If he hadn’t told me about the dream on the morning of the pancakes, I might have suspected he exaggerated—not his nature to dramatize or emphasize reality. The weight of that dream and the avoidance of taking Rob’s place bring him home a month later.
THAT SUMMER OF 2006, I bring Jack home from another deployment. In the several days that followed Rob Macklin’s death, the command group scrambled to figure out who would fill his place. The possibility of Jack’s filling the vacant command was only one possibility. When asked his preference, Jack diplomatically stated to his command that he would prefer to take command of the battalion he’d planned on, build his team from the beginning, and deploy to combat together. Beneath his logical response was the lingering memory of his dream.
The division command group is given Phil Schneider as an option. He has already finished his battalion command, but hasn’t been selected for war college. Rob Macklin’s command thus falls into the hands of Martha Schneider’s gaunt, somber-looking husband. The command’s reaction that it would fall to Jack was only a possibility. For Schneider, the second command does end up helping his career, but turns Martha into the pariah of Fort Drum.
Back to Jack’s homecoming from Afghanistan: Considering he has dodged an entire additional year in Afghanistan, we should be walking on air. Our marriage begins to unravel beyond the typical redeployment awkwardness and resentment. He is brooding. He criticizes the way I handled the kids while he was gone. The adjustment to an extra person living in my home is harder than the deployment itself, but this time even more so. And the nature of his obsessiveness embarrasses me. He asks me if I ever really loved him or just married him for comfort. Really? Like he makes so much money that it’s worthy of gold digging? What an insult. Maybe the dream messed him up. Would this just fix itself? I can’t exactly go to my girlfriends and share that my normally cheery husband now thinks I’m a gold digger. They would look at me like I had a penis growing out of my forehead. Nightmares about Afghanistan, that’s what I can handle. That’s a nice and normal reaction to combat. Not this. Not at all.
After confessing his assumptions and delusions about me to a stunned army chaplain, Jack seeks help from a recommended therapist, Helen. The queen of the earthy, crunchy military skeptics. I love her. I would be her, had I not decided to take this path instead. In the three years ahead, Helen will be the one person outside our world who will steady us in the chaos. Helen is an outside touchstone for many in our world, possibly the only person outside who understands. She confides to me that Jack sees me like a fog that he can’t pin on the wall. I love her analogy. He can’t find an order in my disorder.
Both the army chaplain and Helen give Jack a warning: His words and accusations toward me will take an eventual toll. It might not show up right away, but the angry words will build a virtual brick wall between us. One that might never go away.
So instead I stand on the street with my friends and bitch about the time I wasted writing various volunteer organization newsletters that no one bothers to read. Or we talk about how Laura Macklin is coping, whether she’s decided yet where to go. She can’t stay on Fort Drum. Her life of details has slid down the side of the mountain with her husband. What would any of us do in her shoes? We talk about the pizza guy who drives entirely too fast down our street, and has anyone caught which pizza place he’s from? Somebody needs to report him. One of the ladies stands on the street with a sloshy glass of wine and expresses outrage at not being able to find an adequate stock of hostess gifts in our tiny town. These moments of talking about things at arm’s length are a relief. They carry me away from the images in my mind and force me to breathe, and more importantly, they remind me how good it feels to not just laugh, but also giggle. Safe outlets for unexpressed emotion. Juicy enough to keep me on the edge of my seat, but removed enough from my real terror.
We wives wear tremendous pride that outshines our private feelings of shame or inadequacy. We are a culture of self-entitlement—offered freebies and accolades to keep us in line and keep us quiet. Never forget, we are volunteers. Wives do not draw pay or wear rank. Our power is strictly vicarious. No matter if you bust your ass or not, we are all recognized pretty much the same. No rest for the weary. My schedule is full of meetings, fund-raisers, team-building social events, volunteer recognition ceremonies—all busy work designed to keep me just busy enough that I don’t have time to stop and contemplate the big picture of what’s going on around me. I just want to get through that day, that week, that month, that deployment, that reunion.
We use our savvy not only to take care of the families in our units, but also to posture before our peers. The worry for my husband’s safety and the active mothering of my own children are secondary to my responsibility of keeping the families under his command tucked beneath my safe wing. And also making sure that my peer wives (perfumed turds) and the wives senior to me (mega perfumed turds) see what a breathtakingly fucking awesome job I’m doing and what a hardworking martyr I am.