SEAL Firsts

by Sharon Hamilton

  “I hear you. Not quite yet, but I’ll come out of my cave sooner or later. Don’t worry about me.” All her life, this had always been what she told grownups. No one ever had to worry about Shannon. It had been drummed into her to be self-reliant. She was determined to use that strength to forge a new path, alone, now that Frankie was gone. Last thing in the world she wanted was to depend on her parents or anyone else. She told herself over and over again she was fine. She could do this.

  Frankie’s favorite place to go on Sundays was Duckies, the frozen yogurt place where a lot of the Team guys hung out. She saw them, with their dark glasses and cargo pants, their canvas slip-ons or rubber sandals made from old tire treads.

  She was a dark chocolate girl at heart. But that day she ordered Frankie’s favorite, strawberry. He liked the fresh chunks of fruit they put into their cones.

  She added a few white chocolate chips and sat at the little yellow-topped table in the corner, out of the wind, and where she could watch people walking down the Strand. She watched young couples, fingers entwined, older couples walking their little dogs, retired Navy, and new recruits. Everyone walked the Strand, looked into shop windows, and simply enjoyed being alive.

  That sent a silent tear down her cheek. Maybe the strawberry was too sweet.

  A couple of groups of older Team guys were walking back to their cars from a swim at the beach. Their crab-like walk pegged them. The sand going halfway to their knees told her they’d done a timed swim like Frankie used to do. Someone honked. Someone gave the finger to a pickup truck filled with rowdy young guys.

  Being part of the things Frankie had liked didn’t help. Her thoughts got sadder. She had to dump the rest of her yogurt and put her own sunglasses on so people wouldn’t see how hard she’d been crying. She found her car and drove herself home.

  Setting out her purchases, she hung two little frilly pink dresses in Courtney’s closet. The first two things there. They were small, almost like they’d been made for a doll. But no question about it. They belonged to Courtney.

  Days strung together, and soon another month had gone by. SEAL wives and girlfriends were at her house constantly. They held a shower for her, and both Frankie’s mom and her own mother came. It was fortunate the two women got along so well, and Shannon knew they’d started phoning each other on a regular basis. One mother helping the other mother. Gloria was right, “We’ll all get through this together somehow.”

  And then one day Shannon laughed again.

  Chapter 7

  T.J. had been spending a lot of time at Gunny’s gym. Timmons was practically living there as well. He’d sold his house, moved into an apartment nearby, and become a permanent fixture there.

  The older man had dropped a bit of weight, lost most of his potbelly, and was developing definition in his arms. The frog statue, their Team mascot replaced some five times in the past, was braced to the wall. It stood on a glass shelf with a recessed light shining down on it. On that shelf were several pictures, including one of Frankie’s smiling face, taken on his wedding day. T.J. looked at that picture every time he came into Gunny’s. He recalled the promise he’d made, and the look of the beautiful girl on Frankie’s left. He knew time was running out on his conscience, and he’d have to act soon or the mission would be labeled a failure due to abandonment.

  Timmons had brought in several of his older friends, and soon a white-haired group was assembled there regularly. Detective Mayfield had retired from the San Diego P.D. and was now living with Armando’s mother, and he and Clark Riverton, another San Diego policeman soon to retire, dropped by for the group. Sanouk called them the “Silver Senior Running Shoe Circle.” But there wasn’t anything senior about them, other than the fact that T.J. occasionally heard discussions of Viagra and special hair products.

  Amornpan, Sanouk’s Thai mother, took care of the older gentlemen’s club like they were her boys and she was a Southeast Asian lounge singer. She was beautiful and ageless. She was a gracious lady. She made Timmons a better man simply because he walked in and greeted her every day. T.J. doubted they were lovers yet, but their paths were definitely heading in that direction, and the Team Guys talked about it all the time.

  Good for him.

