Fire and Forget (6 page)

It is important for both of you to share your deployment stories. You both may have made significant self-discoveries and
participated in events that should be communicated when you are ready. Be patient. Wait for your soldier to share his/her experiences.

A few hours later, Colin rouses her from the bed. He is wearing pressed khakis and a buttoned shirt. Evie rubs her sanded eyes. “You
ironed
?”

“Went to the gym, made dinner reservations, showered, ironed, and hung up all of our clothes. Chop-chop, lady friend.”

Twenty minutes later, Evie yawning, Colin leads the way to the hotel restaurant. Evie is impressed: candlelight, etched-glass candleholders, each table draped with white linen, Hawaiian music from speakers hidden in the greenery. Volcano photographs adorn every wall, glowing with tumult, bleeding lava.

The hostess seats them on the highest tier, overlooking an ocean streaked with setting sun.

“I told her it was our anniversary,” Colin whispers proudly, and Evie feels a spark of hope.

She orders the Wilted Escarole with Macadamia Nuts and Pomegranate; Colin gets a steak, medium rare. They order a bottle of Big Island white.

“To five great years,” Colin toasts. “May we have at least fifty more.”

She hesitates with her wine glass midair; the tiny light inside extinguished. Five years is past the honeymoon but before the seven-year itch, five years ought to be a time of sweatpants, leaving the bathroom door open, no more breakfast in bed. A time to be comfortable. But Colin was deployed for three of those five years, and when Evie looks back, she sees all the white squares on her calendar, squares she crossed out each day as she waited for Colin to come home. This time, halfway through his tour, she gave up crossing out those squares. She cannot imagine fifty more calendars, all those blank days, a long future ahead with a husband
home one year, gone the next, more a perverse punishment devised by King Kamehameha than any kind of triumph.

So she drinks too quickly. The wine is overly sweet and not chilled enough, but it is doing its job, blurring the edges of the room.

“That's all you ordered?” Colin says when their entrées arrive, looking down at her salad as if he feels sorry for her. “Have a bit of this.” He nudges his steak in Evie's direction. She shakes her head.

“We had steak and crab legs once a week. Fridays,” he says, putting a piece on her plate anyway. “But it was only a memory of the real thing. Every bite of that overcooked hide made you realize how far you were from home. At first the crab was good, just the novelty of eating something so decadent. But every goddamn week? Really? I never want a crab leg again.”

She keeps a mouthful of wine on her tongue while Colin speaks, as if afraid the sound of her swallowing will stop him. She wants her husband to keep talking; she wants to know about the entire life he lived without her. But he takes another bite in silence.

Evie cautiously asks, “Remember that trip we took to Hunter Mountain? How we stayed locked up in the cabin, eating omelets and drinking cheap wine—all those secrets we told each other?” It was early in their courtship, their first trip anywhere, to a ski resort though they never went skiing. That's when Evie told him about a waitress trick of hers, how she'd lick the desserts of the rude customers before serving them, leaving the groove of her tongue in scoops of ice cream like guilty fingerprints. And Colin told her how he had pissed in an ex-girlfriend's open convertible, costing him a baseball scholarship. Young enough to think sharing their flaws was an act of love in itself, they tried to cram the story of their whole lives into that weekend.

“Colin, you know you can tell me anything—”

He watches her for a moment. “Don't make me go back to Afghanistan,” he says, tapping his knife against a smear of cooling
grease on his plate. “It's a shithole full of goats, dirt, and men with matted beards.” He puts the knife down and takes her hand. “I'm here with you. I made it back. That ought to be enough.”

“Is there anything you want to ask
me
about?” she asks.

Colin lets go of her, picks up his knife, begins to cut again. “No,” he answers. “Unless there is something you need to tell me?”

