Casualties (12 page)

The guest room door opened with a click. Ruth did not look up. Robbie's half-printed, half-scrawled words slanted off the page in front of her.
so tired want to close my eyes see nothing hear nothing.

“What's that?” Neal touched the notebook. But Ruth held on.

“Let me see.” His voice was firmer this time. Ruth felt the cardboard cover slip from her fingers as he grasped it. She heard the flipping of pages slow, then stop, then the whisper of a single page as he turned it slowly.

“I should have stopped him when he enlisted,” she said dully.

“That wasn't your call to make.”

Ruth shook off the arm Neal was trying to put around her shoulder.

“I was his mother. I should have protected him.”

“He was old enough to make his own decisions.” Neal grabbed her shoulders then; the book slipped to the carpet.

She tried to twist away. “He saw someone, a counselor or psychiatrist,” she said. “Why didn't they help him?”

“Look at me.” Neal gripped her. “This isn't your fault. It's not the Marines' fault.”

“What are you saying?”

“It's hard but you've got to remember, Robbie was not the most stable kid. He did drugs before he joined up. He had that thing that time, that bout of depression. You were driving yourself crazy trying to get his head straightened out.”

Ruth wrenched herself free. “You're blaming him? He wasn't tough enough? Is that it?”

“You think I don't know what I'm talking about?” Neal said. “You think I haven't had my share of nightmares?”

“But you were tough enough to take it and Robbie wasn't?”

“Everyone's different. Every guy deals with it his own way.”

“Deal with it? He's dead!” Ruth said bitterly. “Nobody helped him. Nobody.” She pushed him, then threw herself at him, striking every part of his body she could reach. His bathrobe gave way and she dug her nails into his skin.

She felt Neal's fingers close around her wrists like manacles. Suddenly she was twisted around, her back pressed against his chest. His arms wrapped around her and squeezed. She kicked and twisted, but Neal hung on.

“Go ahead,” she heard him say. “It's okay.”

Fury made her thrash; she was choking on it. Neal was alive. He could have his nightmares, but he was still alive. Robbie was dead. Stupid, stubborn, broken boy.

She sagged. Neal's arms were holding her up now, guiding her to the bed, helping her to sit. She wanted him to go, needed him to stay. She felt his hand on the back of her head, patting, then stroking. His breath rasped in her ears. “It's okay.” She heard him repeat the lie again and again as if, through repetition, he could make it true.

September 1987

Ruth clutches the bottle of champagne in one hand and juggles the keys to their Boston apartment in the other. Beyond the door, she can hear Jeff reading
Goodnight Moon
to Robbie. He's only two but he knows every page by heart. “Husssh,” he says, drawing the word out with a giggle. She takes a deep breath and pushes open the door.

“Hi.”

Jeff looks up at her over Robbie's curls, still damp from his bath. Then he eyes the champagne and grins. “I was going to surprise you, but I guess Mom called you already.”

His words derail her. What is he talking about? Now Robbie is reaching for her and patting the book.

“Wait a minute, Champ. Mommy's thirsty.” Jeff rises and sets Robbie on the floor with the book. “Give me the bottle, I'll get some glasses.”

“Mommy wead.”

Ruth squats down and pulls Robbie close. “Just a minute, Monkey.” Then she says, a little louder so her voice will carry into the small kitchen of their apartment, “Why would your mother call me? What's up?”

The clinking of glasses stops. “You don't know? What's with the wine, then?”

“I've been offered that new job, the one with Ryland.” She sings it out. “I spent all afternoon with him and his partner and at the end of it, they wanted me. You won't believe the salary.” The giddiness she's tried to suppress emerges. She squeezes Robbie until he squeals and then she kisses him right on the nose and makes him giggle.

“I didn't know you were going there today.” Jeff is back, glasses and wine nowhere in sight.

“I told you. Jeff, it's a great opportunity. Getting in at the beginning of a startup,” Ruth says, talking fast now, sure that if he just hears the details, he'll go for it.

