by Penny Reid
“Egypt?” I frowned.
Alex glanced at his webcam. “Yes. What’s wrong with Egypt?”
“Nothing . . .”
“What?” Greg pushed.
“Well, their latest protests, the environment seems dangerous. Weren’t the police raping both men and women?”
Greg lifted an eyebrow, appearing thoughtful, and nodded his head. “I believe so. But to be fair, it’s about time rape stopped being so sexist.”
“Greg!”
“What?”
“There is nothing funny about rape.”
“I agree. And there’s nothing funny about sexist rape, either.”
Although I could appreciate the ironic nature of his statement, I had to draw the line someplace. No jokes about rape, even if they were effective in highlighting a double standard. “You are so terrible, I don’t-I can’t-you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“It’s pronounced astonished. And I am.”
“He has a point, Fiona,” Alex chimed in, steepling his fingers as he leaned back in his desk chair. “It’s about time men were raped. Why should women bear the entire raping burden?”
I glanced askance between the serious visages of my husband and Alex, and sputtered, “How about no one is raped? How about that? How about: no more rape, period.”
“Motion passed, no more rape,” Greg announced. “And no eating Irish babies, either.”
I narrowed my eyes on him, not missing his reference to Jonathan Swift’s infamous satire, A Modest Proposal. He mirrored my expression, squinting his eyes, and a subtle smile lingered over his lips.
Troublemaker.
Alex nodded and hit his desk once with his fist, as though he were a judge. “Excellent, we all agree, no rape. So . . . we good with Egypt?”
CHAPTER 14
Dearest Husband,
I don’t think I loved you the way I love you now when I said, “Yes, I’ll marry you.” Back then I thought I knew what love was, what love was supposed to be. But each and every day you show me it’s so much more.
-Helena
Letter
Ontario, Canada
Married 10 years
~Present Day~
*Fiona*
“It’s dying, Greg. The Jeep is on its way out.”
“Shhh.” He pressed his index finger against my lips and said in a harsh whisper, “She’ll hear you.”
I ignored his silliness (for the most part), but I did give him a faint smile. “There’s no resuscitating it. The Jeep needs a new radiator and we obviously don’t have the parts. All we can do is wait for it to cool, keep adding water, and see if it starts in an hour.”
I cleaned the grease from my hands with a rag I’d found in the trunk, and used my wrist to wipe the sweat from my forehead. We were a good ten or so miles from the new vehicle Alex had arranged, and still on the outskirts of Nigeria’s most populated city. We’d been driving all day—mostly in silence—and the sun was setting; Enugu on the horizon, streaks of orange, purple, and fiery red painted the sky.
Neither of us had reintroduced the topic of Grace not wanting to play soccer, my alleged overcompensation for the lack of normalcy in my childhood, or Greg’s bullying proclivities. Mostly, we stewed in our own thoughts. If his deliberations were anything like mine—and I suspected they were—he was focusing on maneuvering through the next forty-eight hours, making it safe and sound back to Chicago, and freeing the hostages in the process.
“When the time comes,” Greg stroked the hood and sighed mournfully, “will you give me some time to say goodbye to the car?”
“Do you need some privacy now? Slip inside the driver’s side door and I can cover it with a tarp, give the two of you a minute?”
“No. Not now,” he responded solemnly. “I’m going to drive it to a cliff, shoot it while it’s not looking, then push it into a lake.”
My faint smile became a full one. As though pleased with himself for making me smile, Greg stood a little taller, his eyes lingering on my mouth.
“Good plan. But do we want to stay put and wait?” I asked, eyeballing the road behind him. “Or should we grab our gear and make a run for it?”
“A literal run for it? You mean run the last twelve miles?”
“Is it twelve? I thought it was closer to ten.” I was undecided which course of action would be best.
Greg scratched his neck and studied the horizon. “It would take us two and half-ish hours by foot, if we ran the whole way, but if we can get the Jeep running we’ll save both time and energy.”
“But if we can’t get the Jeep running, then we’ll have wasted an hour.”
“True.” Greg bobbed his head from side to side, his eyes moving over my shoulder. “But I think we have to risk it. Two Oyibos running together on the side of the road will be conspicuous no matter the time of day. We should wait until nightfall regardless.”
His logic made sense.
“Fine, but we can’t stay by the Jeep. We should push it off the road at least, and cross to the other side, hide in the grasses for an hour.”
Greg was already moving, releasing the emergency break, and motioning me over to the driver’s side. “Agreed. You steer, I’ll push.”
Once we finished maneuvering the Jeep some ways into the tall grass, we grabbed our gear and jogged to the opposite side, careful to remain hidden.
“As long as we stay within a quarter mile of the road, we should be safe from snakes.” Greg stamped his feet before he crouched to the ground, removing his backpack.
“Good to know,” I said. But what I was thinking was more like, filet of snake actually sounds really good right now.
My stomach rumbled. Loudly.
Greg lifted a single eyebrow as I sat next to him. “Hungry?”
