chapter 10 | house no. 13

November, 2008

Grey.

My world of blue shirts and blue skies has disintegrated to grey. Grey hair, grey clothes, grey sinks and toilets. Grey cement and walls. Grey rain.

The color has leached out of everything and left me blind. I don’t turn on the television. I don’t read books. Newspapers sit in a grey pile on the kitchen counter, growing higher and higher as the weeks pass. I just stare at the grey paint all around me, unable to cry or laugh or think.

Buddy is the one spark of something in my nothingness—a small but needy presence to move the days forward. I let him into the backyard to do his business. I feed him and water him. If the sun happens to find a way out of the clouds, I manage to walk him around the block, but he doesn’t pull or bark or do any of the usual Buddy things because he knows I won’t fight back. I’ll just concede, and he’ll be free to run away, or get hit by a car, or steal some poor old lady’s sandwich. His good nature prevents it, and I guess somewhere in the grey I am thankful for it.

I don’t even care when a black car that looks vaguely familiar drives by me as I follow Buddy down the sidewalk, or when the same black car slows in front of the house as I stare aimlessly out the kitchen window. I may know this car, but it isn’t important now. My brain is too fogged to register, too numb to care.

I find myself sitting on the sofa, staring at the grey around me, lost in my head.

It has been two hundred days since John left the house and didn’t come back. Two hundred days of questions—of lonely, grey guilt.

It’s almost Christmas, and I have one hundred and sixty four days left to get out of this house. Merry Christmas . . . get out. They want to talk to me about it. They, ubiquitous They. I hate They. They took John away from me.

They, that take, take, take and never give. They.

Where will I go? I’ve lived on or beside twelve different bases since I left home to pursue my truncated dreams of a college education. Twelve places where I was told to go. Dictated by They. Of those times, John and I bought twice and the rest were military housing. It was just too much effort to buy. Why put yourself through that, when you knew you were going to be packing up just as you settled in? This house is no exception. John and I were moving to the East Coast this year. We had plans to live near the beach, revelling in our empty-nesthood.

Without him, where will I go? I am lost in the grey.

Buddy suddenly pricks his ears and growls as someone knocks at the door.

He barks, pulling me from my grey thoughts. I look at the kitchen, wondering who it is. I don’t get up.

Knock, knock, knock.

I don’t get up.

Buddy barks again, and continues barking as he jogs to the kitchen. Tick, tick, tick go his nails on the ceramic. I should cut his nails—he’ll scratch the hardwood, I think.

Knock, knock.

Buddy stops barking and starts to whine happily. He knows who it is.

I don’t get up.

Buddy prances in the kitchen and moves from the side to the front door.

I look up, and from where I am seated I see Bob, peering through the window panes.

“Ellen,” he says, his voice muffled by the glass. “Please . . . let me in.”

Buddy waits expectantly. His tail wags back and forth like a metronome.

I stare at Bob, seeing him but not seeing him.

“Ellen, I’m not leaving,” Bob says.

Buddy turns and looks at me, his eyes confused and happy and expectant. His tail stops wagging. He waits.

“Ellen, . . . open the door.”

Bob’s breath fogs up the glass. He’s wearing a knit hat. When did it get cold?

He tries the handle but it doesn’t budge. Buddy walks over and puts his head on my lap, eyes big and dark and sad.

“I can’t.” I whisper.

“Ellen, come on. It’s cold out here.” Bob says.

Buddy pulls at my sleeve, like he wants to go for a walk. In the grey, I realize I haven’t dressed today. Why would I dress? I’m not going anywhere.

With no thought other than to stop the incessant knocking and pleading, I get up and walk to the door, turn the deadbolt, and walk back to my cocoon of blankets. I don’t even wait to look to see if Bob comes in. It’s the best I can do.

Bob takes off his coat and hat, and flops them over the banister. He slips his shoes off, leaving them carefully on the rug. He has a briefcase—the briefcase of doom, I think. He says nothing, just picks it up and walks in to my living room. He sits down, watching me quietly.

My eyes flit from his socks to his face. Socks . . . face. Socks . . . face. I don’t want to look at the briefcase of doom. I hate that thing. Every piece of paper I’ve signed, initialled, read, and reviewed for this whole messy business has come from that briefcase.

Bob watches me and I fiddle with the fringes of the blanket wrapped around me.

Finally, I can’t stand it. “What?” I ask.

“Ellen, I’m worried about you.”

Surprise, surprise. Living in the land of grey is not socially acceptable. Especially for an officer’s wife. Oh, wait. Ex-officer’s wife. We’re supposed to be all perky and organized with nails and clothes that match the flower arrangements on our dining room tables. Heaven forbid an officer’s wife should experience an actual true, deep emotion.

I say nothing. What is there to say? Bob can worry all he wants, but it’s not going to change the fact that my husband is dead and everything I’ve ever lived for is meaningless now.

“It’s been seven months,” he says, as if this should matter to me.

“Six months, and sixteen days.” I say. The time matters, but what he is implying doesn’t.

“Six months and sixteen days, then,” he says. “John is not coming back, Ellen.”

