Sparta (11 page)

None of this—the dim, enfolding clouds of anxiety, the rise of choking panic, the throttling claustrophobia, the straight-out jolts of terror—had anything to do with the bright, calm world where his parents and everyone else lived. He couldn't tell his parents any of this. He had to move forward. Charlie Mike: continue the mission. You made a plan and carried it out. His plan was to make a plan. Speaking it made it real.

“So what schools are you thinking of?” asked Marshall.

“For international affairs, Kennedy, Columbia, Fletcher. I'll need to take the GMAT or GRE. I'll study for them over the summer, and take the test in the fall.”

At the moment, of course, he could not study for them. Whenever he tried to read anything serious, to concentrate, the headache descended on him, sinking its talons deep into his mind. He didn't tell his parents this; he was pretty sure it would stop. He'd get some rest, things would calm down, he'd go back to normal.

“Sounds great,” Lydia said again, nodding.

It was strange to think that everything was going on at Sparta without him. In the early evening the cooks would be shouting in the mess hall. Marines were walking into the courtyard to mount up, the sound of their boots grinding into the gravel. At dusk the bats came out, skittering black outlines against the darkening sky, quick, erratic, like scraps of night let loose.

He could not stay here. This house was so thickened with the fragments of his own life that he could hardly breathe. Here his parents had their own adult lives, and he had none. Here there was no room for him as an adult, the closet still filled with his childhood clothes. He was a child here. But where else was there?

“Con,” Marshall said finally. “This has to be hard. Is there anything we can do?”

He shook his head.

“Is there anything you'd rather talk about?” Lydia asked. “Anything you want to tell us?”

Conrad shook his head.

“I feel as though we're so far apart,” she said. “As though there's something between us.”

He said nothing.

“We got a movie,” Marshall said.
“Life of Brian.”

The way to get through this was moment by moment. It would get better. It was a question of getting through the moments.

The library was long and narrow, lined with books on three walls. Two small sofas faced each other across a kilim-covered chest; at one end was a fireplace, with a battered leather bench on the hearth. Family photographs stood on shelves and tabletops: Here they were in Kenya, arms around one another's shoulders, thorn trees and savanna in the background. Here was Jenny at her high school graduation, her mouth bristling with braces, smiling, squinting up and holding the ribboned scroll. Here was Ollie in sixth grade, with huge black eyebrows and a pointed wizard's hat, as Prospero. Here was Lydia at five, solemn in a nightgown, glancing sideways at a Christmas stocking.

They settled in to watch the movie. The room was dark except for the bright liquid images on the screen. This was one of his favorites. It was a relief to sink into it, to feel the dark fist of pressure against his chest begin to release. To laugh out loud.

As the movie went on, the fist against his heart began to clench again. Crowds of robed people milled about, pressing bodies, the confusion, growing chaos. He wanted someone to take charge. His heart was speeding up and he felt the swollen surge in his throat. He watched them stand up in the amphitheater, dangerously outlined against the sky, the crowd below shouting and mutinous. Conrad stood up and left the room. He closed the library door and went through the darkened kitchen, on out the back door.

Outside, he stood on the brick walk. The white fence gleamed in the darkness, the dim garage beyond it pallid. Above was the black sky. He counted slowly to ten. He looked around, letting his eyes adjust. It took ninety seconds to get night vision, a long time if someone nearby was trying to kill you. The darkness breathed around him; the willow trees moved slightly, the leaves hissing faintly. He stared into the blackness. There was no one there. He could walk up the hill, across the field, on into the woods without danger. There was nothing.

Something had gotten loose in his chest.

He looked up at the hillside. He could sense the chem lights drifting dimly across the field. He couldn't see them without his night vision goggles, but he knew they were there, glimmering and green. He strained to see them. He listened for footsteps, the brush of cloth against stone.

