He stood in front of the full-length mirror in his late mother’s bathroom. His body held souvenirs from his life: shrapnel scars faded pink from his first tour in the mountains, a knife wound white and jagged from a high school fight, and the mutilation from his stepfather’s belt buckle. He had hated it the most. Had wished it away from the time he received it, but it and the leg were left behind with the second tour – a victim of a roadside bomb. The missing limb – a shocking reminder of sins he did in the name of honor. The view would send waves of emotions: the anger came first, it swept over him filling every pore in its powerful punch, then followed by the feeling of being less than, and finally uselessness would put him into a crippling vise – all bundled in a neat package called frustration.
****
Across town she stood in front of the mirror viewing her middle-aged body, marked with battles won: stretch marks and a c-section scar from her son, a jagged mutilated area of skin from a motorcycle accident in college, and surgery scars littered her body like shrapnel wounds. Each one invoked emotions and memories that ranged from good to bad and joy to fear; they were hers and she shared them with very few. However, the scars no one could see; those she tried the hardest to hide, but they slipped out like tiny shards of light into the dark night to those who truly looked – the true view of her battle worn soul.
****
It was 2:15 pm and they now sat together in the nondescript brown reception area for their separate counselors to invite them in. The picture window with the view of a river and trees with their yellow tipped leaves, lit up the empty receptionist’s desk. She flipped through the tattered woman’s magazine on the small couch, while he sat forward in the adjacent chair with his forearms on his fatigue covered thighs, bouncing his left leg.
“They’re late,” he said and stood up to pace the small waiting room, picked up the intercom unit then placed it back down, only to circle the desk one more time and to play with the candies in their dish.
“You remind me of my son.” She smiled while she still looked down at an unrealistically white living room laid out on the glossy pages. “He couldn’t sit still, always wanted to move.”
“I’m not like your son,” he snarled.
“No, you’re alive,” she calmly stated, never looking up.
He stood off to the side and watched her as she pretended to read the article. “That sucks.” He drew in a fortifying breath. “Sorry for snapping.” The edginess of his body tightened.
“It is okay. We all have our days.” She looked at the young man and noted the scar on his right cheek which ran down to his neck. “And thank you for not saying sorry; I have begun to hate that word.”
“I know what you mean.” He sat back down. Her expensive conservative clothes were worn with crisp precision, it would have made any Drill Sergeant proud, but her hair was loose and windblown. “I hate – you’re strong.”
“You’re so brave,” she countered.
“It was for a good cause.”
“I couldn’t go through what you have,” she forced out.
“Yah,” he scoffed, “like we had a choice.” They stopped for a moment of shared reflection.
“Everyone thinks the cancer and chemo were the hard parts.” She smiled ruefully. “It was the look of helpless fear on my husband’s and son’s faces.”
“The guilt in their eyes, because they’re relieved it wasn’t them,” he murmured, “or worse – it should have been them.” He leaned onto his legs as he thought of Ryan. He had taken his place to clear a road and for that Ryan wished it had been himself. The emotion inside of himself wished it had been him clashed with the feeling of relief it wasn’t.
“Everyone forgets, life is just ugly sometimes.” She looked at him as he bowed his head. “Sometimes I feel that’s why I am stuck.” The words were soft, an afterthought which unknowingly escaped her.
“The way they look when they see me without my leg,” he said into clasped hands with his eyes closed but his brother’s face when he walked in on him last week – shock, revulsion and pity – that moment made his gut hurt.
“I hated my prosthetic.” He grunted in agreement, “I used to have to leave a note stuck to the door to remember to wear it.” She said with a sardonic smile.
“A note?”
“Yah, you know – do you have your keys, purse and right breast.”
“Really?”
“Went grocery shopping more than once without it.”
“Did people notice?” The chair creaked as he leaned back.
“Maybe. I was usually half way through shopping when I figured it out.” She looked out the window, “I decided to have it reconstructed after the second time.” She never told anyone but the momentary bolt of shock every time she got out of the shower and looked in the mirror was the catalyst to her choice – it felt vain.
“I can’t get mine fixed.” He slouched down.
“Nothing can be truly fixed, we can only disguise it – make it look socially acceptable.” She threw the magazine onto the coffee table, “or you live with it so long the disquiet becomes part of you.”
“He told me to get involved in a project and I would start to feel normal.”
“She told me to keep putting one foot in front of the other and soon life would feel normal.”
“Has it?” his question genuine.
“How can it?” She rummaged through the magazines, “Normal is cooking dinner for my son. Normal is holding a small child to your chest and feeling their breath and warmth through your clothes.” The sadness in her eyes made him hitch, “I held an infant at work, it drooled on my blouse; it soaked through to my skin. I didn’t know it until someone mentioned it.”
He missed the normal his mom brought to his world, if she had lived maybe taking care of her could have given him something to fill the vacuum.
They sat in silence for a while until she asked, “Have you found a project?”
“No,” he grunted and looked away. “I can’t even find a job.”
“What did you do in the military?”
“I was a Special Forces Engineer Sergeant,” at her confused look he clarified, “I blew shit up.”
“That is a hard career to transfer to the civilian world.” A memory flickered of her son lighting firecrackers with exhilaration during the Fourth of July picnic.
