Evie tried to adapt to his uneven schedule, mostly by taking time off from Florence’s Home Cooking Catering, sitting around the house waiting for Colin to get back while thinking about the money she should be making, and then smiling too much when he finally came through the door.
Awkward yet again because each time Colin returns from a deployment, and this is his third, there are more classes for Evie to attend: Redeployment Briefs, Family Readiness Group Meetings led by the chaplain, lectures by the “military life consultants.” There are glossy pamphlets, charts on the wall, checklists printed out from the Internet. When Colin got back from his first tour four years ago, he came home to a wife in a thong and high heels, frying up pork chops, and that was all the “healing” he needed. Now the worry doesn’t end when the deployment does. Now there is talk of soldiers who seem whole at first but are actually damaged: brain injuries, nightmares, prescription drug abuse, attempted suicides.
Colin did not use the hammock once.
But he seems fine. Especially now, curled up in his North Face jacket, his head jammed into the oval eye of the window, sleeping peacefully as the plane hurries them through time zones.
So Evie puts away her Battle Spouses’ Tips for a Smooth Transition and pages through the Lonely Planet Guide to Oahu. The more she reads, the more she underlines, the better she feels. The guide offers a highlighted route to the restaurants with stars, the hotels with the plushest pillows, the shops with the best-priced souvenirs. She is lulled into believing the illusion of the word “vacation”: that the ordinary unpleasantness of life—traffic jams, bed bugs, salmonella—will somehow be avoided if only they follow the author’s map. Evie rests her cheek against Colin’s sleeping shoulder, trying to peer out as the merged blue of sea and sky are severed by a sudden cresting green.
A stewardess bangs down the aisle, collecting the last bits of pre-landing trash, telling everyone to put their seats forward and stow their tray tables. Colin lurches upright, his shoulder hitting Evie’s chin, and she bites her tongue hard. It takes him a moment to realize where he is. He turns and looks at her. Fiercely. It’s a face Evie has never seen before: his blue eyes narrow, his teeth so clenched a pulse beats in his cheek. In that moment, Evie thinks that he must know about the man in Austin, and she leans away from her husband, her hand over her mouth.
Colin blinks. He uses his palm to push back whatever thoughts are there. Evie’s fingers are still on her lips, her tongue feeling around her teeth to see if she is bleeding (she is not), and he turns back to his window, not even noticing she is hurt.
Some things may have changed while you were gone, including your spouse. You both may have refigured your outlook and priorities. Try to share expectations, especially for the first weeks of being together again. Discuss topics such as social activities and household routines. Go slowly—don’t try to make up for lost time. Be flexible.
As they land and wait to disembark, Evie wonders if some acquaintance, a witness at the party four months ago, had seen the man press his mouth against hers, if anyone had told Colin all about it. Which is a conundrum, of course. If Colin has been waiting for an explanation, each day she hasn’t mentioned it must be weighing on him, the moment looming and illicit. But if Colin doesn’t know and she blurts out the story, it will seem like a confession, and he will wonder if she is hiding more.
“Well, what are we going to do?” Colin asks and Evie glances up. He is holding her Lonely Planet, flipping it open to a picture of the blasted volcano, Diamond Head.
Evie grins, flushed with relief, ready with an answer.
This is what she wants to do: traipse around the island, snorkeling in the warm water of Hanauma Bay while striped fish nibble at their fingers. Walk the reef-sheltered lagoon of Kaneohe, dine at the Moroccan restaurant, Casablanca, with its silk pillows and hookahs gem-like in the center of each table, eating with their hands, wrapping spicy chickpeas and spinach in flatbread and laughing as it drips down their arms. Visit the red-lacquered Japanese temple of Byodo-In, tossing crumbs to the peacocks ambling across the lawn. Drive through the tree-canopied Nuuanu Pali Drive, stopping at the lookout to see the Pacific below, so serene as it laps the site where King Kamehameha’s warriors threw his enemies down the twelve-hundred-foot cliff. Watch the surfers at Pipeline Beach and swallow sweet mounds of “shave” ice, kissing with syrup-dyed lips.
Colin nods, an eyebrow lifted in amusement, seemingly amazed at the detail behind his wife’s desires.
