One September Morning (24 page)

Seeing that they’re next in line for Santa, Suz smooths her daughter’s flaxen curls. “And you still haven’t been able to get any details from Noah?” she asks. It seems odd that John’s brother, who was assigned to the same platoon as John, hasn’t come forward to share what he knows about the shooting. At the very least, Suz would expect him to talk with the family, but Noah disappeared shortly after the funeral.

“No one has spoken with Noah since the day after John’s funeral,” Abby says. “He’s officially AWOL now.”

“Do you think he knows something about John’s death?” Suz covers Sofia’s ears with her hands, and her daughter swats them away. Not that her daughter really understands any of this, but Sofia is quite observant for a three-year-old. “You don’t think he’s involved in some way?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what to think. He and John had a sort of sibling rivalry going, with Noah always competing to win validation from John.” Abby presses a hand over her mouth. “Did I say that? Oh, dear. I’m already sounding like a therapist. Anyway, I’d like Noah to know that I’m not judging him for deserting. It’s just that…” She sucks in a breath, tentative. “With so many unanswered questions about John’s death, I’d really like to talk with someone who was there.”

“Well, you’ll get your chance soon. I hear the company is returning as scheduled in two weeks.” Suz has mixed feelings about the return of Scott’s unit. Part of her is happy for all the other soldiers, but another part feels hollow, as if there will never be closure for the families whose loved ones won’t be returning from Iraq.

“Welcome to Santaland,” the photographer in the elf outfit says, her candy-cane scepter pointing the way to the doorway to Santa’s workshop. “I see you’re all set for the deluxe photo package.”

“No, thanks.” Suz shakes her head. “We just want to visit with Santa, right, pumpkin?” She takes Sofia’s hand and leads her forward.

“But it’s all taken care of,” the elf insists, checking her clipboard. “You’re getting two copies of the portrait, two portraits printed on ornaments, and the locket. All paid for.”

“There must be some mistake,” Abby says. “We haven’t paid for anything.”

“It was all taken care of by the woman in front of you.” The photographer shows the clipboard to Suz. “She’s not with you?”

Shaking her head, Suz scans the order. The elf is right. Down at the bottom of the invoice, just above the signature, she sees the note:
Merry Christmas from your angel.

“It’s from the grandma in front of us,” she tells Abby, feeling goose bumps at the base of her neck. “She wants to be our Christmas angel.”

“Mommy, can she be my angel?” Sofia tugs on Suz’s wrists, wanting to be lifted up.

Suz pulls her into her arms, savoring the sweet smell of her baby skin. “Sweetie, you have so many angels, I can’t even count them.”

“Thank you, Mommy.” Sofia squeezes her, so hard for such a little thing.

“Speaking of angels…” Suz smiles at Abby. “Have you heard anything from yours lately? Any rumbling houses in the night? Hot spots in the bed? Printers coming to life and sending you messages?”

The two women exchange a grin as the elf ushers them through the peppermint-trimmed doorway of Santa’s workshop.

“My angel has been pretty quiet lately,” Abby admits. “But that’s the thing about guardian angels: they’re very quiet until you need them.”

Fort Lewis
Sharice

T
he first Christmas without my sons.

Sharice presses a needle through the red cloth that forms a holly berry on the quilt and gasps. Beneath the quilt, the needle has pierced her fingertip.

She jerks her hand back and sucks her fingertip.

Foolish of her, forgetting her thimbles when she knew the women at the Family Readiness Group were going to be quilting. Usually the methodical, slow work soothed her nerves and opened the window to light conversation about children and plans, but today, the room is tense, the talk having turned to politics.

Always dangerous in a quilting circle.

“Need a Band-Aid, Sharice?” Rachel Maynard hasn’t lifted her eyes from her sewing but somehow she knows Sharice’s finger is bleeding.

“I’m fine,” Sharice shoots back, hoping to interrupt the diatribe, but Jenn Hausner is still going on about a teacher at the school who’s been sharing stories about the effects of American occupation on the children of Iraq. Jenn has been dominating the quilting circle of late, though Sharice keeps telling herself that this quilt had better get finished soon or they’re going to miss the Christmas season completely and ruin their mission. The quilt is being auctioned at a Christmas bazaar to raise money for care packages for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The FRG is always focused on some task to make life more bearable for the armed service members, and while Sharice has always been proud to be a part of the group, lately she’s felt a cool undercurrent running through some of the meetings.

“First, I told him I can’t believe he’s talking about Iraq with fourth-grade students,” Jenn says. “I mean, when I went to fourth grade my teacher didn’t talk about things that could give us nightmares.”

“That may well be,” Eva Capeci says, “but the world was a different place when I was in fourth grade.” Like Sharice, Eva is more of an old-timer. In fact, they met years ago at Fort Drum when Sharice’s boys were little, but they were both so busy caring for their own families at the time that they hadn’t really become friends until both husbands landed at Fort Lewis some twenty-five years later.

