While He Was Away

by Karen Schreck

  No matter how busy I am, I always call him back as soon as I get his message.

  He never answers.

  I remind myself of Justine, repeating the same old stories, because basically my days are about work and that’s it.

  Bonnie leaves a whole bunch of messages. I finally get a moment to call her, only to tell her that I won’t be able to get over to her house for a few more days at least.

  When Linda’s really back at Red Earth—only a few more days now—and I can get a little sleep, I’ll go back to Total Rush if that’s what Caitlin and Jules want. I’ll complain with Ravi about all the prep work for next year. I’ll organize a whole semitruck worth of orphanage donations. I’ll personally drive everything to the UPS store or the post office, whichever Bonnie and Beau want. I’ll make and send off another care package for David too. I’ll write a gross of long overdue mail and email—all of it positive and encouraging. I’ll spend twice as much time with Justine.

  •••

  And then one day, Linda’s really back at work.

  “Take the night off,” she tells me as the lunch shift winds down. “Get some rest.”

  Problem is, I’m still so wound up with adrenaline that even now, when I have hours and hours to loll around in bed, I can’t sleep. I toss and turn. I nod off and wake up again. At about six in the morning, when the birds start singing really loudly in the honey locust tree, I’m up for good. In a sleepy haze, I get out David’s old letters from last year. I make a cup of coffee, sit down at the kitchen table, and read them.

  I read one particular postcard over and over again, sent from Florida when David was visiting his grandparents. There’s a gator wearing sunglasses on the front, and it really does look like it’s smiling.

  Penna—

  It’s New Year’s Eve. I know. We’re not together. Do you know how much I wish we were? This much. Just now I held out my arms as wide as they can stretch. If I could break myself in two to be with you, I would.

  Tonight, walking on the beach, I picked up a whole bunch of shells for you.

  Love,

  David

  He took those shells and strung them into a necklace for me. The string broke when we went out last Valentine’s Day. It was the first day it was warm enough to take out the motorcycle, and so we went on our roundabout ride. We were passing the farm fields when the shells went flying. When I got as broken up as the shells, David held me tight. “They were only for wishing on, really,” he said. “There were ten shells, right?” I nodded. “So make ten wishes,” he said.

  I wished, ten times over, that we’d always be together.

  I close my eyes as questions wash over me. What do I wish for here and now? What is he wishing for over there? Is he still writing in the soft, black journals that he thinks are so cool? Why haven’t I asked this? Why hasn’t he told me? He bought a bunch of them at the Oklahoma City art museum’s gift shop that day of our first kiss. The journals weren’t cheap. He spent a good chunk of change, way more than he usually spends on himself, but, “It’s worth it,” he said. “Made in France, hand stitched, used by dudes like Van Gogh and Picasso. How can I go wrong?”

  He didn’t go wrong. All last year he didn’t go wrong. He filled the journals with words and pictures and little scraps of things—matchbook covers, ticket stubs, seed pods, bird feathers, Japanese candy wrappers, and old postage stamps—stuff anyone else might overlook but that caught his eye on any given day. “I like shiny, little things. Just call me Magpie,” he said, which somehow I doubt he’s saying to anyone in Iraq. Maybe I’m wrong. David would date every page, and all the pages worked together, each one completing what came before and after.

  Once David asked me to kiss an inside cover, just so he could remember the exact shade of the lipstick I was wearing—a red that he especially liked. Another time, I cut off a lock of my hair, and he braided the strands and glued them to a page. And then there was the day when he licked his finger and gently dabbed an eyelash from my cheek, then glued that to a page too.

  I open my eyes. I set the postcard aside. I take a deep breath, reminding myself of who I was, who I am. Who we were, who we are. I write David an email, because, assuming everything is okay with the lines, the connections, it’s faster than a letter. Connections, I think. I remind him about the shell necklace and the Valentine’s Day roundabout ride, and I tell him what I wished for ten times over. I want to make sure he remembers. I ask him if he’s still keeping a journal. Then I tell him the nitty-gritty details of my life: Officially survived the intense work schedule after Linda’s accident. And guess what. Now Linda says she’ll see Justine. I wish you were here for this.