  T.J. finished early and said his goodbyes. He always gave his final goodbye to Frankie with a kiss to his forefinger and then a point straight at the guy. Increasingly he also pointed one at Shannon. He was more aware that he needed to do the one thing Frankie had asked before he passed over. No matter how uncomfortable it was.

  “I know, I know. You asked me to look in on her, watch out for her, and I haven’t done that. Sorry, man. But, jeez, you know about the picture I look at every morning in my shaving drawer. You want me to get rid of it? If I give it back to her, she’ll have a fit.”

  He wondered how Shannon was doing. He had a feeling she needed a little silliness in her life and wondered if he could help out with that.

  He stopped by a toy store and inquired about playhouses. They happened to have a pink gingerbread house in the back that had been returned last Christmas since it was missing parts.

  It was T.J.’s kind of gift. He bought it at a huge discount, threw it in the second seat of his truck, and, without calling Shannon first, headed over to her place.

  He pulled out the partially opened carton, trying not to drop pieces. A small plastic bag of screws fell at his feet, and he cursed but picked them up without losing his grip on the wooden panels of the playhouse.

  Shannon had already opened the front door when he got there. Her eyebrows were knitted into a frown. She inspected the pieces of wood under his arm and then looked up at him with questions she seemed unable to verbalize.

  “Every princess deserves her own house. A playhouse,” T.J. said as he lifted his shoulder to draw attention to the playhouse pieces.

  “Is this a playhouse or a dollhouse?”

  “I think it’s a playhouse.”

  “You are aware she won’t be able to play with dolls for probably at least two years.”

  “So, it will wait for her, then. Maybe in the meantime you can use it.” He tried to smile, but the blush on her face and the fullness of her belly were too powerfully distracting. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was the first pregnant woman he’d been within ten feet of.

  Ribbons of jazz came from the house.

  “I can just put this in the back yard, if today isn’t a good day. I can come back another time to put it together, but I have time to get it done today, if you’re willing.”

  “I hadn’t even gotten to thinking about what she would play with once she’s walking. You do know they have to be born first, start crawling, and then walk, in order to use an outside playhouse?” Her frown marks were easing, and a small, very tiny smile formed on her lips as she told him nonverbally she appreciated that he’d thought of the baby. He liked that he’d been able to think of something she hadn’t yet.

  So far so good.

  She opened the door, gesturing him inside. He knew where the door to the back yard was, through the master bedroom at the back of the house. Once inside, he saw her unmade bed, the glass of water by the nightstand. A book was lying face down on the table.

  “Did I wake you from a nap?” he asked as he walked past the bed.

  “No. I was getting a snack and heard your truck pull up.” She opened the sliding glass door and allowed him to walk in front of her into the yard.

  She’d planted flowers along the edge of the lawn, ones which had not been there when he visited Frankie before their last deployment. The day of the funeral, he hadn’t followed the others to her house for the reception, preferring to linger a little longer at the cemetery. He’d had private thoughts he wanted to share with his Team buddy.

  The yard looked happier than he remembered. He was glad to see Shannon had maintained everything like before Frankie was gone. He’d seen a number of wives fall to pieces, not that he blamed them. But Shannon had moved forwa
rd and seemed steady.

  He knew she must be hurting inside, but because of her dislike for him, hid it well. He decided perhaps he could change that a bit. Maybe he could bring her a bit of relief.

  He laid out the pieces, putting the screws and washers on a corner of the box it came in. He crosschecked the parts to the manifest and discovered there were several bags of screws missing.

  He began tracing his footsteps across the lawn.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I think I may have dropped a few things. Any tiny bags of screws or wooden dowels?”

  “I’ll go look, but I didn’t notice any.” She disappeared from the screen door, returning a few minutes later carrying a glass of ice water. “Nope. Not a thing.” She slipped out through the slider and stepped down onto the concrete patio in her bare feet … with those hot pink toes he was having such a hard time ignoring.

  “Here,” she said holding out the glass.

