Purple Hearts Page 21

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  As I loaded the washcloth with soap, he rested his head on the back of the tub, breathing shallowly. He was exhausted, still wincing every few seconds. On instinct, I pushed him forward slightly, and ran the cloth down his back, to the parts it would be difficult for him to reach.

  “Where else?” I said.

  He opened his eyes. “Hm?”

  “Where else can’t you reach?”

  “No.” He held out his hand to take it. “I don’t need you to do that.”

  “Just let me.” I squeezed the washcloth, and the tug went lower inside me, but thank God he couldn’t see that, and thank God it was just the two of us so no one else could question why I thought this would be a good idea.

  He did let me. I started with his back, then up the neck, behind the ears. At first it was weird, but then it was just . . . nice. Nice to see him not in pain, and, yes, nice to touch him, as it had been that night six months ago. And perhaps nicer now, since neither of us was drunk or angry or awkward.

  “Thank you,” he said, lulled, his silver-blue eyes disappearing under tired lids. “This is really,” he started, and let out a shiver as I got close to under his arms. “Helpful.”

  “You’re welcome,” I replied, moving to his thighs, under his knees, the underside of his calves.

  Suddenly, “Sugar, Sugar” started up in my pocket. Luke flinched in the water, splashing me slightly. I laughed, and stood up, grabbing my meter and test strips from the medicine cabinet, my lance and lancelets from the shelf above the toilet.

  “Do you mind if I do this?” I asked, holding up the meter.

  “No,” Luke said, his eyes looking up at me. “I’ve always been curious about it, to be honest.”

  “Well,” I said, washing my hands. “It’s not that exciting.”

  I took my lance, poked the side of my index finger, drawing the tiniest drop of blood. I glanced at Luke. He was transfixed. I smiled.

  “Now,” I said, holding up a bloody finger, “I touch the edge of the strip, and we wait.”

  The air was quiet, thick with steam. I put a cotton ball on my fingertip.

  “About 3.6. A little low.” I grabbed a glucose tablet and popped it in my mouth. “Tablets for nonemergencies,” I said, pointing to the bottle. “Packets for emergencies.” I pointed to the box.

  “Why packets?”

  I hesitated, wondering how I should put this without scaring him. “In case I’m too out of it to swallow.”

  I heard him move around again, the water lapping. I opened the cabinet again, reaching the tiny notebook and pen I kept there to record my levels.

  “You record the blood sugar in a notebook?” Luke said.

  I nodded.

  “I do that, too. I mean with my running times.” He cleared his throat. “Or rather, I used to. Anyway, guess what?” he said. “I’m going to start physical therapy tomorrow, for real. I’m going to run again if it kills me.”

  I tossed the washcloth back into the water. I let out a breath. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  I glanced at his leg. The injured part was mottled brown, scarred. Just below his right knee was a single darker scar, the size of a bullet hole.

  “What, you don’t believe me?” he asked, snatching the washcloth out of the water to do the rest, splashing me.

  I splashed him back, standing. “Actually, I do.”

  Luke

  Jake still hadn’t shown, and I was beginning to worry. I wouldn’t be surprised if he backed out. We’d talked a week ago, and I’d even left my phone on just in case, but I hadn’t heard from him since. I hadn’t heard from Johnno, either, which was starting to make me think my phone wasn’t working, or something. The air outside Cassie’s house was cool. The grass was dry, the pavement wet where Rita had watered her planters. Passing cars kicked up dust and birds fluttered overhead. It was all so normal, but after weeks being cooped up in Cassie’s apartment, the world felt heightened somehow, a brighter version of itself.

  I’d been up, walking circles around Cassie’s apartment, for days, but this was the first time I’d tried the stairs by myself, using the cane the hospital had given me.

  Even so, my stiff legs were practically itching to run. I started to remember the last time, the day before Frankie and Rooster and I found out we were heading to the Pakistan border. I’d hit the track at dawn, leaving Rooster and Frankie sleeping in the little wood-paneled room, untouched air in my lungs, holding two truths at once: that everything was hard, and that everything was going to be okay.

