2

Near the barracks, a low temporary grandstand had been set up. The seats were mostly empty, but kids were running up and down the empty risers, chasing one another. The bleachers overlooked the parade deck, a big square field of scuffed dirt, now partly filled with waiting families. When the buses appeared from beyond the barracks, people began gathering. The buses were unmarked, but everyone knew who was in them. People turned to face them, holding balloons, waving tiny American flags. Homemade signs were raised: WELCOME HOME BOBBY. WE LOVE YOU JESUS. Behind the families, towering over the crowd, were inflated balloon figures: a purple castle, rigid pennants fluttering from its turrets; a huge red and yellow smiling bear. They swelled against the sky, weirdly smooth, like giant babies.

Conrad’s parents were both tall; they stood out among the others. Marshall was lanky and spare, with wide shoulders and a concave chest. He wore an old narrow-striped polo shirt and khaki pants. He stood with his hands jammed into his pockets, his head thrust forward, his fine, colorless hair falling across his forehead. He was oddly awkward, his elbows and wrists always prominent, always at the wrong angle.

Lydia was nearly his height, also lean and long-boned. She wore dark pants, a loose light jacket. Her hair was short and thick, deep brown, but graying slightly. Her eyes were dark and deep-set, with a mournful slope. She stood next to Marshall, her arms folded against her chest, her dark eyes searching for her son.

Next to the Farrells stood a young blond mother with two small children, and behind her an older man. They all held pale blue balloons inscribed WELCOME TOMMY. White ribbons hung from the balloons. The mother wore a short-sleeved pink sweater, and a balloon was tied to each of her wrists. She held a small boy against her chest. She kept rising onto her toes, craning to see, then sinking back onto her heels, unbalanced by her son. The balloons followed her movements languidly. The little girl clasped her mother’s thighs, staring resentfully upward. A balloon was tied to the center of her plastic headband. Behind them stood a grizzled, stocky man wearing aviator sunglasses, legs spread, arms tightly folded, a balloon tethered to one buried hand.

The bus doors hissed open. The families held back, anticipatory. When the first Marine stepped down, everyone began to cheer. As the line of them appeared, there were claps and calls, names were shouted out. “Hey, Durell!” “Yo, Jimmy!” Mothers waved and called; children screamed joyfully, whether or not they saw Daddy; wives began weeping; fathers beamed and whistled.

The blond mother suddenly set down her son. “Tommy!” she called. She raised her hands, clapping, the balloons bobbing around her face. She gave a high-pitched laugh, then started to cry. She called again, “Tommy!” Her voice broke.

“Mom,” the little girl said accusingly, unable to see.

The grizzled man cupped his mouth and called, “Hey, Tom!” The balloon floated jerkily over his head.

The Farrells watched silently, scanning the faces of the men stepping down from the bus. Marshall pushed his hair off his forehead, but at once it fell back.

It was the end of the day, and the California sky was darkening to a transparent violet. To the west, the palm trees were turning a deep red-black against the liquid glow. Over the crest of the hill, to the east, the sky was still blue, but it was becoming deeper and dimmer. Once everyone was off the bus, the staff sergeant gave the order and the men began to march, three abreast. There were two platoons of infantry grunts, all in clean desert camouflage uniforms, blurred brown and tan. They marched in unison, heads high, arms swinging. His platoon was Dingo Three; Conrad marched alongside. As an officer, he did what his men did, but apart. In the mess hall, officers always ate last. You put your men first.

The ceremony would be small, there were only two infantry platoons returning, about ninety men. If it had been a whole company coming back, two hundred or more, there’d have been a big ceremony, food and bands. But this would be brief. The big blow-up toys were about all there was, and they were aimed at kids. Most of Conrad’s Marines didn’t have kids, they were too young. Most of them were not even twenty-one—though they were no longer kids.

As the platoons marched along, children ran daringly out in front of them, then raced back to their families. Wives waved, babies began to cry, fathers called through cupped hands. The Marines kept their eyes front. When you marched, you separated yourself from everything else. You didn’t make eye contact with the crowd, even if it was made up of your own families. You were part of your unit, not part of the people watching. This was how they’d been trained.

