Backwoods (14 page)

“God, no. I can’t even sew a button on
straight. They sell them fancy like that now. She’s got one like
Cinderella’s, one like Sleeping Beauty’s.”

“You must miss them a lot,” he remarked.

Her eyes grew sad and somewhat forlorn.
“Yeah. It’s not as bad as when I was sent over to Baghdad, but…”
Her voice faded as her eyes grew glossy and, blinking, she turned
her face away.

Andrew said nothing, feeling awkward and
intrusive, until he saw her shoulders relax as she regained that
momentarily lost composure. “You were in Iraq?” he asked and she
glanced at him, nodding.

“I was in maintenance, so it’s not like I’d
see any kind of action. Just what was left of the Humvees and
Strykers after an IED attack. I was stationed at Camp Liberty north
of Baghdad.”

“How long were you over there?”

“A year and a half. I haven’t been back very
long. Not even six months.”

“How did you wind up in the National Guard
anyway?” he asked.

She laughed without little humor. “The usual
way, I guess. I enlisted. Me and Tonio, we used to live in this
crowded little apartment in the Bronx. We talked about moving out,
getting our own place, a real house, but we couldn’t afford it. I’d
quit my job with the city after Max was born, and all we had was
Tonio’s paycheck coming in. So every Wednesday, my mom would come
over and sit with the kids while I’d haul all our clothes over to
this
86
aundromat on foot. I’d come
home, have lunch with them, help Mom get Max and Eme down for their
naps, then walk back over to pick everything up.”

Her expression had grown distant, pensive.
“One day, I walked past a Guard recruiting office up the block from
the laundry. I must’ve passed it a thousand times, but I’d never
really noticed it before. They had a big sign in their window.
‘Twenty-thousand dollar sign-on bonus. ’ That was all it took.”
With a smile, she glanced at Andrew. “I could think of a lot of
things we could do with that.”

“I bet.”

“I took what’s called an off-peak quick
ship,” she said. “That means I agreed to leave for basic training
right away, putting me in the service before the first part of
November. In exchange for that, they gave me the money upfront. We
used half of it as a down payment and bought a little townhouse
over in the East Bronx, a neighborhood called Castle Hill. Two
bedrooms, two baths, its own little yard.”

“Sounds nice.”

She shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t know why I did
it, other than I guess I had dollar bills flashing in my eyes. You
know, like they do in the cartoons? I didn’t ask anyone, didn’t
tell anyone what I was going to do. I just did it.”

He blinked at her, surprised. “What did your
husband say?”

“He was upset, of course. Wouldn’t you be?”
Another glance. “Tonio and I never fight. I think that’s the
closest I’ve ever seen him come to losing his temper with me. And
mi madre.”
She rolled her eyes.

“Your mom?” Andrew asked, having wracked his
brain back to high school conversational Spanish.

Dani nodded. “She’s always hated that I was
into cars and engine work, that I wasn’t this picture-perfect
daughter like my sisters, who used to make
tostones
or
albondigón
or
pastales
with her and now have babies
and husbands and white picket fences, all that bullshit. She
thought marriage would change that, change me. And I guess she was
right, for awhile anyway. She was pretty pissed when I enlisted.
And it was hard to make Max and Eme understand. They don’t get
things like money. All they knew was that Mommy would be going
away.” Her voice grew choked. “At Christmas time, no less.”

Her eyes dropped to her beer bottle again,
and she toyed with an upturned corner of the damp label. “You want
to know the worst thing? A part of me didn’t even care, not at
first. I mean, of course I missed them. They’re
mis
niños,
my kids. But by that point, I’d been a stay-at-home
mom for almost five years. Tonio was never home, always picking up
swing shifts and late nights and then he said he could get paid
double time on the holidays. It was like I couldn’t escape.”

Her voice faded for a moment. “I felt like I
had disappeared. Like there was nothing left of
me,
the
person I’d been before Tonio, before the kids. And I missed that,
you know? Having something that was my own, a life that was mine. I
wanted that back. Not for always, not instead of my kids, but just
a little bit of it.”

