by Karin Tanabe
“Fair enough.”
“You’re here with Tyler?” the security guard asked me. “You sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said, not feeling so sure.
“Because I would be happy to show you around myself. You don’t have to endanger yourself with this guy.”
“Thanks, but I’ll be okay,” I said, taking back my ID.
“Welcome aboard, then,” said the guard.
“He’s just joking,” Tyler said, catching a glimpse of my tense face as we drove through the gate.
“Is he?”
“Of course he is. You really think he’d let me take you around on base if I was some cold-blooded killer of cute women from Rhode Island? The military has standards, you know. High standards. And I happen to far surpass every one of them.”
I shivered, thinking about the way my body felt when his hands were on me at the Breakers.
For the first time since I had started seeing Tyler I was truly nervous. Maybe it was because of Hannah, or what Blair Bari had said, but I was panicking. I had the kind of nerves that I was so used to feeling at Christie’s when something big was about to happen. But every time I had felt nervous at work, when sweat had rained down my body and my face had been covered in hives, something good had happened. The one auction when I had not had that reaction, the January auction, was my denouement. Maybe nerves were a good sign.
“I’ve never been on a military base before,” I disclosed. “I’m tense.”
“Why?” he said, laughing. “It’s the safest place you could possibly be. Did you notice how hard it was to drive in?”
He had a point.
“It’s Saturday. Base is a little emptier today, but I just want to take you to one place. If you think the view from the Breakers is nice, you’ll really like this one. And you can’t just buy a ticket; you’ve got to know some people. On the right night, it can be all yours.”
We parked and walked along the water toward an open grassy area with a bench and flagpoles heavy with American and POW/MIA flags.
“I’d love to kiss you but like I said, I can’t do that here. So you’re safe.”
“I like you like this,” I said, leaning my head against his chest. “Restrained. You don’t seem so much like Tyler Ford.”
“I wish I didn’t know what you meant by that, but I do,” he said, smiling.
The crack of the flags and the ropes hitting the metal pole near us picked up as the wind started to change directions.
I looked over his shoulder from where we were sitting and saw four military jeeps roll by, all of the men in them staring at Tyler.
“Are you sure I’m allowed to be here?” I asked.
“Trust me. I have that on lock.”
I tried to let everything I’d learned in the past few days disappear for a while and relaxed into his shoulder.
“I’ve never been out with someone I didn’t really know,” I said honestly. “I don’t know much about you, and what I’ve heard isn’t the best. But you’re not like that when you’re with me. Not yet.”
“I think people talk about me because I’m too quiet for their liking. Silence scares people. You don’t tell them your life story, they get scared.”
“You don’t want to tell anyone your life story?”
“Nope.” He looked down at my curious face. I knew I looked nervous. Louise had said I needed to work on my poker face and she was right.
He kissed me on the forehead and we sat in silence for a while enjoying the day until I finally said, “How about you tell me just a few things.”
Tyler didn’t protest, but he waited a while to say, “The thing about me is, expectations of failure were pretty high growing up. Somehow, despite everyone willing me to fail, I had a sense of pride, and to this day I don’t really know where it came from. I always wanted to be someone more than people expected me to be, so I could come home and they might say, ‘Look at you. You turned out okay after all.’ Because, trust me, no one expected me to turn out okay.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t try in school, at all, and I got into trouble a lot. All I really cared about was shooting things, playing football, drinking, and girls. Not in that order. And no one really noticed what I did. My dad was drunk, if he was around. He didn’t care what my grades were or if I did anything after high school. No one even told me to graduate.”
“So why did you?”
“I don’t know. I knew if I left school I would really screw myself and the one thing I didn’t want was to be dirt poor anymore. I won’t admit this to many people but I really grew up poor. Ugly poor. We used to eat our cereal in a bowl of milk and then when we were done, we’d put our bowls back in the fridge and reuse the leftover milk the next day.”
He looked down at me listening and said, “You didn’t have to do that, I’m guessing.”
I didn’t answer.
“Trust me, I knew there was something better out there than struggling when I was with my family, stealing beer when I wasn’t, and sleeping with girls who would turn into their mothers in ten years.”
“That kind of sounds like a lot of America, though.”
“Yeah, but it’s not for me. Not even back then.”
“Are you glad you joined the military? I mean, do you ever regret it?”
“Not for a second. I wouldn’t have done well in college, not that I would have gotten in anyway.”
“I think you’re a lot smarter than you like to acknowledge.”
“I’m smarter now,” he said, taking my cold hands in his. His palms felt more calloused than usual. “But I left Wheatland eleven years ago.”
“And you’re never going back.”
“That’s for damn sure. I am never, ever going back.”
“Show me a picture of you when you lived in Wheatland,” I asked, turning my face toward his. I was hoping the wind was giving me a pretty blush, not making me look red and cold.
“Nah, you wouldn’t have liked me then.”
“But I like you now,” I admitted.
“Good. Then just like me now.”
