MADISON, WISCONSIN
MARCH 2007
Each of them still missed Maisie. At dinner, they felt around under the table for her soft ears, or listened for her paw-clicks trotting downstairs while the coffee machine began to bubble. Ellen had collected her bed, food dishes, and favorite chewy toys and stowed them in a cardboard box in the garage; no one could bear to give or throw these things away. And on this evening occasionally one of them could be found by a window, looking out over the latest crust of snow in the yard, smooth and unbroken by prints, under the yellow porch light.
Her decline had been mercifully fast, too fast for any possibility of Ellen to make arrangements to come back from Walter Reed in time. She had just returned to D.C. after three weeks home with Jane, for the birth of her daughter, and the adoption, and helping her through those hard days afterward. Jane had taken Maisie in to the vet, worried about how she kept falling, and had the tests done, and heard the results. But she couldn’t bear to be the one, so it was Wesley who came home from Chicago to do what was needed. He was with Maisie at the end, stroking her head as the injections were administered, driving back to the house alone. That night he and Jane finished a bottle of Macallan someone had given to Ellen years ago, and they called Ellen and Mike in Mologne—Mike having moved there too, rooming with another amputee from 57—and all four of them cried on speakerphone as they remembered and toasted their good dog’s good life.
Now, as Ellen loaded the dishwasher, she wished Wes was here. Originally he’d had plans to come home for the weekend but canceled when the opportunity came up to go skiing with his girlfriend at Steamboat, where her parents kept a condo. She was rather proud of how nonchalantly she’d rolled with the news, on the phone with Wes, but admitted to herself now that she felt disappointed.
“They’re not, like, getting engaged this weekend.” Jane had wandered into the kitchen and hopped up to sit on the island counter. “Are they?”
“What?” She was startled, by both the possibility and Jane’s ability to read her mind. “I haven’t heard anything. Why, did he say something to you?”
“Would you give him your ring to use, if he did? The one from Dad?”
“That one goes to you, actually.” It was in a faded velvet box on her dresser, with her wedding band: a single diamond in a gold setting. “If you want it.”
“Really?” There was so much pleased surprise in Jane’s voice that Ellen glanced at her over her shoulder, both hands still in soapy water. Her daughter had a sunburned nose and cheeks from a snowshoe hike she’d gone on with friends yesterday in the woods near Eagle Heights. Her hair was wound into two coils on top of her head, like emergent horns. With her tangled necklaces, made of string and silver, and the glinting delicate blue stone in her nose, she looked like a mystical woodland faery alighted on Ellen’s kitchen counter. Possessor of great powers for mischief and joy.
“I have an older family ring I had meant to give to Wes, when the time comes. But yes, the diamond one is for you. Would you like to maybe … I think I’d like to give it to you now.”
“Now, like—tonight?”
“Why not?” Ellen blinked at the pot she was scrubbing. “Or tomorrow. If it doesn’t fit, we’ll go downtown and find a place to have it resized.” They were so careful with each other now, after the birth, with Jane still living at home—working a few days at the vet. No mention was made of when she would move out, or how or where or what next, but that was all right. It wasn’t time yet; they were still held in the space of having survived giving that baby away. They had gone through it together, although of course the main burden was Jane’s. But it had drawn them close, in a new way. They were still blindly touching the soft walls of this cocoon, trying to determine what it meant and when the pain would soften too.
The obstetrician had gently asked if Jane would like to give her daughter a name, at least for now. Before she went to her real parents, waiting in a separate area in the hospital. Ellen would never forget Jane’s response, the way she held her newborn for those few moments, the expression on her face as she bent close to her. No, Jane whispered. Her eyes stayed only on the baby. No, that’s all right.
“If you want,” Ellen said now, to the pot covered in dish soap. So careful.
“Okay, sure.”
Then at the same time she began to ask “Is the table cleared?” Jane said “Thanks, Mom.” Ellen smiled to herself.
“Could you two bring in anything else that’s out there?”
“Mike!” Jane shouted, not moving from the counter. Ellen sighed. “She wants you to clear the table!”
“I can’t,” they heard him call from the living room, where the TV had been moved from the basement. “No leg, no chores.”