She cut him a glance. “When I got sent to
Iraq, I realized just how big a mistake I’d made,” she said. “I
missed Max and Eme so bad, it hurt inside. I’d look at their
pictures or think of their little faces or hear their voices over
the phone, then lay in my bunk and just cry and cry. I must’ve
cried myself to sleep every night I was there. And then, being
called up again to come here. They weren’t supposed to, not for
active duty again, not this soon.”

Her eyes were glossy again, swimming with
tears. “You must think I’m a horrible person.”

He shook his head. “No. Not at all. Of course
not.”

Again, she turned her face away, her lips
pressed together as she proudly tried to compose herself. After a
moment, she turned to him again, swatting once at her cheek with
her fingertips and managing a shaky life. “Enough boring you with
my life’s story. Tell me yours.”

He laughed. “I’m not bored.”

She folded her arms, cocked her brow
expectantly and he laughed again. “Alright, alright.”

For the next twenty minutes, he talked, until
the sun sank low in the sky, dipping behind the tree-covered
mountains, sending shadows spreading in thick, fast-moving fingers
through the room.

“I’m sorry they hurt you,” Dani said after
he’d told her about the incident at the Pagoda Chinese restaurant.
“What a shitty thing your dad did.”

He managed a smile. “My mom told me
everything happens for a reason. Even when it hurts, even if we
don’t understand, it all happens for a reason.”

He fished his wallet out of his pocket so he
could show her the letter from his father. “He left my mom for
Lila. I haven’t seen or spoken to them since that night at the
restaurant.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Seven years. He still tries to call me, send
me letters, gifts at Christmas. I never listen to his messages, and
send his shit back marked ‘return to sender. ’ Maybe one day he’ll
take the hint.”

“Why do you carry that letter with you?” she
asked.

He managed an unhappy laugh. “So I won’t
forget what he did to me. Or my mom. He’d been married to her for
twenty-five years, then just pissed it all away, all for Lila.”

Her hand fell against his, gentle,
comforting, drawing his gaze. “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was
telling you the truth. Maybe he really is happier now.”

Andrew smirked. “At least one of us is,
then.”

“Hey, I know how it is, how hard it can be,”
Dani said. “Tonio and I, we’ve been married seven years. I can’t
imagine what it’s like after twenty-five.”

“What do you mean?”

“You miss that sometimes, the way it is when
you’re first together, when you first fall in love. Because it’s
exciting. It makes you feel…I don’t know. Alive somehow. Didn’t you
feel that way about her once? Lila, I mean. Haven’t you ever felt
that way since?”

He didn’t answer. He looked into her eyes,
all too aware of a pleasant tension that filled the silence, the
narrow margin of space between them.

It’s like a date,
he thought.
A
first date, where you’re trying to figure out who’s going to kiss
who at the end.

Andrew drew his hand to her face. God, her
skin was soft and warm, and he used the pad of his thumb to brush a
light line following the curve of her bottom lip. He could have
sworn she trembled at his touch and he leaned toward her, tilting
his head.

“Andrew,” she breathed, then he kissed her,
letting his lips settle softly, gently against hers. Though she
didn’t lift her head, she didn’t draw away, either. Her breath had
drawn still, her body had gone rigid, that slight tremor he’d felt
as he’d caressed her cheek now thrumming through her like an
electrical current through a live wire.

He brought his free hand up to cradle her
face, lifting her mouth to meet his more fully. He let his lips
part, drew the tip of his tongue along the seam of hers, easing
them apart to let him inside.

“Andrew,” she whispered again, her voice
ragged as she turned her face away. She pushed him and he
immediately sat back, ashamed of himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said as she scooted off the
bed, stumbling to her feet. “Dani, I’m sorry.” He reached for her,
but she backed away, shaking her head.

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, helplessly.

“It’s late,” she mumbled, drawing her arms
around herself in a fierce embrace, closing him off as effectively
as Alice whenever she’d fugue out of conscious awareness.

“Wait,” he pleaded.

“I should go.” She bolted from the room,
letting the door slam shut behind her.

