One September Morning (2 page)

Iraq, 2006

T
he king is dead.

Americans will no longer turn on their televisions to watch him run the ball through a pack of hulking football players, breaking free to lope into the end zone. Viewers of the nightly news will not see him in a combat helmet and desert khakis, flashing a smile and telling a reporter about a community program he facilitated to get school supplies for Iraqi children.

He won’t come bounding into the barracks to roust the guys for a race or to hand out the candy or nuts or clean cotton sheets he just received in a package from home.

No more soldiers gathering to bask in the presence of the king.

No more jokes from the big guy.

No more photographers aiming their cameras to capture the king in a battle stance, the almighty warrior.

The king is dead, slain with this weapon cradled in the hand of the man who knows him so well. Chee-ee-oom! He pumped the hero full of lead. That was all it took to bring the big man down.

Now the sweet, biting scent of oil stings his sinuses as the new king rams the cleaning rod down the barrel of his M-16, removing all traces of the crime.

Not that it matters, as no one has a clue that he fired off the rounds that spawned a flurry of gunfire in the dark Fallujah warehouse.

Nobody realizes he deliberately aimed and killed Army Specialist John Stanton, big-ass football player, All-American hotshot with a charmed life and a trophy wife.

Nobody knows that a new king will soon take Stanton’s place.

He checks the spring, and then lubes it—lightly. Oil it up too heavily and you’re in trouble—one of the tips he’s learned and heeded in military training. He learned from the best of them. His old man used to tell him, you never break the law unless you can get away with it. Well, he’s getting away with it now, and it feels damned good. He felt a surge of adrenaline when the bullets exploded from his rifle, a swell of satisfaction as the impact pushed the body back in the darkness. The first shot was nice and clean upper arm, in through the armored vest. Thank God for the NOD, the night operation device that illuminated hot spots, making it easy for him to find to his target.

Just like a freakin’ Xbox game.

And the sheer beauty, the perfection of the killing, is that no one will ever suspect him. Why would they? People thought they were friends, buds. No one could see the hatred he felt for John. The great John Stanton, football hero, patriot, and philosopher. Such a load of crap. John with his megabucks job, celebrity profile, beautiful wife. John with the picture-perfect family, the old man retired army, Mom a freakin’ saint, a brother who was his best friend, and a kid sister who idolized him. When you have it all, people adore you and want to give you more. But why should John have all those things when he has zippo?

Yeah, yeah, life is unfair. But nobody says you can’t make a few changes to even the score.

He fits the two parts of the rifle back together and replaces a pin. John’s death is just the first step in restitution. With the king out of the way, he can move in and scoop up some of the goods left behind. What guy wouldn’t want a piece of that wife…a place in the perfect family? And who knows, if he can get close enough he might have a shot at some monetary gain, too.

Rest in peace, Johnny boy.

And don’t worry about the good life you left behind
. He smiles as he removes the soiled patch from the end of his cleaning rod.
I’m ready and willing to jump in your boots.

Fort Lewis,
Washington Abby

I
t’s wrong to wish your life away.

Abby Fitzgerald knows that. Still, resting one hip against the porch rail that’s been painted over so many times it’s taken on a new, snakelike shape of its own, she wishes away a beautiful September morning. The green stretch of lawn, the yellow and orange mums bursting like a dozen suns in the community flower bed, the expanse of cerulean sky and Mount Rainier huddled on the horizon like a gentle giant—let them be gone.

Vanished.

Abby would trade them all for the grim, gray rain of December, the month her husband returns from Iraq. Gripping her hot teacup with both hands, she closes her eyes and wills away the day, the months…September, October, November, December.

Which does not work. When she opens her eyes, September reigns, dammit.

A few feet away, birds swoop onto feeders John tacked in place. Chickadees and house finches quickly snatch up black sunflower seeds, then bounce down to the bushes. At the saucer dangling from the porch overhang, the buzz of a hummingbird is slightly alarming, and Abby catches sight of the tiny bird just long enough to see the patches of iridescent violet on its head. Busy creatures. So damned chipper. She should follow their example—wake up and get to work. She needs a clear head to pull her notes together for tonight’s presentation.

But the dream absorbs her.

Last night, John seemed so real that it felt more like a visitation—a spark of contact with the warmth of his body—than a dream. Her mind replays the sequence, the sensation of John moving beside her, twisting the sheets away from her the way he always does, then flopping onto his side with a relieved sigh. Abby was so caught up in the ebb and flow of her own rhythmic breath beneath the quilt that it required great effort to open her eyes through the mask of sleep. But she did. She turned to him and observed him settling in beside her, his head a halo of dark hair, his broad back a wall of comfort for her as his solid body sank into the mattress.

