When She Came Home

by Drusilla Campbell

  “He said he loves me,” Candace said and leaned into Frankie’s hip. “But I don’t want him to love me.”

  “Enough,” Domino said. Her engorged lips barely moved.

  Two suitcases stood at the end of the bed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Santa Maria,” Dekker said.

  “Tell me how I can help.”

  “Don’t… help.”

  Candace stood beside her mother. “We’re doin’ okay.”

  “Go home,” Domino said.

  In the cramped room Frankie felt huge and awkward, all dangling arms and big feet. She had imagined that she and Domino were friends, that they had a particular connection. Whether or not this was an accurate description of their relationship didn’t matter anymore.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Domino squinted in the effort to speak, drawing her brows together, cutting two deep creases above her nose. “Stay away… Jason.”

  “I don’t even know what he looks like. I wouldn’t know the man if I tripped over him.”

  Candace laughed. The tightness in Frankie’s shoulders and back eased a little. She sat beside Domino and carefully, tenderly, drew her into her arms. For an instant Domino resisted and then Frankie felt the starch wash out of her.

  Brave soldier. Brave girl.

  War was a terrible thing. It didn’t matter that the statement was a cliché. It needed to be said and said again in every language until all the world accepted the truth in the same way it was known around the planet that battery acid wasn’t for drinking. Good war, bad war: Frankie knew there was a difference, but the wounding was the same. Mind and body, brain and bone, no one came away unmarked. Even Glory and Rick, who had stayed in San Diego and waited for her to come home, even they had their hidden scars.

  “Going. Morning.”

  “Without saying good-bye?”

  Domino looked at Dekker, asking him to explain.

  “She was going to call you when she got to Santa Maria. I know some folks up there connected with the VA. They’ll help her get a job and she can park the van on their property until she finds an apartment.”

  “And I’m gonna go to school. For really. And the beach isn’t far away.”

  “Before they go, they both have to see a doctor. My brother.”

  “We’ve got someone we trust up in Santa Maria.”

  “How will they get up there?”

  “ ’rive,” Domino said.

  “That’s ridiculous. It’s almost three hundred miles. You can’t drive in your condition. I won’t let you.” Frankie had rarely felt so sure of anything. “You’re coming to my house until you’re better. I have plenty of room and you can stay as long as you need to.”

  Domino shook her head.

  “Don’t argue with me, Domino.” Frankie looked at Candace. “Tell her. You know she shouldn’t drive.”

  “She gets dizzy.”

  “I’m sure she does.”

  “Frankie’s right, Mama.”

  “In your condition you wouldn’t make it to Orange County.” Frankie stood up. “We’re not going to negotiate on this, Dekker. I have a room with two beds already made up. She can leave the van where it is now and we’ll come and get it tomorrow. As soon as I get home, I’ll call Harry. Domino needs to be looked at by a doctor.” Frankie thought about telling Domino that Candace had hepatitis, but that could come later. “If we were in Iraq, Domino, and you were hurt, I’d pick you up and carry you to safety. You wouldn’t fight me there. Don’t fight me now.”

  Dekker said, “It’s your call, Domino.”

  “Please, Mama.”

  Domino seemed to fold in the middle and her head dropped forward onto her knees.

  They loaded the Nissan’s trunk and Frankie helped Domino into the backseat. Driving back to Ocean Beach with Dekker following them, she wondered what Rick’s reaction would be. She feared a setback in the détente of the afternoon. The fair thing to do was to call him and give him a little time to prepare, but she didn’t want to hear his objections so she left her phone in her purse.

  It was after two when Frankie pulled into the garage with Candace and Domino and a portion of their worldly goods. Rick didn’t seem as surprised as she had expected him to be. And not put out either. He was politely welcoming, and while they drank a beer in the kitchen Dekker told him some of Domino’s story. Frankie settled her and Candace in the guest room on the first level. Glory had awakened when Flame barked at the strangers, but her initial excitement at having her best friend in the house vanished the moment she saw what Jason’s fists had done to Domino’s face. Subdued, she stayed near Rick with her hand locked in his.

