The Shadow Between Us

by Carol Mason

  ‘I had so many surgeries. The doctors kept expecting me to be happier with the progress, but it was almost like they’d oversold me on what the results would be.’ He glances at his hands, upturns them as though seeing them for the first time, which I’ve noticed him do before. ‘I got frustrated having gone through all that pain for what was essentially not much difference. I stopped leaving the house. Would disappear into the basement if anyone came over. I only felt normal when I was drinking. It was just in the evenings at first. Then I’d wake up waiting for it to be evening so I could get shit-faced. Then I stopped worrying what time of day it was and just got shit-faced anyway. I recognised I was on a path, but still, somehow, the SEAL in me felt I could control the drinking if I really wanted to. The thing was – I didn’t want to.’

  He looks at me now but doesn’t seem to be seeing me. By the expression of frank disgust on his face, I believe he’s too busy seeing himself.

  ‘The army doesn’t have a lot of resources to deal with PTSD. You’re kind of out there with a self-help sheet . . . I drove my truck into a brick wall in a total alcohol-fuelled fit of despair. I don’t know whether I just wanted an adrenaline rush again, or whether I seriously wanted to end it . . . I came out of it so dazed I thought I was back in hospital in Germany, right after the accident. My wife said she couldn’t do it any more. She thought I was a danger – to my son, to myself . . . I don’t know if I was seriously a threat to anyone’s safety, but she was right, there was no point in trying to test it.’

  He looks away into the body of the trees. I can’t tear my eyes away from the picture of the life he’s just painted. Because somewhere in this, I see a reflection of mine. How many days did I stay hidden within my four walls to avoid people’s stares? How many times did I visualise ways I could end it if only I was brave enough? Found my only relief when alcohol hit my bloodstream? Mark emptying wine down the sink, saying, ‘You have to hold it together. What would Jess think?’ Listening to Ned just makes me want to say, I know, I can relate. But the fact that I can makes it all the harder to admit.

  He brings his eyes back to mine. ‘I moved out for a while. Got some counselling. Went to a couple of AA meetings . . . The thing was, I could stop drinking. It was a choice. Alcoholics don’t have a choice. And I’m not just saying this to say I’m better than anyone. I fully recognised it was a slippery slope. But once I’d committed to not touching it, I didn’t. And I didn’t need any God and his twelve steps to help me do that.’

  I glance down at that thing he’s got tied round his wrist.

  ‘The problem was what it all stemmed from . . . Deep down I realised I was nothing any more. Before, I was always on a mission with my men. I always had a higher purpose. But now my higher purpose was just to exist purposelessly. In reality I was never going back there again, never going to be part of a team again. So I was nothing now.’

  I let out a slow breath through pursed lips, trying to disentangle the threads of his story that merge too tightly with my own, tempting me to look at myself. ‘But you’re a young guy with your entire life ahead of you. A husband, a father. A hero. How can you say that’s nothing?’

  ‘I’m no hero. I’m no better than any guy out there and no braver.’ He shrugs.

  ‘Can I ask you what that is?’ I reach my hand out and tap an index finger on his wrist, wondering if part of me has somehow just wanted an excuse to touch him.

  ‘Ah,’ he says, seeming to lighten. ‘We closed in on this village outside of Kabul. My teammates had opened fire on this guy in a house – one of our targets. I was searching the rooms upstairs. There was this kid in the corner . . . huddling.’ He frowns as though seeing it. ‘He was terrified and I realised it was probably his father we’d shot . . . I tried to tell him I wasn’t going to hurt him but he couldn’t understand English. Then one of the guys shouted that there was a woman downstairs, hysterical. The kid’s mother, I thought. I told them to bring her up.’ He pulls a mirthless smile. ‘When she lifted him in her arms, the kid was stiff as a board. But he kept on watching me. And I could see this sudden shift in his expression – not fear any more: trust. A minute or two later he pulled this off his wrist and gave it to me.’ He touches the torqued material. ‘I didn’t want to take it but he just kept holding it out, so I did . . . Miraculously it survived the explosion, given it was on the side of me that was the most hit, and I’ve worn it ever since.’