The citrus scent of his aftershave clung to the bedding, and she heard him, too. Heard him calling her name, his voice a tidal wave washing through their small bedroom, breaking through her consciousness, then crashing into the street outside to resound over the neighborhood, the military base, the wide patches of green lawn and suburban sprawl that stretch north to Seattle and east to Mount Rainier.

“Abby,” he called, the tenor of his voice both heartbroken and exalted, and so heavy it rumbled the bed, shook the room, causing their wedding photo and the tiny porcelain bowls on the dresser to shimmy and clink. Abby recalls bracing herself for the earthquake, having experienced them a few times since moving to the Pacific Northwest. But it was only the ripple of her husband’s voice stirring the air.

Even as her eyes searched the dim landscape of her room, the wide expanse of pale sheets beside her, she knew John wouldn’t—
couldn’t
—be here. Of course not. He was on the other side of the world, where their night is our day and our day is their night. While she slept, the sun was already blazing over the desert plain of Iraq. Thousands of miles away.

And yet his presence felt so real.

“Just a dream,” Abby says aloud, for only the chickadees and nuthatches to hear. “Just a dream,” she reassures herself, knowing that it still can’t explain the vividness of the moment. The smell of sweet clove from his aftershave.

Or the warmth of her husband’s body beside her.

She’s not sure when she dozed off, but this morning she awakened to an empty bed and a beautiful morning. The golden September sun warmed the earth with one last sigh of summer, the air crisp and brash and bright. A gorgeous day, but Abby Fitzgerald has learned not to trust a beautiful morning. She’s seen tragedy dance in the arms of happiness, dance without missing a beat.

The morning her father was stricken with cardiac arrest, Abby was rolling on the grass of the junior high, playing Ultimate Frisbee with her gym class. The day John told her of his discontent with professional sports and his desire to enlist in the army began in Paris with a walk through a farmer’s market with all the color and texture of an Impressionist painting. And the most deceptive morning imaginable etched itself deep within her memory: the September day that dawned with a clear, blue sky over Manhattan five years ago, the morning she looked out from her dorm room and spotted smoke billowing from the North Tower of the World Trade Center across the harbor.

Digging her fingernails into the thick paint of the porch rail, Abby turns toward the kitchen.
You can’t keep going back to that
. If she’s losing her mind, she’s not about to go down without a strong cup of coffee.

While coffee brews, she flips open her laptop and checks her e-mail. Nothing from John, but then sometimes he is assigned to shifts that keep him away from the computer for extended periods. She dashes off an e-mail, telling him about the vivid dream.

I knew I missed you, she writes, but now I’m dreaming you into our bed. Sure sign that I’m losing my mind without you. December can’t come soon enough.

Although this is John’s second deployment to Iraq, this time the detachment feels more acute, the parting more intimate, and Abby still wonders how she fell into this role of military wife. It was not something she foresaw for herself when she was making plans, thinking she’d make very conscious choices, as if life were a route that could be charted on Mapquest. She’d never imagined saying good-bye to her new husband and trying to patch together a life on an army base with other women married to the military. Although Abby has always been independent and competent, this separation from the man she loves seems endless, as if she’s put her life on hold, sealed into an airtight container until the day of John’s return.

You’ve got your job to do, John e-mailed her when she mentioned her feelings. Remember the deal? Finish that master’s and study for the licensing exam.

The plan made perfect sense when John departed on the drab green bus. While he was gone, she would focus on her psych degree, finishing up her course work before embarking on clinicals. But she hadn’t expected to be distracted with worry, flipping on CNN,
Nightline,
the
Today
show in search of news that might involve John. Tuning in to NPR while driving. Naively, she’d thought it would end soon. Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad fell in 2003; wasn’t that the goal of the U.S. Army? They’d found no weapons of mass destruction. Recently, she’d heard a politician compare the use of force in Iraq to trying to fix a wristwatch with a sledgehammer. But the word was, our armed forces were in it for the long haul.

Outside, she lowers her laptop and books onto the table. Their yard backs up to a common area that John rallied residents to refurbish soon after they moved here. Japanese maples and boxwood shrubs were planted, a brick barbecue was built, and a play structure installed for children of all the military families housed here. “Don’t you think you should ask permission to do all this stuff?” one resident asked, squinting at John suspiciously. Abby sips her coffee, recalling John’s answer: “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.” Looking at the play structure, Abby can still see John drilling while Suz’s husband, Scott, kneeled on the ground with the level, ready to pour cement over the anchors.

Funny, but she can feel John’s presence here, too.

Now the scent of apple blossoms and September roses sweetens the air as Abby waves to Peri Corbett, who is mowing her lawn on the other side of the commons. Peri lifts one hand, then cautiously steers around a flower bed, and for the bazillionth time Abby wonders how the woman manages so well with three kids, and her husband deployed overseas. “You just do it,” Peri always says when she and Abby run into each other at the commissary and chat over fresh tomatoes or blocks of cheddar.

