Blue Stars (32 page)

Carefully Lacey took his heavy arm and laid it across her chest, then waited. When that seemed okay, she scooched closer to his warm body and slid her leg between his. Lacey pulled up her T-shirt and maneuvered Eddie’s hand onto her breast, where it lay heavily, unmoving. She touched herself. Thoughts and memories, present and past, lit up the screen of her closed eyes and Lacey tried to ignore them, tried to get herself to the place where they didn’t matter.

Based on his last set of MRIs, and the continued disinhibition, it’s likely that we’re looking at some level of permanent damage to the prefrontal cortex. Language, emotional lability, memory loss.

The time he told her he didn’t like her on top; the time he said she was too loud in bed.

Oh that feels soooo good, doesn’t it? Look, he likes it! Eddie getting a sponge bath in SICU, head almost entirely wrapped except for his uncovered mouth, thick and loosened with physical pleasure.

The time he threw out her vibrator, disgusted. The time he said it wasn’t normal for the woman to want so much sex, after she’d had kids.

And Jim. Jim, Jim. What if it were Jim’s hand on her bare breast, what if it was his warm legs around hers. Lacey’s breathing got faster.

Scritch. Scrabble scrabble.
Right under the bed! Lacey wheeled up just in time to see a small mouse streak across the room and disappear into the closet.

“Are you
kidding
me?” She flung off Eddie’s arm; he mumbled and rolled over the other way. Lacey sat up, filled with horror. A mouse, inches from her face. What if it climbed onto the bed while she slept? Made a nest in her fucking hair?

Right then, her cell phone rang and Lacey pressed
ANSWER
, too freaked out to take notice of the late hour.

“You’re not asleep, are you?” It was Ellen’s daughter, Jane, sounding not at all concerned that she might have been. Lacey heaved herself out of the bed and went into the living room. No more beer, which was what she really needed—throat dry, face flushed—but in back of the kitchenette’s one cabinet she found the last-resort-only bottle of mulled wine that someone had left on a holiday baked goods table.

“Clearly not,” she said, gagging from the sticky sweetness. “Gah. Hang on.” In the fridge was a liter of flat lime seltzer, and Lacey chugged just enough to be ready to face the wine again. “What’s up? How come you’re up?”

“Why go to bed when I’m up four times a night to pee? When does that stop?”

“When you have the baby. Only then, you’ll be getting up four times a night because of
his
peeing. And pooping. And needing to be fed.”

“Everyone tells me that like I don’t already know it. Anyway, we’re going to co-sleep.”

“Whatever. You can’t co-diaper, or is that a thing now too?” Lacey sat cross-legged on the sagging couch with both bottles nestled on her lap. She listened to Jane launch into another diatribe against Ellen—it had a slight variation but the standard theme,
she doesn’t get me
—and kept a worried eye out for any mice movement in the corners of the room.

These phone calls from Jane, meandering late-night talks, probably weren’t the smartest idea. Lacey wasn’t sure why, but she knew enough not to mention them to Ellen. They’d started a few weeks ago when Lacey, bored one night and half drunk and lonely but pretending to be concerned about Jane after Ellen had sent her away (that’s how Jane always put it, “when Mom sent me away”), had sent her a short text. Who knows what it said, something along the lines of
you ok?
But possibly Jane was feeling as bored and lonely because seconds later Lacey’s phone rang, and what should have been a short conversation stretched to almost an hour. Neither of them had a lot to do at night. This had continued, off and on, and although Lacey wasn’t kidding herself that Jane wanted much more than a willing ear for her to vent about her mom, she sometimes tried to slip in a few pieces of relevant information:
Yesterday Michael got a 95 on one of the cognitive tests, but he’s calling it 100 and claiming he’s always been color-blind so the color-matching section isn’t relevant. He’s gonna get another surgery soon, but this is a good one—move some nerves around so his C-leg will work better. Hey, how does your mom get ahold of so many damn books, even out here? I barely finish one and then she’s got me into the next.
With typical teenager self-absorption, Jane rarely asked about any of them at Walter Reed, how Lacey was, or how her mom was holding up. Still, Lacey thought she could detect care in there, hidden under the required blasé.

“Four more months,” Jane said now, apropos of nothing.