I stare at him. I’m not stupid. I know John is not coming back. I know it every second of every minute of every hour of every day. John will not come back. He is dead, dead, dead.

“Ellen you have to move on.”

I squeeze the fringes in my hand until my too-long, broken, un-manicured nails dig into my palms.

“What do you want, Bob?” I finally ask.

He looks so hurt at my question, and sits there for a long time, waiting. “I want you to come back to the living. John is dead, Ellen, but you’re not.”

The blood rushes to my cheeks, and my eyes sting from unshed tears.

My brain screams and screams that he’s not being fair, that everyone else has come and brought lasagne and told me it would get easier and patted my back. Everyone else cleaned and made coffee and left stinking lilies to die on my table. Why does he, of all people, have to be so mean?

“I don’t know if I can do that,” I whisper.

“You can,” he says, leaving the black briefcase on the floor. “I’ve seen what you can do.”

This . . . this simple statement, pulls me from the grey more than anything else could. I loosen my grasp on the blanket.

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it without John.” The tears are so close. I don’t want to cry in front of Bob.

“Bullshit!” he says forcefully. I jump.

What in the hell?

“You can do it. And you will do it. It sucks. It’s hard. But you are one hell of a strong woman, Ellen Michaels. I know how strong you are.”

His eyes are piercing me like arrows, and suddenly I know he’s not talking about John. He’s not talking about kids and postings and moves. He’s talking about something I’ve spent my life trying to forget.

My voice cracks as I respond. “You know?”

“I know.”

“But.”

“Ellen, I know. For more than twenty five years I’ve known.”

“You know?” My voice is almost inaudible.

He nods and my heart feels like it will explode through my ribs and onto the floor.

And then, instead of the tears falling from my eyes, they fall from his.

“I’m sorry,” he says. I’m not sure what it is that he’s sorry for. There’s so much. “I . . . I wish . . .” He dashes the tears away. Add shock to the list of emotions I’m feeling anew.

“I wish I had said something—anything—then. Right then. In front of John’s room.”

“Bob . . .” I start. He can’t know. No one knows. Hell, I don’t even remember exactly what happened that night. I’ve struck it from my mind. Denial eventually leads to amnesia.

“I was late. I ducked behind a door when the COC came out of John’s room. I saw him buckling his belt, for God’s sake!” His eyes flit around the room, but they come back to me, pleading. “And then you came out, Ellen. Beaten, crying, and . . . and . . .”

“Bob, stop.” The memories are coming back, and they are too much for my grey world. Vivid black and angry red.

“You were bleeding, Ellen! I wiped up the trail of blood you left! And I didn’t say anything! I could have said something. I . . .” The tears are rolling down his face, blotching pink and streaking white. Dragging the past up in front of me after years and years of forgetting.

I can’t take it! I can’t! Not now, not fucking now!

“Stop!” I scream at him. “Shut up! You don’t know anything!”

He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know there was more—that it didn’t end there. That Fielding has haunted my every move for twenty-five years.

Buddy whines.

“I could have helped,” he says as he leans forward, dropping his head in his hands. “I could have helped.” His anguish is too raw for me to understand.

I’m . . . I don’t know what I am. I’m not prepared for this. He’s so destroyed over that one time, what would he do if he knew it all?

He finally sits back and meets my eyes. His are bloodshot and red, staring back at me, wanting forgiveness.

“Ellen, if you can get through that—and all the shit the military has thrown at you, yet have three beautiful children and a marriage that survived it all until now . . . you can get through this. No one . . . no one wants you to forget John. You can’t. But you’ve got so much more living to do! You’re young, and you could—”

“What?” I interrupt him. “I could what? Work at a fucking bargain mart?”

“No! Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said over the past few months? Jesus, Ellen! John left you over half a million dollars!”

I didn’t know this. My eyes widen.

“The insurance policy? Accidental death? Double the benefit? Retirement savings?”

These words I recognize . . . but they were just papers to sign, words to get through.

“Ellen . . .” his voice softens. “Ellen you can buy a house, go back to school, travel, whatever you want. Please, just come back to us. Come back to the living.”

I look at the briefcase of doom, and then look at the wall. I can’t think of that time, can’t think of the years of denial and clothes that cover up bruises. I can’t understand Bob’s torment. And I certainly can’t reconcile the fear, pain, and guilt of that time with the fear, pain, and guilt of John’s loss. It’s like two different Ellens in two different universes. That one moved on because there was something and someone to move on for. This one has nothing to reach toward. No one to hide behind. Only wisps of fog lay ahead of the here and now.

“Please? Ellen?”

The wall in front of me has a dark spot where Buddy has rubbed against it with muddy fur. A brown swipe on a beige background. It looks like a hand waving hello.

My head turns from the dark spot back to Bob.

“How? How can I come back?” I whisper.

He shrugs. “You have to just do it. Look all of the awfulness in the eye, and step forward anyway. . . . Talk to me. Tell me what I don’t know. Tell someone. And then find Ellen, and who she is.”

Find Ellen.

Find Ellen.

Oh, John! Why did I let you leave that day, when I was angry and broken and lost?

And now that you’re gone, how can I find who I am?