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by Kristen Tsetsi

  “It’s nothing. Sometimes Jake will write things on the backs of pictures for me to find later.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Did you find any secret messages?”

  “No.” I tip my cup for the last few drops of coffee. “I think I want more. Do you want some?”

  “Sure.”

  I bring the ashtray with me to the kitchen and fill the pot, dump grains in the filter, and stand there while it brews. Denise comes in to flick her ashes and leans against the counter. “Thanks for having me over. William’s mother is coming, so I’ve been cleaning like crazy. I had to get out.”

  “When will she be here?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  I take a long drag, exhale over her head. “William’s mother must be so happy to know he has a wife who loves him the way you do.”

  She laughs, then coughs. Smoke-puffs the shape of mushroom clouds shoot out with bright, sunlit drops of spittle. “I’ve been waiting for you to say something.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  We put out our cigarettes.

  “No, it isn’t, but still…I think I know what you think. I think you think we’re just having fun, doing a little something on the side. You can tell me.”

  “I don’t think anything.”

  “Where are your coffee mugs?”

  I point to a cabinet, and she pushes through the moderate collection until she finds one she likes. She chooses one that reads, in large, comic letters, I LOVE COFFEE.

  She says, “I have to ask you to not write Jake about him. What you do is up to you, of course, but I would appreciate it.”

  “I don’t keep secrets from Jake. But, if it makes you feel any better, it hadn’t occurred to me to write him about—about this.” I’d probably tell him about it if he were here, but putting it in a letter borders on malicious. Writing is…intentional.

  “Well, whatever. Anyway, Mia, this is between William and me. If you do write Jake, he’ll tell William, so…”

  “No, he won’t.”

  “Then William would find the letter.”

  “I’d tell Jake to burn it.”

  “Quit smiling. This isn’t funny.” She chews her lip and taps her mug. “You don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand?”

  “This. The whole thing.”

  I wait, listen to the clock. I never took out the batteries.

  The coffee finishes and I pour some for each of us and we go back out to the living room.

  I think of Denise and William, of Denise and Brian. What she can mean when she says I don’t understand.

  She’s probably right. I don’t understand. Not really. But when I imagine the two of them together, I think of Marc and that stock boy and I want to know how Brian does it—if it’s different from what William does, and in what ways. Does he smell like citrus? Does he grip her side instead of her back? Does he bite her ear and whisper strange, private things about the way her skin feels, maybe, or the shape of her shoulder? I want to know, What’s it like to be with someone else, with someone new?

  I put my feet on the table and my toe touches Jake’s pictures and I look at his face and someone could have killed him at that moment, that single second of innocent fantasy, and it starts a panic, a strange sort of fluttering in my throat, so I think In real life never, I promise, and I imagine the painting and the timelessness and endlessness of the love in that old house in the snow. It’s Jake and me, I know it is, it is it is it is it is it is—

  —and I need it, the painting. Need it the way the religious—and maybe, (or especially) the not-so-religious—need their crosses over the dining room table, their Mary statues gazing down from the fireplace mantle.

  Denise wipes her eyes and dries her fingers on her pants. Her face would be a mess if she were wearing makeup, but as it is, there’s charm in her red eyes and puffed mouth. Maybe it’s that I’ve never seen her like this. Or maybe her pain gives me pleasure for no good reason. Whatever the case, her swollen, splotchy face is strangely beautiful in a way she couldn’t duplicate with all of her foundation and blush.

  “I love him.”

  I rub my eyes, dry and tired. “Does he love you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about William?”

  “What about William,” she says. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? What to do about William.”

  “Does he know?”

  She bites a nail, looks at it, folds her hands on her lap. “It was some time last year, winter I think, when someone, some…nosy bastard…told William he saw me with another man—who was, yes, Brian—at the shopette. We weren’t doing anything unseemly. We were holding hands while looking for donut holes. He prefers the chocolate ones, and I like glazed, but all we could find were powdered.” She pulls her sleeves down to cover her fingers, then pushes them back up to her elbows. “That was the only time William ever said anything. He told me someone had seen me in the store with a man, and he asked who the man was. It wasn’t serious yet, so I told him I didn’t know, that it wasn’t even me. He let it go. But now,” she says and puts another nail in her mouth, “he must know something is off. We don’t kiss anymore. Not unless we’re…well.” She shakes her head. “Isn’t that funny? I can say it when I’m talking about Brian. ‘I sleep with Brian.’ ‘I have sex with Brian.’ I can’t say it about William. Anyway, that’s when we kiss. Or, that’s when he kisses me and I let him. You would think he’d feel that, or that he could tell. How can anyone be that oblivious? Anyway, time passes—months, sometimes—in between, and it’s not like we hate each other. We’re adults, after all, and fairly sexual people. But we don’t hug. Or touch, or laugh. He has to have an idea. He can’t be that obtuse.”

  When I realize she’s waiting for an answer, I say, “I don’t know.”

  “If he’s not, and if he does know what’s going on—or even that something is happening, whatever it is—he’s never brought it up again. And,” she shrugs, “if he doesn’t say anything and I don’t say anything, it isn’t really happening, is it?”