“What about you?” Evie asks.
This is what Colin wants to do: paddle a kayak out to Chinaman’s Hat and kayak-surf the big waves back. Take a scuba recertification course at Kaneohe Bay. Eat fat burgers at Jameson’s in Haleiwa while drinking Jameson whiskey—she admits this has an irresistible symmetry. Then go to a luau and devour as much of a pit-roasted pig as possible (yes, devour) while slugging back the fruity rainbow drinks a soldier can only drink in a place like Hawaii. Cliff jump into Waimea Bay. Rock climb at Dillingham Airfield, followed up with a six-mile hike out to the tip of Kaena Point. Do a shark encounter he found online.
There is nothing called “shark encounter” in Evie’s guidebook.
She looks out the window at the runway as her husband talks. He thinks he will convince her to do a shark encounter? She hates sharks. Evie hates everything on Colin’s list. She does not kayak or hike or rock climb or scuba. She knows her husband is a man full of energy, his body an animal that must be tended, fed, groomed, and put out to run. And yet she assumed this trip, like other vacations they’ve taken, would be a compromise between her love of museums and good food and his love of sweat and activity. But all of Colin’s options seem like adventures he ought to do alone or with a soldier buddy. With a bitterness that surprises her, she suddenly wishes she never agreed to this trip.
She turns to the people in the aisle, everyone hunched and stalled, trying to get off the plane, and she moves from foot to foot, wanting out.
Typically, a “honeymoon” period follows in which couples reunite, but not necessarily emotionally. Sexual intimacy may take time. Be patient and communicate—you and your spouse may have expectations that are not met right away. Talk about each other’s emotional and physical needs without assuming what the other wants. Needs and wants may change over the course of a year.
Colin had booked the hotel. Evie was hoping for something in Waikiki or Honolulu, close to the high-end shopping and placid beaches where Japanese tourists stayed. Instead, they drive their rental car out to the sun-bleached world of the North Shore, passing beach after beach, surfers tiny spots of color delicately clinging to the tremendous winter waves.
Colin valet-parks at a hotel that seems to be constructed out of sun and marble. As Colin checks in, Evie inspects the garden in the lobby, trying to figure out how the orchids grow from the black lava rock. Evie thinks the flowers look like impaled heads with lolling purple tongues, and she makes sure they do not brush her arm as she and Colin head to the elevators.
Their room is the most extravagant Evie has ever seen: a buffed, gleaming floor; a king-size bed that looks like a confection of meringue and marshmallow; a balcony facing the ocean. She turns to ask Colin how much the room will cost. What was he thinking while they drove past plenty of perfectly decent budget hotels?
Before she can get the words out, before she can even put her purse on that monstrosity of a bed, Colin’s hand is on her back, pulling her into his grip, and his lips shut hers to speech. Her body stiffens. She’s weary from the flight. She wants a long shower or a longer bath. She wants room service and a nap. This is how it’s been since he’s been back, a sudden mauling as if Colin is a teenager with no control over his urges. Their bags are piled by the door, her purse strap weighing on her shoulder, her hair heavy on her neck, sweat sticky along the trail of her spine. She is intensely aware of not having brushed her teeth for hours. But there is no doubt on his part, just the certainty they will have sex now, this moment, without any communication
other than his body pressing into hers. In response, her shoulders relent. Her purse slides down and crashes on the marble and her lipstick rolls out and hits her foot. Colin releases her long enough to tug his T-shirt over his head. One glimpse of his chest and something shifts inside of her; she stops thinking about her unbrushed teeth, just kicks off her shoes and reaches for his belt buckle.
This is one thing army wives do not complain about: the return of the deployed husband to his marriage bed. After all those months apart, eager hands on timid flesh, exciting and yet familiar, the true return boiled down to two bodies snapping together like puzzle pieces, still fitting, new and familiar at once.
* * *
Colin collapses beside her, careful not to crush her with his muscled weight, both of them breathing hard. The air conditioning cools the edges of Evie’s exposed skin. There’s a ceiling fan, too. She watches it twirl above and waits for an ache in her chest to go away. Then she gets up on an elbow. Now that they are naked, whether she wants to or not, she can tell him everything, get it over with. Maybe her revelation will nudge him into telling her how he is really doing, maybe the post-coital intimacy will allow him to reveal the things he couldn’t tell her when he was so far away, communicating by satellite phone or e-mail.
