Purple Hearts Read online

  “Cassie!” I called. My words were slurring. I didn’t care. “C’mere. Please. Just for a second, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  Cloud head began to yank my thoughts in reverse. I wheeled toward her room. I stopped.

  What if I had never met her? What if I had never overheard her proposing to Frankie? What if I had never met Frankie? And if I had never met Frankie, Frankie would have roomed with someone else who could have been in the jeep with him at the Pakistan border, maybe someone who might have told everyone to stay in the jeep, and as a result, Frankie and Rooster would still be alive.

  What if I had never joined the army?

  What if I had never left cloud head?

  What if I had never found cloud head in the first place?

  What if I never needed it?

  What was before cloud head?

  Before, when I taught myself to change my brother’s diapers and asked why the sky was blue and whether ghosts were real. When I called V100 and requested “Spirit in the Sky” for my dad. When I had a mother. When I knew how to want, and how to love. When I knew how to actually do things for people, rather than hate myself for not doing them.

  Cassie finally came out, running her hands through her hair. It was down to her shoulders now. We’d known each other long enough to watch the other’s hair grow.

  She sat down, the heat and weight of her warming, making me feel less alone.

  “I want to be better,” I said, trying not to slur. “I want to help out around here.”

  She kept her eyes ahead, and took a deep breath. She put a hand on my back. I tried to sit up straighter. My vision was crossing.

  Though she was sitting next to me, I heard her voice from far away. “You have to get your shit together.”

  I could. I could be a real friend to Cassie. I could protect her house. I could get rid of Johnno. I could protect my brother and his family. But I couldn’t get up. All I could do was think, remember.

  Come on, cloud head. Get up. You can do it. Cloud heads can do things, too. Come on, cloud head. I was sick of myself. I was sick of cloud head, I was sick of regular head, I was sick that I had even invented them. Because that’s all they were. Thoughts.

  One, two, three.

  Get up.

  Cassie

  The next morning, when I walked into the living room, Luke was standing.

  His hair was plastered with sweat, his sweatpants were falling off his ass, but he was up, using the back of the couch for support, shuffling back and forth, muttering to himself like Macbeth’s wife.

  I didn’t say anything at first.

  That’s how Luke and I preferred it, right? We didn’t acknowledge each other. At least that’s how he’d preferred it until last night.

  It wasn’t like I was doing any of this out of the pure goodness of my heart. I was still under his health insurance, I would still get half of his severance, so it was best we kept it to practical exchanges. Me handing him damp, soapy towels through the bathroom door so he could clean himself. Him averting his gaze while I got out of the shower. It was all part of the job.

  But sometimes his pain was so clear I could feel it in my own bones. At least once a day I felt it, felt him hurting so hard that it extended across the room. When he’d reach to adjust his pillow. When he’d bend to pick something up off the floor. When he was still waking up from a nightmare with a choked scream.

  So now, seeing him standing like that, I couldn’t help it, I started clapping.

  Luke

  I was panting, but I didn’t care. Clutching the couch, a step. I wiggled my toes, proving I could feel the hardwood floor beneath them. I could put weight on it. It was stiff and I couldn’t walk alone but I could use the muscles.

  “I can’t believe you got up on your own!” she said again, her smile taking up her whole face. She looked me up and down, probably so unused to seeing me upright.

  Another gentle step. The floor stayed solid.

  Pinching pain rather than stabbing. Pinching and poking, small, like a secret, like Jake and I used to do to each other in the grocery store line when we knew we would get in trouble if we pushed each other in public.

  “Goddamn,” I said, swallowing the lump that had formed in my throat.

  It’d been a wave inside me when the sun had hit my eyes this morning, my mouth dry from passing out. I’d reached for my glass of water but realized I’d left it on the shelf where the records were, across the room. A chorus of fuck, fuck, fuck had rung in my ears, louder than usual, fueled by anger at my useless body, that I couldn’t get a fucking glass, that I could feel my stomach spilling over the same sweatpants I’d worn for a fortnight.

