You Know When the Men Are Gone (13 page)

But the door swung open and instead Ellen saw Delia holding Landon in her arms, his blond head resting on her shoulder, his mouth yawning and his cheeks red; clearly he had not had his afternoon nap.

“Hey,” Delia said, stepping inside and kicking the door closed behind her. She shifted Landon’s weight on her narrow hip. “I meant to be home earlier so you wouldn’t worry but we took the wrong shuttle bus back—”

Ellen strode across the room and pulled Landon out of her daughter’s arms, her wedding ring catching on one of the silver chains hanging from Delia’s waist.

Delia’s kohl-blackened eyes rolled. “Let me guess, now is when you decide to overreact—”

In a fluid motion, Ellen slapped her daughter’s face so hard that she felt the reverberation in her armpit. Delia stumbled backward and Ellen took a deep breath. She wanted to keep slapping so she dropped to her knees and searched Landon instead, her hands moving over his arms and legs to check for injury. Delia disappeared in a flutter of black, running down the short hallway, slamming her bedroom door behind her.

“Are you all right?” Ellen asked. Landon glanced toward Delia’s room, pulling out of Ellen’s grasp, in some instinctual way aligning his small self with his sister. Ellen tightened her grip.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, pushing Landon’s bangs off his forehead. “Everything is okay now.” She took a deep breath; yes, finally, everything was okay. “What did you do today?”

Landon rolled up his right sleeve, revealing a fake tattoo of a heart with the word
Mom
underneath.

Ellen kissed his nose. “That’s great.”

Landon picked at the ends of the tattoo. “They were out of Spider-Man.”

Ellen asked with forced enthusiasm, “Where did Delia take you?” She squinted at him; there were gray marks in the corners of his mouth.

He shrugged, his right hand absently twisting at his fly. “Cory’s house. When we got there his dog barked and then peed on the carpet.”

“Who is Cory?” Ellen asked.

Landon’s eyes widened at the urgency in Ellen’s voice. “Can I have ice cream?”

“Landon, who is Cory?”

“Delia’s friend.” His blond hair had flopped back into his eyes and it made him look crafty. “He put his hand here on Delia.” Landon pressed one of his palms against Ellen’s chest, on the blank spot, and Ellen leaned away, surprised, realizing that she had not put the silicone bag back into her bra.

“What else did Cory and Delia do?” she asked.

Landon jiggled his fly again and Ellen knew she had only a moment to get him to the toilet.

“Landon, please tell me—”

“They kissed a lot but I made puke noises until they stopped.” He threw himself against the wall and started to gag, kicking the white paint until his sneakers left little black smudges.

For a moment Ellen wondered if he was just trying to tell her the most disgusting thing he could think of. “Okay, okay, enough,” she said, her voice sharper than she meant it to be, weariness descending on her, the adrenaline of the day gone.

She didn’t call Delia out to eat dinner, just microwaved chicken nuggets and canned corn for Landon. Afterward Ellen bathed her son, checking behind his knees and under his armpits for bruises of any kind but finding nothing, nothing but chocolate crumbs, and he told her he ate almost a whole package of Oreos until Delia took them away and made him watch a TV show about squids that he didn’t like.

“Cory’s house was fun,” Landon whispered as Ellen tucked him into bed, running her fingers through his damp hair. She kissed his forehead, leaving her lips pressed near his hairline until he moved away, nestling deep under his covers. Ellen knew that soon he wouldn’t let her kiss him goodnight anymore, that there was a time limit on a child’s affection, that each year, month, week, day, whittled away at it until he, too, would stretch and grow out of childhood and into something prickly and strange.

Ellen felt her face redden as she crossed the hallway between the bedrooms, passed the school pictures that showed the devolution of Delia from blond braids in the first grade to black-lipped frown in the most recent. Ellen hadn’t wanted to buy the photo but John said they had to show Delia that she couldn’t shock them, that they would love her nonetheless, and maybe Delia would realize how ridiculous she looked if she had to walk by that picture every day. But the photo angered Ellen every time she saw it, with the dog collar, yes,
dog collar,
on Delia’s throat; every time Ellen saw it she felt as if her daughter were laughing at her. Ellen’s back straightened and her fists clenched and she knew she was not going to back down this time; there might be yelling but Ellen was the mother, she was resolute, she would ensure this did not happen again. She remembered when she was young and misbehaved, how her own mother would say to her, “I love you but right now I do not
like
you,” but right now Ellen felt nothing, nothing at all except rage, and she wondered if it was possible to reach the end of a mother’s love.

Delia’s room was dim, lit only by a desk lamp with a purple scarf tossed over the bare bulb even though Ellen always told her it was a fire hazard. Ellen hesitated in the doorway and looked at the shipwreck of Delia’s room, all of her things ransacked and exposed. Delia was washed up on the shore of her bed, curled into the fetal position, her back to the door.

Ellen leaned over to pick up the strewn black clothing. She remembered dressing a tiny Delia in pink dresses and wide-brimmed hats and how strangers would come over to them in the grocery store and tell Ellen how beautiful her baby was. How proud Ellen had felt at her small daughter holding court and doling out smiles to her admirers.

“What were you thinking?” she asked, tears suddenly distorting her vision. “I called the MPs. I drove around post and talked to your friends—”

The body on the bed shifted, the spine straightening out, the dark head lifting as if from a deep sleep.

Ellen continued, trying to keep her voice low so she didn’t wake Landon but she could feel it rising, bouncing off the postered walls and low ceiling, caught in the shadows of the room and gathering under the unmade bed like a rising tide. “You put your brother at risk, you put yourself at risk. Who is this Cory? I can have him arrested for kidnapping. I can have
you
arrested for kidnapping. I didn’t know if you and Landon were alive or dead—”

Delia sat up, the purple light ghoulish on her pale cheeks. “You didn’t know if Landon was alive, right? You were only worried about him.” Her voice sounded tired and thin, much older than it should have.

