He exhaled in disgust.
Rick was doing fast and furious sit-ups on the far side of the bed, his toes tucked under the chest of drawers. He jumped to his feet and faced her. The tendons in his neck stood out like the roots of an old tree.
“Just tell me why.”
“Don’t poke your finger at me.”
“I want to hear the truth. No more bullshit.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Frankie, don’t you know yourself better than that? Have you so little insight?”
He used his condescending, I’ve-lived-longer-and-know-more-than-you voice, and her desire to cooperate froze.
“I told you. I’m doing it for her.”
“The hell you are. You’re doing it because you’re a twenty-five-year-old woman who’s still trying to get her father to love her.”
On the soccer field if someone elbowed Frankie out of the referee’s line of sight, she waited for the right moment and got her back. In games and life, the impulse to retaliate came to her as naturally as breathing. But this was Rick and part of her understood his anger and even sympathized with it. If their positions had been reversed, she too would be confused and heated; however, she would eventually accept his decision to serve and defend because she had been raised to believe that this was what military families did when the country was threatened.
“It would be different,” she said from the closet doorway, “if it were you who wanted to go.”
“But it’s not me, Frankie. It’s you, the mother of my daughter.”
“I’m a woman, so I don’t get to do what my conscience tells me? There has to be some deep dark Freudian explanation?”
“Shall we pursue that idea? Do you think you’re up for that conversation?”
She ignored his challenge. “This war is about who we are as a nation.”
“Stop.” He held up his hand. “If we’re going to talk about this, you have to do one thing for me. Stop the spin. Stick to the truth. You enlisted because you’re the General’s daughter and you’ll do anything, even leave your family to fight in some godforsaken desert, just to hear him say you’re a good girl and give you that look.”
“What look?”
“The one he gets on his face when he starts talking about his father and his uncle and grandfather. All the bully Byrnes who risked their lives so America can be free.” He looked disgusted. “If you knew how tired I get of listening to that crap.”
His vehemence stung her. “I thought you loved my father. He loves you.”
Rick laughed. “But he’d love me so much more if I were a Marine.”
They had always talked in the dark. It had been their way from the beginning.
“What are Glory and I supposed to do without you?”
He was calmer than he had been, more hurt than angry. But this was harder to bear. She wanted so much for him to understand.
“On the plane that hit the Pentagon there were a bunch of kids on a National Geographic field trip. And there were two little girls. Sisters. I imagine I’m their mother and I know they’re going to die and I can’t help them.”
He rested his index finger on her mouth. “Just stop. It isn’t your fault those children died and it’s not your job to save the world.”
“Your folks live in Massachusetts, Rick. We’ve flown in and out of Boston ourselves.”
“There are dozens of flights every day.”
“But it could have been us. We could have been at your folks and had Glory with us….” She sagged under the weight of the images. “It can’t happen again. Ever.”
War was men’s business and the General knew how to call in favors. Though he could not undo her enlistment, he made sure that after officers’ training and the Basic School, his daughter was separated from her unit and posted to the small finance office at the Marine Corps Recruitment Depot in San Diego, about twenty minutes from Ocean Beach. Most nights she was home from the shop in time to fix dinner. She became a fixture at the MCRD, and every day it rankled, it gnawed, it galled her that while her friends were in Iraq and Afghanistan, she was a paper pusher in her hometown.
Glory was just finishing first grade when the opportunity arose for a ten-month deployment in Iraq, what the Marine Corps called Temporary Additional Duty. Frankie would be posted to a Forward Operating Base as part of a joint effort to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. She told herself, she told Rick and her father, that the TAD was only ten months.
“I have to do this.”
Rick looked grim and clenched his jaw. The General stopped talking to her.
Chapter 3
October 2008—San Diego, California
Frankie had been home from Iraq for almost two months, back at the MCRD, a captain now and adjutant to the chief financial officer, Colonel Walter Olvedo. She and Olvedo were meeting in his office on the day the call came from Glory’s school. Frankie’s phone vibrated against her thigh but she didn’t touch it.
The situation in the office had reached near critical, and she and the colonel had been trying to have this meeting for weeks. The surge announced by the president had created problems for the previously insignificant San Diego Office of Financial Affairs. It had tripled in size and now handled not only payroll for the MCRD but other bases in southern California as well. Also—and this was new—a number of sensitive classified matters came across Frankie’s desk. Seven of the nine young Marines in the office had inadequate clearances and insufficient financial training to deal with these and were inclined to be careless unless Frankie rode them hard and constantly. Olvedo had sent a dozen messages up the pipeline requesting more qualified personnel, but with everything that was going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one had time for anything as far from the line of fire as Frankie’s shop.
“Is that your phone buzzing, Captain?” Olvedo had heavy black brows that made him look cross most of the time despite his pleasant and easygoing disposition. “It sounds like a killer bee.”
Olvedo’s wife had once been a career Marine but after their third child was born she left the service to go back to school to become a teacher. His mother-in-law lived with them and helped out with childcare. He knew Frankie couldn’t ignore a call from Arcadia School.
