Ask Me Again

by E. J. Noyes

  Gerhardt set his glass on a ledge. “Take a look around. I’ll just toss some feed out.”

  I sipped my drink and walked slowly across the laneway to peer over one of the half-doors, resting my forearms on the wood. The floor was bare of bedding, cobwebs adorning the corners of the stall. I could easily picture Sabine in there, grooming a horse or cleaning up the stable and probably chattering to herself or the horse the whole time.

  Gerhardt came back after a few minutes, brushing hay off his pants. “There, that should keep them happy.” He picked up his glass and leaned against the stable door. “I’m sure you’ve seen all the ribbons and trophies in her room.”

  “Yes, I have.” Strangely, none of her childhood awards were at home.

  He gestured to the stable beside him and I walked over to take a closer look. A tarnished brass nameplate on the half-door proclaimed that the stall had belonged to MONTE. Gerhardt pointed to the mesh that made up the top half of the stable where two dirty, faded ribbons were woven through the bars. They were embroidered with NODA 1990.

  “If she keeps all her ribbons and trophies in her old bedroom, displayed so proudly, why do you think those two are there?” His eyes were shrewd and before I could answer, he continued, “That Purple Heart of hers is hidden in the darkest corner of your closet, isn’t it?”

  His question was uncannily accurate. I raised an eyebrow. “Yes. How did you know?”

  Gerhardt shrugged, a careless sort of gesture as though it would explain everything. “I know my daughters, Rebecca, but Sabine and I are two peas in a pod. She can’t stand to have that medal out and on display because of how it happened.” He jerked his chin at the fabric threaded through the mesh. “Same as those. She wasn’t at her best, or she could have done more. She doesn’t want the…proceeds of those achievements with her other good things. She doesn’t think she deserves it. You know what she said to me when we were leaving the hospital? She was mad that even though she won, her percentage points weren’t as good as she wanted them to be because she was hurt and couldn’t ride as well as she usually did. It’s illogical to us. But not to Sabine.”

  I frowned, biting my suddenly trembling lower lip. What he said made absolute sense. Why hadn’t I realized? Gerhardt hooked an elbow over the half-door and looked at me. “We raised both our girls the same way, to be good people, to do their best and work hard, but Sabine’s always had some sort of extra drive. She’ll flog herself to do everything perfectly, and she won’t quit unless you take the whip off her and hide it somewhere she can’t get at it.” What he said was true—Sabine had no off button, she was like an out-of-control machine that needed its kill switch hit to make it stop.

  “How is she?” he asked, sounding as though he was trying not to cry.

  “She has PTSD,” I said matter-of-factly. Saying the words aloud made my eyes prickle and I blinked hard to stop my own tears forming.

  “Of course she does.” Then he echoed a sentiment I’d heard before. “Don’t we all, everyone who’s been out there, have it to some degree?”

  I raised both eyebrows. “I suppose you’re right.”

  Gerhardt rested a weathered hand on my forearm. “Is she okay?”

  I sipped my drink, trying to dampen my throat enough to tell him. The brandy burned and I relished it. “Most of the time she seems fine, like herself, but every now and then I can tell something is off. Something that feels like more than PTSD and I can’t quite pin it down. She’s been attending counseling.” I didn’t mention that while deployed she’d stopped taking the medication.

  “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “How are you after everything that happened? Are you talking to anyone?”

  His question was so unexpected that it took me a few moments to respond. I felt like a deer caught in the headlights. “Yes, I have been.” My answer was truthful. But the truth was also that with work and the emotional fatigue that’d settled over me during Sabine’s deployment, my therapy had dwindled to once a month and then even less. I fought off tears.

  Gerhardt rested a comforting paternal hand on my shoulder. “Good.” He sighed. “She’s always hidden her pain, Rebecca. Physical and emotional. I’ve never been able to figure out if it’s because she can’t stand the thought of being less than or something. Or if she’s scared that we’ll be angry at her for some reason, or if she’s hiding it so we don’t get upset. Drives me and her mother nuts, but it’s just the way she is.”