The walls of the purple castle were made of netting. Inside, kids bounced relentlessly on the trampoline floor. The compressors, inflating the castle, made an industrial roar. Beside the castle stood the bear, with staring eyes and manic grin. It seemed to be female, its bottom half a huge brown skirt with a white apron as the doorway. A little boy in desert cammies stood outside it, a miniature Marine. He was holding his hands over his ears, his mouth open. A little girl, her face painted in cat whiskers, came out the door and stood beside him. She saw the marching Marines and lifted her hand in a wave. Over the loudspeaker a brassy march struggled against the thundering bass of the compressors, which were winning.

The platoons reached the edge of the parade deck and drew up before a balding and stern-faced colonel. He stood frowning and erect, chin high, shoulders back. Beyond him, the long packed clouds of evening were drawing across the lower edge of the sky.

The Marines stood before him at attention, heads high, eyes straight ahead, arms stiff at their sides. The blue dome of the sky was darkening, becoming deep and endless as the stain of night spread smoothly down its sides. Suddenly the arc lights went on, illuminating the field with a dry white glare. The sky overhead became dark, and all at once it was night. The Marines were irradiated, surrounded by darkness. In the sudden illumination they became mysterious—their mottled uniforms, their smooth, close-cropped heads, their fixed stare. They carried something of the place they’d come from, the life they’d lived there, something of those who had not returned. The field, and the waiting men, illuminated by the lights, seemed clouded by that invisible awareness. Darkness lay beyond them, and the vast nighttime sky lay overhead, the landscape turning shadowy across the continent as the sun dropped away from their side of the earth.

Lydia leaned toward Marshall and whispered, “Have we missed him?”

“We must have,” Marshall said. “He must be here.”

“But how could we?” Lydia murmured. “We’ve been watching. Where is he?”

They scanned the rows, and Lydia felt a sudden fear: that he was not here after all, that he had been somehow lost. It was irrational—they knew he was here—but familiar. Fear had become part of her consciousness.

*   *   *

Lydia had not grown up in this world. The military had been entirely alien to her. There was no long family connection to it, no swords, no photographs, no war stories. Her father’s only connection to it (two quiet years on a naval air station in Tennessee, long before she was born) was rarely mentioned. It played no part in her family history.

She had grown up in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when the military was shadowed by disgrace. As a child she’d seen her parents watching the evening news night after night, their faces grave. They sat before the TV, drinks in their hands, listening in silence to the serious voice of the newscaster. One night her father listened to a general as he blustered and stalled, challenged by hostile questions.

Her father shook his head, swirling the ice cubes in his glass. “The country will never recover from this.”

Lydia, who was eight, was alarmed. For years afterward she expected something to happen, dire consequences. It was the military, she understood that. The military was in disgrace. The Vietnam War had been a scandalous mistake, everyone knew it. The advisers had lied to the press, the White House had lied to Congress, the generals had lied to everyone. The military had manufactured evidence, the troops had massacred civilians. The whole thing was a national shame.

Lydia grew up believing that the military had been permanently dishonored by this. Never again would the public trust it so deeply. The lesson had been a terrible one, harsh and costly, but the nation had learned it. This was how history worked, the way nations formed attitudes and policies. This was the school of experience: never again would America allow such a thing to happen—to undertake war so secretively, so recklessly, so duplicitously.

By the time Lydia was a teenager, the draft had ended, and no one she knew enlisted. That whole world receded into vague obscurity for her. The military seemed huge and surreal, like a factory out of Kafka, grinding on endlessly, groaning and rumbling as it produced a vast, dangerous, and incomprehensible product. It was outside the rest of the community, unrelated to civilians or peacetime. Lydia had seldom thought of the military until the spring of Conrad’s junior year at Williams, 2001, when he came home to tell them about his plans.

The Farrells lived in the small town of Katonah, in northern Westchester, in an old farmhouse on a hill that slanted down to a dirt road. The house was set on wide, sloping lawns and shaded by huge rough-barked sugar maples; the fields were bounded by lichened stone walls. Across the lawn from the house was a red two-story barn, with an enormous hayloft above and big box stalls below: it had been converted from a dairy to a horse barn before the Farrells bought it. Behind the house, meadows rose up over the crest of the hill. Beyond them, on the other side, the land sloped down and gave way to woods. The original farm contained several hundred acres, though the Farrells owned only six. They’d bought it during a dip in the market in the late 1970s. After that, prices soared, and they’d never have been able to afford it.