Abby sinks into a chair and drags the textbook into her lap. As if she has time to mope around and fantasize about making some telepathic connection with her husband. She’s got a Power-Point to write on solution-focused family therapy. This evening she is scheduled to present this approach to the rest of the class. She works steadily, spurred, as always, by the impending deadline. Having typed five bulleted points, she frowns, not sure where to go next.

“You know I love you, so you won’t mind my saying that you look like hell.” A familiar voice calls from the kitchen window of the attached duplex.

Her neighbor Suz.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Abby replies to the dark window screen.

A moment later Suz appears at her back door, stepping onto the patio, hands on her hips. “I never sleep anymore, but that’s no reason to be nodding off at this time of the morning.”

It’s as close as Suz has ever come to complaining. In the four months since her husband, Scott, was killed outside the city of Baghdad by an IED, a roadside bomb, Suz has pushed herself, sometimes stoically, to “shut up and move on,” as she puts it. The army allows widows and their families to remain in base housing for six months after the death of the service member; Suz will need a new place by December.

“Where’s Sofia?” Abby asks. Suz usually keeps her three-year-old daughter within reach.

“Day care. I dropped her off for a full day today. Got some leads on apartments near here, and I figured I’d check ’em out without the mommy baggage. One of them’s supposed to have a hot tub,” Suz adds, an enticing lilt in her voice. “Want to come with and check ’em out?”

“I wish. But I’m beat. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

Suz tilts her head, the concerned mother. “You feeling okay, sweet pea?”

“Just hallucinating in my sleep. I dreamed John was in my bed last night.”

“A juicy dream, I hope.” Suz grins wickedly.

“It was sort of reassuring…except that it felt so real. I swear, when I woke up, there was a warm spot in the bed beside me. I could smell his aftershave on the pillowcase.”

Suz rubs her arms. “I’m getting goose bumps. Come with me and you can fill in all the details.”

“Can’t. I’m pulling some notes together for a presentation due tonight.”

“Well, you were in a funk when I caught you. You got to visualize success, honey.”

Abby reaches back and twists her hair into a loose knot. “Does that work for you?”

“Hell, I’m always too busy visualizing whirled peas. That and wrapping up dolls for a three-year-old. As of this morning, we’ve got another baby in the box.”

“Really?” Abby bites back a grin. In the past few months, three-year-old Sofia has insisted on having her baby dolls tucked into shoe boxes and wrapped up as if they were gifts, which she carries around in a large shopping bag. Abby suspects that the behavior has something to do with the loss of her father, but as she’s pointed out to Suz, it’s a harmless practice. “Maybe Fia is onto something,” Abby says. “I’m going to try that the next time I’m feeling blue. Wrap up something I own and give it to myself as a gift. Maybe carry it around for a few weeks so that everyone will know I’ve got something special.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Suz says. “’Cause my daughter has cleaned every last shoe box out of your closet.”

Abby smiles at her friend, who looks almost professional with her ginger-colored hair swept back with a skinny headband. She’s wearing a lime green tank with a matching polka-dotted sweater, a denim skirt and black polka-dotted flip-flops. “You’re all dressed up today.” When Suz works the counter at Java Joe’s, she sticks to shorts or jeans and a T-shirt. “What’s the occasion?”

“Just trying to look respectable for my potential landlords.” Suz yanks off the headband and shakes out her hair. “Respectable, but not loaded. Rents aren’t cheap around here.”

“True.” Abby is relieved that her friend wants to stay in the area. At first, she thought Suz might take Sofia home to Nebraska. Suz and Scott both enlisted years ago to “get the hell out of Dodge,” as Suz likes to say.

“I thought you were going to look for a place closer to Seattle?” Abby says.

“Yeah, I was, but those places are
really
expensive. I don’t know what to do. I’d sort of like to stick nearby and keep Sofia in the same day care. Continuity and all. But part of me wants to make a clean break and start over somewhere else.”

Abby nods, slipping her feet out of her sandals and hugging her knees. “Joe should give you a raise. You certainly deserve one.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure that Joe can afford me much longer. With Scott gone, I need a real job. A career. That’s the only way Sofia and I will get anywhere.”

“I like the way you’re thinking,” Abby says. “The way you’re always pushing ahead. You’re amazing, Suz.”

“Talk is cheap…a helluva lot cheaper than housing in the Seattle area. Besides, I’ve got a deadline breathing down my neck. The army wants me outta here in December, and with the holidays coming, it just complicates things for a move.” She slides the headband back into place. “You sure you can’t come along? I’ll buy you a latte.”

“Next time.” Abby leafs through the pages, searching for the chapter’s end. “And if I’ve got any say, I vote for the place with the hot tub.”