  I send the email. Then I draw awhile to remember that I like to do that, I’ve always liked to do that, and I will like to do that still, when David comes home. I make it to just after noon. Then I do what I’ve been waiting to do: I walk to Tom’s house.

  •••

  Tom doesn’t answer when I knock, so I go right in.

  I find Justine sitting in the front room in the chair by the cedar chest. She’s wearing her white dress. Newspaper clippings, photographs, and drawings litter the floor at her feet. Justine is smoothing the Gold Star banner across her lap.

  “Penna,” Justine says, smiling at me. “My star.”

  Her eyes are clear. She’s her eighty-year-old self today. I’m so relieved that my knees go a little weak. I lean down and give her a hug.

  Tom comes into the room then, apologizing for being in the bathroom (I tell him that’s fine, really), and with his help Justine gets to her feet.

  “Do you want to see Linda this afternoon?” Tom asks. He takes my breath away, asking this. Clearly, Tom’s a “rip the Band-Aid off what hurts” kind of a guy. Or else he’s just so nervous he doesn’t know how to deal. From the way he’s chewing at his lip, I think this might be the case.

  I know how he feels.

  For a moment, Justine’s expression darkens with confusion, sadness, and fear. But then she nods.

  I have no idea what Linda will do, how she will act, whether she will ruin or rebuild what I’ve worked so hard to make happen.

  Tom leads Justine out the front door, and I follow. We help her into the front seat of Tom’s truck. Tom sits down behind the steering wheel, and I sit on the other side of Justine. As we pull into the street and head off, Justine leans against me, weighing no more than a shadow, it seems. The few blocks slip past, and then, as we pull up in front of our house, she says softly, “Home.”

  Twenty-Three

  Linda is back from the lunch shift. She’s in the kitchen, rinsing out the coffeepot. When we come in, she practically drops the coffeepot into the sink, and then she just stares at Justine. Her look isn’t angry or rude; it’s stunned. Her face is as pale as when she broke her ankle. She runs her hand roughly across her mouth to stop its trembling. This doesn’t work. She glances at me.

  Justine points down the hallway, wordlessly asking Linda’s permission to look around. Linda nods. We follow Justine—Tom, Linda, and me. With each slow step, Justine’s raised hands hover before the photographs that line the walls. Suddenly she veers into my room. She is saying that she used to draw and paint here, and then it became Linda’s room when Linda was born.

  “I remember it like yesterday,” she says.

  We follow her through the doorway to her past.

  “I drew so many pictures here.” Justine gazes out the window, her fingers on the glass.

  She leans closer to the window and her breath clouds the glass. “I drew that very honey locust tree. It was so much smaller then, just a slip of a thing. I drew this street when there was nothing else here. Now look at it all. So much, so many strangers.” She turns to us, panic constricting her expression.

  “I draw that honey locust tree too.” I start at the surprising urgency in my voice. “This is my room now.”

  “I know.” Justine’s face softens, studying mine. “I’m glad.” She sees the quilt then, Plu
m Tumble, spread across the end of my bed. She goes and gathers the quilt into her arms. She hides her face in the soft folds. “Still here.” There is wonder in her voice.

  “You can have it back,” I say. I feel Linda watching me. “We found it when we first moved in. You should have it.”

  Linda has been so quiet since we came inside. Now she clears her throat and says, “I thought you made it. Was I right?”

  Justine lifts her face from the quilt and nods at Linda. “I made it for Owen. He couldn’t take it with him when he went overseas. He said I’d need it more than he did. Maybe he was right. But Ernest keeping it all those years…I can’t believe it.”

  “I remember Dad wrapping up in it on chilly days,” Linda says. “When Penna and I first found it, I thought it still smelled like him. Boozy. You know.”

