I set my jaw. “Well, I did it.”
She rolled her eyes and stood. “Then you’ll have to fail on your own.”
“I’m not going to fail,” I said, swallowing. Hoping I believed it. “That’s so dramatic,” I added, but didn’t know if she could hear me.
She opened the sliding glass doors that led to the backyard, stepped through, and closed them again. I watched her spray and wipe in wide loops.
I cupped my hands around my mouth, pressing them to the pane. “How can I prove to you that I’m not crazy?”
Mom narrowed her eyes, her reply muffled. “Who knows.”
I watched her work, remembering the looking-for-a-man days she had talked about. I was a toddler. I remembered the cat-piss smell of our neighbor Mrs. Klein’s house. Of weeping and weeping until I fell asleep, waking up in the middle of the night and crying again until a grumpy, exhausted Mrs. Klein handed me a dusty juice box and a handful of stale crackers from her bathrobe pocket.
I remembered the relief when Mom was the one to wake me up in those days. Mom with her dimples and big, soft chest and constant, quiet tongue clicks, like a train slowing down. She wore Lanc?me perfume, from a beautiful bottle with gold-plated lettering spelling La vie est belle. I used to sit in her room, tracing the letters with my finger.
Mom tapped on the glass. Look, she mouthed, pointing to the tall wooden fence that surrounded the Floriens’ pool.
On the far corner sat a big bird with a green head and a white breast.
Mom slid open the door, letting in the warm, humid air. “It’s a green heron!” she said, her voice clear and bright, anger lingering at the edges. “The only advantage of working for people with pools.”
All this talk of dreams and passion. I didn’t know exactly what I meant, either. It was like foraging for notes in the forest. Always not that, not that. Not Mom’s life. Not law school. But it was as if I could never say that, that’s it. I had it briefly at the Skylark, after we’d played, that I knew.
I would find it again.
I pointed to the heron, nudging Mom’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s a good sign.”
“Don’t be stupid, Cass,” she said, wiping her forehead with a blue-rubbered hand as she looked on. “That’s just a bird.”
Luke
“Chili’s. Ugh,” Cassie said as we approached the decorative door flanked by cacti. “We’re in one of the culinary capitals of the United States,” she continued. “Why did your friends choose Chili’s?”
“They’re not foodies, Cassie. They’re just hungry.”
After Cassie had picked me up in her Subaru, the entire car ride through suburban Austin had been a stream of criticism. Or “just questions I have,” according to Cassie. Why didn’t you tell me we were supposed to dress up? All the army wives are going to look like Jackie Kennedy, aren’t they? Do you guys think drone bombs are taking your jobs, or are you all for drone bombs? Do I salute, too? I had tried to answer her as best I could while the annoyance pressed on my chest. I didn’t realize tucking in my one button-up shirt was “dressed up,” I’d told her, and I didn’t know anything about drone bombs, I was infantry, and, no, for God’s sake, please don’t salute. I assured her we’d be in and out of there, then we’d follow them to the hotel near the airport that Frankie had booked for us and a few other couples, then we would be done.
Inside, Chili’s was full, loud, smoky from fajitas. A teenage hostess with a too large headset greeted us and held up a one second finger. We nodded.
“I’m just saying.” Cassie leaned close to me and muttered, “What about barbecue?”
I sneezed in response.
“Are you getting sick?”
“No, your perfume makes my nose itch.” Her car smelled like someone lit a match to a field of herbs. Not unpleasant, just spiky.
“I don’t wear perfume. Remember? I told you that at the diner.”
I hadn’t remembered. I was probably too busy being pissed about all the stuff she forgot. “Okay, then the smell of your car makes my nose itch.”
“Are you allergic to my smell?”
“No!”
Cassie was laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The face you just made.”
I realized my jaw was pretty much wired shut. I tried to loosen it, took a breath, and said quietly, “Can you handle this?”
“Handle what?”
“This is the last impression people in my company are going to get of you and me in person. This is, like, our army moment. For an army marriage. So.”