“Nice try, stumpy.” Jane swung off the counter, her face suddenly alive. “Get off your butt and come help me.” Ellen listened to their affection and bickering, the clattering of plates and their coded insults. The things she knew about them and the hints of what she didn’t.
* * *
After Walter Reed Mike had moved into an assisted living apartment run by the Madison VA. But almost from the start he chafed at the rules and regulations there, and so was now making plans to find a place with a guy he’d met there, a National Reserve BK amputee originally from Indianapolis. In the fog of leaving Walter Reed after most of a year there, Ellen realized she had always assumed Mike would move in with them, at least for some time—she’d never really thought about it. And all the paperwork, all the bureaucracy, involved in detaching them both from Walter Reed had consumed her every free moment for weeks. So she was caught out, embarrassed by her feelings of rejection, when he told her about all the plans he’d made. This was on their first day back, in mid-September. Wes had picked them up from the airport and soon the four of them were on the back patio eating grilled tofu dogs and potato salad.
“But it’s no trouble!” Ellen protested. “You can have Wesley’s room, and it won’t be hard to make any changes to the bathroom up there— We’ll all pitch in to get you settled…”
Mike looked down at his lap. He’d gained back most of the weight, and his hair was longer, a soft bristle like a black paintbrush.
“I don’t mind at all, is what I’m saying,” she continued, though the three of them were silent. Had obviously talked it through, between them. “Just until you get on your…” Feet again, she was able to bite back.
“Mom,” Jane said. And her voice was gentle. “It’s good this way. He needs his own place.”
“But…”
“Mom. It’s okay.”
And in this way, Ellen understood that things had changed. She swallowed her objections and tried to form an enthusiastic smile. An awkward silence settled as Ellen gazed over the brown and brittle grass in the yard; she could feel the three others exchanging looks. Stay here, she told herself sternly.
“It’s not like I won’t be around,” Mike mumbled, and bit off half his hot dog. “To hang out, or whatever.” And his flash of a smile to her, mouth full and eyes exhausted, did the work it always had.
* * *
Mike’s C-leg was now leaning against the other side of the couch from where he sat, his stump propped up on a checkerboard-pattern needlepoint pillow Ellen’s mother had once made. Jane nudged the prosthetic away from her. “At least that sneaker doesn’t smell,” she said. The two of them were bent over Mike’s laptop, laughing at something on Facebook.
Ellen lingered in the doorway, watching them. It was impossible to parse the language of their bodies, utterly comfortable with each other. Jane smacked the back of Mike’s head, and then laid hers on his shoulder. He said something that made her wince, then something low and soft, into her ear, that made her smile. This was recent, though, a wary amity. Before, there had been weeks of slammed doors, bitten-off conversations, phones ringing at 2:00 a.m. Ellen stayed focused on Jane, on her recovery. How had they settled things between them, after his injury, after the adoption? It wasn’t for her to know, at least now.
“I’m going up to the study,” she said. “Jane, you’ll lock up?”
“What about the movie?” Mike protested. He held up the DVD case. “You were the one who picked it.” The Mummy III: Rise of the Dragon Emperor. He ignored Jane’s laughter. “She did, she insisted! I wanted Pride and Prejudice.”
“All right, you two.” She dropped a kiss on the tops of both heads. “Keep it down so I can hear myself think.”
“Wait, weren’t you going to show us something?” Jane said, twisting around to catch her mother’s wrist. “Like on the news, that you taped?”
“Oh. No, it’s not important. And I have papers to grade.”
“You have papers to grade? Mike, she has papers to grade!”
“Papers that need a grading,” he mock-announced. “Many, many papers. On which there shall be grades. Many, many grades.”
“Papers to grade, papers to grade,” Jane twittered, in a parrot voice.
Ellen rolled her eyes and went upstairs. What was funny about that? She did have papers to grade. As always. Even more so, now that she had taken on three courses this spring, continued voluntary penance in the department.
