Joy

Chapter 4

Driving to New York, she felt like she was dreaming and was afraid that she’d wake up and he’d be gone. He let her drive, and they stopped to buy food along the way to eat in the car, and got to New York in the late afternoon and returned the car. Allegra’s building was quiet since the students who lived there were gone by then, and the apartments would remain empty until August when they all came back. The building seemed eerie and deserted without them. Allegra unlocked the door, and they walked in. Shep looked around as though he had landed in Paradise. His eyes had that faraway look again that he had had when she first saw him. He seemed as though he was coming back from a distant place, different and worse than anything she could have imagined.

There were no words to tell her what he’d seen in the past six months. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want her to ever know what it had been like. They had lied to him again and again. They lied to him every day, and then he saw the truth when he went on the missions he was assigned to. The things they did to people, and that people did to them. The torture that was part of every interrogation, that was standard procedure there. He had talked to Allegra’s father about it when he’d seen him, and Bradley had laughed at him and said, “Toughen up, son. You’re not in Kansas anymore. This isn’t The Wizard of Oz, it’s real life. And it doesn’t get realer than this.” He said it as though he enjoyed it, and Shep had known then that they would never be friends. Bradley Dixon was an animal, and he stayed in the army at whatever age he was to satisfy his bloodlust and his need for excitement. The interrogations gave him an adrenaline rush. Shep had been in on one of them with him, and had thrown up afterward for hours. All he wanted was to live long enough to go home to Allegra. Now he was home, and for the first time, he couldn’t talk to her, because he couldn’t tell her what it was really like, and didn’t want her to know about her father, although he knew that she suspected it, and had for years.

Allegra didn’t respect her father. She didn’t even like him. He had gone over to the dark side years before and never came back. There were plenty of others like him there, and he was the leader of the pack. It was why, Shep knew now, he never came home for long, because he couldn’t live in the civilized world anymore. He could only exist in the nightmare they had created, he was part of it. Shep didn’t want to be one of them, but he had been for the past few months. It was like an initiation into some kind of satanic cult, and he had been one of them while he was there, and he didn’t want Allegra ever to know what he had seen and done.

It had nearly cost him his soul, and now he was home, and she was so clean and pure and whole he was afraid to touch her, although that was all he had wanted for so many months, to be back with her and pick up their life together where they’d left off. But he didn’t know how to find his way back now. She could sense it as she looked at him, when he sat down on the couch and stretched his legs in front of him.

“Are you okay?” she asked him gently, and he nodded, but she knew he wasn’t. She didn’t know what part of him was broken, but something was, deep inside him. She could tell. “Do you want something to eat?” He shook his head. The words wouldn’t come. They were stuck. It had happened to him before, in Afghanistan, when the going got too rough for him, and he was forced to be there anyway, and be part of it, and act as though he was okay with it.

She didn’t want to ask him if he wanted to go to bed. She had a deep instinctive sense that he wasn’t ready for that. The culture shock of coming back was too great, the trauma of whatever it was he’d been through. She could feel it in her bones and in her heart.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked him, and he hesitated.

“Yeah, maybe.” There’d been briefings about what it would be like coming home, but he hadn’t been prepared for how beautiful she would be, how sweet and clean and innocent, and how normal it would all seem. But he didn’t belong there anymore. He knew it even if she didn’t. He didn’t deserve to be there.

It was a beautiful June afternoon, and they walked to the Cloisters and through a garden she used to go to sometimes to study. Then they went back to the apartment and he lay down on the bed, and she stretched out next to him. He looked up at the ceiling and found some of the words he wanted to tell her.

“It’s harder coming back than I thought it would be. Everything seems so normal.” It seemed like a benign statement, but it was very profound. “I don’t feel normal yet.” He wondered if he ever would again.

“You will. Give it time. You just got here,” she said softly. “We have our whole lives ahead of us. And you don’t ever have to go back there.” She was glad they were going to Newport. She thought it would do him good to go back to the places he had loved in his childhood, where everything was simple, despite the grand houses. They could do simple things there.

They lay next to each other and held hands until he fell asleep. For months he had dreamed of making love to her, and now he couldn’t. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to soil her with the things he’d seen, as though they would rub off on her.

He slept for hours because of the time difference for him, while she moved around the apartment silently, packing to go to Newport. She packed for him too. He woke up at midnight and he was ravenous. He ate nearly everything she had in the fridge, and she cooked a steak she had bought for him. She was happy to see him eat it. He needed to put back on the weight he’d lost. He looked like a skeleton.

He took a shower after he ate, and she walked into the bathroom and took her clothes off and joined him. She made it all so simple, as she stood in the water with him, looking even more beautiful than he had remembered her, and he started to cry, and suddenly his arms were around her and they were making love, and they went back to her bed and made love there, and he found her again. He thought he had lost her, and himself. He was still crying when he came, and then the tears stopped, and he was at peace as he lay next to her.

“Welcome back,” she said, still breathless from their lovemaking.

