Home Front (36 page)

“We’re soldiers,” she said. “Well, I’m just pretend.”

Conny smiled. “That explains it. And now, young lady, I need to get some things to help your mom exercise. You want to help me get them?”

“Can I, Daddy?” Lulu asked.

“Sure.”

When they were gone, Jolene flopped back into her mound of pillows, exhausted.

“You okay?” Michael asked, leaning over her.

She didn’t have the strength to deal with him right now. She felt so weak and vulnerable, and in that split second when their gazes had met, she’d imagined love. Nothing could scare her more. She’d given him her heart long ago, and for so many years, and then he’d crushed it. With her body so broken, she couldn’t let anything else be hurt. “Why are you even here, Michael? You know we’re over.”

“We’re not.”

She struggled to sit back up, hating how she looked doing something so simple, all off-balance and breathing hard. She threw back the covers. “Is this what you want?”

“Yes.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “Don’t lie to me, Michael.”

“I’m not lying. I learned a lot while you were gone, Jolene. About you … about me … about us. I was an idiot to tell you I didn’t love you. How could I not love you?”

She wanted it to be true, wanted it so badly she felt sick with longing. But she was broken now, and Michael had always had a keen sense of duty. It was one of the things they’d shared. He wouldn’t let himself walk away from his wounded wife, no matter how much he wanted to.

“We’re back, Mommy,” Lulu said, coming back into the room with Conny. “And Conny says we get to play catch!”

Jolene drew in a tired breath. She wanted to say,
Really? With one hand? Won’t it be more like fetch?
but she didn’t. Keeping silent felt like a minor triumph. She managed a small, hopeful smile. “Okay, Lulu,” she said. “I love playing catch. So let’s get started.”

*   *   *

Michael stood by Jolene’s bedside.

She had fallen asleep almost immediately after her PT session. He was hardly surprised. She must be exhausted. Today he’d seen the woman who flew helicopters. The warrior.

He stared down at her scabby, bruised face. Always, from the beginning even, when she’d come into his office that first day, he’d seen Jolene as a powerhouse, a woman with steel in her spine.

He saw her vulnerability now. Maybe for the first time ever she needed him. It surprised him how much that meant to him, how much he wanted to be there for her.

He touched her face gently. “Have I lost you, Jo?” he whispered.

He heard Lulu’s helium-high voice in the hallway, and he turned, realizing too late that he had tears in his eyes. He wiped them away as Lulu said, “Look, Daddy, we have ice cream.”

Smiling as best he could, he turned again to his wife, kissed her cheek, and lingered there just a second. Then he straightened and walked away, leading his girls toward the car. All the way home—on the long ferry wait and crossing—Lulu chattered. She wanted a wheelchair of her own.

As they turned onto the bay road, Lulu started singing and clapping her hands together; then she started pretending she was playing patty-cake with her mother. “Help me make one up, Betsy, like Mommy does. Patty-cake, patty-cake—”

“She only has one good hand now,” Betsy snapped. “How do you think she’s going to play patty-cake with you?”

Lulu gasped. “Is that true, Daddy? Tell her to shut up. They’ll take off the cast and Mommy will be fine, right?”

Michael pulled the car into the garage and parked next to Jolene’s SUV. “Leave each other alone.”

Lulu wailed.

Betsy bolted from the car and ran out of the garage, slamming the door behind her.

“Great.” Michael unhooked Lulu from her car seat and pulled her into his arms.

In the house, she immediately wiggled out of his grasp and ran upstairs, probably to torment her sister.

Michael went to the kitchen, poured himself a drink, and stood by the counter, drinking it, gathering strength for what was to come. When he finished the drink, he set down the glass and headed upstairs.

He knocked on Betsy’s door. “Betsy, it’s Dad. Can I come in?”

She waited almost too long, then muttered, “Whatever.”

A phrase he’d come to loathe.

Inside the room, Betsy stood with her back to him, at her window, woodenly rearranging her plastic horses. He didn’t need Cornflower to tell him that it was a desperate attempt to create order from chaos.

“She’s in pain, Betsy,” he said.

She went still. Her hand hovered above a black-and-white pinto, her fingers trembling. “She’s different.”