“Oh, Eva, now you’re making me feel old.” Chessie Johnston presses her lips together to suppress a giggle. “When I was in fourth grade, they taught the American Revolution as current events.”

Eva and Sharice laugh along with her, but the other women don’t seem to get the joke.

Jenn’s needle moves adeptly, though her cheeks hold twin squares of scarlet, evidence of her high agitation. “Anyway, I told Mr. Minetta not to make it sound like we were the bad guys. Those Iraqi children are much better off with American GIs walking through their neighborhood; even if our soldiers look like the Incredible Hulk to the kids, they’re safer now than they’ve ever been.”

Sharice tucks her needle into her patch of the quilt and rises. “Maybe I’ll take a Band-Aid after all and switch over to folding flyers. Without my thimbles I’m all thumbs.”

“And you definitely don’t want to bleed on the quilt,” Chessie says. “Though we could certainly say that we made the quilt with blood, sweat, and tears.”

Again, the three women enjoy a laugh, but the others withdraw, as if dusted by a cold frost. As Sharice goes over to the sink to wash her hands and put on the Band-Aid, she does a mental count of the frost brigade. There’s Rachel, Jenn, Suki, Janet, and Britt, to Eva, Chessie, and her. Is it the age difference between the two groups? Whatever the case, her group is clearly outnumbered.

“So what happened with the teacher?” Janet asks as she pulls the thread taut. “Is he changing the curriculum?”

“Please! We really got into it after that. He started this antiwar crap, and I told him our president was right to send our soldiers over there.” Despite her ire, Jenn works steadily, methodically, which Sharice finds a little unsettling. She can taste the metallic sheath of repression, cold and sharp in the back of her throat.

“And did he argue with you?” asks Britt.

“He started to. He went off on the president for a minute, then he did a tirade on free speech. So predictable.”

Predictable?
Sharice thinks.
Well, thank God for that.
She rues the day when free speech is no longer part of our Constitutional rights.

“But he backed down?” Janet puts an arm on Jenn’s shoulder. “You know he did. No one crosses Jenn Hausner and lives to tell the tale.”

“I just played my ace in the hole. Told him that my husband is deployed to Iraq. That shut him up pretty fast.”

It’s the younger wives’ turn to snicker now, and Sharice wonders if she and Eva and Chessie sounded that offensive. She stands beside the sink in the corner, thinking that it’s time to leave.

“In your face, Mr. Liberal Schoolteacher,” Janet says.

“But before I left, I made my point.” Jenn nods. “People can talk, and everyone is quick to criticize, but when you’re in something as deep as we are, you just know what’s right. You and I know we’re doing the right thing over there.”

Do we?
Sharice wonders. She is beginning to doubt the usefulness of American troops in Iraq, but she can’t say that aloud. The woman who’s lost one son to violence and the other to cowardice is in no position to question the mission of the other deployed soldiers. Bad enough that people know of her shame. She can’t go anywhere on base—not to the PX or the commissary—without generating stares and muffled whispers. Why do they bother to whisper, when she knows what they’re saying:
There’s the woman who had two sons, one a hero, the other a deserter.

Those who are better-informed know that her son’s hero status may soon be in question, but Abby’s quest for an investigation hasn’t spread as rapidly as the white-hot news that Noah did not return to duty when his bereavement leave ended.

How did this happen; this total reversal in role, from conservative military wife to controversial victim?

She remembers how she used to feel when people would criticize the presence of the military in a place where her sons or husband were deployed. She would bristle and sometimes snap back a rebuttal. “How can you speculate from your living room couch when our men are over there in the thick of it?” Ooh, that used to fire her up.

And now…she’s questioning in her heart, but she can’t step out and play that role in public. Not yet, maybe not ever.

“Our guys belong over there,” Jenn says, “and anyone who questions that doesn’t have the right to call themselves an American.”

“Easy there, Jenn.” Chessie arches one brow. “Let’s keep politics out of this quilt. Nobody wants to be sleeping with a blanket of controversy over their head.”

Head down like a bull ready to charge, Jenn defends herself. “It’s not about politics, Chessie. It’s about our men putting their lives on the line for this country, and they need our support. If you don’t support the president, you’re stabbing our own guys in the back. You gotta support the leadership or you’re just plain unpatriotic.”

“Seems to me our country was founded on the expectation of freedom,” Chessie says, “and that would include the freedom to disagree with our president. Freedom to hold opinions. Freedom to argue and debate. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Come on, Chessie. Are you really going to sit here and say that you don’t support our guys over in Iraq and Afghanistan?”

“See? You’re putting words in my mouth,” Chessie said. “I knew we should’ve dropped this.”

