* * *
In the abstract, Jolene had known that Washington, D.C., was a city of monuments. She’d read about the various places dedicated to the country’s history, but until she stepped out onto the busy streets, she didn’t quite understand how they all joined one to the other and told a story. Everywhere she looked—on tiny slivers of snowy ground, on plaques on park benches, on white marble statues—there was a memory, a reminder. The scale of the city surprised her, too. She’d imagined a New York–type city, full of thrusting skyscrapers. But this city felt grounded in a way she hadn’t expected; there were no high-rises, no canyons of concrete that made passersby feel small.
New York was a city that showed off its greatness, sought to make tourists look at man’s accomplishments with awe. D.C. knew that man’s greatness lay not in stone and steel, but rather in ideas and decisions.
“Are you ready?” Michael asked.
She turned away from the hotel room window, which overlooked a quiet street covered in snow.
Behind Michael, a gilt-framed mirror hung on the wall above a sleek French reproduction dresser. In it, Jolene saw herself from the waist up.
A soldier again—if just for this moment—in her class A dress uniform, with her hair pulled back and a black beret positioned with care. Medals and insignia decorated her chest, reminding her of who she used to be. This was probably the last time she would wear this uniform. She was in the process of taking a medical retirement from the military. Soon, this uniform would be like her wedding dress, a memory hanging in plastic in the back of a closet.
That part of her life had ended. The future lay cloudy in front of her, full of possibilities.
“Jo?”
She smiled. “I’m fine, Michael. It’s just weird, that’s all.” She slipped into the coat he offered her.
She held Michael’s hand as they walked to Constitution Avenue. The whole city was gray and white, with slashes of black, a moody chiaroscuro. They walked through the Constitution Gardens; snow glazed the tree branches and benches.
They strolled past one last bare tree, and there it was: the Wall. Even on this frigid, snowy day the black granite seemed alive, reflecting the images of those few visitors who had ventured out in today’s cold; an endless expanse of glossy black stone engraved with the names of soldiers who’d died in Vietnam. She reached out with her gloved hand, let her fingers trace the names in front of her. Dotted along the wall were mementos and flowers and gifts left by loved ones.
There were more than 58,000 names.
She didn’t realize she was crying until Michael put his arms around her. She leaned against him, barely noticing the snowflakes falling on her cheeks and eyelashes.
They stood there until Jolene was shaking with cold, and still she hated to leave. “I want to bring the girls here in the summer.”
“Summer is a great idea,” Michael said, “but now, let’s go. I can’t feel my hands.”
She nodded and let him lead her away. In front of them, distant, the Lincoln Memorial rose up through the gloom and snow, pearlescent, lit by beams of golden light.
A house, divided against itself, cannot stand.
Michael flagged down a cab, and they climbed in. “Walter Reed,” he said, clapping his gloved hands together.
Jolene settled into the seat and stared out the window at the white-coated city blurring past. By the time they pulled up to the imposing medical center entrance, it was snowing so hard she could barely see.
When she stepped into the busy hospital, she had a sharp, sudden memory: she was on her back, strapped to a gurney, staring at hot lights, trying not to cry or scream, asking,
How is my crew?
until she lost consciousness. The pain was overwhelming. It was all in her head in a second.
Michael squeezed her hand, reminding her with his touch that she was here, standing; the worst was behind them. She took off her heavy woolen coat and handed it to her husband.
For a moment, as she stood there in her dress uniform, decorated with the medals she’d earned and the patches that had defined so many years of her life, she felt tall again, steady. It didn’t matter that the skirt revealed what she’d lost; the uniform revealed who she had been for more than twenty years. She wore it with pride.
“Are you okay?” Michael asked.
She smiled. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll wait for you?”
“Okay.” She let go of his hand and went to the desk, where the nurse on duty gave her the information she needed.
“Are you family?” the nurse asked.
“No.”
“Is she expecting you?”
