Casualties (14 page)

Neal faced her again. “That's out of my hands, you know that,” he said. A shadow of something—regret, guilt, maybe both—passed over his face.

“Why did you stick around the military after you retired? You could have started another business, gotten another job that had nothing to do with uniforms or war, or any of this.”

“Never would have met you, then, would I?” he asked.

He was trying to lighten things up, but Ruth didn't want light. She wanted him to tell her something that would make sense of all of this.

“No one understands unless you've been there,” Neal said. “Maybe that's why I stayed in the Army all those years. I didn't have to explain myself to a bunch of idiots who couldn't understand, who hated us. You know how it is; I wasn't going any higher so I had to get out. This job . . . it's close enough. I figure you might as well stay among your own kind.”

“And the money's good, right? Enough to get you through a few nightmares.”

His eyes hardened. “I've done all right,” he said, his voice loud now, and sharp. “We all have.” He waved his hand toward the view outside the sliders and swung it in an arc that encompassed every inch of the top floor.

Ruth turned toward the room she had built. She found no safety in the sweeps of glass, the tiles of natural stone. Her thin shirt was no defense against the sun burning through the wall of glass that framed her ocean view.

“Go,” she said to Neal. But she didn't look at him. She couldn't. “I want you to leave.”

I'm only a phone call away,” Neal said from the doorway of Ruth's office. She'd retreated there while he packed.

Ruth heard him, but she did not look up. Her fingers tightened on the envelope she held in her hand, a note of sympathy she'd pulled from a pile of unopened mail on her desk. She didn't recognize the name in the upper left corner. Maybe Terri would know. Then she caught herself; this was not the kind of help Terri meant. A few sentences from Gordon Olson and all the rules were changed; the last bit of certainty was shattered.

“Did you hear me?”

She ran her finger along the edge of the unopened envelope. Thick ivory paper, expensive. The note inside would be unoriginal and brief; no answers for her there, only the possibility that she would resent the writer for being able to write it and then move on. She placed the note, unopened, on the small pile of similar envelopes between stacks of bills and junk mail.

“Ruth,” he said again. She felt Neal's hand on her shoulder.

“Look at me, please.”

Ruth glanced up at him, saw the overnight bag slung over his shoulder, the confusion in his eyes.

She was afraid to be alone. Maybe Neal hadn't meant what he'd said. He'd been angry, that's all. He knew there was a difference between what he'd been driven to do in combat and what she did for a living.

“I don't know what you want from me,” he said. “I've tried to help. I still want to help.”

He would stay if she asked. Ruth was afraid to look at him. She needed to remember she'd always been alone. She'd been fooling herself to think otherwise. A moment passed. Then another. A rustling sound from the doorway told her that Neal had turned to leave.

“I'll call you tomorrow, make sure you're all right. If you need me before then, call me.”

She leaned forward, hands cupped over her ears so she would not hear the echo of his steps in the hall or the bang of the door as he let himself out.

What now?

She should leave, get out, go for a walk or drive or something, anything to clear her head. How was she going to manage the next few days, weeks, months?

Months.
Panic flickered. Ruth turned from the window looking for something that would rescue her, at least for the moment. She snatched her laptop, still in its case, leaning against the side of her desk. A few minutes later, the blue screen was filling with familiar icons. A click and she was on the RyCom server, another and she was in her e-mail, half surprised to find she still had access. She hadn't thought about what she was looking for, but the realization that she was still in the system steadied her. Maybe she could still get to Don somehow, convince him to change his mind.

As Ruth looked closer, though, she saw that many of the e-mail messages were from strangers, forwarded to her from the company's
general mailbox. The subject lines chilled her.
My Sympathy.
I Understand.
Help for Families of Suicide Victims.
Furious at the presumption behind them, Ruth began to delete the messages wholesale, racing through them until she came to one with a single word,
Please
, in the subject line. She clicked.

Dear Ms. Nolan,

I don't know if you will see this but after I saw the terrible news about your son on television, I wanted to try to reach you. I feel I have a better sense than most people of what you are going through right now and you have my deepest sympathies.

My husband took his own life last year after spending thirteen months first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. He was a strategic weapons consultant. He signed on with RyCom to work with the military. Something happened to him. I didn't know him after he came home. He suffered so much. We both did, and our kids.

We tried to get him into a psychiatric hospital, but the insurance wouldn't pay even though it is in the policy. All he got was a few counseling sessions and some drugs. He couldn't work. After he died, I was told by the life insurance company that there would be no money coming because he committed suicide. We have four children, three boys age 10 to 14 and my youngest, a girl who is 5. We are losing our home. When I saw your story, I felt you might be the one person who could help us now. We are part of the lawsuit, but we may lose our house before it can be settled. I know this is a terrible time for you but I also know that tragedy can open the heart.

