Pieces of Me

by Natalie Hart

  44

  I am at the art shop again this morning. I decided to take on extra shifts. I need something to focus on, to get me out of the house. I need a reminder of the parts of me that are not just a wife struggling through her husband’s return.

  The art shop is my refuge now. I find the quiet predictability of it reassuring. When I am here, I can relax in a way I cannot at home. Adam’s grief inhabits the house, appearing each day under a difference guise. Some days it sits quietly in the corner, a dark presence that sucks away light and joy. Other days it rages through the rooms, slamming us against the walls and leaving us gasping in the wake of its force. I do not know which is worse.

  Some days I can’t help but wish I had more than this job in a shop, but I’m not sure I would be capable of anything else at the moment. The job gives me stability. Helping Hassan with his college applications gives me purpose.

  Penny is here again today. I have noticed that she is around more during my shifts at the moment. Noor comes in more often too. They are gentle around me and I know they can tell that something isn’t right.

  When Adam first got home, Penny teased when I came in late or tired. She and Noor joked that I was going through a second honeymoon period. They asked why I was hiding Adam away from them, keeping him all to myself. But now the jokes have stopped. Noor came to pick me up for the art group last week while my car was in the garage for a check-up. I asked her to text me when she arrived and said I would run out to the car. I hated myself for trying to keep her away from him. When I went out to meet her, I caught her glancing up at the figure that moved quickly away from the bedroom window.

  Today Penny is organising stock and I am behind the counter when Noor arrives. She still comes in each Friday and sits in the corner of the shop with a coffee, talking about her latest project or her family or the trip that she one days plans to make back to Kurdistan.

  “Hi Emma,” she says today, with her usual warm smile.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” I say.

  Penny emerges at the sound of Noor’s voice. I have noticed the friendship between them take shape in recent months. They talk about their favourite artists, share recipes, and they even went to see a play together the other week. I would like to believe that the friendship is entirely based on their shared passions, but I can’t help wonder how much of it is their shared concern for me. I wonder what is said between them when I am not here. They both know me, far more than most people in Colorado Springs, but they do not quite know me enough to really push. To challenge me when I say I am fine. Sometimes I wish they would probe more, but most days it is a relief. It would feel like a betrayal of Adam to discuss him with them. This is something I must deal with myself.

  I go to make us coffee, and when I return, Penny and Noor are talking about the exhibit for the art group that Noor wants to plan. She has discussed the idea with me before. It is a way to showcase the group to the Colorado Springs community and demonstrate what refugees and immigrants can add to society. It is also a way to raise the profile of the artists themselves. Noor believes that some of the work produced, for example Afsoon’s jewellery and Hope’s clothing, could be sold in local shops. Noor had hoped to hold the exhibition in the school, but the principal has said no.

  “He says that some parents won’t think it’s appropriate for the school grounds being used for such purposes,” she says.

  “Because we’re foreign?” I ask.

  “Because they are. Not you. You’re white, so it doesn’t count.”

  My identity as an outsider here is diluted by the colour of my skin.

  “This is the same guy that gives Hassan a hard time. It was a nightmare trying to get a college reference out of him. Someone should really lodge a complaint.”

  “I completely agree,” says Penny. Penny’s world view has started to shift a little since her friendship with Noor. I have seen her drop her new friend’s name proudly into conversations with old customers, as if daring them to comment, and watched her be offended by some news story or another on Noor’s behalf.

  “How are Hassan’s college applications going?” Noor asks me.

  “I think we’re almost there,” I say. “I’m seeing him this week to go over his personal statement one more time and then we’re done. I never thought I’d ever learn so much about computer sciences or the US college system.”

  “Lucky you,” Noor says with a laugh. “But really, that’s so exciting. I saw Zainab at art group this week and she seemed super happy. I’m pleased for them.”

  “Me too. Sorry I couldn’t be there again,” I say.

  “No worries. You know you’re welcome whenever you can make it.”

  Penny, who has been deep in thought, speaks.

  “Noor, your art exhibition… Why don’t I ask my pastor if you can hold the exhibition at my church?”

  “Really? Do you think that would be possible?”

  Noor looks as surprised as I feel.

  “Oh, I can convince him,” says Penny. “I donated a whole bunch of art supplies for the last charity auction he held. Far better than all the jars of jelly everyone else gave him. He owes me.” She winks and I laugh.

  “That would be wonderful,” Noor says and then turns to me. “Do you think you’ll have anything ready to put up, Emma?”

  I feel my body tense at the question.

  “To be honest, probably not,” I say. “I just have a lot on at the moment. I’ll definitely be there though.”

  It is not that I haven’t tried. When Adam is out, I continue to sit on the floor in front of the love atlas and my mother’s painting, pieces spread around me. I push them into different combinations and patterns. Last night I came close to something. The colours began to come together in a way that was familiar but I could not quite put my finger on. They prompted half-forgotten tastes and sounds and memories that remained just out of reach. Last night it was me who moved uneasily in my sleep, not just Adam.