  ‘Wow.’ I don’t know what to say. Because it said online that SEALs never talk about what they do, this divulgence completely subdues me. I just can’t help but think how humanity is the great leveller. ‘Did you ever tell your son about the little boy?’ I ask.

  He nods. ‘I did. Left out the bad parts. Spun it better . . .’

  I study him and I can tell something has derailed his mood again with the mention of his son. Then he says, ‘I let my family down. Lisa. All my son wanted was a dad and a simple family life. And I’m sure Lisa must have thought I didn’t feel they were worth fighting for. Because, believe me, a SEAL’s wife lives her own kind of war. She had to grow up way too fast. Afghanistan took something vital from her, as much as it took my face and my career. I am sure she regularly wonders what sort of person she might have been without all that . . .’ He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, pulls a small photograph from his wallet, passes it to me. ‘This is Lisa and Jamie.’ I can almost hear the quickening of his heart.

  I take it from him, our fingers grazing briefly. It’s hard to sharpen my focus given all he’s just said. My brain is a spinning colour wheel processing all this background information. I stare at the picture of a thin, busty blonde woman, someone who might have won beauty pageants then ended up as a checkout girl in Fred Meyer. The little boy is cute with a buzz cut just like his dad’s and metal-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Lisa’s a registered massage therapist. They’re in quite big demand where we live. She earns decent money and gets to pick and choose her hours around Jamie and his school.’ He shows me another one. This time, next to Lisa and Jamie is a man: Ned before the accident.

  ‘I wasn’t a bad-looking guy, or so people told me,’ he says, semi-seriously.

  We meet eyes. ‘You’re still that guy.’

  ‘You’re kind,’ he says, after a moment.

  I want to protest that I’m not being kind; that talking to him just affirms that our looks don’t define us. His scars, once you get used to them, are only a part of what I see, like a pattern on a shirt. What anyone looking at him would see is someone who is principled, interesting, strong. Someone who downplays himself, who is completely without ego. I suddenly find myself filling with questions. Is their marriage truly over? What’s he really doing so far away? I want to ask him how he lives, how he pays his bills, where real life begins once military life has ended . . .

  I must be transmitting it because he says, ‘I needed to be on my own. I just got in my truck, started driving, then I was somewhere else, in another state . . . Somewhere along the road I decided it was a good plan to drive across the country. So here I am.’ He shrugs again, looks slightly hopeless. ‘Anyway, don’t be freaked out if some days I’m a hard guy to have a conversation with.’ He stands, stretches his arms way above his head, leans back slightly, which makes me look to the area where his T-shirt rides up from his jeans – the patch of bare, unharmed skin. ‘And don’t ever worry about saying the wrong thing,’ he says through a yawn. ‘I’ve pretty much heard it all. You can’t imagine how many people have tried to talk to me. When I was back there, in Florida, that’s all everybody was trying to do, to give me their opinions. They meant well, of course. But they never actually let me say anything. It’s rare for me to just have someone to listen.’

  I am struck by how the air between us is changed. How one small divulgence of confidence – the opening of a window and the invitation to look inside – has drawn us a different topography, brought us to a new understanding of each other. How expansive I now feel. Almost giddy.

&nbs
p; He takes his glass into the house. I continue to sit here, recast, listening to him running water in the sink.

  When I go inside, he has his back to me. I watch him mopping up the tiny flood that collects around the taps with my hand towel. He looks so out of place, so oddly domesticated in this little house, which makes a battered part of me smile.

  He turns and catches me observing him, takes stock of me for a second or two. ‘Army training. I’ve been told I’m the tidiest guy alive.’

  I smile. He continues to study me. Whatever more was coming stays unfinished.

  ‘I’ll see you soon then?’ I say, when he carefully hangs my towel back on its hook and makes towards the door. ‘Maybe next week at the Correspondents’ Club?’ I sometimes wonder if my tendency to give people an easy out is why everyone has taken it.

