She quit him, cold. And the worst part was how easy Jim made it for her, because he was a good person. He didn’t make a play for her, a pitch for “them.” No guilt trip, no wheedling. He bowed out with grace. On the phone he cut off her stumbling apology: “It’s a good call, Lace. We’ll walk away intact. I don’t want to be the guy who makes your life any harder.”
Over the next few weeks she went crazy with need and longing.
Was Eddie thinking about her? No. No, and she shouldn’t expect it. She was a good Army Reserve wife, she knew what he was up against when he was out there. Lacey loathed these high-maintenance new girls who demanded Skypes and iChats, who laid into their tired guys with complaints about bills or the kids. Or just feeling neglected. Hell no: Lacey would rather staple her mouth shut than distract Eddie, or drag him down into the petty details of home life. That was her domain and she would die before letting him know, for example, how bad things were getting with money.
But there were other reasons Lacey knew Eddie wasn’t craving her, aching for her during their time apart, no matter what his situation was. And it was only now, during this second deployment, that she began to understand more. Yes, they weren’t newlyweds anymore, and yes, they’d both been around the block—too old for drama. But Eddie wasn’t the kind of man to waste a lot of time on endearments or tender emotional talk. Even before they married, Lacey noticed that he was into her only when it was leading to sex … and then of course the sex itself dropped off big-time once the wedding and moving in were finished. She’d told herself to get with the program: this was big-girl life, time to grow up and act like it. And then the army only solidified their growing formality, a distancing … nothing about this organization promoted impulsive romantic gestures.
She had so much more than she’d hoped for. Lacey was ashamed, but that didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t find contentment the way other people apparently did. How to admit that you’re missing something big and basic out of life? How to say it to another person? I want to be touched more.
* * *
It was a Sunday afternoon midway through September. Lacey pulled into the parking lot in the shopping center in Yonkers, just north of Van Cortlandt Park. She idled there for a moment, studying the row of storefronts through her sunglasses. Vacuum sales and repair, HairCuttery, Payless Shoes. Squeezed between them was a smaller business, no awning out front, no big sign. But the flag and 9/11 NEVER FORGET poster let her know this was the one: U.S. Service Recruiting Center.
“Can I stay in the car?”
Otis was slumped low in the passenger seat, heaving long sighs to announce his displeasure. For a moment she wished he didn’t have to come on this particular errand, but then a harder part of her thought, He’s not a baby, he needs to know what’s up.
“No, you can’t stay in the car. And I told you not to bring that outside the house.” A friend had loaned Otis some repellent video game full of screeching women’s voices and blam blam gun sounds. “Give me that. Otis, give it to me. Jesus.” She shoved the handheld player into the glove box and slammed it shut. Otis went tcch under his breath and Lacey told herself to ignore it. They’d been having a rough time. Ever since school started, Otis had been pushing back at her—arguing about TV time, putting off his homework until the last minute and then rushing through it, sloppy. Twice already his teacher had e-mailed Lacey with concerns: he wasn’t listening, he’d been digging pen tracks on the side of his desk.
Lacey wasn’t handling it well, either. Her patience was low; she was stressed about her cut work hours and trying to get a grip on the money situation. She didn’t need preteen bullshit on top of all that. And she had given up Jim! That was for Otis, though he didn’t know it, and his blithe ignorance of her sacrifices pissed her off even more.
“Well, are we going to go in, or what?”
“You better cut that attitude.”
“I’m just saying.”
Lacey killed the engine and swung out of the car, slamming her door. She tugged her jacket down. Striding across the lot her heeled boots clopped loudly on the pavement and her purse swung. She shook her hair back behind her shoulders. Otis dragged behind, and when she got to the door she waited pointedly while he caught up. What? Lacey pushed sunglasses up into her hair and stared at the door handle until he held it open for her.
“Thank you,” she said clearly, walking past him. She almost felt sorry for the guy at the front desk, eyes on his computer screen, unaware of her mood, but she let her inner bitch out nonetheless—clattering down her bag and keys in front of him, snapping out her words: “So, are there forms to fill out? For the food and gas cards?”