But he is already asleep.
It is important for both of you to share your deployment stories. You both may have made significant self-discoveries and participated in events that should be communicated when you are ready. Be patient. Wait for your soldier to share his/her experiences.
A few hours later, Colin rouses her from the bed. He is wearing pressed khakis and a buttoned shirt. Evie rubs her sanded eyes. “You ironed?”
“Went to the gym, made dinner reservations, showered, ironed, and hung up all of our clothes. Chop-chop, lady friend.”
Twenty minutes later, Evie yawning, Colin leads the way to the hotel restaurant. Evie is impressed: candlelight, etched-glass candleholders, each table draped with white linen, Hawaiian music from speakers hidden in the greenery. Volcano photographs adorn every wall, glowing with tumult, bleeding lava.
The hostess seats them on the highest tier, overlooking an ocean streaked with setting sun.
“I told her it was our anniversary,” Colin whispers proudly, and Evie feels a spark of hope.
She orders the Wilted Escarole with Macadamia Nuts and Pomegranate; Colin gets a steak, medium rare. They order a bottle of Big Island white.
“To five great years,” Colin toasts. “May we have at least fifty more.”
She hesitates with her wine glass midair; the tiny light inside extinguished. Five years is past the honeymoon but before the seven-year itch, five years ought to be a time of sweatpants, leaving the bathroom door open, no more breakfast in bed. A time to be comfortable. But Colin was deployed for three of those five years, and when Evie looks back, she sees all the white squares on her calendar, squares she crossed out each day as she waited for Colin to come home. This time, halfway through his tour, she gave up crossing out those squares. She cannot imagine fifty more calendars, all those blank days, a long future ahead with a husband home one year, gone the next, more a perverse punishment devised by King Kamehameha than any kind of triumph.
So she drinks too quickly. The wine is overly sweet and not chilled enough, but it is doing its job, blurring the edges of the room.
“That’s all you ordered?” Colin says when their entrées arrive, looking down at her salad as if he feels sorry for her. “Have a bit of this.” He nudges his steak in Evie’s direction. She shakes her head.
“We had steak and crab legs once a week. Fridays,” he says, putting a piece on her plate anyway. “But it was only a memory of the real thing. Every bite of that overcooked hide made you realize how far you were from home. At first the crab was good, just the novelty of eating something so decadent. But every goddamn week? Really? I never want a crab leg again.”
She keeps a mouthful of wine on her tongue while Colin speaks, as if afraid the sound of her swallowing will stop him. She wants her husband to keep talking; she wants to know about the entire life he lived without her. But he takes another bite in silence.
Evie cautiously asks, “Remember that trip we took to Hunter Mountain? How we stayed locked up in the cabin, eating omelets and drinking cheap wine—all those secrets we told each other?” It was early in their courtship, their first trip anywhere, to a ski resort though they never went skiing. That’s when Evie told him about a waitress trick of hers, how she’d lick the desserts of the rude customers before serving them, leaving the groove of her tongue in scoops of ice cream like guilty fingerprints. And Colin told her how he had pissed in an ex-girlfriend’s open convertible, costing him a baseball scholarship. Young enough to think sharing their flaws was an act of love in itself, they tried to cram the story of their whole lives into that weekend.
“Colin, you know you can tell me anything—”
He watches her for a moment. “Don’t make me go back to Afghanistan,” he says, tapping his knife against a smear of cooling grease on his plate. “It’s a shithole full of goats, dirt, and men with matted beards.” He puts the knife down and takes her hand. “I’m here with you. I made it back. That ought to be enough.”
“Is there anything you want to ask me about?” she asks.
Colin lets go of her, picks up his knife, begins to cut again. “No,” he answers. “Unless there is something you need to tell me?”
