“Shit,” I said, turning away from the TV, hand over my mouth. “Shit.”
“Did you know her or something?” asked Mohammed.
“I interviewed her here,” I said. “She knew they were going to kill her and she was trying to get out.”
That night was one of the worst I had in Baghdad. I went straight to my room after work. I hadn’t been to the bar much since the incident anyway.
I lay on my bed in silence and every time I closed my eyes I saw her. My thoughts were like the montage on the news, except now the montage was narrated by her steady modulated voice. She talked me again and again through what they had threatened to do to her. The images flickered and followed her narration in detail. Again and again, I saw all the ways they told her she would die.
I called Adam. Not on Skype but on his mobile. He was the other side of the world, organising equipment for team training that was coming up.
When he answered the phone, I cried at the sound of his voice.
“Emma, is that you? Emma – God, are you okay? Has something happened? What’s wrong?”
“We lost her,” I cried. “A woman came in and I interviewed her and it all took too long and now she’s dead.”
“Oh, Em, I’m so sorry,” he said. “Babe, I’m sure you did everything you could. I know how you feel. I get it, I really do. Let me go upstairs and find a computer I can Skype you from. We’ll talk it through. You’ll be okay, Em, you really will. I love you.”
I cried to Adam over Dina, but I never cried to my mother after my father died. Rebecca and my mother wrapped themselves in their grief. They let themselves break down, come undone. They stayed at home and clung to each other while I dreamed that their tears flooded the house and took us all under. I decided that I needed to be strong.
I was being strong when I studied hard at school, passed my exams, got a place at university. I was being strong when I went off to study a Bachelor’s and a Master’s, while Rebecca stayed at home. She trained at a local beauty salon, eventually set up her own business, stayed and supported my mum. I was being strong, but the thing about letting yourself break is that afterwards you can be pieced back together. My mother and Rebecca broke and began to heal. My fractures and cracks just crept deeper.
I thought I was being strong when I left altogether. When I came to Iraq.
It is different when I go home now. Each time, something more has changed. My mother decorated the kitchen and painted over the spot where Rebecca and I marked our heights in pencil as we grew. Rebecca’s husband stores his tools where my father’s fishing equipment used to be. My father’s chair has been replaced with a trunk of toys for Sophie’s visits.
“This isn’t a doll’s house, Emma,” Rebecca argued. “You can’t expect us to stay exactly where you left us, waiting just in case you ever choose us instead of them.”
I knew it hurt my mother that I left.
“It’s what your father would have wanted,” she said. But that was just it. I was more like my father than Rebecca, who took after our mother. So I knew that when I went back it was like a little bit of him had returned to her. I hated that responsibility and I hated that I was keeping him from her.
But now Rebecca and my mother are okay. As they have pieced themselves back together, they have found a way to fill the gaps left by my father, and now the gaps left by me too. I do not know how to find my place between them again.
My phone beeps, dragging me out of my thoughts. For a moment I have the strange hope that it is my family. I check my phone and try to ignore the mild disappointment I feel when I see it is Kate replying to my earlier message.
Oh, that sucks about the ’terp, Em. Sorry. Let me know if you need anything.
I wait for Adam to get in touch, but still there is nothing.
34
Subject: I miss you
Hey Em,
Sorry for not emailing for a couple of days – work stuff came up. It’s been a pretty frustrating week. The usual bullshit. I’m sorry I haven’t been very communicative. It’s not that I don’t want to talk, I just don’t really have anything to say. Nothing positive anyway, not after what happened. I can’t wait to be out of this place and back with you.
I miss you Emma,
Adam
Last night I dreamt that he was here. He smiled at me and I saw the slight angle of his left front tooth. He brushed a strand of hair from my face. I touched my fingertips to the tiny scar on his brow.
Last night I dreamt that he was here. I felt his skin against mine. The muscles of his back moved under the palms of my hands. His breath was warm on my neck.
Last night I dreamt that he was here and the nagging emptiness that has shared my bed for months was gone. The world folded and the oceans were crushed and mountains rose up from the plains and the land brought us closer together.
Sometimes it is harder to wake up alone after the promise of him, than when I remember in my dreams that he is not here.
35
I sit on the floor of the living room, in the same spot where we had the picnic before he left. Next to me is a large empty mason jar. I am surrounded by pieces. Fragments. Parts. Bits of stone and rock, tile, glass that has rounded at the edges. They are beiges and browns and reds and greens and the occasional sliver of blue.
Each piece holds a memory. I pick them up one at a time and turn them between my fingers. I twist them this way and that. I test the soft flesh of my thumb against their edges. I tease out their stories.
Here is the piece I picked up at the palace the day that Adam proposed. Here is the top of the Incline. Here is outside of the gym the day Sampath died.
I sit like this every evening now. I push the pieces around me into different shapes and formations, but always they seem to resist. I am not sure what I am hoping for, but when they are ready I will know.
This evening, tired and frustrated, I gather them between my palms and return them to the jar. I don’t know if it is the pieces that are not ready or me.
36
I need to get out of my head. Since the news of Ali’s death, things have got worse. I’m panicking more. It’s like a trigger. It’s set me off.