  And then it hadn’t been.

  The memory hooks came. If we hadn’t gotten in the jeep, if I’d blocked Frankie, if, if, if. The daily desire for cloud head was rising, wanting to erase it all. I pushed it away. Not here, not here, not now. I’d taken only one this morning.

  I’d put Rita in charge of my prescription, instructing her to stagger them out to twice a day, no matter what I asked. She understood.

  Not a second later, as if to reward me, Jake turned down Cassie’s street in his car. “You need a hand getting in?” he called through the open window.

  I limped toward him. “Nah, it’s good.”

  “Well, look at you,” he said.

  The whole drive to Buda we barely spoke, just listened to the local sports radio station’s pregame analysis. It was the conference championship, they were saying. The Bears were favored to win.

  We were late. Of course, precisely when I had plopped my cane onto the first row of bleachers, hauling my gimp leg like a sack of potatoes, the band director tapped his baton on the stand. Everyone rose in silence, their hands on their hearts, poised to sing the national anthem.

  Thump. I had been concentrating on propelling myself to the next step, not noticing that the talking had died down. Kerthump.

  Everyone’s eyes were pulled toward the sound. “Poor guy,” I heard. “Morrow’s son. Veteran.”

  The band director, being the patriot that he was, waited until I had made a slow, rotisserie chicken–like turn to face the flag.

  “Oh, say can you see,” the voices began around me.

  “Move to give him your seat, Carl,” I heard.

  Jake and I kept our eyes ahead. I didn’t want anyone’s seat. All I did was get shot at and come back home and sit on a stranger’s couch eating pills. I didn’t deserve anyone’s seat. For the thousandth time that day, I wished I was cloud head. No.

  About halfway through the first quarter, Jake and I had finally made it to the only open seats in the third row.

  “You good, man?” he asked, helping to ease my lower half into a sitting position.

  “Yeah,” I assured him. “Just don’t ask me to get you anything from the concession stand.”

  Jake laughed and I felt an inch of relief.

  One of the Bears’ post players had just dived for the ball. Out of bounds. The whistle blew.

  “Good hustle,” I said.

  “Yeah, they’re scrappy this year,” Jake replied.

  The game resumed.

  I could barely remember what I had been thinking the other night, calling out to Cassie to watch me stand, my tongue like a dead fish in my mouth, but I remembered what I had wanted. To be better. Jake wasn’t going to start talking. This was my job, without a safety net.

  “Remember—” I swallowed. “It’s hard to believe this is the same place I took you for basketball camp.”

  “Yeah, I think about that sometimes. When I go to games.”

  “You were good, too.”

  “I was all right. I had to quit to start working at the garage.”

  I shook my head, remembering him coming home with Dad when he was just fifteen, on the rare days I wasn’t off somewhere getting high, his jeans covered in motor oil. “You grew up too fast.”

  “We both did.” The ref called a foul on the Bears. Jake threw up his hands, groaning with the crowd. “Aw, come on!”

  “Nah, not me. I was just a shi
thead.”

  “Yeah, but before that.” Jake took his eyes off the game, onto his hands folded between his knees. “After Mom died.”

  “How could you remember that?” He was just a baby.

  “How could you not?” His voice went up, thin. “I mean, I don’t remember Mom. But a few years after that, I remember Dad had you walking me to day care. Walking me home.”

  I’d help him into his clothes. Mostly my old shirts. My Batman shirt, which I had been mad didn’t fit me anymore. I had forgotten all this; it was so long ago. I shrugged. “Day care was just down the street.”

  The Mountain Lions missed their free throw. The crowd cheered. Jake leaned back, starting to smile. “After you walked us home you always liked to climb on the stool and get the animal crackers from above the refrigerator. And we’d sit there and watch Power Rangers until Dad came home.”

  “And then we’d act it out outside,” I said. “While Dad made his terrible hamburgers.”

  Jake laughed. “You told me the Pink Ranger was manly. Was the most manly color. Remember that?”

  “God.” I laughed with him. “We were progressive as hell.”

