Long Division (9 page)

“Aww. No not really. Same old tra.
²⁷
There was some rumor floating around about Jessica Simpson coming to our base to give a concert. But it didn't take long for us to figure out it was bullshit. The XO even had to make an official announcement.

“XO? Kisses? Hugs?”

“What?”

“What does XO mean?”

“Commanding officer. Jeez, Annie. I feel like I've told you that a hundred times.”

“Sorry. But anyway, that's too bad.”

“What's too bad?”

“About no Jessica Simpson.”

“Whatever. She's a ditz. She'd probably call us the navy or something.”

“Yeah.”

So basically I'm the worst phone talker ever. And whenever David and I have a conversation like this, after it's over, I end up sprawling on my bed and inventing fourteen different things I could have said to make it better. Or else I write myself some notes of what we should talk about next time. Maybe when I get my oldie conversation partner, I'll have all sorts of amusing anecdotes to spout off. I could even pick up some charming 1940s vernacular.
What the dickens have you been up to, David? Good heavens, I miss you so, darling.
I also resolve to make a cheat sheet (The teacher must always stress the cheat sheet!) with all of David's abbreviations. And then I won't waste precious phone time asking for the same old silly definitions.

 

On my first day as an official Violet Meadows volunteer, I wake up early and eat Cream of Wheat for breakfast. I think about what having dentures must feel like and if one has ghost memories of the ex-teeth. When I arrive at the home, Jean leads me to the room of my new conversation partner, Mrs. Loretta Schumacher, rattling off facts about the resident like she's trying to sell me a used car. “She's (a) ninety-three. Been here (on the lot) for six years now. One of our sharper ones in her nineties (solid engine). Doesn't stress much (good tires). Keeps her room clean (leather interior). Has moderate arthritis (a shimmy). Diabetes (slow oil leak). I think that's it. Nice lady. You two should have fun. Here we are.” Jean has that jiggly tricep arm fat (known as the dreaded “chalkboard flab” in my profession), and it quivers as she knocks on the door. Its trembling reminds me that I'm kind of trembling. I don't even have a moment to consider why I'm nervous because before Jean has a chance to lower her reverberating arm, Mrs. Loretta Schumacher has opened the door and is standing right in front of us like she's been waiting in this exact place all afternoon.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Schumacher. This is Annie Harper. She's a volunteer. Here to chat with you for a bit.”

“How do you do, Miss Harper?” Mrs. Schumacher extends a weathered hand to me and I take it, surprised that it feels soft and robust at the same time.

“Very well, thank you. Pleased to meet you.”

“We'll see about that in an hour or so, sweetheart. Right? Don't be pleased to meet me until you've met me and until you've sat here in my lousy room for a bit of time. Huh?” I laugh nervously and steal a look at Jean, who is blank, not amused, probably planning her next four years of vacation days.

“Okay. Um. Sure.” That is what I actually say. Brilliant, I know. An amazing representation of my oh-so-articulate generation. Jean backs out the door and shuts it with a gentleness that I didn't expect from her.

“I have two chairs, you know. Please do take a seat.”

“Oh. Thank you. Thanks.” I pull a folding chair away from the wall, and it makes this loud sticky sound like it hasn't moved for years. I imagine a mop being swabbed around it once a week for a decade. There's this dirty muck crusted around the base: the buildup of solitude. Loretta slowly lowers herself into a wooden rocker by the window. It's exactly the kind of thing you see in nursing homes in movies. I'm stunned that Hollywood didn't make up the detail and that Loretta is actually afforded the luxury of a chair that can bring motion into what is probably a nearly stagnant existence.

“Well,” I say, “Nice day out. Supposed to snow tomorrow.”

“Do you like poker?” Loretta fires this out all sharp tongue. Like an accusation.

“Poker?”

“Yeah, you know. Texas Hold 'Em. Five-Card Stud. Tramps 'n' Floozies.”

“Tramps 'n' Floozies?” I imagine Loretta wavering on the edge of sanity, mixing her card games with the titles of pulpy Western novels she once read. I'm picturing her, all ninety-three years and raisiny, vamped up in some ruffly Western gown with an ace slid seductively down her bodice. She's asking for another whiskey and I'm smiling. And Loretta sees me smiling, and she's taking my smile for a yes. Yes, I love poker. She reaches down to her left into a satchel that's hanging from the armrest of her rocker. I figure she's pulling up a deck of cards. Tattered, sticky cards that I'll watch her rigid, unyielding fingers attempt to shuffle properly before dealing them out. And what will we bet? Cough drops? First dibs on the style section of Sunday's paper?

Loretta hands me a small piece of black plastic, and as I realize that it's not a deck of cards at all, she says, “I'll give you the easy one.” I turn the portable video poker device over in my hands and read its name.
Power Pocket Poker
. Loretta has pulled a pair of reading glasses from her rocker's satchel and has already fired up her machine. “Oooh. Pair of queens,” she says.

And I don't know what to think about it. We're not talking. We're not talking about the old days when she'd make lemonade on Sundays and walk her toddling grandchildren in the park. We're not flipping through vitamin catalogs and discussing the positive effects of riboflavin on the kidneys. She isn't smiling a toothy, denture smile and I'm not breaking age boundaries and transcending generational gaps and laughing recklessly as my youth absorbs into the dull, gray walls. We're playing video poker.

“Hey, Loretta,” I say after a minute, “I just got a full house.”