“No, nothing,” Evie murmurs, sticking a fork in her pretty, pomegranate-jeweled salad. She thinks about the word
need
. A necessity, an obligation. Is there anything she
needs
to tell her husband? She thinks about the things she kept from him while he was away, things that would worry him, because of what she knew:
A worried soldier is a soldier who is not focused on his mission; a worried soldier is a danger to himself and his fellow soldiers
. She does not
need
to tell him about Lana, the major's wife who packed up her house and four-year-old and went home to New Jersey two months ago, without returning any of Evie's calls or her two Pyrex casserole dishes. She doesn't
need
to tell him about the rodent problem in their housing development, how one night Evie came home to a full-grown rat licking its paws on her front stoop.

Nor does she
need
to tell Colin about the kiss. She was doing a catering job with Florence and her son, setting up and breaking down for a sergeant major's retirement party at the Fort Hood Club. She was tidying up the kitchen when a man brought her a tequila sunrise. He said he was the sergeant major's cousin, that his name was John, from Austin, and that he hated disco, which happened to be the only thing the DJ was playing. Was there anything he could do to help her? So she gave him some baking sheets to dry, told him about the rat, admitted the tartlets he kept praising were her contribution to Florence's spread, and let him keep her sweet drink filled to the brim. They talked through the disco; they talked as most of the revelers went home; they talked as the styros and tea lights sputtered out and tablecloths were folded into boxes. They talked until he suddenly leaned in and
put his lips against hers. After a dazed moment, Evie pushed him away. He followed her out to the parking lot, trying to give her his business card, but she refused.

She did all the things a good wife should. Of course she did. And yet, for a fluttering split second, with that strange mouth on hers, she had closed her eyes. Closed them and considered leaning into whatever he was offering. She tasted adultery, a smudge of Florence's signature peach-and-pepper barbeque sauce on his lips. That is what she needs to tell Colin, can't tell Colin, won't ever tell Colin: the moment when she didn't know what she would do, when she waited for John to secure her in his embrace rather than letting her pull away so easily.

If your spouse experiences vivid waking nightmares or flashbacks, set up a security plan. Your spouse can be dangerous to himself and everyone around him; he might be reliving an experience and might not know what's real. Do not touch your soldier when he is having nightmares—get out of bed, turn on the lights, call his name from across the room until he is reoriented. Make sure to have a wireless phone nearby in case you need help, and keep dangerous objects like knives and guns in places easily accessible only to you. Practice a quick exit that you can safely execute in the dark.

Evie starts awake, feeling the bed quake. She realizes it is Colin. He gasps, a thick and struggling sound as if he can't get enough air.

“Shhh, Colin. You're alright.” Evie slips out of the bed. “Everything is OK.” She walks across the dark room and turns on one of the lamps. “Wake up, Colin.”

Her husband groans and Evie wonders what images wrack him: cars that won't stop at checkpoints, the hiss of a mortar too close, smoke and gunfire.

She tiptoes around the room, turning on each lamp. Colin's legs are twitching, on the verge of kicking. He moans again.

“Colin!” Evie says loudly, feeling cruel. “Wake up!” She flicks on the main light. She also puts her hand on the doorknob, ready to run down the hotel hallway.

Colin sits, an elbow over his eyes, shielding himself from the brightness.

“What the fuck?” he says. He sees her hand on the door handle, and then his eyes move up her flimsy nightgown, stopping with confusion at her face, as if she is the one who might be crazy, as if she might be a danger to herself.

Be aware that many soldiers return home with a feeling of post-combat invincibility. One consequence of combat exposure may be an increased propensity for risk-taking and unsafe behavior. Specific combat experiences, including greater exposure to violent combat and contact with high levels of human trauma, are predictive of greater risk-taking after homecoming, as well as more frequent alcohol use and increased verbal and physical aggression toward others.