  “I tell JJ that, too,” Jake said, elbowing me. “I tell him that pink is fine. Whatever he likes is fine. Hailey loves that.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said. The teams took a time-out. The memories washed up, pooling around us.

  “I mean, listen, Luke,” Jake started, interrupted by two people getting up to go to the concession stand, muttering about the price of Coke. “You were my only person when we were little. That’s what I meant to say. Dad was there, but I don’t know if he ever really wanted to be a dad. He did his best. But you were there.”

  My throat tensed up. I looked at my shoes. The game started up again.

  “And when you began to pull away, and do shit, and act out, it was like losing another parent.”

  The force of what he was saying was about to knock me over. I had two choices. I could try to escape through some other route, some other feeling, or I could take it. I remembered knocking on Johnno’s door the day after I’d taken OxyContin for the first time. I had almost backed away before he could open it. I had almost gone back.

  I turned and looked at my brother. I saw my mother’s eyes in his eyes.

  “I think—” I paused, choosing my words. “This isn’t an excuse, but I think Mom’s death hit me later. It sideswiped me.”

  “I know it did,” Jake said, looking out on the game. He put his hand on my back for a second.

  My relief had weight, had substance. “I won’t do that to you again,” I said, my voice uneven.

  “You better not,” Jake muttered. “And don’t get any ideas about reenlisting after your leg heals.” Ten seconds until the first quarter was over. The Bears were behind by two points. “Mr. Purple Heart.”

  I looked at him. He’d probably seen it in the paper. Dad, too. I hadn’t really talked about it with anyone in depth yet. Every time I thought about my own Purple Heart, I saw Frankie’s bloody boots. It hardly seemed real. “We’ll see.”

  “Come on, defense!” Jake yelled. “Here we go!”

  With seven seconds left, the point guard stole an inbound pass and gained momentum down the court. Everyone around us stood, yelling, “Go! Go! Go!” Jake stood, too.

  I pressed on my cane, creaking upward, my leg shooting pain. No, I wouldn’t reenlist, I thought. I had other things to focus on. Staying sober, getting an education.

  By the time I was standing, and could see what happened, the point guard had scored. With labor, I sat again. Instead of getting frustrated, I smiled at Jake, who helped me conquer the last inch or so.

  “So, did y’all get a nurse?” Jake asked.

  I clutched my cane, my lips pressed. “We should have.”

  Jake shook his head at me. “You made Cassie do it all by herself?”

  “Her neighbor helps out. It was a decision we made together.”

  “Man.” Jake shook his head, admiring.

  “I know. She’s good, yeah.” I thought of Cassie’s beaming face when I had started to walk the other day, her taking my arm as we circled the room. Had I thanked her for that? “She’s amazing,” I added, and felt the truth of my words. Even when we fought, she braced her body against mine, still fuming.

  “I bet she complains, though. I’d whine about it all the time if I were her.”

  “She doesn’t too much,” I said. “Not to me, at least.”

  “She’s a good one, Luke,” Jake said, looking from the game to me for a moment. “You picked yourself a good one.”

  The buzzer sounded for halftime. Jake stood, stretching. “You want anything?”

  Suddenly, a man in a bright orange T-shirt took the court, holding a wireless microphone. “Okay, okay, people! Who’s ready to win some pizza from Gino’s?”

  The crowd roared.

  “What the hell?” I asked Jake, laughing.

  Before he could answer, a blond woman in an equally bright orange shirt accompanied the man, holding a fishbowl of red scraps.

  “All of your ticket stubs were put into this bowl. The lucky seat I draw will get the chance to win free pizza for a year if you make a half-court shot!”

  “Well, shit,” Jake said, turning to look at me, eyebrows raised. I rolled my eyes.

  “And the lucky seat is . . .” The woman drew a scrap from the bowl. “Row C, seat eleven!”

  The folks around us turned side to side, and then, slowly, all faced me. I looked at my seat. It was me. I was in row C, seat 11. Shit.

  For the second time that day, everyone stared. Ex-girlfriends who had gotten plump with babies, former social studies and English teachers who had wanted to flunk me, former football coaches who had failed to whip the mouth off me, former friends and parents of friends who had seen me drunk off of the vodka stolen from their liquor cabinets, all were waiting to see what I would do.

