you pack for your trip,” Sharice tells her.
“You don’t have to do that,” Abby says. “We’re both tired, and I’m just going to throw a few things together.”
“And then you’ll be across the country without the things you need. Don’t be silly. I’m happy to help.” Sharice marches into the bedroom. “At times like this, you forget to pack important things, and suddenly you find yourself across the country without a toothbrush, or minus your favorite slippers, or, God forbid, without any clean underwear. I remember traveling home when my father passed. The boys were young yet, and Madison wasn’t even born, and when we got word there was no time. We had to throw together a few essentials and jump on an army transport from Okinawa back to the States….”
Abby sits on the edge of the bed, listening as Sharice talks from the closet.
“Needless to say, there was no time to pack properly. I threw things into a suitcase and a duffel bag, trying to remember to pack the right dress clothes for the ceremony, as well as coats for the weather. Of course, when we arrived in Minnesota, nothing was quite right. I’d forgotten to pack dress shoes for the funeral. Had to borrow a pair from my sister. Those shoes gave me the worst kind of blister on my heel. Noah was angry about the blue suit I packed for him. He complained that it made him look like sailor boy. And John…apparently, just before we left the house, John dumped out all his clothes and replaced them with his collection of stuffed animals, so that they wouldn’t get lonely without him.”
She emerges from the closet rolling a suitcase, another bag slung over her shoulder. “So there we are in Minnesota for my father’s funeral and John has nothing to wear. I was so angry with him.”
“What did you do?” Abby asks, grateful for Sharice’s rare anecdote.
“I made John wear Noah’s sailor suit. That taught him not to repack.” Sharice removes a garment bag from the closet. “You’d better take your dress clothes. Might as well have what you need in case the funeral is back east, which sounds very likely.”
And that’s that, Abby thinks as her mother-in-law starts going through the garments hanging in her closet, looking for a suit or a dark dress.
Thinking of comfort, Abby opens a drawer on her side of the dresser she shares with John and pulls out short white socks and panties, shorts and T-shirts. One pair of jeans should be enough, and she’ll need a sweatshirt. She pauses, then slides open John’s bottom drawer, where her hands dig into his old football jersey, scarlet red with the number nineteen on the front in white. Pressing her face into the soft folds, she inhales his scent, a mixture of salt and soap, a scent that creates a pang of longing deep in her soul. The jersey goes into the bag along with everything else, then she changes her mind and pulls it out. She’ll carry it with her on the plane, burrow into it when she has nowhere else to turn.
As she closes the drawer, photographs on top of the dresser catch her eye. Two photos from their wedding, and a picture of John in his gray dress uniform, the sky behind him so blue that his dark hair and broad shoulders cut a bold silhouette. That smile…it tugs at her heart, even in a photo. She used to tease him that he could appear in a toothpaste commercial, and he’d flash her a wide grin, saying something inane like, “Brightens and whitens!”
The black-and-white wedding photos have always reminded Abby of a classic film, one in which the soldiers return from the front in World War II to their joyous wives clad in sophisticated gowns. In one photo, John, in dress uniform, escorts Abby beneath an archway of crossed silver swords. John was so tall he had to duck, and a glint of light off the sword over his head makes it look as if he has a halo. The other photo is a close-up of Abby and John dancing, their eyes fixed on each other, each utterly mesmerized by the other.
She never imagined herself as a soldier’s wife; the sword-crossing ceremony at their wedding made her feel like a princess, the bride of a knight. “I don’t see myself as an army wife,” she used to tell John, who would roll his eyes and remind her that labels are so limiting and often inaccurate. Abby didn’t want to be married to the military, but by the time John had come to the decision to enlist, she had already fallen for him, and the attraction, like John himself, was so huge and overwhelming and brilliant that she could not imagining spending her life with anyone but him. And now she is a military widow, a tag that seems just as ill-fitting and all the more unavoidable.
“Slowing down on the job?” Sharice zips the garment bag closed and steps closer to view the photos. “I don’t know if Jim has ever told you, but he’s never been so proud as the day John and Noah enlisted. When John signed on to play for the Seahawks, we’d thought it was over—our family legacy in the military. And then…” She shrugs. “The terrorists attacked, and everything changed.”
“To be honest,” Abby admits, “it wasn’t a change I welcomed. I never imagined myself as a soldier’s wife. It was a world, a culture, so foreign to me, and I prided myself on being in control of my own life.”
“I sensed that about you,” Sharice says, heading back to the closet.
“It’s hard to give up your freedom to ‘orders.’ I didn’t want to be married to the military, but suddenly it became part of John, part of the whole package if I wanted to be with him. And I did. I couldn’t imagine my life without him.” Her lower lip begins to curl as a sob threatens, but Abby bites down on it, tamping down the inevitable pain. Not here, not in front of her mother-in-law, who always seems to be silently questioning Abby’s mettle.
“Your feelings about military service aside”—Sharice steps out of the closet to make eye contact—“no one has ever questioned your love for my son. We could tell you adored him, and he was just crazy about you, too.” Sharice sighs. “And although you didn’t choose military service for him, you also did not stand in his way. That’s admirable.”
“I don’t know how you did it all these years, moving across the country when orders came up, being a single parent while Jim was deployed.”
“You just do it. You adapt.” Sharice picks out a pair of black pumps from the floor of the closet and shrugs. “At least you’ve come to understand the dedication of the military community—unlike the rest of the country. I swear, they believe we sit here on base and hold Bingo tournaments. It’s always been an issue for me, the lack of support for the military community. Too many people don’t appreciate the sacrifices made by soldiers in the armed forces and their families. People just aren’t patriotic anymore.”
Does Sharice think she’s lacking in patriotism?
Picking up the photo of John in dress uniform, Abby studies the folds of the American flag flapping in the wind behind him and has to steel herself to keep from choking up. Her eyes still fill with tears when she witnesses the lowering of the flag at dusk here at Fort Lewis. Since 2001 she has not been able to witness a ceremony with the Stars and Stripes without choking up, recalling the image of the firefighters who raised the flag at Ground Zero, the resounding choruses of “America, the Beautiful” that filled sports arenas and hearts at a time when the country was so shaken by acts of terrorism against innocent people.
Was it patriotism that made her throat tighten in a lump as she watched the soldiers in John’s brigade line up to board their buses, their desert fatigues a speckled sea of muted tones? So many of them, men and women…and which ones would return healthy? Which would lose their lives or come home damaged and traumatized?
Or was she unpatriotic to want her husband out of the war? Was it wrong to want to keep him here in the States, out of harm’s way? Was it selfish to wish he’d stayed in pro football, playing out his battles on Astroturf a few Sunday afternoons during the season?
“I’m not sure what patriotism means anymore,” Abby says, surprised at her own honesty in front of Sharice. “But I have to admit, when John got on that bus to go to Iraq, I didn’t want him to be like the other men. I wanted him to be special, protected, as if he had a guardian angel watching over him.” She can still recall the eerie feeling as she scanned the long line of men, some turning to wave, others facing away, anonymous heads. “I knew some of those