by Reiss, CD
Quickly, I opened the glove compartment, got out the pamphlet, and snapped it closed. I could barely see it, yet I had the pitch memorized. The front photo was deeply saturated in orange-and-yellow sunrise with the silhouette of cavalrymen marching, arms raised in command, every one a leader. In the rusty sky, a line of parachutes opened.
WE DO MORE BEFORE BREAKFAST THAN MOST PEOPLE DO ALL DAY.
Onward. I didn’t have to look back if I was going toward something. I wouldn’t be blindsided by the things I’d done if I could just keep momentum.
The back had a business card clipped to it. The recruitment office on Shiloh Street. Lieutenant Barry Driggs. US Army.
Lieutenant Barry Driggs knew who he was and where he stood. He knew where he was going because the army told him so. The army pointed him in a direction and didn’t let him look back. He was one of them. So was Jake. That was what he had been smiling about when he got home.
Escape. The hope of a beautiful escape into purpose.
The dome light snapped on as the driver’s side door opened. Jake got in and closed the door before the dashboard beeped twice. He smelled of alcohol wipes and twenty hours without a shower.
“Hey.” I tucked the pamphlet under my leg. “How did it go?”
“Uneventful.” He cracked a can of Coke. It hissed as he sucked the bubbles off the lip. The diffused light hit his sculpted cheekbones and the scrub of hair growing on his chin.
“You had time to get something to drink?”
He handed it to me. “Finish it.”
“Why?” I didn’t like the sticky brown crap with an indefinable flavor.
“Just do it. For once, just do what you’re told.”
I used the spotted Burger King napkin to wipe the bubbles off the side. Jake circled his finger as if to say, “Move it along.” I drank as much as I could before the buildup of carbonation stopped me. My brother tapped the steering wheel and stared out into the darkness.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
“Drink up, punky.”
I took a deep breath and drank as much as I could.
“I’m fine, but…” He paused for a shallow breath while I got the drink down to a third of a can. “I’ve been taking sniper courses. They make us think of them as targets. Not people. Like if we tell a part of ourselves that it’s really a person, it poisons the part that does the shooting. But I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do it. After this, I don’t know if I can lie to myself.”
“Don’t ruin your life because of me.”
We looked at each other a long time. Condensation dripped onto my finger and slid along its length. Jake was my older brother. He’d given me noogies and made fun of my body when it started maturing, falling into silence on the subject when it was finished.
Now he was a man.
And me?
What did that make me?
I finished the remaining cola and handed him the can.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a used alcohol wipe. It had a faint streak of blood on it.
“Lie?” My headache started there, right when the alcohol wore off. At the moment I told the truth about lies.
He stuffed the wipe into the can until only a small triangle of white stuck out. “Smart.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yeah. If anyone asks, tell them I picked you up at one thirty and took you home. Do you have a lighter?”
“Sure.” I got out a pack of clove cigarettes and offered him one.
He took it and the black Bic. He lit us both, then touched the flame to the white triangle. When it caught, he shook the wipe down. Yellow light flickered from the little hole, replaced with acrid smoke.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I did ruin your life.”
He cracked the window and blew the smoke out, coughing. “This shit’s going to ruin me way before you do.” He dragged again and choked. I laughed. “It’s like smoking broken fucking glass.”
I took a long pull before licking the clove flavor off my lips. “Yeah.” I smiled, flicking my ash into the empty can. “Ruins the shit out of you.”
* * *
Back in Greyson’s space, Caden sat me in a chair. He pressed his fingers to my wrist as if the answers were in my pulse. I smelled the smoke from the can mixing with the clove cigarette. Tasted the Christmas on my lips. He was with me, staring at me as if he was trying to understand me, but he never would. I was the memory of what I’d forgotten. I was the events during a drunken blackout. I was Greyson’s darkness and the light that banished it.
“You’re thready,” he said. “You need to rest.”
“All right.” I wasn’t tired. I was drained.
“And eat.”
“Sure.”
I closed my eyes, letting the room slip away, going backward to my brother’s car as he parked it on a back road and told me to stay there. I was to sit in darkness and silence. I was to duck if someone came. I agreed to everything, submitting to culpability for something that I’d done but couldn’t remember.
The pressure of the chair under me disappeared. Caden had taken me in his arms and was carrying me to the bed, where he laid me down and stroked my hair from my face.
“I’m going to fix this,” he said.
I opened my eyes. Above me, he was a protective force that had no idea of the harm he could do. I wished I was worthy of him. I wished my sins were as unintentional as his.
“No,” I said, “She and I are going to fix it.”
Chapter Eleven
CADEN
Hours had passed with her narrating the sound of the leaves in the wind. I’d sat still for it when I could, but mostly I took her pulse and her temperature, looking for something to latch onto.
Solutions. I needed solutions, and all I had were problems.
I didn’t know what Respite meant by fixing it, but if she was anything like Damon, she wasn’t going to fix shit. She was going to fuck it up.