But she wasn’t planning to grade, not now. First she went to her desk, where the proofs of her most recent article—“Wharton and War: A Writer on the (Home) Front”—needed correction, and several e-mails about upcoming conferences awaited her response. Ellen cleared this work to the side and opened a file she’d named, simply, “New Book.” Here she quickly typed a few thoughts that had occurred during dinner prep, mere notes and sketches that she could flesh out more later, when she wasn’t so tired. Because the new edition of A Son at the Front, with an introduction by Ellen Silverman, was doing well. Serena had urged her to write the proposal and get a contract first, but Ellen was going to take her time with this book. She had new things to say, and she wanted to build them up slowly, to consider multiple approaches into the material of how reading mattered to women in Wharton’s era, during the Great War. Ellen believed she had a different audience now, to be responsible to—and whether that was true or not, it made this work seem vital, and she knew enough not to argue with that.
What she had taped to show Mike and Jane had aired on C-SPAN earlier in the week. One had to fast-forward through many, many minutes of procedural complications, and pockets of dead air, and long-winded speeches received with grim-faced hauteur by the committee members of the House commission. The unmoving grainy long shots were technically similar to footage from a convenience store security camera. It would be impossible to miss Lacey, though. She stood out, not only because of the long, blond, wavy hair, but because of the way her paper trembled as she gripped it and read out her statement in her strong, outer-borough accent.
Ellen had been riveted. Lacey, testifying to Congress! At first she barely listened to what Lacey had to say, those details about her substandard living conditions, shoddy treatment, the different ways Walter Reed failed people once the soldiers became outpatients. She just marveled at the tiny representation of her friend, making known what the army had tried to cover up. Were those reading glasses new? How was Eddie doing? It had been so long since they had talked on the phone, and their e-mails had slowed to a stop.
When the scandal broke, Ellen saw that her own part in the actual newspaper series was small. She recognized things she had said to Shelby, but they were truncated and attributed to “another resident.” Lacey’s story was a focus, though, as was a photo of her sitting next to Eddie, his face tilted up toward the stained ceiling, a half smile on his lips. Lacey eyed the camera dead-on.
“What bothers me is that he can’t see it,” Mrs. Diaz said, referring to Major Diaz’s head and eye injuries. She gestured to the mold and the broken bathroom fixtures. “I do the best I can, but Eddie was always the one for cleaning. He’d be up and down this whole hall, bleaching and fixing everyone’s rooms, if he could.”
There were also several column inches devoted to a mother furious about her son’s hopelessly mixed-up medication, and an army staff sergeant who, although injured himself, had taken on the role of social worker, morale booster, janitor, and handyman for his fellow soldiers who couldn’t help themselves. The original articles snowballed into further investigations, predictable outrage (both automatic and real), some firings, and now this congressional committee.
“Professor Silverman, when you were there did you know about all this???” a student had e-mailed, sending a link.
“Huh,” Jane said, when Ellen showed her the paper. “Can I take your car tomorrow?”
“Brilliant, brave,” read the note on the bouquet Serena sent to her office.
But Lacey, Lacey had done it. Suddenly Ellen had a powerful longing to be back there, at the Mologne House bar. Getting teased by Lacey and laughing with her and trying to give her some good advice. She’d thought back then those hours were merely a respite; she’d taken them for granted. Strange, Ellen thought, pushing away from her desk. To know now that that friendship was real.
She could phone Lacey, tomorrow. She could tell her how proud she was, watching her testimony, how impressed. How I miss her.
Her reading chair, a light wool blanket. Rumbled explosions from the movie downstairs; the memory of Lacey’s hoarse laugh. Ellen switched on the lamp, and opened her book.
NEW YORK CITY
MARCH 2007
Apparently this block on Carroll Street was the only one on City Island where it was every-man-for-himself in terms of garbage cans. More likely, Lolo’s natural haughtiness and tendency toward daily 311 calls to report minor snow shoveling violations or noise complaints hadn’t won her many friends. Whatever it was, no one else’s garbage and recycling cans were still out at dinnertime on this evening near the end of winter. Lacey got back out of her car, left the motor running, and hauled the first of Lolo’s three heavy cans from the curb around to the side of the house.
“Now she’s gonna stand there, get all concerned, what’s that noise,” Lacey muttered under the window where Lolo was frowning, talking. “It’s fine, Mom. Just bringing in the cans.” She ignored Lolo’s complicated gestures—What are you doing? I’ll do that later. Not, of course: Thank you.
Then she dragged the blue recycle can, cursing when her heel caught on a crust of blackened snow. Wheeling in the last, sticky-handled garbage can, Lacey could feel it starting, the hot throat, the bad feelings. She ducked down out of sight under the windows and wiped at her face furiously. Lacey sat on her heels and pinched her upper arms until they stung, sobbing, while Lolo knocked on the glass above her: Where are you? What’s going on?
