Sparta (31 page)

“Ta-
dum
,” said Conrad forebodingly. “The beginning of it all.”

“Well, it was,” said Lydia. She put her own plate on the table and sat down. “Everyone please sit. It doesn't matter where, except for Claire, I want you next to Marshall. Place of honor.” Lydia wore a silky striped shirt and fancy earrings, tiers of glitter that chimed faintly when she moved.

The table was covered with a festive tablecloth, bright red, with yellow stylized roses. The wineglasses were mismatched, and so were the water glasses. The plates matched—white, with blue flowers around the rims—but they were faded, with chipped edges. Lydia had put candles on the table. The flames fluttered in a faint breeze: both doors were open, and the scent of the summer night came in on the mild air.

“We're so glad to have you here,” Lydia said to Claire, raising her wineglass, beaming.

“It's so nice of you to ask me,” Claire said politely. She'd changed her clothes and looked pretty and glowing. She wore a black blouse and a string of red beads. Her thick hair was held back with a barrette.

“Oh, no, it's nicer of you to come,” Conrad said. “It's much nicer of you to come than it is of us to ask you.”

There was a moment's pause. Jenny, lifting the wooden salad bowl, held it still, narrowing her eyes at her brother. Ollie, reaching for the salt, froze, his eyes flicking at Conrad's face. Marshall, settling his napkin in his lap, looked up. Lydia turned to look at her son, her face filled with alarm.

Conrad grinned. “Joke,” he said.

Lydia frowned at him.

“Conrad,” she said. “Claire was nice enough to come all the way up here. Don't tease your girlfriend. Isn't that one of the cardinal rules of relationships they tell you on
Car Talk
?”

“I think theirs is about wives,” said Marshall. “It's ‘No matter what your wife says, you say “Yes, dear.”' I've memorized it.”

Lydia nodded. “Good that you have.”

“That's it?” asked Ollie. “That's all? That's the whole secret of a happy marriage? Just, the husband says yes, no matter what the wife says?”

“That's it,” Marshall said. “Great ideas often look simple.”

“Gandhi,” Jenny said, “Jesus, and Click and Clack.”

Ollie shook his head and picked up the saltshaker.

They were all relieved. Conrad could see it in their faces. They thought he was on a knife-edge of sanity, ready to go over.

That night after dinner Conrad and Claire creaked up the stairs and shut the door to their room. Their steps were loud on the wooden floor. The room was lit only by the small bedside lamp. The shade was yellowed, dark with age, and the room was bathed in a rich amber glow.

“It's nice of your parents to put us here,” Claire said. She took off her beads and put them on the bureau. “Broad-minded.”

“Yeah,” said Conrad. “I guess my mom suddenly had an epiphany.”

Claire stepped out of her sandals and set them side by side under a chair.

“What did your parents tell you about sex? When you were in high school?”

“My mom's a therapist,” Conrad said. “She was all over it. She and Dad sat me down when I was about fifteen and had a talk.” He took off his shirt and put it on the chair.

“What did they say?” Claire asked.

“They told me I always had to take responsibility for whatever I did. I mean,
really
. I got the message.” He took off his pants and dropped them on the rug. He glanced at them and picked them up, draping them on the chair. “Then my dad drove me to a drugstore at the mall and waited while I went in and bought condoms. I wasn't even having sex, but I didn't want to tell him that.”

“Your
dad
took you to buy condoms?” Claire asked.

“It was a big deal,” Conrad repeated. “But we didn't talk in the car.”

“My mom told me to be careful, and she gave me the phone number of her doctor,” said Claire. “I think the whole thing scared her.”

“Yeah, well it did not scare my mom,” Conrad said, shaking his head. He sat down on the bed in his boxers and waited for Claire to come to him.

Claire stepped out of her skirt and there were her lovely curvy legs, suddenly bare all the way to her crotch, neatly hidden by her underpants. Then her torso was bare as she pulled off her top. In the dim light her skin was luminous. It was miraculous the way she could use her body, walking around so easily, standing by the bureau to take off her earrings, raising her hands, turning her head. The way her hair shifted, stroking the tops of her shoulders.

