by M. C. Cerny
I barely get through the meet-and-greet without frowning as Rhonda makes the rounds saying goodbye. She pats my hand and drives me home, dropping me off in front of our small house. She drives away and I stand at the front door unable to force myself inside the empty space. Instead I sit down on the cement stoop and watch the cars drive down the street of our little neighborhood. Tank won’t be home until after eight.
In the six months of being married to Tank, we’ve barely spent enough time together as he settles into work on the base. My patience is raw. He’s loving every minute of what he’s doing and he’s filled with tasks and mission objectives while I’m floundering. There’s only so many times one can clean a small one-bedroom house before you run out of things to scrub and hospital corners to tuck into beds.
Some nights I fall asleep on the couch and wake in the middle of the night wrapped up in bed, wondering how I got there. The amazing sex I thought we’d be having…sometimes Tank is exhausted and sometimes I’m too homesick to be in the mood. Tank calls as much as he can, I can’t fault him for that, but I’m lonely. My heart aches and nothing fills the space. Nothing I want besides him here, home, with me. When he’s deployed I’ll have a car. We share his Mustang since I can’t afford to go and buy my own. When he’s home I’m dependent on him to take me where I need to go, and sometimes a bus to bring me back if our schedules don’t jive. Let’s say I haven’t made the best effort to make friends. I let Tank think I’m happy, but inside I can’t tell you one good thing about living here besides Rhonda’s coffee if she’s home from work.
8
Tank
“How’s it going, soldier?” My commanding officer is grinning as I’m deep in thought wondering what to do for Bea’s birthday. I don’t share his good mood today, but I respond appropriately. The past few months haven’t been great at home.
“It’s all right.” My answer is noncommittal. I talked to Bea earlier, but she didn’t sound good. In fact, she sounded more despondent than before. I’ve been monitoring her moods lately, and not because I want to correlate if it’s her period or because the rent is due.
We fought this morning because I finally found the credit card bill stuffed under the couch cushion. Not only was it over the limit but it was a week late. I flipped through the pages and found the charges for things like food, movies we never saw together, and home goods. I had wondered how the house spruced itself up. Turns out my wife has a good eye for decorating and an even better one for sales. My stomach knots, wondering how we’ll pay this month’s bill. I know she doesn’t have a job yet.
This new financial burden put a damper on the car I was trying to buy her so she could have more freedom to come and go as she pleased. I figured a car would open up her options for jobs off the base, if that’s what she wants, or the ability to attend classes at the local college. I’d asked her to hold off because the busses don’t run late for evening classes. I worried about her traveling back and forth on her bicycle after dark. Maybe I’m crazy to think that, but my job forces me to see harsher realities of life.
I’d be kidding myself if I thought this transition was easy for either of us. She fakes it well. The only thing she can’t fake is the sex, and both of us are in a rut lately.
“Hey, cheer up.” My CO nudges my shoulder. “You’ll be happy to know your request for this weekend was approved and your sign-on bonus came through.”
I perk up at that knowledge. That money will help payoff the credit card and give me something toward her car.
Sunday is my wife’s birthday.
I get on the phone and call Rhonda. She’s been a godsend since we came on base, and the only person I know who can help me coordinate a surprise party for my wife on short notice.
I have the idea to get a cake FedExed from her favorite bakery back home. Flowers and balloons from the PDX. I don’t think I can get her parents to come down so soon—they’ve been nice to give us some space so we can figure things out, same as mine—but maybe her girlfriends Kate and Hope can come down. I practically run myself in circles until Rhonda calms me down. She tells me that there are a few WAGs who will come to the party and promises to reach out. It’s going to be great. I don’t know how I’ll keep the secret until this weekend.
“Bea, I’m home.” I drop my duffel bag by the door and shrug out of my shoes. She doesn’t like the mess they track inside and I don’t blame her. It’s a good thing I left all the party supplies I picked up in the car; I might be able to sneak them inside and into the hall closet. I know she isn’t with Rhonda because I just spoke to her about the party plans. There’s a stillness in the air I don’t expect. The whole house is eerily quiet.
“Honeybee, baby, where are you?” I pace into the bedroom and everything looks neat as a pin. I turn around and walk to the kitchen. Not a damn thing is out of place, and a chill runs up my spine. I rack my brain. Did she say she was going anywhere? No. Her bike was still here. The bed was made. The living room looks freshly vacuumed and the dishes are clean, stacked neatly by the sink.
I scout the house again.
A note catches my eye on the counter and I pick it up, slipping my finger under the crisp, white paper. I pull out the letter inside and find my own Dear John.
The words are hard to read between blurred vision of emotion. I’m hurt she didn’t trust me. I’m angry she kept this from me, like a secret between us. I’m sad that I wasn’t tuned in enough to see her unhappiness. I'm kicking myself in the ass for not realizing she needed more from me as her husband.
