by Dana Canedy
Now here I was sliding rings on my finger and holding them up to the light. Charles watched and adjusted his baseball cap. I could not read his expression. Was he thinking the stones were too big or was he sorry that he had suggested the trip to the jeweler in the first place?
“They’re all beautiful, but I need some air,” I said, returning a ring to the tray and grabbing Charles’s hand. As soon as we had made our escape, I hugged him, kissed his cheek, and whispered, “I love you so much, but let’s not do this today.”
“Come on, you crazy woman,” he said, good-naturedly— which surprised me, given the risk that he had taken in bringing me to that store. “Let’s go to the beach.”
At dinner that night, I told Charles that I didn’t want us to be one of those couples that rush into marriage because of the grief of 9/11. We had so much time, I told him.
“You’ve been an independent woman a long time,” he said. “Are you sure you want to get married at all?”
“Charles, listen to me,” I said, taking his hands in mine. “I love you and I do want to marry you, eventually. But we’ve never even lived in the same city. Doesn’t that concern you?”
“No, I know you, Dana.”
“But, Charles, we haven’t really discussed what we expect from marriage.”
He said he did not expect much. “I just want to be your king and make you my queen.”
“That sounds nice,” I said, “but what does that mean? Would you expect me to come home from work every day and cook you dinner? Would you care if I didn’t take your last name?”
“I don’t care about you cooking or what name you call yourself,” he said.
It was a good start—but, to my mind, only a beginning.
We turned our attention to our food and I convinced Charles to try escargots. To his surprise, he liked them and ate the entire appetizer. The gentle swaying of the ship soothed me and I wanted to be in his arms. We finished our dinner and went to the lido deck to indulge in a late-night chocolate buffet and music under the stars. We danced slow and close in the moonlight and breathed in the sea air between kisses.
Then all too soon our two weeks together were over. Except for an occasional weekend getaway, we spent the rest of winter and most of the spring apart, as his number of combat-readiness missions suddenly increased. He never complained, but I knew he was tired of being in the desert and sleeping alone. He said when the temperature dipped at night, he imagined my warm body next to his.
I was simply grateful that, as a troop instructor, Charles could not be deployed to Afghanistan. It might be scorching by day and cold at night in the California desert, but at least he was not atop a mountain in the Middle East searching in the darkness for Osama bin Laden. There were times when Charles hinted that he felt uneasy being involved in mock battles when so many soldiers were fighting the real fight. I reminded him that he had already served several combat missions and that the training he was overseeing was vital.
One day in late spring, Charles told me that he was going to take a few days off so that we could spend our birthdays together. But with so many soldiers he knew being deployed to Afghanistan, he was in no mood for grand getaways. We would spend our time in Miami, but I was determined to make it as festive as possible. I spent a week searching for a gift for him before settling on a handsome set of Italian leather luggage. The only suitcases he owned looked as though they were held together with duct tape, but I knew that it would not occur to him to replace them.
The day he arrived, I left the office early and came home carrying a large box wrapped in bright gift paper. He met me at the door, smiling. I set down the box and he wrapped me in a long embrace.
“I missed you,” he said.
I felt like a little girl ready to blow out candles and hand out party favors. I couldn’t wait to see his face when he unwrapped my gift, and I have to admit that I couldn’t wait to see what he had chosen for me. But as soon as he noticed my box, he looked panic-stricken.
“Let’s open our gifts now,” I said excitedly. He stammered and continued to eye the box nervously as I handed it to him.
“Do you like it?” I asked, beaming, when he tore off the tissue paper covering the black leather and pulled out one of the pieces.
“Wow,” he said, looking stunned. He studied each piece of luggage before slowly returning them to the box. Then he got up and paced nervously. He seemed to be stalling.
“I have something for you, too,” he finally said. “But it’s not much.”
He handed me something the size of a small book, and I tore off the wrapping paper. It was a paperback novel. I wrinkled my forehead in confusion.
“I know how much you like to read,” he said, weakly.
“Charles, don’t try that,” I snapped. “You forgot to get me a gift, didn’t you? I’m not stupid. You picked this up in the airport.”
“Look, honey, I’ve been busy. I’m sorry. I just wanted to make the flight.”
I was fuming, and we barely spoke that evening or before I left for work the next morning. When I got home that evening, there was a tiny jewelry box on the coffee table. Charles was nervous, I could see, as I ripped off the pretty paper and opened the box. Inside was a delicate pair of gold hoop earrings. There was a problem, though. Try as I might, I could not fasten them around my earlobes.
“Great, Charles. First you forget my gift altogether, and now you’ve managed to get me something that makes me feel like even my ears are fat!” I chided, only half-joking.
He was crestfallen. We drove back to the store together to return the earrings, Charles rubbing his temples, me huffing. I explained the problem to the sales clerk as Charles leaned on the counter, looking wounded.