Please go to whoever is in charge and tell them our family and the other families of contractors you hired labored and died trying to help their country just as I am sure your son did. I don't know him or you but I have seen firsthand what going to those places did to a good man. He may have died here, but he was killed there.

Please help us. If you want to write back, just reply to this e-mail or you can call me. My contact information is below. I hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Marilyn Corning

Ruth's finger hovered above the “delete” key but she could not tap it.
He may have died here, but he was killed there.

Ruth recalled the pages of Robbie's notes, scrawled with stories of things she'd never let herself think about while he was “there.” The more Ruth reread that one line, the more it accused. There were no parallels here, Ruth wanted to tell the Corning woman. Robbie had been forced to do what he needed to do, but her husband, a man with four children, had chosen to go into a war zone.
We never lied
, Ruth found herself thinking, as though the dead man and his wife had taken up residence in her mind. There was nothing she could do even if she wanted to. She scanned the list of remaining e-mails. There was nothing important in them. Nothing from Gordon, Andrea, or Don. No follow-ups from that woman in Human Resources, Sylvia. They knew she was gone. Soon enough, so would the others.

Sunlight spilled through an opening in the blinds and swallowed the images on the computer screen. Ruth couldn't look anymore. She needed to get out of here. She'd go to her gym in the back of the house. She'd crank up the music, push it hard. She'd work every muscle until it screamed. She'd do whatever it took to get through this afternoon. But the phone rang before Ruth reached the door.

She stood still, snared by the absurdly calm male voice leaving a message. He was calling from the mortuary. Her son was “resting” now with them, he said. The cremation would take place that afternoon, as instructed. They would wait to hear about the remaining arrangements. She could call any time. He listed two phone
numbers and a name she did not catch. “We'll wait to hear from you. Please accept our sympathies to you and your family at this sad time.” Click.

Five hours later Ruth was still in her gym, even though she'd long since stopped moving. The floor was cluttered with water bottles, weights, and a cotton shirt so soaked with sweat she'd struggled out of it. She sat on the floor, her back against the wall, staring out at the late afternoon sky. Her shoulders ached, her knees throbbed—they'd nearly given out when she stepped off the elliptical trainer for the last time—but at least the day was almost over. Now she had to find a way to get through the night.

August 1995

She and Robbie are in the car. They are always in the car. In an odd way it is where Ruth feels closest to him because he is all hers. Elsewhere, she loses him to day care, to school, and on alternate Friday nights, to Jeff. On Fridays it's a frantic dash to Robbie's day care to pick him up before it closes, crawling through the drive-up line at McDonald's for the Happy Meal she's promised him, and then battling the traffic north of Boston until it breaks and flings them forward. For ninety minutes, she singsongs questions to him, tries to make him laugh, or just steals glances at him in the rearview mirror as he sleeps, a French fry dangling from his fingers. Then, too soon, they arrive at the state liquor store parking lot in Concord where Jeff's truck is usually parked and waiting.

They still fight.

“He's only three!” Ruth says when she finds out Jeff took him up to the top of Cannon Mountain for skiing “lessons.” Later, she is even more furious when she learns that he has introduced Robbie to his future stepmother by moving Vonnie in during one of Robbie's “off” weekends. A new baby follows quickly. Too quickly.

“He doesn't know where he stands with you,” Ruth tells him in a low voice as Robbie climbs out of her car. “Try to give him a little extra attention.”

“You have him in day care all day long and you're telling me to give him more attention?”

“At least he knows when he comes home that there won't be any surprises.”

“For Christ's sake, stay out of it,” Jeff yells in front of Robbie. “It's your constant controlling bullshit that's got him so wired he doesn't even know if it's okay to like me or not.”

She's relieved then on the January weekend that a nor'easter shuts down stretches of the interstate connecting Boston with New Hampshire. Jeff tells her he'll be at the usual spot, but Ruth cancels the visit; the roads are too messy and it will take too long. The next day, he catches the tip of his ski on a patch of ice during a run down Cannon, plunges out of control, and slams headfirst into a pine tree.

In the three days before Jeff is removed from life support, the roads are cleared and Ruth brings Robbie to the hospital where his father lies hooked up to a ventilator, a host of beeping monitors, and bags of fluids. She is not allowed into the room, but his second wife, Vonnie, takes Robbie in to see him. Ruth watches through the glass while Vonnie places her hands on Robbie's shoulders and gently guides him toward the bed. She sees Robbie's hand close around his father's. Jeff's face is swollen; his eyes are ringed with black. He doesn't move. Ruth's eyes fill with tears as Robbie wheels around and hides his face in Vonnie's embrace.

After Jeff dies, they must wait for the ground to thaw so he can be buried. Robbie insists on keeping to his original visitation schedule. A child psychologist she's found for Robbie tells her this is good for him. Every other weekend, Ruth drives him all the way north where they stay at the farm and Robbie visits with his uncle Kevin, Vonnie, and the kids. Ruth does it even though it means swallowing her own confused grief and crawling back to the all-too-familiar smallness of Gershom.

