Come Back To Me (7 page)

Kevin swigged his fourth beer. What was that sexy scent she was wearing? “So, Al, what’s really up with you?” His inhibitions were nowhere to be found.

Alice sucked down the last of her third (or was it her fourth?) drink and waved to the waitress for another. “Whaddaya mean?” she asked. If she wasn’t mistaken, her words sounded almost flirtatious. Her body was numb, and it felt damned good to let go for a while.

“C’mon. You know what I mean.” Kevin laughed, “Men, guys, doing the nasty.”
There was that scent again
. He tucked his heightened sexual impulses away.

Alice feigned insult, pulling back from the table, her eyes wide.

“I’ve known you for what…forever? And I’ve never seen you with a dude.” Kevin’s head rocked to the beat of the bad rap song playing loudly in the background.

“Date? I date.” She leaned over the table. “I date guys, I mean.”

“Well, I didn’t think you dated chicks!”

They fell into fits of drunken laughter.

“Maybe I do! How would you know?” she quipped.

“That’d be cool, too. Maybe I could watch,” he roared.

Alice grinned.

Tess hesitated by the bed, thinking of Beau. She’d been such a mess earlier, with Alice, she’d felt as though she were on an emotional roller coaster. Even the bike ride she’d taken to clear her mind hadn’t helped. She touched Beau’s side of the bed, lingering in thought, then made her way to the bathroom where she pulled off her bike shorts and stepped into the shower. Lather slid down her chest. She washed her stomach, the heel of her hand feeling a tiny bulge. She looked down and froze. There it was. She tried to wrap her mind around the idea that there was a little person inside of her. A fact she’d successfully ignored.
What did it feel like to be inside a person’s body?
she wondered. Even with the baby inside of her, she felt hollow, alone. If Beau had been there he’d hold her, tell her he loved her. If Beau were there, she wouldn’t be wondering how she was going to raise a baby alone. 

Iraq

Samira and Zeid made their way to the river and trudged back toward their shelter across the dark, arid desert. Zeid tried his mother’s patience during the long, hot trek.

“But, Mother,” he said in his high pitched, pre-adolescent voice. He spoke only Arabic, though now that they were living with Suha, Samira had hopes that he might learn English.  “I want to fight. I am a man,” he pleaded.

Samira, scared for their safety, shushed him and ignored his relentless plea to return to the city. Her heart swelled with pride that her son would want to protect their people, though the attitude he showed toward Suha was deplorable. She was shamed by his words, though he’d acquired them by no fault of his own—a remnant from his bully of a father.

Zeid had given up his arguments or was simply too exhausted to put forth the effort. He walked a few feet in front of Samira as they neared their temporary shelter. He carried two containers of water, and when Samira looked at him, his feet dragging, his shoulders hung low, she felt the weight of sadness upon her. She’d taken him out of one hell and led him into another. Although she did not mind the temporary shelter, she worried how living in constant fear would impact Zeid and the other children. Zeid was a child, and yet he’d been thrown into the role of a young man.

She sent Zeid inside the tent. Samira needed a moment to refocus her mind before seeing the handsome man inside. Over the past few weeks, she’d stolen many glances at the injured foreigner.
What was his life? Did he beat his wife?
Oh, how she wished she knew! She was embarrassed by her schoolgirl infatuation, but could not deny the excitement of her rapid heartbeat as she stole those peeks, or her adulation of the man who lay helpless in a bed that she had hastily thrown together.

The day after they’d found him in the sand, she’d gone out and scoured the area, looking for clues of his life. All she had found was a broken camera, which now lay hidden amongst her things.  It was not her intent to keep the jewel hidden, but she had been unwilling to relinquish it. Having that small token of the intriguing stranger brought her happiness, and she hadn’t had much joy in her short life.

Samira’s life had been one of sadness and great pain. She had never forgiven her parents for giving her to Safaa, her husband, when she had been just a girl. Safaa was twenty years her senior and well versed in the ways of men and women. Samira had pleaded with her parents not to be made a bride at twelve years old. She promised to help her mother, to cook, clean, sew, to do whatever was necessary, although she had already been doing those daily chores for years.
It was not the way anymore
, she had told them.
Girls no longer married so young!
Her father would not hear her. He demanded her marriage, ignored her pleas without so much as an explanation. He’d turned his back on her for money, and to Samira, for what seemed like a pittance when compared to what she’d be losing. Prior to the war, Iraqi brides bid a much higher dowry, and Samira was no different than those brides, though much younger than most.