“I’m never leaving you again,” he whispered, and meant it at that moment.

“You don’t have to. I’m here, Shep. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m sorry I had to leave you to go to Afghanistan.”

“It’s over now, like a bad dream.” She couldn’t even imagine how bad it had been. But he looked like he was waking up. They lay together and talked about nothing important, just ordinary things, until they fell asleep. It was what he needed now. She always knew what he needed. He was part of her heart and soul, as she was of his. He had a nightmare that night, but it didn’t wake him up. She held him in her arms until he relaxed and fell into a deep sleep again. As the sun came up, she fell asleep next to him, grateful beyond words that he was home.

—

The drive to Newport was more beautiful than either of them remembered. It was perfect. He had called his parents to tell them he was home and would see them in a few days, and they had given him permission to use their house. Unlike the VanderHolts, they didn’t have employees who lived there year-round. They brought people from Boston with them when they came down, and the house was empty the rest of the time. Shep and Allegra could be there alone now, which was what they needed. She didn’t want to stay at her grandmother’s home with all the staff there. This was what he needed. His boyhood home would be an easier reentry for him.

They swam off his parents’ dock when they got there, and went for a walk. They went to the store and bought groceries. They bought lobsters for dinner and Shep cooked them, and they sat outside and looked at the stars afterward. Then they made love again as they had the night before, but it was easy and familiar this time. He had gotten stronger and looked healthier even in a few days. He had shaved off his mustache and looked like himself again.

Shep went to Boston alone to see his parents, and Allegra visited her grandmother’s cottage while he was away for the day. The staff were happy to see her, and she had come to love her grandmother’s beautiful home, even though she had been unhappy there as a child and had felt unwelcome. She was welcome there as an adult, now that her grandmother understood who she was, and that she was nothing like her mother.

Allegra lay reading on a chair in the garden all afternoon, and Shep came to get her when he got back from Boston. He was always impressed when he visited her grandparents’ cottage. It was one of the biggest and most imposing homes in Newport. a throwback to another era of grander lives and greater riches. The VanderHolts had held on to it through generations. The Williamses had acquired their home more recently. Shep’s grandparents had bought it.

They drove back to his house and swam off the dock again, and made love in his bedroom afterward. She loved knowing that it had been his room as a boy, and now she was his wife.

“How were your parents?” she asked him, as they made dinner and ate in the big old-fashioned kitchen.

“Old. They’ve aged a lot just in the last six months. I worry about them. My brothers should come to see them more often. We had a nice visit,” he said, looking peaceful. Just the two days he’d been home had begun to restore him and heal the wounds of everything he’d been through. He needed a lot more of it.

They spent two weeks there, which did him a world of good, and then they went back to New York. She had interviews with the two publishers she’d heard from. They were going to take turns commuting to Washington on weekends. They were just starting out on their grown-up lives. His parents wanted him to come back to Boston in a year, when he left the military, but he and Allegra wanted to live in New York. It was more exciting. He was looking forward to weekends there.

He’d been home for three weeks and it was the end of June when they went to Washington so he could report to the intelligence office. He seemed almost like his old self again. He was getting there, and had only had one nightmare in the last week, which was a vast improvement over one or more per night when he first got home. He’d gained some weight, and looked more like the Shep she knew. When they went to Washington, they checked in to their favorite inn in Georgetown. It was quaint and cozy and they loved it. She did some shopping when he went to take care of his paperwork, and he had made reservations that night at 1789, their favorite restaurant, to celebrate his homecoming. He had served for four years and had done a tour of duty in Afghanistan and survived it. He couldn’t wait for the next year to go by, so he could leave the army and embrace civilian life. He had all the tools he needed to find a good job, after five years in Army Intelligence by the time they released him.

He was quiet when he got back from the office, she noticed that he still tired easily, and he was withdrawn until dinner that night. She wondered if it had been traumatic going back to the intelligence office. He didn’t say anything to her until they were eating dinner. She could see he had something to tell her before he said it.

“So, are you settled in at work?” she asked him, smiling, and he hesitated. He waited too long to answer her, and he looked serious when he did.

“They made me an offer. For extra pay,” he said quietly.

“Doing what?” she asked, suspicious.

There was no way around it, except to tell her. “They want me to go back to Afghanistan for another six-month tour of duty, and then finish up in Washington when I get back. I’ll go back as captain, better base salary and combat pay. They need me there, Allie.” He hadn’t called her that since she was a teenager.

“My father is still there,” she said bleakly. “That’s never a good sign. He only goes to the worst places.”

“They really do need me, Allegra. We can save the money. They swore I’d be home for Christmas.”

“And when would you leave?” She felt sick as she listened to him, and she could tell they had convinced him. He wanted to go. She could see it in his eyes. They had won. They had their hooks in him now.

“In two weeks. They would let me come home early, a few days before Christmas.” His voice was a low growl. “And I’ll do six months in Washington after the holidays, and then I’m done.”

“Is this what it’s going to be? They talk you into going back every time, and one day you wind up like my father? A robot. Three weeks ago you were having nightmares, and you looked broken when you came home.”

