American Wife (5 page)

I'm amazed not so much at that attitude, but at the fact that Chris could be so calm when he talked to me minutes before he thought he was going to die.

Then again, that was true of every moment he was deployed. A stray mortar shell or a Scud, later on a suicide bomber or a roadside bomb, could have taken him out at any moment. But he was always calm, always matter-of-fact. Talking to him, he really could be anywhere—safe in a bunker or out in a hide waiting for his target to appear a thousand feet away.

On my side of the phone, I engaged in a certain amount of denial. I would hear gunfire in the background while we were talking, but dismiss it as irrelevant. On the rare occasions that I asked about it, he said it was taking place outside the base and then move on to another topic—without of course mentioning that
he
was outside the base, and the firefight was a few yards away.

I learned early on that the U.S. public was not getting a full view of the war—call it dumbed down by sound bites. A lot of the protests against the war were simply naïve, but even those that were more sophisticated tended to lack a lot of information. It got worse as the war went on. As reported by other soldiers and some news media, the atrocities that were being committed in Iraq, especially by al-Qaeda-affiliated mujahedeen, were outrageous. Civilians were tortured and killed. But this was rarely if ever reported.

I think it is one thing to protest the war and quite another to criticize the soldiers who are sent to fight it. The soldiers are simply doing a job we've assigned to them. They've given their country a blank check on their lives and the lives of their loved ones; we should at least show our sympathy. Protest Congress or the president, the people who are actually making the decision to go to war; support the troops, no matter what.

Some people do do that. Unfortunately, not enough.

COMING HOME

My father had told me that war changes people, and while I knew intellectually that it had to be true, I didn't really understand it emotionally until Chris came back from his first deployment.

It wasn't like he was a completely different person. Casual acquaintances might not even have picked up on the differences. But I certainly could see them.

His temper was shorter, and it seemed to flare at certain things that before would have seemed insignificant. Someone not thanking him for holding the door would make him cross. He'd been in a place where there was no such thing as common decency, let alone courtesy; small failures of courtesy here, in a place where things were supposed to be far different, unsettled him.

Not that he got violent with me, or with anyone, but anger was closer to the surface than it had been.

That's common, I think, among war veterans and others subjected to stress, especially when they've just come home. He was less accessible, too—it was never easy to get him to talk about his feelings, and now it was even more difficult.

We developed a little ritual that we'd follow whenever he came home from war. Chris would spend the first few days at home, without anyone bothering him. Even though neighbors and family members all wanted to see him and celebrate his return, I ran interference, explaining that he needed a little time to decompress. Little by little, he would come out of the protective shell, getting back to his outgoing self.

He never lost his sense of humor, and that may have helped him come back. His belly laugh was a sure sign that he was getting better.

He did drink more. It wasn't a cure, and it wasn't something that made him obnoxious—if anything, it quieted him down a bit. But it always had the potential for becoming something more—a crutch or a problem, or both.

When he started making coffee for me in the mornings again, I knew he was back all the way.

Chris didn't share most of what had happened on the deployments when he got home. Talking too much would probably have detoured him from getting back to normal life. But he was also afraid what my reaction would be to certain things—maybe I might be so worried about him in the future that I would find it impossible to go on.

Eventually, the stories would come out. A few times he'd talk about things in front of other people. I think he planned some of those: he was afraid, maybe, that I'd say
What!
and freak out.

Other times he would tell me at a quiet moment. Alcohol sometimes loosened his lips, though even with me he maintained his silence about classified ops.

What kind of things did he talk about? The things that make war so ugly.

Over the years, he told me about some serious and crazy situations—like the time he was face-to-face with a terrorist but was out of bullets. He got out of that one alive; his antagonist didn't. He talked about laughing as he watched enemy mujahedeen drown. He talked about the way blood smells when it's fresh and still pouring from a dead body.

Gruesome, but the reality of war.

He repeated stories about how guys would laugh at certain things we wouldn't find funny stateside, the way an ER surgeon jokes about an intense surgery with fellow surgeons—you can either laugh or cry, but the emotion has to come out.

I think sometimes he'd throw things out there to see if people thought he was a monster. If they were bothered by the fact that he was proud of his job—which, after all, involved killing people. I don't think that he judged people by their reactions; I think he was more like a scientist, testing to see how abnormal the situation of war truly was.

I wasn't freaked out by what he did, or the strange things that happened. I know the circumstances, and I know the goal. And I know Chris.

War forced him to wall part of himself off. He had to harden himself against the brutality that he was part of. He had to be brutal himself, not only to do his job but to simply survive.

That didn't make him a monster.

People have no idea how horrendous war is until they've lived it. I think that was as true for Chris as anyone. And it's difficult to have an appreciation for the kinds of emotions that the men and women who are in war feel.

It seems especially hard for civilians to understand violent emotions against the enemy. Chris called the enemy “savages”—and with good reason because of the things they did to Iraqis as well as American soldiers, many of which he witnessed. But even without those barbarities, he could only have hated the enemy.

Imagine if you are out somewhere with your family, and one of them gets shot and killed. The next day, another gets shot. Then another. Sooner or later, no matter who you are, you will hate the person who is killing your family. And that hatred extends to the others who are supporting him. It runs deep.

Anger swells.

The guys you train with are your family, especially when you are a SEAL. They call each other “brothers,” and if anything, that understates the closeness of the relationship. They depend on each other for a multitude of things, and not just in combat.

In war, you change: you have to in order to survive and to keep the people around you alive. You adapt. You become harder. If you don't, you make mistakes that cost lives.