But by now she knew to expect it, each time she came out here to visit Eddie, each time she left him. Jim said it was proof of her caring heart. People from her AA meeting said it was years of built-up toxins finally leaching out of her system and she shouldn’t expect it to stop anytime soon. All Lacey knew was she’d be wrung out and mascara-stained, numb, as payback for this weekly afternoon on City Island.
These fits were getting a little easier to take, though, ever since they flew her down last week to Washington for the trial. Okay, Lacey knew it wasn’t a trial, but you could have fooled her—with the bench seating and dark wood rails, the podium and hushed seriousness in that giant hearing room where she was called to be a witness in front of not one judge, but half a dozen, all staring down at her from a raised platform with their name plates set out in front. She was so scared she’d had to pee the whole time. They’d said she could read whatever she wanted, her statement, but she’d forced Shelby to help her write and rewrite those two pages, e-mailing it back and forth, until it sounded right and all the mistakes were fixed. In D.C. she got driven everywhere in a Town Car and stayed at the Marriott out by Reagan National, and even though Lacey sort of knew she wouldn’t be paying for it she was so nervous about what was and was not included on this trip that she didn’t eat dinner that night, didn’t order a thing from room service, just watched some cable in the bathrobe before her flight back the next morning at seven.
“I pictured it different,” she told Jim then, on the phone, lying sideways across the king bed. “Different how?” he asked. “Tell me.” “Well … I guess I imagined being back there, at Walter Reed. Saying all this there, somehow, what it was like. But I was nowhere near it. Never going to see it again, probably.” “Yeah. What else?” “And nobody was there that I knew. It’s stupid, but…” She tried to figure it out, while Jim waited for her. Because he wanted to know her thoughts. That hit her each and every time. “I guess I thought I’d see people. Like, from the wards. I thought I’d see Ellen.” “Was she going to testify too?” “No. I just thought about her, when I was there.”
What she didn’t say was that at every turn she’d been freaked that someone from Building 18, one of the women who hated her now, was going to pop out and scream at her in front of everyone. She’d seen herself called out on mil-wife blogs ever since the articles came out last month, everything from who does she think she is? to whiny brat doesn’t deserve to be called an army wife to unpatriotic bitch to nice undyed roots, you hot mess. No, she didn’t tell Jim about the late-night reading of these posts, or about how they could still make her burn with shame. In D.C. she half expected a brigade of righteous wives and moms to face her down during her testimony, and the funny thing was she could predict every single thing they’d say to her. She had been one of them.
But if there was one person she wanted to know all about what she’d done—spoken directly to the House of Representatives!—it was Otis, so she texted him photos of everything until they made her put her phone away, the marble halls and brass plaques and a self-portrait of her big face in front of a flag, and she collected a bag full of souvenirs for him: her ID badge, the program schedule, a White House magnet she bought at the airport, two bars of soap from the hotel. Her days of being able to give him extra assignments on top of school stuff were over—he’d like to see her try—but if she could she’d make him research and memorize whatever structure of authority made up the legislative branches leading down to the Subcommittee on National Security. And then explain it to her, since Lacey still wasn’t sure how that all worked.
She called him now, from the car, phone wedged between cheek and ear while she idled in Lolo’s driveway. In a front window Tego the cat arched his back between the glass and the sheer white curtain. A hand—Eddie’s hand—appeared and stroked the old cat, front to back, again and again. All Lacey could see of Eddie was his shadow behind the curtain, but she watched his hand pet the cat, slowly, steadily. She shut her eyes and mentally sent him … what? The hope that things would be easier someday, good luck with Lolo’s “Texas chili” tonight (she had memories of that), and: I’m sorry. Always, sorry. Sorry for him and for her and for them.
“C’mon, Otis—pick up, pick up, pick up … Hi, honey! Whatcha doing?”
“Nothing.”
“So what kind of nothing?” Lacey waved to Lolo, still consternated in the window on the other side of the door. What’s wrong with your car why haven’t you left yet? Then she floored it up Carroll and hung a left on the main avenue. Otis was telling her about the movie they were watching, about a mummy and a dragon and she tried to keep it straight but she was still trying to shake off the remnants of crying so hard, god she wished she could get that together already.