  “She’s doing better,” I insisted hoarsely. “She’s trying so hard, she really is, but it’s going to take some time.” I was desperate for him to understand that I wasn’t just ignoring his daughter’s struggles. That I wasn’t ignoring our struggles, because Sabine and I were inextricably intertwined.

  “I know. And she’s trying for you.” After a beat, he frowned. “But…do you think she could be trying too hard?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think sometimes she gets too focused on one thing, to the detriment of everything else.” He shrugged. “Maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, but I’m just worried she’s pushing so hard to get to this place she wants to be, and it’s doing her harm rather than good. She doesn’t know any other way except to barrel right through whatever’s in her path. And sometimes that just doesn’t work.”

  The tears that were just prickling before now spilled to my cheeks. Gerhardt fished a handkerchief from his pocket. “Clean, I promise,” he said with a slight smile. He held my drink while I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

  “I’m sure she’s told you this but I know she never wanted to be in the military. She did it for me, and her opa, because she’s so set on doing the right thing.” He let out a long breath. “She took it upon herself because she knew there was no way Jana would join up. Sabine has such a strong idea of the way she thinks things should be.”

  “I know,” I murmured. After another brief nose blow, I glanced at him. There was nothing I could say because I understood the motive behind her behavior. My thoughts looped back to what he’d said about taking away the source of Sabine’s torment.

  As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, Gerhardt took my hand and gently squeezed. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Rebecca? You need to take away the thing that’s making her push herself so hard. She needs to slow down and just breathe for once. It has to be you because Lord knows she won’t listen to us.”

  There was nothing I could do but nod tearily and offer a helpless, “Mhmm.”

  “I’m sure you’ll both work it out. She’ll get there, especially with you helping her. She’s lucky to have you, Rebecca. We’re all lucky to have you.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and hugged me to his side. “Come on, let’s get back before Carolyn has an apoplexy about us being late for lunch.”

  We made our way out of the barn, and down toward the house. As I carefully negotiated the slope, I mulled over what Gerhardt had said, and the more I thought, the closer I came to an uneasy realization. I looked up at him, but I couldn’t get the words out. Because…what if that thing is me? What if the problem is us?

  Again, I thought of our intimacy the other night, and couldn’t help the uncomfortable sensation worming through my body that she hadn’t really wanted it, but had only gone along because she knew how much I’d missed making love with her. What if Sabine was trying so hard to be what she thought I wanted, that she would hurt herself to get past her pain instead of working through it safely?

  And if that was the problem, how the hell could I even begin to fix it? I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do.

  Chapter Nine

  Sabine

  Just before we’d left Ohio to come home, Amy texted announcing an emergency barbeque the following day, Saturday—attendance mandatory because pretty much everyone else they knew was busy at such short notice. The reason? Her “darling husband thought it was a good idea to buy half a dead cow from a friend” and they needed help eating it. I
replied that we’d be there, asked what to bring and was told promptly and in typical Amy style, Huge fucking appetite. Amazing potato salad.

  We took my car, the backseat packed with Bec’s potato salad, her ubiquitous flowers and a cooler with nonalcoholic drinks for me as well as a few wine bottles that clinked together the whole drive. The constant clanging made me want to grind my teeth, and it was all I could do to not pull over and throw the bottles out of the car. Amy lived about thirty minutes from our place, in one of the quiet, family-friendly suburbs in Maryland. Thirty. Clinking. Minutes.

  Midway through my fumbling over their wooden side gate for the latch, Amy flung the gate open and pulled me into a tight hug. “Ohhh, it feels like I haven’t seen you in ages,” she said, keeping me in a rib-crushing embrace.

  Laughing, I returned her hug one-armed and with the other held the salad aloft. “It’s only been a week, Ames.” Never mind the fact I’d see her back at work next Monday.

  “Exactly. An eternity.” She let me go to acknowledge Rebecca. “Colonel Ke— ma’aahhh, um…” Amy glanced at me, her panicked confusion hilarious. Since Bec’s retirement, we’d had a handful of social occasions, but Amy just could not settle on what to call her former boss.

