by Ivy Jordan
“Ain’t wrong if they’re thankful, if they want to, you know?” John shrugged. “Maybe it’s you who feels awful. You don’t think you deserve a free meal, Sawyer? You did a tour with the SEALs. You’ve earned a fuckin’ cheeseburger.”
I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t like that, and he knew it, and I knew it. I wouldn’t turn down free food, but I wouldn’t make a beggar of myself either. “Austin’s just the best bet for me. I don’t really have a plan. Might as well go there.”
“No plan? Most guys are achin’ to get back to a family.”
“You know I never married.” I shoved my cap back onto my head and pushed the bill forward. “Anyway, I should get going. It’s been good serving with you, John.” Even with his snorting laugh, I valued his company and his friendship.
“Well, shit, you sure you don’t want to stick around?” John spat off to the side and sat up a little. “I mean, I know you don’t have any tours coming up, but you could still hang around the barracks.”
I couldn’t be more determined to leave. I didn’t know what the future held, but I knew better than to stick around here much longer. The place ate at me. Knowing what I’d done in my time serving, knowing what I hadn’t but should have, it all came to the forefront of my mind here. Going to Austin would be a step in any other direction, and that felt right.
“Nah,” was all I said. “I think I’d do best going back.”
“Shit,” he said. I knew he’d miss having someone to clean up after his shit and take care of the recruits, but couldn’t bring myself to care too much about it. Caring was what got us all into these messes in our tours. “Well, good luck out there.”
I had one more night to spend in these barracks. Technically I could have stayed in an apartment with some of the other SEALs, but I didn’t want to see my comrades when I went to take a shower. I preferred to keep them at a distance. Besides, I liked seeing new recruits come in and not know what the hell to do about a SEAL being in their bunker. They always acted a little scared of me.
In the end, the other SEALs decided to sleep in the barracks, too, so there were a bunch of empty apartments and a bunch of SEALs taking up space where they didn’t belong.
Before I could go back to the barracks, I had one more meeting with my commanding officer. He went by ‘Chief,’ nothing else, and I’d long since forgotten his formal name. I stood outside his office toying with my lighter. I’d stopped smoking cigarettes a while back—the jitteriness that came with them was a luxury I couldn’t afford overseas. In the middle of a dangerous mission, that tiny amount of jitteriness could be the difference between life and death. Still, I liked to fiddle with lighters or shoestring or rubber bands. Busy hands, busy mind.
I could hear Chief bitching at one of the newer guys. It went that way with them; the only way they could earn their keep was by listening to people yell at them nonstop. I remembered my first days of boot camp. I’d been screamed at and screamed at and screamed at until one day I finally screamed back and got hit so hard upside the head that I almost blacked out. Dissent wasn’t an option. We were soldiers, not visionaries. We put up with what they dished out, or we got sent home.
A few people had gotten sent home that first week. Years later, others, in caskets.
Finally, the man walked out of his office. His face looked white, teeth nearly chattering in his skull, and he gave me a nervous stare before sprinting down the hallway. I couldn’t imagine why he’d been yelled at, but it was always something stupid. Boots not shined enough, hair not to standard, a dirty room, even looking at a commanding officer funny, all were criteria for getting screamed at. Sometimes they’d get so close to you that you could feel their breath on your face.
I walked into his office. It was strange that he even had an office, strange to see him sitting down, and stranger that instead of standing up, he remained seated. Usually he liked to look down at people. I snapped to attention, and he nodded at me. “At ease.”
I stood for a second and then sat down. I would miss Chief more than most people here. He was an unassuming man, with mostly lanky limbs and a skinny face; it was easy to think little of him, or at least not think he’d be a force to be reckoned with. But Chief must have known that everyone thought he was a shrimp because he was the single most damning force in the entire Navy. I was more afraid of him than any of the jacked up SEAL captains that breathed down our necks during our beach training.