The house was white clapboard, with three stories and five bedrooms, comfortable but not grand. On a beam in the attic was the signature of the carpenter: Richard Inglesby, 1856. For a hundred and fifty years people had lived their particular lives in those rooms, within those same plaster walls. Prosperous farmers, to judge from the house and its grace notes—high ceilings, elegant moldings, three bay windows, and a back stairs for the help. For all those years people had gotten out of bed each morning in those rooms. They’d set their weight on the slanting wide-board floors. On bone-cold winter mornings they went down the creaking back staircase, put on coats and boots, and went out to the barn to feed the animals. On hot summer nights they slept with the windows open onto the dark lawns, the murmuring sugar maples. During thunderstorms they looked out through the pouring rain toward the barn, revealed in terrifying precision by the flashes. Babies had been born in these rooms, the mother twisting and sweating, holding on to the iron bedstead behind her head, a doctor leaning over her. People had become ill in these quiet rooms. They had died here, their breathing stilled. Someone had watched, her gaze locked on a yellowish face, unable to turn away. All these people, cooking and sleeping and having children and getting ill, having parties and arguments, being confused and happy and grief-stricken, were part of the history of the house. Someone had decided to modernize and put in gas, and they’d had to cut the mysterious pipeline in the wall in order to add the window in the breakfast room. Someone later had put in electricity, plumbing; someone had paved the driveway. The Farrells changed little. They respected the modest nineteenth-century presence of the house. They’d preserved its integrity, protected it from change. They felt responsible for it.

The Farrell children had grown up there, Conrad, Jenny, and Oliver. Marshall commuted, taking the train every day to New York, where he taught law at NYU. When the children were grown-up enough, Lydia had slowly gotten her M.S.W. When the children were older, she set up a family therapy practice in New York, and she began commuting, too. The trip took over an hour on the train, and it was tiring. By the time you reached Valhalla, it seemed endless. But at the end of the trip you stepped out of your car in your own driveway, drew a breath of sweet country air, heard the soft calls of the mourning doves in the lilacs.

That Saturday morning, the weekend Conrad came home from Williams, Lydia and Marshall sat at breakfast, reading the Times and waiting for the children to straggle down the back stairs. Conrad and Jenny, twenty-one and eighteen, were usually the last; Oliver, fourteen, was usually first.

Marshall and Lydia sat in the little breakfast room off the kitchen, overlooking the garden. The paper was spread messily across the table, Classifieds and Real Estate already discarded on the floor. On the windowsill stood a jug of spring flowers: bleeding hearts and Jacob’s ladder. Beyond the jug lay the brindle cat, Murphy, her eyes shut, her white paws tucked neatly under her chest, feigning disinterest in their food. Lydia was deep in the crossword, Marshall pored over the op-ed.

They heard movement upstairs, and then they heard someone descending. They saw bare feet, legs in loose gray sweatpants, someone jolting down the back steps. Lydia expected Ollie, gangly and loose-jointed, his face shimmering pink with hormones, his mouth complicated with braces. But the steps were light and controlled, the feet tidy. After the gray sweatpants she saw a faded T-shirt that declared in orange letters, WILLIAMS TRACK. Conrad.

“Good morning,” Lydia said. “You’re up early.” She moved the newspapers to make room for him. “Want me to make something to eat?”

“No, I’m good.” Conrad went past them and fixed himself a bowl of cereal. He brought it back to the table and sat down across from his parents.

“Good morning,” Marshall said, raising only his head. His torso was cantilevered over the paper. He was poised, ready to dive back into it.

Conrad took a spoonful of cereal, then leaned back and folded his arms across WILLIAMS TRACK. “I wanted to tell you something,” he said. “I have an announcement to make.” He seemed awkward and self-conscious.

They waited, Lydia holding her coffee mug, Marshall poised over the paper. Neither was alarmed. Conrad was their eldest child, an achiever, responsible and conscientious. He trusted the world and had faith in the way it worked. He was always on the honor roll, always captain of the team. He completed the task before him; he moved beautifully through life.

Why would they be alarmed? What he was facing was his future. They’d had many talks about it. Conrad was majoring in classics, and he was drawn to everything in the ancient world: literature, history, art. He’d talked about going on to study archaeology or history; he’d talked about becoming a classics professor himself. He’d talked about law school and following his father’s path.