* * *
Lacey made lists, dozens of lists—in her organizer, on her phone, on the whiteboard in the kitchen—where she racked up the different bills and fees and what they owed and what she couldn’t pay. The monthly mortgage was covered, okay, but after that things got chaotic. Car payments and insurance (including Eddie’s jeep, sitting in the garage untouched) got alternated, her college loan was mostly ignored until the Sallie Mae calls grew aggressive, and the training courses Eddie’d had to take for his last promotion were coming due. These could all be juggled and delayed, to some extent. But then: utilities and food, two credit cards at their limit (one with a 26 percent interest rate), Little League for Otis (cleats, glove, travel fees) … and last week she’d bounced two checks, one to the exterminator (ants), one to the ophthalmologist for Otis’s school-required vision exam.
With Eddie’s income cut by a third when he went from civilian to reserve pay, and the reduced schedule Lacey had to take on in order to be around for Otis, they’d been just barely managing. But last month her boss called a meeting and said due to how slow it had been at the gym they would all be taking mandatory unpaid furloughs every three weeks. Then she’d asked Lacey to stay behind and said she’d need to work the second shift from September through November: 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
Lacey almost laughed. “There’s no way,” she said. “I don’t have anyone who can take my kid until that late.” Or her whole paycheck would have to go to a sitter.
The supervisor shrugged. “It’s all I have until after the holidays. It’ll pick up then.”
So she’d had to stay on the part-time schedule she’d worked all summer, and now the pileup of delayed bills and payments reached a breaking point. Last week she’d put off buying groceries day after day, waiting for money to come in, and that meant they ate out at fast-food places on her bursting credit cards. Then on Friday some screwup happened with the auto-deposit for Eddie’s check and she hadn’t been able to get a live human on the phone all day, with the result that she’d had to borrow forty bucks from Otis’s small stash in order to buy pasta, sandwich stuff, and toilet paper. She made one last list, people she might ask for a loan: Lolo, Martine … and then slowly crossed them out. Late last night Lacey thought fuck it, and went online to figure out where to go.
* * *
“Um, does Eddie know you’re doing this?”
Lacey shot Otis a sideways look. “What’s that supposed to mean?” They were on chairs in the tiny waiting area by the window. She was whipping through the clipboard forms the desk clerk had given her. Lots of programs donated goods or money for military families, which then got funneled through churches or recruiter stations. Lacey had chosen this one because it wasn’t too close to home, but not far enough away to require much gas.
“Nothing.”
“No, say it.”
“It’s just that, I don’t think it’s the officers’ families who are supposed to be, like, getting charity.”
Lacey put her pen down and sat back. “You’re worried about ranking protocol, huh? Or are you just ashamed of your mom, who’s accepting help when she needs it?” She let her voice carry around the dingy office, whose workers glanced up and then away. It was unfair, making Otis squirm in the heat of her reply, which wasn’t only about him. She’d cried earlier this morning in the shower, imagining what it would be like to come here. To hell with taking on more guilt about his embarrassment.
Otis shook his head, mumbled something that might have been sorry. Lacey blew out a long breath at the pocked ceiling tiles. She went back to filling out forms: resources, earned income, dependent costs.
“You don’t have to say anything, though,” she said, a few minutes later. “To Eddie. We don’t need to bother him, is all.”
* * *
The only man she’d ever been faithful to was the Asshole, and look how that had turned out. Growing up in Great Neck, Lacey’s boyfriends were mostly of the petty thief and vandalism variety, guys who were big men only among their crowd of friends, sweet at first but lazy at heart. She went through them like changes of clothes—those tight jeans and off-the-shoulder tops and fake-leather boots she would kick off at the end of the day and discard, a tangled pile in the corner of her closet. She wasn’t so different in this. Her girlfriends weren’t choosy either; they all rotated boys around according to complicated algorithms of reputation, cuteness, availability, or the chance to get back at some bitch who’d made out with your ex. Lacey’s boyfriends shaded into each other, overlapping. She’d officially call it quits with one only after securing her next position—that was the way they all did it, cycling through the halls and malls of adolescence, just marking time until real life began.
