Denise Gomez has a room in the back of her small house with a special bed, and equipment to make sure her sister doesn’t choke.
“The VA sends a physical therapist over once a week,” Denise tells me. “Michelle is a tough girl, but you already know that. She’s making good progress, too. Real good progress.” Denise touches the hair on her sister’s forehead. “I can tell she’s real glad to see you. She brightened right up the minute you walked through the door. Just so happy to see her old lieutenant. Isn’t that right, Sis?”
I smile and nod. “I’m really glad to see her, too. Both of you. You’ve been great hosts.”
I arrived in the midmorning after driving most of the night and catching a few hours of sleep in my car. Denise greeted me with a cup of coffee and a hug. I was bracing myself for some level of blame or hatred, but it was nothing like that. This woman is all love. The hospitality didn’t ebb as we walked back to Michelle’s room. She even spared me the requisite speech about Michelle’s condition, and the admonitions to prepare myself.
The first thing I noticed was Michelle’s hair. I’d never seen it out of its tight bun, and the length of it shocked me.
Denise laughed. “Bet you never knew she was so girlie.”
I noticed the tattoos on Michelle’s forearms, next. The songbirds and the snakes chasing after them had withered and faded with her atrophied arms and no longer seemed to belong to her.
After a couple of hours, it felt as though I’d submerged myself into the quiet of this house. We sit and talk while Denise paints Michelle’s fingernails and rubs her feet. It seems, at times, like she’s looking at me and managing to focus. The spark of recognition I’d allowed myself to hope for, that never comes. But neither does the shadow of pain and despair that I’d feared. She moans from time to time when she wants her position shifted, and when Denise turns her, Michelle’s long, black hair falls away to reveal a dent in her forehead where the skull is missing.
“I should be going,” I finally say to Denise as the sun sets. “Long drive.”
“Well, it was so nice to have you!” she says, getting up to hug me. With her arms wrapped around my neck she whispers, “You are always so welcome here. You know that, right?”
“I know,” I try to say, but swallow the words when I realize I can’t speak without embarrassing both of us.
When Denise releases me, I walk to Gomez’s bed and take her hand. She doesn’t move. “Sergeant,” I say, with as level a voice as I can manage, before I turn to leave.
I drive around the corner, and about a mile down the road, before I put the car in park and let myself go. I want no possibility of Denise Gomez seeing me do this. Though I have no right, I rest my head on the steering wheel for what must be an hour. It’s fully dark by the time I manage to compose myself.
They gave me a medal for valor.
Major Leighton pinned it on my chest when the company returned home to Camp Pendleton. After the ceremony in his office, Major Leighton gave me the floor and asked that I make some brief remarks. I thanked everyone for being there. I thanked my fellow lieutenants Cobb and Wong for their support through the long deployment. I thanked the major for his faith in me. I didn’t say a word about Gomez, and neither did anyone else.
My separation orders were processed a week later, so soon after the battalion arrived home that I didn’t even bother to retrieve my things from the storage unit where they’d spent the better part of a year. I just filled out the paperwork to have the boxes shipped directly to my home of record in Birmingham and accepted the invitation to sleep on Cobb’s floor.
Things changed with Cobb, Wong, and the rest the lieutenants after Ramadi. They were different around me. Deferent almost, which I never understood. Cobb, in particular. Or maybe I imagined it. Maybe it was me. Maybe I was different.
I felt like it would’ve been rude to decline Cobb’s offer. For a week, we stayed up late, watched movies and bad television, and didn’t say much to each other. We didn’t become friends and knew we never would, but I could hardly remember what I disliked about the guy.
On my last night of active duty, Cobb drove me to the San Diego airport to catch my flight home to Alabama. I had no plans for my month of terminal leave, beyond an uninterrupted week of sleep on my sister’s couch.
As I stepped from Cobb’s jeep with a duffel over my shoulder, he reached over to shake my hand and wish me well. “Glad you were around. Good luck, Pete.”
Unprepared for his sincerity, I muttered something incoherent before recovering my wits and offering a curt “Thanks. You, too.”
A flood of nostalgia swallowed me up as his taillights passed out of sight, and I realized with a start that my last true moments as a Marine had slipped away. I was alone, quite suddenly, with just the stories. The truth had driven off with Cobb.