He grabbed my face and I flinched a little from the surprise.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered as he kissed me until his afternoon stubble started to make my upper lip raw. “You don’t need to be so scared of me.”
Maybe I did need to be a little scared of him.
I didn’t care that the wind was starting to rip through my clothes. Tyler was right: if you didn’t look behind you, this spot was even prettier than the view from the Breakers.
“I had two older sisters,” said Tyler, looking down at my face to see if I still wanted to listen. “One died when she was very young. Her name was Katie. I barely remember her. She was seven when a car right outside our house hit her, but I was only five. She had very straight hair, like you,” he said, touching the end of my braid. “But dark. Your hair is so light. It almost has no color at all.”
“Yeah, I don’t look like my parents. They look more like you.”
“Really? Your parents live here?”
“I thought this was you telling your life story.”
“You could meet me halfway, though.”
I sat up, lifted my head from his shoulder, and bent my neck a few times, to get the stiffness out.
“My parents don’t live here,” I said. “They live in Boston, which is fine by me. I really loved my grandmother more. She was more of a parent to me than either of my parents were, or are. But she died when I was thirteen. She lived with us until then and she taught me every good lesson I learned in life. She wanted me to be nothing like my parents and everything like her, which I guess in a way I am. I even look like her. My parents . . . it’s not that they’re bad people, they’re just bad parents. And they don’t really like people, besides each other. T
hey prefer ideas. I was a mistake. But they’re Catholic so there I came.”
“They said you were a mistake?” asked Tyler, his voice rising slightly in protective surprise.
“No, of course not. But it’s always been pretty obvious. My mom hadn’t even graduated from college when she had me. That was not the plan. I don’t know what the plan was, but that was not it. My father didn’t marry who he was supposed to. My grandmother got back at him by living with him for thirteen years and then dying and not leaving him much of anything. Actually, she left me just a hair more than she left him, but that was so I could go to the right, very expensive schools. My father thought my grandmother would give him what remained, but instead she gave it to charity.”
“Really? She just gave away all her money?”
“Really.”
“Ever get mad about it?”
“No. Perplexed sometimes, but mad, no. It wasn’t my money.” That wasn’t the whole version of the truth. It was a shred. Sometimes I got very mad. But I had enough self-discipline to never admit it.
“Do your parents know you’re here and not in New York?”
“I haven’t talked to my mother in a while, but my dad called the other day to tell me that I’m doing everything wrong. They think I’m crazy to be here and even nuttier to be working in an antique store for eight dollars an hour. They call it my ‘latent rebellious phase.’ I guess this is the closest I’ve ever come to anything like that. They’re actually terrified that I’ll just stay here and let this become my life instead of going back to New York to get my old life back. Or something even better. Not that I can think of much better; I had my dream job in New York. I really loved it.”
Tyler looked down at me fidgeting on his shoulder. Just the thought of that job, of what I had, and I couldn’t sit still.
“I’m sorry. I probably look pathetic. I’m still sad about the mistakes I made.”
And with that, I told him everything. I told him about Christie’s and Adam Tumlinson’s collection and Elizabeth and Nina and the entire reason I ended up right back in the small town where I grew up.
From finding me at the store and from what I had told him over the last few days, Tyler knew I worked in art and antiques, but saying the name Christie’s, explaining I was there for ten years, implied a lot more expertise. If there were details he wasn’t telling me about the green and white bowl, he might hesitate even more now. But I kept talking. It was one of those split-second decisions that your gut controls. Where you lock eyes with someone and your head and your heart race to dictate which way you’ll go. As I looked up at Tyler, rested my weight against his body, felt his arms move around me, I knew my heart had won.
I recounted my last day at the auction house in January, how ashamed I had felt walking through Rockefeller Center that night, my persistent rage toward Elizabeth.
“I hate that woman, Tyler,” I said, repeating her name. “I’ve never hated anyone before, but I hate her.” He shifted his weight a few times and finally he stopped fidgeting and stood up to watch me as I told him the story.
He didn’t kiss me, or comfort me, or chide me; he just looked down at me on the bench and said, “So Elizabeth Tumlinson is a bitch. You should try to let it go. Hate is a waste of time. Trust me.”
Instead of answering, I just said, “Okay. I’m done. Your turn. Tell me something else.” Tell me about Hannah. Tell me about the bowl.
“I’ve got a Silver Star,” he said, with his sexiest grin plastered on for good measure. “I’m a bit of a hero.”
“Oh yeah? Well, why did you go to Iraq so many times, hero?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot and I still don’t have a good one-line answer. I should work on that. Maybe you can write me one.”
“Try.”
“Try . . .”
I sat there silently, slowly losing feeling in my fingers. I knew he wasn’t going to bring up Hannah again.
“I guess a big part of me felt like I should. I was young and able-bodied and all that and I wanted to serve my country. One tour didn’t do it, so I did four.”
“What was the worst part about it?”
“The worst part about it? Definitely the lack of hot chicks.”