“We’re done here.” He waved his hand toward the office door. “Do what you have to do.”
Thirty minutes later she was hurrying across the parking lot to her Nissan.
“Captain Tennyson, please, wait up. Please.”
At the car she turned to see a young man in chinos and a blue blazer hurrying toward her.
“I’m glad I caught you,” he said, panting a little. He handed her a card.
“You work for Senator Belasco?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you for the last three days.” He added in the tone of a parent to a willful child, “You haven’t returned my calls.”
“If I wanted to talk to you, I would have called back.”
“Then you did get my messages.”
“I’m in a hurry, Mr. Westcott.” She unlocked the Nissan and threw her tote across to the passenger seat. “I don’t have time for you or your boss.”
“There are things you don’t know, Captain.”
“I’m late for a meeting at my daughter’s school.”
“Have you been following the hearings, Captain?”
Senator Susan Belasco’s investigation into allegations of criminal wrongdoing by the private contracting firm Global Sword and Saber Security Services, G4S, had been front-page news for the last several weeks.
“I have nothing to say to the committee.”
“A boy was killed at Three Fountain Square. He was ten years old.”
“Don’t call me again.” She slammed the car door and revved the engine as she shifted into reverse, muttering as she backed up. “Move your toes, you son of a bitch.”
Taking the back road out of Mission Valley, she used her cell phone to call her therapist, Alice White. As expected, she got her voic
e mail. Frankie’s situation could not honestly be called an emergency so she hung up without leaving a message. What good was a therapist if she never picked up her phone?
The Arcadia School secretary had sounded vaguely accusatory, or maybe Frankie had imagined that. Lately she felt like everyone was trying to pick a fight or poke a finger at her. Dr. White said stress made it hard to read people and situations correctly.
Walking fast across the asphalt parking lot to the school entrance, her breath fluttered at the base of her throat and she wished she were wearing her service uniform, not the utility camouflage that was blousy and comfortable as pajamas. More officially dressed, she would not feel so much like a schoolgirl about to be called on the carpet for kicking a soccer ball through a school window.
Arcadia School had grown within her experience from a small private primary school to a complex of buildings and grounds spread over two blocks of prime San Diego real estate. She had a cloudy recollection of walking this hall for the first time when she was younger than Glory, excited and scared and proudly self-conscious in her new school uniform. The waxed floors still rippled with reflected light from fluorescent bars in the ceiling and the mural in the foyer next to the office depicting generations of Arcadia schoolgirls tossing up handfuls of posies with Native Americans, Father Serra, and Cabrillo’s ship in the background was as hokey as it had been that first day. She had gone on to be one of the stars in Arcadia’s constellation. Class valedictorian, a National Merit Scholar, president of the senior choir. She had played serious basketball and captained Arcadia’s soccer team at two national championships.
At the office door she inhaled, wiped her palms on the thighs of her pants, set her hand against the doorplate, and pushed.
The office was exactly as she remembered it: a long, crowded, and disorderly room. Across from where she stood, a wall of windows was covered by slatted blinds drawn up to irregular heights. She had to look away to keep from ordering someone to even them up.
Below the level of the counter, she pressed two fingers against her wrist. Her pulse hammered. What was she afraid of? This was a school and she had spent ten months in Iraq, for godsake.
Frankie had read the standard issue pamphlets on stress the Marine Corps provided. She knew that readjusting after deployment took time and was always a challenge, greater for some than others. Her deployment had been fairly typical, even uneventful. The General had been through much worse in Vietnam and adjusted to being home without making a fuss and so would she. Her wide goalkeeper’s hands made fists hard and tight enough to punch a hole in the counter as she waited for someone to notice her.
A gray-haired woman looked at Frankie in her cammies and then over her shoulder at the door as if she expected an invasion to follow. “You’re Captain Tennyson. Of course you are. I’m Dory Maddox, the head secretary. I’m sure you don’t remember me. I started here when you were in the senior school.”
Arcadia was divided into the lower school for girls in kindergarten to third grade and upper school for grades four through eight. Senior school was high school.
“I have an appointment, ma’am.”
The parentheses at the corners of Dory’s mouth tightened, hinting displeasure, and Frankie realized she should have tried to make a little polite conversation. She had been deployed less than a year, but in that time she had forgotten the rules of polite behavior; and not only were her expectations frequently unreasonable, she was often abrupt and unintentionally rude.
Her therapist’s calm voice came into her head. “It’s hard to readjust but little by little, you’ll feel more comfortable in your skin.” After months with all her senses pumped, no one expected her to switch them off like a light at bedtime. No one except Frankie.
At the far end of the Arcadia office, a door opened and Frankie recognized Trelawny Scott, still wearing her black hair pulled into a tight chignon, still peering at the world from behind round Jackie O glasses. Years ago, Scott had taught biology to Frankie’s ninth-grade class. Today she looked smaller and thinner than Frankie remembered her, but still formidable. Her palm was dry and cool when they shook hands.
“Look at you! A captain in the Marine Corps. I’m sure the general is very proud of you.”