Phone lines were down. Neither of our cells had signal. I didn’t have a car, and I couldn’t carry her to the hospital. I still hadn’t told her about Jake because I couldn’t decide which one of her would take it worse. Respite, whose world seemed to circle around him? Or Greyson the Unpredictable?
If she were injured, I’d carry her back to New York if I had to. But I hadn’t yet taken her to the hospital because I didn’t want to put a dozen doctors between us. I didn’t want to answer questions, and I didn’t want her whisked away from me to some mental facility. Because they would. The army. Blackthorne. Someone would take her away.
Greyson had a few granola bars in the cabinets and a bruised apple on the counter. A half-eaten container of hummus and a round of pita that still had a day or two in it. I unwrapped a bar and sat on the edge of the bed.
“You have to eat.”
Her eyes opened halfway, as if she wasn’t committed to looking outside herself but for the first time in hours, she’d try.
“Respite,” I said. It felt wrong to look at my wife and call her a different name, but she wasn’t Greyson either.
“Hello, Caden.” She glanced at the bar that poked out of its wrapping like a bloom, then back at me. As Respite, she exhibited an emotional flatness I associated with distraction. She was never fully present in the room with me, and it made me impatient to see my wife again.
“What kind of name is that?” I asked. “A little on the nose, don’t you think?”
“She turned my name into her wish.” She sat up, sliding her bottom back and leveraging against her right arm. The sheet fell down her body. I’d stripped her to her underwear, and I was glad I hadn’t finished the job. I didn’t want to look at those beautiful tits on another woman.
“So that’s not your name?”
“No.”
I pushed the granola bar at her. She took it reluctantly.
“What’s you
r name then?”
“Something like that.”
“Like Respite?”
She nodded and bit off the tiniest corner.
“But not?” I continued.
She shook her head. This new personality took years off Greyson’s demeanor. There was something very knowing about her but something petulant and naïve as well.
“I don’t know it yet, but I will.” She bit off another corner and chewed with more attention than chewing deserved. “I’ll know once I play the entire thing back.”
I waited. Did she think I knew what she was talking about?
“Do you have water?” she asked.
“Sure.”
As I filled a cup, I watched her in the reflection of a tiny mirror tile. Greyson in a black bra and rumpled sheets but not her. Not her at all. I’d married a woman, and there was a girl in the bed.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the glass.
I pulled up a chair. “What’s this about playing something back?”
She handed over the glass, then the half-eaten granola bar. “A thing that happened. The memory is deep, but I had eight kamikazes. So, it’s there? I can get it out, but only one thing at a time, from the end. Like I have to unpack the box from the top?”
I heard what she said. The words were fine, but the tone wasn’t Grey. It had question marks all over it. I couldn’t blame her for not knowing which way was up. I didn’t either. Couldn’t tell how long this would take either. Was she unpacking a two-year-long event or a bad few minutes?
“When is the memory from? How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Where were you?” I kept my tone casual. I didn’t want to freak her out. She seemed fragile.
“Um, Jake just pulled up to a… like a side back alley-ish thing? It’s a lot of cinderblock and gray. Light industrial, maybe. It’s really dark, and I’m glad about that.”
I’d thought I knew what my wife was going through because I’d lived it with Damon. But Respite was different. She spoke about her alternate as if she was the same person. Past the emotional flatness, there was a soft compassion for the girl whose story she was telling. A forgiveness. Respite’s tone confirmed she existed to help, not conquer.
“Also,” Respite continued, “there’s kind of a gross swimmy feeling, and my tongue tastes like burn.”
“The eight kamikazes.”
She may have heard me, but judging from how her gaze went blank, it didn’t matter. “The crickets are really loud. I feel like they’re going to give me away. It’s cloudy, but the light pollution from town makes the clouds bright enough to see by. And Jake is mad. He gets out of the car. He’s got big muscles on his arms. When he left for the army, he was skinny. Now he’s like a man. He scares me?”
Again, the question at the end illustrated how different she was. I wanted to shake her loose. It had been hours, and I wanted my wife back.
She put up with Damon for weeks.
“Why is he mad?” I asked.
“It’s three thirty in the morning,” she replied without looking at me. “He wants to know why the hell I haven’t gone home. What’s on my freak mind? He always called me a little punky freak. And then I cry so hard he stops being mad.”
She went silent.
“Respite?”
“When Jake gets out of the car, the gravel crunches under his feet. He’s not wearing the boots he came home in. He’s wearing his old Adidas while he’s on leave, but he keeps his dog tags on. He leaves the car door open. The dashboard’s beeping, and his lights are on.”
She’d started from the beginning, adding new details but going no further back.
“Why is he there?” I asked.
“He’s saying, ‘Oh, fuck, Grey. Fucking fuck. Where?’ and I point at a dark place behind the building. Jake goes, but I sit sideways in the car with the door open. I take the keys out and turn off the lights so the beeping stops. I wait a long time.”
“What’s happening, Greyson?” I called her by her real name because she wasn’t respite any more than I was a back rub.