“Ma’am,” the salesman said, “these earrings are for babies.”
Charles and I burst out laughing.
With all that had been going on in the world, it felt good to laugh about a fight over something as frivolous as birthday presents. I was glad, too, that Charles and I had reached a point in our relationship in which it could withstand a feud or two—and, believe me, we had them. I finally trusted him to stay.
I could be myself with Charles because he saw me as the woman I hoped to be instead of the one who was easily agitated, occasionally hypercritical, and always obsessing over a few extra pounds. I recalled how moved I had been by his devotion when he accompanied me to the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention in Orlando the summer before. While I attended workshops and interviewed potential Times applicants, Charles sat by the pool drawing and catching up on his rest.
I had been asked to deliver a speech at the closing night banquet, and I rehearsed it every evening in our hotel room. Each time I made it to the end, Charles clapped and proclaimed the speech perfect. But I was nervous. I did not tell him that my anxiety had nothing to do with the speech but instead with the fact that my ex-boyfriend, Greg, and his new wife would be in the audience.
Charles did not want to put on a suit and make small talk with strangers while I sat on the dais, and I did not protest: by now I understood his shyness, and when he said he would rather stay behind and work on a drawing, I didn’t mind. He was so grateful that he offered to iron my outfit. I chose a lavender blouse and a snug gray skirt—then changed my mind when I saw it on.
“It’s too plain, and my hips look huge.”
He pulled my red suit out of the closet.
“Too hot,” I protested.
He ironed a silk fuchsia blouse with three-quarter-length sleeves for me to wear with a floor-length black satin skirt. I put it on and was doing a slow turn in the mirror when Charles walked up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. He rubbed my back and then slowly turned me to face him.
“Dana,” he said, “you’re not Greg’s girl anymore. You’re a woman with a woman’s body. You look beautiful. Now go give your speech.”
I was astonished. How had he known?
I lowered my eyes in embarrassmen
t. I had never felt so loved.
“I’m sorry,” I said, just above a whisper. I kissed him deeply, reapplied my lipstick, and walked out feeling more confident than I had in a long while. And though I caught sight of Greg in the ballroom moments before I walked to the podium, the only man I was interested in impressing was my own.
Whether Charles was giving me a pep talk about facing my former boyfriend or laughing off my silliness about a birthday gift, he always made it clear that he was with me for the long haul. But we were living in a season of seismic shifts that kept shaking our foundation.
On the evening of March 19, 2003, President Bush addressed the nation and announced that the United States was declaring war on Iraq. “My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger,” the president said.
I would soon have a part in chronicling the war. After two and a half years as bureau chief, I was promoted to assignment editor for national news and moved back to New York. My job included assigning national reporters to track relatives of some of the soldiers in combat. The national desk was also responsible for periodic stories intended to gauge Americans’ support of the war. When the military approached the terrible milestone of one thousand U.S. soldier deaths in 2004, I sent a team of reporters to cover some of the funerals and put names and faces to the “casualties of war,” a term I hated. Those soldiers had mothers and children and names like Taylor and Diego—and Charles.
Charles and I did not discuss in any depth whether we thought the invasion and occupation of Iraq was right or wrong. We had our reasons: after 9/11, he would not have questioned his commander in chief, and, as a journalist for one of the world’s most prominent newspapers, I was used to maintaining a posture of neutrality. Then, too, I suppressed what frightened me most— that he could be sent into combat. So I simply avoided talking about it.
Charles was promoted to the rank of first sergeant in June 2004 and reassigned to Fort Hood, Texas. There he was put in charge of an entire company, comprising more than one hundred soldiers. It was a great honor, but I did not meet the news with the same excitement that he did. It meant that he could now be deployed.
Less than six months into his new assignment, Charles called me with the news I had dreaded.
“Honey,” he said softly, “I got orders for Iraq.”
Seven
Dear Jordan,
Orders for Iraq. I heard the words your father spoke that winter day in 2004, but my mind would not accept them. He simply could not be sent into battle. It had taken us too long to find each other.
“Oh God, Charles, please don’t tell me that,” I said. And then: “Can’t you get out of it?”
“No, Dana,” he said gently. “I put on the uniform and I take the paycheck, so I have to go where the commander in chief sends me.”
I knew that would be his answer as well as I knew that he was somehow relieved to be joining the war. For months he had felt guilty about preparing soldiers for a battle he was not himself fighting. To him, it was like violating a sacred oath. Nothing I said eased his torment, especially after he began to hear from buddies he had served with during the First Gulf War who were heading back to Iraq.
I could have begged or railed. I could have pleaded with Charles to consider how his elderly parents would react. I did have political views about the war—everyone did, and I could have forced him into debating the issue. But none ofthat seemed right now. What mattered was supporting my man. I certainly did not want to risk saying anything that would hurt his morale or make him question his mission.
“When will you go?” I asked.