  He stops right in front of me, a mite too close – it’s like being back in Beth’s doorway all over again. I have that same sense of being galvanised by his nearness and yet bemused by why I should be. ‘You’ll see me tomorrow, Olivia. I guarantee it.’ There is a beat of hesitation where he just stands there, his eyes moving steadily, and with pleasure, around my face. Then he slowly reaches for the door handle.

  Reluctant to leave?

  Or perhaps I’m just finding myself in a strange frame of mind where I want him to be.

  EIGHTEEN

  My phone rings from under a pile of cushions.

  ‘Hi,’ he says.

  I seem to momentarily lose my voice. ‘Hi.’

  ‘What are you up to?’ he asks when there’s a canyon of silence between us. He sounds casual, chilled, much like the old Mark – or he’s trying to. I’m guessing the necklace business is clearly forgotten about now. Except, perhaps, by me. I just keep thinking of his parting words as I got into my car. ‘Show me. Go on . . . If you found something, then I want to see it!’ and me cringing as I shut the door.

  I pull my mind back to the present and his innocuous question. What the hell am I up to? ‘Oh? Right now?’ I say. ‘Not much. Just watching a spot of TV.’ I haven’t had the TV on in two nights but don’t want to tell him I’m just sitting here in space, in case he reads something negative into that. ‘What about you?’ I ask. It feels surprisingly nice to have an ordinary conversation. We could be coming together at the end of a normal long day. It makes me miss us.

  ‘Oh, not much. I was just out watering the plants. Got talking to our favourite neighbours. Tanya was saying she hasn’t seen you in a while.’

  With the emergence of his sarcasm, a part of me smiles; he can’t stand Tanya Waxman and isn’t the biggest fan of Bill. All the more reason I would have expected him to rally to my defence the day I saturated the idiot in his garden, I suppose, but never mind. ‘What did you tell her?’ I ask.

  ‘Just that you’d gone to England to spend some time with your folks.’

  As if. My parents were the last people I could have talked to. How do you inflict something as big as what I’ve gone through on the elderly? ‘Think she believed you?’

  ‘No.’ He sounds semi-amused.

  I snicker.

  ‘Who gives a shit what she believes though?’ he says.

  And right there is the old Mark: my number one ally and champion.

  I hear him taking a drink of something, picture him sitting on the sofa with his Scotch glass containing one fashionably large and slow-melting ice cube. I am feeling almost drugged by tiredness and the comfy familiarity of us, and find no need to root around in my head to come up with anything deeper than, ‘How are you doing?’ I realise I haven’t asked him this in a very long time. Not properly – where I might be giving him the opportunity to actually tell me.

  There’s a lengthy silence then he says, ‘OK. You know . . . What can I say?’

  I wait to see if he will say anything else, but he doesn’t. So I ask, ‘How’s work these days?’

  ‘Working,’ he says, sounding a little flat. And then, ‘How’s your letter-writing club?’

  ‘Ah . . . the Correspondents’ Club.’ I always love saying its name. ‘Good. I like it a lot.’ My thoughts slide briefly to last night, to Ned and his hand reluctantly on my door handle. ‘I never really expected to, but I hugely look forward to the meetings. There’s something very calming about the environment, the company, the busy silence . . . It’s cathartic somehow.’

  ‘Good,’ he says, after a pause. Mark is never one to really get into conversations about catharsis or anything vaguely resembling it, so it doesn’t surprise me this topic is over quickly. ‘Oh, by the way, I spoke to Cassie the other day,’ he says. ‘She was asking how you were doing.’

  I feel like saying, Bit late! Sadly, I am somewhat inured to his sister’s name. I can’t really say I’ve ever been all that close to Mark’s family. We’re polite and we get along; our relationship has just never gone very deep. Cassie is a successful chef. Her restaurant, in the Bay area of San Francisco, regularly wins national awards. No Michelin stars yet, which, after her comment about how my chicken noodle soup is the only thing I can make, ensures I don’t lose any sleep over this. Bitchiness aside, my biggest criticism of her is that in all these years she has never made any attempt to be close to Jessica – despite having no kids of her own and Jess being her only niece. Not a single card, gift, text or phone call on birthdays or Christmases. Jess has never once been asked down for a visit. Then when my daughter suffered a Grade II concussion after a skiing fall two winters ago, Cassie spoke to Mark but never thought I might have welcomed a little show of family support. And of course it goes without saying that after everything that’s happened lately, she has rung me a grand total of twice.