Lydia was proud of his wide interests. She was proud that he’d moved into regions that were unknown to her, mastering knowledge that would never be hers. This was one of the delights of being a parent, wasn’t it? Watching your children stride steadily past, outstripping you, knowing that they were carrying on the life of the family—whatever it was, the essence, genes, some kind of tribal presence—into another region, one that was distant, rich, remote. Astrophysics, intellectual property, ancient Greece: places where her mind would never go would be explored by her children.

Lydia waited, ready to applaud Conrad’s decision. This was like unwrapping a present.

“I’m joining the Marines,” Conrad said. His arms were crossed like a barricade across his chest.

Marshall sat up straight and carefully folded the paper closed. His eyes were pale and intent, like a benevolent hawk’s.

“The Marines?” Lydia said, stunned. Her mind went blank. “The real ones?” she asked stupidly. She had no idea what she meant. She tried to think what exactly they were. Why were they called that, marine? What connection did they have to the sea? Why did they wear those white gloves?

“The real ones.” Conrad looked from one to the other.

“Well,” Marshall said soberly. “That’s quite a decision.”

“When do you go?” asked Lydia.

“Right after school, this summer, I’ll go to officers’ training school at Quantico,” Conrad said. “Next year, after graduation, I’ll go in for good.”

“Quantico,” Lydia repeated, mystified. For good? How could it be good?

“That’s where the training school for officers is,” Conrad said. “It’s in Virginia.” There was pride in his voice: another shock for Lydia. He was proud of this.

“Tell us more, Con.” Marshall folded his hands on top of the paper. “Tell us why you’ve decided on this.”

“So, I want to do something big. I don’t want to just go into some graduate school and get another degree. I want to do something that has consequences. This is the biggest challenge I know,” said Conrad. “I want to see if I can do it.”

Marshall nodded. “I can understand that.”

Lydia looked at him, betrayed. Marshall had nearly gone to jail for protesting the war: How could he suddenly understand this strange martial urge? The wish to join the Marines.

All of it bewildered Lydia: the pride in Conrad’s voice, the understanding in Marshall’s. Suddenly she was confused and excluded. This was something the two of them seemed to have been sharing all along, a private language she didn’t speak. She’d thought they’d all shared the same world, but they had not. Her son, her husband: Where had they been leading this secret life? The one that only they knew about.

“This is a big change, isn’t it,” she asked, “from majoring in classics?”

She tried to sound supportive and interested instead of appalled and frightened. Conrad was an intellectual; how could he choose to enter a totalitarian system? And he was compassionate. She remembered him as a child, coming into the kitchen and carrying a tiny wounded rabbit, soft in his hands, bright-eyed and desperate. Rabbits, chipmunks, snakes—Conrad was the one who tried to save them all. Saving had been his mission. Why would he now choose a world of violence and killing?

And anyway, weren’t the Marines a last resort—for misfits, people who were so violent and misanthropic they couldn’t function in the outside world? Weren’t they for someone who needed a rigid iron rule to suppress antisocial urges? Conrad wasn’t like that. Their family wasn’t like that. Their family was bookish and liberal, not martial and authoritarian.

But Conrad shook his head. “Not really. It’s kind of a continuum. The classical writers love war, that’s their main subject. Being a soldier was the whole deal, the central experience. That’s what first got me interested. Sparta. The Peloponnesian War, the Iliad. Thucydides, Homer, Tacitus. I wanted to see what it was like.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “It seems like it’s the great thing. The great challenge.” He looked at them.

Traitorously, Marshall nodded again. “I see.”

“But that was different,” said Lydia. “The Greeks were all at war with each other. We aren’t at war. Being a soldier isn’t central now.”

“It’s the idea,” Conrad said. “Being a soldier is elemental. It’s kind of primal. And I want to defend our country.”

“Defend it from what?” Lydia asked. “This is 2001, not 1941. We have no enemies.”

Conrad shook his head. “It’s the idea of it,” he said again. “I want to do something serious, something that will make a difference.”

It all seemed adolescent to her, that absurd male sentimentality about violence. There were other ways to make a difference, why choose something so hostile, so alien?

