Come Landfall: A Novel

Nine: Farewell

nine Farewell After eight months of marriage, Angela was still learning the different aspects of her husband. There was his “I’ll pray on it” part, where he wrestled with matters of right and wrong, from whether to tell Big Frank to hire a male nurse to help him with personal matters (Big Frank kicked him out of the house with his prosthetic leg when he finally brought it up), to questioning if drinking three beers on his nights off was too much or just being sociable. There was his “I’m here for you” self, when he held Angela all night in postcoital tenderness, then rose early to help Nana up, fixed breakfast for everyone, and left extra cash on the dresser for Angela to buy “something cool and sexy.” There was his anxious mood, when he worried about “money we didn’t have to spend,” and looked twice at any man who looked at Angela even once when they went out to the High Chaparral buffet on Tuesday nights. The part of Frank she could still not yet figure out how to respond to, how to accommodate, was when he came home in the evenings and said, “I’m not cut out for this.” “What?” she said, knowing full well his answer. “The ‘Chair Force,’” he said. “I’m about to jump out of my skin.” “Oh, Frank, you’re an excellent teacher.” “It’s making me fat.” He turned on the TV and watched images of soldiers on Fox News. He turned it off, then went and listened to his Walkman. She heard him singing along, quietly, to Dylan’s “I Believe in You.” come l andfall 129 Sundays she started going with him to Victory Brotherhood, uplifted by his sense of uplift. Brother Tim was eloquent, a good storyteller , and enjoyed recalling the time he had been scraping barnacles off a boat and met Frank. When she watched the congregants wave their hands in the air, was surrounded by joyous clapping to the praise music band—drums, electric piano, and bass—she felt happy for her husband. The message of Jesus Christ still did not stir her in the same way. Frank, she knew, was convinced it would one day. So be it. After church one fall Sunday, when they went to the Shed in Ocean Springs to eat barbecued ribs and hear blues music, she had an instinct of what he was going to say. They were sitting side by side at one of the picnic tables of the open-air restaurant. He put his arm around her, kissed her on the cheek, then said he’d gotten word to do training at an Army base in Arizona. The program was for Air Force weather specialists to learn Army culture. At the end of the training he’d be attached to an Army division heading to a battle zone. “The classroom’s just not for me,” he whispered. “Not yet anyways. It’ll be perfect for when we’re raising our family.” “When will you be back?” she said anxiously. “Five weeks, maybe six.” “And how long then before you go . . .” She motioned to the distance. He shrugged. “No telling. Maybe we’ll be done by then. Maybe it’ll all be over.” “It’s what you want, I know.” “It’s who you married.” “It’s who I married,” she said. Then he was away, and on Thanksgiving she took Nana to the Pirates Plunder holiday buffet and ate in silence while text-messaging Frank “miss u, luv u” three times, and come Christmas, with Mrs. Torres staying with Nana a couple of days, she flew to Airzona to spend twenty-four hours of Frank’s leave time making love to him in a small motel room outside Fort Huachuca. New Year’s 2004 she drove along the outskirts of Keesler and gazed out at the hangars and airfields. In the distance the oaks bowed somnolently down to Back Bay, lonesome 130 Roy Hoffman already. He’s only gone several weeks, Angela thought. “How will I survive when he’s away months on end?” She tried not to watch anything about the war, but the worn and grizzled face of Saddam, who’d been rooted out of a hole in the ground, looked back from every TV channel and magazine cover at the grocery store checkout line, and she held her breath...