“I could work in construction, but they won’t hire me until I have a letter saying I’m emotionally stable.” He snorted, “and the longer you are unemployed the harder it is to find a job.”
She nodded and then looked confused, “Emotional stability?” Who is emotionally stable? We all live on a knife edge of truth.
“I was home about six weeks. This asshole t-boned me and I beat the shit out of him.” He ran a hand over his shaved head and looked at the ceiling. “Everything made me angry then, including the wind.”
“Wow.” She blinked “Now?”
“Now?” he thought for a moment and smiled, “Only assholes who T-bone me,” she smiled with him, “and sometimes the wind.”
“These magazines are so old and tattered,” they were piled on the end table with the pamphlets for a suicide hotline, “Just like me.”
“You’re not old.”
“My son would have been twenty-nine this year.” She smiled at him.
“I’m twenty-nine.” His voice quiet, she looked nothing like his mom. He thought of her in that ugly waitress uniform, she seemed to be wearing, with her thin coarse gray hair in a haphazard mess and her quick smile, next to this well-dressed woman. She would have known how to comfort him and would have kicked his ass back to a real life.
“As I said you remind me of my son.” She got up and walked to the window, “it looks like the sun might come out today.”
“This time of year, who knows.”
“Well, another summer has passed and I have again successfully managed to not call a contractor to fix my porch.” She wrapped her arms around her waist.
“Why?”
“It feels disloyal.” She walked back to the desk and fingered a paper weight with one hand but kept the other tight to her middle. “They were going to fix it the following weekend and well, they never got to it.” She shrugged, “The lumber had just been delivered when the call came in;” she was silent, “it just seems wrong.” She spoke in a tiny voice.
“Survivor’s guilt?” He rubbed his palms on his thighs as he glanced over at her, “me too.”
“They say it’s normal.” She grabbed a candy out of the dish and played with the wrapper before throwing it back in.
“They say that, but they obviously have never lived with it. There is nothing normal about something that sucks all the joy from your soul and doesn’t have the courtesy to leave you sad – only numb which is fucking worse?”
“Do you think those that left us behind got the better end of the stick?”
“They’re dead.”
She smiled, “You don’t believe in a God?”
The hollow laugh that came from him was haunted, “Where I’ve been, what I have seen – done.” He rubbed his face and glanced at the pamphlets, “The idea of nothing after this is more of a comfort than going for my judgement.”
“We are harder on ourselves than anyone else would be, even God.” She weakly smiled. “I think that those who go before us wait with joy, but sometimes I wish I could speed things up – just go.” She looked at the eight hundred number, “However, that would defeat the purpose of why we are here – wouldn’t it?”
“What purpose could I have?” The sneer in his was voice self-deprecating.
“I know that for your leg at least one more daughter now goes to school in that country.” She saw for a fleeting moment a soul as lost as hers. “The world changes one daughter at a time.”
“I don’t think we are doing any good over there.” He rubbed his head, “it’s more of a mess now than before we got there.”
“Ever bake?”
“What?”
“Bake. You know brownies, cookies?”
“Ya.”
“When I bake I take out everything I need: flour, sugar, cocoa, measuring cups, bowl, baking pan – the recipe.” She raised her eyebrows to see if he was listening, “as I work I spill flour and the orderly piles become disorganized but after I put it in the oven the project seems finished.” She shrugged. “But when I turn around and the kitchen is a mess. It sometimes takes longer to clean than it took for the brownies to finish baking.”
“You’re comparing a war with baking?”
“No, change. The government came up with a plan, the recipe, then they got everything they needed together, men, guns, food, water, and then they put it into action.” She smiled, “What is left is the mess which needs to be picked up.” She reached into her purse, and pulled out a pack of gum and offered him some. “Only difference is they are picking up a mess which everyone is running through.” She unwrapped the gum, “it is going to take longer than we will be on this earth for the infractions to stop fighting. Patience is something Americans are very short on.” She popped the gum into her mouth.
He picked at the threads on the arm of the chair and just thought. He looked at her again reading the same magazine she had at the beginning. “What was the purpose of your son’s death?”
The stillness that filled the room felt like steel, but it softened with her exhaled breath, “It’s what I struggle with.” Her eyes unreadably vague, “maybe to give the driver a second chance?”
“Is that what you want?” he suddenly seemed wiser and older than his years.
“I don’t know.” She finally looked up from the magazine, “I am just tired. Tired of the anger, the sadness, the loneliness in that mausoleum of a house.”
“Why don’t you sell your house?” he asked.
“I have a deck to repair.” She smiled.
He looked around for a clock, “It’s late.” He walked over to the window as she sat down.
“I turn my phone off when I come in,” she dug into her purse.
“I leave mine in the car.”
She turned on her phone, the appointment had been cancelled due to a family emergency. “That explains mine.” She looked at him.
“They’re married.”
She stood and held out a hand, “This has been a very good session.”
He gripped her hand, smiled and agreed, “David.”
“Excuse me?”
“My name is David”
“Ivy.” She started to the door, but turned back to him, “Same time next week.”
“Definitely.”
****
In the counselor’s office the sleeper sofa was open, the lovers tangled in sheets and each other – the intercom was on the end table as they listened to the occupants of the waiting room leave.
“First time he has reached out to someone,” he murmured into her hair.
She idlily ran a finger over his chest, “First time she has talked about her son.”
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