Everything and everyone is ready. Can we ever truly be ready?
Let the countdown to deployment begin.
What to do with all this nervous energy . . .
My dog won’t bite if you sit real still.
I got the anti-Christ in the kitchen yellin’ at me again.
—TORI AMOS
AGAIN WITH TORI. Tori has a magical way of speaking to deployment angst, even before it’s begun.
In the long weeks of the summer of 2007 leading up to the fifteen-month deployment, battalion commanders, their wives, and other division-level leaders attend a three-day team-building seminar on the shores of Lake Placid. It’s part of our “get-ready-to-giddy-up” pre-deployment preparations. A fresh binder overflows with the most current Kool-Aid, given to our reverent hands for us to serve to the wives under us. Really, it is an opportunity to drink (alcohol, not Kool-Aid) to excess and schmooze with other command teams. Size up the competition. Some of the women sneak out of the mandatory PowerPoint snooze-fests to shop and sniff each other out. There’s a new crop of division leaders, and this is our introduction. Many of the leaders at 10th Mountain have a history with the division and are returning for another tour. One of the new wives is my old friend and mentor from Somalia days, Carrie Barnes. Carrie likes to remind me that no matter how much time has elapsed, she is still my wise, older sister and can snap me into deference with a disapproving look or roll of her eyes. She patiently held my hand through my first deployment to Somalia, even though she had two tiny and needy babies then and probably wanted to punch me for my incessant whimpering and random dry heaving. I feel relieved that she will be around again for another deployment, this one the mother of them all, even trumping Somalia. Three times the length of Somalia.
When we aren’t engaged in practical reality of what’s to come, we talk about the salacious and exaggerated details of an email found on someone else’s husband’s army BlackBerry, an email reminiscing about the time he “titty fucked” his neighbor’s wife in the woods behind our houses. We have to whisper words like “titty,” but acronyms like IED and KIA roll off our tongues comfortably.
General George Casey is the chief of staff of the army, and he flatly tells us to prepare for an eighteen-month deployment, even as we are still reeling from the extension to fifteen months. As with so many moments, there is nothing to do but pour a cocktail.
Our brigade buzzes with rumors (which are true) of the affair between the deputy commander of our brigade (second in command of nearly four thousand) and another married lieutenant colonel, a female officer who is a close friend of Jack’s and whose husband is serving in Iraq. Of course this is a huge scandal. Elizabeth Bianci and I are shown the dirty and shocking emails between them at Bunco (or Drunko, which is a more accurate description of the mind-numbing and way-too-gung-ho game of dice rolling). The emails were found by the deputy commander’s wife on his government BlackBerry and were passed around delightfully by her thinly veiled BFF. Our brigade commander, the bumbling and BO-emanating Vick Petty, sweeps it under the rug and turns his anger toward others within the brigade who’ve discussed the emails. I’m at the top of that list. Whoopsies. Petty leers at Jack; they are polar opposites. Petty tries to be everyone’s buddy, but ends up looking like a buffoon. He is in over his head with the upcoming deployment, and I can see the freaking-out in his eyes. He’s nothing more than an overgrown, insecure schoolyard bully, and I have zero respect for him. I would use the word sinister to describe him, but he’s too slack-mouthed to be sinister.
Greta, my youngest at two years old, is a biter and sank her teeth into him once at a brigade picnic. Somehow he has managed to work that tiny detail into every single conversation I’ve ever muddled through with him, so passive-aggressive. If he is going to act that way over a toddler bite, how will he endure Al Qaeda?
Though Petty is despised and written off as a bully by most in the brigade, his wife, Barb, is revered and respected. She doesn’t mess with me. I wonder how those two ended up together; I wonder that about most of us. Maybe the word revered is too strong. She’s not especially wily or formidable. But she allows the battalion commanders’ wives to do their thing. She meddles to an extent, but it could be worse. She always shows up with a bottle of wine, and who could not love that quality?
The last couple of weeks before a deployment are sacred. Not a time for an avalanche of social events. So those are crammed into June and July, and half of July spent on block leave. June is a blur of picnics and lunches and seminars and classes to equip and ready ourselves. We disguise team-building as socializing. We would be spending the next fifteen months intimately involved, so no reason to fart around. Might as well get the show on the road.
I’ve spent the whole spring getting our new house set up and making it into the cushy dream house I’ve always hoped for. I painstakingly choose the colors for each wall. Devote weeks painting splotches of color on each wall so I can live with it and see it in every light. Finally I decide on the colors, and wait for Jack to eventually offer his painting services. Though I pretend that painting will be my own personal mission, I have no intention of doing the painting myself and take advantage of the fact that living with asymmetrical, haphazard splotches of paint will drive Jack bananas. My plan works.
I want to entertain. I am impatient to use this house, the house I finally have space to move in. Space to show off my culinary skills and feign humility at how easily I’ve created such a warm and cozy live-in home so quickly. Truly it isn’t difficult with this new house, a fireplace in the living room, and an excellent layout of rooms. Perfect for guests. A huge, sweeping porch. Right at the apex of the cul-de-sac, surrounded by pine trees. Our house was maybe the best house on post, definitely in the best position.
Yes, I need to show it off as soon as possible. Especially rub it in just a little to old Eeyore, who still waits for her house with a peevish restlessness. I relish an opportunity to be pleasingly condescending. So Jack and I plan three sets of party/picnics. One for the battalion staff officers, another for the troop commanders and first sergeants, and a third for the other battalion commanders in our brigade and, eek, the Pettys. Tension already exists there, and we choose to ignore it. We chalk it up to growing pains. Jack has never had a boss he didn’t get along with; somehow this is unfamiliar territory to us and ignoring it seems to be the best course of action.
The first two parties go off without a hitch, except that I’ve made each meal entirely from scratch, and Liesel shows up with a box of Walmart-purchased brownies in a plastic container and plunks them directly in the middle of my table. The turd in the soup pot. A domestic, passive-aggressive act of warfare.
For the final party with the other battalion commanders and their wives and the Pettys, I brainstorm an excellent game to play. I come up with about twenty names of famous people from all eras and all sides of controversy. Kanye West, Madonna, Abraham Lincoln, Pol Pot, Matt Lauer, Saddam Hussein, Cinderella, Hillary Clinton, you get the idea. But one name is different. One I have a special idea for. Eeyore’s husband, Fred, will get his own name. I print each name on a sticker and post it on the back of each guest as he or she arrives. Vick Petty gets Madonna, or maybe Britney Spears; I can’t recall. But Fred Sweeney gets his own name. The guests can only ask yes or no questions about their identity to figure it out. For over an hour, Fred works the party: “Am I athletic?” “Is my wife hot?” “Am I successful at my career?” “Am I universally hated?” It is sublime. The best prank in history. Finally, well after an hour, he looks at me and pauses, lowering his bushy eyebrows. “I’m me. I’m me, aren’t I? Very nice, Hawkins. Well played.” I could see on his face he doesn’t find it as funny as I do and will be gunning for me. Let him.