“We’ll be sad to see you go, Gains,” Chief said. He leaned forward a little, shifting his ass back in his seat. “Not a lot of men have your work ethic.”
“All of the SEALs do,” I replied. That earned me a smile and a little chuckle.
“They have to,” he said. He shook his head. “You know, we could use you up here. Probably could use you to train some of the new recruits.”
“I wouldn’t suit the job,” I said. “Honestly, I think I’d work ‘em too hard. I’m too used to what the SEALs could handle.”
“These men aren’t that,” he agreed. “Still. You don’t have another tour? You’d think they’d want you back.”
I shook my head and adjusted my cap. “No, I don’t think they would. Best they see me off now. Besides, I have things to be doing. A life to get on with.” That was a lie. I had no life—I was the type who joined the military to make something of myself. Now I faced the realization that the military made up all of who I was, and my identity outside of it was faded at best. I didn’t know what to do. But I knew I couldn’t stay here.
Chief rolled his tongue in his mouth, and I suspected he had dip under his lip. We weren’t supposed to do it, but I wasn’t about to rat him out. “You know,” he said, “a lot of you SEALs, you get the wrong idea about things that happen.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You go out, something happens to you, you misconstrue it. Get it all backwards from what actually took place.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said.
Chief leaned back in his chair, looking at me from over the tops of his glasses. “Uh-huh. Bet you don’t.” He ran a hand over his hair—it was too short to run a hand through it—and swallowed. “I’m saying it isn’t your fault, what happened with James.”
I pulled forward in my chair and started to stand. “I should get back to the barracks,” I managed. I didn’t want to talk about this, and I certainly didn’t want to try and ration through it with a man who I’d only seen screaming at new recruits.
“If you say so,” Chief muttered. He didn’t look angry or suspicious; I half expected him to bitch at me for blowing off his statement, but instead, he shrugged. “It was good serving with you, Gains. You let me know if you ever want to come back.”
I paused before I left. “Thank you,” I said. “But honestly, Chief, I think all I want to do is go back home.”
I walked back through the camp to get to the barracks. Recruits were running left and right with their freshly shaven heads like newly mowed grass. I could tell it had just happened because they stopped and looked at themselves in every reflective surface and had their hands on top of their heads whenever they got the chance. After they’d gotten their heads shaved but before they’d gotten their caps. This was a truly new group.
I remembered it all too well, when this was new. Before this had become my entire world for six years, I’d had one foot back in Austin. Back with my girlfriend, Stacy, and back with what I had left of a family. A job, a life. It had fallen away damn quickly. While I took a shower and got the last few things I owned put in a bag, I thought about whether or not to worry about Stacy.
She wouldn’t be in Austin, anyway. Six years had passed; she’d either be dead from a drug overdose or in some other city. She never could sit still for long.
I lay down in bed and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the other people in the barracks talk over one another, like Boy Scouts on a camp trip unable to shut up and go to bed because of all their excitement. That would wear off soon and give way to exhaustion, relief at the aw
ful mattress on their backs. I closed my eyes.
I wouldn’t need to see Stacy. She wouldn’t be in town. If she was, I wouldn’t run into her. In any case, I prayed to anything that was listening that I could avoid her. I’d survived bombings, I’d survived gunfire, but I didn’t know if I could survive another round with Stacy Black.
Chapter Two
QUINN
“Thanks, Ms. Rodgers. I feel better already,” my patient said. I held the door open for him and gave him a smile.
“I’m glad,” I said. “Can I count on seeing you back next week?”
“Yeah, same time next week,” he said. Then he went off, and I closed the door.
That was my last appointment of the week. I sat down on the couch that my patients usually sat on and pressed my fingers to my temples. This had been a particularly exhausting week, and my weeks were already exhausting. Being a psychiatrist meant listening to a lot of people’s problems, and while I mostly didn’t mind, there were some days that it did tend to grate on me.
Someone knocked on my office door. “Quinn?”
