Lizzie's War Page 5

  “Goddammit, Chevy, what did I tell you about those firecrackers?” Maria hollered shrilly.

  The bushes stilled. There was a moment’s silence as her sons weighed the tactical situation, and then Chevy, the oldest, stood up resignedly, followed by Lejeune and Ramada.

  “What did I tell you?” Maria repeated.

  “Not to set them off until next Fourth of July,” Chevy conceded, studying his Keds. Four months older than Danny, he looked like his father, with the same square shoulders and Dudley Do-Right jaw, the same clear blue eyes on the lookout for trouble, and the same reckless grin, suppressed for the moment but always suggested.

  “Is it the Fourth of July?”

  “Lejeune threw the second round!”

  “Just answer the question, mister. Is it the goddamned Fourth of July?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well, then?”

  Chevy met her eyes, with the hint of a characteristic gleam. He was going to make some smart-ass Petroski crack, Liz thought, but Chevy caught himself and shrugged. It was almost sad. Liz couldn’t remember ever seeing Larry’s oldest son subdued.

  “Give me the rest of the firecrackers,” Maria said.

  Chevy nudged Lejeune, who hastened to hand her a capacious plastic bag.

  “All of them.”

  Lejeune glanced at his older brother, who shrugged again and nodded. Lejeune rummaged in the bushes and produced a second, even larger, bag.

  “Now you boys take your guests out back and find something to do that doesn’t involve explosions.”

  Relieved, the three Petroski boys bolted around the corner of the house, followed by Danny and Angus. Kathie and Deborah followed more slowly. Things would sort themselves out soon enough, Liz knew, as she got out of the car and met Maria’s eye with a smile. The children were as intimate as cousins. The older boys would amuse themselves in a variety of rowdy ways. Kathie would linger near the edge of the scene, flirting antagonistically with Lejeune. Ramada would show Deb-Deb his G.I. Joe and trains, she would show him her otters, and eventually the two of them would settle in and make something spectacular out of pipe cleaners, Popsicle sticks, and glue.

  “Jesus, these kids,” Maria said as Liz approached the porch.

  “Live ordnance area,” Liz agreed, testing the range of irony, and Maria rolled her eyes with a heartening resilience.

  “Larry bought them six bags of the damn things at some roadside stand in North Carolina, right before he left. They’ve long since shot off all the bottle rockets. The neighbors are ready to kill me.”

  “Boys will be boys,” Liz said. It came out of her mouth before she could stop it, their old wry refrain. Their eyes met. Maria smiled ruefully, then began to cry. Liz moved to put her arms around her and cried too. There really wasn’t anything else to do.

  IN THE KITCHEN, a last trace of coffee in the still-heated pot had cooked down to a smoking brown crust. The table was littered with English muffins, variously buttered and smeared with jam and marmalade, each with one bite gone, apparently the jetsam of several failed runs at breakfast. The phone was off the hook, the receiver buried under an embroidered blue pillow that said HOME SWEET HOME, to muffle the distress signal. When Maria stopped crying and went to the bathroom to wash her face, Liz cleared the debris from the table, scrubbed the scorched carafe, set a fresh pot of coffee brewing, and looked for sandwich fixings. But Maria came back with a bottle of Jose Cuervo Especial and some margarita mix and seemed in no mood for solid food. Liz set up the blender and added ice cubes and some frozen strawberries to a conservative ration of early afternoon tequila, but before she could put the top on, Maria took the bottle and tilted it. Watching the tequila go glug-glug-glug, Liz decided to say nothing. Clearly it was no time to think of the long drive home.

  The sink was full of unwashed stemware, and the loaded dishwasher hadn’t been run. The last clean glasses in the cupboard were Flintstones jelly jars. Liz poured two drinks and rinsed a couple of Slurpee straws that had already seen hard use. They settled in at the Formica table in the breakfast nook, with a view of the backyard. The screen was flickering on a little black-and-white television with the sound turned off that sat on a stool beside the table, and Maria kept one eye on it. Apparently she had gotten into the soaps. Beyond a battered apple tree drooping with unripe fruit, the children were quiet, huddled over what was probably something dangerous.

