Going Overboard (13 page)

Several seconds passed and no one answered.

I knocked again, a little louder this time.

Still, no one came to the door.

“Oh, for Heaven's sake!” I said and rang the doorbell.

A few more minutes passed; then lights started coming on, one by one, until I could see Brent's silhouette shuffling toward the door.

I waved sheepishly, then pulled down on my hem again.

Brent opened the door and squinted. “Sarah? What's going on?” he said.

I shivered in the cold and hugged myself.

“Come on in,” he said, waving his arm toward the foyer and taking a step back. “Danielle's still sleeping, but—”

“I can't,” I said. “The boys are inside. I've locked myself out.”

A smile came across Brent's face as he looked me up and down. “For some reason I thought you'd be a flannel jammies kind of girl.”

I laughed. “Well, usually, yes. But my heater is stuck on high and I can't figure out how to reprogram that little computer thingy on the wall. So it was hot last night, but freezing this morning. I don't understand it. . . .”

Brent rubbed his chin and smiled.

“Anyway,” I said, “please tell me you have a key to my house.”

“I'm really sorry,” he said, “but I don't think we have one.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“Afraid not,” he said. “We had one when we took care of Tanner while you were on vacation, but I'm pretty sure we gave it back. You want me to call a locksmith or something?” He opened the door wider. “Please, come on in.”

“I can't . . . the kids . . .” I looked back in the direction of my house and saw Tanner going to the bathroom again, this time on Danielle's chrysanthemums.

“Oh, no! Tanner, get out of there!” I yelled, but she didn't hear.

“Don't worry about it,” Brent said. He was looking past me, out across the yard at Tanner. “The flowers will be fine. But, Sarah, is Tanner sick?”

Sick?
I stared thoughtfully at Tanner in the middle of the flower bed. “Well, I don't know,” I said softly. “I hadn't thought about it, really.”

Tanner was old, for sure, and she seemed to be aging even faster since I had children. But she couldn't be sick . . . could she? Tanner and I had been through so much together: high school, my first car, going off to college (she went with me), marriage, two deployments, and two children. At times she felt like an extension of myself. She was part of me. The idea of her being sick or dying was as unfathomable to me as a parent's imperfections are to a child.

I looked back up at Brent and realized how pathetic I sounded for not knowing whether or not my own dog was sick. So I shook my head and said, “But, gosh, no, she's not sick. Of course not.”

Brent went inside to call a locksmith, and I went to comfort Tanner. When he came back out, he was carrying one of Danielle's bathrobes and two plastic lawn chairs. He had thrown on an Old Navy sweatshirt, but he was still wearing flannel pajama bottoms and slippers that looked like men's loafers. I wrapped myself in the bathrobe and hugged my knees to my chest
as I sat in the chair on the driveway. Brent went to the backyard to look in the boys' window.

“Still asleep?” I asked when he came back around the corner.

“I can't see anything,” he said. “But I don't hear them crying either. I'll go back and check again in a minute.”

He sat down and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Want one?” he said, and I shook my head. He offered every time, even though I never accepted.

I watched him strike a match and light the end of a cigarette until it was aglow and crackling. Just the sight of the red fire seemed to warm me. He blew out the flame and placed the used match inside his pack of cigarettes; then he pulled Tanner up into his lap and stroked her back. No one else ever paid so much attention to Tanner. Well, except for me . . . and my dad, who in his quiet way, seems to have a kinship with animals. (I once saw Dad calm down a rattlesnake at the zoo just by staring at it through the glass.) When I was still living at home, Dad always took Tanner out with him when he rolled up under the cars to change the oil or fix the brakes. “How's life treating you, Tanner Wanner?” he would say, as if someday she would finally answer. Sometimes, in a weird sort of way, I think I was jealous of the attention Dad gave Tanner.

Brent puffed on his cigarette and blew smoke at the sky. “Beautiful day, isn't it?” he said.

I looked out at the chilled grass. The neighborhood was so quiet and still, I felt like I had cotton in my ears.

But it was freezing.

And it was early.

Yet, still, Brent was smiling.

“Yes, I guess it is,” I said and smiled to myself.

Brent had such an optimistic view of the world, a perpetual smile on his face. Sometimes when I asked, “What are you guys planning to do this weekend?” he would say, “I don't know, but
whatever it is, it's going to be fun.” Nothing seemed to get him down, and he was capable in every situation. I was sure his marriage was perfect and that Danielle was one of the luckiest girls around.

“Hey, Brent,” I said suddenly, “how long do you think a marriage is supposed to stay—how should I say this?—romantic?”

“What are you asking?” he said, squinting in my direction.

