There’s a ceiling fan revolving slowly overhead and I wonder why I smell oatmeal cookies. Then it hits me again that I’m still in Florida, and I wonder if the remembering will ever become second nature. I glance at the clock. I’ve only had a couple hours of sleep, but I’m wide-awake.
I swap my skivvies for a pair of swim trunks and go out to the pool. Most of us lost weight in-country. Because even though MREs are high in calories and designed to sustain a person through the day on just one or two, they can’t replace what you lose hiking around in 110-degree heat with eighty pounds of gear on your back. I was almost always hungry. But just because I can stand to gain a few pounds doesn’t mean I want to get lazy and fat on leave.
I’m about five laps in when I see a shadow at the edge of the pool. I surface and find my dad standing there wearing a pale blue golf shirt and matching plaid Bermuda shorts.
“Hey, champ.” He sounds like a tool. Champ is an old nickname from when I was still drinking the Dean Stephenson Kool-Aid. He alternated it with sport, tiger, and killer. I guess the latter is the most accurate now, but they all come off as used-car-salesman phony. We’re not buddies because he’s deemed me worthy again.
I hang on the edge of the pool and wait for him to say whatever it is he wants to say, my eyes pinned to his. His Adam’s apple drops as he swallows nervously and I feel a surge of satisfaction. For so long I was afraid of him, but now I’m bigger and stronger. “What do you say we go hit the gun range?” he says. “Get out of your mom’s hair so she can get ready for tonight’s dinner.”
“What dinner?”
“We’re having Don and Becky Michalski over.”
My friend Derek’s dad, Don, is the guy who coaches loudly from the stands and gets mad when the players, coaches, and referees don’t do what he says. He gets in fights with other parents. He’s been banned for life from Ida Baker High School after punching their soccer coach. My mom hates him, and his wife is embarrassed to be seen with him in public, so I don’t know why Mom would agree to cook for him. Unless… it’s not about Don. It’s about Becky.
“I think I’ll hang out here,” I say. “Give Mom a hand.”
“You sure?” Confusion flickers across his face. “I’d like to see you in action.”
I’ve never voluntarily hung out with my mother, but right now it beats this lame attempt to show me he’s a cool dad. Also, I scored top marks in boot camp for marksmanship. It’s probably for the best if he doesn’t see me in action.
“I’m positive.”
He stands there as I swim away, and I can see his shadow on the water for a while, as if he’s waiting for me to change my mind. It takes everything in me not to pull myself out of the pool and beat the shit out of him. Instead, I swim.
I’m a hypocrite after what happened last night with Paige, but me hooking up with my ex-girlfriend behind my brother’s back is not the same as my dad cheating on his wife. Paige and I have used each other this way for years, stretching away from each other and snapping back like a rubber band. The only person who stands to get hurt is Ryan, but it’s not as if he’s going to marry Paige Manning, either.
Down in the kitchen, Mom is her pulled-together self again, except for the tiredness lurking at the corners of her eyes. Her purse is looped over her arm, the crumpled list in one hand and the keys to a brand-new Suburban—one of the perks of being married to the owner of a car dealership—in the other. “Want to ride along?”
“Sure.”
She looks surprised. “Really?”
“Really.” I jam my foot into one of my tan combat boots. On the outside it’s scuffed and worn from continuous wear, a spatter of rusty bloodstains across the toe. Inside it smells like shit, but I don’t have any other shoes except my running shoes, and I hate those. I bought a pair of Sambas when I graduated boot camp but didn’t lock them up at infantry school and someone stole them. “So what was Dad’s excuse?”
“He says Steve Fischer invited him over for a drink. He didn’t want to drink and drive, so he spent the night,” she says. “He called to tell me he was okay before he went to play golf.”
I follow her to the garage. “You know I’m going to kill him, right?”
A ghost of a smile plays across her lips as she starts the Suburban, as if she can imagine it and she likes the idea. Then her face rearranges into something more Mom-appropriate and slightly disapproving. “Travis, he’s your father.”
He doesn’t get a free pass because we share DNA. If anything, that’s even more reason to kick his ass. “You can’t let him get away with it, Mom,” I say. “Just because—”
“Let’s talk about something else.” Her hands grip the steering wheel with such ferocity that she could probably rip it right out of the dashboard. Subject closed. I guess that’s only fair. She’s been artful at avoiding the subject of Afghanistan, and I suspect it’s because she read an article somewhere on the Internet that said I’ll talk about it when I’m ready. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready, but I guess I owe her the same respect.
“None of my clothes fit and I need new shoes,” I say.
Her smile shifts to wide. “Now, that I can do.”
On San Carlos, we pass a veterans’ club. It’s a sketchy little place not affiliated with any other club in the country, but there are always cars in the lot. Pops, who was a Marine with the 3/7 in Korea, brought me there once for lunch when he was down from Green Bay for a visit. “Hey, um—do you want to get some lunch?”
I’m not really the type to join a veterans’ organization—especially since I’m still active duty—but I could use a beer and… I don’t know. Maybe I won’t feel so out of place there.
“Here?” Mom eyes the place skeptically. “Um—sure.”
Inside, the veterans’ club is more of a dump than I remember. The walls are painted with emblems from all the armed forces branches, only they’re amateurish and out of proportion. The tables wobble and the chairs don’t match, but the bartender gives me a membership application he calls a formality.
“Iraq?” he asks.
“Afghanistan.”
“Marine?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Semper Fi, son.” He shakes my hand and I see his Death Before Dishonor tattoo. Kevlar got one exactly like it on his back after he graduated boot camp, and the saltier Marines in our platoon ragged on him mercilessly about it. “You’re welcome to stay for lunch,” the bartender says. “The special today is fish sandwiches with fries and coleslaw.”
I order two sandwiches and a pitcher of beer, which he draws for me without so much as blinking.
“Travis.” Mom frowns as I pour the beer into plastic cups. She leans forward, keeping her voice low. As if we’re doing something naughty. “You’re not twenty-one.”
“I am a veteran of a foreign war.” I hand her a cup. “More importantly, I’m thirsty.”
At first we don’t talk about Dad. We don’t talk about anything, really. We drink beer, agree the fish sandwiches taste good, and speculate on what kind of fish it is.
“I’ve been thinking about seeing a lawyer.” Mom refills our glasses. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and she hands me a paper napkin. Dining room manners tend to lapse when there’s no dining room—or even a table. Most of the time we ate sitting on the ground, where there was no lack of places to sit, and “Hey, save me a seat” was a running joke between me and Charlie.
“Yeah?” I ask.
She nods. “I’m—I’m kind of scared.”
“Why?”
“We’ve been together a long time,” she says. “I don’t know how to be alone. Or what I would do with myself.”
“You could go back to school.”
She gives me a wobbly smile. “Maybe you and I both could.”
I have three years of active duty left, but she thinks I’ll use my GI Bill to get an education. I don’t tell her I still have no interest in college. I can’t envision myself as a teacher or an accountant or a lawyer. Or even married with kids.