“Aren’t there other things you can do?” she asked. “What about the Peace Corps?”

“The Peace Corps is lame,” Conrad said. “And ineffective.”

“But this is so violent,” Lydia said. “The millitary is a culture of violence. Every solution is violent.”

“First of all, no it’s not,” Conrad said. “Second of all, the military is called in only when all other solutions have failed. When it’s necessary. Do you think nonviolent resistance would have worked against Hitler?”

There was a pause.

“What does Claire say about it?” Lydia asked. She was hoping for solidarity.

Conrad swallowed. “She’s fine with it.” He nodded. This was not entirely true.

Lydia nodded, watching him.

“I mean, she was surprised,” Conrad admitted, “but she’s supportive.” Also not entirely true, but anyway they hadn’t broken up over it.

Lydia said nothing.

“I can see you’re horrified by this,” Conrad said.

“No, no.” Lydia shook her head. She was horrified.

Conrad began to explain, stroking the cat. Electricity began to crackle in Murphy’s fur. Irritated, the cat jerked her head with each stroke, swishing her tail back and forth while Conrad told them about the Marines. The language he used reminded Lydia of ancient myths, Nordic sagas, King Arthur. Courage and loyalty, Conrad said. Commitment, a code of honor. All straight from the ancient world, from Sparta. Semper Fidelis.

Lydia watched him as he talked, the early light flooding in from the window, across his face. He looked like both of them: he had Marshall’s wide jaw, his long, straight nose, his light coloring, pale hair, smooth, creamy skin. He had Lydia’s slanting eyes, though Conrad’s were blue. He was theirs, he was of them, he represented them. He was carrying them into the future. How could he be so wrong, so unlike them?

His body had become solid. She saw that it was, really, now a man’s: the chest springing strongly outward, the arms muscled and firm. His face was lit from within by youth; his features were precise. The brave, mournful eyes, the smooth, powerful arms, the slanting cords in his neck: his beauty was borne in on her. He can’t be risked, Lydia thought.

He talked earnestly, looking up at them, looking down at the cat.

Someone had come to Williams and given a talk about the Marines. It was inspirational. A professor stood up and challenged the speaker, saying that the military shouldn’t recruit on liberal arts campuses—that they were trying to militarize the academy. The speaker had argued back: on the contrary, he said, he was trying to liberalize the military. Conrad had been offended by the challenger. Weren’t you meant to choose for yourself in college? Weren’t you meant to consider everything and then make your own decisions? It was the challenger who had made him think more about the Marines.

Conrad talked about Homer. War was his great subject, how it shaped history, affected families, changed young men. War was the route to nobility. Before Aeschylus died, he asked for his epitaph to mention only his achievements as a warrior, nothing about his plays. War, not art. As he talked, Conrad ran his hand hard down Murphy’s spine and her tail sprang up with each stroke.

It was too late for Lydia to say anything, she could see that. Conrad was immersed in this, lost to it, in full spate. He was in love; it was in his voice.

When he finished, Lydia said tentatively, “So is it done? Final? Have you committed?”

“I’ve signed up for this summer at OCS.” Conrad sealed his lips shut over the words. “It’s done.” He stroked harder. Murphy stood up in a distracted crouch, unsettled, swaying, her coat rippling.

He was leaving the world Lydia knew. He would enter another, alien to her: the strange, violent life of soldiers, where killing was the right thing to do. This was anathema, the very opposite of everything you brought children up to believe. Don’t you remember, she wanted to say, what we always said about the military?

Conrad saw her expression. “It’s not dangerous,” he said. “Don’t worry. This is peacetime.”

“It’s not just that,” she said. “It’s a different world.” It was as though he were declaring his plans to join another family. You can’t do this, she wanted to say; you’re one of us.

Conrad watched her as he stroked the staggering cat. She could see that he could do as he chose. His life would unroll into the future.

And in this way, watching her son stroking the twitching cat, Lydia came to understand that the national memory did not work the way she’d thought. She saw that the shapes of ideas changed, slowly, like clouds, within the public mind. First the shift of an outline, the blurring of edges; then, mysteriously, according to some unseen current, the whole form alters. What had certainly been a high-heeled boot becomes unmistakably a swan. The idea of war as unacceptable, the military as unreliable, which seemed to Lydia fixed, immutable, had changed completely. Those concepts—war, and the military itself—were no longer scorned, not even among liberal intellectuals, not even among classics majors at liberal arts colleges. Somehow, while Lydia and Marshall were not looking, those ideas had become plausible, possibly necessary, maybe even laudable. Anyway, acceptable.