“I’ll have a desk job and work on strategy and statistics this time. No field work. No interrogations. No torture.”

“Isn’t that what they told you last time? Maybe this is how they roped my father in, except there was a real war on in Vietnam then. Maybe that life becomes addictive. But you can’t bounce back every time. One day there will be nothing left of you and you’ll be broken forever, like he is.”

“I’m not at that point yet. And we’re talking another six months in Afghanistan, not forever. I can do it. And I make a difference for my country there. Six months till Christmas is a short tour of duty, it’s not like a year or two years.”

“If you survive it, body and mind.” He had ruined the evening for her, and the celebration of his homecoming was over in three short weeks. He was going back, and she knew there was nothing she could do to stop him. They had hooked him, and he was ready to go back to a god-awful place, and they would send him back to her broken. “Do I have a choice?” she asked, looking upset.

“Maybe not so much,” he said honestly. “I feel like I should do it. I owe the army a lot. I told them I had to talk to you about it. I didn’t agree to anything yet.” She nodded and was grateful for that.

“You have to do what you think is right, Shep. But I wish you wouldn’t go. You got back relatively whole, next time maybe you won’t.” He had recovered in a few weeks this time but he had been in bad shape mentally when he got home.

“I swear I can handle another six months, and it’s a better job this time, with a higher rank.”

“Then I guess you’ll go,” she said sadly, and he smiled ruefully and thanked her. He had already forgotten how much he hated Afghanistan. They had promised him it would be better this time, and he believed them.

She was sad as they walked back to the inn after dinner. She loved having him home, and now he was going again. He felt guilty for upsetting her, but he was convinced it was the right thing to do. They knew just how to do it. “Where do you want to spend the next two weeks before you go?” she asked him.

“How about a week in Newport, and a week in New York afterward?” Their time together already had the bittersweet taste of goodbye to it. She hated the idea of his being back in a war zone. She just didn’t want him to turn into her father, but she didn’t see how he could, Shep was such a decent, warm, loving man. Her father was a war machine who had sold his soul years before, and there was no turning back from that. He never had. She wanted to believe that Shep could survive another six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan and remain whole. Maybe it wouldn’t affect him so much this time. He knew what to expect. She could only hope.

—

The two weeks flew by. They spent a week in Newport, at his parents’ home, as he wanted to. They had dinner with his parents in Boston before they headed back to New York. They were surprised to see her with him. Shep and Allegra had thought about telling them they were married, but decided against it. It would just give his parents one more thing to worry about. His going back to Afghanistan was enough. They were upset about it, and so was Allegra, but he had made the decision to go for six more months. She didn’t tell her grandmother about their marriage either. The time was wrong for her too. She had lost her husband three months before and was still in deep mourning. She didn’t need to hear about Shep going to Afghanistan.

The week Allegra and Shep spent together in New York was almost perfect, except that his leaving again was looming, and Allegra never forgot it for a second. She was already sad before he left. He promised her this would be the last time. And he wouldn’t reenlist when his five years were up, after six more months in Washington. After Afghanistan, he would come to New York every weekend, as he had before, since presumably she would have a job by then. She didn’t want to look for a job in Washington, when he wouldn’t be there for six months and she’d be alone. And all the publishers she wanted to work for were in New York. She was going to keep the apartment near Columbia, and then move to be closer to her work. She’d have to do all of it without Shep, but the job would keep her busy, just as her studies had done.

It was a painful déjà vu when she went back to Washington with him, and she resented the army for talking him into it. But he was upbeat and optimistic, and convinced he was doing the right thing for his country, giving the army another six months in a combat zone. At twenty-six, he felt up to it, and ready to take whatever job they were assigning him to, which he couldn’t disclose to her. Clearly he liked it. And he was going back as a captain, which he was happy about too. He didn’t have a single nightmare the week before he left. Officially he had recovered from his last tour there. At least it seemed that way. She had had him home for five short weeks and now he was going away again, for more of what he’d been through before. He was flying back to Afghanistan on the Fourth of July.

“Don’t make a habit of places like that,” she warned him, and he promised he wouldn’t. She couldn’t imagine him staying in the army either. He was ready for civilian life after four years now of active duty, with one more year to go.

The last time they made love before he left had the same bittersweet quality as his last days with her. She felt as though Shep belonged to the military now, and had only been on loan to her when he came home. She had lived that life with her father, and she didn’t want it for Shep or herself.

He kissed her hard when they said goodbye. “Don’t forget me!” There was desperation in his voice.

“Not likely,” she said. There were tears in her eyes, but he didn’t look as torn this time. He hadn’t just been assigned to go, he had chosen to accept the job, which made a difference to him. He had a voice in it. “Take care of yourself,” she said, and kissed him one last time. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he said, and left her. He turned back with a final wave, as she fervently hoped that this would be the last time he would leave her to go to another war zone. At least he would be home by Christmas. She had spent the previous one alone. She didn’t want to do that again.