“Actually . . . yes.” The realization was surprising. I hadn’t been hungry for the last two and a half months, not since just after Christmas. And I didn’t have a headache.
“We have First Strike rations in my bag.”
I made a face, because I was craving snake or something like it. Maybe shrimp. Shrimp and butter. Yum.
But ultimately I said, “Sure. Hand it over.”
Greg passed me the rectangle of rations. I opened the sealed plastic and absentmindedly munched on the contents while I sat cross-legged next to him. The route we’d opted to traverse on our way to Enugu was mostly unpaved, which was likely how we’d ended up with a hole in the radiator. But that also meant it was considerably less traveled. Several minutes would pass between any noise or indication of a solitary car in the distance.
The sonata of sunset insects, the darkening sky above dotted with emerging stars, and the wind rustling the tall stalks were our only companions.
Surrounded by peace and calm, I found myself having deep thoughts, and I gave voice to them abruptly, before spending too much time considering the subject matter. “Why do people get married, Greg?”
Greg’s attention lifted from his ration pack and settled on me, inspecting both me and my question, his handsome face betraying bewildered interest.
I sought to clarify. “You said once it made sense to partner off so burdens could be shared. But that’s not what I’m asking, because I don’t think shared burdens are why people get married. Shared burdens are a byproduct, not a cause.”
Greg munched on a square of foodstuff that resembled a Triscuit. “You’ll have to be more specific. Do you mean, why get married as in why make it official? Or do you mean, why get married as in why be monogamous and commit to spending the rest of your life with just one person?”
“The latter one. I don’t even understand the desire in myself.” I leaned back on my hands and studied the sky, leaving the rations in my lap. “I know, growing up, it was expected of me. Culturally, for the most part, girls are told their map of life includes partnering off, getting married, having kids.”
“Men are as well, you know. Our generation, at any rate. It was understood, part of growing up is getting
married.”
“Exactly. That’s exactly it.” I turned my attention back to my husband. “Why is it a part of growing up? Why do we want it so badly? Why do parents want it for their children?”
“If you throw away all the first-world pundit-esque pretentious answers—like societal pressures, oppression of one sex or the other, a patriarchal construct meant to maintain order, etcetera—and assume the desire to partner is a real thing, then I think . . .” He trailed off, staring unseeingly at something in the distance.
I waited for him to continue, giving him time to compose his thoughts, and found myself enjoying the moment, and his profile. He still hadn’t shaved and looked a bit wild, his hair falling across his eyes. Over the course of the day he had pushed it off his forehead again and again—like he used to do when we were first married—and the simple movement had me feeling nostalgic.
I longed to run my fingers through it and twist the silky strands around my fingers. I hadn’t. Not yet. Things weren’t right between us. Yes, we’d made love, made use of each other’s bodies. But playing with his hair when I still carried a lump of discontent around in my stomach felt insincere.
“I think,” he finally continued, his voice soft and thoughtful, “there are fundamentally two kinds of people: those who need to be loved, and those who need to love. Now, not to say the desires are mutually exclusive, quite the opposite. I believe most people are a mix of the two, with one desire outweighing the other.”
“Some people need to nurture, some crave being nurtured.”
“Exactly. And marriage, exclusivity, monogamy—when done right—feeds both needs in a way nothing else comes close.”
I turned my attention back to the sky and marinated in his words, finding truth in my husband’s wisdom. It may have been an oversimplification of a complex issue, not taking into account the many special snowflake needs of each individual member of humanity, but it resonated with me.
Conversation and debate of any kind not related to our children, and universe of worries, were luxuries. I couldn’t remember the last time Greg and I had discussed anything other than the kids, the household, money, our friends, or our marriage.
I was about to ask him which of us was the nurturer and which of us needed nurturing, when he surprised me by asking, “Why did you marry me, Fiona?”
I didn’t think too hard about my answer. “Because I loved you. And because you showed up and demanded we get married without delay because the world was ending.”
I moved just my eyes to his face, found him smiling at the memory, or maybe at his youthful impulses. “I was frantic, I admit. I didn’t want to spend another day without you as my wife.”
“So you said at the time.” I laughed lightly, recalling how zealous he’d been, how impassioned. We’d been so young.
We’d been too young.
“That’s why you married me?”
I nodded once.
Greg cleared his throat before asking, “But not because you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me?”
The question and his voice struck me as both vulnerable and accusatory. Frowning at him, the rigid, unhappy set of his mouth, I leaned forward and placed my hand on his thigh.
“Honestly?”
“No. God no. Honesty is for the proletariat. Lie to me, of course.” He was trying to disarm the moment with humor, but despondency permeated his tone and his features.
“I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you,” I said, thinking at first that would be the entirety of my answer, but then—without forethought—I continued speaking. “That’s not really what happened, is it? How could I have known ‘the rest of my life’ didn’t really mean the rest of my life? Marriage, for us, means sometimes. Sometimes, over the course of the rest of our lives, I get to be with you.”