  “So, how did you hear about it?” Maria asked.

  Liz hesitated, then conceded, “Mike wrote me.”

  “Of course. The good old USMC grapevine. No sparrow falls unheeded. The loving Corps takes care of its own.”

  “You should have called.”

  Maria shrugged. “There are a lot of things I should have done. Starting with marrying a doctor and having girls.”

  Liz sipped her drink, too fast, and her throat froze up. She took several surreptitious breaths through her mouth, trying to thaw the piercing lump of pain, conscious of the beginnings of a headache at the base of her skull.

  “So, what had Mike heard?” Maria asked after a moment, apparently oblivious to Liz’s distress. She was still keeping one eye on the TV, following the silent twists of As the World Turns.

  “Not much more than they told you, I’m sure,” Liz said, sure that whoever “they” were, they had been more delicate than Mike’s terse “nothing but hair, teeth, and eyeballs.” For so-called minor wounds, the Marine Corps sent a cryptic telegram, but for major wounds and deaths they sent two somber men in uniform, who sat there in your living room, resolutely vague about the way your man had died or been maimed, full of useless military sympathy.

  “They didn’t tell me anything. I ran out the back door.”

  “What?!”

  “The damned Marine Corps–green sedan pulled into the driveway on a Tuesday afternoon, and a chaplain and a major got out. I didn’t need the fine print read to me at that point. They don’t send two guys to tell you your husband cut himself shaving. I told Chevy to lock the front door, and I went out the back.”

  “Where did you go?” Liz asked, fascinated in spite of herself. She had always wondered what she would do if the two Marines, like Death in dress greens, came to her door. It made perfect sense to her that Maria had bolted. She was even envious of such an honest response. Most of the wives she knew ended up serving the guys iced tea, trapped by the social context. You were allowed to cry, but it was considered bad form to faint or scream.

  “Does it matter?” Maria asked.

  “I suppose not.”

  They leaned forward to sip their drinks, the Slurpee straws filling like thermometers in a heat wave. On the screen, Tommy Hughes had lit up a hand-rolled cigarette and was taking a deep, exaggerated drag.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Liz asked.

  “The times they are a-changin’,” Maria said. They watched Tommy pass into a state of sinister bliss. In the backyard, Danny and Chevy had climbed the apple tree and were bombarding Kathie, Lejeune, and Angus with green fruit. Liz considered intervening, but Kathie looked like she was happy being pelted, with Lejeune, and the younger boys were returning fire.

  “So what did Mike say?” Maria prompted after a moment.

  Liz hesitated, reviewing Mike’s terse summary of Larry’s death, trying to find the bright side of getting blown up by a mine. Was it comforting, or more distressing, that the mine had been command detonated? Did it ease the pain to know someone had killed your husband on purpose as opposed to a random explosion? And where the hell was Con Thien?

  Maria’s straw gurgled, breaking what had become an awkward silence; her Flintstones jar was empty. She rose and crossed to the blender for a refill.

  “Larry made captain the day before he died,” she offered. “Had you heard that?”

  “No,” Liz said, duly dizzied by the irony. Or maybe it was the tequila before lunch.

  “Finally.” Maria upended the blender and shook the last of the pink slush into her glass. “That’s pro
bably what got him killed. Those goddamned captain’s bars. They love to kill officers.”

  “Mike said he wasn’t wearing his bars. He said they never wear their bars in the field.”

  Maria perked up. “Oh? What else did he say?”

  Liz realized that she had blundered. She tried to put herself in Maria’s place. What would she want to know? What really mattered? That Larry had not died in vain? By Mike’s account, the interdiction campaign that had gotten him killed was wrongheaded. That someone had been there for him in the end, whispering comfort, holding his hand as he bled out? Most likely the poor man had never known what hit him. The usual unpretty sight. “You know Mike. It was the same old trenchant macho crap. But I know it tore him up. He loved Larry like a brother.”

  “The weird thing is, it feels like it was my fault,” Maria said.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Maria—”

  “No, seriously. I mean, if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, Dad would never have gotten a bug up his ass about Larry, and Larry would have been a captain long since, like Mike. He wouldn’t have been leading a goddamned platoon in the field.”