  I lifted my cane, shaking my head, feeling humiliation rise in my stomach, hot and soupy. Jake tried to wave them off, smiling politely, saying, “All right, now, back off,” through his teeth. “The man doesn’t want to do it.”

  “Jake,” I said suddenly, warmth rising to my face, “you gotta do it.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, are you kidding? You’ve made that shot a hundred times.” Even as a kid, he could launch it from well past the three-point line, if he did it from his hip.

  I pointed at Jake, and I don’t know what came over me, but I began to chant. Maybe it was the army man in me, the person who loved to move in sync, who’d fall back to the privates who weren’t running as fast, breathe with them, yell with them, helping them make it to the finish line.

  “Jacob, Jacob, Jacob,” I shouted.

  Everyone caught on. “Jacob, Jacob,” the whole gymnasium joined in.

  Jake’s face turned red. He held up his palms. “All right!”

  I watched him leap down the bleacher steps two at a time. I held no hardness, no anger that I would be able to go only half as fast when we left, that the pain would almost break me, that I’d want OxyContin when I got home to make it all go away.

  Jake caught a bounced pass from the man in the orange shirt. I won’t do that to you again, I’d told him. This time, I knew what terror might come, tempting me to go back, to let Oxy numb me. But I also knew that the pain of giving in to my addiction would be much deeper.

  Jake looked at me. I gave him a Power Rangers stance in my seat. He dribbled to the opposite free-throw line, pressed forward, and launched the ball into the air.

  Cassie

  Luke sat in the front seat of the Subaru, his cane propped on the door. I reached between his legs to clear out the empty water bottles and granola bar wrappers that had accumulated near his feet. And by ‘clear out,’ I mean put in the backseat. “Sorry,” I said, stifling a yawn.

  “It’s cool,” he replied, laughing a little, eyeing the empty Queen, Natalie Cole, David Bowie, and Patsy Cline CD cases pil
ed on the dashboard.

  He’d wanted to go to the river, so he could keep working on his PT outside. Of course I’d said yes, and offered to pick him up later, but I was nervous, for some reason. He’d been inside for so long, sheltered from the chaos of the outside world, vulnerable and defenseless. I felt like I was releasing an injured lion back into the savanna.

  When I turned on the ignition, Portishead blasted at high volume. I turned it down, giving him a whoops look as I reversed. “Not used to having anyone else in my car.”

  Except for Toby, and unless I kept the volume up high, he would talk about the music instead of just listening to it. That’s why, I’d discovered, going to loud concerts with him was fun.

  Luke rolled down the window. “You can keep it turned up,” he said, content with his face in the breeze.

  Okay, Cassie, chill. He wasn’t an infant with sensitive eardrums. I turned it up, and, yeah, fine, I sang along with Beth Gibbons, because that’s what I would have done otherwise. Luke nodded along, lost in his own thoughts.

  When we reached the river, he guided me to a spot in the park as if he knew it.

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “Yeah,” he said, not elaborating. I resisted the urge to ask him more. I didn’t know why I wanted to know, anyway.

  “Thanks, Cassie.” He lifted his injured leg out, put the cane on the pavement, and pushed himself up, reaching a hand in to wave good-bye.

  “Oh, Luke, your phone!” I said. He’d left it on the seat.

  It was vibrating. He grabbed it, looked at the number, his mouth twisting for a moment in disgust.

  “Eh,” he said. “I don’t need it. You can pick me up here, thanks.” He tossed it on the car floor, out of sight.

  “Okay, bye,” I called through the open window.

  I watched him limp away, solo against the endless wall of trees. Suddenly, I remembered: I had forgotten to get him a plant.

  Luke

  For five days straight, Cassie dropped me off on the trails at River Place on her way to work, and Rita picked me up after. I started with fifteen minutes of exercises. If I could get through fifteen minutes and fifteen knee raises, I’d get through twenty the next day. If I could get through fifteen minutes, I could take out the trash.