While He Was Away

by Karen Schreck

  “First I’ll show you around, introduce you,” Linda is saying. “New girl. Of course, everyone knows who you are. I talk about you all the time. ‘My daughter, the artist!’ Oh, I don’t know what the specials are today. We’ll have to figure that out. Listen, here’s how you cope if, let’s say, five four-tops and three deuces come in all at once—”

  “Please!” I clap my hands over my ears. I feel like the top of my head is going to blow off. “I’ll cope exactly how I’m coping now. Just barely.”

  On the way home—how many hours from now?—Linda will probably debrief me in exactly this manner. Only I’ll be even more tired. I’ll probably have to guzzle caffeine to get my butt up into that attic, and then I’ll be up all night and trying to sleep all day again, and Linda will really let me have it tomorrow.

  We stop at a red light. There’s the park with the playground.

  And there’s Ravi, balancing at the top of the slide on his skateboard.

  That feeling comes over me—that panicky feeling I get whenever David does something like back-flip off a viaduct wall. I roll down the window and shout, “Are you crazy?”

  Ravi shades his eyes with his hand. He must realize it’s me, because he calls back, “Nope. Just a superhero.”

  Linda peers over my shoulder. “Who’s that?”

  “Some guy,” I mutter. And shout, “Don’t kill yourself!”

  The light turns green. Ravi sails down the slide and into the air. He makes his landing, steady and sure. The momentum sends him hurtling toward us. Linda kicks the car into gear quickly and drives on. As if he might dent her VW.

  “Crazy,” Linda says.

  “No.” I sound mad. I am mad. About a lot of things. “Not really.”

  Linda smirks. “Gotta love the ‘really.’”

  I scowl out the window. Enough about Ravi. I’ll think about Justine, that letter in the attic. What will it tell me? Will it tell me if Justine ever walked these streets like David and I used to do? Was there a playground here way back then? Did Justine and her soldier ever swing on the swings together or kiss there in the dark?

  More important, did Justine ever spend time at Red Earth?

  I drop my feet on the car’s floor, registering yes. Of course she spent time at Red Earth. My grandpa owned the place, after all.

  I glance at Linda, wondering if she’s still trying to get inside my business, inside my head, but she’s tapping her fingers on the steering wheel to a song that’s playing in her head. She’s smiling. She might as well be the one who’s half a world away. I look out my window again. The houses, apartment buildings, and occasional fast-food joints are dwindling into strip malls, gas stations, and lots of fast-food joints. And up ahead the neon sign for Red Earth flares—a red horizon line and a brown tumbleweed flashing on and off, rolling, rolling, and going nowhere in the neon wind.

  We drive around to the back of the two-story brick building and park by the garbage bins. We get out of the VW, and I follow Linda through Red Earth’s back door. Linda calls a cheery hello to Isaac, the ebony-skinned chef, who comes equipped with full mustache and trademark green bandanna covering his dreadlocks. Isaac is tending his griddle—the sizzling sausage there. He salutes Linda with his tongs, ignores me, and goes back to flipping links. He’s all business, that Isaac.

  Linda plucks two gray time cards from the metal rack beside the time clock. She hands one to me.

  “After you,” she says.

  I punch the clock.

  Linda gives me a swift hug. “You’re officially one of us now.”

  “Yippee,” I say.

  Everything happens fast then. Linda introduces me in my professional capacity to Caitlin, the waif-like cocktail waitress with the stick-straight, shoulder-length, pink-streaked blond hair and fake Irish brogue. (“Caitlin tries on lots of different accents,” Linda whispers to me, “but mostly she’s all Irish, to go with her name, I guess.”) I remember Caitlin from school last year. She was a senior. (Apparently she was a hanger-on as well, too old for high school, since she can serve drinks already.) She was all into theater. I saw her play Eliza Doolittle in the fall production of My Fair Lady.

  “I don’t remember you,” Caitlin says bluntly when I tell her this.

  Linda whisks me off to say hi to Tom, the sixty-something, bald-as-a-cue-ball bartender with American eagles tattooed on his forearms. He gives me a quick appraising glance, grunts hello, and then turns away.

  How welcoming.

