Casualties (2 page)

July 2004

At some point it may no longer be possible to start over. Ruth has worried about this before, but on the morning after her son's nineteenth birthday, she feels cold with the certainty of it. There will be a time when Robbie is too old to recover lost ground, when all his mistakes have calcified into a mass so large and impenetrable that neither one of them can break through.

Not for the first time, her assistant reminds her that she may be making too much of things.

“He's only nineteen. He's going to be fine,” says the voice coming through the Bluetooth wedged in Ruth's ear. “Whatever you do, don't lose your temper.”

“Temper? What temper? I'm a San Diegan now. We don't have tempers. We have one great day after another. It's the law or something, isn't it?”

Ruth cranks opens her kitchen window with one hand and pours her third espresso with the other. She stares at the spot of driveway where Robbie's truck is supposed to be. It's nearly ten o'clock. He's fourteen hours late.

“Don't say I didn't try,” Terri says with a sigh. “I'll move the rest of your morning appointments. Let me know about the afternoon.”

Ruth barely hears the click in her ear when Terri hangs up. A truck is approaching. She stretches forward to get a better look, but it's just the maintenance crew for the golf course she has never used a day in her life. And never will. This house is just one more failed start; they moved here because it was closer to the third and last high school she'd found for Robbie. He hadn't bothered to show up. They'd kicked him out before she'd finished unpacking the last box. Now she's stuck too far away to see the Pacific but close enough to catch its scent on a morning like this when the breeze is right.

Enough. Her turn will come—and when it does, she'll be living so close to the ocean that the sound of waves will lull her to sleep every night and wake her every morning. Right now she has to focus. Ruth turns from the window and scans the community college brochures fanned out on the table in front of her.
Discover Your Potential
, invites the cover of the booklet on top. Every guidance counselor and teacher Robbie had had used to go on and on about his potential. He must still have it in there somewhere.

She'll have to broach the subject strategically. She can't, for example, remind Robbie that he said he'd be home last night so they could cap off his birthday weekend in the desert with a good dinner. Last night is history even though the tray of lasagna she'd bought remains, untouched, in the refrigerator next to a thirty-dollar Death by Chocolate cake, also untouched. She can't let him know about the splinter of pain that burrowed deeper with every hour she sat alone waiting for him, hoping that he'd do what he said he'd do. She thought she'd seen his eyes soften for a millisecond when she suggested the kind of dinner he liked, no pressure, nothing he had to dress up for.

But that's how things have been going for years now. One minute there's that softening, a glimpse of the boy who used to lift his arms and smile when she walked into a room. The next minute the
boy disappears into a six-foot-two-inch hulk of muscle and fat shrouded in black T-shirts and baggy jeans. The light that made his eyes look like amber honey vanishes. He can freeze her out with a single look.

The roar of an engine pulls Ruth back to the window. A gray pickup loaded with a dirt bike and an ATV screeches into the driveway where it sits, shimmying to the bass that pounds into the pavement and rattles the windowpane. Ruth's resolve cracks a little with every pulsing beat. She gulps the rest of her espresso and lets the cup clatter into the sink.

When the truck shudders to a stop, Robbie tumbles out, eyes squinting and his mouth open in a laugh. He's on the phone. Ruth wishes now she'd gone to work. This whole conversation would go better tonight, after he'd slept a little and she'd had a chance to regroup.

Then Robbie's in the kitchen bringing three days of sweat, beer breath, and cigarette smoke with him.

“Hey, what're you doin' here?” He shoves his phone into the pocket of his sagging camouflage shorts, pushing them further down his hips.

“Happy birthday.”

Even she can hear how bitter she sounds. She sees his grin of surprise fall away before it gets started. Had he been happy to see her? He's already shrugging; there's the hunch of his thick shoulders and the smirk she has come to hate.

“Thanks.” He heads for the refrigerator but stops at the table. “What's all this?” He snatches up one of the brochures and looks at the picture of young men and women on the cover, grouped on the grass as if they and their laptops were part of the landscaping. “This supposed to be my birthday present?”

Ruth thinks of the computer that Terri researched, bought, and wrapped, waiting for him on his bed. She wishes now she'd put it somewhere else. She needs more time. He's staring down at her now, chin jutting out a little, like he's challenging her to explain herself.
Ruth takes a deep breath and tries for a smile. “I just thought you might find something you like in there, something that might help you decide what you want to do with your life.”

“Got all that dialed in.”

Ruth thinks of the garage where he works part time, fixing dirt bikes, motorcycles, and those tricycles his friends race in the desert. Then she sees her brother back in New Hampshire, head always stuck under the hood of a truck or car, or half-buried in the engine of someone's farm machine. He'd given up on himself without even trying. She wasn't going to let that happen to Robbie. “I'm talking about a career. It's not too late. You can find something that—”

“I'm starved. What's in the fridge?” Robbie grabs the door of the refrigerator.