I looked up and furrowed my brow. It sounded like my aunt, and I had been meaning to talk to her anyway. “It’s unlocked,” I called, and sat up a little. It seemed my unwinding would have to wait. I glanced at the automatic kettle sitting on the table across from the couch. Sometimes after work, I would stay in my office for a little while, have a cup of tea, and listen to some of the relaxing music I had on hand for clients. I didn’t have a psychiatrist, didn’t need one, but I did need to unwind.
My aunt, Janet, opened the door. She looked around the corner to see me sitting on the couch. “Is the psychiatrist late?” she joked.
I rolled my eyes a little and sat up. “Ugh. It was a long week.”
“Have you been doing well?”
“Of course, of course.” Overall, things were fine. One rough week didn’t mean a bad life, that was for sure. I wasn’t prone to making the sorts of mistakes that might land me in a position to say otherwise. “How have you been?”
“Oh, I’ve been alright,” Janet said. “I wanted to stop by and check on you here since you’re on my way home.” Janet worked as a secretary at a local bank and had been for years. Austin was hardly a small town, but she came from a small town and brought that sense of job loyalty with her.
“I appreciate it,” I said. It was a little bit of a lie. I would rather have been alone. But I didn’t mind Janet, and I knew that she had troubles of her own, especially dealing with my cousin Stacy like she had to. It couldn’t be easy on her. I thought sometimes of asking if she wanted to see me, but it was a terrible idea to see therapists that were in your family. Conflicts of interest came up.
“You know, I read an article on the internet this morning,” Janet said. She was always talking about some article she’d read on the front page of the default page on her internet browser. She was terribly sweet with how she used the internet and how little she filtered through information. “It said that more and more women are becoming psychiatrists now.”
I gestured around me. “Well, wouldn’t you know it.” It was a huge point of pride for me that I’d managed to get a job doing the one thing I loved the most. It took a lot of hard work and tedious hours at university, and sometimes I wondered if I would have been better off marrying rich. But coming into my office every day and making a difference in the life of at least one person was enough to convince me that I’d made the right decision.
“I think that a lot of them get into it for the money,” Janet said, as though telling me a horrible secret. She glanced over her shoulder. The only other people in this building were a shitty real estate agent and some travel agency that barely paid rent every month.
“A lot of them do,” I agreed. “And then they realize that it sucks when you don’t want to do it, and then they quit. And you can’t really get any other kind of job with a psychology degree.”
“Is that what you got? A psychology degree?”
“Yeah. Texas has it set up so you can be a psychologist and write prescriptions. So I’m technically a psychiatrist,” I said. “Or at least, I get paid as a psychiatrist. And I don’t have to try and worm my way into any of these psychiatry offices. They’re so selective.”
“Oh, I bet you could get into them,” Janet said, waving her hand to emphasize how smart she thought I was. Compared to her daughter, maybe, but not compared to some of the people in Austin.
“Thanks,” I offered. “I like doing what I do now, though. I help people, or, I try to. I feel like I am. That’s what I want to do first: help people. If they need medication after that, then I’ll prescribe it, but it’s a last resort for me.” Some people who had life-threatening disorders needed medication without much question, but most people could get away with lifestyle changes and someone to talk to.
“Oh, you know, I think Stacy could really use someone like that,” Janet spoke and then tilted her head down, as if ashamed that she’d even brought her daughter up. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a daughter and have what had happened, happen.
I didn’t say anything, unsure of what exactly to say that wouldn’t be out of line or inappropriate. I wished I had made that cup of tea so I could sip. Anything to divert my attention from the awkwardness that hung in the air—or rather, that had been hanging in the air for ages whenever the name ‘Stacy’ came up.
“She won’t, um, she won’t, though,” Janet clarified. I knew that she was doing it as a reassurance. I wouldn’t have to deal with Stacy and her set of issues. Janet wouldn’t have to face me knowing that I knew the extent of the problem. I liked to help people, though, and Stacy could be reconciled with in my opinion. Still, she didn’t say why she definitively stated that Stacy wouldn’t be getting help. I knew better than to pry.