Her father had died of a heart attack when she was nineteen. He was a thick-waisted, red-faced man with a deceptively mild expression. He’d worked for Con Ed as a lineman for twenty years before getting laid off, and then took a series of lesser-paying jobs in electrical support. The drinking increased during those years, as did the ugly fights with Lacey’s mother, who had to go back to work as a secretary and made no secret of her bitter disappointment. Mostly, her dad went after her brother, Bob—police got called to their house several times—in epic screaming and shoving matches over the car, the late nights, grades, any excuse either could find. One night when she was fourteen Lacey dodged a jar of pickles one of them hurled at the other, yanked her head to the side one millisecond in time, so that the weight and heft of the glass jar blew by her ear, brushing it with coolness before exploding against the kitchen wall. With Lacey, her dad was less physical and restricted himself to heated diatribes about her slutty clothes and friends. That was when he was sober. When he was drunk he slurred weepy expressions of regret about how little she’d accomplish in her life, due to his mistakes.
Lacey and Bob took every job they could find, and ate out every meal they were invited to, not to mention some they weren’t. And they had a tacit pact to keep their mouths shut when well-meaning teachers, parents of friends, or other adults asked about how things were at home. After she left, Lacey used to wonder why she hadn’t confided in anyone and let that old bastard reap the consequences. But it occurred to her that many, if not all, of the kids they knew were in similar situations. The bad shit in their house wasn’t so unique, and everyone seemed to accept that growing up and getting out were the only solutions.
That, and making out with boys. Lacey loved it. She knew it wasn’t something a girl was supposed to admit, and she only rarely went all the way, but those long kissing sessions meant everything to her. With someone’s clothed body mashed against hers, in a thick fug of cheap cologne and cigarette smoke, she could shut her eyes and let go. Escape.
* * *
“Buona sera!” Felicia tried again, when the weary but tolerant waiter brought them another bottle of red. “Am I getting it now?”
“Buona sera, signora bella,” he said. The three of them applauded and he smiled tiredly to himself and pulled out the cork.
The restaurant—Buona Sera Ristorante, a newish place on Gramatan up in Fleetwood—had been chosen to convince Felicia to come out. It was closest to her place, where her mom was with the kids. Lacey had picked up Martine, and girls’ night out was in full effect, Italian-style: fried calamari and tri-colore salad first, now chicken caprese and seafood risotto. As soon as Eddie’s October check cleared, Lacey withdrew more cash than she should have for tonight, including a sitter and a blowout at that cheap place near the gym, but she wasn’t going to worry about money tonight. She needed this.
No kid talk, no war talk, was the original rule. Only fun stuff. But it was impossible to stick to: Martine’s fight with a snotty mom at the preschool led to how she wrote a late-night three-screen e-mail about it to her husband, only to delete it at the last moment thank God. Felicia had taken on two bathroom rehabs that were cratering, and John better not pull an early homecoming because their place was a wreck. Lacey told Lolo stories, amping up her Latina accent (“Why hasn’t anyone called me back? I left that message an hour ago. What happened. Did something happen?”) until they were laughing to the point of tears.
“It even got Ed to crack a smile,” Lacey said, helping herself to some of Martine’s potatoes. “He said I’m the one taking a bullet, dealing with her so much.”
“Did you get him on iChat? No luck for me in weeks.”
“It was a quick video call. They were about to go out.” Lacey didn’t say that Eddie essentially confirmed what she asked him about—a rise in suicide bombings around his area. As usual, he kept it low-key, brushing off most of her questions and treating the subject as slightly off topic, nothing that important. Was this how he spoke to the younger men under his command? Did it work for them, did they think the danger wasn’t increased at all? They didn’t have Lacey’s knowledge: the way Eddie had of dropping eye contact when he was tense, his gaze roving up and around, as if searching for assistance or a distraction. She’d seen it when he wasn’t happy with her—for being too loud, too haphazard—the effect was casual, tricking her into thinking not much was at stake. But then his eyes would be one step ahead of hers, all around the room, and she’d know.