More than that, they had become honorable. It was a mystery to her.

Later, Jenny and Oliver came down, and Conrad told them. Jenny came slopping in wearing a ripped-neck T-shirt and sweatpants, earbuds in her ears. The whistling slither of the music was audible to everyone, and though it was strictly forbidden to wear these at the table, Jenny made herself toast, brought it back, and sat down without removing them. Lydia was too distracted by Conrad’s news to say anything, but Jenny started eating and then realized that Conrad was talking to her. She took off her earbuds and said, “What?”

“Pay attention,” Conrad said. “I’m joining the Marines.”

Jenny stared at him. “You must be out of your mind.”

“Or just maybe,” Conrad said, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The white gloves, right?”

Conrad shook his head. “You have much to learn.”

When Ollie came down, Conrad waited until he sat down with his cereal, then told him.

“The Marines!” Ollie said. “No way!”

“The ones with the white gloves,” Jenny said.

Conrad rolled his eyes, but Lydia could see that he was more confident now.

*   *   *

That night when they went to bed, Lydia and Marshall talked more about it. Lydia closed the door to their bedroom. The room had a bay window and a window seat looking out over the lawn to the barn. The walls were papered with a ferny green print, the curtains white. The furniture was honey-colored—an old maple bureau under a curlicued mirror, two carved side chairs. In the corner was an upholstered chaise longue, comfortable and inviting, on which no one ever sat. A white bookcase stood in the corner holding Lydia’s favorite books and photographs of the children. On the floor was a fraying carpet that had never been large enough for the room.

Lydia stood leaning over the bureau to look in the mirror as she took off her earrings. “So what do you think?” she asked. “I’m flabbergasted. The Marines.” She looked past herself in the mirror, at Marshall. “I don’t think I like it.”

“I don’t recall being asked if we liked it.” Marshall unbuttoned some of his buttons, and pulled his shirt over his head, straining the ones still buttoned.

“But this isn’t some summer job. It’s dangerous,” Lydia said. “We should have some say about it.”

“I don’t actually think we do,” Marshall said. “But it’s not dangerous. We’re not at war.”

“The military is always dangerous,” Lydia said. “What about those Marines in Somalia?”

“There are thousands and thousands of Marines. A few died in Somalia. That could have happened anywhere. They could have died in a car crash.”

Lydia turned to him. “But they didn’t. That was a horrible death.”

Marshall said nothing.

“It’s so strange of him. Where did he get the idea?”

Outside, the big sugar maples muffled the house in the darkness.

“We’re not supposed to know where our children get their ideas,” Marshall said. “It’s a mystery. If we’re successful parents, our children will invent themselves.”

Marshall stepped out of his pants and turned them upside down. He took them by the cuffs and swung them neatly, aligning the legs. He set them over the back of a chair.

Lydia sat down on the bed. She put her hands on her knees. “I really don’t like it,” she said. “I really don’t.”

Marshall sat down next to her. He put his arm around her. “It’s something we didn’t expect. But I think his mind is made up. He’s twenty-one, he’s an adult. I don’t think we have much choice.”

“He has a year before he signs up for good. I hope he changes his mind,” Lydia said.

“I can understand the appeal,” Marshall said.

Lydia frowned. “Why do you keep saying that? You were a protester.”

“Because I thought that war was morally wrong. I’m not opposed to all wars. Some wars have to be fought, like World War II. And I can see why Conrad wants to do this. It’s the big test: I’m kind of proud he wants to take it.”

“In our generation, if you acted out of moral beliefs, you were a protester,” Lydia said. “Or you joined the Peace Corps.”

“So, maybe in his generation, you join the Marine Corps,” Marshall said. He stood up again.

Lydia shook her head. “It’s just insane. I know I’m supposed to adapt to this. I mean, I’m a family therapist. A mother has to let her children go. I know that.” She shook her head again. “But does she have to let them walk off a cliff?”

*   *   *

The colonel snapped his hand down at his side.

