With a vivid appreciation for each other and what we overcame, none of us are the same. Not Jack or me. Not Ben. Not my friends. When young death is just part of the daily rhythm, it takes a piece of your soul and flushes it. But it adds something else. Maybe jaded, maybe even a little bitter. But mostly sweeter. Never mediocre.
—JUNE 2012
The bullets in our firefight is where I’ll be hiding, waiting for you
—DAVE MATTHEWS
THREE YEARS SINCE we left Fort Drum. Bin Laden is dead. Iraq is over. Neither of these events is as defining or pivotal in our minds as one might expect. We in the army paid less attention to the big picture; over the years, seeking revenge on bin Laden specifically slid down our list of priorities. Soldiers and their families like Jack and me needed to get through the day intact, with our people intact. That was our success; ridding the world of bin Laden or Saddam Hussein was an afterthought at best.
I questioned whether my marriage would survive, and now that the chaos of war is winding down, we have to figure out a new normal again. The dull weariness remains, but maybe it will never go away. The main reason our marriage survived is more likely because it does take the back burner to the hypervigilance of war for so many years. And because we are both supremely stubborn and refuse to quit anything. There is no time or energy to indulge in the essence of our marriage. We weren’t connected then in a traditional sense; during that period we were more like business partners than a married couple. Detached and focused on the mission, time for the touchy-feely shit later. Our souls are forever blackened, but maybe that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Black is the amalgamation of all colors, right? Black is better than gray.
In truth, Jack is more emotional than me but is better at setting his emotions aside when he needs to. Learning to compartmentalize is vital to this lifestyle of constant stress and change. I wonder if everyone’s marriage feels as dilapidated and smacked around as mine. Still to this day, Jack doesn’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time and can’t get comfortable in a bed. Aside from the weight on his spirit, Jack’s rigorous combat lifestyle of treating his physical body as another obstacle to overcome has taken its own toll. Jack has endured three complicated shoulder surgeries, both ankles and elbows are forever damaged, and he continues to delay a surgery, which will fuse discs in his back. The surgery will greatly decrease his twisting mobility and possibly take him from the infantry for the rest of his career. On top of that, his hearing is severely impaired as a result of years spent in roaring helicopters surrounded by IED blasts and gunfire.
Those are the kinds of war stories we don’t talk about with each other, the wives. I’m not alone in this experience. War doesn’t pick and choose the good from the bad, though goodness is the earnest goal of our soldiers and that of the senior wives, to an extent. We are the mentors. We have to keep our shit together, our war faces firmly locked in place, or at least give that appearance.
The fact that it took twelve years of our lives to accomplish killing bin Laden robbed us of time, but blessed us with wisdom. It robbed my children of years with their father, childhood years that Jack will never get back. Years of memories: soccer games and stomach viruses. The kids will be fine. It’s Jack who will look back and maybe face regret.
Vick Petty has been forced into retirement, asked to go quietly. He was implicated in contributing to the suicide of Roselle Hoffmaster through his toxic leadership and bullying. There is a slight moment of relief that he finally got his dose of karma, but it comes too late. Roselle’s family will never feel justice for her loss.
Jack and I are back in the North Country visiting for the wedding of Ben Black in Sackets Harbor on Lake Ontario. Our first time back since we drove away on a rainy day in 2009. We drive around Fort Drum, past his old battalion, down our old streets. The smell of the pines brings memories flooding back. I can almost see the snow banks piled to the top of the stop signs even though it’s a sweltering day in June. This place feels familiar and also very uncomfortable, unfinished. A time of reflection, remembering what we were and what we are now. Remembering the things that we thought had broken us, but just bent us instead. Not long ago I found a date book from that time, completely full of endless and mostly meaningless meetings. Neat to-do lists filling the sides of each page. Visit new mothers in hospitals. Take dinner to so-and-so. Send thank you note. Pick up new army wife handbook for what’s-her-face. It was endless, and where was the real meaning in it?