Shit
. Andrew sighed heavily, shoulders
hunched, as he shoved his fingers through his hair.
Way to go,
Romeo. You just lost your only friend in this place.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Well, well, well,” Suzette remarked Andrew
approached her and Alice along their regular walk the next morning.
“Look who’s out at the crack of dawn again.”

He’d been hovering outside the bay door of
the compound’s garage while Dani worked inside, trying to muster
the balls to go inside and talk to her, apologize for what had
happened the night before. But when he’d seen Suzette and Alice
coming, he’d been nearly grateful for the chance to escape and had
abandoned his post, cutting across the yard to meet them
headlong.

“Hey, Suzette,” he said. She’d sounded snide
in her greeting, a thinly veiled sarcasm he didn’t understand.
Coming to a stop in Alice’s immediate path, since this was the only
way to get her to stop, he squatted down to the girl’s eye level.
“Morning, Alice. How are you doing?”

Alice blinked at some indistinct point beyond
his shoulder, as if taking no notice of him. The only way he knew
with any certainty that she was aware of him at all was the fact
that she’d stopped walking.

“Where were you last night?” Suzette asked.
“I sat in the rec room for at least an hour waiting.”

“Sorry,” he said, looking up at her. “I got
roped into KP duty.”

“KP duty,” Suzette repeated, using her thumb
to flick a column of ashes off the tip of her cigarette, sending it
tumbling to the grass. She arched her brow and snorted. “Since when
did you start talking like them?”

“Like who?” He frowned slightly. “That’s what
it’s called.”

“That’s what
they
call it, the
grunts,” Suzette said. “What, did you eat with them in the
dee-fack,
too?”

“I was invited, yeah, and I accepted,” he
said, glowering.
So I wasn’t imagining her bitchiness a minute
ago. What the hell’s her problem?

“I waited for you,” she said again, her brows
narrowing. “In the rec room. With dinner. I thought you were going
to join me again.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

That little furrow between her brows
deepened. “I thought you were going to join me after that again,
too.”

“Look, Suzette,” he said again as he stood.
“I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me since I’ve been
here, your hospitality and—”

She uttered a sharp bark of laughter. “Is
that what you call it?” Shooting a withering glance at the garage
beyond his shoulder, she added, “Let me guess. You’re getting your
hospitality
from someplace else now.”

For a moment, he stood there blinking, caught
off guard and feeling somewhat trapped before it occurred to him
that he had no reason to feel that way.
It’s not like anything
happened with Dani,
he thought, then the furrow between his
brows deepened.
And it’s not like Suzette is my goddamn
girlfriend.

“Wait a minute,” he began.

Dropping her cigarette onto the grass, she
stomped on it, snuffing it. “Why? So you can give me some other
pathetic kind of excuse?” She clapped him on the chest as she
walked past. “Go fuck yourself, Andrew. Because you sure won’t be
getting any from
me
anymore.”

****

O’Malley hadn’t ever turned up for dinner the
night before, and by lunchtime, was still missing. None of his
barrack mates had seen or heard from him in nearly twenty-four
hours.

“I’m worried,” Dani told Andrew, pacing
restlessly in the corridor outside of the mess hall while inside,
the rest of the company ate lunch. He’d expected her to avoid him
altogether, or even ream his ass verbally, as Suzette had done, and
had been surprised instead when she’d sought him out back inside
the barracks.

“About last night,” she’d started, but he’d
cut her off, plowing full-steam ahead with the apology that had
been on the tip of his tongue all morning long.

“I was an asshole,” he’d told her. “What
happened was totally out of line and I don’t know what I was
thinking. I wasn’t thinking. I mean, I
was,
but I had no
right to think that way, or to even think for one second that you
might not have minded. Because you
did
mind, and I know that
now, and I’m sorry. I mean, I knew that last night, too, but I
wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking at all. I just…I
mean…”

He’d sputtered to a flustered, frustrated
stop and looked up from his toes—where he’d pinned his gaze to that
point—to find Dani regarding him with her head cocked, her brow
raised, the corner of her mouth curled in a slight smile.

“You’re laughing at me,” he’d said.