  I’d pressed so hard on my feet that I wanted the floor to fall away. Pain was there, but I’d told it to fuck off.

  Fuck off, I’d said aloud on the second attempt, and I’d pressed on the coffee table, almost tipping forward until my knees caught the edge.

  I’d tensed my quads like I used to when we lifted weights for football, felt them shake. Just when I thought they were going to give out, I was straight. They were straight.

  I was up, I was up, and Cassie reached for me, taking my arm, somehow knowing I’d want to walk in a circle, around and around, away from the couch, the room its own little country.

  Her steps with mine were strong, slow.

  She beamed at me. My chest felt wide open.

  “You don’t have to stick around if you don’t want to,” I offered. “Do you have anywhere to be?”

  “No. Here,” she said, steering me toward the stereo. “Let’s put on some music. What do you want?”

  I didn’t know at first, but then the smell of motor oil drifted toward me from another time, the vision of my dad’s hands tapping along on the hood while he examined an engine. “I’d like to request,” I began, and took another step with her arm now around my waist, “ ‘Spirit in the Sky’ by Norman Greenbaum.”

  Cassie

  It was cool and sunny, so I opened the windows to the apartment and put on David Bowie’s “Rock and Roll Suicide,” turning it up as high as it would go. I’d decided to wait until my mother’s schedule matched mine so I could tell her the band’s news in person, and I had a good feeling about today. Luke had been standing on his own for a few days in a row, and was now outside with Rita, making laps around the yard.

  I was nine days and a thirty-minute show away from being signed for a record deal. I couldn’t wait to tell her: I was a musician, and I had proof.

  When she pulled up outside, I watched her step out of her Camry wearing drugstore sunglasses, a Rosario Ferré book under her arm. I smiled, and turned down the music as she climbed the stairs.

  “Who’s mowing your lawn?” she was saying as I opened the door. “It’s a jungle out there.”

  “Oh, Rita’s supposed to take care of that,” I said, reaching over to kiss her on the cheek.

  “And you’re wearing a dirty T-shirt. Same jeans for days. Estas flaca.”

  I pursed my lips, resisting a retort, reminding myself that today was supposed to be good. To fix things between us. Still, sometimes I thought I could tell her that I won a Nobel Prize and she’d say, Make sure they aren’t using that photo of you from your goth days.

  But that was about to change.

  “Anyway, Mom, I—”

  “And where am I supposed to sit?” She was looking at the couch, which held Luke’s pillow and blanket, crumpled and probably smelling like sweat.

  My face burned.

  She picked up the blanket and began to fold. “Does a nurse come?”

  “Rita comes. From downstairs, on nights when I have to bartend or when I need to practice.”

  She set down the squared blanket, and picked up the pillow, beginning to fluff it. “Hm. And how long will you have to do that without figuring out how to pay her for real?”

  I watched her work, trying to find the right words. “Well, yeah, but hopefully Luke will be better soon. And, Mom, I have
something to tell you.”

  “Go on,” she said, tossing down the pillow, a smile growing on her face.

  My stomach dropped. My heart started to beat, hard. She would be proud of me. Right? “I don’t think it’s exactly what you want to hear, but it’s good.”

  She pulled a strand of hair out of my mouth. “Oh, does this have something to do with your piano playing?”

  A punch to the gut. “Piano playing? Mom, it kills me that you call it that. It kills me.”

  “What would you rather I call it?”

  “My career.”

  “Your career.” When I looked back at her, she was rubbing her temples, as if my lack of comprehension were giving her a headache. “All I’ve told you, all I’ve given you, out the window.”

  “All right, forget it. Forget it.” I fought back tears, heading toward the kitchen. “You want some lunch? I’m done talking to you about this.”

  “Why?”

  I stopped, shaking my head.

  She continued, “Because you don’t like what I say?”

