You Know When the Men Are Gone

Table of Contents

 

 

 

AMY EINHORN BOOKS
Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014,
USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin
Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green,
Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell
Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia • (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) •
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017,
India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd,
24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Copyright © 2011 by Siobhan Fallon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted
materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada

“Amy Einhorn Books” and the “ae” logo are registered trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Some of these stories have been published previously, in slightly different form:
“The Last Stand” (as “Burning”) appeared in
The Briar Cliff Review
, Spring 2008.
“Camp Liberty” (as “Getting Out”) appeared in
Roanoke Review
, Summer 2008.
“Gold Star” (as “Sacrifice”) appeared in
Salamander
, December 2008.
“You Know When the Men Are Gone” (as “Waiting”) appeared in
Salamander
, May 2009.
“Inside the Break” appeared in
New Letters
, Spring 2010.

Excerpts from Book XXIII “The Trunk of the Olive Tree” from
The Odyssey
by Homer, translated
by Robert Fitzgerald. Copyright © 1961, 1963 by Robert Fitzgerald. Copyright renewed 1989 by
Benedict R. C. Fitzgerald, on behalf of the Fitzgerald children.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fallon, Siobhan.
You know when the men are gone / Siobhan Fallon.
p. cm.
“Amy Einhorn books.”

eISBN : 978-1-101-48614-6

1. Military spouses—Fiction. 2. Families of military personnel—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3606.A45Y
813’6—dc22

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses
at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors,
or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and
does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

To KC:
Best friend, husband, father, soldier,
you are always worth the wait.

She turned to descend the stair, her heart in tumult. Had she better keep her distance and question him, her husband? Should she run up to him, take his hands, kiss him now?

... And she, for a long time, sat deathly still in wonderment—for sometimes as she gazed she found him—yes, clearly—like her husband, but sometimes blood and rags were all she saw.

—Penelope upon recognizing Odysseus,
The Odyssey

YOU KNOW WHEN THE MEN ARE GONE

I
n Fort Hood housing, like all army housing, you get used to hearing through the walls. You learn your neighbors’ routines: when and if they gargle and brush their teeth; how often they go to the bathroom or shower; whether they snore or cry themselves to sleep. You learn too much. And you learn to move quietly through your own small domain.

You also know when the men are gone. No more boots stomping above, no more football games turned up too high, and, best of all, no more front doors slamming before dawn as they trudge out for their early formation, sneakers on metal stairs, cars starting, shouts to the windows above to throw down their gloves on cold desert mornings. Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life.

At least things were muted until a new family moved into apartment 12A. Meg Brady from 11A could hear the rip and tear of boxes, chairs scraping against the floor, cabinets opening and closing, the weighed-down tread of the movers reminiscent of the soldiers far away.

Carla Wolenski from 6B knocked on Meg’s door around noon, slipping into Meg’s living room as soon as she cracked opened the door.

“Natalya Torres is your new neighbor!” Carla whispered, swinging her baby from one hip to the other. When Meg didn’t show the enthusiasm or dread Carla expected, she held her baby close as if shielding it from the ignorance of the world. “You haven’t heard
anything
about her?”

Meg shook her head. Carla lifted tweezed eyebrows into small parentheses of dismay. She whacked the baby on the back, who promptly burped a milky chunk onto her shoulder. “Trust me, you’ll hear it all soon enough,” Carla said, flicking the spit-up onto Meg’s carpet. When Carla left, Meg followed her out onto the landing, ostensibly to walk her friend back to her own apartment, but she hesitated outside the Torreses’ open door, trying to see inside.

The next morning, Meg was woken by a thunderous noise. She reared up, breathless, her heart a wild creature in her chest. Her alarm clock read 5:47 A.M. The noise continued, a mournful, doomed desire, and Meg realized that it was a half howl, half bark, from a dog on the other side of the wall she shared with the Torreses’ master bedroom.

She slapped her headboard, which made the barking louder, as if the dog were jubilant that he had roused her. She heard him jump, his nails scratching, trying to dig through to her, the otherness of new territory and scent.

Unable to fall back asleep with the foraging a few inches from her pillow, Meg crawled out from her sheets, made a pot of coffee, and checked the Internet for news of Iraq. She scanned the stories about roadside bombs and soldiers dead, making sure the First Cavalry Division and her husband’s battalion, 1-7 Cav, were unscathed, at least for today. When the sun rose and the caffeine kicked in, she grabbed her keys and went to the community mailbox on the landing outside, eager for news. She imagined a postcard, like the one Jeremy had sent her a few weeks ago of a flowering Tigris River; she longed for something he had kept in the breast pocket of his uniform, scrawled and hesitated over during a quiet moment while training Iraqi troops. She wanted something she could hold.

A door opened and a black dog bounded out and ran straight at her, a solid bear-rug of muscle. Pizza flyers fluttered to the tile. She closed her eyes and wondered if army doctors would be able to reconstruct her face before Jeremy came home.

“Boris,
down
!” someone shouted just as Meg felt the nails of the dog hit her stomach, knocking the air and any ability to scream out of her. She heard the rattle of a chain and then the dog’s weight was lifted. Meg took a half-furious, half-relieved-to-be-alive breath, and opened her eyes. The woman at the other end of the leash was tall and blond, wore an odd patchwork coat that reached to her ankles, its metallic thread catching the early light. She tugged the leash savagely for good measure, muttered, “Down!” again as the dog smiled at Meg, his purple tongue lolling happily from his mouth.

“I am apologize,” the woman said, her accent as thick and clunky as the chain around her dog’s neck. “Boris,
bad
! Very bad.”

Meg felt her cheeks redden as she touched her own shoulder-length brown hair, hoping she’d brushed it before leaving her apartment. She glanced at her sweatpants and slippers. This woman’s beauty was an affront, her yellow hair piled up on top of her head, her long neck, glossy red mouth, and the gold and silver squares of material in her coat. She seemed to have stepped out of a Gustav Klimt painting. Who would wear such a coat, a coat made for cocktails and cool autumn nights, while walking a dog? It was barely eight in the morning and April but already the Texas sun had started to burn over the horizon, that thick and sandy wind of Fort Hood flinging its heat around.

“Please refrain from military police,” the woman continued over the dog’s panting. Meg noticed that the woman’s apartment door was open. Two small children peered out of it, both as blondly anemic as their mother. “Boris always have many complaints. My husband would break his heart if Boris gone. Please, I am apologize very much.”

“It’s all right,” Meg said.

“I am Natalya.” She held her left hand out, her nails filed into perfect ovals.

Meg wiped her palm on her sweatpants, introduced herself, and they shook.

Boris the Impaler tried to jump her again.

“Meg, you must promise refrain from military police, okay?” Natalya asked, not releasing her hand, her forced smile revealing a row of ever-so-slightly-crooked bottom teeth. “Please promise.”