“I told you that was the easy one. Last month I hit it big. Royal straight flush. Hearts!” We play for another thirty minutes or so, announcing our more daring bets and triumphant hands. And though the beepy-beep-beepness of the games grates on my ears, sounding like the erratic chirp of a faltering heartbeat monitor on some dramatic medical TV show, the way that Loretta says, “Let's go. Let's go now, darlin',” while she presses the deal button is actually kind of nice.

T
oday I'm calling my book
Without an Artifact
, because this is a war that will produce no yellowed envelopes with patriotic stamps and no tiny ration coupons for butter. David and I speak over garbled satellite phone lines and exchange electronic messages that I will probably delete by accident with the latest promotional announcements from Victoria's Secret.
²⁸

 

David calls late late late at night. It's after midnight, and I'm still up because of a certain pint of a certain lactose-stuffed frozen dessert.

“My Annie Woman!”

“My David Man!”

“How are you, babe? Did I wake you?”

“No, I've been up. Not feeling too well.”

(Delay, delay, delay)

“I'm sorry. You got a cold or something?”

“No, I had ice cream. So things are a bit rumbly down there. You know, below the Mason-Dixon line.” I snort at myself. Pleased with the way I slipped it in. Finally. It's a crapshoot how long the mail takes anyway.

“You got my letter! You used the code!” David is nearly giddy about it. And I smile too. Despite the lousy connections, it's rare for his voice to sparkle like this—for it to inflect the kinds of tones that cause pictures of his smile to pop up in my mind.

I tell David about Loretta and the video poker and how she's already called me “honey” twice. I wait until I've painted a clear picture of Loretta and her rocking chair saddlebag and the way her eyes nearly close when she smiles. And then I tell him that Loretta's dead husband, Ron, was in the navy.

“He served in World War II and Loretta didn't see him for eighteen months!” I'm almost oddly jubilant. Like if she can do it, I can do it. And if he knows she did it, there's no way he'll ever think that we might fail. If anything, knowing Loretta's story will make things easier.

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, and the whole time he was gone, she never spoke to him on the phone once.”

“Jesus. I guess that really puts it in perspective.” (Delay, delay, delay) “Annie?”

“Yeah, I'm here. I'm just really glad we have the phone. But at the same time, we'll have fewer artifacts.”

“Artifacts?”

(Delay, delay, sniff, delay) And then I explain to David what I mean about the artifacts. He promises to send me even more letters on the fancy paper and some sand from the Iraqi desert in one of those mini room-service ketchup bottles they give out in his MREs.
²⁹
He says it's almost like a vial.

“Not souvenirs, David. Artifacts. Things we don't create on purpose, but objects that simply exist and tell us something about an event or time.”

“Whoa, Annie. What, were you like, secretly an anthropology major? Why don't you keep a journal or something? Aren't you keeping a journal?
³⁰
I tell David that it's late and I'm sorry for being so odd and that I must have been having that dream about the dinosaur bones again or something. He tells me he loves me anyway and wishes he were sleeping in my bed with me so he could calm me down when I start digging through the sheets in a wild search for petrified femur bones. I swear to god, I'm such a numskull.

I'm hoping Loretta will help, though. She's most certainly my number-one role model now. Back when there was no e-mail and no satellite phones, she was strong, committed—a full house of nonstop love. And she made it. Captain Ron came back, and they picked up their life together where they'd left off. I guess this would be a good time to mention something about my own commitment. David and I never actually discussed the option of putting our relationship on hold while he was away. For me, I resented the situation so intensely that I wasn't going to let WAR win and put an end to all my giant love fun. It can't take us too, I thought. After college, we knew deployment was inevitable. David was lucky enough that he got to stay in Washington and wasn't shipped out to an ugly brown base in Belly-button, Kansas, or something. He found out he'd be staying at Fort Lewis rather close to graduation, and just weeks later, I got my teaching job at Franklin Elementary here in Tacoma. It was perfect. Easy cheesy, right? We had a good three-month warning before he left. And it was about a month before the stupid flag-waving departure, while on the road trip/camping excursion, when I learned that David was a little scared of the commitment himself. It was one of the nights we'd splurged for a motel room and I had woken up alone just after dawn—tiny slivers of light peeking through the heavy, floor-length window drapes. He had left two notes on his pillow. One said that he'd gone to get coffee and doughnuts. The other was vastly more serious, and even after he gave it to me, we never talked about it. I tucked it into the jeans I wore for the entire vacation, and it's been sitting in this basket by my washing machine for months now. I regret that I accidentally washed the note at least once, rendering it nearly illegible. But I'm proud to say that I remember its contents verbatim.

I imagine this is one of the most sentimental artifacts that David Peterson has ever produced. I feel like he should get some medal for his uniform because he wrote such an awesome note. I actually chuckled when I fi rst read it, thinking that David was being melodramatic. I know myself. I know my heart and that I govern it and that I love you. Duh. Thanks for the reminder, Lieutenant Peterson, sir.

But now that I'm in the thick of this whole thing, I kind of get what he's saying. NOT THAT I WANT TO QUIT, GENTLE READER. But if I need to bow out at some point, if I can't take another moment of the Super (lame) Army Girlfriend Show, it's a sort of a comfort to know that he's already given me that option. Declared permanence is rather scary. Shouldn't we always be free to change our minds?

 

So I'm becoming one of those slacker teachers. It's only my third year and I'm already floundering into pathetic stock art projects. I nearly cried in the supply closet when I pulled out a full pack of brown construction paper knowing the skeptical and disappointed looks I'd get when I told my class to trace their hands and attempt to render the silhouettes into reasonable likenesses of turkeys. They've passed kindergarten; they'll call me on my bullshit creativity.