  While Linda checks the table settings, I restock the salad bar. Fill the water pitchers. Make fresh coffee. With Linda’s help I gradually start hustling around the dimly lit dining room like I actually belong here—only once banging my head on the low-hanging, faux-wagon-wheel lamps that hang over the heavy oak tables. Only twice bruising my shins on the chairs. Only three times tripping over the cold stone fireplace’s raised hearth. And in between all this, checking my cell phone to make sure it’s not on silent, in case David has a chance to call.

  The rest of the décor is pretty minimal, thank God. There are a few old photographs of Killdeer on the walls that I’ve never seen before. I want to check them out, but I have too many other things to think about right now.

  I go into the kitchen to get some fresh ketchup bottles. Isaac evaluates me from his griddle.

  “Wonder what that’ll look like when you’re eighty-five,” he says, looking pointedly at my tattooed finger.

  I shrug. I never think about when I’m eighty-five. Before Justine, I’d never thought much above Linda’s age, actually. Forty was my cutoff.

  “I can always get it removed if it starts looking bad,” I say. “But it won’t. I won’t. I love it.”

  And I do.

  Shaking his head, Isaac turns back to whatever he’s frying now.

  At 4:15, when everything seems ready, Caitlin stuffs her iPod into her apron and pops a CD into Red Earth’s player. An Irish band blares, penny whistles shrilling. Linda rolls her eyes, but the band plays on. Stripped of her earbuds, Caitlin wants to chat. She grabs my arm and steers me over to a table near the bar. She pats the back of a chair, and—what the heck—I drop down into it. These Doc Martens feel too heavy. Guess my feet are used to flip-flops and sandals.

  “Two Cokes, pretty please,” Caitlin calls to Tom. She seems to have forgotten her brogue for the moment. She’s just a regular Okie now.

  Tom fills two glasses and pushes them across the bar to Caitlin. Caitlin hands me one and plops down in a chair beside me. I take a long drink; I didn’t realize I was so thirsty. Over the rim of my glass, I watch Tom, who’s methodically cutting limes into neat little wedges. Tom moves like molasses, tending bar. But Linda knew him when she was a little girl—apparently Tom was an old friend of the family and lived with them for a while—and when he came looking for work because he couldn’t make it on his pension, she immediately hired him.

  “Tom’s a fixture,” Linda told me one night. “He was like a little brother to my dad.”

  Now I’m thinking, Brother to Grandpa, uncle to Linda, great-uncle to me? And then, He knew Justine maybe?

  “So you think you’re ready?”

  I start at Caitlin’s voice. I’d almost forgotten she was sitting beside me. I look at her. She’s watching me as closely as I was watching Tom, her glossy lips pursed around her straw.

  I give a little shiver, pull myself back into now. “Ready or not.” I take in the empty restaurant—fifteen tables, plus the one Caitlin and I are sitting in!—and my stomach lurches.

  “It’ll be slow till five-ish, then it’ll be crazy till nine thirty–ish, and then it’ll slow down again till closing. I’ll help you during the worst of the rush, and I know your ma will too. But basically I’m all about the alcohol. If there’s a bunch of folks boozing it up at one table, I’ll be there. I make real money, see, on tips from sloppy drinkers. I don’t have a sugar mama at home like you do. I’ve got parents who make me pay rent. So I’m fixin’ to make some cold, hard cash. Got it? S
omeday I’ll make my million doing voice-overs in LA, but until then this is it.”

  I grip my glass more tightly. “I’m not asking you to carry me.”

  “Oh, right.” Caitlin rolls her eyes. “Listen. You got clout. Talk your mom into hiring another night person, why don’t you? Someone with a little experience? I mean, sometimes I can barely keep up. This place is hopping lately. I don’t know how you’re going to manage.”

  “When Red Earth gets really established, we’ll hire more help.” I push my glass away. My stomach’s suddenly too jittery even for a Coke. “That’s what Linda says at least.” I glance around again. “Where is she anyway?”

  Caitlin laughs. “Oh, it’s Linda, is it?”