“I wish you hadn't cut your hair all off,” he said, pulling back the sheets and getting into bed. “I liked it long.”

“It was too much,” Claire said. “It was taking over. It was, like, Me and My Hair. I realized I couldn't do a job interview with the hair, and that was it.”

She took off her bra, then her underpants, and climbed in beside him. He slid his arms around her. She was cool and smooth. It was remarkable how cool and smooth her skin was. Beneath the skin was her body, warm and pulsing with her mysterious energy. She was mysterious, all women were mysterious, and why was that?

Conrad ran his hand over her face, then moved down her long neck, her throat. He traced the smooth curves of her breast, the slope of her side, but something kept him apart from it. He couldn't focus on her body, couldn't make it central. His mind kept sliding away from it. His own body was slack at the center, though his muscles were tight. He stroked her, the long, sweet rises, hoping everything would return.
Jesus,
he told himself,
what is the matter with you? Do this for her if you can't do it for yourself.
But he could not. He was waiting for his body to create its own energy, a kind of wildfire, rising and swallowing him up, taking over.

Nothing happened. Nothing, nothing. His hand lost its purpose.

At last he took it off her breast. He touched her arm.

“Sorry
,
” he whispered.

“It's okay.” Claire ran her hand along the side of his face. “Con, it's okay.”

“No, it's not,” he said, furious.

“It's okay,” she said. She rolled over onto her stomach and put her head on her pillow. She closed her eyes.

Lying next to her in the dark, he had the sense that she was falling into something new with him, not love exactly, something else. Something more like concern than passion. It wasn't what he wanted, but right now he didn't want passion, either.

*   *   *

Later in the week, one morning they lay in bed, awake but not yet speaking. It was early, and the light glowed through the papery white shades. The curtains lifted, rippling as the air fell away. Claire turned on her side, propping her head on her hand.

“How are you feeling?” Her voice was quiet.

“What do you mean?”

“Is it getting better?”

He stared past her, uncomfortable. It was his business, not hers. “There's nothing I can do. It's always the same.”

Claire ran her hand across his chest, rubbing gently. Her hand felt strange.

“Do you want to tell me anything?” asked Claire. “Would it make you feel better to talk?”

“What do you have in mind?” he asked. “What could I tell you?”

“Whatever's bothering you,” she said. “I want you to come back. You're not really here. I think you should talk to someone. If not me, someone.”

“The things in my head,” said Conrad, “are not things I could tell you.”

Claire's hand slid back and forth, smoothing his skin.

“How bad could it be?” she asked, murmuring. “Okay. I guess you killed someone. Or a lot of people. But you were meant to. You had no choice. You were trained as a soldier. It was your job to … do that.”

“It's not that,” he said. “You wouldn't understand.”

“Try me,” she said. “Why can't you tell me part of it? You can't carry this around anymore. It's tearing you apart.”

He looked past her at the window. The shade breathed in and out, the curtain belled. There was nothing he could tell her. There was nothing about there that was connected to here.

“Tell me something,” she said.

There was a long silence. He looked at her face, the wide cheekbones, the straight eyebrows, her deep-set blue eyes, her grave gaze.

“Whatever you did is okay,” she said. “You had to do it.” She moved her hand up to his chin, caressing his face. “You did it for a reason. You were there to protect the Iraqi people.”

He shook his head. The mother, stunned, in the front seat. “We were trying to get away from the shooting,” she had told the terp.

“If you won't tell me, tell someone else,” Claire said. “You need to talk.”

He shook his head again, and now he shifted in the small bed, moving away from her hand.

 

16

It was the third week of August, and the city had a ragged, breezy air. The summer was mostly over, and whatever happened now was out of bounds, overtime. No one was really working, and no one really cared. The traffic on Twenty-third Street was just as noisy as usual, but it didn't seem to matter.

The VA hospital was on East Twenty-third Street, a group of tall modern buildings made of mud-colored brick. They faced south, set in an angular horseshoe. A semicircular driveway curved from the street to the main entrance. In front of this stood a tall flagpole, the Stars and Stripes fluttering from it briskly. A massive porte cochere extended over the drive, a heavy, flat roof topped with three small glass pyramids. Conrad, approaching, wondered if they were meant to suggest the Louvre. If so, it was a strange reference. Why not something martial, something that would offer a sense of community?

But next to the driveway was a sign establishing that very community:
NOTICE: NO FIREARMS OR WEAPONS ALLOWED ON THIS PROPERTY
. Images of a stylized gun and knife were canceled by a diagonal red bar. Another sign warned that guide dogs and service dogs were allowed on the premises, but only
PROVIDED THEY DO NOT LOOK MENACING OR DANGEROUS, AND ARE UNDER CONTROL AND RESTRAINT BY THEIR OWNER AT ALL TIMES.

There you go,
Conrad thought,
those are my guys.

Good idea, to arrive at the VA with your ravening pit bull. Or your automatic rifle.

The driveway was lined with parked cars and vans, ambulettes. A polished black sedan with government plates stood at the curb, a driver at the wheel. Trash blew in little whirlwinds along the pavement. Three employees, plastic ID cards hanging on long cords against their chests, were walking toward Conrad on their way out: a heavy young woman in a tan sweater and tight black pants, her hair a thick mass of tiny braids, and beside her two burly men in jeans.

“She just a beginner,” one of the men crowed, glancing sideways at the woman.

The woman smiled and frowned, looking straight ahead.

“She get high on wine coolers!” he said. “She just a beginner! I know her!”

The woman shook her head.

“She don't know
how
to drink!” He gave a shout of laughter.

As they passed Conrad, the woman began to sing in a high, faint falsetto.
“How do you know-ow-ow.”

“Man, we get her started,” said the man, grinning. “We show her the way.”

The entrance to the building lay through a huge revolving door, slowly circling. The door's interior was divided in half, each large enough for a wheelchair or a gurney. Conrad shuffled through this into the high-ceilinged lobby.

A glass wall divided the room, running side to side. On the left was a checkpoint with two doorways, labeled
U.S. MILITARY
and
VISITORS AND PATIENTS
. Straight ahead, a large dome hung from the ceiling over a low oval counter. Behind the counter stood a man with dark, polished skin and a thick beard. He wore a dark blue uniform and a beret angled precisely on the side of his head. An ID card hung on his chest. He was leaning back against the far counter, holding a wrapped sandwich. He had just taken a bite when Conrad approached him. The man swallowed discreetly and concealed the rest of the sandwich behind his leg.

“Morning,” Conrad said. “This is my first time here. How do I get started?”

“You a U.S. veteran?” he asked.

Conrad nodded.

“Right over there,” the guard said, pointing to the checkpoint. “Give 'em your ID and they'll start the process. Get you registered and squared away.”

A businesslike black woman at the checkpoint took his information and sent him up to the fourth floor. The ponderous elevator rose slowly, swaying in its shaft, its doors opening after a pause. Conrad stepped off into a waiting room.

The woman behind the counter was black and middle-aged, with bleached orangey hair pulled behind her head. Her mouth was thin and pursed, and she wore narrow black-rimmed glasses. A limp beige sweater was draped over her shoulders. She sat behind the high counter, watching a computer screen. She glanced up at Conrad, then down again. Overhead was a bank of fluorescent lights, one of them blinking.

“You need a full medical assessment,” she told him. “Fill out the form, then bring it back to me.”

“Thanks,” Conrad said, and took the clipboard she held out for him.

The jutting counter cut the room into two sections. Shabby metal chairs lined the walls on both sides; a few small tables held dog-eared magazines. Most of the chairs were taken by men in jeans and T-shirts. Some of them sat, leaning back, knees splayed wide, hands folded in their laps. Some leaned on an arm and flipped through a magazine. Some played with cell phones or stared down at the shabby tiled floor, arms crossed, legs stretched out before them. No one spoke.

Conrad took the clipboard to the right-hand section. He sat down beside a big-chested man in his late twenties who had a protruding chin, beetling brows, and a buzz cut beginning to grow out. Conrad nodded in his direction as he sat down; Buzz Cut gave a noncommittal nod.