“No. My visit is a surprise. But I’ve cleared it with the hospital.”
The nurse studied her for a moment, then nodded. “Room 326. You’re lucky. She’s leaving in two days.”
Thanking her, Jolene headed down to room 326, in the orthotics wing.
The door was open.
Jolene moved through the buzz of medical staff with the ease of someone who had learned the routine of a place like this.
She paused at the open door and knocked.
Inside the room, a woman lay in a hospital bed, angled up. Jolene recognized the look in the woman’s eyes: a combination of fear, anger, and loneliness. There were few lonelier places in the world than a hospital room. Even with loved ones beside you, there was no escaping the frightening, isolating truth that neither love alone nor family could make you whole.
She went to the end of the bed and stood there. “Sarah Merrin?”
“What’s left of me is.”
Jolene’s heart ached for this woman—this girl, almost; she couldn’t be more than twenty years old. She saw the empty blanket where Sarah’s legs had been. “You’re still Sarah, even though it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like you left her somewhere, over there, right?”
Sarah looked up.
God, she was so young
.
“Do I know you?”
Jolene moved slowly away from the end of the bed. As she walked, with only the slightest hitch in her gait, she felt herself gliding back in time, and for a second she was the woman in the hospital bed again, and a young marine named Leah Sykes was coming up to her bed, smiling, offering hope in the fact of her stance. Jolene hadn’t appreciated it enough then—she’d been so broken—but she had learned, over time, how much that support had meant.
She moved to the side of Sarah’s bed.
Sarah looked down at Jolene’s prosthesis, then up at her face.
“I’m Jolene Zarkades. You wrote me a letter. Two, actually. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. I was … depressed and pissed off for a while.”
“Chief?”
“It’s just Jolene these days. Hi, Sarah,” she said gently.
Sarah’s eyes filled with tears.
“I’m a runner,” Jolene said softly. “It took a while, but I’ll be a runner again. I ordered a tricked-out new metal prosthesis. It’s called a blade. Supposedly, I’ll be able to run like the wind.”
“Yeah, I hear a lot of shit like that. People actually say, ‘Oh, it’s just your legs, thank God it wasn’t worse.’ They wouldn’t say that if they had a stump. Or two.”
“You’ll lose things, I won’t lie. But you’ll find things, too.”
Sarah lay back in her pillows, sighing. “Teddy’s coming back today. He’s just finishing his tour, and I’m what’s waiting for him. Lucky guy. I don’t know what to say to him. Last time … well, he had trouble looking at me, if you know what I mean.”
Jolene knew better than to hand out some shiny bit of optimism. She understood now that some things had to be fought for to mean anything. There were journeys in life no one could take for you. She couldn’t tell this girl, this soldier, how to handle her life or her injury or her marriage. All she could do was be here, standing as tall as she knew how, and hope that down the road, this would be remembered, as she remembered the woman who had stood by her bedside in Germany, all those months ago. “I’m just going to stand here, okay?” she said to Sarah. “Be here with you.”
“I’ve been alone,” Sarah said, sounding young, almost childlike.
“You’re not alone now.” Jolene stood a few inches away from the wall, listening as Sarah talked about her childhood in West Virginia and the man she’d loved since ninth grade and the fear that she would be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.
Jolene said very little. She listened and nodded and stood there. Not once did she sit down, even though her hip started to ache.
As night fell, she saw Michael come up to the open door.
He saw her standing there by Sarah’s bed, and he smiled. She thought about the letter she’d written him all those months ago, those few simple words:
I loved you beginning to end.
No wonder she hadn’t been able to say anything more. What else was there?
She’d had to go to war and lose almost everything to find what really mattered.
I’m so proud of you,
he mouthed. At that, she felt something open up inside of her, in the deepest, most untouched part of her heart that for years and years had been hers alone.