  45

  The low sun has already settled behind the horizon as I drive home. There is frost on the pavement and heavy clouds threaten more snow, even though it is supposed to be spring. The Coloradan winter feels never-ending. I drive slowly and cautiously, other people on the road doing the same.

  I am tired. I didn’t sleep much again last night. Adam moves around while he sleeps. Makes indistinguishable noises. Once I think he cried.

  Penny caught me dozing off sat at the chair behind the counter of the art shop after Noor left and told me to go home, but I didn’t know how to tell her that home is the last place I want to be right now. The shop is free from the heaviness of habitation. At least outside there is space for me and my thoughts.

  I open the door and Adam is sat, beer in his hand and volume on the television up high. I lean over the back of the sofa to kiss the side of his face in greeting. My lips scratch against stubble that I am surprised he can get away with at work. He reaches one arm back and pats the back of my head, his gaze not breaking away from the television.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey.”

  I pour myself a glass of wine in the kitchen and slump down next to him without removing my shoes.

  “How was your day?” I ask.

  “Shit,” he says, expelling the word in a rush of sweet beery breath. I rub his leg.

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  “Nope.” His eyes are still fixed on the screen. He is watching a football game between two minor league British teams. I don’t know why he’s watching it or how he found it. He’s never expressed an interest in “soccer” before.

  “How’s your week?” he asks.

  “It’s fine. I saw Noor in the shop today, which was nice, and I’m helping Hassan finish his college applications this week.”

  “Of course. Hanging out with the Iraqis again,” he says. “I don’t know why I bother asking.”

  We don’t talk about Iraq these days. “It was a shithole when we went in and it’s a shithole now we�
�re leaving,” said Adam this week, when he changed the channel from a news report on the withdrawal. Without talking about Iraq it feels like our foundations have disappeared. Maybe Kate was right.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I say.

  “You just can’t quit,” he says. “It’s like an obsession to you – getting all involved in their business.”

  “It’s not an obsession. I’m just helping them out.”

  “You’re not in Iraq anymore, Emma. This is America. It’s like we never even fucking agreed that you’d get your head out of that place for a while.”

  I won’t take the bait this time. We’ve had this argument before and right now all I want to do is eat and sleep. I stand up and knock over two empty beer bottles that I hadn’t noticed on the floor by the couch. I pick them up and take them to the kitchen.

  “Want some dinner?” I ask.

  “Not hungry,” he says.

  I open the fridge door, where there is only one bottle left of the two six-packs he bought yesterday. As I close the fridge, I notice the card from Adam’s mum, stuck on with a magnet, reminding us of his dad’s sixtieth birthday party. She’s invited the whole family over for the weekend – the three sons, plus their wives and kids. We’ve already cancelled two trips to see them since Adam has got back and I know everyone else has sorted out their travel arrangements for the party.

  “Have you booked tickets for your dad’s sixtieth yet?” I ask.

  “Not yet.”

  “The flight prices will get high soon. We don’t want to end up having to drive it.”

  “I’ll do it, Emma.”

  It’s as if the more I ask, the more reluctant to book it he becomes.

  I start clearing up the kitchen so that I have space to cook. There are a couple of empty bottles in the sink and a plate with a soggy piece of toast. On the counter is a knife, stuck to the work surface with peanut butter. I pick it up and drop it noisily into the sink.

  “Babe, do you have to be so loud?” he says.

  “I’m just cleaning up your stuff,” I say, picking up a corner of the disintegrating toast and dropping it pointedly in the rubbish.

  “Just leave it.”

  “I need space to make dinner.”

  “Get takeout,” he says, his eyes now back on the television. “Or wait ’til the game’s over.”

  “I don’t want takeout. I just want to make some dinner so I can eat and go to bed.”

  He looks over again.

  “Emma, will it really kill you to wait twenty fucking minutes?”

  There are many things that kill us, but not this. I turn on the tap. I look over at Adam and notice that his fists are clenched in his lap. They were clenched when we argued last week too. Not high up in front of him but stomach-level, moving in small swift movements that punctuated his sentences.

  “It won’t kill me,” I say over the tap, “but I want to cook now.” I squeeze green washing-up liquid onto a sponge and start to wash the plate. I sense Adam standing, but I do not look at him. There is a strange feeling in my stomach that I have felt before, but it is not a feeling that I associate with Adam. I feel the weight of his footsteps towards me, but I do not turn. The feeling gets stronger.

  He does not say anything, but reaches into the sink and takes the plate out of my soapy hands.

  “Adam. What the—?”

  He opens the back door and hurls the plate into the darkness. I hear a thump. It must have landed on the frost-covered lawn beyond the patio. I imagine it landing, cracked, but somehow intact. Rolling to a stop.

  “Problem solved,” Adam says.

  He returns to the sofa, sits down, and I stand in silence. It is fear, the feeling in my stomach, even though I have avoided giving it a name. I feel the blood pumping through my body. I try not to tremble. It is fight or flight. Today I still have some battle left in me. Or at least I think I do.

  I count in my head. Take a couple of deep breaths. Then I walk over to the television, turn it off, stand in front of it. He looks momentarily surprised, but his face quickly hardens.