I Skyped with Adam a few days ago. He was ten minutes late to the call. At first I thought he could still be out working. Then I wondered if there was a sandstorm, the thick kind that gets in your eyes and ears and interferes with the internet. Or maybe there was a power cut and the generator hadn’t come on. Or maybe he just didn’t want to talk about the desert and the dust and eating the same meals every day.
But then I thought about other explanations too. In these other explanations, hot metal ripped through his body. An explosion tore him into a thousand pieces. Crimson blood soaked into the dry ground. A black hood made the night even darker.
When Adam finally came on Skype, he was fine. I acted like I was fine too.
“So how are things? What’s up with you?” he asked.
“Not much,” I replied. “What about you?”
“Same shit, different day,” he said.
We do not talk about Ali, although his absence fills every conversation. We do not talk about Adam’s homecoming, although I know the date must be getting closer.
I need to get out of my head, so I message Kate again.
Hey. Can I come and hang out?
The reply comes quickly.
Sure. Come on over!
When I get to Kate’s house, she ushers me inside with a voice that is quieter than normal.
“We’re just about to have story time,” she says. “Dave doesn’t get to read Noah’s bedtime story because of the time difference, so sometimes we have one at Dave’s bedtime instead.”
I follow Kate to the living room, where I see Noah curled up on the sofa holding a teddy bear wearing a military uniform with a tag saying Jenkins. The laptop is open in front of him and I can make out the familiar blue window of Skype.
“Want to join us?” asks Kate.
“Are y
ou sure? I don’t want to interrupt. I can just wait in the kitchen or—”
“Don’t be silly. Noah will love it,” she says.
I look over to where he is waiting patiently. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him sit still for this long.
“Hey, Noah, do you think Emma should join us for story time too?”
He nods, but doesn’t take his eyes off the laptop.
I sit down on the sofa next to him and Kate sits the other side. It is the low deep kind of sofa that is made exactly for snuggling up with families.
Dave calls and Kate presses accept.
“Daddy!” Noah squeals, now sitting upright.
“Hey bud!” says Dave, his face appearing in front of us. “How’re you? And let me see the bump – where’s my kiddie number two?”
“Hi, sweetie,” says Kate, as Noah kneels up next to her and puts both hands on the bulge of her stomach for his dad to see. “You’ve got a bit of an audience for story time today.”
The video must have just loaded at his end.
“Oh, hi Emma! What’s up?”
It is odd to be sat on Dave’s sofa talking to him while he is in Iraq. I feel like I have been let in on an intimate routine.
“Hey Dave. I hope you don’t mind me joining you.”
“Are you kidding me?” he says. “It’s great to see you! Hell, if I’d have known, I would have got Adam in here too and he could have helped me out with the voices!”
“My bad, I’ll tell you in advance next time,” says Kate.
I laugh. I don’t know Dave well, but whenever I have spoken to him he has always put me completely at ease. There’s something reassuring about him. It makes you want to confide in him, even though he’s an enormous hulk of an SF guy. Really, he’s a bit of a teddy bear himself.
Adam once told me that when Dave thinks one of his team needs to talk he opens a packet of Skittles and starts to sort them by colour. He has a theory that people concentrate on the colours and not the talking, so when he starts asking questions, people answer honestly without realising.
“I shit you not. It works,” Adam said. “That’s why Dave puts on so much weight during deployments. He probably gets through at least ten packets of Skittles a day.”
“Okay, buddy, I’ve got a good book for you today,” Dave says. He disappears off camera for a second and reappears wearing an eyepatch and holding a book called The Homesick Pirate. Noah squeals again. Pirates are his favourite. Kate looks over his head and mouths “Amazon” at me. I can’t imagine what deployments must have been like before APO addresses and online shopping.
Dave starts reading the story. It is about a pirate who leaves his family behind to go on adventures. He meets mermaids and battles giant squid and finds hidden treasure, but each night he looks up at the stars and thinks about his family back home. Dave puts on an impressive performance as a pirate and occasionally adds in a few of his own “Arrrr, me hearty” and “Shiver me timbers” for good measure. I suspect he has been practising.
During the story, Noah moves from his position in the centre of the sofa and crawls onto my lap. He sits resting his head back against my chest, with the bear under one arm. I notice Dave miss a beat in the story as he and Kate exchange glances. Noah is a friendly child, but I’ve never seen him be particularly affectionate with anyone other than Kate.
At first I sit stiffly, scared that any movement will send him back to the middle of the sofa, but then I relax a bit and put an arm around him. His head droops to one side, leaning against my arm. Kate gives me a smile.
By the end of the book, when the pirate comes home to be reunited with his family, I am blinking rapidly. I’m pretty sure Kate is too. Dave takes off the eyepatch and gives us a wink.
I make the excuse of going to make coffee to give the three of them some time together.
“I really enjoyed that, Dave,” I say as I get up.
“I can’t believe Adam hasn’t been reading you any bedtime stories,” he jokes. “I’m going to have serious words with that man.”
I laugh.
