TWENTY-SEVEN
the lifetime movie version
sloane
August 5, 2011
Dear Sloane,
I know you said you weren’t upset earlier on the phone, but I can’t express to you how much I wish you had gotten pregnant before I left. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the baby we want so badly. But when I get home, we will try again, and this time it will work. This time, we will get everything we have ever wanted. I already have you, Sloane. This baby will just be the icing on the cake. Wonder if the icing will be pink or blue?
All my love,
Adam
IT WAS ONLY A few months between the time Adam and I had started “trying” for a baby and the time he was deployed again. It wasn’t enough time for us to be worried—or for him to be suspicious. It was very unlike me, this big lie. I was never one who could keep a big secret, but I had managed to keep this one quite splendidly.
It wasn’t until Adam was gone that the gravity of what I was doing really set in, that the level to which I was compromising my marriage hit me. My adoring husband who trusted me implicitly believed that when he was making love to me, we were trying to make a baby. Only I knew he was alone in that.
It was that letter that really did it for me. All I could think was, here is my husband halfway around the world, fighting for my freedom, and I have betrayed him in the worst possible way.
I thought about writing him a letter, explaining to him my position and that I was sorry. I would try to make him understand my reasons for what I had done, explain that I wanted to make him happy but I did not want children, under any circumstances.
But I knew this wasn’t something I could write. I couldn’t hide behind a letter. I had to tell him in person. So, for the six months he was gone, I wrote to him under the pretense that I, too, couldn’t wait to have a baby. I reasoned that if, God forbid, something happened to him, he should get to be happy just a little longer. I never told anyone what I had done, how I had lied to my husband, how the secret I kept from him had nearly cost me my marriage and the love of my life.
Now, sitting on my mom’s screened-in back porch with my two sisters, that seemed a world away. I could hardly remember a time when I didn’t want children, couldn’t imagine I had ever envisioned my life without these little people who, while frustrating at times, made my world go around.
Earlier that night, for the first time in weeks, I hadn’t rushed through putting my children to bed. I didn’t feel the urge to get back in my pajamas as quickly as possible to get the day over with. Maybe that was the gift in this whole thing. I remembered this was the only life I was going to get, and one day I was going to be gone and wouldn’t get to spend time with my boys. I read to them, snuggled into my side, until Taylor fell asleep and AJ could barely keep his eyes open. Then I sang their favorite songs until AJ drifted off as well. I stared at them, trying to remember them as babies, trying to memorize them now, as though I could tuck this perfect moment somewhere deep inside myself and save it, like Adam’s letters, for a time when I really needed it.
The screen door squealed open, breaking me out of my thoughts, and as it slammed shut again, Scott appeared, a beer in his hand. “Nothing will make you want to drink quite like your mother dying.”
I didn’t want it to, but my mouth opened and words flew out: “Try having your husband Missing in Action.”
Scott grimaced.
“Scott,” I said, “it was nice what you said earlier, but you aren’t really going to Iraq, are you?”
“Oh, I assure you I am,” he said, taking a seat and crossing one leg over the other. “I’ll book a flight as soon as . . .”
He trailed off, and I swallowed away the tears for what that “as soon as” meant.
“So what will you do when you get there?” Emerson asked, leaning toward him intently. I had a feeling she was picturing this all unfolding on the big screen and what her part would be. Probably me. Because the terrified wife in the Lifetime movie version would most certainly be a tall, blond, thin twenty-six-year-old.
“Civilians tend to know a lot,” Scott said. “And I have a lot of friends in Iraq now. I’ll do a little digging into where the boys were when they crashed, and I’ll do what I do best: ask questions.”
“Does that really work?” Caroline asked.
I sighed.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. Of course it works.” She turned to Scott. “This sounds like a great idea, uncle of ours. I have the utmost faith in you.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“I think it’s the craziest damn idea I’ve ever heard,” I said, “and if you’re killed by a land mine or left to die in a prison somewhere, I will blame myself forever.”
He shook his head. “No, you won’t. I’m doing this for completely selfish reasons.”
“How is this possibly selfish?” Emerson asked.
“Because if I go over there, find them, and report on the whole thing, no doubt I’ll win a Pulitzer.”
He winked at me. “For real, though,” he said. “I’m going of my own accord for my own reasons. Do I want to save Adam and get my niece her family back? Absolutely. But if it all goes awry, that’s on me, not you. I know what it’s like.”
It was borderline stupid that knowing Scott was going made me feel better. I mean, my husband was God only knows where in that dusty desert land of caves and rock. It wasn’t like my uncle, who was trained in journalism, fly-fishing, and very little else, was going to track down my husband and bring him home safely to me if the world’s finest military hadn’t managed it yet. But, after months of sleepless nights, my teeth ground down, my eyes bagged, my shoulders slumped, the color drained from my face, I needed something, anything, to hold onto. Scott loved me and he loved Adam. And, sometimes, that’s as good a reason as any to believe everything is going to be OK.
Scott squeezed my knee and said, “OK, girls. Uncle Scott is going to bed.”
“Yes,” Caroline said firmly. “You’re going to need your strength.” She paused. “Grammy and Mom are on the front porch. Let’s go out there with them.”
Emerson nodded. “Perfect. My wineglass has been empty for like a half hour.”
Grammy was snuggled on the couch in a nest of pillows with blankets all around her. Mom was right beside her, as though if she got close enough, she could breathe for her, keep her here.
There were so many things I could say to Grammy in that moment, but I only squeezed her tightly and said, “I love you so much. I hope you had the best day.”
“I love you too, sweet girl,” she said. “This was the best day of my life.”
“Hey!” Mom exclaimed. “What about the day I was born?”
Grammy laughed. “The best normal day where no one was born or married.”
The door opened, and Emerson flopped dramatically on the couch, while Caroline spread out on Mom’s new outdoor chaise. It seemed fitting she would get the best seat. Queen Caroline, past, present, and future.
In that moment, with all the women I loved most in the world crowded around me, it didn’t feel like anything was out of the ordinary. It didn’t feel like anyone was dying. It didn’t feel like life was about to change in ways we couldn’t even imagine.
And so, when I look back on my life, that moment, just Grammy, Mom, my sisters, and me, sharing stories and laughing until we couldn’t breathe, is one I want to remember. When I think of Grammy now, when I imagine her in heaven, she is having a night just like that.