  “Are you kidding me?” I ask him.

  “What?”

  “All I want to do is make some dinner and you throw the plate into the fucking garden?”

  “I asked you to stop and you didn’t.”

  “You were an arsehole about it. I just wanted some food.”

  “You were crashing around. Was waiting really too much to ask?”

  “Shit, Adam…” I am exhausted. Pain starts to hum around my temples. I can feel my eyes filling up, but I don’t want to cry. Not now. Not in front of him. I put my face into my palms and massage the side of my head, trying to keep calm.

  “Oh great. Yeah, that’s right, have a little cry about it, Em. That will make things better.”

  He picks up the remote control for the television and turns it back on. He stares at the screen as if I am not standing there in front of it and a sudden anger flares up and burns brightly inside me. That is when I say it.

  “You think Dave would want to see you like this? You think he’d be proud?”

  They were not my words to say.

  Pain and shock flash across his face. I want to take the words back, but it is already too late. I cannot stay there to witness the havoc I have wrought, so I storm to our bedroom. Slam the door. Hold my shaking hands in front of me and wonder what this deployment has changed in me too.

  I sit on the bed for a while, practising the deep-breathing techniques that I learned while I was in Baghdad. Eventually I sleep.

  I wake up the next morning lying on the bed fully dressed. Adam has not come to bed. I find him lying asleep on the sofa in the living room. His face looks even more gaunt than when he returned. I sit down next to him and he stirs, rubbing at his eyes as he opens them. This war has destroyed too much already. I won’t let it destroy us too.

  I stroke his head with my hand.

  “Morning,” I say.

  “Morning, babe.”

  He moves back on the sofa and I lie down facing him. I am reminded of the nights we spent together in Baghdad, when we slept curled into each other in a single bed. My face is inches from his.

  “Adam… I’m sorry for what I said last night. I shouldn’t have said that… not about Dave.”

  He sighs.

  “Yeah, well, I shouldn’t have thrown the plate.”

  I put my hand on his side and he flinches at the contact, but I leave my hand there.

  “Adam, I think you need to talk to someone.”

  He says nothing, just looks at me. I know he wants to look away, but our faces are so close that there is nowhere for his gaze to go.

  “I just… It’s not your fault Dave died and I think you’re still punishing yourself for it. You did everything you could. Maybe talking to someone professional could help…”

  It was Kate who had told me, not Adam. Kate had received the report, then asked and asked and asked until she understood the final moments of Dave’s life. It was Kate who told me that Dave was shot in an ambush during an operation and that it was Adam who worked on him. It was Adam who tried to stem the blood that was pumping out of Dave’s body. It was Adam who tried to stop the life from draining away.

  I have asked Adam about it, but he won’t say much. I do not know whether this is because he doesn’t want to or that he simply can’t. It’s something I saw in some of the visa applicants who had been through trauma. Their mind decided it was better to forget.

  Kate told me that one shot went through Dave’s chest. The doctors said he never stood a chance, but still Adam tried. I have tried to reassure him many times that it is not his fault. He hears the words but he does not feel them.

  ‘I’m the medic, Emma. The fucking medic,” he said to me when we finally talked about it. “It was my job to bring him home safely and I failed. Anything would be better than this. I would rather have not come home at all than come home without him.”

  “You don’t mean that,
Adam,” I had said, my voice cracking. “You can’t mean that.” But I knew it was the most honest thing he had ever said.

  “I can’t get help, Em,” he says to me now. “It’s not that simple. They could stop me doing my job.”

  “Maybe a break isn’t a bad thing.”

  “Without my work I have nothing.”

  I want to grab him. Shake him by the shoulders. Shout, what about us? What about me? I left my job to come here. I have nothing else. Do not tell me your work is everything. Instead I speak in a voice that sounds calmer than my own.

  “Why would they stop you doing your job? I went to that briefing. There was all kinds of stuff about getting support.”

  “It doesn’t always work out like that though.”

  He pushes his body up to a sitting position and I do the same. I face him on the couch.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Do you remember Scott?”

  “Scott?”

  “Yeah. He was in Iraq with me when we met.”

  “Oh, the short guy, kinda stocky?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. The team Bravo. Well, after the last deployment he had some marriage issues. He thought his wife had been fucking someone while he was away, although he never had any proof and she didn’t admit to it.”

  My mind flickers to Sally in the bar, her body pressed up against a stranger. I never said anything to Adam and now I somehow feel that this makes me complicit.

  “Scott went through a bit of a bad patch. Nothing major, but he realised he wasn’t firing on all cylinders at work. He was getting pissed more than usual. So he did what they tell us to do. He asked for support. And do you want to know what happened?”

  I have a feeling I probably don’t.

  “They transferred him off the team early. He still had a year left, but they sent him to some shit role in battalion ops. They said they just needed someone, but everyone knew what was going on. It was fucking bullshit.”

  “But… I don’t get it. Why?”

  “Because he didn’t have his shit squared away.”

  “Are you sure that’s why?” I ask.

  “Positive. I’m just telling you how it is, Emma.”