“So he shaved,” she said. “The whole thing”—Lacey swiped a finger across her upper lip—“totally gone. Clean-faced as a baby now.”
“Good idea, Eddie.” Martine, who never made a secret of her preferences in the mustache department.
“Oh, wow,” Felicia said. “I bet you didn’t recognize him at first. Why’d he do that, I wonder.”
“’Cause the early eighties called and wanted their look back.”
“He didn’t want to be mistaken for an Iraqi, with that Saddam Hussein look. Worried he’ll get strung up by mistake.” Lacey tried to join in.
Felicia made a disapproving tch sound, so they dropped it. In truth, it rattled her, Eddie’s shaving. When she yelped at the sight he pretended at first not to know why. Then he shrugged it off, saying it saved time and he was sick of dealing with it. But his face looked so bare, so much smaller, paler. What if it was some kind of omen? What if it was a way to punish her for cheating, make her more afraid for him, more aware of his vulnerability?
Lacey took a long drink of wine. Stop it. Tonight was supposed to be fun.
“You want to tell her about what happened?” Martine said, pointing her fork first at Lacey, then Felicia. “In your little support group? Not-so-support group, that is.”
“Uh-oh.”
Lacey sighed. She still wasn’t happy with the way she’d handled things. “Well, last week this one girl comes in, she doesn’t come every week so I was—”
“Tell her about—she was wearing a T-shirt that says WAR IS BAD FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS. I mean, fuck you,” Martine said, more tipsy than they’d noticed.
“—So I was glad,” Lacey went on. “At first. I don’t care about the shirt. But then she blurts out she’s leaving the group because her parents are convinced that what we do is brainwash her with right-wing propaganda.”
“Say what? How old is this girl? She can’t think for herself?”
“Well, that’s what everyone jumped in saying. And that if she’s doing whatever her parents say on the issue then they’re the ones doing the brainwashing.”
“Right?”
“I tried to get her to talk more but I guess she felt like we were all jumping down her throat so she got all, you know, crossing her arms like they do and not saying anything.” Lacey mimed the young woman leaning way back in her chair, chin tucked. “I was freaking out, thinking I’d done something wrong, I mean—I’m not a shrink or anything, maybe she’d complained to Anne Mackay or whatever. Also, right-wing what? We hardly talk politics! They spend the whole hour bitching about the pay grade. God, if anything that group bashes on the army more than the liberal media does!”
“Now tell her the worst part,” Martine said, rattling her empty water glass. “Did they turn off the air? Why’s it so hot in here?”
“Do I want to know?” Felicia said.
“Well, she goes on to say that her parents are in MFSO, and that they’ve been bringing her to some of their meetings, and she’s starting to see the light.” Lacey sighed. Their prix fixe dessert course arrived, but she wasn’t hungry anymore.
“MFSO.” Felicia spelled it out slowly, thinking. “Military something something—”
“Military Families Speak Out,” Lacey said.
“Military Families So Fucking Cowardly,” Martine spat. “The enemy among us.”
“Mart,” Lacey said. “They’re a legit organization. I looked it up after. It’s an antiwar group,” she told Felicia. “Support our troops by bringing them home now, et cetera. You know.”
“And for every wife they get on board, they get a spike in traffic I’m sure. I mean, it’s no big deal to get some parents out there holding up signs and talking shit about Bush. They don’t care, they’re old now and used to pissing off their kids. But a soldier’s pretty all-American wife turning Benedict Arnold? Oh, that’s good.”
“What did she say about all of it? Is she against the war now, or what?” Felicia was working her way around the three desserts methodically, one bite from each. “And what does her guy say?”
“Well, yeah, that’s what everyone was asking her. I don’t know if she’s told him or what. No one would let her speak much, really.” The wine had lulled Lacey into a tired spaciness. They needed to switch to beer soon. Or something harder. The women in the group had been merciless: All you’re gonna do is put him in more danger, and our men too. Get right and shut up, nobody asked for your opinions on politics and shit. How do you think this is going to make him feel, out there, knowing you’ve given up on him, humiliated in front of his brothers.