“Hold up, I need to tell you—”

“Wait till you hear what they're paying. He said I'll start at—”

Jeff cuts her off. “I have a new job, too.”

So that's his surprise. “The promotion? That's great! How much?”

“Nope. I took a job with the state of New Hampshire. We can finally move out of the city. I'll make the same as now but up there, things are a lot cheaper. You can even stay home with Robbie.”

“You're joking, right?” Her husband's hesitant smile tells her he is not.

“That's why I wanted you to wait on the thing with Ryland—I needed to know if this was real or not,” he says. “We're going home. The state needs an engineer to oversee construction projects up north.” This time it's Jeff who is firing words almost faster than Ruth can process them.

Robbie's fingers tickle her ankle, but the giddiness has evaporated. She looks at Jeff, who is staring right back at her, his smile tightening into a stubborn line.

“No,” she says.

“What?”

“I told you, I'm not going back. You knew it. I told you.”

“I gave my notice today.” Jeff says it as if he hasn't heard her.

“You can't do that.”

“I can't?”

“You quit your job without telling me? You call your mother but not me?”

Her voice is loud in her own ears. Jeff yells back. “Of course I called you. I called you the minute I knew, but you were gone all afternoon. What was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to wait, that's what.”

“I've been waiting. I'm sick of waiting.” His voice is hard with a bitterness she has heard more and more lately.

Robbie starts to cry. For once, though, it fails to stop them.

“You want me to pass up that much money?” Ruth says. “It's the same as you're making right now and in six months I'll get a raise. We'll have stock in the company. We could buy a house in a year.”

“We don't need the money. We could buy a house right now in New Hampshire on my salary. That used to be the plan, remember?”

Ruth turns her back and walks into the cramped kitchen. His resolve scares her.

“Not this time, Ruth.” Jeff is behind her, grabbing at her arm. She shakes him off.

“Stop it. Robbie's crying,” she says.

“I'm not rolling over this time,” Jeff says, quieter now. When she looks at him, she can't find a trace of hesitancy.

Robbie's arms are around her knees. He has followed them. She scoops him up so he's between Jeff and her.

“It's time,” he continues. “My parents aren't getting any younger . . .”

“Not again. You're nearly thirty. You're still trying to please them?”

“I'm their only kid. Robbie's their only grandson. They want us to be closer. It's what I want, too.”

Ruth hates that he isn't yelling anymore. “We live only four hours away! We see plenty of your parents.”

“I'm sick of this place, sick of the phonies everywhere. I want my kid to grow up like I did. Is that so wrong?”

“What about my job? What about me?”

“It's always been about you. Every decision I've made, where to go to college, where to work, has been because of you.”

“Don't give me that.” The guilt, though, toxic and familiar, steals over her. She knows the drill now. He will recite the history of their relationship from
teenage love to this moment, how he fought his parents when they tried to send him to prep school for the last years of high school, fought them again when they wanted him to study law like his father. He followed her to the state university and got a degree in engineering. They got married right after college even though he (and his mother, Ruth always pointed out) wanted to wait.

“Boston was always your idea,” he says. He'd been stunned when she landed a job at an advertising agency before he'd decided. He ended up taking a job at a consulting firm on Route 128.

“A damn good one too,” she replies. “You've made great money. You've traveled—” But she knew he'd hated everything she loved: the “starter” apartment in Somerville, riding the T to Boylston Street every morning, spending Saturday nights in a Cambridge bar or trying food at an Indian restaurant with their neighbors from Delhi. When Jeff had to spend weeks at a time in places like Charlotte or Chicago, she looked forward to flying out and meeting him for long weekends; the idea that she could fly hundreds of miles for a weekend never got old. It didn't matter where they went.

“It's my turn,” he says.

“Your turn means we have to go backward?” She thought of how Gershom squeezed her down to nothing when she went back north. The mountains circled around her like an ancient stone wall. Jeff would sit for hours with older, fatter friends, lost in beery recollections of ski races and basketball games. She thought of her mother-in-law with her judgmental silences, her brother and grandparents who always seemed confused when she talked about her job.