Inside the terminal, I checked the departures board. My flight stood out in ominous red. Canceled, along with a dozen others. The woman at the ticket counter couldn’t help me. Some sort of bad weather in Chicago had backed up connections west of the Rockies. None of the airlines had an available seat on a flight to Birmingham, or anywhere else, until morning.
Everything I owned was already in transit. Worse, I hadn’t taken the time to replace the phone I’d deactivated before deployment. Not wanting to bother Cobb or invite another heartfelt good-bye, I had my ticket transferred to a morning flight, and I entered the concourse to find a secluded spot where I could stretch out and sleep. But I owed my sister, and maybe my parents, a phone call. So, I wandered over to the USO.
The airport USO was principally used as a gathering spot during pickup periods, when Marine recruits from around the country arrived in the middle of the night for boot-camp induction. Mercifully, the Recruit Depot was between cycles, and I had the small alcove to myself. An old man sat behind the volunteer desk, his arms crossed and his chin resting against his chest. He wore a Marine Corps ball cap and looked old enough for Korea.
Wondering if he was asleep, I approached him softly, my head down and tilted to the side.
“Need some help, young man?” he asked, wide-awake and perfectly still.
“Oh. Sorry for sneaking up on you, sir,” I said, taken off guard. “Just wondering if there’s a phone I could use?”
“Over here.” He nodded, stood up, and gestured for me to follow as he shuffled on short legs over to a table piled high with beat-up cell phones. They looked donated. He grabbed one and stared up at me, apparently waiting for a number.
“Sir, I can dial the phone myself. I’m just looking to make a quick call.”
He shook his head. “No, no. You have to mash a special code. Better let me.”
“One second.” I dropped my bag, unable to remember my sister’s phone number offhand. I knew I had it in an address book at the bottom of my duffel, but I didn’t want to dump the whole thing and root through my underwear in the middle of the USO to find it. My parents’ home phone number, the first I’d ever memorized, came to the front of my mind.
“Dial area code two zero five . . .” I watched his odd, stubby fingers at work.
“Okay. Two zero five . . . and?”
“You know what, sir”—I picked up my duffel—“I really appreciate it, but on second thought I’d rather not disturb them.”
“Your folks?”
“Yes, sir. It’s a few hours later there.”
“You sure? Bet your mother wants to hear from you.”
“I’m sure. But I appreciate your help, sir.” I turned to leave.
He stopped me. “Where you coming from?”
“Pendleton.”
“Not what I mean,” he said with a knowing grin. “Where you coming home from?”
“Iraq.” After a moment’s hesitation I added, “Recently returned from Iraq, sir,” in an attempt to make it sound routine. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“Well then, welcome back.”
He offered me his hand and I shook it, realizing for the first time why I’d noticed his stubby fingers. They weren’t just odd; they were absent. Save for his thumbs, most of his fingers were missing beyond the first knuckle.
He caught me looking down at them. “Chosin Reservoir. A hundred thousand screaming Chinese couldn’t touch me, but that cold, boy . . .” He chuckled and shook his head. “That cold was one mean bitch. Ate my fingers right up. Lucky to have what I kept. I’m Tippet, by the way.”
“Oh. Pleasure to meet you. Peter.”
“Well. All right then, Peter,” he said with an air of inevitability. “Let’s go get us a beer.”
He waved his arm toward the sports bar across the way and indicated that I should follow as he ambled out into the concourse.
I scrambled after him, trying to decline. “I appreciate it, sir. But really, no thanks. I’ll just find a patch of carpet where I can rack out for the night.”
“Well, that’s horseshit,” he said simply. “You’re drinking a beer with me, Peter. I got an ugly wife at home and it’s quitting time.”
“Again. Sir. I appreciate it.” But then I realized that we were already at the bar. Tippet had covered the distance with surprising speed using his awkward but determined shuffle.
He called out to a waiter and pointed at the nearest tap with the nub of his index finger. “Two of these, Mark,” he said, hardly taking note of the brand he’d selected.
I surrendered. “Just one beer, sir.”
Tippet laughed. “Call me sir one more time and you’ll eat your teeth.”
“Okay. Thank you, Tippet. Just one, though.”
“You’re a lieutenant, right?”
“Until a few hours ago, yes. How’d you guess?”