“I can imagine. What did—”
“Anyone like that is dead to me.” Martine waved for the check. “It’s hard to be alone, and the news can look really bad, but … come on, girls. Do what you gotta do on the down low but for God’s sake don’t make our misery into a weapon against our own troops. You know?”
Felicia was shaking her head. “If John ever pictured me holding up some kind of NOT IN MY NAME sign, or whatever … I just can’t even.”
“I’m not sure I handled it all that well,” Lacey said. “I feel like I’m supposed to let everyone have their say in there. As a safe space. But on the other hand—”
“You don’t want to let traitors get away with shit! What if she caught some of those other ditsy young wives at a bad moment?”
“What did you say, Lace?”
“I kind of … I let them all freak out for a while, and then I—well I told her that the politics part of being in Iraq or Afghanistan didn’t matter. That it was separate from what our guys were doing, and so she should keep it separate.”
“Sounds right to me. They don’t get to choose which battles they fight.” Felicia nodded.
Lacey counted out bills for her part of the tab. She didn’t disagree, but there was a moment at the end of the meeting that kept coming back to her. What would you do? This girl had asked Lacey directly as she was leaving, probably for the last time. If you came to believe, with your heart and your head, that it was all a mistake, us being there. Would you speak up, or not?
What had happened was that her immediate answer, deep inside, was yes. Lacey had never once backed down from a fight. She suddenly saw the flip side of her own convictions about the rightness of this war—cultivated through pride, close attachment, and lots of Internet research—and got it, in a flash, how she would be acting if what she thought was the exact opposite. She’d go at it with the same energy now poured into this FRG group and all their other activities. Bet your ass I’d speak up. No matter what Eddie thought.
So who was she to tell this person otherwise?
“Let’s get out of here,” Martine said, sliding herself out of the banquette. “Too. Much. Food.”
“Buona sera!” Felicia sang out, to their waiter, to the room at large.
* * *
An hour later, Lacey and Martine were cruising around, not ready to go home after Felicia left. They got Big Gulps from a 7-Eleven and took the Cross County Parkway, singing Christina Aguilera with the windows down. They took the Bronx River up through Westchester, going past the darkened golf courses and wooded pockets. On the way back south, Martine announced it was time for another drink. Also, she had to pee. Lacey’s buzz had worn off by then but she was game, so when Martine stuck a hand out into the night and said, So turn off here already, it struck her as fate that the next exit happened to be Pelham, and her car seemed to take them, of its own accord, to Wolf’s Lane and Chap’s Bar and Grill, where Jim just happened to be on as manager that night.
Martine barely noticed the venue when they parked outside. She ran in ahead to get to the ladies’ room. Lacey followed slowly, glad for the cover of a late-night crowd standing at the bar, noisy music, some game on the TVs. She kept her head down and took an occupied table by the window.
“Hey. I know you.” He was there, before she was ready, before she’d figured out what it was that she was doing. Jim smiled down at her, puzzled, touched her hair. “‘Of all the bars in all the…’ something something.”
“Yeah, well,” Lacey said. She couldn’t look directly at him. The warmth coming off his body was almost too much. “My friend needed to pee.”
“Of course she did. No better place to pee in the tristate area.”
“Can I take this chair?” someone asked, reaching for the other one.
“It’s taken,” Jim said, a firm hand on its back. “You look good,” he said, bending low to her ear. “You’re killing me right now, but you look good.”
“Is it crazy that maybe I could eat something?” Martine said, arriving. “What should we drink, Lace? And can I get a glass of water first,” she said to Jim, who held out her chair.
“Maybe a couple shots,” Lacey mumbled. “We can always cab home from here.”
“I’ll send a waitress over,” Jim said. Behind Martine, he held Lacey’s gaze.