“Welcome home, gentlemen. Dismissed,” he said. “Go see your families.”

At once the platoons broke lines. The men of Dingo Three turned and waded into the milling families as though into the surf, the dense MARPAT brown mingling among the bright colors of the crowd.

Conrad swiveled, looking for his parents, at the same time watching the reunions around him. Haskell, a grunt from third squad, had barely taken a step before he was seized by a beefy teenage girl with heavy arms and long oiled black curls. “Bobby!” she screamed. She threw her arms around his neck, leaning against him and knocking his hat back on his head. Haskell drew back, tucking in his chin, raising his hand to his hat. But she was clamped full-on against his chest, and she pressed her meaty lips over his. A group of plump girls in bright tube tops stood nearby, watching and giggling.

Private First Class Jackson, second squad, had begun moving slowly into the crowd when a girl in a red dress came running through it and threw herself on him. She jumped into his arms and wrapped her legs around his hips like a monkey. It was somehow electrifying and obscene, with the small children drifting past. Jackson staggered at the impact, but recovered. He put his arms around her and began turning slowly. Her red dress flared out around her in a rippling circle.

Everyone in the platoon knew who the women were. They all knew names, pictures, stories. The beefy girl kissing Haskell was someone he actually hardly knew, a sort of long-distance girlfriend. They’d gotten to know each other while he was in-country; they’d never even fucked. It got like that, though, people sending hot emails back and forth to people they barely knew back home. All that testosterone had to go somewhere, speeding out onto the Internet.

Jackson’s girlfriend, Helena, the girl in the red dress, had been a cheerleader back home in Oklahoma, and Jackson was always talking about how strong and flexible she was. Jackson ate coffee powder for energy when they went out on patrol, and when he got stoked, you couldn’t shut him up.

“Cheerleaders, man,” he’d say, shaking his head. “You have no fucking idea. They can do anything. Twist into pretzels. Yes!” He squeezed his eyes shut. “They bend themselves all around like acrobats.”

After that, “cheerleader” became code for anyone who could do something extraordinary. Bad guys, Ali Babas—which was what you called bad guys—Marines, anyone. And here was the cheerleader herself, doing a flying fuck-jump like a monkey as proof. Jackson was proud of it; that’s why he was swinging her in that circle, her dress flaring. He wanted everyone to see it.

In-country they talked about women all the time, on patrol in the Humvee, on security, back at the outpost, laughing and lying and sweating and swearing. Once, Jackson had impersonated Helena in a dance contest. He came out from behind a curtain wearing an orange towel and white socks, waving pom-poms made out of white paper he’d gotten from the mess hall. They’d all cheered while he kicked, raising his knees and grinning.

Usually Conrad wasn’t part of those things: as an officer, he kept apart. There was a lot he didn’t want to see, stuff he left to the sergeant. But the men had invited him to the dance contest. “The cheerleader,” Jackson had shouted, waggling his eyebrows, swinging his hips inside the orange towel. “Take it off,” they’d yelled back. “Take it all off!”

Now Conrad snaked through the crowd, pushing gently past Vasquez: he and his wife had found each other. They stood embracing, locked into each other’s shapes. They were nearly the same height, and they seemed fitted together, eyes closed. They were silent, and Conrad looked away to give them privacy.

He was glad Claire hadn’t come. He wouldn’t know how to greet her. How could he not kiss her? For two years at college they’d spent nearly every night together. But while he was in-country, they’d broken up, or sort of broken up. Maybe they’d broken up before he left. He didn’t know where they were. Were they now supposed to shake hands when they met? When he next saw her, he didn’t want it to be in public.

Where were his parents? He tried to raise their faces in his mind. Had he seen them without knowing?

Now he saw his father making his way through the crowd. Marshall raised his hand awkwardly to bat at a white balloon that drifted across his face: WELCOME TOMMY. Behind him was Lydia. They were both smiling. Of course, once Conrad saw them, they were utterly familiar: tall and lanky, both slightly gawky.

When Marshall reached Conrad, he put his arms around his son. They hugged, shoulder to shoulder. Conrad was surprised by his father’s body. It seemed thin and insubstantial: Had it changed, or had he? Compared with the solid, muscular density of Marines, Marshall seemed almost frail. It was not the way he’d ever thought of his father. Conrad turned, and Lydia moved into him, putting her arms completely around him, and he felt the thump of her sob against his chest.