He went to her, took her hand, and led her to the bed, where they sat side by side. “It’s okay to be afraid.”

“But it’s her fault. She
picked
the army—”

“Betsy, honey—”

“Sierra’s dad says it’s Mom’s fault. He says women shouldn’t be flying helicopters in wartime anyway. If she hadn’t been flying, none of this would have happened. I told her I wouldn’t forgive her … and I can’t.”

Michael sighed. “Sierra’s dad is a dick who doesn’t know shit. And you can tell him I said so.”

“I’m scared, Dad.”

“Yeah,” he said, putting an arm around her. “Me, too.”

Then the door burst open and Lulu stood there, frowning furiously. “There you are. Were you hiding from me?”

Betsy turned, sniffling. “I’m sorry I was mean to you, Lulu.”

Lulu grinned, showing off her tiny teeth and bright pink gums. “I know, silly,” she said. “Can we play patty-cake now?”

Twenty-One

Yesterday, Jolene had worked harder than she’d ever worked in her life—army-ranger training hard—and for what? So that she could sit upright in a chair, to stretch a leg that wasn’t there, to hold a rubber ball with fingers that barely worked.

Now, she lay in bed, too exhausted and depressed to reach for the trapeze and pull herself to a sit. How pathetic was that? She called Carl at the hospital in Germany, but he didn’t answer the phone. She left a message and hung up.

Tami, girl, where are you? Why aren’t we going through this shit together?

There was a knock at her door, and she knew who it was. Conny the dreadlocked torturer. She didn’t open her eyes.

“I know you aren’t sleeping,” he said, coming into the room.

She rolled away from him. Even that was hard to do with only one good leg. The motion was pathetic and lurching. “Go away.”

He came over to the bedside. “You can’t hide from this, soldier girl.”

“I rolled over. Why don’t you give me a treat and we’ll call it a day?”

He laughed at that. It was a bold, rich, velvety sound that clawed at her already-frayed nerves. “I can just pick you up and haul your scrawny white ass outta that bed.”

“You would, too.”

“What happened to the woman who made it through boot camp and flight school?”

“Her leg is in Germany and she needs it.”

“She’s not getting it back.”

Jolene glared at him. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

“You want me to go, Jo?”

“Yes,” she said, almost cried it.

“Then get out of this bed and start working with me. Let me help you.”

She looked up at him, knowing there was fear in her gaze and unable to mask it. “This is killing me, Conny.”

He brushed the hair from her eyes with a gentleness that brought tears to her eyes. “I know that, soldier girl. I been there.”

“How have you been here?”

“Pain’s pain. I have had my share—more than my share, really. My son died. Elijah. I’ll tell you about him someday. He was a beautiful boy, had a smile that could light up the room. After he passed, I was full of anger. Darkness. Started drinking and yelling. Well, I imagine that’s all you need to know. Took me a long time—and a hell of a wife—to find my way back. I know about hurting all the way to your bones. And I know about giving up. It ain’t the way.”

“I used to be the kind of woman who never gave up.”

“You can be her again.”

Jolene turned away from the compassion and understanding in his dark eyes.

“Come on, Jolene,” Conny said, reaching for her. She didn’t pull away but let him lift her out of the bed and into the wheelchair.

The physical therapy room was a huge bright space with four broad, vinyl-covered beds along one wall and windows along another. There were two sets of silver parallel bars anchored to the linoleum floor. Scattered throughout the rest of the area were a variety of steps with and without handrails attached to them, yoga-type mats, physio balls in all sizes and colors, stacks of hand weights, Thera-Bands, and a collection of walkers and crutches.

First, Conny had Jolene warm up. She rolled onto her side on one of the bright blue yoga mats on the floor, and stretched out as far as she could, imagining her foot still there, pressing out, reaching for the end of the mat.

With each movement, Conny charted her range of motion and encouraged her to do better.

“I don’t think that’s possible,” she said, breathing hard.

“Oh. It is. Stretch farther.”

Jolene gritted her teeth and kept at it, stretching her stump until pain made her scream out. Sweat dripped into her eyes and off her face, making the mat beneath her slippery.

“One more inch,” Conny said.

“I hate you,” she said, trying to give him what he wanted.