  Bec laughed, stepping forward to clasp Amy’s hand. “Just Rebecca. How are you, Amy? It’s wonderful to see you, it’s been far too long.” She offered the flowers and picked up the cooler from where I’d set it on the stone path. “I’ll take this through into the yard.”

  Once we were alone, I prodded Amy. “Seriously. Don’t you think it’s about time you got over calling her Colonel?” I bit the inside of my lip, but my smile broke free anyway.

  Amy leaned close to whisper in my ear, “Well, I suppose it’s easy to forget you used to have to call her ma’am when she’s lying underneath you, and you’ve got your fi—”

  “All right! Here’s the potato salad, as requested.” I shoved the bowl at her. “So, instead of boiling, Bec roasts the potatoes first.”

  “Nice sidestep.” She snorted, patted my shoulder and pulled me forward. “Come on. Everyone’s here.”

  We walked through to the undercover barbecue area in the back of Amy’s large, neatly mown backyard. After hugs from Mike, Mitch and Rick, and a shy handshake from Amy’s seven-year-old son, Ethan, I poured Bec a glass of wine and left her talking to the boys while Amy and I went inside to deal with the salads.

  “Shoes, sorry,” she said at the back door. “Rick had the floors done as gift for me while I was away. Like…give me a pair of earrings or something, not polished hardwood.”

  Laughing, I took off my shoes. “Isn’t it the thought?”

  She hmmphed and quickly arranged Bec’s flowers in a vase, put the potato salad in the fridge and extracted wine. “Do you want a drink?” she asked, holding the bottle of white aloft.

  “I’m good with water for now, thanks.” In another lifetime, I’d have caught a cab to a social event and had a few drinks. Or swapped driver duties with someone. Now all I could think about was how I was the driver on duty most of the time and it was all my own choice. Another thing for the stupid brain shit list.

  Amy poured herself a glass, swallowed a huge mouthful then topped herself up. “So. Any news?”

  “Nope.” I shrugged, trailing a fingertip over the black granite countertop. “All the same. All good.”

  “Good. Me too. So we’re all caught up.” She grinned, pointing to the cabinet opposite me. “Can you please grab the ugly glass salad bowl from in there?”

  I set about fetching what she wanted while she yanked things from the refrigerator with typical efficiency. From outside I heard Mitch’s exuberant shouts, and Ethan’s answering cries. Amy stared out the kitchen window, a faint smile lifting the edges of her mouth. “Boys.”

  “Mmmm,” I agreed, rinsing a head of lettuce and shaking it dry. The water splattered over the sink and backdrop, droplets marring the surface. I wiped them away as quickly as I could. Amy and I worked together silently, chopping and mixing, and I took my time, making sure my carrot was sliced into perfectly matched sticks.

  “Sabs?”

  “Mmm?”

  Amy’s expression was oddly contemplative. “Seriously. What’s up?”

  Apparently I couldn’t even make salad without looking weird. I set down the knife, wanting desperately to brush her question aside with a nothing is wrong. Instead, I said, “I…don’t really know, and that’s the problem.” After a shrug I added, “Have you ever just felt wrong, Ames, but not known exactly why?”

  Amy nodded once, then moved away, opened her pantry and reached up to the top shelf. Unwrapping something as she came toward me she said, “Sometimes. I think we all have.” She held up a peanut butter cup. “Open.”

  She popped it in my mouth then unwrapped another for herself. It was just like the pair of us during deployments—her telling me to open wide first thing in the morning as we rushed toward the prep rooms, then stuffing a bit of protein bar or muffin in my mouth so I’d have something in my stomach for the hours of surgery ahead. Later in the day, I was certain to find a piece of candy or semi-melted chocolate she’d stashed in one of my pockets.

  Amy pushed another PB cup into the front pocket of my jeans where I’d likely forget about it until I did laundry. “Are you…feeling okay?”

