He doesn’t even like to fish.
Laurie leans back on her pillow, then uses the remote to raise her headrest to make herself comfortable. She looks at Jonathan with her left eye, then takes a deep breath through her nose, opens her cracked lips, and says:
“All right, then. I guess it all started with Cheerios.”
“Cheerios?” he says and looks up from his pad, where he was getting ready to write his notes. He is also recording everything through the app on his phone, but he likes to write down key points as well. It helps him to get a better overview.
She nods.
“Yes, Cheerios.”
Chapter 2
The thing is, I didn’t buy the darn Cheerios, and that’s what we were fighting about on our way back home in the car—the kids and me. That’s my son, Damian, and my daughter, Isabella. Now, when I say fighting, I mean my youngest, Damian, who is six years old, is having a raging fit. He is screaming at the top of his lungs inside the car, and there is nothing that can calm him. Damian loves his Cheerios, and more than that, he needs things to be the way they used to be. He doesn’t do well with changes, and there have been a lot of those recently. Too many for such a young heart to carry. I should have known that was what it was all about, but I was so frustrated, so worn out, I didn’t have the strength to deal with his fit. So, I yelled back. I yelled at him and told him to eat something else for once—that it won’t harm him.
“But there is nothing I like,” he screams back at me. “It all tastes bad.”
“Just do it for me, okay? Just this once?” I say.
“No.”
I look at my son in the rearview mirror. He crosses his arms in front of his chest and pouts. His sister, who is fourteen, rolls her eyes at him and looks out the window just as I drive up the street. We live on base—Ambridge Air Force base near Dundee Beach, Florida. My husband is a pilot in the Air Force. My kids go to the local school outside of base and come home by bus when I don’t pick them up on my way back from Publix. I prefer to shop at Publix outside of the base since I can get more organic groceries that way, and I try to keep my family healthy. It’s funny how you try to control the little things when everything else is out of control, right? I mean, it’s absurd; here I am, not knowing if my husband will have killed himself, and all I worry about is whether my children are eating organic or not. As if it even matters. They don’t really know that it is better, do they? All the experts, I mean. Do they even have proof that organic is better for you? I didn’t eat organic food when growing up, nor was I gluten-free or dairy-free or any of that stuff, and I’m still alive, right? But I guess it makes me feel in control when I make sure the kids stay healthy. It’s probably why I also tend to go to the gym constantly when Ryan is overseas. I do cross-fit, and it makes me feel stronger, so I tend to do that a lot when he is away for a longer time. This was his fifth deployment, and he had just returned about a month earlier. I say returned, but the thing is, I wasn’t sure he ever returned from this trip. I know a part of him didn’t; that’s for sure. He came back changed. It’s hard to explain…he was just not the same man. Anyhow, I’m getting off track here. Where was I…? Oh, yes. I turn onto our street on the base, where we live. It’s all government housing, our street, a row of two-story gray houses squeezed onto a small strip of land between the river and the ocean. The houses are all the same; I’m talking completely identical, and more than once, I’ve parked in front of the wrong house, thinking it was ours, ha-ha, but that was mostly in the beginning, in the first years we lived there. Now, after eight years, I’m somewhat of an expert at telling the houses apart.
What I am not an expert in is dealing with my husband’s PTSD. Do you know how many of them come back with PTSD? No, neither do I, but it’s a lot more than you’d think. And after four trips over there, I was pretty certain it wouldn’t happen to him, that he knew what he was dealing with by now, so it wouldn’t happen. Not to my Ryan. But it did. And we realized it too late. It’s not like there’s a sign to look for, like a rash or a fever, or that he’s even aware of it himself; it just sort of happens, you know? The little things he can’t deal with all of a sudden.
“Is that Dad?” my daughter says as I drive up toward the house. Both my children shriek when they see him. He is sitting outside on the doorstep, looking dashingly handsome as always. My heart skips a beat as I lay my eyes on him.