Tears stung her eyes, blurred her vision until he was the only solid and true thing in this bright, unfocused world. She could feel her tears, streaking down her cheeks, taking years of hurt with them. She wiped them with the back of her hand until her tears were gone, a memory.
Epilogue
Summer comes, as it always does, in a wash of light and expectation. One day it is cool, wet spring, and then, as if at the turn of a switch, the sun returns. Long, hot days bake the pebbled shores of Liberty Bay, turn the already-weathered dock into brittle, silvery slats of wood trimmed in dune grass. Shorebirds call out to one another, swooping and flapping above the peaked blue waves.
Jolene sits in the Adirondack chair on her small deck, watching Michael and Carl teaching Lulu how to fly a kite. Betsy and Seth run along behind, laughing, waving their hands in the air. Mila is their adoring, cheering audience. The day smells of kelp steaming on the rocks and charcoal burning down to ash in the barbecue pit.
Every few seconds, someone yells: “Look, Mom!” and she looks up, smiling and waving. It isn’t that she can’t walk along the beach. In her new prosthesis, she can do almost anything—she runs, she skips, she chases after her five-year-old. She even wears shorts and rarely feels self-conscious.
She is here, separate from them, because she has something to do … something she’s been putting off. She can’t do it with them, but neither can she quite do it without them.
Lulu’s giggle floats on the air.
Jolene reaches down for the letter in her lap. Her hand shakes as she picks it up and sees her name in her best friend’s handwriting.
At last. After months of therapy, she is past the time when words can break her. Or, she hopes she is.
She eases the seal open, feels it resist for a second and then give. The letter is written on plain copier paper. She can imagine Tami on that last day before they left, with her clothes piled in a heap on her bed and her duffle bag by the floor. She would have rushed around, looking for something to write on, and probably curse that she’d forgotten to buy stationery. Tami was like that; she remembered all of life’s big things, but the little details had often passed her by.
Jo
If you’re reading this, it didn’t go the way I wanted over there. It’s funny, I never thought I’d die. I pictured you and me lasting forever, sitting on your deck, watching our kids grow up while we managed to stay young. I hope that’s where you are now. In a deck chair, with a fire going in the pit. I hope Michael and Carl are down with the kids on the beach. Is my chair empty beside you?
Jolene looks up, into the clear blue sky. An eagle flies past, dives deeply into the blue water, and comes up with a bright silver salmon in its beak, dripping water on Jolene as it soars to the top of an evergreen.
Don’t be whining about how much you miss me. Of course you miss me. Wherever I am, I miss you, too. But you know all that. From the time we met, we knew everything that mattered about each other, didn’t we? We just knew. I guess that’s what best friends are: parts of each other. So you’ll have that with you, have me with you.
I don’t want to get maudlin. I’m sure you’ve cried enough tears for me to fill the bay. I know I would cry for you.
God, Jo, we had it all, didn’t we? That’s what I’m thinking about now, on a sunny day when I’ve been asked to think about my death.
Here’s what matters: take care of my baby. My Seth. It’s hard to even write his name. My damn pen is shaking. Make sure he knows me. Me. There are bits of me that only you can share. Tell him about my dorky sense of humor, how I used to cry when he hit a baseball in Little League, what dreams I had for him. Make him know that I was more than his mother; I was his champion. Tell him that sometimes when I laugh too hard, I sound like a seal. Help him remember me. That’s my last request of you.
And that you take care of yourself. That, too. Michael loves you and you love him. I hope to shit you haven’t blown that. If you have, I will definitely haunt you.
I know that sadness has stalked you in your life, Jo, from early on. I saw you fight it and win. You always won. But maybe now it’s harder. Maybe you should give in to it just enough. We’re all sad sometimes. I’m sad right now, thinking of you reading this letter. But I want to look down (God—I hope it’s down and not up) and see you flying, running, laughing, living your life to the fullest.
Play without a net, flygirl. Because even from here, I’ve got your six.
Always.
I love you.