Chapter Twelve #2
“What I’ll need from you,” the doctor said, “is some reasonable thinking. Convince me you’re in a sound state of mind.”
“I’m in a sound state of mind,” Felix said.
The doctor was looking at the chart. The same goddamned chart from Manila, Felix suspected; they’d flown it over with him. “Convince me you don’t wish you’d gone down with the Teague.”
It was so frustrating. Was he not allowed to be devastated? “Isn’t it normal to wish that, given what happened? Just in terms of how simple it would have made everything? Isn’t that a common reaction?”
“No.” The doctor backed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “The common reaction to having survived a deadly event is to feel grateful you survived it. So that’s our starting point.”
—
Logic was supposed to fix this. And for all Felix knew, logic would. Why had he tried to get off the ship? Because he was going to die if he didn’t get off the ship. Did that tell him anything? And what he’d done with the kapoks. Did that tell him anything? Around and around.
Finally, Felix said, “You want me to tell you I’m not sad because of what happened? I can’t tell you that.”
“Do you still feel like you were abandoning some of the men—one in particular—when you jumped ship?”
“Did I say that in Manila?”
“You said that here, yesterday.”
“I don’t know. No, I guess not.”
“Let’s talk about…” The doctor’s eyes scanned the file. “Augustus D. Varick, Seaman, First Class.”
“Why is that name there?”
“You mentioned him a number of times in your previous care. It says you asked after Seaman Varick’s whereabouts”—he squinted, hoisting his cheeks—“ ‘repeatedly and in a distressed state.’ And you were concerned that his remains weren’t recovered.
A lot of deceased weren’t recovered. Were the two of you close? ”
Felix went to speak but stopped himself.
“Do you know why his death, in particular, is so upsetting for you?”
Because the best parts of Felix had been knocked out in the blast and leached out of him in the salt water.
Because the rest of him, the worthless parts, had been hauled up onto the deck of the USS Rigdon by means of a rescue harness, while Augie drifted beneath the surface or was trapped in the hull of the Teague.
Felix hadn’t been able to come up with a single scenario in which Augie had survived.
The muscles in his face began to tremble. Tears fell from his jaw.
“He was my friend.”
—
Out the window, in the distance, the spires of the Golden Gate Bridge pierced a dense, stagnant fog. He lit his fiftieth cigarette of the day.
“This whole war has been a pain in the ass,” he said.
Which didn’t sound like him, but that was the point; it made the doctor chuckle.
It also opened a portal in their dialogue that Felix could start to pull himself through, broken shoulder and all.
“I have a wife. I had things going on, before I left. I want to go home.”
“I know you do. But I’d like to be a little more certain that it wouldn’t be all the same to you if you’d died. You just gave more than three years of service to your country. You survived something traumatic. This isn’t the time to be indifferent about your future.”
“I won’t be,” Felix said. Then, feeling that wasn’t the right response, “I’m not.”
“I’ve been wondering if you might want to write to Seaman Varick’s family. A letter about Augustus. It seems the two of you were close, and you’re particularly bereaved. Writing to them might help both them and you.”
“Maybe,” Felix said, knowing he couldn’t—and wouldn’t—write to the Varicks. He couldn’t imagine touching his grief to theirs. He smoked and watched the doctor scribble in his file.
Finally, the doctor sat back in his creaking Windsor, set his pen down, and folded his arms across a stomach that was like a small casting drum.
“I’m just going to take a shot in the dark and say something.
Things happen in war, son. There’s a lot of separation, a lot of uncertainty.
Some incredibly—intense—friendships are forged in a war, that’s for certain.
And we don’t all come back. You need to let yourself off the hook, whatever hook you think’s got your name on it.
Go easy on yourself, so you can get back to your life.
Back to your family and your plans, like you were saying.
The only way to move on from something is to put yourself where it’s not. You agree with that, don’t you?”
Wholeheartedly, yes.
—
He was given the name of someone else to report to, and inwardly he reeled, but this man wasn’t a doctor.
He was a soft-eyed business school graduate from Mississippi who talked rights and benefits, explained how Felix could roll his life insurance, told him he was still accountable for his outstanding debts, if there were any, and he should look into his back taxes, see how much he owed and get that squared away.