“You used me,” Jeff says now in a tone that makes Robbie bury his head in the crook of her neck. “Right from the start you used me.”

Ruth listens with disbelief. He's reaching all the way back to high school. There he was, a town kid, big-fish father and bossy mother. He was popular, easygoing, got along with everyone. Even her shy brother. Even her. Most of the kids didn't know what to do with her, a farm kid who sounded like a flatlander and got good grades, from a family that went back to the early days of the county, but also an orphan whose mother was from “away.” Jeff liked her red hair, her tall skinny body, even the glasses she wore for a while. “They make your eyes look bigger,” he always said.

She's not that kid anymore, Ruth wants to scream now. Neither is he. He's
only reminding her of it because he knows it drives her crazy. She is caught in a confusion of exasperation, guilt, and pity. He's the one who doesn't fit in now. It's Robbie who tightens his arms around her neck, but Ruth feels it's Jeff who's dragging her down, trying to keep her, and them, from changing.

“When are you going to take responsibility for your life instead of blaming me?” she asks.

The question isn't new, but Jeff's answer is.

“Right now,” he says.

He's still angry but the sadness in his eyes jolts Ruth. This isn't the change she means. She pushes past him and goes back into the living room. “It's late. We have to put Robbie to bed.”

“NO!” Robbie struggles now, reaching for Jeff. “Daddy, too.”

Jeff follows them into the bedroom. Robbie spreads his arms open and Jeff moves into the circle. They stand, linked by their son's small arms, one around each of their necks, so that each of them kisses a cheek. He's hanging on to each of them the way they used to hang on to each other after their fights were over. Ruth feels Jeff's hand on hers and she doesn't pull away. They can find their way out of this. They have to.

He starts again, though, as soon as Robbie settles down in his crib and they are standing again in the living room, Ruth's discarded coat and briefcase on the floor, Robbie's book splayed open.

“If we stay here, we won't make it,” Jeff says. “I always told you that's where I want to live. Remember? We almost broke up over that when we got out of college.”

“You wanted to be with me more, that's what you always said.”

“The thing is, I don't feel like I'm with you, Ruth. Maybe it's that I don't feel like you're with me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don't know. You're the one who's good with words. I'm just saying that you wanted a guy and I was there. I was always there. You wanted a kid—”

“So did you!”

“Yeah, I did. I still do. I want a few more, even.”

“I never said I didn't want more children.”

“Every time I talk about it, just like every time I talk about moving back to New Hampshire, you put it off. You put everything off unless it's got to do with your job or Robbie.”

The words are fighting words, but Jeff says them in a tone that sounds resigned, as though a decision has already been made. All Ruth has to do is acknowledge and accept it.

“You're just making me the bad guy so you feel better about leaving.” Her words come out breathy and broken; a lump has formed in her throat.

Jeff doesn't reply right away. She sees a struggle in his eyes and suddenly she wants them to stop talking and go to bed, right now before they can say another word. She wants to wake up with the Jeff she has known since high school, the only person other than her brother and grandparents who has known her that long, and who always stayed, even when she knew he longed to be somewhere else.

“I guess that means you're not coming with me,” he says.

Ruth wants to tell him he's got it wrong. Maybe she can do it. She loves him. He loves her. She wants Robbie to have his father. She wants to be the kind of woman who stays. When she tries to say it, though, it feels like an ending, not a beginning. In her ears are the words that Don Ryland said to her that afternoon when he offered her the job: “We don't want someone who knows everything, Ruth. We want someone who can figure things out and go the distance.” It was as though he'd reached inside her and found both her fear and her strengths. He'd held them up where they reflected possibilities, endless and open.

She looks at Jeff's broad familiar face. She sees a pinpoint of hope in his eyes and wants to cry. “I want to be with you. But I can't go back.”

“You can, you just don't love me enough.”

“What about you? If you loved me or Robbie, you'd stay with us . . .”

Even though the decision's been made, they fight. They fight first in low, rasping whispers, conscious of their son sleeping one room away, and then louder and louder until Robbie is awake and crying and they are too.