“Uh-huh. What about homework?”
“What about it?”
“I’m not kidding. Did you do that Regents practice test? The one on the computer?”
“Practice test…”
“Otis! If I get back and—”
“Relax, relax, I finished it. And famous-African-American-person book report. All I have is math journal—”
“Good. You know how much homework I got, right? And you don’t see me leaving it until last minute on the weekend, so…” Fine, that was obnoxious but true. Almost true. She had no idea how she was going to finish that Kinesiology project by Monday, but somehow it would get done. Last night she stayed up until one to finish chapter review questions for Nervous System and Pulmonary, so at least those were out of the way.
The divorce had gone through as quickly as she could have hoped. Now the VA checks had started to come in, plus all Eddie’s rehab was taken care of. Lacey kept an eye on the money and made sure it all got funneled into the accounts she’d helped Lolo set up. Did those articles help their case? Sure, maybe. All Lacey knew is that she fought for as big a payout as Eddie could get—his rating got up to 85 percent—and then walked away from all of it, even though the lawyer thought she was crazy. Except she’d held back just enough for first semester tuition at Hunter College. She’d allowed herself that much.
Compared to that one preprogram basic-sciences course they made her take, Hunter’s physical therapy program was intense. Three years, full-time, all classes held at the Brookdale campus in lower Manhattan. She’d have to do two clinical practicums for the last year, sort of an internship in a health center or hospital, and if she got through that there would be the licensing exam. All before she could even earn a dollar. And she was a million years older than the other students, and she’d probably hit menopause by the time she got certified. But Jim said it took as long as it took, and so what, as long as she liked it?
And actually, she loved it. From the first course, Physical Modalities, she could tell she was going to rock this. All that fitness assessing and injury rehab and body typing and exercise program designing that she’d done at Rudy’s and for her own clients … she totally saw how to make that count now, in the classroom. And who knew, maybe one day she’d be able to work with injured vets like Mike. Really work with them, not just basic core-strength stuff like she’d done on Ward 57. Lacey kept it a complete secret, she didn’t even tell Jim, but she had this idea for how you could combine a regimen of PT work with training routines, and how that could really help guys—and women—who were adjusting to limb loss. Maybe she could even design her own method, and write it up online somewhere … and get famous, and rich … Oh shut up. First, finish your Kinesiology project.
Under the City Island bridge there were a few people fishing off the small beach, even in the cold and dark. What the hell kind of catch did they put in those white buckets, and who bought it? Had to bring in some kind of money, because guys were always down there, no matter the weather.
“We’re gonna order pizza so he wants to know do you want Anthony’s or Famous Famiglia? But not that healthy place with the whole wheat crust, disgusting.”
“Actually … can you put him on? Love you baby.”
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“So, uh … how’s Eddie?”
Lacey breathed out, long and slow. She shifted the phone to her other ear. “About the same, honey. He likes the new shirts you helped me pick for him, because of the zip-ups, no buttons. And Lolo says he’s been sleeping good, and the doctor said soon they’ll take him off the seizure meds, so…” She fell quiet. Why did she always have to put on the good spin? Otis knew how things stood. The divorce, their new apartment, how Jim came over but only on the weekends he didn’t have his girls. Maybe someday she’d be able to really talk to O, and tell him what it was like with Eddie both before and after the war, where she went wrong and how she tried to make it right. Maybe someday Otis would tell her what he thought too. But for now, she had to get through these moments where she felt so bad about things she could hardly stand it.
“He said to say hi.” Not true. As far as she could tell, Eddie didn’t have any memory of Otis. Or if he did, you couldn’t tell from the few short sentences he was capable of speaking.
“Okay. Um, so do you want pizza? Wait, here’s Jim.”
“Hi, baby. You okay? How was it over there?”
“All right. She’s got him in front of the TV a lot, as far as I can tell. Or maybe that’s the aide. Anyway, they’re good for groceries, and the stairs look better.” Jim had paid for a guy to tear out Lolo’s rickety-wood stairs in the front and back, and put in leveled concrete ones.
“How are you, though.”