We watched each other, as much as was possible under the blanket of blue-black sky and twinkling stars. And the longer we swapped stares, the more wretched I felt.
Because my suspicion that sometimes no longer being enough solidified into a fact.
Sometimes wasn’t enough.
It hadn’t been enough for several years.
As though reading my mind, Greg said, “Just because we’re not in the same city doesn’t mean we’re not with each other.”
“Actually, it kinda does. Geography has a lot to do with being with a person.”
“But it’s not everything.”
“But it’s a lot. Looking back, I see a lot of me being alone. I see a lot of me without you. I see a lot of dinners for three, not four.”
He grimaced, packing up the remains of his rations. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”
“No. I’m pointing out that you’ve been missed. Being present is one hundred percent more meaningful than being there in spirit. You’ve been there in spirit for Grace’s first words and Jack’s first day of kindergarten. But when they look back, they’re going to remember the absence of you, of your tangible presence. You may have been thinking about them, but you’re not in the pictures.”
“What do you want me to do, Fe? Quit my job?”
I removed my hand from his leg and recited robotically, “You being happy makes me happy. Your job makes you happy.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. Yes, you love it. You love the difference you make in the world. You love making drilling safer and more efficient and the effect it has on the environment. You love doing something meaningful. And you’re good at it.”
“Then what? What’s the solution?”
“It is what it is,” I said rather than, It’ll just have to be enough.
“You know I hate that phrase, ‘It is what it is.’ The motto for indolent, phony do-gooders everywhere.”
“Yes. I know you hate it. But what else is there to say?”
“This isn’t acceptable to me.”
“What? What isn’t acceptable? You can’t be in two places at once.”
“No. You could say, ‘This isn’t acceptable to me.’ You’re becoming invisible under the weight of unhappiness and yet you say, ‘It is what it is’ like you’re powerless to change it.”
Directing my face away from him, I was thankful for the dark, for the veiled shadow of the moonless night. I considered his words, You’re becoming invisible under the weight of unhappiness.
Is that what is happening? Was I becoming invisible?
I didn’t particularly want to share the struggle going on within me. The angry voice was back, reminding me again that two months wasn’t enough. Two months would be better, but better didn’t necessarily equate to adequate. And adequate definitely didn’t equate to what I wanted . . . or what I needed.
“You’re a bloody ninja superwoman, and I’m just one of your many admirers,” Greg grumbled, pulling my attention back to him.
“Pardon me?”
“I said—” he started, but then stopped, straightening and twisting around toward the road.
I followed his line of sight and cursed under my breath.
Two cars were stopped on the opposite side of the road; men were shouting, both within the cars and outside of them. They’d left their beams on high, shining them into the concealing grasses.
The Jeep had been discovered.
“How did they see it? It’s pitch black out here.” His irritation was obvious.
“We’re going to have to run,” I said unnecessarily, more to get him moving than anything else.
“Okay. Okay. Let’s go.” He nodded and reached for my hand, like he needed reassurance I was still alive and well.
I held on to him tightly, thankful for the strength of his grip, finding I needed the physical connection just as badly as he.
***
Other than being exhausting, the next five hours were without incident.
We located the promised vehicle. The charger was under the driver’s seat. We were able to leave the outskirts of Enugu without any trouble, circumventing the main city by taking the bypass rout
e and messaging Alex as soon as the phone held a charge.
Two hours into the southward drive, Greg took a gravel turnoff I would’ve missed in broad daylight.
“This is the way to the sentinel houses?”
He nodded once. “Yes. There are four off this road along the pipeline, set back and obscured by the landscape.”
“You found them by following the pipeline?”
“Back in January, when I started the assignment, I didn’t announce my intention to survey the houses to Nautical Oil, so no one knows I’ve been poking about.”
“Really? You’ve been poking about?” I gave him a mock suspicious glare.
“Actual poking.” He flashed me a grin. “Not sexy poking.”
I chuckled. “So you, what? Found the money strewn around in the houses?”
“Not necessarily. I wanted to trek the length of the products pipeline, determine how we could improve security and/or discourage thievery. Most of the sentinel houses are occupied, but the sentinels don’t do their job. The house where we’re headed now was vacant. I decided to spend the night before trekking back and that’s when I discovered the cash in the empty garage, stacked in a corner.”
“How odd.”
“Yeah . . . well, maybe not. If the money is from illegally refining oil—and I’m assuming it is—then the cash I found has likely been laundered. The corrupt members of the government responsible for this mess need to store the money someplace before it can be deposited or used for bribes. These sentinel houses are out of the way, and since the thieves in charge apparently control most of the sentinels, where better to hide the money?” He steered us off the unpaved road and a short ways into the underbrush before cutting the engine.
“Do you think it’ll still be there?”
“Only one way to find out.”
I frowned at our surroundings, not seeing any sign of the house or the pipeline. “Are we here?”
“No. We’re a half mile from the main products line, and another mile from the sentinel house. But this is as close as I’m willing to park. Once I determine whether it’s occupied, I can jog back for you.”