Jenn shakes her head. “I don’t see why. Our guys are all soldiers. If we don’t support them, who will?”

There were a few murmurs of agreement, but Britt stops sewing. “But what if you just don’t feel that way?” she asks in a plaintive voice as she rubs her fingers over a gold star on the quilt. “I love my husband and my country, but I really don’t see the merit in this war, if that’s what they’re still calling it. I mean, I’m all for ending terrorism, but I think our guys really don’t belong in Iraq right now.”

“I hear you,” Chessie chimes in.

Sharice grips the sink behind her, trying to tamp down the arguments swelling within. “It’s a complex issue,” she says aloud, as if realizing it for the first time. “And Britt makes a good point. Sometimes your gut feeling doesn’t match the things you want to believe in.”

“Well, I don’t rely much on feelings,” Jenn says. “Sometimes I don’t
feel
like getting out of bed in the morning, but I don’t give in to that, do I? You can’t put stock in feelings. You just need to do what’s right.”

Is that a shot at me?
Sharice wonders as she sucks in a breath. Or is Jenn so smug that she doesn’t see the different circumstances and beliefs of the women in this room?

“Must be nice to have all the answers, to know what’s right,” Eva says in a voice so low it’s almost a snarl. “To be so darned sure of yourself.”

“I have always had a strong moral compass,” Jenn says. “I just know.”

“Well I hope that damned moral compass will help you find your way if you get lost in the woods.” Repressed fury quavers through Eva’s voice as she lifts her needle and rips the thread off with her hand. “Because that’s about all it’s good for.” She grabs her purse and cuts toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Janet asks. “We’re supposed to finish today. The auction is this weekend.”

“You’ll be fine without me,” Eva calls as she flies out the door.

Seeing the clear line of escape, Sharice follows her.

“And where are
you
going?” someone calls after her.

She does not answer, does not look back. Right now she needs to put distance between herself and Jenn Hausner.

Outside the community center Eva is weeping into a laurel hedge, her head tipped into her hands.

“Oh, Eva…let me get you a tissue.” Sharice rubs her friend between the shoulder blades and finds that Eva’s soft red jacket is padded, like a cozy sleeping bag.

“I’m sorry.” Eva swipes at her eyes with the back of one hand. “I don’t know what came over me, except that when Jenn Hausner sinks her teeth in like a bulldog, I can’t stand it!” She laughs through her tears.

“She’s just young and stupid.” Generally Sharice tries not to be so judgmental, but there it is.

“Stupid and insensitive. I usually don’t let her get to me, but we just heard, Kevin…he’s going back to Iraq. His unit in One Hundred Palms is being deployed again.” Kevin, Eva’s youngest son, always seemed to be the softest of the three. As a child, he was always crying over skinned knees and bruises.

But they grow up to be marines, Sharice thinks, and they march off to battle.

“I don’t know why it upsets me so much,” Eva says apologetically. “I guess I thought it would be over by now, everything in Iraq. I mean, he made it through the invasion of Baghdad in one piece. He leaves in January. He’ll be fine, right?”

Somehow, the question make Sharice want to cry. Should she answer honestly or give the pat answer to give Eva some comfort?

Eva adds, “I don’t know why, but I’ve never been this worried. Not even when Tony was deployed for Desert Storm.”

Sharice rubs her friend’s shoulder. On the other side of the laurel hedge is the community center flagpole, which isn’t battened down correctly. Both women stare blankly as the rope flaps in the wind, making pinging noises on the pole.

“You tell Kevin to be careful over there,” Sharice says quietly. “He’s to wear his flak jacket and helmet. And we’ll pray for him. Once he’s over there, we’ll get the girls to send him a care package.” She gestures toward the women inside the community center.

“I’ll send my own care packages. Anything to avoid Jenn Hausner.”

“Are you quitting the FRG?” Sharice asks.

“At the moment I’m not sure whether I’ll go back to a meeting next week or next year. Right now it’s not worth the aggravation.” She points inside. “Did you hear them?”

“Loud and clear.” Sharice heard more than the words that were spoken; reading between the lines, it’s clear that Jenn and her friends want to limit the group to their own definition of patriots. “You know, the FRG meetings have always left me with a sense of usefulness and well-being, a sense that I was engaged in a charitable, philanthropic act, but today…today was a disaster.”

“I’m so sorry!” Eva squeezes her upper arm. “With everything you’ve gone through, John and now Noah…and here I’m crying because one of my sons is being deployed.”

“It’s okay to cry.” This is something Sharice has been learning the hard way, something she wishes she could share with her husband.

“Oh! You’re so sweet.” In one quick move Eva throws her arms around Sharice and envelops her in an embrace.

At first Sharice is taken by surprise, but she lets herself lean into Eva’s padded shoulder, lets herself relax in the circle of compassion.