  I turned back to face her. “No, because I invited you here to tell you the best news I’ve ever received in my life, and I know you’re not going to care because it doesn’t fit into your idea of what my life should look like.”

  She got quiet. “So I guess you’re not going to tell me you’re going to law school?”

  I let out a harsh breath, barely a laugh. “No. Fuck no.”

  “Don’t curse at me.”

  “I might get signed to a label. Wolf Records. Do you know what that means?”

  We were quiet. She sighed. “I assume it means you are putting your music ahead of your security.”

  No congratulations. Of course not. No acknowledgment. She couldn’t even fake it.

  I tried to keep my voice from shaking. “It means I might go on tour, get paid, everything.”

  For a minute, she looked frightened. Then she let out a breath, big and put-upon. “God help you. And God help Luke.”

  “Hey, Mom?” I started picking up Luke’s stray clothing from the floor, stuffing each item into his bag. “Maybe, just, you know, think about what I do in the context of the larger world, instead of whatever scheme you’ve concocted in your little apartment.”

  “I fed you and raised you in that little apartment so you can throw away your education to go on a road trip.”

  “A road trip! Give me a fucking break.” She made feel like a teenager again, like I was spitting answers back at her through my bedroom door.

  “Leaving Luke behind to fend for himself. What does he think of all this?”

  “Luke. He— he doesn’t—mind.” I couldn’t really speak for Luke’s thoughts on The Loyal. But that wasn’t the point. She couldn’t even be proud or happy for one second before questioning me, delegitimizing me. “This is not a road trip. I’m not a street musician with a hat sitting out on the sidewalk. I’ve been playing my whole life, and you know that.”

  “I know that,” Mom said, quiet.

  “Why do you dismiss me even when I have proof that I can do this?” I yelled loud enough that a flock of birds scattered from the ash tree out the window.

  “Because I’m scared for you!” She pointed to my stomach, to my disease-ridden gut. To Luke’s pills sitting on the end table, to our dirty little home. All of a sudden I could see it, the dirt, and I flushed hot with embarrassment. “I don’t know how you’re going to make it last.”

  “Your fear is your problem!”

  “It’s not just my problem. What will the military say? What will Luke do?”

  “Luke will get severance. He has the GI Bill for when he’s ready to go to school. I haven’t had an episode in months, Mom. I keep my blood sugar stable. I cook. I take care of myself. My own way.”

  “I’m still concerned. I’m allowed to be concerned.”

  “Not anymore.” I crossed the room, opening the front door. An invitation.

  She sighed. “I’m never going to talk you out of this, am I?”

  I waved my hand toward the door. “You’re not going to talk to me, period, until you can respect my choices.”

  “Then I’ll go.”

  I was trying to ignore my gut’s panicked churning, reminding me that we had never parted this way, harsh enough not to speak.

  She gathered her book, put on her sunglasses, and walked past me, a sad smile on her face. I knew she was burning inside, though. She wanted to be right. I’d wanted to be kind. I was done being kind. But she’d never not want to be right.

  Mija, she’d said. Mi hija. Not just daughter, my daughter. She thought she owned me. Not anymore.

  Luke

  It started, as most things started for me these days, in the chair. For the exercise I had in mind, all I had to do was keep my leg straight and lift it up, but there wasn’t a lot of room in Cassie’s apartment to bend my good leg and spread my hands for balance. So I’d asked Rita to help me down the stairs and keep an eye on the backyard in case the pain got to be too much.

  As slowly as I could, I lowered myself to the ground.

  When I got there I was already breathing hard. But now I had space. I had clear vision. I had no cloud head. Just one, I told myself. Just one and you can be done.

  I imagined my leg was the tree I thought it was in the hospital, when my thoughts were eclipsed by pain. It was the trunk of a tree cut down, and I was back in Buda, still young and happy, at the landscaping job with my brother. I visualized him at the other end, lifting. Let’s get this out of the way, I said to him. One, two, three.