  “He would have been leading a company, most likely,” Liz said. “Like Mike.”

  “Company commanders don’t get killed.”

  This wasn’t true, and they both knew it. But it was true that company commanders didn’t get killed as often as the leaders of platoons. Liz held her tongue. It felt very strange to be defensive over the happenstance that her husband was still alive.

  As the two women sat in silence, Ramada and Deb-Deb appeared in the doorway, earnestly allied as always, in search of scissors. Maria roused herself with an obvious effort and rummaged through a kitchen drawer.

  “Can I have a Slurpee too?” Deb-Deb asked Liz.

  “These are grown-up Slurpees, sweetheart. We’ll get you a real Slurpee on the way home.”

  Deb-Deb took it in stride, which none of the other kids would have done. “We’re making angels for Ramada’s daddy, and we need scissors to cut out the wings.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Liz told her, her eyes filling. The liquid lunch had left her volatile, she noted. But fortunately her younger daughter was having too much fun to notice.

  “Do you think blue wings are all right?” Deb-Deb asked.

  “I think blue wings are perfect.”

  “We’re using cotton for the clouds.”

  Maria found a pair of scissors that couldn’t do too much damage, and Ramada and Deb-Deb trotted off happily. Maria took the opportunity to mix a fresh blender of margaritas and carried it back to the table. She tipped the pitcher and sloshed Liz’s glass a bit too full. An icy pink rivulet eased down the side of the Flintstones jar. Liz intercepted it with her finger and licked it off, tasting nothing but tequila. Maria had made the second batch very strong.

  Maria replenished her own margarita and sat down, leaving the blender within easy reach. They both drank, considered their drinks in silence, and drank again.

  “They’re giving him a big sloppy handful of medals,” Maria said at last. “Of course. The booby prizes. ‘His indomitable courage, inspiring leadership, and selfless devotion to duty upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps. He gallantly gave his life for his country.’”

  Liz held her tongue. The wives all hated medals. She had made Mike promise not to be heroic, for all the good that would do when it came down to it. Boys would be boys.

  “A Purple Heart,” Maria enumerated. “A Bronze Star. The Legion of Merit. And get this: the goddamned Vietnamese Gallantry Cross, courtesy of the grateful Republic of South Vietnam. Like I give a good goddamn whether their pissant little country is run by a right-wing fanatic or a left-wing crank. Like that was worth dying for.” She stared at her glass. “They haven’t even gotten the body home yet, for some damned reason. No one can give me a straight answer about why.”

  Probably still looking for the pieces, Liz heard Mike saying in her head. She reached for her drink again and said nothing. The silences were getting longer. She had begun to hope they would get around to crying again soon. At this point, crying seemed like a relief.

  A sudden change in the tenor of the child noise from the backyard made both women lift their heads.

  “Oh, Christ, they’re in the damned water,” Liz said, getting to her feet. Danny and Chevy, fully clothed, were entangled in the middle of the Petroskis’ small blue wading pool. “Shit. Are those two fighting?”

  “Looks like it.” Maria sighed and rose resignedly to follow. “I’m betting Chevy started it. He’s been hell in school lately.”

  They hurried out the back door. The two older boys were flailing at each other. Kathie, Lejeune, and Angus stood at the roiling water’s edge, shouting encouragement to the combatants. Maria and Liz pushed past them, hollering for their sons to stop, but Danny and Chevy thrashed on, until Maria waded into the pool and separated them. Held at arm’s length, they continued for a moment to try to get at each other before settling down.

  “Chevy Petroski, you are in such deep doo-doo,” Maria said.

  “He started it!” Chevy insisted, snuffling. Now that the heat of conflict had passed, both boys were tearful. “He just started punching me!”

  “Is that true, Danny?” Liz demanded from the edge of the pool. Maria, still keeping the boys apart, was wet to midthigh, and Liz wondered whether she should climb into the water to drag her own son out, in motherly solidarity. But she was wearing a decent pantsuit, while Maria’s bathrobe had seen better days.

  “He pushed me in!” Danny said.

  “Chevy?” Maria demanded.

  “We always push each other in!”