He remembered the night on guard duty at the police station in Haditha. The day before, an IED had killed three Marines, and everyone was on edge. That night they sat without talking, drinking chai. Two local police guards and two Marines from Sparta. Around midnight they heard footsteps in the street. They looked at one another. It was after curfew, and anyone outside was there illegally. The footsteps stopped outside the building. The Iraqi policeman called out, but no one answered. The footsteps came closer, right outside the door. Nomer Caulfield stood up and aimed his rifle at the door and shouted, first in English, then in Arabic. No one answered. The Iraqi called again. No answer. They heard fumbling at the doorknob, and Nomer Caulfield shot right through the door. They heard a heavy grunt, and then a wild, broken braying. They opened the door: it was a donkey, gotten loose from somewhere. It lay on its side, screaming and trying to lift its head, until Nomer shot it again to stop the noise. The next morning it was in the street, bloody and buzzing with flies.

Here no one was creeping toward him. The night around him was safe. He knew that. He stood still, breathing slowly. He counted to ten. Nothing.

Conrad went back inside, catching the screen door with his hand so it wouldn't slam. The kitchen was dark. The dishwasher thumped noisily. He stood still for a moment, watching the line of light around the door into the library. He started to count again, trying to slow his heart. Against his leg he felt the soft, hideous brush of a camel spider, and he kicked out violently. He caught the cat on his instep and she gave a cry.
Jesus.

Conrad knelt, reaching for her in the dark. His hand found her, the light, bony body upholstered in fur. He took her, soft but struggling, into his arms and held her still, her tail switching angrily against his chest.

“Sorry, Murph,” he said, his heart racing again.

Those fucking spiders didn't bite, they ate. He'd seen the big hole in Stocky Warnock's leg, the flesh red and open, hollowed out like a half-eaten peach.

“I'm sorry,” Conrad said again, deep into her fur. “Shh. I wasn't thinking of you. Good cat.”

She had stopped struggling, but would not purr. She waited in his arms, ready to leap out.

“Purr,” he said. He held her against his chest, stroking hard. “Purr. Goddammit.” He thought of slamming her against the wooden counter.

“Con?” Marshall stood silhouetted in the doorway.

Conrad put the cat down and stood up. “I was petting Murphy.”

“You okay?” Marshall asked.

There was a silence.

“Yeah,” Conrad said.

His heart had been wound up too tight. It was coiled in his chest like fuck. He still had all these hours to get through and there was nowhere to go.

 

6

Ollie must have come up the drive soundlessly, because Conrad, who was in the kitchen, didn't hear him arrive. He didn't hear Ollie drive up or get out of the car or slam its door shut. He didn't hear Ollie coming through the white gate into the yard. He didn't hear anything until Ollie came through the back door, jumping up the one step into the mudroom. His backpack caught on the screen door on that jump, and he jerked himself free and the door slammed behind him like a gunshot. Conrad, who was standing at the open refrigerator, felt the sound go off inside his head like lightning hitting his heart, and as Ollie appeared in the doorway, Conrad threw himself as far as he could get inside the fridge, pulling the door shut against himself, ducking down, his blood thundering.

For a moment there was silence. No one moved.

Conrad emerged, closing the door behind him.

“Sorry,” Ollie said.

“It's okay,” Conrad said. He shook his head. “Reflex.”

“Sorry, Con.” Ollie looked appalled.

“No problemo,” said Conrad. He took a breath. “Welcome home.”

They gave each other quick shoulder clasps, a thump on the back. Ollie was taller than Conrad remembered, but insubstantial. The bones were just beneath the skin, unclad by muscle.

“Glad you're home, bro,” said Ollie.

“Yeah,” said Conrad. “Me, too. You want a beer?”

They went out through the library to the porch, a square room added onto the side of the house. On three sides the walls were tall windows: the room faced the side lawn, toward the big ash tree and the barn. The ash tree made a high, graceful canopy. The grass had just been mowed, leaving a pattern of wide silvery stripes in the lawn and a damp, fresh smell lingering in the air. It was the end of the afternoon, and the golden light slanted wide and low across the velvety green.

Conrad sat on the sofa, his back to the wall. Ollie sprawled in a big armchair. They both stretched out, putting their feet on the glass-topped coffee table. The table was made from a pair of printer's trays, and the small compartments held whimsical family objects: a tiny box containing one of Conrad's baby teeth, tiny and yellowing; a freshwater mussel shell, a pearl encrusted in it, found by Jenny; the tarnished brass name tag from Yeats, the beloved childhood dog. Everyone was in there, one way or another.