  “Oh.” Justine buries her face in the quilt again and breathes deep. “He’s gone.” She looks up at Linda, her brow furrowed with lurking confusion. “Isn’t he? He’s really gone.”

  Linda swallows hard. “Who?”

  “Why, Ernest.”

  “Most of the time.” Linda’s voice is quiet.

  “We washed the quilt right away,” I say firmly. “So it just smells like us now.”

  “It smells good,” Justine says.

  I smile. But I’m still wary, watching Justine’s every move and expression for some sign that it’s not the twenty-first century anymore, but decades ago, before any of us but Justine was born, before Linda and I were even imagined.

  Justine lays Plum Tumble back across the foot of my bed, and then she leads us to Linda’s bedroom—the room Justine says she shared with Owen, and later Ernest. Justine doesn’t seem to care about the dark purple walls—though I bet they weren’t purple when she slept here. Standing before Linda’s dresser, she presses her hands to her temple. She rubs at some other pain there—nothing to do with color.

  “Maybe I should have moved houses altogether,” she says. “Maybe that would have helped Ernest and me. But he wanted this house. He wanted it so much. More than me, I think.”

  Tom mumbles something like reassurance. “But if you’d done that, moved, maybe we wouldn’t all be standing here together now.”

  Justine doesn’t seem to hear. She looks at the things Linda has displayed on the dresser’s top—my framed school pictures, some stones from Lake Michigan, dried flowers in a vase, two earrings missing their mates that Linda likes so much she can’t bear to throw away.

  Justine picks up my third-grade school photograph, studies it, and then sets it back exactly where it was. “You grew up good.”

  I don’t know whether Justine is talking about Linda or me. It doesn’t much matter. But Linda crosses her arms over her chest and watches her mother, and I see tears in her eyes.

  Justine leads us into the kitchen now. “Why, it’s hardly changed!” Justine claps her hands, joyful and relieved. “I’d know that linoleum anywhere.”

  “We’d like to do something about that.” Linda strides over to the sink and pours herself a glass of water. She doesn’t offer one to Justine. “Some updating. You know.”

  Justine says, “Of course.”

  “She understands,” I say quietly.

  But then Justine turns to Linda and says, “I don’t know how to begin.”

  Linda’s mouth twists. “Me either.”

  I’ve never heard Linda sound like this, so hopeless. The pain in her voice sucks all the air out of me. Breathe in, breathe out. I think of the guy going kill-crazy in that video. I’d strike out in panic at the wall I can almost see rising up between my mother and my grandmother. I’d strike out just like that guy did. I’d go kill-crazy if I could. But I can’t move. My arms and legs seem to have turned to solid blocks of stone.

  I force out the words because someone has to say something, someone has to push us through this wall.

  “We don’t have to begin. We’re right in the middle.”

  But Justine is right at the end, I think then. I don’t say that—I don’t have to, because Justine and Linda turn to me in a movement so similar that it seems planned, choreographed, a kind of dance. They look at me. A minute passes, maybe, a long minute where nobody moves. I can hear Tom breathing hard, the sound of a heavy-set man whose heart just might be breaking.

  “Oh, Penelope,” Linda says. “Is this what you really want?”

  I nod.

  Linda hugs herself. This is what she’s always done. She’s held herself. Since she was a very little girl. She’s held it together. For herself, for me, for us. Now she’s doing it all over again.

  Justine holds out her arms to Linda. “Please,” Justine says.

  Slowly, one step at a time, Linda walks toward Justine. Linda’s still holding herself tight. But she lets Justine hold her too.

  Thank you. I think I say this aloud. But I can’t be sure.

  Only a moment passes before Linda quickly pulls away. Linda’s face is flushed now. Her gaze darts nervously, lighting on anything but Justine.

  “Why don’t you all just sit down for a little bit?” I sound like some kind of hoity-toity hostess who barely knows her guests. When I gesture toward the living room, I might as well be made of rusted metal—my arm moves that clumsily. “Take a seat,” I actually say.