  Harry came through the front door without knocking and went downstairs to examine Domino. He dressed her injuries and gave her pain meds, assuring her a sound sleep that night.

  In the kitchen he told Frankie, Dekker, and Rick that he would be back the next day. He wanted to see Candace in the office for a complete physical, much more thorough than the one required for school enrollment.

  “I don’t feel sick,” Candace said.

  “Well, that’s good, that’s what a doctor likes to hear. But hepatitis is sneaky. Tomorrow we’ll get you checked out and give you some medicine and you’ll be good as new. Ready for school up in Santa Maria.”

  Harry looked at Frankie. “Sis, you’re a wreck.” He dug in his bag for a sample pack of sleep medication. “Eat something, take one of these, and go to bed.”

  Eventually, the house settled for what remained of the night.

  “I never saw anything like what happened to her face,” Glory said as Frankie tucked her into bed. “On TV it doesn’t look so bad when someone gets in a fight.”

  “It wasn’t a fight, honey. It was a beating.”

  “Did she do something bad?”

  “No, but even if she had, Glory, there’s never any reason to beat someone up like that.”

  “I’d never do that. Not even to Colette.”

  “I know you wouldn’t.”

  “Will she be okay?”

  “She’ll heal.”

  “Was it like that in the war? Did people look bad like that?”

  Frankie pulled her daughter into her arms and let her cry. Poor eight-year-old girl, bullied and abandoned and exposed to violence. How had this happened when all Frankie had ever wanted was to protect her?

  In the bedroom that still smelled faintly of garlic and pepperoni, Frankie lay still and waited for Harry’s wonder pill to put her to sleep. Rick slept like a boy without a trouble in the world. He had accepted Domino and Candace into their home as graciously as if they were old friends.

  He loved her. He was going to stick. They both were.

  She didn’t feel at all sleepy and would not put it past her brother to have given her a placebo. Either that or she was too wired by the day’s events. After staring at the ceiling for thirty minutes, she got out of bed and in her warm robe with down slippers on her feet, she curled in the chair by the television and wrote in her journal.

  She began by writing about Domino and Candace and without planning to she transitioned into a recollection of Three Fountain Square. She wrote for more than an hour, and her right hand, unaccustomed to holding a pen for so long, cramped in the claw position. As she massaged it she read over the pages covered in large looping script, sometimes adding a detail or a name. Just a few weeks ago she had told her therapist that she would never be able to find the words to describe what happened that day; and now, while it was true that a part of her wanted to tear the pages out and bury them in the garbage under the old vegetables and dribbly coffee filters in a sodden and stinking place where no one would ever look for the truth, she knew she would let her writing stand.

  She felt a great emptying relief.

  She closed the book and put it on Rick’s dresser where he would find it and returned to bed, fitting herself against the curve of his back and the bend of his legs. He murmured something from
the depths of a dream and reached around to pat her thigh.

  He would learn that she had gone to Iraq to make the world a safer, better place for all children, and how badly she had failed. It was all there in the journal. Evidence of murder and cowardice and dereliction of the duty. But writing her story wouldn’t be enough for Senator Belasco. She wanted her to stand before Senator Delaware, the cameras, and the whole world.

  Make my bed and light the light

  I’ll arrive late tonight

  Blackbird, bye-bye.

  Chapter 34

  The morning started slowly with Frankie up first. She felt surprisingly good despite little sleep. She was making oatmeal and a pile of toast when Candace peered into the kitchen, uncharacteristically tentative.

  “Is it okay?”

  Frankie was so pleased to see her that for a moment all she could do was smile.

  “Can I help?” Candace pulled a stool up to the stove where Frankie was stirring the oatmeal. “My grandmother used to make oatmeal. Do you have real milk or do you use the powdered kind?”

  Rick came downstairs and while he settled the girls for breakfast, Frankie took a tray to Domino and found her sitting up in bed, staring at the opposite wall. When Frankie walked in, she covered her battered face with her hands.

  “Don’t be embarrassed. Please.”