Lacey could barely remember what week it was. “So … April something?”

“Yeah.”

“You getting scared? About the birth? Don’t worry—once the drugs kick in it’s really not that bad.”

“I would
never
get an epidural,” Jane sniffed. “It stays in the baby for up to a week afterward. They’re sleepier, they—”

“Ha! You should be so lucky, ‘they’re sleepier.’ I don’t think Otis went down once for a nap longer than thirty minutes until I put him in day care. And even then I don’t know what he did, but it wasn’t my problem from nine to five.”

“Did it … was it really bad?”

Lacey drank, first some cough syrupy wine, then flat seltzer. Should she mix them? “Which part?”

“When he … came out. The stitches, and all that. I once had to get stitches on my chin and Mom says I almost passed out when I saw the needle. I really, really, really don’t like the idea of needles. Down there.”

“Yeah, well … luckily you can’t see any of it; you’ll barely notice what they’re doing down there. And by that point you’ll be holding him. Or her. Think about that. Holding your baby. One moment they’re not alive, and then they are, and you’re holding them. I mean, it. Him, her, you know.”

“Mm.”

“Look, it’s normal to feel freaked out by it. But Jane, I gotta say—” Or did she? Lacey went ahead anyway. “If that’s the biggest fear you have, you’ll be fine.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Your mom is totally willing to house and feed both you
and
the kid for an indefinite—”

“I didn’t ask her to do that! Nobody’s making her be all in charge. She just wants to run my life, that’s all that is.”

“Will you grow up for a second? I know you think you and I have all this in common, like, the single mom thing. But I would have given my right tit for
my
mom to be able to let me and Otis live with her rent-free, not to mention even give a shit how I’d handle everything. I took a cab home from the hospital, with this little baby on my lap. I had no idea.”

“Just because we have, like, some money doesn’t mean—”

“She
loves
you. You hear me? She isn’t here because she’s choosing him over you, or some shit like that. She’s here because no one else would be. And it sucks, everything—” Lacey had to take a quick chug of sweet wine to cover a sudden fierce wobbliness in her voice. “Everything here sucks. So maybe cut her a little slack.”

Jane was quiet. So, maybe that did it. Now this girl would hang up on her, stop calling, go ahead being pissed off. Would Lacey now be forced to
read
, while drinking, until she could sleep again? She eyed Ellen’s latest,
Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett, which she was two chapters into and actually kind of enjoying.

Except Jane stayed on the phone. “All right. I mean … whatever. Can we change the subject?”

“Definitely.” Relief. And in the girl’s vulnerable bravado, Lacey suddenly heard echoes of Bailey. Bailey, from her FRG group, a million years ago. What had ever happened with her? Was anyone looking out for her? Lacey pictured her, and then Anne Mackay, and then Martine and Felicia and the women in the group she’d led and Aimee, someone who’d lost her husband, and all the others. They hadn’t totally stopped trying to reach out to her—except for Martine—but Lacey’s silence to every call or text must have let them know to back off. Or maybe they’d moved on, busy counting down the days until deployment ended and real life resumed.

If she wanted to, she could find a different mil-wife activity to join every hour here at Walter Reed. Flyers abounded; there were prayer groups and errands co-ops, support groups and mentors and volunteer opportunities everywhere she turned. Yet Lacey stayed away.

It was like she was floating alone in outer space, tethered only barely to a life where all of that mattered. How busy she used to be, running from work to FRG meetings and back again, helping out and dragging Otis along for the ride. And all that time, ignoring the fact of Eddie, who he really was and how they were not meant to be. Filling up her days with military stuff, everything and everyone except Eddie.

And now here they were, the two of them. One broken in the head and the other—Lacey let herself think it, go ahead and wallow—broken in the heart. Alone.

“Will you tell me some stuff about, like, the fun parts? When he first walked or … cute things he said. I need something to look forward to.”

Lacey took a deep breath. “Fun parts, fun parts. There are fun parts?”

“Not cool.”

“Yeah, I’m kidding. All right, let me think.” Drink. “Okay. One time—there’s this book,
Goodnight Moon
? It’s like a—”

“Oh my God, Lacey. I know about
Goodnight Moon
!”