Henry –
This letter is hard to write. We both know how difficult this has been from the start. I don’t know if I can do this the way things are. I don’t know what I want out of life, but being alone and unable to feel independent isn’t what I thought I was signing up for. You know where to find me.
– Bea
9
Bea
“Mom, Dad, I’m home!” I push through the front door but find the house empty—not a soul in site to greet me. I drop my bag in the hallway and go to the kitchen, hoping to find something to eat.
The cookie jar is on the counter and I pop the lid, reaching inside. It’s empty. I paw around inside the ceramic base, but not even a stray crumb reaches my fingertip. I texted my parents that I was coming home. They were oddly subdued and my dad asked if I was all right. I didn’t know how to respond. Am I really leaving Tank or am I visiting my parents for the weekend? I love him. I miss him. I need something from him I don’t know how to explain.
Hungry and tired, I make my way upstairs. Each step and I feel the fatigue of my journey on the bus. I turn right at the top of the stairs and push open the door to my room.
“What the hell?”
The door swings open, but gone are the pale lavender walls, replaced with soft yellow and white lace trim. My twin bed is buried under fabric swatches, and a dress form takes up the corner. My desk is now a sewing table with drafted patterns and thread bundles.
Teenage posters of heartthrob celebrities are gone, as are my shelves of books and swimming trophies. I rub the center of my chest, feeling a pang of sadness. It’s like I never lived here at all.
I hear the jingle of the front door and race to the stairs. My parents are laughing and carrying in groceries.
“Mom?”
“Oh hiya, Bea. Come help your dad get the soda from the car.”
“Mom,” I say, a bit more sternly, to get her attention.
“Seriously, Beatrice, go help your dad.” Her voice brooks no argument and glumly I walk outside, grabbing soda bottles.
I place them on the counter and put my hands on my hips, giving the house a look over. What else is different? “What happened to my bedroom?” I demand. I’m this close to stomping my foot and barely hold back.
Mom hums to herself and puts away sandwich meats.
“The craft room?” She’s moving items in the fridge and I’m getting angrier at feeling ignored.
“No. My room.�
��
She shrugs. “I changed some things around.”
“All my stuff is gone.” My arms rise and fall, and my hands slap my thighs. This is unbelievable.
“Don’t be dramatic. I put it in the attic when you moved out. It’s not like you need a bedroom here—you have your own house now.”
If there was a mirror in front of me, my face would look like I was catching flies.
“I got married, Mom. I didn’t die.”
“I know, darling.” My mother rolls her eyes and I’m speechless.
I sniff back tears. “I don’t have a bedroom anymore?” I don’t have a place here in my own house, and I don’t feel like I have a place with my husband.
“Sweat Bea.” She sighs in that mom way that tells me I’m the exasperating one.
“Mom.”
“Beatrice, you live with your husband. There’s a pull-out cot in the closet, or you can put sheets on the couch.”
Unbelievable.
I spend the night on the couch tossing and turning. At breakfast I ask my dad what to do and he tells me this is my moment to be a grownup and face the choices I’ve made. He doesn’t say Tank doesn’t love me—quite the opposite, in fact. He explains that unless I tell Tank how unhappy I am, it’ll be hard for him to discern what’s going on. He places the blame for holding out on my shoulders, and the blame for rushing things on us both. Dad fills me in that Tank was pretty clear about how he felt about me, but that I was the one who had wavered. It was true: I had let fear cloud my emotions and expected things to be rosy when marriage takes the work of two people.
It’s eye-opening to realize I haven’t put the work into trying the way Tank has. We aren’t perfect—far from it—and I need to give him a chance to try as much as I have to try to figure out what I need to stand on my own two feet.
There’s nothing quite as humbling as having to ask your parents to drop you off at the bus station to head back home—the real home I’ve made with Tank. I suppose Mom is feeling sympathetic, as she packed a few dozen of her cookies in my bag. Dad reminds me I could come home anytime I liked, to visit, and next time to bring my Marine home with me.
10
Tank
I wake up with a crick in my neck. This old chair has to go. Another hand-me-down while I figure things out. It doesn’t match the rest of the furniture, but I’m still leery to part with it since we own it outright—unlike the sofa, which I’m still paying off. My dad had a good decade in this chair and I had hoped the luck would pass down to me, but it hasn’t—not yet, anyway. Everything in my body hurts, but my heart hurts the most. Keys jingle in the door and I sit up just enough to see the glint of light as it creaks open. I missed Beatrice the way an amputee sometimes misses his limb. I could still feel her in my chest, a phantom pain, a bubbling ache left wondering. Not knowing if she was coming home was the worst feeling in the world—worse than getting my deployment assignment and not knowing if she would follow me to base.
The door slowly swings open, bringing with it cool outside breeze. I reach for the cake on the coffee table, slowly sliding the box under the couch. If this isn’t my wife, I definitely don’t plan on sharing this cake from back home with anyone.