“The end of next year,” Charles said, and I thought I heard relief in his tone again. In the last few months, he had begun to reflect more and more on his time serving in Operation Desert Storm. Even knowing the dangers he would face, he felt his orders somehow completed him.
I found myself thinking of the past, too. When I had vowed years earlier never to marry a soldier, it was because I feared replicating painful parts of my childhood and limiting my career choices. I had never considered a far greater risk: that my man might be sent into battle.
It took Charles’s pending deployment to throw everything else into perspective. The personal commitments that I had so long been afraid of I now wanted desperately. I loved being a journalist and as a reporter had considered it a point of pride that my editors knew I kept a packed suitcase in my car and my laptop nearby in case they needed an “unencumbered” reporter in a hurry. I had even achieved the financial security I sought, but I was also approaching forty. Hopping on a plane at a moment’s notice was no longer a thrill. Waking up in a hotel and not remembering what city I was in no longer seemed like an adventure. On some level I must have known this; I had accepted the editing job in New York when I could have become a foreign correspondent or a national bureau chief in another city. Now I stayed in one place and sent other people to unfamiliar cities to cover wildfires and plane crashes. I wanted to experience more of life, not merely report on it.
One evening, when Charles called to tell me about his latest drawing, I was distracted and cut him off.
“I want to have a baby,” I blurted out.
He thought I was joking and laughed.
“I’m serious, Charles. I want to try to get pregnant.”
He was silent for a minute. “Why?”
The question lingered.
Charles knew that I had never particularly wanted children. I liked them well enough and adored my nieces and nephews, but I had seen so many parents struggle financially, including my own. I wanted the freedom to focus on my career without worrying about being a breadwinner and a nursemaid. I never had the baby lust that lots of women feel when they reach their thirties. I was too busy building up my 4
Of course, the issue was not just my feelings; it was about whether Charles and I would be good parents together. So many children, African Americans especially, were growing up without fathers. Charles, I knew, would love me and any child of ours too much to ever leave us. He was the only man who had been patient enough to really try to understand me—and to love me anyway. I knew he would be an equally patient father.
I wanted to be his wife as well as the mother of his child, but I knew him well enough to know that he was too traditional to entertain a proposal from a woman. He needed to do the asking, in his time and in his way.
As I thought about how to answer Charles’s immediate question, it occurred to me that he was not aware of something: the balance of power in our relationship had shifted. The days of him pursuing me and me letting him were over. I had urged him more than once during difficult moments in our relationship to date other people, but I was now thankful he had not found anyone to replace me. I loved him more than he knew, and it was time to make him see.
My answer to his question was definitive. I told him I had never known a man with such amazing character and strength and spirituality. I told him that he was my best friend, but that I had also never experienced such passion with a man.
I did not say that knowing that our baby was growing inside of me might sustain us both during the long year ahead.
“Do you think it’s even possible?” Charles asked.
“All we can do is try,” I said. “If you want to.”
“Absolutely,” he said, startling me with his certainty.
“Really, don’t you want to think about it awhile? I’m not asking you for a puppy, you know.”
“No, I don’t need to think about it,” Charles said emphatically.
“Are you sure?”
“Stop asking me that,” he said. “Yo
u’re the one who doesn’t sound sure.”
“It’s just that I don’t understand how you can make a decision like this so quickly,” I said.
“I made it a long time ago,” he said.
I reached into a drawer in my nightstand. “I’m about to throw out my birth control pills.”
He said, “Go ahead.”
That night I thought again about how well Charles had come to understand me, and how that helped me to better know myself. Once, when I came home from work furious about a disagreement with my boss, I followed Charles around the apartment, animatedly recounting what had happened. He did not say a word. Finally I turned to him and asked, “Well, don’t you have any advice?” Barely pausing for an answer, I resumed my rant. When I was done, I realized that while I was talking he had drawn me a bubble bath, lit candles, and put on a jazz CD.
Wordlessly, he helped me undress and lowered me into the warm water. Then he handed me a glass of Chardonnay, set a bowl of popcorn beside me, and told me he was going for a walk. I was finally speechless. By the time he returned forty-five minutes later, I was watching a sitcom and laughing out loud. Charles might not have had much to say about office politics or the newspaper business, but he knew what I needed, sometimes better than I did.
Knowing he would rarely ask for anything for himself, I tried to anticipate his needs, too. I could tell from the way he moved when his muscles were sore and he needed a massage. If he got out of bed in the middle of the night to draw, I knew something was troubling him, and that if I sat quietly beside him long enough, he would tell me about it. I knew that he enjoyed long baths nearly as much as I did but would not take one unless I prepared it for him.
It would be two months before Charles’s next break in training, but I could not contain my excitement about our decision. We had agreed not to tell anyone until there was something to say— but I went ahead and told my mother, my sisters, and my closest girlfriends.
“Girl, that’s going to be a beautiful baby,” said my friend Loretta.