“It is; it’s Daddy,” Damian yells, while the groceries in the back clank and scramble as I turn the minivan into the driveway and stop.
“It is him!”
Damian jumps out the minute the car stands still and runs to his father. Isabella follows him, but she is more cautious.
“Hi there, peaches,” he says to her as she approaches him, Damian already hanging around his neck.
“Hi.”
He pulls her into a hug. I fight my tears as they well up in my eyes. I am overwhelmed with so many emotions right now; it’s unbearable. I can’t contain it. He sends me a feeble smile like he knows he has screwed up.
“Where have you been, Daddy? Where have you been?” Damian says. “I got a new bunny. Do you want to see it, Daddy? Do you?”
“Really? You got a new one, buddy? That’s amazing,” Ryan says and looks up at me, his eyes questioning. We had agreed no more pets, but that was before he left. Things are different now. Rules and agreements are being broken in the name of survival.
Damian rushes inside to get the new bunny.
“If Mom keeps giving him bunnies every time you’re not home, we’re gonna need to go live on a farm,” Isabella says.
“Yeah, well, he needed a distraction,” I say as Isabella goes inside, ignoring my excuses. She has heard them numerous times before and still doesn’t believe them. She knows I gave him that bunny to make him stop whining and moping, so I could catch a break.
I grab the groceries and slam the back of the van shut, then walk up toward Ryan. He grabs one of the bags from me and carries it inside when Damian comes running with his new pet, the black angora rabbit called Tigger. It’s named after Damian’s favorite character in Winnie the Pooh, and since they could both jump, it was the right name for it, he argued. He already has two other bunnies, Ollie and Wanda, and the last thing we need is one more mouth to feed, but it seemed like a good thing at the time. It was the only thing that cheered the boy up when he realized his dad had left again after only one month home, and we didn’t know when he was coming back.
“How have you been?”
Ryan helps me put the groceries away. I have a jug of milk in my hand and have it halfway into the fridge when he asks the question. I pause, then close my eyes for just a second before placing the jug on the shelf and closing the door to the fridge a little harder than I intend to.
Ryan looks up from a paper bag, a pack of Annie’s Organic Mac and Cheese Deluxe in his hand.
“How have I been?” I ask with a light scoff. “How have I been? Well, let’s see. Ever since you ran out on us and decided to stay away for the past week, I’ve pretty much been trying to keep everything together. I feed the kids; I help with their homework, I arrange playdates, I go to parent-teacher conferences, and I nod and smile and tell them everything is fine. I tell my parents, using my calmest possible voice, that you’ll be back, not to worry, and then I cry secretly in the bathroom, praying the children won’t hear it. I build Legos with Damian, hoping he won’t ask for you; I do math with Isabella, praying I know what I’m doing. I answer their questions, and I take their fits of rage as they turn their anger and blame on me. I tuck them in at night; I get them up in the morning, I wash their clothes while they’re in school and make sure they’re folded and that none of my tears hit their dinner as I serve it. I can’t stop eating, and I think I’ve gained about ten pounds just this past week because I worry; I worry like crazy about you and when we’ll see you again. And once we do, how long will you stay this time? You leave without a word, and we don’t know when or if we’ll ever see you again. I don’t know where you are, where you’re sleeping at night. You don’t even freaking call them and say goodnight. At least you did that when you were deployed, Ryan. At least you’d call us. The kids need you, you know? They finally got their dad back, and now you’re gone again without a word, without even a goodbye or an explanation. What do you want me to tell them? They’re trying so hard to be brave, and then…then I forget one thing like those freaking Cheerios, and suddenly everything breaks down. I try to convince them—along with myself—that their dad hasn’t left for good. That you’ll be back one of these days, maybe tomorrow, while the hope dwindles inside me. And I feel so abandoned. You might as well have died in that war over there. Maybe the pain would have been less invasive. That’s how I’ve been. How’s your day going so far?”