Now that I’m standing back, I see it differently. My importance to the greater machine is meaningless; it goes right along with or without me. The army machine doesn’t care about any one individual. Each of us is expendable, but we leave a collective footprint. The deepest meaning is in the sisterhood, how we kept each other from drowning. Are we as buoyant as Elizabeth and I hoped? Maybe we sank underwater for a while, but we did not drown. Now, how we swim out of the calming waters remains to be seen.
Where will Jack and I be without the mistress to take our focus and energy?
AT BEN’S WEDDING reception, I take a stiff cocktail and walk by myself down to the edge of the water to look out over the now calm lake. The lake that wasn’t always so serene. The lake that stood and watched a faceless man try to overpower me and silently stood witness to the fight in the snow-slushy gravel almost twenty years ago. A lake that kept my secret. The lake shares my understanding of what overcoming the attack means: buoyancy. It built my impervious shell that has allowed me to endure the nearly twenty years that have led me here again; it began my journey toward the black-soul syndrome. For the protection those things offered, the horror of that night was a sick blessing. One that Jack might not ever quite understand, and that’s okay. I don’t understand his demons either, but our love endures beyond the haunting memories we don’t share. In spite of them. Our shared path continues, now with a truce between us. Jack is a part of me; he has been from the day I first laid eyes on him in that bar with the dirt floor until now, twenty-one years later. He is the team to my command, as the army saying goes. As much as we don’t understand the specifics of what we’ve each faced, we understand just enough. Just enough to give us peace. Finally. Placing my head in the crook of his neck has always been my safe place, but one where I never allowed myself to feel too vulnerable. I couldn’t count on that feeling of safeness then, but now maybe I can. For the first time in a long time, it doesn’t feel like we are faking it until we make it. We’re making it now.
Ben walks up behind me as I take a whopping gulp of my vodka-and-something-I-can’t-identify drink. Hey you.
“How was the wedding? Did you like it? Sorry you have to sit with people you don’t know for dinner. I didn’t do the seating chart; Jane’s mom did it. I know how you hate small talk with strangers.”
“The wedding was magnificent, Ben. Perfect. How is Town & Country magazine not here to cover it? I’m just thrilled that Jack and I could make it back, and that so many from the old team are here. We’re all the same but different too, still connected. Don’t you think? And yeah, there will be a price to pay for you sitting me next to your new in-laws’ cousins. Jack is itching for the DJ to start so he can tear up the dance floor. Will you make sure they play Salt-N-Pepa for him, please?”
Laughter. And his familiar squeeze on my arm. Nothing is perfect, but it all feels as it should be. Full circle, or at least full oval. Imperfect but beautiful still. Weary but hopeful.
Images and words spoken from our years here at Fort Drum will from time to time pop into my mind and bring it all back like it was yesterday. Those memories are a part of me as much as the legs that carry me into whatever the next chapter is. My wounded heart will recover. Above everything else, beyond the long hardships, one outcome is the most invaluable. The sisterhoods. The lifelong friends and bonds that will never lessen. Years can go by, and I will pick up with each of those sisters as if a single day hasn’t passed. Only we can truly understand one another; not even our husbands can fully grasp what we’ve been through with each other and how ironclad those bonds are.
This place is radioactive with memories. Sackets isn’t a place; it’s a person. It sees me, it saved me. It stood by and sacrificed me, knowing in the end it would only give me the resiliency to survive. Instead of feeling afraid here, I am wiser for appreciating Sackets for what it was.
In the end, nothing is good or evil. I am, as we all are, somewhere in between. It is entirely possible that writing this book could turn me into a pariah among my peers in the hard-core, gung-ho combat culture, for discussing our weary, black souls and our secret sisterhood that both embraces us and knocks us off our high horses, but my gut hopes otherwise. If my instincts are off, it’s a price I’m willing to pay to get my story out there—the story wives share privately but don’t publicly discuss. A tale desperate to slip out of my soul and into the minds and hearts of civilians, readers who often have a skewed and contrived perception of what we’ve been through. The ones who think we knew what we were getting into when we signed up for this lifestyle.
Memories of how it brought out the best and worst in all of us. How lucky we were to have stood in those shoes and felt what it means to live through wartime. And none of us wants to lose that. Even if I had a heart attack along the way. Every single word and every single day was worth it. Together we found beauty that lies in the center of chaos.