A smooth-skinned girl, blessed with dark tendrils that fell to her waist, small, fine features, and a willingness to work hard in the home, Samira was a relative gold mine for her family. Her father had demanded twice the typical dowry of 350 U.S. dollars. Safaa, a wise business man, negotiated for Samira, and in the end paid her father the equivalent of roughly 425 U.S. dollars. He was proud of the negotiation. Samira was sickened by it.

With one older brother and no sisters, Samira had learned her place in a home early on. Her marriage was no different. Her wedding night brought pain, shame, and the understanding that complaining would only lead to bruises and harsh words. Samira accepted her place in her husband’s world as more of a concubine, nanny, and housekeeper than a wife, with grace and outward patience. Inside, however, she harbored disgust and resentment. Shame for what she had become, and anger toward not just her husband, but also herself, gnawed away at her. When her husband was killed by an improvised explosive device, she’d been secretly, shamefully, thankful. She played the role of grieving wife flawlessly. She did feel grief, but only for the protection that a husband had provided, not for the loss of her husband.

After Safaa’s death, Samira had tried to get a job, initially being one in the home of a kind gentleman whose wife had taken ill, but Suha worried about what it might look like to others, and she’d left that job after only two days. Most of the men who interviewed her leered lasciviously, and she had grown increasingly frightened. One of the men came to her home after dark, her children each tucked safely in their beds. Samira had tried to keep him from entering their modest home, but she was no match for the large man. He forced himself upon her, leaving her unconscious and battered. When she awoke the next morning, thankfully before Zeid, Edham, and Athra woke up, she summoned Suha immediately.

Suha had delivered her three children. She trusted her. She’d seen to similar wounds on Samira on her wedding night, and had secretly advised her of the power of silence—advice Samira had been grateful to receive and had smartly abided by. Suha had also delivered Samira’s fourth child, whom she could not bring herself to name.

She had been just six months pregnant when a blow to her side, artfully bestowed by Safaa, had caused him to leave her body, a slippery, lifeless weight. Samira prayed for her husband’s death from that day forward, and once her prayers were answered, she realized that his death just brought the need for new prayers, prayers of savior from the hell that Iraq had become for her. Suha answered those prayers. After nursing Samira back to health from the violent rape, she took the steps she had been planning since her own father’s death. Suha arranged for them to defect.

The process had been long and difficult, and the planning had taken much longer than Samira had thought she could bear—but she did—and she would endure this last leg of their journey, as well—even if that meant living in the desert for another year or more. Samira had the patience of a python mapping out its hit on unsuspecting prey. She would never go back to her homeland, and that resolution brought her great pride.

Maryland

Tess washed her salad bowl, having finally begun eating again. She lifted a dish towel out of the kitchen drawer, exposing her collection of coasters, lonely and forgotten in the bottom of the drawer. A sharp pang raced through her chest. The colors and flawless edges called out to her. She swiftly slammed the drawer shut, turning her back against the sink.
Damned coasters
. How dare they show up now when she’d been so strong? She threw the dish towel onto the counter and walked into the den where her laptop sat cradled among a nest of blankets, her nightly perch. Tess sat upon the blanket, placing the laptop gently on her knees, her delicate fingers hovered over the keyboard. She closed her eyes and raised her chin toward the ceiling.
Please. Please
, she begged. She logged onto Skype and was about to type in Beau’s screen name when her cell phone rang. It was a sign, she thought. She pushed the laptop to the side and ran to the ringing phone. Before looking at the caller ID, she pushed the green button.

“Hello?” she said, hopeful and breathless.

“Tess, hey. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

Her hope deflated, “Uh, no.”
I thought you were my husband.

Louie didn’t pick up on her disappointment. “Good. Sorry I didn’t call you earlier. It wasn’t that I wasn’t going to call you this time, I promise. I was stuck with that client I told you about, you know, the guy who lost his ledgers. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about your company.”

Tess was still a little miffed about his quick retreat, and apparently he wasn’t going to offer her any explanation. Two could play at this game. She didn’t respond when Louie paused.

“I know I said that I’d call today, and I’m really sorry,” he said sincerely.

Busy with your wife?
“That’s okay,” Tess managed.

“Is now good or would you rather I called you in the office tomorrow? Or do you want to meet for lunch, maybe?”

Tess smiled despite herself. His enthusiasm was hard to ignore. “Now’s fine.” Tess slipped into her professional persona. She inched to the edge of the couch, her legs crossed, notepad and pen in hand. “What would you like to discuss?” She was well practiced in answering the basic questions that most clients asked: how she recruited her applicants, what her criteria was, testing used, etc. Almost every client she’d ever worked with wanted to know how she started her business at such a young age. Her pulse never failed to respond to the excitement that she still felt when talking about her company.