“Do you have any plans for this weekend?” I asked instead, hoping to change the topic.
The effect was immediate. Janet’s face lit up like she was relieved at the change of pace. “Oh, yes! Actually, tomorrow, Saturday, we were thinking about having a little welcome home party for Sawyer. It’s kind of a surprise. We know he’s coming, but I don’t think he knows there’s going to be a party. Just a little thing in the backyard.”
I raised my eyebrows a little. “You’re not upset with him?”
“Upset?” Janet shook her head. “Maybe we were once. For a little bit there we were angry with everybody. Stacy, Sawyer… after everything that happened, it seemed everyone was a little bit to blame. But Sawyer got his head on straight. He joined the military and served well. From what I can tell, he’s back to being himself. Me and your uncle, we never could hate him. Especially not with his dad being the way he is…”
I should have expected Janet to talk on and on. I loved her dearly, but she wasn’t the best possible person to have stop by my office before leaving work on a Friday. I wanted nothing more than to go home, although I was glad to hear that Sawyer was doing well. I’d only heard about him, bits and pieces from Janet and my Uncle Jesse. They spoke highly of him until shit had hit the fan with Stacy. But they stayed in touch with him and bragged about his accomplishments like they were their own. His dad, though, was a meaner person from what I understood.
Part of me wanted to sit him down on the psychologist’s bench. There was always a part of me that wanted to do that with people I met. Now that I had the means to probe the inner workings of a person’s brain, I wanted to do it with everyone. Not everyone wanted to be psychoanalyzed. My best friend said so all the time. We’d have a conversation, and she’d proclaim, ‘Stop psychoanalyzing me!’
“You can come if you want,” Janet said. I perked up, realizing that I’d tuned out of the conversation a little bit to drift into my own mind. It was something I tended to do: turn over the situation again and again. Sometimes I came to conclusions that made no sense because I decontextualized conversations from their happening.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to impose,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be! It’s a family event; you’re family.” I got the feeling from her tone that Stacy wasn’t going to be there and Janet was once again reaching towards me to fill the role of ‘daughter.’ If she were my patient, I would have asked her about the implications of that.
As it stood, I only nodded. “Yeah, sure. I have nothing to do tomorrow. How long do you think it’ll last?”
“Not too long,” Janet said. “A few hours, probably. If you could bring a side or a dessert, that’d be lovely. Have you met Sawyer?”
I twisted my mouth to the side in thought. I’d certainly heard of him. “I don’t know. Maybe in passing at some point, or on Stacy’s social media. Face doesn’t come to the name, though.”
“Well, in any case, you can meet him tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see a friendly face after being gone so long. Can you believe it’s been six years?” Janet shook her head.
“Yeah, that is a while.” When Sawyer had left, I was merely dreaming of becoming a psychologist. Or, at least, I’d only just signed up to take the classes required. Now I had a degree, a license, and a business. I wondered what had changed about him; I wouldn’t know, I supposed, since I didn’t know him very well to begin with.
“Usually they come home on shore leave, and he stayed,” Janet mused. She shook her head. “Well, no matter. He’s coming home tomorrow, and that’s good enough for me.”
“I’ll be there,” I assured her. With that, we said our goodbyes, and she made her way out of my office. I decided to stay a moment, not really ready to go back to the loudness of my house and face the rest of the evening.
I didn’t know what to expect when I saw Sawyer. Now that I’d been thinking about it for a while, I could remember something. I silhouette, sort of, a muscly figure with dark hair and bright eyes. I could remember a smile. Mostly I associated him with Stacy, though I was certain that they’d broken up. How they hadn’t broken up before was beyond me. From what little I could glean of a memory from Sawyer—and I wasn’t honestly sure that I wasn’t imagining things because I didn’t remember—he didn’t seem the sort to get involved with the nonsense Stacy got herself involved with.