He had a six-month grace period with the IRS as a veteran; after that, all bets were off.
The Mississippian sent him to an Oregonian, who explained the G.I.
Bill and the unemployment insurance it offered.
Then came a medical examination as thorough as the one he’d received going in.
From there, they sent him to the finance office for his back pay—in cash, plus a bonus for mustering out and a stipend for getting home.
He was so exhausted from it all that he nearly asked if they could give him a bed in the hospital for just one more night.
But he didn’t. He had three days of sleeping on a train ahead of him.
He called Margaret again to update her on his arrival day and time, and when he said he loved her and couldn’t wait to see her, his voice cracked and wouldn’t work for a moment.
He’d forgotten how to express certain emotions, maybe.
Margaret, saying it all back to him, sounded a little rusty herself.
He had no luggage, not even a duffel bag.
They gave him a new toothbrush and razor.
When he stepped onto the train, there were nearly a dozen people already onboard, and a woman near the front smiled at him and started clapping.
A few others clapped too, and then it seemed that everyone in the car was clapping.
Not since he’d proposed to Margaret in Lazarus had he warranted the applause of strangers.
This time because of the uniform, he knew; because of the arm in a cast, the sling.
Still, they applauded—and all he’d had to do was spend three years on a ship, almost drown, and go a little crazy.
—
Margaret was waiting for him at the train station in Bonhomie.
It was late afternoon and bright, the summer air, far removed from all coasts and oceans, still and heavy.
Margaret looked beautiful, and just slightly older.
She hugged only one of his shoulders because of his injuries.
She kissed him, and got up on her toes to kiss his forehead, and squeezed his right hand and kissed that too, smiling, trying to get used to the sight of him.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in months.
They went to Wickersham’s Steakhouse for an early dinner.
Felix asked her everything he could think to ask so that he wouldn’t have to talk about himself, then the food arrived, and Margaret offered to cut his steak, and he thanked her but managed on his own.
Because he was so accustomed to eating quickly on the ship, he ate without stopping; when he looked up, he was almost done and she’d barely started.
So much had changed about the house that he questioned his memory of it.
At Margaret’s suggestion, he sat in the backyard in one of the new Adirondack chairs and smoked and drank a Coca-Cola.
She brought out a plate of macaroons and Fig Newtons.
She brought out the newspaper, and in the waning light he paged through it, its content artificial to him, the leaves of the oak tree peeking over the top of the page unnaturally green.
When dusk came, they went back inside.
Felix climbed the stairs first and changed out of his uniform.
When Margaret walked into the bedroom, he was standing shirtless before the dressing mirror.
He was thin, she thought. Thin, and wrapped in bandages that went from the base of his neck to his ribs on the opposite side, back to his armpit and over his collarbone.
His ribs were wrapped crossways too. First aid class was going to come in handy, after all. She smiled at him in the mirror.
“Do you want to get into bed?” he asked.
She realized he meant with him. It was eight-fifteen. His amber eyes were alight on her face, tracing it, relearning it, maybe, and he looked as handsome as he ever had to her. “Yes, Felix,” she said, adding quietly, “and you can just relax.”
But he seemed to really want to go to bed with her. It seemed important to him to try to make that happen.
They moved together quickly but, due to his condition, carefully.
She couldn’t get to her diaphragm, because pausing for it would put at risk an already delicate undertaking.
She hadn’t used it with Cal, either, because she hadn’t had it with her at the studio.
She reflected on these two things before she took Felix fully inside, surprised at how readily sex with him came back to her: his breathing, the way he so carefully parked himself, his slow, cautious movements.
She’d learned how to enjoy this with him, and she was grateful for the way the desire she’d always felt for him came back into her body.
She moved with him, holding the back of his beautiful head, her other hand low on his slender hip, pulling him deeper into her.
Later she would marvel at how different their lives would have been—hers, Felix’s, Cal’s, the baby’s—if she and Felix hadn’t had sex that first night he was back.
If he hadn’t managed it, or if she’d felt differently about giving it a go.
But with some skillful maneuvering and verbal encouragement they were successful, and that wound up saving her, for a while, from having to explain so many things.