The next morning, Evie listens to the too-nice-wife voice in her head. She agrees to go with Colin to the Haleiwa Marina and onto the boat with the Hawaiian word for shark,
Mano,
emblazoned on the side. The captain is a middle-aged Hawaiian with a dark geometry of tribal tattoos up and down both arms. His second mate is a teenage boy with a lip piercing. They seem calm while the white mainland tourists, in their tropical print sarongs and board shorts, whisper with excitement and fear, the word
shark
looming unspoken in the air. Evie has no idea what to expect, but the boat has the feel of a haunted house, of pampered people paying good money to feel a rush of adrenaline.

“Call me Ishmael,” the captain says without smiling. “And you gonna see some Moby-Dick-sized sharks today. You better be good and scared.”

Evie glances at Colin, who shakes his head. The motor roars and she motions to her husband with a tube of sunblock. Colin relaxes, pulls his shirt off and offers her his back. He is sunburned across his shoulders, and Evie feels a wave of guilt about not reminding him to apply sunblock before his early morning run. There are so few ways she can keep him safe and yet she couldn't even protect him for one day against the Hawaiian sun.

About four miles from shore, far enough out that they can no longer see land, the boat slows. Ishmael's lackey drags buckets from the stern and starts chumming the water, fish blood pooling on the surface like oil. The passengers watch the fins rise up as if summoned.

There are suddenly so many sharks, long slabs of shadow under the boat, the gash of white rubbery mouths occasionally breaching the surface. Evie recoils from the edge while Colin eagerly takes photos, chatting with the pierced boy who keeps pouring fish chunks overboard.

“Galapagos,” says the boy. “They recognize the sound of our motor.” He grins with crooked teeth and Evie wonders if he pierced his lip to distract from the mess inside his mouth. “They range from six to twelve feet.”

Ishmael cranks down the large steel cage suspended off the side of the boat. The cage is for humans. Evie supposes there are windows of Plexiglas within the bars to make for clearer underwater viewing, but from where she stands, it just looks like a lot of big holes.

“Who's going first?” the boy asks.

Of course Colin raises a hand, putting the other on Evie's elbow. “We will.”

Evie takes off her T-shirt and sarong, then slowly slips on flippers and snorkel gear. She follows Colin down the ladder into the cage. The water is ice cold and she treads frantically, as if about to drown. She is too afraid to put her face into the water. The fins circle the cage and her breath comes in hissing gasps; she gags on the salty mouthpiece. Colin emerges next to her. He points down but she shies away. He pulls the mouthpiece from his lips and offers her his hand.

“Trust me,” he says.

She hesitates, and they stare at each other for a moment, their view distorted by the slowly fogging plastic of the masks. He reaches for her and she pulls her hand loose. He reaches for her again, both hands this time clutching hers, and she fights an impulse to kick him. She takes a deep breath, tells herself the hands gripping hers belong to the man she loves, but she looks back at the boat, looks frantically at the people watching, and wants them to save her. She can feel the sharks underneath, feel their snouts and serrated teeth brushing along the side of the cage.

The cage shakes with a bump and she rips her hands free, grabs the boat's ladder, and pulls herself up. For a moment Colin treads water alone in the cage, watching her. Then he too climbs up into the boat.

Evie looks down at her flippers. “I'm sorry, Colin. I just can't.”

He stands there in his mask, the mouthpiece flapping against the side of his face. “It's safe, Evie. It'd be safe if we weren't even in the cage. Galapagos sharks are harmless.” He takes off his mask and looks to the pierced boy for backup, but the kid is sneering, as if pleased Evie is such a coward, as if the whole purpose of his job is to terrify at least one tourist a day. Then Colin's eyes lock on her, and calm suffuses his face. “I'll prove it,” he says softly.

His eyes still on Evie's, never hesitating, he climbs up on the boat railing and, before anyone can even think to stop him, he steps off, right into open water, sinking into the center of the feeding animals.

Evie screams, rushes to the edge, feels Ishmael wrench her arm as if he thinks she will follow her husband.

Colin surfaces, still facing the boat. He keeps his eyes on his wife as he reaches out to pet a shark, his palm running easily along its shiny back.