  I ran my tongue around my teeth to snag the last bits of chocolate. I knew what she was really asking, and after all we’d shared, she deserved an answer. She’d stuck with me when I fell apart after my ex dumped me from thousands of miles away. Then after The Incident, during my recovery, and this past deployment when I’d freak out at random times about random things. Or when I’d wake drenched in sweat from a nightmare, and she’d helped me strip and remake my bed in the middle of the night without hesitation.

  Amy was larger and louder than life, and always moving at top speed. But whenever I needed her to be, she became slow and gentle. I loved Mitch like a brother, but he always took my wellbeing as a personal mission and could be overbearing in his love and desire to git it fixed. Amy was different.

  Eventually I answered, “Same I guess. Maybe a little worse sometimes? I don’t get it. What’s the problem? I’m home, Bec’s wonderful, I’m alive. So why do I feel so fucking lost?”

  “I don’t know, love. Are you seeing someone?”

  “Mhmm. I saw Pace a couple of times during processing week and I’ll keep seeing him when we’re back at work.”

  “I had my post-deployment interview with him, he’s a nice guy. That’s all you can do I guess. What about medication?” The question was put across carefully, almost nonchalantly. Amy knew all about me stopping the prescribed meds and aside from a thin-lipped stare from across our small room when she’d realized, hadn’t said anything.

  “No. You know I just ha—” I reached for the heavy eight-inch chef’s knife, but instead of grabbing the handle, I knocked it from the countertop. Instinctively, I pulled my hands away from the falling blade but before I could think about moving anything else, I felt the sharp bite on my sock-clad left foot. “Shit! Goddammit!”

  “What?” she asked around a mouthful of cucumber.

  “Dropped it on my fucking foot.”

  “Bad?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t exactly measure twice, cut once.” I yanked my sock off to inspect the damage, noting the blood welling from what looked like an inch-long wound. Blood. Bleeding. Dying. I could do nothing but stare, my heart racing. Blood is made up of…

  Shut up, Sabine.

  Amy slipped around the counter with a dishtowel in hand and crouched in front of me, pressing the wadded cloth to the top of my foot. In the time it’d taken her to put pressure on the cut, the blood had run over the side of my foot and started a small puddle on Rick’s nice gift floor. She glanced up. “Missed the dorsalis pedis artery. It’ll stop bleeding soon.”

  “Mhmm.” Bleeding. I scrunched my eyes closed and tried to ignore the stinging, my shaking legs, the s
trange sensation akin to weightlessness that was moving along my arms. “I…I—” Blood. My blood. It’s made up of erythrocytes, leukocytes and thrombocytes. The average female has roughly four liters— No, be quiet.

  “Sabs? Open your eyes and look at me.”

  I forced my eyes open, staring down into her familiar green ones. The weird feeling in my arms moved into my fingertips, the tingling like the worst pins and needles.

  Amy stood and I could feel the pressure of her foot on top of mine, holding the cloth down. She put a hand on each of my shoulders. “Can you hear me?”

  I nodded, though the rush of blood in my ears made her words sound distant and distorted.

  “Good,” she soothed, her fingers pressing into the top of my shoulders. “Can you feel that?”

  I took a few moments, trying to isolate all the sensations in my body. Yes, I could feel her touching my shoulders and again, I nodded.

  “Where are we?”

  Shaky breath. Think. “We’re…in your kitchen.” The words were broken around my near-hyperventilation.

  “Right. Exactly. And what are we doing?”

  What had we been doing? Driving in a Humve— No. No. We’re not doing that. It’s… “We’re making, uh salad.”

  “Yes we are. Why are we making salad?” Gently, she squeezed me, and when I didn’t answer, Amy said calmly, “Breathe in, love. Just in and out. Why are we making salad?”

  I did as she asked, trying to concentrate on drawing air into my body. When I felt it reach down into my lungs, I exhaled. “Because…I…Bec and me, we came here for a barbeque.”

  “That’s it. And who else is here at my house in the suburbs of Maryland, in the States?”

  “Uh…it’s me and Bec. You, Rick, Ethan. Mitch and Mike.”

  “That’s right.” Her fingers made circles, massaging the tense muscle of my shoulders. “You’re here with Rebecca and your friends and you’re safe.”