  “No,” I say, “I mean yes.” I set down my mug, wipe my face, sticky and cold. A week, maybe two, before he left, Jake was quiet. Where we usually kissed or groped one another in passing in our narrow hallway, he walked right by. And he worked late. “We’re loading up, so I’ll be busy,” he said. He could have someone, someone he knew here and who has gone with him, someone he laughs with at night after flying, before going to his tent, someone whose hair he touches when they have a moment alone, someone he tells stories and wants to kiss, someone he smiles at over the table at lunch. She, that woman, could be his reason for not wanting to get married, but I don’t—won’t ever—know, and for a moment—small, less than a second—I wish he were dead.

  “Are you going to tell William?” I say.

  “What other choice is there?” She says this while pulling the band out of her hair and shaking her head, raking her fingers over her scalp. “If I don’t, we’ll just end up throwing away more time. So, yeah, I’ll tell him I don’t love him anymore. But I won’t tell him about Brian, because Brian has nothing to do with any of this.” She flips her hair behind her shoulders.

  “Doesn’t Brian—I mean, it sounds like he has everything to do with it.”

  “I would still want to leave, with or without him. William’s not right for me, period. In any case, I doubt Brian will still be around when William gets back. He—Brian—said that if I loved him, I would have already left William. He doesn’t trust me, anymore.” She laughs. “Maybe he shouldn’t. I didn’t leave, did I? It’s been a year and a half, and I’m still married. He has no reason to think anything will change.”

  “He should have left in the beginning.”

  “William or Brian?”

  “Brian. Or William.”

  “You say that because this is all so simple, to you. Black and white.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Mia, what you
think about all of this—how you’re judging me right now—doesn’t matter. I know you think I’m a…that I’m an adulteress. Don’t you love that word? These women—the ones who get in their groups and talk about other women, other wives—they love that word because it sounds so scandalous.” She laughs again, and there’s little fun in it. “Check their scrapbooking rooms and I bet you a million dollars you’ll find little stacks of red, velvet A’s in their fabric drawers. Anyway, you probably think I’m rotten, the worst person you’ve ever known, because I’m cheating on my husband—my husband who’s at war, no less—and I understand. But—and don’t take this the wrong way, okay?—I don’t care. I don’t care what you think, I don’t care what they think, and I doubt when I finally tell William whatever I tell him that I’ll care what he thinks. What he feels, yes. What he thinks,” she lights a cigarette, “no.” Smoke curls in wide loops from her nostrils. “But if you feel like you have to write Jake about this, at least include the most crucial piece of truth: I never meant to fall in love with Brian. Ever. He was…he was someone to talk to, is all. I never meant for it to get past a passing friendship, and I certainly never meant for it to last this long.”

  Who, I wonder, is Jake talking to? What if he does have a woman friend, a woman he doesn’t mean to turn into more than a friend?

  “And by ‘it’,” she continues, “I actually mean my marriage. If I weren’t still married, there’d be no affair to have. I meant to leave William a while ago because I wasn’t happy, and then again, later, because I felt things for Brian I’ve never felt for anyone before. And because this is my life. My happiness has to come first. It just does.”

  “Why didn’t you leave him, then?”

  She throws up her arms. “Because he’s always deployed!”

  “Well.”

  “Oh, Mia, don’t—are you okay? Here, let me…” She digs through her purse and pulls out a pack of travel tissues and hands it to me. “You know, don’t you, that this isn’t about you and Jake, and that what’s happening with me and William has been happening for years? It has nothing to do with him being deployed. You know that, right?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I tell her, “I know.”

  “If you feel sorry for him, just know he’s not perfect. We had problems before I met Brian.”

  “Why is Brian always here, anyway? Why isn’t he deployed with the rest of them?” I sound and feel like a child.

  “Oh, he isn’t always here. He’s been to Korea, and now he’s getting ready to PCS to Alaska, which is why he’s not deployed. Timing.”

  “If it was has hard as you say—can I have another cigarette?—you couldn’t have held it in for so long.”

  She tosses one over the coffee table, then kicks a silver lighter across the floor. “It seemed easier than breaking things off with someone who’s at war. How do you tell someone when they finally get home to the life they’ve been dreaming about that the life they’ve been dreaming about doesn’t exist?” Denise yawns. “I’m starting to understand why some women pack up and leave while their husbands are gone.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “I know. I don’t mean it,” she says. “But when no time is right, what do you do?”

  “You wait.”

  She gets up to stand at the window and looks outside, taps her ash between the ledge and the screen. “You’re right,” she says. “Of course I’ll wait. For the next goddamn year, I’ll confine myself to a life I haven’t wanted since I fell out of love with him almost two years ago. I’ll do it because William is in the Army, and because William’s decisions have sent him to war twice. I’ll keep suffering—silently, the way ‘good’ wives are supposed to—for his choices and put my life and my needs on indefinite hold so his aren’t disturbed. Brian will leave me—I’m sure of it—and I’ll just have to deal with that, too, so my dear husband doesn’t suffer any inconveniences or undue pressure. Can’t trouble the boys while they’re at war. The world must revolve around them and around maintaining the illusion of a happy home-life—like a protective bubble—even though they’re grown men, trained professionals, who should be able to handle…”

  She trails off and shakes her head and covers her eyes. “That was wrong. Selfish.” She sighs. “I’m just—I’m just so tired of his life being more important than mine.”

