Purple Hearts Read online

  We would each get one thousand dollars a month, I’d get on his health plan, and I’d up my hours in bartending. This would still cover my student loans and copays and blood sugar checks. Frankie could do whatever he wanted with his share of the money. And in the meantime, I wouldn’t have to get another day job. I could spend my days writing an album.

  And most important, if something went wrong, if my blood sugar got too high or low, that one-thousand-dollar ambulance ride that isn’t covered by insurance, and all the other bills—the hospital visit, and overnight stay—wouldn’t be sending Mom or me into poverty.

  Then there’s the other part of it, the whole faking-a-wedding endeavor. No problem. Frankie and I would go to the courthouse, claiming we’d loved each other since childhood. It wasn’t far from the truth, and hell, I know how to be in love. I’d done it a few times.

  Frankie had been first, probably, but so innocent. A kiss on the cheek or the lips before the streetlights turned on. Next came Andy, the upright-bass player in the jazz ensemble. We spent Saturday nights in the backseat while Charles Mingus played in the CD player, convincing ourselves that our hands down each other’s pants while listening to the best upright-bass player of all time was somehow different than regular hands down regular pants. I mean, how do you not fall in love with the first person who wants to touch you that way? I thought we were magic. Two jazz prodigies, entwined.

  But we weren’t prodigies. We were kids. Me, especially. Once, I’d flown three hundred miles to watch Andy’s college showcase. Instead of surprising him after the concert, I witnessed him making out with a willowy, freckled flute player in the wings.

  It was past one thirty, and Frankie still hadn’t texted, which was weird, because he used to call back within seconds. Then again, that was years ago.

  I started swinging to pass the time. The hard rubber dug into my hips. This was a terrible idea.

  After Andy, I’d stopped playing piano altogether. I’d confined myself to antimusic, listening to No Wave, Kraftwerk, BauHaus, Joy Division. I was alone, and I liked being alone.

  That’s why I thought James had been perfect. James didn’t believe in love, and neither did I. James believed in rational hedonism. I believed in secular humanism. We “fucked like animals,” as he would put it, and ingested every drug available on campus until we burned out, fought, and made up again. We enrolled in the same seminars so we could spend our nights comparing notes, editing each other’s papers, pushing against each other’s viewpoints so hard that we would have to rip our clothes off in the private study room on the fourth floor of the library. We didn’t think it was love, but of course it was.

  I dragged my feet on the ground to slow the swing. I checked my phone. No word.

  After I graduated from Pomona, I was surprised I didn’t run into Frankie again. I moved back in with my mother, applied to paralegal jobs. I started riding my bike. I started baking. I started wearing colors. I spent hours plunking out ragtime versions of Katy Perry and Rihanna. In my headphones, I pumped Elton John, Billy Joel, the Carpenters.

  And Tyler loved all this about me. Tyler told me he wanted to marry me on our third date, a late showing of Sabrina at Violet Crown Cinema. Tyler was in law school, Tyler brought my mom chrysanthemums the first time he met her. Tyler regularly got his hair cut by an actual barber. I bought toys for his niece’s birthday, I decorated the apartment we found in North Loop with large vases full of dried reeds. I got a job at the firm full time, with every intention to get into law school once Tyler had passed the bar. I was twenty-three, I had gotten my wild years behind me, and I had it all figured out.

  Then, something started to crumble, but in a good way. A hard shell falling off. I started to avoid Tyler by going on long walks, listening to album after album, any artist, any genre I could find, as long as I’d never heard it before.

  I had realized the only times I felt sad, tired, inadequate, were the hours spent at the firm, or in that sterile, empty apartment. When I was out in the world, by myself, I felt free.

  I’d moved into Rita’s attic within a week.

  That was a year ago. I’d been making minimum payments on my student loans, trying to keep my mother happy, teaching myself to hone my rough voice into something listenable, collecting synthesizer equipment, working fifty to sixty hours a week, and now learning how to cook food that wouldn’t kill me.

  And with the exception of exchanging occasional booty calls with the drummer of my band, I’d been doing all of it completely, gloriously, and sometimes terribly alone.

  Now I needed help.

  Finally, Frankie texted. Sorryyyy, on our way.

  Frankie would get it. He was still there, still willing and kind, at least. He could go overseas, I would stay here, and by the time he got back, well, I would have had my shot. If I wasn’t making a living from music then, and if Frankie was ready after deployment to pursue actual marriage with someone else, we’d break it off. I’d go back to having shitty jobs with crappy health insurance and figure out another way. Until then, we could just be two independent people in a mutual agreement.

  I took a deep breath and started walking toward his house. My gut was burning, but on my side. I’d fed it expensive quinoa for lunch. That always helped.

  After a few blocks, I looked up at his enormous house, hearing the door of the Lexus shut. People were laughing.

