Home Front (28 page)

He actually stumbled.

“You wanna watch Mommy read to me, Daddy?” Lulu asked.

Michael tried to move, but he just stood there, swaying slightly, holding the door frame for support. Then he lurched forward and snapped the TV off.

Betsy frowned. “What’s the matter?”

In the silence that followed the question, Betsy’s face drained of color. “Is it Mom?”

“Mommy’s home?” Lulu said. “Yippeee! Where is she?”

Hope,
Michael thought. He had to put his own fears aside and give them hope.

But what if it turned out to be false hope? He had no idea how injured Jolene was, or even if she would survive.

Shot down.

He swallowed hard, wiped his eyes before tears formed.

“Tell me,” Betsy said grimly. It broke his heart to see how afraid she was and how hard she was trying to be grown-up. He picked his way past the clothes heaped on the floor and climbed up onto the bed. Lulu leaped onto his chest without warning.

“Where is she, Daddy?” Lulu asked, bouncing.

Michael sat up, stretched his legs out. “Come here, Betsy,” he said quietly.

She moved cautiously across the bed, eyeing him the whole time, her mouth trembling, although she was trying to stop it, he could see.

“Mommy’s been in an accident,” he said when he had both of his daughters in his arms. “She’s on her way to a really good hospital right now. And…”
She’ll be fixed up
. He couldn’t say it, couldn’t make himself say the words.

Lulu pulled free, sat on his thighs, and looked at him. “Mommy got hurted?”

“Is she going to be okay?” Betsy asked softly.

Never in his life had Michael felt so painfully inadequate. “We have to believe she will be. We have to pray for her.”

Betsy looked at him, her composure crumbling. The tears started falling; her whole body shook.

Lulu burst into tears.

Michael took them both in his arms, clinging to them, holding back his own tears.

They cried for what felt like hours. Finally, Lulu pulled back. Her black curly hair was damp and stuck to her pink cheeks. “If Mommy’s hurted, will they give her ice cream? Remember how Mommy gave me ice cream when I fell down the stairs, Betsy?”

“Strawberry,” Betsy said and Lulu nodded.

“With sprinkles.”

Betsy wiped her eyes, sniffed hard. “Remember when she twisted her ankle at the beach last summer, Lulu? It got all swollen and purple and gross, and she said it didn’t hurt at all. She only stopped running for, like, a day.”

“And when that dog bited her at the grocery story, she was bleeding but it hardly hurted, remember? Cuz she’s a soldier, that’s what she said. She’s army strong. Right, Daddy?”

Michael could only nod. To them, these stories were a comforting way to bring Jolene home, where she belonged, but all he could think about were helicopters hurtling to the desert floor, crashing, exploding—catastrophic injuries. He thought about the letters he hadn’t sent to her during her deployment and the things he hadn’t said and the things he had—
I don’t love you anymore
—and he felt sick to his stomach.

He was grateful as hell when his mother showed up two hours later.

“Mommy’s hurted,
Yia Yia,
” Lulu said, starting to cry again.

His mother moved purposely forward. “Your mother is a warrior, Lucy Louida, and don’t you forget it. She needs our happy thoughts right now. How about if you guys get into your pajamas and I read to you a story?”

Michael extricated himself from his daughters and got up. He was shaky on his feet as he moved toward his mother.

“Oh, Michael,” she said softly as he approached, her voice wavering, her eyes filling with tears.

“Don’t,” he said, sidestepping her outstretched hand. He couldn’t be comforted right now, not in front of his children. At his mother’s touch, he might just crumble. He moved past her and kept walking out into the hallway.

He closed the door on them and went downstairs. For some time—he had no idea how long—he wandered around the house, just staring at things. The wedding picture in the bookcase, the end table they’d refinished together, the
You Are Special
plate that hung on the kitchen wall.

The phone rang, and he lurched for it. “Michael Zarkades.”

“Hello, Mr. Zarkades. This is Maxine Soll, from the Red Cross.”

He gripped the phone more tightly, thinking,
Please God, let her be okay
. “How is my wife?”

“Her helicopter was shot down in Al Anbar province last night. Because of heavy fighting, rescue was difficult. I don’t have much in the way of details, and I can’t give you information on the rest of her crew. But I do know she’s alive and stable. She has been treated at Balad and is now on her way to Landstuhl, Germany.”

Michael’s relief was so great he actually sank to his knees on the kitchen floor. “Thank God,” he murmured. He heard the Red Cross worker talking about the hospital, but he was barely listening.

He hung up the phone and went outside, where a cold black night surrounded him.
Jo, you’ll be coming home now … you’ll be okay …

He was so caught in his own thoughts that it took him a moment to see the man standing on the dock across the street. Although he couldn’t really make out the figure—could just see a silhouette in the glow from a distant streetlamp, he knew who it was.

He closed the door behind him and walked down the gravel driveway, hearing his footsteps crunch on the small gray stones. The night smelled of low tide, vaguely sulfuric.

“Carl?” he said, drawing near. “Lomand came to see you, too?”

Carl nodded. “I needed to get out of the house. Seth is … I don’t know what the hell to say. Tami’s mom is with him now.”

“Yeah. My mom is with the girls, too. How is Tami?”

“Damn military and Red Cross haven’t told me shit. She’s alive. In critical condition. That’s what I know. Jo?”

“Alive and stable. That’s all I know. Nothing about the rest of the crew.”

