In silent moments across plates of strange food, I tried to see myself as he saw me, and I realized I had deliberately changed the view. My hair was even shorter, too short probably, and I’d decided against all logic and prior habit to get French-tipped acrylic nails that made it hard to zip my own pants or put in my contacts. I had lost ten pounds. Back in California I’d managed to think that these were improvements I was making to surprise him, but as we spent more time alone together I remembered how he’d always liked my hair longer, that he hated fake nails, that he liked me at a more athletic weight. I also knew that I looked tired and couldn’t keep still, that I was draining my drinks a little too quickly and he was noticing, and that we kept missing each other’s hands or arms when we tried to embrace or reach out. I had changed the view, and part of me realized what I wanted to say by doing it: You haven’t been here. How is it possible to miss someone so much and then be covered in spikes when you finally see them again?
I don’t remember what we said when we finally got around to talking about it. I remember we were lying on our sides on the hotel bed, facing each other but at opposite ends like a pair of open parentheses not sure of what was between them, his head by my knees, my head by his, twenty-three floors above street level with the patio door open to the humid breeze and the distant shouts of cricket players below. I don’t understand where this is coming from—why are you so upset? At various points, one or both of us would break the parentheses to flop on our backs and stare in frustration at the ceiling. Don’t you get it? That’s the problem. We’re living completely separate lives. I didn’t know how to explain to him how enraged I felt to see him flip on the little “Rachel” switch in his mental cockpit, as if the intervening months of separation had been no big deal. I felt mangled by the deployment, aged and withered by the grind of time alone, going nowhere, while he seemed to be aging in reverse, periodically infused with new life by adventures like holding an actual tiger cub at the Thailand Zoo or going to a baseball game in Japan. Usually when we argue I cry like a quiet leaking—no actual sobs or quavering voice, just a long, repetitive series of sniffles. But in Singapore, voicing the feeling that had been building in me—I can’t do this anymore—I couldn’t cry. I thought about punching the walls or jumping off the balcony or smashing the bottle of wine we’d bought at the corner store, but that was only briefly and at the beginning of the conversation when we could still turn back. Ross scrubbed his face with both palms open and slid his fingers down over his mouth and held them there. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t even know what’s broken.
With an open mess between us, Ross and I agreed to call a truce. We worked on finding each other’s hands again as we wandered through Buddhist temples and dodged into tiny shops and under awnings amid the pounding midday tropical thunderstorms. We took refuge often in the sheltering presence of Jake and Stella, the four of us picking up a more familiar rhythm, each with a friend around to act as translator. Stella understood the things I couldn’t say—the sustained loneliness and craving for intimacy, the maddening sameness of a home that felt temporary and unreal. Jake corroborated the pent-up stories of squadron drama Ross had been hesitant to lay out over e-mail with his colleagues milling around right behind him in the ready room. I helped minimize Stella’s household disasters—a broken oven, a pool gone green and buggy, and then a subsequent accidental flooding of the backyard trying to drain and clean said pool—to keep Jake from getting upset or worrying. Instead, I talked about what the kids were up to, how adorable they were. Ross added calming words of encouragement about how easy it would be to fix the household things once he and Jake got back.
By the time we had to say good-bye, I felt like I had just barely opened my heart up again—enough to make it hurt when the duffel bag came back out and swallowed up what small touches of Ross the hotel room held.
“Only three more months,” he said. “We can do this.” But his eyes held mine like a question until I answered back, “We can do this.”
—
Back in the valley, I picked up the blunt tool of e-mail once again.
“I’m fucking sick of this deployment and the wives’ club is driving me crazy.”
DELETE.
“I miss you so much I almost don’t miss you anymore because I’m so tired of missing you.”
DELETE.
“I’m not who I was when you left.”
DELETE.
I spent those last three months unpacking and arranging the house while simultaneously cramming my unresolved resentment and loneliness into the back corner of my mind. I was both emotionally numb and in constant motion, preparing for something utterly foreign and built on fantasy, guesswork, and rumor: the fly-in.