“I’m sorry, did you say something?”
“Fine. Let’s see, the worst part about it. Well, almost every moment, you’re afraid you’re going to die, but you’re also afraid you’ll never live that much again. When I joined the military, I first went to Quantico in Virginia and that was the farthest I had ever been from home, by a lot. I had never seen anything; I didn’t know anything. I was from the smallest town you’d ever seen and it was whiter than a blizzard. I thought yarmulkes were what bald men wore to protect their heads from the sun. I thought the Freedom Riders were the Freedom Writers. You know, some black kids who sat around and wrote in their diaries about freedom. I had never met anyone Muslim. I don’t think I had ever met anyone Jewish. A few Native Americans, a few black people. But very few. And then I left Virginia and went to Iraq and suddenly you’re out there and you’re next to everyone from everywhere and you’ve got a shit ton of guns strapped to you and you’re totally sure you’re doing the right thing because fighting for your country is the right thing to do. But then you remember what a dick you were like five minutes ago and since when did you sign up to become some hero.”
“But you are some hero. They gave you a Silver Star. My guess is you didn’t get it because you were crying under a rock.”
Tyler shrugged, readjusted his arms, and let his cold left hand linger right above my heart.
“I got it for ‘conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy.’ That’s the official jargon anyway. There was a ceremony and all that back at Quantico. There was an American flag on a brass pole to my right and my commander talked about why he nominated me. He talked about me pulling guys out of harm’s way. How I extracted five seriously wounded and mortally wounded marines from the wreckage with little regard for my own severe injuries or personal safety after an IED exploded and we came under heavy enemy fire from concealed positions. And when he was talking about it, all I could think about was how hot it had been that day. It felt like an afternoon where you could just drop dead even if someone didn’t try to blow you up.”
Tyler waited for me to interrupt him, and when I didn’t, he paused for a few seconds and I imagined he was replaying the day in his head.
“Before they pin it on you, they publish your orders. Someone reads them aloud and says that the president of the United States awarded you your medal. ‘Chief Warrant Officer Two Tyler Ford provided initial medical care to treat his teammates’ multiple wounds. After the IED went off, Chief Warrant Officer Ford was targeted by snipers that killed four in his platoon. Chief Warrant Officer Ford’s exemplary leadership and devotion to duty reflect great credit on the United States Marine Corps.’ I remember it all, even the way my arm felt when I saluted, but at the time it didn’t feel like I was there. I was just floating above it all, watching a stranger get a medal. It wasn’t until I felt my commander’s hand on my chest, pinning the medal on my uniform, that I dipped into the present for a few seconds.”
“And how did it feel?”
Tyler looked down at me and let his lips rest on my forehead without kissing it.
“It felt okay.”
“Just okay.”
“I wish it meant more to me than it does. It sounds good, but I was so scared shitless during that whole ordeal in Iraq that I never felt like much of a hero. If I had done it and had been able to do it without worrying so much about my own ass, then I’d be prouder of it.”
“But that’s innate human behavior. You’re supposed to be worried about dying.”
“I was. I was always scared I was going to die during my first and second tours. By my third tour, death became less terrifying because I started seeing
it more. I’d never seen a dead body and then all of a sudden I’m seeing dead kids. I’m seeing my friends die. It almost becomes familiar, and then you get less afraid of it. You matter less to yourself than before. Because why are you special? Why should they die and not you?”
“So you kept going back because you weren’t afraid of war anymore?”
“Oh no, I was afraid of war. War is scary as shit. People act . . . sometimes you just look at them and you can’t believe they’re human, just like you. Same blood, skin, heart, insides. And sometimes you worry you’re going to act like that, too. And sometimes you do.”
Tyler took his arm back, away from my neck, and shrugged a few times to get some feeling back.
“Another reason I kept going is because I came back to Quantico and I was bored out of my skull. My second tour was the hardest and when I went back to Virginia I was pushing papers around my desk and doing crap work and dating girls who thought that gaining ten pounds was the worst thing that could ever happen to them. Everything seemed small. I’d gotten used to a bigger picture. Like did I give a shit if my fucking eggs were cage-free or not? Or why some chick I took to dinner had a gluten allergy? What is gluten? What the fuck is a gluten allergy? Why didn’t anyone have one when I was growing up? It was like trying to fight with a nail clipper when you’re used to a really big gun. So I went back.”
“You curse so much, I think your sentences are twice as long because of it.”
“Yeah, well, all those other words just get in the way of a good curse word.”
Tyler winked at me. He knew I didn’t care how he spoke. I just liked sitting there in his arms, liked hearing about his life, details I hoped he’d never told anyone before, even Hannah.
“But you’ve been in Newport since 2010.”
“Like I said, the war ended. I didn’t want to go back to Virginia, or go home, and then I had a chance to come here.”
“And now your life feels small? Inconsequential?”
“Sometimes. But at least I’m living a small life right on the water. And you’re helping. You are not a petty person.”