“So anyway. I’d read it to him a thousand times, he was about two or something. It’s really basic, just good night this and good night that. I used to pray it was going to make him sleep through the night. Wait. ‘In the great green room, there was a telephone. And a red balloon. And a picture of—’”

Jane chimed in. “‘The cow jumping over the moon.’”

“That’s really weird, now that I’m thinking of it. Why the telephone? Is that the most important thing in the room?”

“This is what my mom would call deconstruction. She’d give you an A.”

“Well, this one time, after we’d finished reading, he was in his pajamas, the zip-up footie kind…” Lacey closed her eyes, her body vividly remembering the warm weight of Otis then, his wiggly chunk of a body, the softness of his cotton fireman pajamas. “I was carrying him over to his crib, and we had this thing where I had to fly him there, like zoom him around the room before dumping him in. And he was in my arms, facing up to the ceiling and I was…” Lacey swayed, on the couch, cupping her arms. “And he was staring up, and he whispered, ‘g’night moon, g’night stars.’” She held still, there again with her baby.

“Wow. That’s adorable. Was that, like, his first words?”

Lacey opened her eyes. “No. He’d been yakking for a while.” She wouldn’t explain more, about the magic of that moment, what it was like to be there when little O sent up his own whisper-prayer to the moon and stars. It was okay if Jane didn’t get it.

Jane yawned. “One more thing. I don’t know how else to do this, but … do you think you could tell Mike a couple of things for me? Or, you know, let him know some stuff?”

“What stuff?” The thick gooey wine kept Lacey from being as alarmed by this request as she maybe should have been.

“Oh … Just some things. I’ll figure out how to get it to you. Like a letter for him, or something you can tell him from me. When
she’s
not around, obviously.”

“Look, I don’t think I should get between—”

“It’s nothing serious, I promise. I just want some privacy without her all in my business. You know?”

Lacey did know. Maybe she should have refused, but she couldn’t help it. She knew about being young and messed up and in love. Fuck, she knew about being
older
and messed up and in love too.

22

“If you need to squeeze your balls, go ahead,” the petite, polished social worker said to Mike. “Sorry—I mean—” She gestured at the two purple latex globes on his lap, each labeled
GRIPPER HAND STRENGTH PLUS
. These were meant to relieve stress, they’d been told. To head off a meltdown. To get Mike some kind of physical outlet.

But if he noticed the double entendre, he didn’t show it. “It’s okay,” Ellen said, and offered the flustered young therapist a smile. She was desperate for any help with how to talk to him. Almost everything she said was wrong, set him off. Ellen knew the cause was his PTSD, but before this she’d stupidly assumed that would have meant flinching at loud noises—Vietnam-era shell shock. But no, all the psych people assured her: this anger of Michael’s was a primary symptom of what they were seeing now from combat trauma. If it seemed directed specifically at Ellen, well, then either that was her own paranoia, or it was reality—in either case, not much to be done. They were constantly tweaking his doses; they had to wait it out.

This was a first “family session” meant to draw Mike out, encourage him to share more about the bottled-up thoughts and feelings that were clearly tormenting him. Gently, for the past thirty minutes, the therapist had asked questions about what she called
the incident
—what did he remember from the street, the Baghdad CASH, the transport to Walter Reed?—while Mike sweated and dodged and answered in short vague phrases. That’s when she gestured at the stress balls. Mike picked up one now and the three of them stared at it, purple and round, on his open palm. Then he arced a perfect three-pointer across the room and—
thunk
—into the wastepaper basket.

“Good shot,” Ellen murmured. “Mike was a wonderful athlete,” she told the therapist. “In high school, he played—”

“Oh my God she doesn’t
care
! What are you, going to give her my highlight reel?” Ellen pressed her lips together. “Fuck’s sake,” Mike muttered.

“Let’s try something different,” the therapist said. “Can I ask each of you to close your eyes?” Briefly, Ellen and Mike met glances, and then did as they were told. “Now picture yourself in a safe space … Actually—” Ellen could hear the sound of papers shuffling. “Right. Bring to mind a happy memory. One that makes you smile. It can be from anytime in your life, just recall it in as much detail as possible: where you were, what was happening, what was so wonderful about it.”