  “… can’t stay.”

  “How do you feel? You sound a little better.”

  “… don’t want to make work…”

  She made a place for the tray on the bed. “A couple of days, Domino. That’s all.”

  “Your husband?”

  “He’s forming a posse to go after Jason. You can stay as long as you want as far as he’s concerned.”

  Domino looked as if she did not quite believe this, but she let it pass. “Candace?”

  “She’s having oatmeal with Glory and Rick.”

  “… don’t want you to wait… us.”

  “Can’t you for five minutes stop being so damn defensive and just say thank you?”

  “Did Candace? Manners?”

  “She’s happy, Domino. That’s what I noticed.”

  Frankie pulled a Tylenol bottle from her pants pocket and tossed it onto the bed. “You need a couple of these, I bet.”

  Domino swallowed four with orange juice.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  They had been parked at the Frye’s lot off Interstate 15. Jason must have been cruising all the big lots that night.

  Domino leaned back, closing her eyes.

  It was after midnight and she was dozing in the front seat when suddenly the van started to move. It was in park and the brake was on, but Jason had rammed his big truck against the bumper and was ready to do it again.

  “I had to get out… make him stop.”

  He did not believe that they were truly divorced. He claimed that he had never signed the papers, that he was being railroaded. Frustrated beyond reason, he had begun to hit her and her cries had awakened Candace. She screamed at her father to stop what he was doing and when he seemed not to hear her, she pulled the card with Dekker’s number from inside the van’s ashtray and lit out across the Frye’s parking lot to the back of the store where men worked nights, unloading and unpacking electronic goods. She begged to use one of their cell phones. By the time Dekker got to them, Jason had fled. Domino lay on the asphalt, half conscious.

  Frankie sat, letting the story sink in.

  “Don’t hate him.”

  “He’d kill you if he could. You know that.”

  “… doesn’t think right. His head’s full of—” Domino shrugged. They both knew what his head was full of.

  Across the street Maryanne Byrne had arranged travel brochures in two piles on the dining room table. One she called His and the other Hers with room between them for the Both pile. A few galleries for her, soccer or polo or even cricket for him to watch. It didn’t really matter what the game was. He enjoyed competition. A beach would please them both if there was a cabana or umbrella, a shady spot where he could snooze all afternoon.

  In the middle of the night her arthritic knees had woken her from a sound sleep to announce that the weather in San Diego was about to change. She’d heard Frankie come home late. Yesterday she’d been in the mood for New York but this morning she leaned toward something tropical.

  First married, she and Harlan had lived in military housing in Honolulu, a bland apartment without so much as a palm tree in view. Whenever they could, they retreated to a shacky community off Kalanianole Highway and rented a bungalow on a rise of land overlooking the beach. Pineapple for breakfast, sun and snacks and naps and then fresh fish for dinner. They made love early in the morning when the air was fresh.

  “You’re daydreaming, Mom.” Frankie came through the screen door.

  “Why aren’t you at work?”

  “I told you yesterday. I’ve got a few days’ leave.”

  Maryanne didn’t care for surprises, but she sensed a lift in Frankie’s spirits and so forgave her for jolting her out of a pleasant memory.

  “Is Dad around?”

  “The gopher ate all the daffodil bulbs. Your father’s staging a major water strike.”

  “What kind of mood’s he in?”

  “Good. If you’re not Ho Chi Gopher.” Maryanne looked at her daughter, trying to figure out what was different about her. “What’re you up to anyway?”

  “Are you going on vacation?”

  “I asked you a question, Francine.”

  She pulled out a dining room chair and sat down. “I saw Bunny yesterday. Glory let him in when I was at my therapist. She thinks he’s family.”

  “Poor child.”

  “Do you like him, Mom?”

  “I thought no one would ever ask. I loathe him. I always have.”

  “You hide it really well.”

  Maryanne sighed. “He’s your father’s friend.”

  “Maybe. When it suits his purposes.”

  Maryanne’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t get between them, Francine.”

  “Why are they so close anyway? Do you know the story?”