You win,
she thinks, as if Jeff can somehow hear her.

“Leave him here with us,” her mother-in-law suggests when Ruth brings Robbie to visit them. “We'll give him Jeff's old room. We'll take care of him.”

“Do you believe the nerve of the woman?” Ruth sputters that night to her brother, Kevin, after Robbie has fallen asleep. “Trying to take my own child from me?”

“More like she was trying to be close to her grandson,” Kevin says. “She's lost her child. It's understandable.”

“She doesn't think I can handle it.”

“You can handle anything, Ruthie. We all know that. Just let it slide.”

She's not sure, though. Even when she isn't traveling, there isn't always enough of her left at the end of a day or a week to deal with Robbie's grief or just make him dinner, never mind remember the play date or soccer game he's been looking forward to. When she drives up the gravel road to her grandparents' farm she knows that for a while, at least, it is not all up to her to make Robbie happy.

She would never leave him, though. She can't. That would make her no better than her mother. When she sees him rush into the waiting arms of her grandparents or brother, longing stabs her. She wants to be the one who makes him smile like that. Maybe if they could get away from this place and its memories, she might be able to do it.

When Don decides to move RyCom's headquarters from Boston to La Jolla, Ruth sees her chance to make a clean break.

“But it's so far,” her mother-in-law quavers. Even Kevin and Big Ruth go silent when she announces the move. Her grandfather, Mo, who was still alive then, asks if it's what she really wants.

“It's my work,” she tells him. “I have to go. It'll be good for Robbie, and me, too, a new start, a new life.”

Her grandmother's eyes tear up behind her thick glasses but she doesn't cry. She reaches for Ruth's hand the way she did when Ruth was a girl. When she speaks, it sounds like a warning. “It's all one life, honey. You can't just start a new one because you don't like the one you have.”

Ruth snatches her hand away and turns to hide her own tears.

—

Jeff is buried in May. That June, after the school year ends, Ruth moves Robbie west. She tries to make an adventure of it. She takes her first and only two-week vacation and they drive across the country in her Honda. For the first day or so, Robbie sits hunched and still in the passenger seat. “I want to go home.”

“We are going home. Our new home.”

“Then let me stay at the old one.”

“I would miss you too much. Wouldn't you miss me? Besides, my job is there.”

“You could get another job if you wanted to.”

The stops in Hershey, then Gettysburg take on the feel of a forced march. Ruth begins to regret the long drive ahead. She should have taken a plane, gotten it over with in a few hours. Sooner or later he'd have to come around. But as they see signs for Lake Erie, Ruth notices Robbie eyeing the atlas. A while later, it is spread open in his lap.

“My teacher says a big boat went down in Lake Erie.”

Ruth hasn't planned to stop but she exits the highway, cruises the Ohio shoreline, and spends the night in Vermilion, where Robbie listens rapt while the docent of a small museum there tells him of one shipwreck after another. By the time they head back to the interstate, he is poring over the map.

“Six hundred miles to the Mississippi,” he informs her.

For the next eight days, Robbie navigates and provides commentary. They like the arches in St. Louis, are equally disappointed in the Mississippi. “Looks like diarrhea soup,” Robbie pronounces. Instead of heading south as Ruth had planned, they follow I-70 through the plains to Colorado and into the mountains. “Wow,” he says as they twist and turn through the Front Range. “Dad would have loved skiing down that. Think I could get Uncle Kevin to go fishing with me out here?”

Ruth lets him talk. She has never spent so much time with him alone. The Honda has become their safe place, a capsule world. All they need is food, water, and a map. Here, he can say “Dad” and not cry. She can listen without guilt. The landscape changes as fast as they can move through it; there is no place for grief or guilt to take hold. Ruth even lets work go for a few precious days. She lets voice mail catch her calls. She and Robbie stand, speechless, at the edges of canyons, touch the sand at rest stops just to see how hot it is. She snaps his picture in front of hoodoos at Bryce Canyon, and then, on the last day, rubs sunscreen on his nose at eight in the morning as he prepares to leap into a pool in Las Vegas. He loves it all, hot as it is, dry as it is. He wants more.

“Let's keep going.”

“We're only half a day from San Diego.”

“Death Valley is right on the way.”

“We'll be able to see it anytime we want.”

“I want to see it now.”

What he wants, Ruth knows, is to keep driving. Now that arrival is imminent, their capsule is disintegrating around them. Ruth has twenty voice mails to answer, she must get in touch with the real estate agent for the condo she's bought in San Diego, she has to confirm the arrangements for the summer camp she's found for Robbie. She is eager, suddenly, to see her new office in the new building, to dive in.

“I'll take you next spring. I promise,” she tells him.

When, later that day, they pass the turnoff for Death Valley, Robbie stares straight ahead. When Ruth asks him to check the map to see how much farther, he pretends he doesn't hear her.