  It was up two inches, and it was down.

  The pain was there, but it was a calm line of waves, back and forth, lapping. This seemed to work, the practice of attaching everything my body was doing in this yard to objects outside this yard, to moments of peace.

  In my mind, I was standing in the makeshift garage on the FOB, my hands resting on the door of a jeep, listening to Clark test its engine.

  In my mind I was running.

  Cassie

  After my mom left, I had begun to pace. This was my household, I was responsible for it, and I liked it this way. Just like I liked wearing the same clothes, and I liked having my magazines scattered on the floor, and I liked that the alarm I’d set for checking my blood sugar every few hours was programmed to play “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies.

  And, yes, this was a tiny, dirty one-bedroom apartment that I paid for by slinging rail cocktails and deceiving the U.S. military, but it was mine, and there were different piles for different things.

  There was the black-clothes pile. There was the not-black-clothes pile. There was the pile of Luke’s clothes. There was the pile of records. There was the pile of things Luke had used or would use in the future, some of which was trash, okay, but it was convenient because he could reach it from the couch.

  Yeah, I’d thought, it did kind of smell in here. It smelled like a sweaty human body. Which was normally fine by me, for the record. But one shouldn’t have to constantly muck around in another’s aura.

  Fine. Fine! I would take care of myself, just to prove I could do it. But I would use the most toxic corporate bleach, and I would listen to Yoko Ono’s primal-screaming records while I did it.

  I put our clothes and Luke’s blankets in the wash. I removed the trash piles in the living room and kitchen, then swept and mopped the floors, and scrubbed the sink and tub. I mopped the bathroom tile, cleaned the oven, opened the windows, and dusted the sills. I even washed my hair, shaved my legs, plucked my eyebrows, trimmed my bikini line.

  Luke opened the door, flashing me a small smile. He was wearing his old sweatpants and a Buda Bears T-shirt with visible pit stains. The effort he’d been expending the last few days was now hovering around him in the form of man scent. Since he started living here, Luke had not yet properly bathed.

  Well, now he would. Or, at least, he would once we got him into the bathroom.

  Which is how I ended up trying not to look at his na
ked body as he braced himself on the edge of the tub, hands clutching either side, lowering himself into the steaming water. We had considered a shower, but we were afraid he’d slip, and none of my chairs fit under the measly tap that hung over the claw-foot tub. Problem was, I had to hold him by the chest, making sure his good leg didn’t slip and splash water all over the floor, or worse, jam the injured leg against the side.

  “Ow, ow, ow, fuck.”

  My hands were slipping across his chest. “What?”

  “Just, slower.”

  “I’m trying.” I followed the line of the water as it hit the tops of his thighs, the lines of muscle cutting his pelvis.

  God, Cassie. Perv, my gut said.

  I couldn’t help it.

  Some hidden part of my brain started shooting images of him inside of me in the motel bathroom. And again on the bed. And again on that chair near the bed. STOP.

  Remember that this is the man who pissed himself on your floor.

  Finally, he was sitting.

  Oh. And he was aroused. I hadn’t noticed; too busy trying not to be aroused. “Okay,” I said, feeling my face flush.

  “Yeah,” Luke said, covering it with his hand. “Sorry. It’s been a while since I, you know, was naked in front of a woman.”

  I shuffled around, looking for a washcloth. “It’s biology,” I said, my voice doing that thing that it does when I don’t know what to say.

  Without looking, I tossed a washcloth in the water and stood up, headed toward the door. Something tugged at me, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t been naked in front of a man in a while. I had no excuse.

  “Is there soap?” he said behind me.

  “It’s in the rack hanging on the spigot.”

  A second later he yelled, “Fuck, ow.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, I can’t reach it.”

  “It’s right behind you,” I said to the wall.

  “I can’t.”

  I turned around and knelt, seeing his face strain as he twisted. In order to get it, he had to press his leg against the side of the tub.