  “But, I’ve gone on and on about me,” she says. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I know you have to miss him.”

  “I do, but. You know. It’s gotten better. I’m pretty busy.”

  “Oh? Driving?”

  “Yes. No. I’m looking.”

  Denise studies her nails, bites one she hasn’t bitten. “Having any luck?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Mall this weekend?”

  “Um…I don’t—no. I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have a job interview.”

  “On a weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re lying,” she says.

  “I’m not.”

  “A job interview won’t take all weekend. Is it because of Brian?”

  “Why would this have anything to do with Brian?”

  “I think you’re upset.”

  “Denise, I’m not.”

  But, I am.

  She’s worthless to me, now.

  She is one of them, one of the others. The man she cares about is here, safe with her. She can’t understand about dusk, the sun’s evil teasing. The time of evening too far from sleep and an ‘x’ across another day, but too close to darkness and the hollow air of no conversation that amplifies the TV sounds of over-acted dialogue and rehearsed applause. Denise doesn’t know the taunting, subtle fade that cues the lighting of yellow windows, the drawing of curtains to hide people living normal lives, eating dinner, yelling top floor to bottom about who wants milk and where are the scissors. She would have little to say about time spent staring out the window at shapeless clouds and cracked sidewalks and meticulously trimmed shrubs, all of it so cheerful and commonplace while over the rooftops and trees and a plane-ride away, “everyday” is mission-planning and mortar fire and grass is something they might find tucked in the fold of a letter.

  “It’s not Brian,” I say. “It’s that you seem to want to find a way to—I don’t know, legitimize?—the sex you’re having. None of what you said was about anything but you and Brian and your ‘relationship,’ and it’s just so fucking trivial. You know? People are dying and the…the…your husband is over there, and he’s doing stuff, and you’re here upset because you want to fuck your boyfriend. And quit making that face whenever I say ‘fuck,’ because I know you’ve heard it before.” My mouth is dry. I swallow. “What about the state of the world, the global implications of the war.?”

  She laughs. Long and hard, she laughs. When she catches her breath, she says, “You’re kidding, right? First, Mia, I never knew you were so naïve! It’s actually kind of cute. But listen: sex is the only thing we have control over. Nothing is reduced to being all about sex. And my relationship with Brian is far more complex than a simple sexual…what have you.” She leans forward. “And second, you don’t think about any of that—the ‘global implications’ of the war—any more than I do. If you do, I’m impressed. Seriously. But I don’t think you do. Admit it—it’s not our concern. We live in our small American neighborhood in our small American town. All we worry about is ourselves and how this war will affect us and the people we love.” She returns to the couch and lets her head fall back. She looks at me through slitted eyes. “When Jake is home, you’ll see. You’ll care less about the war.” She shrugs. “It’s callous, but it’s true. You’ll care less because the soldier blown up by an IED won’t represent Jake, and the woman crying on TV won’t represent you.”

  I don’t know when she put out her last cigarette, but she lights another, and I don’t know when I put mine out, so I ask her for one. For the next few minute
s no one says anything, and then Denise leans forward and picks up her bag, slings it over her shoulder. “I’m meeting Brian. Wow, that feels good to say. You know how it is when you have something finally out in the open…? Anyway. You don’t believe me, what I said before, because you can’t,” she says. “But when it happens—because it will—try not to feel bad, and know you’re not the only one. It helps to know that.”

  When the door is closed behind her, I look for Donny’s number and call it.

  No answer. No answering machine.

  I pick up some cigarettes on the way to his house and park on the street. The blue Jeep has been moved to the curb and is clean, sparkling. Loud music comes from his living room’s open windows. He must be in a good mood.

  I knock on the door with a cigarette pulled and ready for him. When it opens, she—his wife?—stands there in an oversized T-shirt and jeans, brown hair hanging long and straight, thin and frizzed at the ends. She holds a beer.

  “Hi, darlin’,” she says. “Help you?”

  “I’m—I was—” I slide the cigarette back in the pack. “I’m Mia,” I say. “Donny has this painting, and—I wanted to ask about it.”

  “Naw, he took all that with him. Been gone two days, now. Livin’ on Crossland in the Duncan Motel. You want to see him? Let me get the room number. Hold on right there.”

  I look inside, notice china in the cabinet. The easel is gone.

  She comes back and hands me a piece of paper. “Here you go.” Room ten, and the phone number. “You be careful, all right, sweetie?” She closes the door.

  I park in front of room ten and the window shades to rooms nine and eleven slide open, then close. A door opens a few rooms down and a man with a shirt hanging open around his ball-shaped stomach smokes…something…on the walkway. I knock on Donny’s door, listen for sounds—snoring or a TV. I knock again.

  “Hey,” the man with the stomach says. “Who you lookin’ for?”

  “Donny Donaldson.”

  He shrugs. “Don’t know no names. What’s he look like?”

  “Brown hair. Glasses.”