  Of course I’m not going to tell Caitlin that I didn’t start calling Linda by her first name until after I got together with David. Saying Linda’s name, and Bonnie’s and Beau’s too, bound David and me even closer. It gave us access to knowledge and perspective, the way passwords and codes work for spies. Say Linda, and Open sesame! a kind of door unlocked, and David and I’d find ourselves in a secret place—an interior space, far from all that confined and defined us. Our parents, sure, but Killdeer too. We could do what we wanted there. Talk for hours. Break petty rules. Make out. Whatever. It always felt good.

  But he’s called them Mom and Dad, I suddenly realize, every time he’s spoken about them on the phone.

  “Linda’s in the kitchen, where she so often is these days.” Caitlin flicks her pale eyebrows. “Seems the other new member of the crew needs lots of attention.”

  “Isaac?”

  “Yeah. Linda took a big risk hiring him. I heard Linda—”

  “Will you stop with the Linda!”

  Caitlin laughs. “Cute.” She chucks me under the chin. “Anyway, I heard her telling Tom. Isaac said he wouldn’t work here unless he got a bigger salary than any of the previous cooks. He actually has decent restaurant experience. She was worried at first, but now it seems like the risk might be paying off.” Caitlin polishes off her drink. “Isaac’s food will turn this place into a high-class joint, mark my words. What with the Southern-Down-Home-Cooking-Meets-Tex-Mex-Meets-Cajun-Meets-Irish-Fare thing he’s got going on.”

  “A true kitchen god.” I’m a little less queasy. It feels good to joke with someone a little.

  “Just make sure you don’t rub Isaac the wrong way, or we’ll all suffer. He can be a real—”

  “Bastard!” Tom shouts.

  Startled, Caitlin and I both look at him.

  But Tom’s not talking about Isaac. He’s shaking his fist at the TV above the bar. “They did it again!”

  Caitlin claps her hands to her chest. “Watch the volume, Tom, why don’t you?”

  “Just look at this.” Tom stares up at the TV. “Iraq.”

  He’s watching the news—a special report. A hazy video flickers across the screen. It shows a Hummer, on its side and twisted. Bodies litter the dusty road.

  So far I’ve successfully avoided the news. The special reports.

  “A resurgence in violence,” the reporter says.

  Caitlin snorts. “Who are these assholes, anyway? Can somebody tell me? Tom? You were in Vietnam. You know everything.”

  Tom doesn’t answer or look away from the TV.

  “Penna?” Caitlin asks.

  Numbly, I shake my head. There had to be a war. That’s all I know. There was evil out there, and we had to defeat it. That’s what David always said before OSUT. That’s one of the reasons he told me he enlisted.

  Tom is gripping the bar so tightly that the eagles on his forearms bulge. He looks back up at the TV. “Listen to the man, will you?”

  Caitlin ignores him. “And what is an EID exactly? Every day, it’s war this, war that.”

  “Show a little respect, and maybe I’ll fill you in,” Tom mutters.

  Caitlin shrugs, then glances at me and clucks her tongue. “Uh-oh. Now look what you did to the boss’s daughter. Doesn’t look like she likes that show either. You’re nearly as white as the driven snow, Penna.” Caitlin slings her arm around my shoulder. “Come on, now. They’re there. We’re here. It’s okay. Look. It’s not even us hurt. Those are them.”

  Now there’s another clip playing across the TV screen. U.S. soldiers are moving through rubble that was a marketplace, the reporter is saying. One of the soldiers carries a limp, black-haired boy. The rest carry guns.

  The boy makes me think of a young David or Ravi.

  “Help me out here, Tom. She looks like she might faint or something. Don’t hurl, kid, okay?” Caitlin gives me a brisk pat. “Just another day in Baghdad. Come on now.”

  “An IED is an improvised explosive device.” I hear myself saying this. My voice is flat and dull. “A homemade bomb.”

  “That’s right.” Tom considers me.

  Caitlin claps her hands together, falsely enthusiastic. “Aren’t you the G.I. Jane!”

  “I took Current Events.” I shiver. What I don’t say is that before OSUT, David talked about stuff like this. He liked gaming, and a lot of times the games he played were about war. Sometimes I sat down with him at his computer and watched him go at it. I took a few shots myself, popped off a few of the virtual bad guys. I learned some things that way—lots more than I ever learned in Current Events.