She answered Louie’s questions without pause. They commiserated about the difficulties of being one’s own boss, the pressures of growing and maintaining a business, the weight of having employees, and how managing often equated to babysitting. Tess had become sidetracked, her annoyance had vanished.

An hour later, Tess was lying on her back on the living room couch, phone pressed tight against her ear.

“I can’t think of any,” Tess said honestly.

“No hobbies? You’re kidding me, right? Everyone has hobbies.”

Tess laughed, “I guess not everyone.”

“Knitting?”

“Maybe when I’m one hundred,” Tess laughed.

“Skiing, running, gardening?” Louie prodded. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those work-only people.”

“No, I’m not a work-only person,” she wondered if perhaps she was a work-only person after all. She rolled the thought over in her mind and finally said, “I bike ride.”

“Really? You ride? That’s marvelous. I’m so relieved,” he teased.

“Great revelation, huh? I guess I am sort of boring.”

“Riding is a great hobby. I’ve been riding forever. Where do you ride?”

“Around the neighborhoods,” she answered, realizing how ludicrously small her world was.

“Well, then. How about a ride through Rock Creek Park some time?” he asked.

Tess frowned. The memory of riding with Beau was too strong when she rode through Rock Creek Park, which is precisely why she’d begun riding around the neighborhood streets instead. “I…I’m not very fast,” she lied, “and I don’t do hills very well.”

“Neither do I.” Tess could hear his smile through the telephone line.

“I don’t ever ride with a partner,” she tried.

“I’m not a partner. I’m a potential client,” he answered.

Tess blushed.

“It’s a ride, Tess. If you can’t make it, no sweat.”

How had she been so dumb? Of course he wasn’t flirting. Who would flirt with her anyway?

Louie sensed her hesitation, “It’s okay, another time.”

“No,” she said before she could stop herself, “I’ll ride with you.”

Chapter Eight

Tess stared at her answering machine, teeth clenched, breathing hard and fast through her nose.

“We’ve scheduled the memorial service. I’m sorry, Tess, but it’s been over three months, and you won’t even take our calls. It’s not fair to Beau,” her mother-in-law sounded apologetic.

She wanted to scream—no, she wanted to hurl the answering machine across the room. Why had she insisted on the goddamned answering machine when Beau had been so adamantly against it? He hated what he called
extras
in the house, and she hated relinquishing control—always afraid the automated voice mail would swallow her messages, and she’d never get them back.
Stupid machine!
It stared back at her accusingly. She unplugged it from the wall and shoved it roughly into the bottom of the television console, mumbling under her breath, “You can have your damn memorial! I won’t go!” She swiped at her tears as if they were the enemy and threw herself onto the couch, taking several long, deep breaths.
This is not about you. This is about them,
she told herself. She nodded, confirming her thoughts, and feeling good about her decision. Carol and Robert had turned their back on Beau. Kevin, too, as far as Tess was concerned.
Kevin
. He was Beau’s best friend! How could he do this to him? The hell with him, too, she decided, and she stood, calmly, as if she’d put away her anger, put Carol, Robert, and Kevin away, too, stowed them away with the answering machine.

Iraq

Suha’s days were consumed with taking care of Beau, Samira, and the children. She was thankful for the neediness of them all, which left her no time to worry about their tenuous situation. Beau had progressed to standing on his own, albeit awkwardly with one leg splinted. She’d been diligently working with him to strengthen his healthy arm and leg again, knowing all too well what a few weeks of bed rest could do to a person’s spirit, much less the atrophy it could cause. She was determined to help Beau to become strong again, and felt a little guilty for her tactics. Suha hadn’t believed that a man should be made to feel weak. She knew his confidence would come from his ability to provide for others, and to do so, he had to get well again, become the strong man she was sure he had once been. Beau had responded with the strongest of intentions, reluctantly giving in to his body’s own weakness. He’d fought through the initial pain, allowing his right side to become strong and stable once again. 

When Beau had healed enough to carry on conversations without fading in and out of sleep, his lacerations healing into red, puffy scars, Suha had learned his proper name, though
Jameel
still sailed swiftly from her lips.  She’d felt bonded to Beau in a way that she could only imagine to be maternal. As Beau’s body became stronger, his need to speak followed. He spoke of his love for his wife and his physical need to be with her, the pain inside his heart, which was caused by the span of earth and sea between them. The longing in his eyes had drawn Suha in. She wanted desperately to reunite the two lovers. She ached for the kind man’s yearning.