  Justine and Linda seem grateful for any direction. In an awkward manner that rivals my own—like daughter, like mother, like grandmother—they turn, Tom’s steadying hand at Justine’s elbow. Like that, they walk into the living room. Tom settles Justine on the couch. Linda sits a safe distance away.

  •••

  Tom and I bumble around the kitchen, making lemonade, putting cookies on a plate. Tom wonders if maybe somebody needs something more substantial to eat. We decide to make sandwiches and soup too.

  “You really need to do some shopping.” Tom is scrounging through the refrigerator.

  “I haven’t exactly had a lot of leisure time these last few days.”

  “No need to get snappish.” Tom shuts the refrigerator and turns to me with what’s left of the ham-and-cheese deli packets in his hands. “You holding up otherwise? I mean, except for provisions?”

  I dump some ice cubes into the pitcher of lemonade. “Guess so.”

  “You heard from him?”

  I keep my gaze on the ice spiraling in the powdery, yellow drink. “Some.” Tom drapes slices of ham and cheese across a plate. The deli packets empty now, he tosses them into the garbage and then pulls what’s left of a loaf of bread from the pantry. “Want some advice?” Tom doesn’t wait for my answer. “Don’t take it personally.”

  “How should I take it?”

  Tom starts to answer, but I don’t hear him. I hear only my cell ringing from the living room.

  I run toward the sound. I find my cell in my bag beside the couch where Linda and Justine sit at a safe distance from one another. They are talking in herky-jerky phrases, brief questions and halting answers.

  At least they are talking.

  This thought flashes through my mind, and only this, before I grab my cell from my bag and head toward my room, saying all in a rush, “Hello, hello, hello. Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” David says.

  “And I’m here,” I say.

  I wish one of us would laugh. But we don’t.

  I drop down on my bed and wrap Plum Tumble around my shoulders.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” David says.

  “Like, everything. Tell me everything. It’s been so crazy here. I know it’s been crazy there too.” I loop my thumb through Owen’s ring. I pull down until the necklace digs into the back of my neck. “But now we can talk. Finally. Tell me. And then I’ll tell you.”

  Positive. Encouraging. Loyal. I am these things.

  David draws in a sharp breath.

  I feel suddenly ill.

  I think it. Oh no, I think. Here it comes.

  David says, “All these guys have been getting these Dear John letters. Some o
f the girls here are getting them too. Dear Janes.”

  “Weird. I don’t know that many Johns. Or Janes.” My laughter sounds like crying. “They all must be in the army.”

  David doesn’t laugh. “Guess you don’t know what a Dear John letter is.”

  I shake my head. “Guess I don’t.”

  “It’s crap like, ‘Sorry. I can’t handle this. Maybe we’ll hook up again when you get back. But right now it’s over between you and me.’ Crap like that.”

  David waits for me to respond. I can’t.

  “It’s a break-up letter,” he says.

  Something burns at the back of my neck, and then my necklace snaps and puddles in my hand. I was pulling on it that hard. The thin, gold chain slips to the floor, but Owen’s ring stays hooked on my thumb.

  “What does that have to do with us?” I hear myself say this. I sound distant, as if I’m in a different room or calling from another continent. “I only write Dear David letters.”

  “But what if you change your mind?”

  I clench Owen’s ring tighter. “I won’t.”

  “There are people dying over here, Penna. And it’s not always from IEDs. Lately it’s mostly been from Dear John letters.”

  He’s almost crying now. He’s trying to hide it, holding the phone at a distance, muffling it with his hand. But his voice is thick with tears.

  “I can’t do this,” he says.

  He says other stuff too. He says he’s still glad he enlisted. That’s not it. He still believes in what he’s doing. That hasn’t changed. He still loves me too. As much as ever. But with fear attached. He can’t go any deeper right now. That’s it. That’s all. That’s all there is to it. He can’t go on any longer. He’s too scared—not of fighting a war, but of being in love.

  “When I come home again, then maybe if you want, Penna, we can try again. I’ll try again then if you’ll let me. But for now, no,” he says.