Ellen took a step closer, her hand to her forehead. “Where were you?”

Delia leaned against the headboard with a sigh. “Comanche One.”

The Comanche I and II developments were on the other side of the base, older town houses and duplex-housing areas, with cracked shutters, air conditioner units crooked in the windows, and chain-link fences around the small yards. Ellen had driven around there four times.

Delia continued, “Cory’s mom was working. We watched TV and ate cookies; we were like a family. It was good.”

Ellen was speechless. Again she wished John was there. He would know what to say, he would be calm and rational, his voice stern as he laid out Delia’s punishment, the extra chores, coming home directly after school, no phone privileges, then a talk about sex, the horrors of teen pregnancy and STDs, maybe even make her watch that video about suppurating genitals he forced his single soldiers to sit through before and after a deployment. But Ellen felt tears in her eyes and her throat was so full she didn’t know if she could even speak. She sat down on the corner of her daughter’s bed and put her hands to her face.

“Why did you do this to me?” she finally managed, her body shuddering. She had not cried like this all year, not even when they first told her she had cancer or that she would lose her breast; no, then she had nodded and told herself that everything would be okay. But now nothing was okay, this child sitting across the bed from her was a mystery, a punishment, incomprehensible. So Ellen sobbed. She felt the bed shift, felt Delia moving her legs, sliding over the bedsheets, coming closer like an animal in the night.

Ellen slid her hands from her eyes and turned on her daughter quickly, as if trying to catch her doing something wrong, but Delia had crept close and was just sitting there breathing, her pupils enormous in her eyes. Then she held her hands toward Ellen, her palms cupped together, and it looked as if they were filled with water.

“This was on my floor,” Delia whispered.

Electricity shot through Ellen’s spine when she realized that Delia was holding the small silicone bag, her simulated lost breast. Ellen snatched it away, heat rising up her neck, and formed a fist around the jellied warmth.

“Mom, what did the doctor say?”

Ellen blinked. Had she told the kids about the appointment? She didn’t mean to, she didn’t want them to worry. Then she remembered the fight over the jeans, how she had told Delia that she still might die, how she had let her own fears seep out and into her daughter.

Delia looked down at her now empty hands and then put a thumb to her dark lips. Her fingernails were painted black but the polish was chipped as if she had gnawed away at it. “What were the results?”

“I don’t know,” Ellen said carefully, taking a deep breath and staring at her daughter’s mutilated fingertips. Could Ellen have been the cause of such worry? Did Delia imagine a motherless life ahead, one in which she would have to care for Landon? “Your school called before I saw the doctor and I immediately started looking for you. I’ll find out tomorrow.”

Delia lifted her face, the eyeliner rubbed into bruised-looking circles under her blue eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered, her voice unsure. “I’m so sorry.”

Ellen lifted her arms and Delia flinched as if expecting another blow. Instead Ellen violently pulled her daughter into her chest, clasping her so tightly that Delia’s cheek was pressed into the bone of Ellen’s ribs, into the place that had once been soft but was now stripped bare, and Ellen’s head pressed into her daughter’s neck, feeling the pulse where Delia’s neck and shoulders connected.

They stayed like that in the darkened, dismantled room, Delia’s ear against her mother’s heart, trapped and holding tight, both astounded by the pounding of the other’s blood, the life in each of them as unknown, as magnificent and as frightening, as the sea.

INSIDE THE BREAK

T
he buses were blue. There was a long line of them lurking, heaving in that big circus-animal way, giving off exhaust, shuddering, making their presence known, devouring the scant minutes left to the families. When the six hundred uniformed soldiers gathered into a sea of digitized green, Kailani Rodriguez and the other Bravo Company wives drew together. They watched their soldiers stand at attention behind the red banner of unit colors, then march into the waiting buses. The women waved and finally let themselves cry, holding tight to the children who wanted to run after their fathers.

Cristina Diaz nudged Kailani and pointed away from the men, who were turning back for a final thumbs-up before boarding. Kailani followed Cristina’s perfect fingernail as it pierced the air to the left, a hot pink arrow centering on the supply company bus.

“What?” Kailani asked. She didn’t know any of the supply soldiers; they were “non-combat” forces, all the cooks, mail clerks, mechanics, truck drivers, and forklift operators who would work at the forward operating base, or FOB, in Iraq. Most of them wouldn’t go beyond the wire like her infantry, trigger-pulling, rifleman husband, Manny. Now, thanks to Cristina’s distraction, when Kailani looked back at her husband’s bus, she could no longer distinguish Manny’s head among so many short-haired others.

“Look!” Cristina’s voice was tear-free and loud. The other wives glanced at her and then followed the line of her lifted arm. They didn’t appreciate being disturbed from their grief either, the tears streaming, rivulets in the thick makeup on their cheeks, mascara pooling under their eyes, noses running. It was fine to look this horrible now that the men were too far away to see their faces, fine to finally grieve, messy and ugly. Crying in public offered a strangely satisfying relief. Most of them had been through this before, the good-bye, the long deployment, the jubilant return, and they cried now as much for themselves and the lonely year ahead as they did for the men heading off to the dangers of war. Even the most stoic women, the three German wives, standing next to each other as always, thought of the diapers they would be singlehandedly changing for three hundred and sixty-five days, the dogs to walk and goldfish to flush, the garbage to take out, the anniversaries they would be celebrating without their mates, and they pushed Kleenex against their noses as desperately as the youngest, most sensitive spouses.