Suha scrunched her face as she worked to remove Beau’s makeshift cast from his left arm without accidentally cutting his skin. Working with a knife, she cut through the fabric and wood that had held his arm firmly in place. She’d already removed the stabilizer that she’d been using intermittently from his injured leg. The memory of setting the bones brought chills to Suha as she worked to free his limb.

Beau stared, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, at his pasty, thin leg. His left leg had looked ill compared to his right, healthier leg.

Suha tore the stabilizing pieces of the sling away from his arm, sensing Samira’s eyes behind her, watching Beau. Samira had become like a teenager worshiping an idol. She was oblivious to Suha’s knowledge of her crush. From Suha’s place, she wasn’t sure how anyone could miss the longing looks she’d cast in the man’s direction. Beau, however, had seemed unaware.
Men
, Suha thought with a smirk.

Edham watched with curiosity as Suha worked to release Beau’s arm. “Will he be able to walk? Will he do helicopter again? Will he leave?”

Suha tried to be patient with his peppering of questions. She understood that he was just an inquisitive child, but found herself rolling her eyes and hoping he would relent.

Since the third day he’d been able, Beau had played games with Edham. They’d used rocks as marbles. He’d drawn English letters in the sand, and watched Edham morph them into animals, houses, and others pictures—his small slender fingers working the sand carefully into thin lines and little hills, his lower lip hidden under his small straight teeth.  Edham’s eagerness to please Beau was in direct opposition to Zeid’s anger toward him. Beau tried to teach the children simple English words, like “game”, “dog”, “play”, and “house”. Edham worked hard to learn the unfamiliar words and their meanings, carefully sounding out each syllable with pride, while Zeid cast harsh looks in Beau’s direction. His mouth never once uttered a single English word.

Samira had watched from the background this man who was trying to teach her children. His attempts were gentle, first writing the word, then speaking it, slowly, and then asking the children to repeat it. She found herself embarrassed by Zeid’s non-compliance and sheer defiance. She tried to reprimand him, though she also tried, she had to admit, not to come across as a mean parent in the eyes of the stranger. She was not successful in the first effort, and hoped she was able to succeed in the second. If she’d come across as stern, Beau had not let on so.
Beau
. What a name that was! She had yet to dare call him by his name. When in private, though, she whispered the smooth word, caressing it. She felt a blush when he cast a look in her direction, wrong as she knew it was. The tumbling in her stomach was new to her, exciting and welcome, yet threatening at the same time. What if this man meant harm? What if once he gained his strength, he was just like the others, just like Safaa? She told herself this was a possibility, but her heart refused to believe it could happen.

Samira quietly cared for Beau, helping Suha in every way she requested. She offered him water and food, unsolicited. She often helped him to his feet with soft, gentle hands, or brought his blankets up to cover his chest when she thought he was sleeping. Beau felt strangely like one of her children. Her eyes held compassion, and just beneath, he saw fear.

Athra sat on Samira’s lap, watching with her big brown eyes, her thumb planted firmly in her mouth. Beau winked at her. From behind her thumb, she smiled. Her fine dark hair curled up at the ends, just the slightest bit, like the edge of a page folded over to mark a reader’s place. Something in him began to stir—a feeling that he’d not encountered before. He found himself questioning his five-year plan, and wondering if he’d been missing the point these last few years. Beau had become very fond of all three of the children, even Zeid, as tortured and angry as he was. He’d learned from Suha that the children’s father had been killed in an accident of the war, and she’d provided a glance of the type of man that he had been. She didn’t have to elaborate. Beau read the story of Safaa in her eyes. He was not a man who agreed with generalizations, and was sure that all Iraqi men were not created equal, just as all American men did not treat their wives in the same fashion. Some people were good, some were bad. Samira had been married to a bad man. He had watched her with her children, the loving way she spoke to them, the tender touch on their shoulder or head as she passed by them in their small living quarters. He damned Safaa in his mind for hurting such a gentle and, seemingly, naïve creature.

The more Beau learned about Safaa, the more he cared for the children and Samira. When Suha spoke of Zeid, her words carried a certain sting, almost a hint of disgust, though not quite. Beau had been watching the angry boy, who was on the cusp of pre-pubescence. He saw in him a young boy caught between two worlds; one in which he had been schooled and of which he understood the confines, and one that seemed only a thought, a world that he could neither visualize nor understand.  Beau believed confusion lay at the heart of Zeid’s anger. He felt sure that Zeid was dealing with his troubled, fear-ridden life in the best way he knew, even if it was painful for the rest of them. He’d seen grown men deal with less stressful events in a more aggressive way. Perhaps he was jaded, seeing Zeid’s attitude as acceptable, given his circumstances. Beau saw beyond Zeid’s angry front. Hope? Fear? He could not say. He made a pact with himself to show Zeid that all Americans were not hateful, and that men did not have to belittle women to be confident and strong. He tried to imagine what Zeid was feeling, but could not fathom the thought of losing a parent and leaving his home, all in one fell swoop. His empathy for Zeid fueled his desire to help him, and sparked a deeper empathy for Samira, for what she’d been forced to endure.