Scott’s well-meant ebullience embarrassed Frankie though she knew it was meant to put her at ease.
“There’s a marvelous photo of you in one of the trophy cases. Have you seen it, Frankie? Making that famous save? I don’t care how much that coach argued, the ball never made it over the line. It’s perfectly clear in the picture.”
“Speaking for myself, ma’am, I never had any doubt about it.”
“Frankie, you were never one for doubts! I imagine Glory will be just like you.”
“You know my daughter?”
“Oh, my yes. I should have explained. I’m headmistress of the lower school now. I took over from Miss Winslow six months ago.” She opened her office door wider. “Come in and sit down. You already know Glory’s teacher, Ms. Peters, of course.”
Frankie stopped in the doorway. Trapped.
She had learned in the Marine Corps to avoid dead-end spaces. Like right now: no matter how much the headmistress was trying to cover it up, Frankie smelled an ambush up the road.
Chapter 4
Ms. Peters was short and slight, a schoolgirl with a drill sergeant grip.
“And this is Dr. Wilson, the school’s psychologist.”
Wilson had a beige and forgettable face, silver hair buzzed close against his skull.
Frankie forced a smile. Her teeth felt huge, like the ceramic plates that fitted into her flak vest.
You can walk out any time you want to.
She could load and fire an M16 A4 rifle and a .45 pistol with sharpshooter accuracy. In Basic she was near the top in leadership and fitness points. But sit in a school office, exchange pleasantries, and then hear the truth about her daughter, truth that had to be bad because why else would she be called to a last-minute meeting? She would rather lie facedown in swamp water.
“We got to know Rick while you were away, Frankie,” Scott said. “In case you were ever worried about Glory—”
In case?
Of course she had worried about her daughter. In the morning when she brushed her teeth, she hoped Rick was reminding Glory to do the same and teaching her to floss. Looking at the piles of French fries and khaki-colored string beans in the mess, she worried that Glory wasn’t getting enough fresh vegetables. But like all the other mothers she had met in the service, Frankie had learned to put thoughts of her daughter off to the side of her mind so she could get on with the job, but she was never far away. Like the memory of rain in the midst of a sandstorm, some days Glory was all that kept Frankie upright.
“—your husband was a pleasure to deal with. Such a wonderful father.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Her voice broke and she cleared her throat.
Major Olvedo and her therapist had both urged her to see a throat specialist about her persistent hoarseness. She stalled, afraid of hearing that in Iraq she had inhaled chemicals that had permanently damaged her vocal folds. Once she had been a singer and a public speaker; now there were times when it hurt to speak.
“But we do prefer to conference with both parents,” Wilson said.
“He would have. Come.” Actually she hadn’t thought to call Rick. The summons from the school had been a surprise, and she had not been thinking clearly. “He had a meeting.”
Dr. Wilson said, “These things happen, of course.”
What kind of things? Are we still talking about Rick?
The more she needed to stay focused, the more ragged and drifty her thoughts became. At the same time—and this was crazy-making—she was hyper-vigilant and aware of the details of her environment as if her life depended on it. Since sitting down she had mentally measured the size of the office, roughly sixteen feet square, and noted a closed closet door. At least she thought it was a closet. It bothered her that she did
not know for sure. It might be an exit. Or an entrance someone could barge through without warning. The wall of windows opening onto the empty green playing field made her nervous.
Scott picked up a file and opened it.
“I’ll get right to the point, Frankie. We’re worried about Glory and we thought it would be better to talk about this now instead of waiting until… well, we don’t want it to get any worse.”
Worse. Frankie nodded. Worse meant it—whatever “it” was—was already bad. Did Rick know? Had he told her? Had she forgotten?
The smell of wet grass came through the office windows. Automated arcs of water caught the light and danced before Frankie’s eyes like rain. There should be a rainbow somewhere but she couldn’t see it.
Behind her oversize glasses Scott’s brows came together, and Frankie realized she was expected to say something. She managed another nod and a hugely inappropriate, bulletproof smile.
Scott said, “I’ll let Ms. Peters explain.”
“Glory’s a darling little girl, Captain Tennyson. Really smart and she seems to love school. She reads very well and just shines academically.” It was obvious that Glory’s teacher wanted to appear nonthreatening, the kind of woman to whom a parent would trust her eight-year-old daughter.
She blinked too much.
“Really, I wish all my girls were as smart as Glory.”
“I don’t think you invited me here for the good news. What exactly is the problem? As you see it?”
Ms. Peters recoiled a little, and Frankie realized that she had asked the question in her command voice that sounded peremptory and rude in the context of a parent-teacher conference. Cut the crap and get to the point.
“Well.” The teacher looked at Scott who nodded for her to continue. “She’s having problems on the playground. With the other girls.”
“What kind of problems?”
“She’s very aggressive, Captain.” The psychologist had a beige voice to match his looks. “We have a video.”
Adrenaline shot through her. “You’ve been taking pictures of my daughter? You’ve been surveilling her?”
When She Came Home Page 2