“Please do. I’ve been missing out!”
I go to the kitchen and from there hear the low murmur of Kate and Dave’s voices, and the occasional giggle from Noah. Eventually Kate comes into the kitchen. Noah is lying on the sofa watching a DVD.
“The story makes him sleepy, even though it’s not his bedtime. It gives me peace for an hour or so.”
“That was really lovely, Kate,” I say. “Thanks for letting me be there.”
“It’s no big deal,” she laughs. “We do what we can with the distance. Some days Dave makes up his own stories. You should be here for one of those!”
I pour out coffee for me and fruit tea for Kate. I am as at home in her kitchen now as I am in my own.
“So how are you, anyway?” she asks. “I’m so sorry about the ’terp again, Emma, it must have been rough.”
“It was,” I say. “I think Adam’s taken it badly.”
“I told Dave to keep an eye on him. He said he didn’t know anything about it but that Adam had seemed a bit quiet. What about you though? Didn’t you know the guy too?”
“Yeah, not as well as Adam. Ali saved his life—”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. I met his cousin too. I helped out with her visa application.”
“Visa? Is she in the States now?”
“Yes, although I don’t know where… We’re not in touch,” I say.
“Have you told Adam about your mentoring thing yet?” she asks.
“No,” I say, hoping that I don’t sound too defensive. “I haven’t really had the chance, not with everything else that’s going on.”
“Sure,” says Kate.
I’ve barely mentioned the mentoring to Kate. Since our conversation in the hospital, I’ve realised it’s not something I can share with her. It’s fine, I tell myself. We share different parts of ourselves with different people.
She stops and looks up at me.
“God, I can’t wait for them to get back.”
“Me neither,” I say.
“I’ve always hated being away from him. You know, after the summer Dave and I got together, my parents had to physically force me to go back to college.”
“But weren’t you at high school together?” I ask.
“Yeah, but there were four years between us. I was friends with his sister and we were just kids when Dave left school and joined up. Then I came home the first summer of my physiotherapy degree and he was just back from the Q course. There were only two bars in town and we both wound up in the same one. He came over and said hi – didn’t even realise who I was – and, well, that was it.”
“Do you have any plans for when he gets back?” I ask.
“Not this time. He’s usually pretty tired for the first week, so I think we’ll just hang out at home so he can spend time with Noah before the chaos of this little girl’s arrival.” She runs a hand over her stomach. “But once he’s out of the army… That part I have been planning. Summer hiking in Yosemite, a road trip through the Adirondacks in fall, maybe when the kiddos are grown up we’ll finally make it to Europe. He always promised me that one day we’d eat pastries under the Eiffel Tower…” She drifts off for a second and I smile. “What about you? Did you find a homecoming outfit in the end?” she asks.
“Not yet,” I say.
“Whatever it is, just make sure it’s comfortable,” she says. “They never get back when they say they will and there’s nothing worse than hanging around for hours in a tiny skirt and too much mascara. I learnt that the hard way first time round.”
I had been to Denver to check out the shops there. It wasn’t even about the homecoming outfit really. It was just a way to try keep my mind off other things. Ali’s death. Adam’s silence. The latest unanswered job application.
I spent the day in Denver wandering around the shops and becoming increasingly frustrated. Nothing looked right. Nothing looked like me.
I dropped the last dress on the changing room floor and stood in front of the mirror, under the too-bright lights. I stared at my body and wondered what Adam would think when he saw it too. I looked at the tan line on my legs from a summer of sitting in the garden in shorts. I looked at the curve of my waist and the spot where he would rest a hand. Then I looked at the freckles on my torso that he used to join up with his finger while we lay in bed. I ran my fingertips over the soft flesh where my bra met my breast and tried to imagine how it would feel to have my skin under his. I let the back of my hand brush lightly down my belly, past my navel, skimming tiny hairs like the fuzz of a peach.
“I’m going to make some lunch for Noah. Do you want to join us?” Kate asks, opening the fridge.
“No thanks. I’d better go. I have the afternoon shift in the art shop.”
“Are we still on for Thursday?” she asks. Thursday is Thanksgiving. Despite the circumstances, I am looking forward to it. It was always a big deal in Baghdad. The chow hall would be decorated with paper streamers and the centrepiece would be a giant turkey-shaped cake.
“Definitely. I’m making mashed sweet potato, green bean casserole and some kind of English dessert, right?” I say. “Those seem hard to mess up.”
“Exactly. And I will aim to provide an edible turkey,” says Kate. She told me previously that Dave was famously talented at cooking the turkey, thanks to a technique his grandmother taught him, so it’s usually his responsibility. “If it all goes wrong we’ll order in a pizza and shove some turkey strips on top,” Kate says.
“I’m sure it will be great,” I say, picking up my bag and jacket that is hung over a kitchen stool. “Okay, enjoy lunch. And see you for our feast on Thursday. Give me a call if there’s anything else you want me to bring.”
37
Each night, I lie in bed and wonder if the final mission is today. It has become an obsession. It is the thing that stands between Adam and coming home. I know we are almost there.
Pieces of Me Page 18