“Not a guess. You got the stink on you, son. Hard to miss. More important, though, is that the lieutenant doesn’t skip out after the first round. You got the next one. So that’s two, at least.”
We found an empty four-top in the corner and sat down as our first beers arrived. A pint glass for me and a mug for Tippet. He slipped his mitt inside the handle and locked his thumb around the top, well-practiced.
“To our Corps,” he said, lifting the glass.
“To our Corps.” I let the first sip dance across my lips. The alcohol bit into my tongue. Beer tasted so much better than I remembered.
We completed the first round inside of five minutes, and much to Tippet’s approval I ordered a second round without hesitation.
“Sure aren’t putting up much of a fight, are you, Lieutenant?” He laughed.
“First beer in a while. Might as well enjoy it, right?”
“Damn straight. You’ve earned it.”
The second round arrived in the same configuration. A pint glass for me and a mug for Tippet. I watched him wrap his truncated fingers around the glass, and I knew for certain that I hadn’t earned a goddamn thing. But by the end of the third round, I didn’t care. The beer in front of me had ceased to be about what I’d earned, or what I deserved. It was about the weight of my eyelids, the numbness in my legs, and how it was all starting to feel so much better.
“You got a young lady waiting for you, Lieutenant?” Tippet asked as we each finished our fifth.
“Not presently.” I searched for feeling in my cheeks.
“Hell! Let’s get you one.” Tippet stood and disappeared into the suddenly crowded bar. I didn’t follow him, but it didn’t matter. He returned to our table when I was already halfway into my sixth, flanked by two young women.
They were tall brunettes, both about my age, and each with a glass of white wine in hand. They wore heels, perfectly pressed slacks, and silk blouses. They smiled, apparently taken in by Tippet’s charm, and they looked down at me showing what seemed like a fifty-foot wall of white teeth.
“This is the young man I was telling you about. This is my friend Pete, just home from Iraq. And, boy, wouldn’t a few minutes of your company cheer him right up.”
“Oh, wow,” one of them said, pressing her wineglass against her cheek.
“That is really just so amazing,” the other said. “Thank you for your service.” She held out her hand in a strange way. I wasn’t sure whether she wanted me to kiss it or shake it. In my growing stupor, I pulled her hand toward me and pressed it against my forehead.
“Ha! Hey now, Pete.” She laughed. “Had a few?”
“A gentleman stands,” I heard Tippet say in a stern tone. “A gentleman stands, Lieutenant.”
I let go of the brunette’s hand and pulled myself up, out of what had become an impossibly comfortable chair.
The brunettes introduced themselves, but I couldn’t process their names. They reminded me of girls I’d known in college. Perfect and put together. They’d both be married any minute, and the conversation we were about to have would become a story at cocktail parties. They’d stand next to their husbands and tell the story of the Iraq vet they once met. How he was drunk beyond belief in the airport.
The nausea crept into my mouth. My tongue swelled, and the brunettes laughed at something Tippet said.
“I’m sorry.” I pushed between them, dragging my duffel by its strap. “I’m sorry.”
I searched for some place, in lieu of a bathroom, where I could throw up without attracting too much attention. A trash can. A janitor’s cart. The nausea abated slightly as I careened through the concourse, and it occurred to me that I might just need some air. The concourse exit materialized in front of me. Beyond it, I knew, was a door to the outside, to the cool San Diego night, and to the ocean air wafting from the bay across the street.
I doubled my pace, kept a straight line, and managed to leave the terminal without vomiting. I crossed the street and moved toward the smell of ocean air until I found a empty bench next to the bay. The world spun out of control, and I passed out with my head resting on my duffel.
I woke as the sun rose and rolled over to find a bay full of sailboats. A few were on their way out to sea, showing all canvas and heeling slightly with a westerly wind. Free.
A gentleman stands, I thought.
Sitting in my car, on the side of a Dallas cul-de-sac, I think about my father. We could talk about nothing at all and I’d be grateful for it. We could talk about football. He could tell me how many bales he cut from the fields. Square bales or round bales. I could play with my nephew and give my brother-in-law a firm handshake.
I don’t deserve all that, but I want to. And I certainly don’t deserve Paige, but I take out my phone and dial her anyway.
She answers on the first ring.