“Don't turn your back on me. We're going to get this settled. Now.”

He swings around to face her. “I was going to save my news for later, but I might as well tell you now.”

Ruth doesn't want to hear; she's heard it all before. “You need a real job. With a real future.” They've both heard this before too. She pauses, searching for words that are new, that will penetrate.

“That's what my news is all about.”

Ruth feels her jaw cramp with the effort of biting back a sarcastic
What now?
Maybe he's gotten that girl, his boss's daughter, pregnant. He's going to spend the rest of his life getting tattoos and living for weekends in the blazing sun with beer, engines, and a couple of kids. He's going to let his mind, that alive, curious mind she'd once been so proud of, go to waste. Is he trying to spite her by hurting himself? Ruth's train of thought is rumbling so loud and fast she doesn't realize at first that Robbie is still speaking. “What did you say?”

Robbie's chin still juts out as though he's expecting trouble, but he is searching her face the way he used to when he was a boy and wanted to see if he'd pleased her. He starts over, speaking slowly, deliberately, as if each word is loaded with explosives and must be uttered with care.

“I said I decided to work for Uncle Sam. Kinda like you only I joined the Marines. Signed on the dotted line last Friday. A couple months and I'm outta here.”

Ruth feels a sudden slipping inside, even though she can't move. “That's impossible.”

Robbie's eyes harden and he smirks again. “They want me. A few good men. Guess I'm good enough for once. Besides, there's a war on—but you know all that, right?” He rubs the tips of his thumb and forefinger together and imitates the sound of a cash register. “Cha-ching.”

Ruth grips the edge of the chair in front of her. She wants him to take it all back, the announcement he made so proudly and now his insulting tone that somehow makes her job sound dirty. The military couldn't run their wars without the civilians she found for them. She helped men and women make money they needed, more than they could ever make doing the same jobs at home. But they were adults, not nineteen-year-old kids.

“No!”

Robbie shrugs, but his eyes stay focused on hers. “Not your call. For once, I'm doing what I want to do.”

“I'll tell them the truth and they'll kick you out.” Ruth has no idea if this is true, but she'll try anything.

“What're you talking about?”

Ruth ticks off a list on her fingers. “You flunked out of school after school. Rehab was the only thing that kept you out of juvie. What about the psychiatrist, your depression. Do the Marines know?”

“Got my GED, and that other shit's been over for years.”

“Two years, barely two years.”

“Long enough.”

“You could go to college. It's not too late. All you have to do is—”

“When're you going to give up on that? Your kid's not college material, Ruthie. I'm just a motorhead who wants to beat up a few bad buys and spread freedom.”

Each word out of his mouth seems to put more distance between them. She has to stop him; she has to find some way to fix this.

“You think what I'm doing is stupid, don't you?”

Ruth hears him but she's running through her mental Rolodex for the name of anyone who is connected, who can help her get him out. Then she realizes that if she tries that, she'll be marked as the carpetbagger she's always felt she is. The company she works for is filled with ex-military. Proud is what she is supposed to feel. Proud is what they will expect of her. Too late, she registers his question and, helpless, she sees his hurt before he tries to look tough again.
No, not stupid
, she wants to say.
You're all I have.

“Think about it, Ruthie,” Robbie is saying now, leaning against the refrigerator. “You'll be the mother of a Marine. For the first time ever you can brag about me a little, if you want.”

Words she has been meaning to say for years crowd into her throat.

“Stop calling me that.”

“What?”

“Ruthie. I'm your mother. Don't forget it.”

She is crying. She expects him to look away; it's what he's done the few times she has ever cried in front of him. But he doesn't. He straightens and takes a step toward her. When he speaks again, all the mockery is gone.

“I'm doing this because I have to, Mom. Be proud of me. Just give it a try, okay?” She understands that he means to sound tough, final, but Ruth hears the uncertainty he is trying to hide. She hears it and, in a flash of instinct, understands that he is asking her not to hear it.

He's put himself out of reach. The balance between them has shifted. Then, through the tears, through the loss threatening to engulf her, Ruth feels something that frightens but also exhilarates her.

She is relieved.

It is the memory of this relief that will haunt her in the months to come. It will start to unsettle her tonight when they eat the lasagna and carve up the chocolate cake. It will continue to disturb her when Robbie leaves for boot camp, and later, when he is assigned to duty nearly three thousand miles away at Camp Lejeune. It will scald her when she learns he has been deployed to Iraq. Each day she will think back to this day and remember how she nodded and wiped her eyes. She will remember how Robbie's body seemed to loosen, open up, how he squared his shoulders and embraced her as if he'd been practicing all his life for this moment. Sometimes she thinks she will be haunted every day by the memory of the relief she felt when Robbie asked her to let him go. And she
did.