“Eh. You know.” She had to swipe her eyes again, before gunning it onto the Hutch in the split-second gap in the traffic. Jim did know. It was still hard to believe this love he had for her, hard to accept it. They were taking it so slow—she had met his beautiful daughters but only in passing, as “a friend.” Nobody mentioned getting married, ever, and a lot of times he didn’t even stay over, just left after dinner with her and Otis, went back to his place.
But they took every chance they could to be alone. And together they were as good as Lacey had remembered, had imagined—which was saying something.
One night she was waiting up for him, reading Patient Care case histories half asleep on the couch. But he didn’t even come over to kiss her when he came in, just gave a weird wave and hustled off to the bathroom where she heard the shower running. Later in the dark bedroom, after they made love, she asked what was up with that.
Jim rolled on his back, his big arm still under her neck. “Don’t be pissed, but … I’ve been going to a few meetings, all right? The ones for family and friends of … anyway, I told this lady who was running it about you and how great you were doing—”
“Four months in, that’s nothing. It doesn’t even get hard until after your first year, is what they say.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like that I come home smelling like the bar.” He raised his head and stared at her. “My clothes and shit.”
“Are you serious? I’m not going to go on a bender ’cause someone spilled Busch Light on your—”
“I’m not joking around on this, all right, Lace? This lady said whatever I could do would help, and there’s this Web site, and so I’m going to take a shower after every shift before I touch you or kiss you or whatever. For as long as I want. Okay?”
There was real heat in his voice. “Okay,” she said softly. And kissed the side of his face until he brought his head back down on the pillow next to hers.
“Come on home,” he said now on the phone. Red headlights flared ahead; there was always a slow-up where the highway crossed with 95. “You can catch the rest of the movie with us.” She laughed. “What, it’s good. And maybe, you and I can watch a little something different, later on.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, smiling at his efforts to cheer her up. She knew the kind of movie he meant. “Actually, I’m going to go to that thing.”
“You sure? You up for that?”
“Yeah. Think so.”
“So call me after. Drive safe.”
“I won’t be too late. Make sure he brushes his teeth. And I love you.”
She let the sounds of his love you too linger, then dropped the phone back in her heavy backpack, full of texts and notebooks. Traffic picked up as she came up on Pelham Manor, tracing the river north until it disappeared under the big intersection at Sandford Boulevard. The moon was out, its cold white sliver winking at the top of her windshield.
Lacey fished out a lipstick and put some on one-handed. No chance to do anything about her hair in a boring ponytail, or this smear of grease on the thigh of her jeans from Lolo’s garbage cans. It both mattered and didn’t. Of course Martine would look her over, checking out everything about Lacey since the last time, a year and a half ago, and there was no getting around that. But she could handle it.
Martine had reached out, texting her after someone forwarded her the Walter Reed article. At first they both kept it real short, real basic: How long you guys been back? Since summer. How’s Otis doing? Good, how are you guys?
Lacey hoped for nothing, expected nothing. But last week she got a long e-mail, one that it looked like Martine had written late at night. It said how sorry she was for not calling after Eddie got hit, that she kept wanting to but didn’t know how, and maybe it was time they moved on from all that stuff before. She prayed about it. She wished she hadn’t burned that bridge. Also, she wrote about how moved she was reading those New York Times articles, how upset seeing what they’d been through, and the other families, and how she couldn’t believe Lacey went to testify in front of the actual House of Fucking Representatives. And did she hear they were closing it down? Walter Reed. Gonna build a new facility, a better one. Unbelievable, right?
You did the right thing, Martine had typed. Eddie deserved better by them. So did you.
Then she invited Lacey over for a girls’ night in at her place, nothing fancy, just some of the FRG girls and some wine and apps. She hoped Lacey would come. It had been so long.
Unable to stand it, after a sleepless night Lacey texted Mart the next morning. You know I’m with Jim now, right? She couldn’t breathe until the response came. I know. I miss you.
So now she was taking the exit onto Third Street, scared as shit but full of hope anyway, honking at some clown who thought he could cut her off, dreading the moment she’d ring Mart’s bell and have to walk through that door. She’d hold her head up though, because that’s what Lacey did, and she’d go in to face Martine and those women and she had no idea what would happen next.
But there was still a little time. Still a few blocks to go. So Lacey turned on the radio, found the right song, and began to sing.