  “Thanks.” He drank the whole thing, a bit of the cooling water sluicing down his neck and into the ribbing at the top of his T-shirt. He took a mouthful of ice and began crunching it as he handed the glass back to her.

  Shannon watched him, expressionless, and said nothing.

  He put together what he could, and figured he’d find the fasteners for the rest later. A couple of times he put the wrong side out. He cursed at the instructions, and decided they’d probably been translated from Chinese. At one point he discovered there was an important triangular-shaped piece missing, one supposed to hold up parts of the roof. Just gone. He had one side, but not the other. The clerk at the store said everything was there, even though the box was opened, but now he could see the young man had lied.

  A couple of times, the angle of two panels he’d screwed together was compromised, and collapsed. If he’d been home, he’d have destroyed the whole thing, kicked it around, bent and broken it further, and tossed it in the garbage. But this was Shannon and Frankie’s house, and this was for their baby, and dammit, he was going to get this done.

  So much for playing hero. The pieces were so messed up he didn’t know where to start. He sat down and concentrated on them, hoping a solution would present itself, like magic.

  Fuck it.

  When he was about to give up, he heard the sliding glass door pull open again, and this time out walked Frankie’s dad, with his tool belt on and a red canvas hand tool caddy in his left hand.

  “Shannon said I should come and do a rescue on this mission,” Joe Benson said with a beaming smile T.J. found comforting, though he didn’t want to admit defeat.

  “Yup. I do believe we have a problem, Houston.”

  “Well I’m good at fixin’ problems. Let’s see what you got there,” Benson said as he squatted down to peer at the roof and corners.

  T.J. turned his back to the house and began showing Joe what he’d figured out, but he felt Shannon’s eyes on him.

  He kind of liked it.

  Chapter 8

  Shannon watched her husband’s hard-bodied friend while he worked outside, struggling to wrestle pieces of pink and light green plywood, painted to look like the sides of a gingerbread house. He first read the instructions, and then quietly aligned the pieces, searching for fasteners, which, all too often, seemed to be missing. He looked for holes that weren’t drilled.

  By now Frankie would have given up, but in the hour that Shannon watched T.J. curse and nearly throw the pieces over the fence, she’d also seen him quell his anger, tell himself he could do it, and then sigh back into it. Until another problem arose.

  Unable to bear the sight of his frustration any longer, she called her father-in-law. Joe was a regular guy and was never shy about helping out, especially if it required any carpentry or woodworking. And he was the most patient man she had ever met. Their personalities were total opposites, but standing side by side, though Frankie was nearly a foot taller, she could see they were father and son, no question.

  “Be glad to help,” he said, and then appeared at her front door within twenty minutes. Just in time, too, because Shannon could smell defeat brewing in the yard.

  “He’s getting awfully frustrated, Dad. He thinks there are screws missing, and maybe some wooden pegs.” She scrunched up her nose.

  “Always are, sweetheart. I got plenty,” he said as he jiggled his tool kit. “Or they don’t put the holes so they align, or give you the wrong sizes. I’m sure we can work it out.”

  Within two hours the little playhouse was constructed, complete with new trim around the eaves for extra sturdiness, which Joe had recommended. The two men worked well together, and on several occasions T.J. burst out laughing at whatever Joe had said. She heard Frankie’s name several times.

  It occurred to her that it did Joe good to have another man Frankie’s age to share the work on that playhouse, and if Frankie were here, Joe would have been doing this alone. But with T.J. he’d found a kindred spirit.

  Or maybe it was the grief that brought them together. Whatever it was, it was working.

  Shannon admired their handiwork. The two men were practically slapping each other on the back. Extra holes had to be made, and one piece was hand-cut to fit in where a piece had broken. “You guys want sandwiches?”

  “I’m actually starved,” T.J. said.

  “I am too,” said Joe.

  “You want to come in or eat outside?” Shannon asked.

  The men looked at each other and shrugged. “Whatever’s easiest,” T.J. answered. “Makes no difference to us.”