  ‘What did you say to her?’ I ask him.

  ‘The truth. That you’ve had to go away for a while to be on your own. That you’re still not doing too well. She said she’d call you some time.’ Mark always has faith in his sister, and I don’t want to rob him of that.

  ‘That’s nice,’ I say. He may be waiting for me to add I won’t hold my breath, but instead, with being on this topic of people’s support or lack thereof, I find myself telling him I finally got around to reading some old messages on Facebook. In particular Eloise’s.

  He sighs. ‘Ah, yes, that was kind of sad, I must admit.’

  ‘Kind of?’ I say, with a stab of surprise.

  ‘You were going through a very tough time, I realise. I’m not blaming you.’

  I have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. ‘Blaming me? For what?’

  ‘For pushing her away.’

  ‘I’m confused,’ I say, after trying to think through a few accelerated beats of my heart. ‘How do you make out that I pushed her away? She never came near me. Four messages on social media in all that time.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that,’ he says, after a long pause. ‘Eloise came to our door every night for days, weeks, but you refused to see her. She was the one who organised all that food to be delivered from Westin. Remember? There was a full month’s supply of meals for the freezer because you were in no state to even get up from the chair.’

  I find myself staring into space and blinking. I don’t know why he’s saying this. Eloise visited? Often? If that were true, I would have remembered.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says, changing tack, as though that little blip on our landscape isn’t worth pursuing further. ‘The reason I was phoning – one of them, I mean . . . I wanted to know if you would send me your address.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask suspiciously.

  ‘Because I’ve got something I want to mail you.’

  He sounds like he’s enjoying being a little mysterious. ‘Like?’

  ‘I don’t want to tell you, or . . . It’s just something I thought you might like.’

  There is a loaded silence while we wait for me to reply. If Mark had been wanting to find out where I lived and somehow come and haul me back to Seattle with him I think he’d have done it by now. Besides, hauling me anywhere isn’t really his styl
e. So I don’t think this is a ploy. I give him my address.

  ‘OK,’ he says, sounding a little flatter than when this conversation started out. ‘Gonna pop it in the mail tomorrow, hopefully. Keep an eye out . . .’

  It’s a guarantee.

  NINETEEN

  ‘Wow! This is so cool!’ Daniel gawks at Beth’s latest find. ‘What is it?’

  We are gathered around it like it’s an artefact from a previous century or possibly from the moon.

  ‘I kinda feel I should ask that myself,’ Ned chimes in, sending me a sly smirk.

  ‘It’s a typewriter,’ Beth says. ‘The very one Anne Bancroft used in 84 Charing Cross Road.’ She is giddy like the cat who got the canary.

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ I ask, then when I see her expression, follow it with, ‘I’m not being funny with you! I’m genuinely fascinated!’

  ‘It was advertised on Amazon as movie memorabilia. The seller’s deceased aunt bought it at an auction years ago. I paid him three hundred dollars for it.’

  ‘It’s probably not the typewriter from the movie and you’ve probably been had, but it is beautiful.’ I touch its shiny top. ‘I loved that film, by the way. Anne Bancroft was everything I wanted to be.’

  ‘A schoolboy’s fantasy?’ Ned doesn’t miss a beat. There is something quite flagrant about the way his gaze drops over me as he says it. ‘I believe you could pull off that role very well.’

  The boldness of this hits like a tiny electric shock. My cheeks pulse and burn. It’s as though everyone has stopped and is looking at me. I try to pretend to be quite unaware of it.

  ‘She was beautiful.’ York saves the day. ‘And not far off my age. Which would make her a bigger relic than that machine.’

  Beth prods my arm. ‘Watch the film again. I can promise you it’s the same one. Besides, the guy had no reason to lie.’

  Ned’s eyes hitch on to mine and we smile.

  ‘How does it work?’ Daniel plonks down in front of it.