Conrad stretched his arm along the back of the sofa and took a long swallow of beer. He let it run down his throat, cold and yeasty and dark.

“Man,” he said, “this is what everyone dreams about, over there. Sitting down back home, with a beer. Everyone has a dream, the plan of the first beer: What brand. Where you'll be. With who.”

“What was yours?” Ollie said.

Conrad waved his hand at the golden light, the green canopy, the fresh-cut grass.

“Here, I guess,” he said.

Actually, he couldn't remember. Until he'd gone to Ramadi, his first deployment, it would have included Claire. After she'd made her declaration, he didn't have a plan for that first beer. He didn't have a local bar or a bunch of buddies he'd grown up with. His friends from college now seemed distant, separated from him by something huge and untranslatable. He couldn't imagine talking to them, this whole country lying between them. He'd rather see another vet, someone who'd been there—but now he was trying to get past that.

He didn't want to stay in the world he'd been living in, he wanted to get on. You couldn't come home and still go on living in Sparta.

He took another swallow (the second one never quite as good) and thought,
I'm home. It's over
. There was no longer any need to throw himself under a table at a loud noise. He was safe. Alive.

But instead of being a relief, this was faintly sickening. It led somewhere he didn't want to go. There was some unnamed weight attached to his being here. He was here. Olivera was not, and never would be, and how had that happened? And there were those other lives, the pattern on the wall and the girl, and the man lying in the street, and how was he to read that equation? How was he to learn the somber laws of metaphysics that determined who survived and who did not? How could they be tolerated?

He would reenter his life here. He took another swallow (the third always ordinary) and turned to Ollie. “So, what's up at Bard?”

“It's all good.” Ollie nodded.

Ollie looked older, Conrad could see. He'd lost the blurred look of adolescence; his features had become defined. He looked like a blend of the family, Marshall's wide mouth, his wide-set amber eyes, something about Lydia around the nose. Ollie had become handsome. Conrad felt pleased, surprisingly proud: his little brother. Olivetti.

“So you're heading into your sophomore year? What courses you taking?” Conrad tipped back his bottle as Ollie recited them: English lit, anthropology, Mandarin, the Origins of Islam.

“Mandarin,”
said Conrad. “Whoa. How's that?”

“Seriously hard.” Ollie shook his head.

“I bet it is,” said Conrad. In a high, hissing voice he said,
“You must be cra-zee.”

It was the punch line from an old family joke about a psychiatrist and a dog. The joke itself had been lost, but the punch line had become part of the children's private language. It was used only among themselves, and delivered in a shrill, manic singsong.

“No shit,” said Ollie, laughing. “I don't know what I was thinking.”

“No, it's good,” Conrad said. “Good move. Europe's over, China's next. The Chinese will be taking over the world, and you'll be all set. Fluent.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Ollie glanced at Conrad. “You ever study any Iraqi?”

“I know the basics,” Conrad said. “‘Stop. Put your hands in the air. Lie down. Your ass is grass.' All you need.”

Ollie grinned uncertainly, and Conrad regretted what he'd said.

“But you had an interpreter, right?” asked Ollie.

“Sometimes. In Ramadi we had a terp when we went on the school missions. I told you about him: Ali.”

“Why did he know English?”

Conrad shrugged. “Why are you learning Mandarin? He was an engineer. He had a graduate degree. A lot of educated Iraqis speak English. They learn it in school, just like you.”

But why was he snubbing his brother? He'd made the same assumptions himself.

*   *   *

Ali was tall and thin, in his early forties, with curved shoulders and a hollow chest. His face was long and hawkish, the cheekbones high and sharp. A dense black mustache, sloping hazel eyes, thick black eyebrows, jutting Adam's apple. He wore a kaffiyeh twisted jauntily around his throat, a long-sleeved loose white cotton shirt, and khaki pants. He held himself erect and with dignity.