nothing to say about what it was like to live day-to-day
knowing you weren’t safe even walking to the dining hall.
And, of course, he said nothing whatever about
getting wounded.
The next night, beginning to feel frightened by
how near the end of her visit they were, Fiona asked
about his family. They were lying in bed after making
love. He was on his back, one hand propped behind
his head, the other arm around her. With her head on
his bare chest, she could not just hear but feel his
heart beat.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Oh… Are you close? Did they send you care
packages while you were overseas?”
He was quiet for a minute. “Yeah. Yeah, they did. My
folks are good people. My father owns his own plumbing business. I told you that, didn’t I? He encouraged me to tinker when I was little. I could rebuild an engine
by the time I was thirteen, fourteen.”
“I take it building robots wasn’t quite what he had
in mind?”
His chest rumbled with a quiet laugh. “No, but my
parents were proud of me.” He fell silent again, and
when she tilted her head, she saw that he was frowning.
What was he thinking about? Their pride when he went
to college and then grad school, or when he donned his
uniform and went to Iraq to serve his country?
“What do your sisters do?”
“Hmm?” He seemed to pull himself back from
wherever he’d been with difficulty, but after a minute
he said, “Mary—she’s three years older than me—she’s
married, has two kids and, now that they’re in school,
works at the library. My younger sister was married
once, divorced with no kids, and is a journalist with the
Oregonian. ”
Knowing she should remember, Fiona still had to
ask, “What’s her name?”
“Liz. Short for Elizabeth. My parents believed in the
basics where names were concerned. The old ones were
still the good ones.”
Fiona laughed. “You sound fondest of Liz.”
“We’re the closest in age—only eighteen months
between us. And maybe the most alike.”
He talked comfortably about her in particular, telling
stories about growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Portland.
“Since you got back?” she asked.
Again, he was quiet for a minute before asking. “They
were shocked. They try to be supportive. But, except for
Liz, they don’t understand damage they can’t see.”
Fiona was lying on his “good” side, so she couldn’t
see the scar on his face from here. He always rolled in
such a way that she ended up on this side, and she
assumed that was because of the pain in his hip. The
surgical scar there was horrific, the mass of far-less tidy
scar tissue on his thigh even more so. She thought it was
astonishing that he could walk, let alone do the hard
physical labor he often did.
“They think you should be able to put it behind
you?” she said softly.
“They and everyone else.” For a moment his voice was
harsh with repressed anger, or even violence. As quickly,
he buried it deep, tugging her higher. “Hey. Kiss me.”
So she did, and ended up learning nothing more.
No, that wasn’t entirely true. What she learned was
that he was very, very good at not telling her anything
meaningful. Evasion, she was frightened to realize, was
his way. He wanted to get to know her. He just didn’t
want her to really know him.
Which wasn’t entirely fair of her, Fiona knew—that
adult voice talking, reasoning with the absurdly emotional part of her that began to resent being shut out. He did share, just nothing beyond the superficial.
She had to keep repeating to herself that they hadn’t
known each other long. He’d been through so much.
Talking about it wouldn’t come easily for him. She’d
known that about him before she came for this visit.
He’d gotten so angry, that night on the porch, when
she’d tried to push him to confide in her.
And ultimately, it was the anger that disturbed her
most. The horror she understood. The things he must
have seen… How could anyone tuck those memories
away and go comfortably back to life as if he was still the