  Once David and I even shot paintballs at an Iraqi artist through his website. “Shoot the Kaffiyeh,” the website was called. It was anti-war, I know. But David and I didn’t talk about that. We just thought the site was interesting. Cool. At first. The artist was wearing one of those patterned, fringed scarves a lot of Muslim men wear—a kaffiyeh. He was sitting on a low couch in front of a coffee table in what looked like a simple little living room—other than the fact that everything, including the artist, was splattered with red paint, and there was a paintball gun mounted in one corner.

  As we watched, the artist picked up a newspaper and started to read. The newspaper was printed in strange script. The artist took a drink from a glass of water. Then David clicked on something and, wham, fired a paintball. The paintball struck the edge of the newspaper, ripped the newspaper from the artist’s hands, and exploded in red against a wall.

  “Holy crap,” David said. He laughed nervously. He said it was my turn. “Come on,” David said. “Just think about 9/11. Shoot him.”

  The artist was bent over, collecting the messy shreds of newspaper when I took my shot. I aimed off to the side, but even when the paintball just burst bloodily against the floor, I practically hyperventilated.

  “I don’t like this,” I said.

  David stuttered around for a little bit—9/11 this, 9/11 that. Finally he said he didn’t really like this either. Not really. The guy reminded him too much of Ravi. David rolled his eyes then. “Total stereotyping, right? Seen one, you seen ’em all. God. I sound like my worst enemy.” We left that site then and went somewhere else where we shot droids, not humans.

  “You kids learn a little history then, over at the high school?” Tom is asking. “You got something out of that class. What did you call it?”

  “Current Events. I didn’t really like it, just took it for the credit.”

  There’s a commercial on the TV now. A butterfly flits across the screen, advertising a sleep aid. Check with your doctor for possible side effects.

  Caitlin points her straw at the door. “First customers. Or as Linda likes to say, ‘guests.’”

  A family has entered Red Earth—four bickering kids, probably under the age of ten, and a mom and dad who look less than happy.

  “Good luck.” Caitlin gnaws at her straw as she watches the kids barrel toward a table. “It’s a war out there.”

  •••

  Two hours later I’m hiding in a stall. The bathroom is the only place that’s halfway quiet. Red Earth is packed—every table full and a line at the door. Caitlin’s given up on her cold, hard cash. She and Linda have spent the night covering my butt.

  I can’t do anything righ
t. I mix up orders or forget them entirely. I spill drinks and tip plates. I don’t clear tables fast enough. I’m not working the register or the credit-card machine or making change correctly.

  I suck at this.

  Tips are next to nothing. Free meals by way of apology to disgruntled “guests” are one too many.

  Caitlin and Tom made do okay the first hour or so, just giving Linda these looks like What were you thinking? Then they started to let me know they were a little ticked. “First night and everything, but get a brain, kid,” Tom said, and somehow I think he’s not just talking about my service-with-a-smile skills; he’s also talking about my understanding of Current Events.

  Isaac’s pissed too. He glowers across his gleaming stainless-steel Order up! counter. He’s practically broken his little silver bell, slamming his palm down on it and trying to get someone’s attention so the food won’t go cold.

  Minutes ago I splashed hot coffee on a man. A few drops. Linda overreacted, I think, maybe just a little. After she swaddled the man’s wrist in a bag of ice, she told me to “go to the bathroom and come out a different person.”

  So here I am, perched on the closed toilet lid, breathing into my cupped hands. Trying not to cry. Trying not to think about the twisted Hummer, the bodies in the road, the soldier carrying the limp boy, and all the others with guns. Trying not to think about David—or at least the space all around me where he once was. Trying to become a different person.

  Time passes. I know it’s passing. I’m just trying not to think how long it’s been since David’s been gone—how short it’s been since he’s been gone, really. Remember? I make myself think instead. You’ve got the long, strong arms of love. You can hold on across continents and the oceans in between.

  So this is war-love.

  Justine, I think. Remember Justine.

  Remember her, maybe. Just don’t become her. I can almost hear Linda’s voice, saying this.

  I wonder if Linda’s right.