I remember hearing a story about a soldier relieving himself on a dead enemy's body.

Was that horrible?

No more horrible than war itself.

I'm not endorsing desecration of the enemy or any other bad behaviors, let alone criminal acts. But we need to keep a perspective. War is horrible, and it pushes people to their limits. We need to understand that. It is, after all, one of the reasons we want to avoid war whenever possible.

PREGNANT

One of the greatest blessings a spouse can receive is total, unquestioning support from his or her significant other when it comes to a career. I was so lucky to have that with Chris. He put no pressure on me to work, and no pressure on me not to work. And he took the consequences in stride.

During the early years of our marriage, I was very ambitious and wanted to continue moving up the ladder in my profession. So when I heard there was a manager's slot open, I decided to apply for it—even though it meant leapfrogging an entire level in the company hierarchy.

Chris supported me, even though it would mean more work and stress—and consequently, less time for him. My supervisor didn't. He told me flat out he wouldn't recommend me; I was too young and needed more experience to take that job.

If you want to get me psyched to do something, tell me I can't. I researched managerial styles and prepared a long report on how I would do the job and why I was right for it. Then I gave it to my boss's boss. Yes, I was young; yes, I didn't have great experience; but I was ambitious, I was enthusiastic, and I had already shown that I could work hard.

To everyone's surprise, even mine, I got the job.

It was stressful, but it was also invigorating. I got a chance to work closely with my team members, riding with them and doing my best to help them do their jobs. It was a new challenge that played not only to different strengths but also deeper priorities—my love of helping people was now an important part of the job.

My team's accounts were usually at least an hour away, so visiting them, which I had to do often, meant long car trips and extra-long days. Audiobooks were my saving grace. Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, even J. K. Rowling, all kept me company on my drives. (I fell in love with Rowling's Harry Potter series, by the way. To this day, I refuse to watch the movies—I just know the wizards and Muggles won't be as good on film as they are in the books.)

Around Christmas 2003, we visited Chris's parents in Texas. I found myself exceptionally hungry, though I couldn't figure out why. When we came back to California, I just felt something was off.

Could I be . . .
pregnant?

Nah.

I bought a pregnancy test just in case. Chris and I had always planned to have children, but we weren't in a rush about it. In fact, we had only recently decided to be “a little less careful.” It was a compromise between our spontaneous impulses and our careful planning instincts, which we both shared. We figured, if it happens somewhere in the next year . . .

I was upstairs in the house working when I decided to take a break and check things out.

Wow.

WOW!!!

Chris happened to be home fiddling with something in the garage. I ran downstairs, holding the stick in my hand. When I got there, I held it up, waving.

“Hey, babe,” he said, looking at me as if I were waving a sword.

“Come here,” I said. “I have to show you something.”

He came over. I showed him the stick.

“Okay?”

“Look!”

“What is it?”

“Look at this!”

Obviously, he wasn't familiar with home pregnancy tests. Maybe that's a guy thing—given that the tests reveal either your worst nightmare or one of the most exciting events of your life. I'd wager every woman in America knows what they are and how they work.

Slowly it dawned on him.

“Oh my God,” he said, stunned. “Are you . . . ?”

“Yes!”

We confirmed it at the doctor's soon after. I know you're supposed to wait something like twelve weeks before telling anyone—there's so much that can go wrong—but we couldn't keep that kind of secret to ourselves for more than a few days. We ended up sending packages with an ultrasound and baby booties—one pink, one blue—to our parents, telling them we had a late Christmas surprise and to call us so we could be on the phone when they opened them.

Chris accompanied me to most of the exams as we got ready to have the baby. At one critical point, the doctor offered to do a test that would screen for developmental problems. People sometimes use the result of that test to decide whether to go ahead with the birth.

We looked at each other as she said that.

“Do you want to know?” I asked Chris. “I mean, what difference would it make if something was wrong with the baby?”

“It won't change anything. I'm going to love the baby, one way or another.”

“Me, too. That's our baby, no matter how it comes out.”

We decided not to do the test, leaving the outcome to God.

But we weren't willing to leave everything unknown, or at least Chris didn't: he wanted to know whether it was a boy or girl. A few checkups later, the sonogram proclaimed loudly, “It's a boy!”

I can still see myself lying on my back, belly covered with jelly, and Chris beaming next to me. He'd been sure the baby would be a girl—so many other Team guys were having girls that it seemed to be some sort of military requirement.

I was very excited—and a little nervous. I hadn't had a brother growing up. (Ten male cousins don't count in this equation. Even if I love them all.) Talking to his mother, I mentioned that I had no idea what to expect with a boy. She, after all, was an expert—she'd had two, both of whom turned into fine young men.

“I don't know what to do with a boy,” I confessed.

“You just chase them,” she replied.

Boy, is that true.

BIRTH

We found out that Chris would be deploying very soon after Bubba was due. I was so thrilled about being a mother that doing it on my own for six months or so didn't scare me. The fact that Chris wouldn't be there to share his early days weighed on my heart, but otherwise I was confident and ready.

Right? You may suspect where this is going.

I planned to stay out on maternity leave as long as possible, then get some help once I had to go back to work.

I remained on the job until a couple of weeks before my due date. I was as big as a house and twice as hungry. Bubba—Chris's nickname for our son—would move around every so often. Like most moms-to-be, I wanted to share the sensation with my husband. And like many fathers-to-be, Chris was just a little nervous about that.

“He's moving,” I'd tell Chris. “Want to feel?”

“No, no, I'm good.”