“Honeybee? Is that you?” I call out, forcing myself to stand up. Under normal circumstances I might have been alarmed hearing the doorknob jangle, but living in base housing lends a certain element of safety I take for granted.
She doesn’t answer me, but I watch her walk into the room. A slow shuffle of skinny legs covered in dark denim and slip-on flats. Moonlight catches the set of keys in her fingers. Her shoulders slump as she lets her bag fall to the floor.
“I was kind of hoping you’d be jumping into my arms by now.”
Bea glances around the living room. It’s empty, the exact way she left it three days ago. No streamers twisted in pinks and bright yellow are strung up—the only colors I could find at the commissary. No bright-colored balloons either. All the party supplies are tucked away in the closet, unopened.
“Honestly, I’m afraid I might pee myself if anyone jumps out at me yelling ‘surprise.’ A few hours on a bus will do that.” Her voice goes husky, her face pale, and I notice her usual thick bun of wild hair is less perky—a casualty of riding the bus back.
“Surprise.” I shrug, kicking the bottom of the rug and nudging it back in place. Thanks to Rhonda there was no one to send home as she kindly handled the rescinding of invitations. I didn’t even have anything to clean up.
“I don’t suppose this’ll be like our wedding.” There was so much leading up to the big day. All I wanted was to give her something that expressed how I felt about her. So yeah, a little like our wedding, but not quite.
I match her smile, recalling the aunts and all the shenanigans those ladies got into around the wedding. If those girls had it their way we would have had a parade and fireworks. I remember fondly a few details from the rush of that day. The way she looked as her dad walked her down the aisle, and the last smile she gave me as Beatrice Brennan turning into the first kiss as Mrs. Beatrice Andrews. No. I had hoped this would be better, but now it’s only the two of us and no one to witness our folly.
“No party and no cake.” I step in front of the couch, blocking her view of the pink box I shoved underneath it. I still won’t share it unless she’s staying. A man can only take so many blows to his ego.
“I’m sorry I’m not good at this, Tank.”
“Good at what?”
“At being happy. At being used to this and everything that comes with it. I don’t know how to be a wife.”
“You’re being you, Bea. That’s all I ever wanted. I’ll take the good and the bad and we’ll learn the rest together.”
“There’s a lot of things I’m not ready for.” She pulls up her bag and takes out the bears I’d given her right after we got married. A pair of bears dressed up, one in military fatigues and one in a wedding dress. I hadn’t noticed they were gone when she left, but my chest aches knowing she took our bears with her.
“We have time to figure that out.”
“I’m not ready for babies, but I do want to build a family with you.”
We take steps closer to each other. The bears get squished between us and I hold her in my arms, imagining a day when she might be ready and it’s a baby we hold between us. I don’t tell her that because I know it will freak her out, but I do search her face to confirm the possibility. It’s there. I knew it would be, but sometimes you just need to know.
“Is that cake I smell? Sugar and cream in a vaguely familiar pink box?” Her neck strains a she tries to see, and I swing her around, blocking her view.
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess it depends on a few things.”
“Like?”
“If you’re staying or leaving.” My stomach growls, wanting a bite of the cake, but I need my wife more. Cake can always wait when she’s in my arms.
“I never wanted to go in the first place.”
“But you did, and there’s nothing stopping you from leaving again.”
“I had to go so I realized what I was missing all along.”
“I guess I deserve that.”
“Deserve what?”
“A shitty goodbye.”
“Oh, Tank.” She wilts like a flower without water. No tears, just a long, sad sigh.
“Thanks for not making me wait thirteen weeks to figure it out.”
“Hmm…Since I’m staying, can I see the cake?”
“I should warn you.”
“About the cake?”
“Prudy got the order wrong.”
“Then it’ll be just like home.”
“Even Boston cream?”
“Even.”
I pick up the cake and open it on the table. We dig in with our hands, uncaring of silverware or plates. Bea turns to me and dabs a tiny bit of chocolate and cream on my cheek.
“Minx,” I tease her, pulling her in close.
“Tank!” Bea squeals.
I rub my cheek against her nose, sharing the mess with her.
“I love you, Mrs. Andrews.”
“I love you too, Mr. Andrews.”
Unable to hold myself back, I pick Bea up and carry her to our bedroom.
“Tank, you made the bed!”
I chuff, placing her down in the middle and caging her in my arms.
“No Honeybee. I never unmade it.”
“Never?”
“I slept in the recliner. I told you I was never going to spend another night in bed without you.”
“Mom turned my bedroom into a craft room. I guess I wasn’t sleeping in a bed without you either.”
“I don't want to spend another night without you.”
“And now you don’t have to.”
“Did you miss me?” I ask. It’s our thing, and I wait for some silly metaphor that’ll make me laugh.
Her hands caress me and she tugs me down to her lips, whispering, “I missed you like a bee misses honey, and flowers, and sunshine.”
My chest gets tight and I nearly choke the words out. “Ah, all the things it needs to survive.”
She murmurs, “Always.”
Epilogue
Bea