“There’s a break in the clouds, and I can see some stars through it.”
“Greyson.” I try not to growl and fail.
“When I rub my thumbnail, I feel a place where the polish is flaking.”
She was rubbing her thumbnail as if she was there, wherever there was. She was infuriating, making no effort whatsoever to dig out of this. She was just sliding into the details of a memory that could go nowhere and not answering the relevant questions.
She was about to talk again. She opened her mouth to reminisce about the light reflecting off the sky or some bullshit. I didn’t want to hear it. Not another word.
I took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Listen to me!”
She focused on me for the length of fingers snapping. For that moment, she was herself. It was like taking a rib spreader out and putting the thorax back in its place. It all fit.
“Where are you?”
Before I even finished my sentence, she was gone. Heart, lungs, ribs—taken apart. Insides outside.
I was bereft. My body was inside out. I was the one with parts out of place.
“He’s gone a long time,” she said. “The crickets pause enough to let the sound of the rustling leaves through.”
“No, no, look at me.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Okay, I’ll—”
“I can hear my stomach rumbling in the pause.”
“Stop!”
She did. I thought I’d be relieved, but her silence wasn’t a refocus of her attention. She was deep inside herself and not bothering to tell me what was happening. This was worse.
My watch beeped, cutting my thoughts like a scalpel.
I had to report for duty in half an hour.
“Grey, listen, if you’re in there. Listen.”
I lifted her chin until she faced me. With my other hand, I moved my finger across her field of vision, left to right and back again. Her eyes did not follow.
“Jesus, baby, what’s happening?”
My watch beeped. So close to her ear, yet she didn’t move a muscle.
“I have to report for duty in half an hour. Talk to me. Tell me what to do.”
The watch stopped. Like the silence of the crickets, it opened the door to heartbeats and breaths.
“Greyson.”
Twenty-eight minutes to report, and if you’re not ten minutes early, you’re late.
“Greyson.”
No answer, but her lips were puckered in my fingers. I smashed my mouth on hers. The woman in my hands felt like her. My tongue fit between her teeth just the same. She tasted like my wife. But she didn’t respond. I pulled my lips away but held her head still. I was torn between staying with her and reporting for duty. The hospital needed me. The army needed me, and I’d made commitments.
“Talk to me,” I said.
“I beg him not to leave me.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“He says he never will.”
“I won’t. Ever.”
“He’s my brother, and we’re all we have.”
“We’re all we have.”
Did she hear me? Did she understand? Was I even talking to her? Or was I reminding myself of what was important?
Her eyes focused and found mine. I let her jaw go. She was my wife again. Partly, at least. She was still soft and docile, but she didn’t seem as young or fragile. “Caden.”
“Yes?”
“That part? It’s over. I remembered everything I had to.”
“Everything?”
“Everything that was there. I feel the things before bubbling up.”
“Are you all right?”
“I didn’t know you back then. It’s weird to think there was a time in my life without you.”
“I was there.”
Her brow knotted, and she sat perfectly still, as if breathing and remembering couldn’t coexist. Finally, her eyes met mi
ne and she spoke. “I don’t remember that.”
She took memories and facts very seriously.
“Always. We were a promise the Universe made before we were born.”
She looked away but not back inside herself. “I don’t know if I felt it.”
“You don’t need to feel it to make it true.” I gathered her hands in mine and laid them in her lap. “I knew it the first time I saw your face. You were a promise kept. I knew that if I let you go, I’d be breaking something bigger than me.”
She slid her hands out of mine and around them until my palms were on her bare thighs. Pressing my thumbs against the insides, I pushed them open a few inches until I could see the damp crotch of her underwear.
“What do you want?” I asked, stiffening for her.
“You.”
I saw my watch against her leg. Twenty-seven minutes. I was going to have to walk a quarter mile in a storm to get to the hospital. I had to leave… or not. I could smell the tang of her cunt, and the minutes were ticking by. I spread her legs farther apart.
There was another issue: an orgasm would bring back the other Greyson.
“I have to report.”
“Okay.” She lay back, legs still open, the fabric of her underpants creased in the center where moisture made them stick.
She was going to get herself off. If I reported, I’d come back to an empty apartment. She’d be somewhere in Baghdad, walking toward some purpose she made up just to give herself forward motion. We’d be separated again, and I’d have no control of the situation.
That was not acceptable. The US Army was going to have to deal with my absence.
Leaning over her, I hooked my fingers in her underwear. “Pick up your butt.” I slid them off her and balled them in my fist. “Bra off.”
She unhooked the front and wiggled out of the bra. I took it. Her nipples were pointed straight at me, hard and tight, a blush spreading across her face and neck. She closed her legs.
This personality had taken the shame Greyson never admitted to. It was more arousing than I’d ever imagined.
Grabbing her ankles, I pivoted her until she was lined up with the direction of the bed. The headboard was made of cheap metal piping painted white.
“Are you going?” she asked, getting up on her elbows.