“I found a letter from Tami today. She’d e-mailed it before the mission, I guess. She sounded so…” Carl’s tired voice trailed off for a moment. Then, quietly, he said, “Afterward, I read it again and thought, are these her last words?”

Michael had no idea what to say to that, so he said nothing. But he couldn’t stand the silence, either. “You catching a flight tomorrow?” he finally asked.

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.” Michael stared out at the black water, listening to it lap at the shore. The longer he stood there, the more ill at ease he felt. Finally, he and Carl had something in common, but it didn’t exactly bring them together. “Well, I better get back to the girls. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Right.” Carl paused, turned. “Thanks for coming down here, Michael.”

Michael nodded and headed back up to the house, but once inside he almost wished he’d stayed with Carl. Everywhere he looked, he saw Jo.

I found a letter …

He went into his office and turned on the computer, then pulled up his e-mail.

And there it was in the in-box: Jolene’s military e-mail address in bold, black type.

When had she written it? Yesterday, just before her flight?

He clicked on it.

My loves.

Thanks so much for the care packages you sent this week. I was the Queen of Dpod, I can tell you! Everyone wanted some of my tasty treats and the baklava was awesome. I took one bite and thought of all of you. Ask your
Yia Yia
to tell you the story of when she taught me to make it. I was not her best student, that’s for sure. Not as good as Betsy.

You know what else makes me think of home? The weather over here. It’s September and that means rain, even in the desert. The base is one big mud hole. You’d love it, Lulu. Splash! Splash!

Things are pretty much routine over here these days. I’ve been flying a lot. Recently we flew to a place called the Green Zone and had made-to-order milkshakes. Yum!

The Black Hawk is getting to be my home away from home. It has so much equipment, the whole world is at my fingertips. Whenever I look at the GPS, I think of you guys and home and I count the days till I’m back.

Until then, I know how much you both miss me, and I want you to know I miss you just as much. You are the first thing I think of every morning and the last thing I think of at night.

Lulu, I can’t wait to hear every little thing about your first day of school. I know you still feel a little scared, but try to remember that everyone feels the same way. Have you made any new friends? How is your teacher? Tell me everything!

Betsy, I know how lonely you sometimes feel these days. Middle school isn’t easy for anyone, especially not for a girl who is worried about her mom and having troubles with her friends. Life is messy—especially now—it will help if you accept the mess and let it be. Don’t be afraid to talk to Sierra about what scares you. Or Seth. Or your dad. You never know who will say just the thing you need to hear. And remember, a girlfriend can get you through the worst of times. I know because Tami is helping me every day over here.

One thing I see from here, from a distance, is how lucky we all are to have each other.

I love you both to the moon and back.

Mom

He sat back. I love you …
both
.

He deserved that, of course, but still it hurt. He’d thought his letter might have made a difference, but why would it? One letter—coming so late—could hardly undo the harm he’d done.

“Michael?” his mother said behind him, coming into the office.

Slowly, he turned. His chair squeaked. “There’s a letter from Jo. The girls will want to read it in the morning.”

“Come with me,” she said.

He followed her out of the office and into the family room, where she sat down in the overstuffed chair by the window. He sank onto the sofa’s deep cushions. Between them was an antique coffee table—Jolene’s first “faux finishing” project—pale blue and covered with the detritus of family life. A pencil, two photographs in drugstore frames, a poorly fired thumb pot from one of the girls, an unread magazine. If Jolene had been here, it would have been cleaner.

“You need to be strong for your girls,” his mother said. “All of them.”

“Before she left,” he said, knowing even as he formed the thought that he shouldn’t speak it aloud—it would make her ashamed of him—but he couldn’t help himself, “before she left I told her I didn’t want to be married to her anymore.”

His mother’s face seemed to fall at that. “This is what she took away with her?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Michael.” She sighed heavily. “I wondered. Her letters…”

“Are to the girls. Yeah.”

“Well,” she said. “You are an idiot, of course. But we’ve all been idiots when it comes to love. It’s not as if your father and I never had our problems. He once moved out—for six months. You were young. I made excuses. I waited. It is a long story that doesn’t matter anymore, except for this: he came back, and I took him in. We found a way to be happy again. So will you.” She got up from her place and stepped around the coffee table. Sitting down on the sofa, she put an arm around him and pulled him against her, soothing his tattered nerves in the way that only a mother could. “I’ll take care of the girls. You go to her, Michael.”

They sat there a long time. When his mother finally fell asleep, Michael got up. He covered his mother’s sleeping body with one of her own hand-knit blankets and wandered through the dark house. He checked on his daughters repeatedly, standing in the doorway and watching them sleep, hating the new life to which they would awaken. Unable to sleep, he started drinking coffee at 5:00
A.M.
, mostly because, although he couldn’t sleep, he was so tired he kept stumbling, hitting things, knocking them over. Sometimes an image of Jolene, smiling, flashed through his mind, and it caused a kind of temporary blindness. That was when he’d stumble into a chair or knock over a family photo.

He was awakened by the doorbell. At the sound, he jerked upright—realizing he’d fallen asleep in a wooden kitchen chair. He got unsteadily to his feet and went to the door, opening it.

Three men stood there. They introduced themselves as Jolene’s fellow guardsmen and offered to do whatever they could to help out. Out on the road, he saw a car turn into Carl and Tami’s driveway. No doubt there were three more soldiers in that car, ready to render aid.

Michael tried to get rid of them—couldn’t—and ended up showing them to the family room, where they stood together along the wall. They said they were prepared to do anything—drive carpool, grocery shop, mow the lawn.