“No, nothing,” Evie murmurs, sticking a fork in her pretty, pomegranate-jeweled salad. She thinks about the word need. A necessity, an obligation. Is there anything she needs to tell her husband? She thinks about the things she kept from him while he was away, things that would worry him, because of what she knew: A worried soldier is a soldier who is not focused on his mission; a worried soldier is a danger to himself and his fellow soldiers. She does not need to tell him about Lana, the major’s wife who packed up her house and four-year-old and went home to New Jersey two months ago, without returning any of Evie’s calls or her two Pyrex casserole dishes. She doesn’t need to tell him about the rodent problem in their housing development, how one night Evie came home to a full-grown rat licking its paws on her front stoop.
Nor does she need to tell Colin about the kiss. She was doing a catering job with Florence and her son, setting up and breaking down for a sergeant major’s retirement party at the Fort Hood Club. She was tidying up the kitchen when a man brought her a tequila sunrise. He said he was the sergeant major’s cousin, that his name was John, from Austin, and that he hated disco, which happened to be the only thing the DJ was playing. Was there anything he could do to help her? So she gave him some baking sheets to dry, told him about the rat, admitted the tartlets he kept praising were her contribution to Florence’s spread, and let him keep her sweet drink filled to the brim. They talked through the disco; they talked as most of the revelers went home; they talked as the styros and tea lights sputtered out and tablecloths were folded into boxes. They talked until he suddenly leaned in and put his lips against hers. After a dazed moment, Evie pushed him away. He followed her out to the parking lot, trying to give her his business card, but she refused.
She did all the things a good wife should. Of course she did. And yet, for a fluttering split second, with that strange mouth on hers, she had closed her eyes. Closed them and considered leaning into whatever he was offering. She tasted adultery, a smudge of Florence’s signature peach-and-pepper barbeque sauce on his lips. That is what she needs to tell Colin, can’t tell Colin, won’t ever tell Colin: the moment when she didn’t know what she would do, when she waited for John to secure her in his embrace rather than letting her pull away so easily.
If your spouse experiences vivid waking nightmares or flashbacks, set up a security plan. Your spouse can be dangerous to himself and everyone around him; he might be reliving an experience and might not know what’s real. Do not touch your soldier when he is having nightmares—get out of bed, turn on the lights
, call his name from across the room until he is reoriented. Make sure to have a wireless phone nearby in case you need help, and keep dangerous objects like knives and guns in places easily accessible only to you. Practice a quick exit that you can safely execute in the dark.
Evie starts awake, feeling the bed quake. She realizes it is Colin. He gasps, a thick and struggling sound as if he can’t get enough air.
“Shhh, Colin. You’re alright.” Evie slips out of the bed. “Everything is OK.” She walks across the dark room and turns on one of the lamps. “Wake up, Colin.”
Her husband groans and Evie wonders what images wrack him: cars that won’t stop at checkpoints, the hiss of a mortar too close, smoke and gunfire.
She tiptoes around the room, turning on each lamp. Colin’s legs are twitching, on the verge of kicking. He moans again.
“Colin!” Evie says loudly, feeling cruel. “Wake up!” She flicks on the main light. She also puts her hand on the doorknob, ready to run down the hotel hallway.
Colin sits, an elbow over his eyes, shielding himself from the brightness.
“What the fuck?” he says. He sees her hand on the door handle, and then his eyes move up her flimsy nightgown, stopping with confusion at her face, as if she is the one who might be crazy, as if she might be a danger to herself.
Be aware that many soldiers return home with a feeling of post-combat invincibility. One consequence of combat exposure may be an increased propensity for risk-taking and unsafe behavior. Specific combat experiences, including greater exposure to violent combat and contact with high levels of human trauma, are predictive of greater risk-taking after homecoming, as well as more frequent alcohol use and increased verbal and physical aggression toward others.
The next morning, Evie listens to the too-nice-wife voice in her head. She agrees to go with Colin to the Haleiwa Marina and onto the boat with the Hawaiian word for shark, Mano, emblazoned on the side. The captain is a middle-aged Hawaiian with a dark geometry of tribal tattoos up and down both arms. His second mate is a teenage boy with a lip piercing. They seem calm while the white mainland tourists, in their tropical print sarongs and board shorts, whisper with excitement and fear, the word shark looming unspoken in the air. Evie has no idea what to expect, but the boat has the feel of a haunted house, of pampered people paying good money to feel a rush of adrenaline.
Fire and Forget Page 4
