to her mouth and looks at me, her face flushing. “Sorry!” Her apology is muffled by her hand.

“Nice one, Cait,” Ravi mutters.

I don’t wait for further apologies. I start back inside.

But Jules has me by the arm before I can take more than a few steps, and then Ravi has me by the other arm, and the next thing I know, Caitlin has zipped past us. She’s leading us up the front porch steps and through the open door.

They sit me down at my own kitchen table.

Jules makes herself at home first. She scrounges around and figures out the coffee situation. She puts on a fresh pot. The room is quiet, other than the sounds of the coffee brewing. Fine. They insisted on coming here. They can live with the quiet. Because I have nothing to say. I am empty.

Jules pours us coffee. Caitlin knows how I like mine, so she doctors it the way Linda does. Then we sit there, the four of us, and drink coffee in silence.

I glance up at the clock and see that fifteen minutes have passed.

“Please go,” I say.

And as soon as I say it, I realize how much I want them to stay. I’ve wanted them all along.

David and I were big. Are big. But the broken, beat-up, warring, loving, beautiful, truthful world is bigger than us by far.

I remember the little girl in her bandages and red dress. The way David looked at her, his gaunt face.

That’s when I finally start to cry.

They hold on.

I hold on.

After a while, I can finally hold it together.