“Oh, I don't know. I mean, do you still feel in love? Do you ever wish for something more?”

I could feel Brent studying my profile. He puffed on his cigarette and exhaled. “Sure, we're happy, I guess. Although we don't get to have all the romantic homecomings and separations you and Dustin do,” he said, laughing. “That's got to be one heck of an experience!”

I sighed and looked at the concrete. It would be humiliating to tell him about Dustin's less-than-romantic phone call from Spain. Civilians have such a Hollywood view of military life. Maybe it's the movies, or too many World War II photographs, but most people think having a husband “off at war” is somehow romantic. I hated to disappoint Brent and reveal the true nature of—the reality of—my and Dustin's life, so I just said, “Oh, sure—I'm just tired, I guess,” and left it at that.

We sat in silence for several more minutes before the police arrived.

“You called the police?” I said, looking over at Brent.

“Just in case. I wanted to make sure if the locksmith didn't show up before I have to go to work—”

I smiled. “Thanks, Brent. Really. And remind me to give you a key for the next emergency.”

Clearly I was his damsel in distress.

The police officer swaggered up the driveway in heavy black boots. It seemed like he couldn't lay his arms flat against his sides, but I couldn't tell if that was because of all the gadgets hanging off
his uniform, or because of bulky muscles under his shirt. He had a mustache that looked like a Brillo pad, and his thick leather belt creaked as he came toward us.

Brent stood to shake hands. “Good morning, Officer,” he said. “Thanks for coming out.”

The officer hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. “What seems to be the trouble?” he said.

“My friend Sarah here has locked herself out,” Brent said, “and her children are asleep inside. A locksmith is supposed to be on his way.”

The radio clipped to the officer's shoulder squawked and he paused to listen. “Already on the scene. Over,” he said into the receiver; then he looked up at me again. “Well, ma'am, never mind the locksmith. Let's go ahead and get you inside before all the neighbors wake up and see you sitting out here in your bathrobe.”

Brent laughed. “Oh, most of us have seen her laundry flying out the front door anyway.”

The officer looked back and forth between the two of us and my face turned hot. He was imposing and strong in his navy blue suit. But uniforms can be so misleading, can't they? People see a doctor's white coat, or a policeman's badge, and they instantly feel safe. They are comforted by an image or, rather, by their expectations of an image.

So what impression do people have when they see Dustin in his flight suit? I wondered. And suddenly it occurred to me that somewhere there was a policeman's wife waking up alone while her husband was across town on my driveway taking care of me. She had sacrificed time with her husband so that he could serve the public. Kind of like I was living alone so my husband could defend the country.

But did that wife mind being alone? Did she resent so many people needing her husband? Did she want him there to take care of her, instead of here taking care of me? Was she better
equipped for the sacrifice than me? Would she collapse under the pressure?

And, most important, did she have a Cute Doctor?

The boys were still sleeping when I got back inside, so I went to the computer to check e-mail. I had heard from Courtney, who heard from Sasha, who heard from Kate, that e-mail was working on board the ship now, and a few wives had already received messages from their husbands.

I sat down in a noisy wooden chair borrowed from the kitchen table and pushed aside a stack of bills and mail before booting up the computer. Our system was outdated and needed replacing, but as I sat there watching the flashing monitor come to life, I knew during the next few months, it would become my “spouse.” By the time the deployment was all over, I'd feel more connected to my in-box and the expectation of e-mail than I would another human being. The concept of “Dustin”—the man I used to smell and feel next to me in bed—would merely become a collection of e-mails stored in a folder marked “Dusty.”

At least, that was the way it had been for Dustin's previous deployment.

Mom liked to tell me that I “have no idea what it was like for spouses before e-mail, when the only way to communicate with your soldier was through the postman!” When Dad first deployed, Mom relied on handwritten letters, often delivered out of sync, to keep her in touch with him.

But at least they didn't have to deal with the
expectation
, I've often thought. Mom couldn't realistically expect instant communication with her husband thousands of miles away, which eliminated the frequent disappointment and pain today's military spouse feels when she opens her in-box a million times a day (“just in case!”) and finds nothing.

But that morning I was lucky. Once the screen was in focus
and the computer had retrieved my messages, the words SMILEY, DUSTIN H., LT appeared in bold type. I clicked on the link.

I printed up a copy of Dustin's message and took it to the kitchen, where I poured myself a Diet Coke with ice and reread each sentence line by line. I was still angry about the phone call from Spain, but seeing Dustin's familiar words, and the way he
formatted the message perfectly, just like a real letter, made me smile.

I returned to the computer, put my drink down on top of the stack of bills, and wrote my reply: