The Longest Night (34 page)

“They'd just kick us out and get new guys,” said Sidorski after a moment. “They're finishing up a whole crop of operators at Belvoir right now.”

“He's right,” Webb agreed, reluctantly.

Sidorski said, “I'd like to back you, Paul, I really would—”

“I think he was joking,” said Franks. He looked squarely at Paul. “You were just messing around, right?”

Paul paused. “Yes,” he said. “But just—think on it. Turn the idea over in your heads.”

“Absolutely not,” Sidorski laughed.

“All right then,” said Paul. “I understand.” His face felt hot; he wished they would stop staring at him like he'd lost his marbles somewhere on the Greenland ice.

“So,” said Webb, changing the subject like a pal, “we finally pieced together what happened between you and Richards.” He pantomimed a hook to his own jaw.

“Oh, man alive,” cried Franks. “You should have seen it. He hid in that office for about three days. When I finally stopped by, his jaw was black and blue to his ear. I didn't think you had it in you. You're a crazy bastard.”

“I'm not proud of it,” said Paul, meaning what he had done, and not exactly conceding that he was a crazy bastard.

“And how was your little reunion out in Greenland?” Franks asked. “Bet you loved seeing him pop up out there.”

“It was a dream come true. Look,” said Paul, “I've still got to work with the guy until February, so let's not fan any flames.” He turned to Webb. “Say, you married yet?”

He regretted this instantly because Webb's face fell. “Naw,” Webb said. “That's over with for now.”

“Oh. I'm sorry.”

Webb shrugged and fidgeted, looking away. “Maybe Vanna and I will get back together. I mean, maybe we'll try again. I can't say,” he trailed off.

Paul was surprised by the depth of his pity. He wanted badly to say something comforting but realized he was not cut out for such things. “Give it time,” he tried. “You never know what the future holds.”

“Pardon me, Dear Abby,” Franks said, “but we've got to move the rods now. You checking in with Richards?”

“I'm not officially back until tomorrow,” Paul said.

“You aren't taking any leave?” asked Franks. “Hell, why not just stay home until the restart? Why come back for just a few days?”

Paul winced. He'd known this would come up. Soldiers usually took a period of leave at the end of a deployment, to readjust to daily life with their families. “I'm saving my leave for some other time,” he said. “Summer, maybe.”

“It seems like there could be no better time,” said Franks. “You've been away for half a year, got a new baby at home.”

“Well, sorry. You're stuck with me again, as of tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Franks, uncertainly.

“I'll be seeing you fellas,” said Paul, turning for the coatrack. “Hang in there.”

The younger men turned back to their work, but Franks looked at him with a furrowed brow and nodded. “You, too,” he said.

P
AUL STOPPED AT
J
.
C
.
P
ENNEY
on the way home to buy a Christmas present for each of the girls, the Etch A Sketches Nat said they had been asking for. Then, feeling generous, he'd grabbed Liddie a teddy bear and Sam a Barbie.

He had almost never been in a large department store and found that, on this dark and lonesome-feeling day, he rather liked the brightness of the lights and the large interior to wander around in. A forest of white and silver trees had been set up in the store, decked with tinsel and bubble lights, and some mothers were gathered around it with their small children. Paul smiled, a little sadly, and tucked his packages under his arm. He hadn't known what to buy Nat, so he chose an elegant new apron and a whisk, because the loops in her old one were bent out of shape.

It was nearly dark by the time he pulled up in front of the house, and he saw that Nat had lit the candles in the front window. This was one of their few Christmas decorations, and something he liked so much that they continued the ritual past Christmas and through the rest of the winter. He'd liked feeling, in those weeks before Christmas, that she lit the candles not just to warm the house for the holiday, but for him as he came home in the dark from work. They had taken on a private meaning for Paul, like getting a smile from her as he spied the house from the end of the street, something that appeared to be public but was really meant only for him.

Seeing the candles lit now made him sad. He pulled up to the house and parked the car, carefully tucking the girls' gifts under a picnic blanket in the passenger seat to be brought inside at a later time.

“Daddy!” they yelled, running toward him as he came through the door.

“Hello, you two.” He kissed them both.

From the back room, he could hear Sadie's squeals—not quite crying yet, but getting there.

“Where's your mother?”

“Wiff the baby,” said Liddie.

“Mommy yelled at me today,” Sam reported, tears in her eyes. “She was mean.”

“Your mother's not mean. She's just tired,” said Paul.

“I love Mommy,” said Liddie loyally, with a glance at her sister.

“Where's Grandma Radek?”

“We took her to the airport today,” said Sam. “She went home.”

“Really?” Paul tried to conceal the relief in his voice and then felt guilty that he hadn't said good-bye. “She went home? For good?”

“Yes. Back to Old San Diego.” For some reason Sam seemed to think that this was the city's full name, and there was no changing her mind.

“I'll be right back,” Paul said, and slipped down the hall to stand outside the back bedroom. The door was open just a crack. There was a brief silence, and then Sadie began to quaver again. Paul pushed open the door.

“Hi,” he said.

Nat looked up from the bed, where she was bouncing and shushing. “Hi,” she whispered.

Paul held out his arms. “I'll take her. You lay down.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” Nat said.

Paul took the squirming baby into his arms and laid her over his shoulder. He could hear Nat slide under the sheets as he left the room.

Back in the kitchen, he could see that she had started dinner: The wet breasts of chickens lay nestled in a pan, sprinkled with a reddish spice. The oven was set at 350, but there was nothing in it, so he slid the pan of chicken inside and figured he could wake Nat in a little while. “Girls, don't touch those candles,” he called as he looked up and caught Liddie hovering near one.

“Okay, Daddy,” she said.

“Let's play house,” said Sam, and she turned Liddie around and fastened a tiny apron around her back. It was a dress-up apron so it closed with a little latch instead of a tie. “I'll be the daddy so I am in charge.”

Paul settled onto the couch with Sadie on his chest, and she squirmed, grunting. “Shh,” he said, placing the afghan over them both and patting her tiny back. She was the size of a sweet potato. Her little fists rubbed on his chest. He moved her head up higher so that it was below his chin and hummed to her.

“Cook something for dinner,” Sam said to Liddie. “Like this. Mix something in a bowl.” Liddie mimicked her, watching.

“Good,” said Sam. “I'm going to work now.” She walked around the back of the couch, waited a moment, and hopped out again. “Hello!” she called. “I'm home from work!” She said this again and again, with a triumphant grin on her face. Liddie, apparently, did not know how to respond. She whisked the imaginary food in her bowl and smiled. “I'm home from
work
!” Sam repeated, until finally Liddie said, repeating something she'd heard from her older sister a dozen times, “Good for you.”

T
he happiness Nat's children showed at the holidays was almost enough, for a day or two, to make up for everything else that had gone wrong. Nat was certain now that some kind of a disease had bloomed between her and Paul, but she could not imagine what it would take to overcome it. So she watched as Sam and Liddie tore into their presents with shining eyes, bounded around the house two days straight in their plaid nightgowns, and chewed caramels till they complained that their jaws hurt. From his armchair Paul smiled distantly as if watching them experience feelings he could not remember having. Nat set out food and gathered up the empty plates and fed the baby, and from the outside, viewed through the front window, they might have seemed happy enough. And then, just like that, the holidays were over and gone.

J
ANUARY 4 WOULD BE
P
AUL'S
first day back at work, the morning he and his crew would take over the reactor after the night shift restarted it. The day before, Nat was filled with both relief and dread: relief, because she'd felt chained to Paul's melancholy when he just sat around the house, and dread because she could not believe he had been home from work for two weeks and she hadn't found a way to resolve the discord between them.

Paul's return to work meant a new set of chores for Nat, which were a source of mild anxiety but also a welcome distraction. His uniforms needed to be cleaned and repinned, bag-lunch ingredients purchased, food prepared for the upcoming week. Nat bustled about, laundry humming in the dryer, a whole chicken roasting in the oven. After dinner she stepped outside to throw out the garbage and felt the full icy slap of subzero air in her face. The weather had been severe through the holidays, setting record lows. At least Nat was slightly used to it, this being her second Idaho winter. One morning about this time last year, she had been walking out to the car and nearly stepped on the front half of a tiger-striped cat frozen solid to the walkway, its entrails unwinding behind it like a kite flown by Satan. Paul had taken care of it, chipping the stiff creature loose like some remnant from the Ice Age. Coyotes, they supposed.

She pried open the half-frozen garbage can lid and tossed in the bag. When she made her way back around to the front of the house she was caught off guard by the sight of Jeannie Richards's car heading down the street.

Nat frowned and picked her way down to the street, but Jeannie was already nearly out of sight, turning the corner on her own block. It was fine by Nat if Jeannie didn't stop for small talk, and of course Jeannie might have had other business at Nat's end of the neighborhood—she
was
the Liaison Office wife, after all—but it still seemed somehow suspicious.

Maybe Nat was becoming paranoid. She'd soured irrevocably on Jeannie over the summer; the gutter incident had put her over the edge. The woman was a spy, a meddler, a witch. In a crueler time she'd be seen as a bad omen by other women, and, in fact, Nat rather felt that way now.

Nat turned back to the house and noticed that the flag on their mailbox was up. This was odd, because she hadn't placed any mail in it that morning. She stepped over to the box, flipped open the door, and saw a small white envelope inside. Pulling it out she noticed that it bore no stamp, and that the envelope was made of a heavyweight, almost linen paper. She slid her finger under the flap. Inside there was a single page that made no sense to her: a gridded pale-blue sheet that appeared to be from Paul's work, with a list of dates and notes about the reactor.

Jeannie had almost certainly placed the envelope there, but it seemed unusual for her to leave it with no note or explanation. And surely such a technical document wasn't intended for Nat—but would Jeannie Richards really leave mail for
Paul
? The very idea was strange and almost inappropriate. Perhaps it was just some errand Mitch had asked his wife to run, something Paul was expected to file; maybe he'd be back at work before Mitch was. In any case, it hardly looked urgent.

Nat shoved the page into her coat and went back inside. She meant to ask Paul about it, but when she walked past the living room she saw that he was sitting on the floor reading Sam and Liddie a picture book, and she didn't want to interrupt. Quietly she removed her coat and hung it by the door. She stood, watching her husband and daughters.

They looked so dear, Paul absorbed in his reading, with a tilted dark head on either side; Sam's finger poked between her lips, Liddie watching openmouthed, as if whatever the story contained was hard to believe. Paul was such a good father. He always had time for the girls, never spoke to them harshly, and every time he saw them seemed genuinely delighted.

Suddenly, this abundance of love between Paul and their children made her feel bereft. He'd been so in love with her once; was he still? What had happened since he'd come back from Greenland? The moment he'd gotten home, things were different. He seemed hard-pressed to look her in the eye, let alone touch her. He kept his distance as if it were Old Testament days and she were on her time of the month, eating raw pork right in front of him while airing out her skin lesions. Oh, she could joke to herself, but it hurt: She'd approached him several times and was rejected every one. Why was he avoiding her?

There was no way he could know about her friendship with Esrom. That was impossible, and even so, she had kept herself from letting it go too far. Yes, she felt guilty for having thought about Esrom more than she should, for thinking about him, frequently, still; but when it came down to it, she had been faithful, and she loved Paul yet.

Had
he
met someone while he was away; had his heart, inexplicably, changed course?

The army pamphlet had warned of reintegration pains. “What to Expect After Deployment” listed several ways a husband could act upon his return (quiet, withdrawn, irritable) and possible reasons for this (feeling like an outsider, missing his buddies, and so on).
You cannot know what his life has been like and might not understand if he described it to you anyway. Do not prod or nag,
it said.
Be prepared to listen, but do not talk endlessly about the hardships you suffered while he was away. There is nothing he can do about them anyway.

What had made her choose Paul? Six years ago, back in San Diego, she'd had several interested boys around, but Paul had shown up on her beach and she'd picked him. The other boys were happy and glib. They were good at everything. They liked a girl for a minute or a month or even fell in love, maybe, but somehow that could happen without changing their inner lives.

She'd sat by that bonfire and talked to Paul and seen that, instantly, she'd made an impact on him. He was unusually stoic and oddly grave but also easier to affect, somehow, than anyone else she'd known. When she touched him she could almost see the fingerprints.

Tears burned her eyes and she covered her mouth with her hand, listening to him read to their girls:
If you run away, I will run after you. For you are my little bunny
. He had loved her once, but somehow it was gone. She'd taken him for granted and he could tell, and that was enough.

It must be possible, she thought, for a husband's love to just dry up, shift to something else. Didn't other wives complain? The car, his job, the kids: A man's love could come to you like a charming traveling salesman and get you hook, line, and sinker; and just when you felt certain of it, move away.