“Ah, now that feels better,” he said, as the last of the cast was removed.

“No
alaam
?” Suha said, then corrected herself, “No pain?”

“No alaam,” Beau responded, and smiled at her effort. Suha’s English was becoming more fluid. She was patient with Beau’s efforts to speak Arabic, which he found to be a very difficult language to grasp, or perhaps he had difficulty because his mind was already overwhelmed with the task of healing.

Suha moved Beau’s arm in a careful fashion. He grimaced, but felt no greater ache than the sadness he felt from being away from Tess. Suha and Beau would spend the next few weeks rehabbing his injured arm and leg, reconditioning the muscles, and rebuilding his overall strength. At first they exercised his limbs with small, careful movements, short weight-bearing exercises which included things like bicep curls with a can filled with sand, and tying the same can around his ankle with a sheet, then lifting it slowly off the floor. As he grew stronger, Beau took short daily walks, increasing his distance over time, and pushing through the pain. He kept the pocket watch and photo of Tess in his pants pocket, which Samira had mended as best she was able. The familiar lump against his thigh drove him to push himself harder.

Beau set off on his rehabilitative walk with Edham at his side. Those walks were cathartic for Beau. He spoke of his desire to get back to Tess and his worry of the emotional pain she’d likely been through. He was glad that Edham could not understand him or respond to his rhetorical questions. It helped to cleanse his thoughts, to release stress. He wondered what Tess had been told and longed to know if any others had survived the crash. When he’d asked Suha about the accident, she was hesitant to give details, telling him only that he must have been thrown from the helicopter long before it crashed because the explosion was miles away. He couldn’t think of the accident, or Tess, for too long—the burden of the sadness would grow too heavy, weighing down his thoughts and hindering his recuperation.

Edham looked up at him now, as they walked away from their humble dwelling across the naked desert. The dunes masked what lay a mile or so beyond—dark sand eking out from a glorious, flowing river. He smiled, his smooth skin glistening with sweat. “You leave?” he asked in English.

Beau stopped in his tracks, looked down at the boy, and cocked his head to the side in question. He was sure he had heard him incorrectly.

Edham looked embarrassed, fearing he’d said the wrong words. “You leave?” he asked tentatively.

Beau put his hand on the boy’s slim shoulder. He’d been listening and learning all along, he realized, to more than what Beau had been teaching him. He’d been listening to Beau and Suha’s conversations about how he might get home, and when their next move, as a group, would begin. Beau was happily surprised, and instantly worried. How much of what he and Suha had discussed had he understood? He wracked his mind, running through the words he had tried to teach Edham and the others, and could not recall teaching them the word “leave”.

“Leave?” he repeated. His goal had been to return to Tess all along, and suddenly that word,
leave,
brought conflicting emotions. How would he leave? Where would he go? There was a war going on out there, and he had no idea where or how badly it had turned in his absence. He shrugged in Edham’s direction, noncommittally, and turned to follow the path they’d worn in the sand.

Edham shrugged, too, wondering if perhaps he’d used the wrong words after all. He reached up and took hold of Beau’s hand.

Maryland

Louie quickened his pace, kicking up billows of dust from the dirt path adjacent to Rock Creek. He caught up with Tess. They were heading south—a quick trip to the National Zoo. Tess breathed deeply, taking in the smell of the fallen leaves. She could do this, a bike ride with a friend. This wasn’t so bad. Wearing her bicycle helmet made her head look out of proportion to her newly-slim shoulders and sleek arms. She’d shed weight like a molting bird, and worried that soon she wouldn’t be able to hide her burgeoning bump. Louie raised his arms off of the handlebars and held them out to his sides, cackling like a teenager.

Tess laughed. “You’re a fool!”

They’d gone riding together a handful of times, and life had slowly rejuvenated within Tess. They’d taken their first ride along that very path a few weeks earlier, an awkward, silent ride that began with a “hello” and ended with “see ya,” without as many words in between. By their third ride together, they’d found their groove. Tess now had a reason to look forward to Sundays, and, without realizing it, she’d stopped sitting in front of her computer on Sunday evenings waiting for Beau to Skype.

Louie lowered his arms just in time to swerve around a branch that had fallen across the path. Tess roared with laughter as his balance faltered and his wheels wobbled to the right. Louie floundered for balance.