They had two Jägermeisters, on the house, then an order of mozzarella sticks. Then two beers, and another round of shots. Martine commandeered the jukebox with a stack of quarters Jim fed her, the two of them arguing the merits of Journey and Chicago. Lacey’s babysitter texted back to say she could stay late. The crowd thinned, a couple people were dancing, Lacey took off her jacket to bare her arms in a tight tanktop. She watched Martine dance, sweaty and oblivious to the two guys checking her out. She watched Jim at the end of the bar, directing the waitstaff and conferring with the bartender. He never seemed to look over, but once when he came by to fiddle with the TV above her he stood close behind and she could feel him waiting. They didn’t speak. Lacey hooked an elbow over her chair and dangled her hand into the space between them. His hand met hers, rubbing her palm with his thumb, and Lacey felt a deep recognition, like hearing a song she’d loved long ago.
Martine was happy drunk and happily belligerent with the guys who gravitated toward their table as the night got late and most people had cleared out. “Oh, you support the troops? You want to buy me a drink, save my husband a few dollars? Whyn’t you buy my kids a new bike, howaboutthat?” Lacey watched and laughed. Jim came and went, touching her every time he passed by.
But then the lights went on and it was time to go, as much as Lacey didn’t want to. A waiter called them a cab and they waited shivering together outside on the curb, Martine babbling on about maybe they should go dancing or something, like a real club, God was this hangover going to hurt tomorrow or what. Lacey said, Just a sec okay, and went back inside. She walked straight to the back, where Jim was turning chairs upside down on tabletops.
“I don’t know,” she said fast. “I don’t know what I’m doing. And it’s like a joke or something, because you can’t want me, if this is who I am. There is nothing good in me, Jim. There’s nothing—”
He pulled her in hard, no more soft hidden touches. He kissed her and held her shoulders and she cried some even while she was kissing him, but then they were laughing at all of it and then—
Lacey saw her out of the corner of her eye: Martine. Just inside the door. Stock-still and staring.
“The cab’s here.”
“Mart—”
But she turned away from Lacey and walked out. “Fuck,” Jim whispered. “What do you want me to do? I’ll go say it was me, that you didn’t want to…”
“It’s okay.” But it wasn’t. Lacey bit her lip and looked out at the street. At least the cab was waiting, so Martine was waiting. She started to leave and Jim caught her hand.
“Leave your car key,” he said. “I’ll bring it back later, after I close up.”
“I can’t … not tonight.”
“No, I meant—I’ll just drop the key through your mail slot. So you can take Otis tomorrow.”
Lacey dug the key off the ring and put it in his hand. “I…”
“Go talk to her. Just let me know you got home okay.”
When she got in the cab, Martine was staring out the opposite window. “Don’t tell me anything,” she said before Lacey even shut the door. “First stop is my house,” and she gave the driver the address.
They were quiet all along Martin Luther King Boulevard, and on E. Third, but when the cab turned onto Fulton and hit a red light Lacey said, “I’m sorry.”
Martine chewed the inside of her lips and shook her head. “Don’t.”
“I keep it all separate, Mart. You know I would never do anything to hurt Eddie. Not while he’s there. I’ll be upfront when the time is right. It hasn’t been so great for us recently, you know? Maybe I got into it too fast—”
The more she spoke, the more plausible it sounded—to herself, that is. All the things she said were true. Eddie wasn’t going to be the love of her life, and on some level Lacey had always known that. She’d needed someone, and Otis needed someone, and it all fell into line. Even the army fit in—gave her respectability, a cause to fight for. In fact, Lacey went on, in a way FRG and the group and the army had come to mean more to her than—
“Stop!” Martine cried. The cab came to a fishtail halt. “I. Don’t. Want. To know!”
“But—”
“Make all the justifications you want, Lacey. Make it all okay in your head, spin it the way you got to spin it. Just leave me out of it.” She opened the door and got out, still many blocks from her house, ignoring Lacey’s sputtering and the cabdriver’s impatient curses. She wouldn’t turn around and when Lacey leaned out of the open door calling her she started running unevenly down the Mount Vernon sidewalk, her tiny purse bumping against her hip.
“You gonna give me another address, or what?”
She told him in a low voice.
“All this sitting around and waiting,” the cabdriver said. Tch. “Meter’s on for that too.”
“I know, all right? I know!” And then Lacey burst into tears, head down on her knees.
“I’m just sayin’ there’s a charge for all of it. That’s all.”