  She threw a wet towel at T.J., which caught him right across the kisser, eliciting a delicious pearly-white grin. She worked to restore her icy demeanor, but broke out in a brief laugh as she commanded, “Clean off the table and I’ll bring the food.”

  Seated around the round glass-top table while they ate, the men continued to discuss their work. “You know, we work well together. No arguing or fighting. Kinda like working with the Team guys, like Frankie.” T.J. caught himself, sighed and fell back into his chair. “I’m sorry, Joe. Couldn’t seem to help myself.”

  Shannon had thought the same thing. She’d seen Frankie doing things with his buds on Team 3, but even that held a healthy dose of swearing, jousting and horsing around. The mission was always accomplished, no matter how much irreverence there was. She also knew that Frankie could be sensitive and very stubborn. T.J., for all his bad-boy qualities, had remained more focused on the task once Joe overcame the two key obstacles.

  Stop comparing. Not fair.

  Why was she doing it, anyway? The baby kicked as she brought the dishes into the kitchen. Joe was right behind her, carrying the rest of them. “You know, it’s good to see you laughing again, Shannon,” he said as he set things on the counter. He slung an arm around her shoulder and squeezed her to him.

  “Thanks, Dad.” She hugged him back. Then she placed one of his palms on her belly so he could feel the baby. “She wants to come out and play with you, Grandpa.”

  Joe was overcome. “Ahhh,” he growled and wiped a tear from his eye. “She feels strong, Shannon. She does this a lot?”

  “I have no comparison, but yes, I think she’s very active now.”

  “That’s the way Frankie was. His mama wasn’t getting any sleep in the end.” He pinched her nose. “Make sure you rest up, kid. You’re going to need it.”

  T.J. had come from the restroom and was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, bracing himself with one muscled arm pressed against the top of the archway, hips slung at an angle. Though he was a good ten feet away from them, Shannon could see a tinge of envy there, and she picked up that perhaps he was holding himself back.

  “You want to feel the baby?” she asked him.

  He shook his head with a small shrug.

  “Oh, come on, T.J. Get yourself over here.” Joe stepped aside and Shannon walked slowly to meet T.J. halfway. Carefully he extended his palm, and she placed it against the lower right side of her belly. The warmth of his hand cau
sed the baby to jump again, and they were rewarded with a kick and what felt like hiccups.

  He stared at his hand, and she could see him soften and transform. When he looked up at her, she saw his need and his pain, which mirrored her own.

  “Well, I’d best be going,” Joe barked, collecting his things.

  T.J. took a step back and jammed his hands into his front pockets. “Yeah, I’ve got things I need to do, too. I’d say we did well, Joe. And Shannon, thanks for lunch and all the ice water.” His smile was gentle.

  Joe and Shannon hugged, and then T.J. gave her a gentle embrace. Her belly rubbed against his lower abdomen, and she was surprised by a rush of intimacy. She felt T.J. hesitate to pull away. “You got anything else you need, give me a call, okay? I’m not as good as old Joe here with the hammer, but I can figure out most things.”

  She found herself saying, “Thanks,” but felt the exchange was unfinished.

  Joe was out the door with T.J. behind him when she decided to call, “T.J., there are a couple of things I think Frankie would want me to give you,” she said to his back. She saw him stiffen, saw him share a glance with her father-in-law, and then hesitate, holding the door open.

  “Bye, you two,” Joe nodded and took off down the walkway with his toolkit.

  T.J. closed the door behind him. Shannon suddenly felt awkward and shy about being alone with him. Something had shifted.

  “We need to talk,” she said, taking his hand and leading him to the living room and the brightly flowered overstuffed couch Frankie always said looked like it belonged in a hippie museum.

  She sat an arm’s length away from T.J., curling one leg underneath her. It was getting harder and harder to find comfortable positions as her belly grew. Placing her arm along the back of the couch, she rested her head there at an angle and looked up at T.J., who was focused on her eyes and nothing else.