  This was true. The boys seldom came home dry from a visit between the families; but the inevitable dunkings were normally a gleeful ritual. Maria and Liz hesitated.

  “He ruined my watch!” Danny said.

  “You were bragging that it was waterproof!”

  “It is waterproof!”

  “If it’s waterproof, how could I ruin it?” Chevy demanded.

  Danny lunged for him, catching Maria off guard. All three of them toppled over into the water. The other three children started to shout again. Liz sighed, hoping her slacks wouldn’t shrink, and waded in. She grabbed Danny by the scruff of the neck and hauled him off Chevy. Her son was weeping again, and she thought she understood. The watch, a grown-up-looking timepiece with the Marine Corps insignia on the face, had been a gift from Mike on Danny’s last birthday.

  “Go get yourself dried off,” she told him. “You know Chevy didn’t mean to wreck your watch.”

  “Dad said it was waterproof,” he sobbed.

  Liz took him in her arms. She couldn’t say what she wanted to say, which was that sometimes men were wrong. That sometimes gadgets failed. Watches leaked and carburetors clogged; M-16s jammed at fatally inconvenient moments and minesweepers didn’t beep at every mine. Condoms tore. But that wasn’t the kind of thing you told a ten-year-old in tears. Instead, she simply held her son as he sobbed, feeling his wet shudders through her ruined blouse as if they were her own.

  WHEN THINGS HAD calmed down, Chevy and Danny made a sheepish peace and went upstairs together to towel off. The other children, sobered by the incident, went to play Ping-Pong in the garage. Maria took Liz to her bedroom to find something dry to wear. They undressed in the master bath and dropped their soggy underwear on the floor. Liz hung her pantsuit in the shower, where it dripped desultorily, the colors leaking out. Maria tossed her own sodden bathrobe in the tub. Liz followed her out into the bedroom, where Maria opened the closet and took one of her husband’s shirts off a hanger.

  “Take your pick,” she said, slipping the shirt on and going to a drawer to rummage for some shorts. “We still wear the same size, don’t we?”

  “It always looks better on you, somehow,” Liz said. She wavered, uncomfortably naked but disconcerted by the wardrobe half filled with Larry’s clothes. Maria glanced over at her and exclaimed, “Oh, my God, L
iz. Are you—?”

  Liz gave her a taut smile. “Going on eight weeks.”

  Her friend floundered for a moment.

  “‘Congratulations’?” Liz suggested dryly.

  “Well, of course. Sorry. But—”

  “Don’t bother, sweetie. I just want to lie down and die.” Liz turned back to the closet and chose a yellow sundress that she had always admired on Maria. Pulling it over her head and checking herself in the mirror, she marveled at how pale she was, this late in the summer. They hadn’t been to the beach since Mike had left.

  “That looks good on you,” Maria offered, crossing to stand beside her.

  “Hah,” Liz said. “I’m already fat as a pig.”

  They stood together in front of the mirror, looking glumly at their reflections. After a moment Liz turned sideways, almost grudgingly, to check her profile. Maria put a hand on Liz’s tightening belly, and they smiled at each other.

  “Does Mike know?” Maria asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Couldn’t he have gotten out of going, then?”

  Liz just looked at her. Maria conceded the obvious with a shrug.

  “Are you going to have it?” she asked.

  “Is the goddamned pope Catholic?”

  “Mike wants it?”

  “I don’t think Mike gives a damn, frankly,” Liz said, and surprised herself by beginning to sob. Maria took her in her arms, and Liz buried her face in her friend’s shoulder and wept, mortified at having to be comforted by a woman recently widowed. Mike in fact had suggested an abortion—he knew a Navy medic willing to do it with a minimum of back-alley indignities. No doubt he had believed he was being supportive. He knew how much she had been looking forward to the freedom of all the kids finally being in school. She’d been thinking of taking a few classes, resuming the progress toward her abandoned degree, or getting involved somehow in the local theater. But despite her own ambivalence, Mike’s willingness to abort the pregnancy had only enraged Liz. It had seemed too much like hideous convenience, a sacrifice to the gods of duty, honor, and country. What she had really wanted was for him to stay home from his goddamned war.