  “I don’t. Whatever it was happened on their last tour. Before that they were just ordinary friends. I asked your father to tell me what it was, but he said some things are best not talked about.”

  Maryanne wished she still smoked. She had broken the habit years ago, but there was a type of conversation that always roused a craving for nicotine.

  “I’ll tell you something I’m sure of, Frankie. Bunny Bunson is no hero. He didn’t save your father’s life or anything conventional like that. It’s not gratitude your father feels.” Maryanne straightened the piles of brochures, knocking them against the tabletop like decks of cards. “I think something happened in ’Nam that revealed a part of Bunny that you and I will never see, and whatever it was, it made your father feel protective. I don’t think the General likes him as much as he feels sorry for him.”

  “He never wanted to protect me. As far as he was concerned, I was on my own out at the end of the gangplank.”

  “But you never fell in. If you had, he would have dived in after you. He would have fought sharks for you, Frankie. But you never needed him to.”

  Frankie looked as if she were trying to believe this.

  “So yesterday. What did Bunny have to say for himself?”

  “He implied that Dad’s sick. Is it true?”

  “He’s fine except for the fact that he’s seventy-five years old and spent three tours in hell.”

  “I need to talk to him, Mom.”

  “About what?” Frankie didn’t answer right away. “Well, never mind, I don’t need to know. He’ll listen.” At least she hoped he would. A thought occurred to Maryanne. “Unless… You haven’t reenlisted? Tell me you haven’t done that.”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s good news because I don’t think he’d take that well at all.”

  “Actually I can’t wait t
o be a civilian again.”

  Maryanne began gathering the brochures in a pile. “I hate to disappoint you, Frankie, but you’re every inch a Byrne and that means you’ll always be a Marine. It’s not just that little tattoo on your wrist. It’s part of your DNA.”

  Chapter 35

  The General was in the shade house washing his hands.

  “Got him this time.” He dried his hands on the old-fashioned roller towel beside the sink. “The bastard can’t live forever.”

  Every autumn the same ritual was enacted in different parts of the garden. The General planted daffodil bulbs, choosing a spot far from the previous year’s failed effort, and every year a gopher found and ate most of them. He would never admit it, but hungry bugs and caterpillars and gophers were what he enjoyed about gardening. They made it a competition.

  “What brings you across the street this morning?” He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t look so good, Francine.”

  “I didn’t sleep.”

  “Well, if that’s all it is. Nobody ever died from lack of sleep.”

  “I need to talk to you, sir.”

  There were two well-used Adirondack chairs on a square of grass at the highest point of the garden. From there they had a glimpse through the neighbors’ rooftops to the horizon where the sea and cloudy sky met.

  The General said, settling into the chair, “Better enjoy the last of the warm weather while we can.” Before Frankie could say anything, he added, “Go on down to the fridge in the shade house and bring me up a Heineken. Have one yourself, if you want to.”

  He talked about the gopher, about the weather, about anything to avoid a serious conversation.

  “Listen to me, sir. Please. Senator Belasco wants me to testify about something I saw in Baghdad. She came to see me specially. To ask me to do it.”

  “You?” He waited for her to say more. “Just tell her you won’t.”

  “I don’t think I have a choice, not really, Dad.” She seldom called him Dad. Sir came more comfortably, Daddy never. “I have to tell you what happened over there. Will you listen?”

  “Between you and your mother, I don’t think I have a choice.”

  At one time the school in an outlying district of Baghdad had educated both boys and girls in two separate buildings with an office between them. The school had been a source of pride for the community, but when Frankie saw it, almost nothing remained of the classrooms. She and Fatima had met with the principal of the school and several of the teachers and elders of the community, listened to their accusations and complaints. It might be true that coalition forces had inadvertently destroyed the school. There was no way to prove the truth of the accusations. What mattered, Frankie kept repeating, was the new school they were all going to build together. These had been Frankie’s first close encounters with Iraqi women and what had struck her about the conversations was their profound fatalism. Frankie had a vision for the destroyed school and their inability to believe in it with her made the meetings exhausting.