When she drew away, there were tears in her eyes and she was laughing. She said, “I had the craziest idea. I was afraid I wouldn’t recognize you. I couldn’t call up your whole face, only parts of it.”

The crowd was swirling around them, ebullient. Jackson came over to them, his arm around the Monkey. He stood apart, waiting politely to be seen.

“Jackson,” said Conrad.

Jackson was short, with a long head and fleshy ears. He had low, beetling brows and gleaming blue eyes, skin mildly pitted with acne.

“LT, I’d like you to meet my girlfriend, Helena,” Jackson said formally.

“Hello, Lieutenant Farrell.” Helena smiled at him. She had a very red mouth, loose dark ringlets, a small cleft in her chin. “I’m glad to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Glad to meet you, too, Helena.”

Conrad nodded politely, not mentioning that he’d heard about her as well. It was strange seeing her in the flesh, lipstick smudges on her teeth, strands of dark hair clinging to her damp throat. Strange to see this physical manifestation of Jackson’s other life. His new life, under this darkening California sky, a small evening wind rustling the leaves overhead. Strange to think that this was the last time he would see Jackson in this way. The balance had already shifted: Jackson’s arm was around the Monkey. His allegiance was now to her, or to whoever came after her. He’d never again be under Conrad’s command.

The last four years were being dismantled around him, subsiding, melting away in a silent cascade. Their shared life was over: from now on, for the rest of their lives, they would share only a past, never the present. It was as though Jackson himself were vanishing before his eyes. Though what they shared would always be there. Part of their life was fluid, part fixed.

“All right, Jackson. Have a good evening.”

“You, too, sir,” said Jackson.

Conrad thought of the Monkey’s legs wrapped around Jackson’s waist, that graphic, flamboyant welcome, the public declaration of a different life. He thought of Claire. Everything was breaking up and changing.

As Conrad turned back, he saw Anderson, ten feet away. He was talking to his parents, his arm around his girlfriend.

“Excuse me one moment,” Conrad said to his parents. “I want to say goodbye to someone.”

Anderson saw him coming over.

“Hey, LT,” he said. “Like you to meet my mom and dad, Chuck and Nita Anderson. And my girlfriend, Sue-Ann Hanson.” Everyone smiled. Sue-Ann was fat but pretty, with liquid blue eyes and springy blond hair.

Conrad shook hands with the parents. “Your son is a good guy,” he told Nita.

Nita was short and stocky, with short gray hair, small features in a wide face. She wore baggy khaki pants, some kind of striped sweater. She beamed at Conrad.

“Well, we think so,” Nita said. “We have always thought so.”

Chuck Anderson wore a loose short-sleeved jersey with a diamond pattern across the chest. He had a wide, colorless mouth and wore square gold-rimmed glasses.

“Hear you had some pretty exciting things going on over there.” Chuck looked at Conrad from under his thatchy eyebrows.

Conrad tried to remember—was he an accountant or a lawyer? Something like that. They lived in a small town outside Minneapolis.

Conrad clapped Anderson on the shoulder. “This guy,” he said, “did some exciting stuff. As exciting as anything that happened in the whole country.”

Nita and Chuck both looked at Anderson, who grinned and shook his head.

“You’re a hero,” Sue-Ann said, turning to Anderson. She had pressed herself against his side. Her dress was royal blue, scoop-necked, wide pleats tight against her big legs. She was brimming with excitement. The fact that Anderson was here, that his body was next to hers, that the future lay before them, nearly made her wriggle with delight.

Anderson shook his head again.

“So, now, the dogsled?” Conrad asked.

“Coming soon,” Anderson said.

“Dogsled?” Sue-Ann asked. She looked at Anderson, then at Conrad.

Anderson squeezed her shoulders but didn’t look at her.

“Okay,” Conrad said, “I’ve got to go. It was nice meeting you,” he said to Chuck and Nita. He nodded to Sue-Ann. “Keep in touch,” he said to Anderson. “Semper Fi.”

“Thanks, LT.” Anderson nodded. “I’ll see you.”

Conrad made his way back through the crowd, nodding and smiling. He reached his parents.

“Sorry for that,” he said. “So. Where we headed?”