“I wouldn’t be doing my job if you didn’t,” he said, laughing. “That’s good.” He patted her shoulder. “Now let me see some sit-ups.”

“You are worse than any drill sergeant I ever had. You know that?”

“I aim to please.” While she did her sit-ups, he went to get her wheelchair and rolled it toward her. “Okay. That’s enough. Get in.”

She looked up at the chair, hating it. Sweat dripped down from her hair. She wiped her hands on her tee shirt, leaving damp streaks behind.

Conny lifted her onto the workout bench, got her seated, then rolled the wheelchair closer. “I’ll show you how to get into your chair. Here, make sure this brake is set. Wipe your hand so you don’t slip, and remember, don’t put any weight on your right hand. Just use it for balance. Let me help you, Jolene…”

She licked her lips nervously. “Who would have thought it took all this work to sit down. I used to run marathons. I tell you that? One time—”

“You’re stalling.”

She steeled herself again and began the work it took just to get from the bench into a wheelchair. Groaning at the exertion, she angled herself forward, stood slowly on her good leg. Balancing, she waited until she felt steady, holding the chair in her good hand. Already she was breathing hard again, sweating. And afraid she would fall. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Before, she could have lifted one leg and balanced with ease. Now her equilibrium was as shaky as her sense of herself.

With exaggerated care, she turned on her good foot and sat down in the chair; her bandaged residual limb stuck out like a bowsprit.

“You did it,” Conny said, smiling brightly.

He gave her about ten seconds to revel in her triumph, and then he had her back at the yoga mat, working again. She didn’t have the core strength to lower herself to the mat on her one good leg, so Conny helped her. “More sit-ups,” he said when she was ready. “Two hundred.”

“Two hundred? Are you mental?”

“I told you you’d hate me. Quit whining and start.”

She lay down, wishboned her arms behind her and pulled upward. “One … two … three…”

She hadn’t noticed before how your feet anchored you for sit-ups. Now, she was constantly moving, sliding, feeling unsteady on the ground as she went up, down, up, down.

“Two hundred, Jolene,” Conny said. “Don’t slow down.”

“Screw … you,” she said in between breaths. She wanted to give up, wanted it badly, but every time she considered quitting, she thought about her children, and her family, and how much she wanted to be herself again, and she kept trying.

When she finished, Conny wheeled her back to her room. “I’ll send an aide to help you shower,” he said, positioning her wheelchair by the window.

“Conny?” she said, looking up at him.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about your son.”

He gave her a slow, sad smile. “I’m sorry about your leg, soldier girl.”

*   *   *

For the next week, Jolene spent her nights battered by memories, and her days pretending she was getting better. She called her daughters every evening and let them tell her about their day; at night, she called Germany and talked to Carl about Tami. Most of all, she kept working. Every morning, when she woke, her first thought—in the split second when she hadn’t yet remembered the truth—was
I wonder if it’s too cold to run
.

By the time she opened her eyes, that question was gone, tossed onto the pile of lost chances that made up Before.

Now, her room was dark; the door was closed. She turned her head just enough to see out the small window. Beyond the glass, she saw a bare tree, its spindly limbs sporting puffs of green moss and a few tenacious, multicolored leaves.

She grabbed the trapeze and pulled herself to a sit. By the time she was upright, she was breathing hard. Tired again. She couldn’t believe how much muscle mass she’d lost in such a short period of time.

Today she would get fitted for her temporary prosthesis. Her new leg. She wanted to be excited about it, but the truth was that she was scared. The new leg meant that she would be up and around, that she would be walking, that she would go home, to her ruined marriage and her frightened children and a life that had no foundation. She wasn’t a pilot anymore, wasn’t a soldier, wasn’t really a wife. Who was she?

She wanted to talk to someone about her fears, but it had never been her way, and God knew it wasn’t the military way. Whatever new fears and ragged nerves and residual images she’d carried home from Iraq, she was expected to deal with them herself. Besides, she’d learned as a kid how futile words could be. With Michael she’d always held back, even in the best of times, afraid to let him see how damaged she was beneath the bold surface. It was a trick she’d learned young, in that house full of alcoholics. Say nothing.