  Up the driveway, three people got out of the car: Frankie. Luke, the asshole from the other night. And a woman in a turquoise dress, maybe Luke’s girlfriend.

  I nodded at the woman and pretended Luke didn’t exist.

  “Frankie, can I talk to you for a second?” I said, holding the army brochure like a weapon, smiling big and scared.

  “Sure, Cass,” Frankie said, his brows furrowing. “Be right there,” he called, and Luke and the woman made their way into the house.

  “First of all, hi,” I said, and laughed for no reason, nervous.

  “Hi,” Frankie, said, laughing with me. “Good to see you after an ‘eventful’ night.”

  “Right, about that . . .” I had bent the brochure into a cylinder.

  “Sorry. Again. Also, please tell me we’re going to get to see you play before we ship out.”

  “Yeah!” I swallowed. “I mean, no, but that’s also kind of why I’m here.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I found out I have diabetes, and—” Frankie’s face twisted in concern. I stopped him. “No, it’s okay. I’ll be okay. Hear me out.”

  “But that’s so scary,” Frankie continued, softer.

  “It is. And I just lost my day job.” Before Frankie could pity me further, I said quickly, “So here’s what I’m thinking. With your army contract, married couples get two thousand dollars extra a month, and the spouse gets covered under your health care. So, like—” I paused, smiling with my teeth, my gut sloshing. “So what are you up to tomorrow?”

  Frankie squinted, smiling. Then an expression of understanding passed over his face. “Wait, is this a proposal?”

  “N-not like that,” I stammered. “We go to the courthouse. We get a marriage certificate. I’m your legal spouse. We split the money.”

  “Cassie,” he said.

  I handed him the brochure. He flattened it out of the crumpled mess.

  “It’d be so easy,” I pushed, on the verge of pleading. “We wouldn’t even have to pretend for that long, because you’ll be overseas.”

  “Housing and subsistence benefits for married couples?” Frankie laughed, incredulous. He stared at the paper. “Where did you get this?”

  “Armando gave it to Nora that night at the bar.”

  “Fucking Armando.” He shook his head. “Cass—but, like, why? Why are you even considering this?”

  A knot of regret was already forming. This wasn’t how I’d pictured this going. I pushed through it. “My health insurance is fucked, and if something were to go south with my diabetes, I couldn’t afford it. Especially on top of my student
loans.”

  Frankie exhaled. “Why don’t you just get a new job?”

  A flat laugh escaped me, thinking of the hospital room. This is a good hobby. “You should talk to my mother.”

  “There just has to be another way.”

  “I’ve been living the other way, Frankie,” I said. I felt the desperate edge to my voice. “It sucks. I did everything right. I went to college, I paid my own bills, I took care of myself. I had a career. Even when I was doing everything right, things went wrong. They’re going to go wrong again, especially now that I’m sick. So I might as well pursue my passion instead of grinding away at some buffer job that will get me nowhere anyway.”

  He stared at me, opening his mouth to speak, then closed it.

  I lowered my voice. “All you would have to do is sign some papers before you deploy. When you come back, I will get divorced, anything you want.”

  Frankie handed me back the brochure, and crossed his arms over his Captain America T-shirt. He kept looking back at the house as I spoke, as if he were afraid of someone inside. “Cassie,” he said, then pushed air out of his mouth, shaking his head. “I want to help you. I really, really do. You’re like blood. I would do anything for you.”

  “Those are things people say when they’re about to say no.” I could hear it in the air, his refusal. I was already thinking of ways I could pull it off as a joke. But if it were a joke, I wouldn’t be getting tears in my eyes. Damn it. I just asked someone to commit fraud so I could afford to have a disease.

  “If things were different, I would,” he said, reaching a hand out to touch my arm. “I’ve got Elena to think about now.”

  “Elena?” I asked, swallowing the lump in my throat.

  “My girlfriend,” he said, jerking his head toward the house.

  “Oh, of course!” The woman in turquoise. “Of course. Well.”

  “We’re pretty serious.”

  “Makes sense. That’s awesome,” I said, hoping I sounded happy for him.

  Clicking heels sounded on the pavement behind me. I turned to face Elena, a woman around my age with sleek black hair in styled waves. Her makeup was visible but tasteful, her dress bright and flattering.

  “Hey, baby!” she said to Frankie, cheerful. Then to me, “Hi, I’m Elena.”

  “Great to meet you,” I lied.

  As I shook her soft hand, some sort of chasm broke beneath me, pulling me down, spiraling around my gut and squeezing like a python. Elena appeared composed, loving, in control of her life, and of course Frankie didn’t want to upset that. Of course not.

  “How’d y’all meet?” I forced out.

  Frankie’s face lit up. “Through my mom. She came over here for a work thing last year. I always thought she was cute.”

  “We’re moving in together when Frankie gets back,” Elena said, and they exchanged nervous, adoring glances. “We’re so excited.”

  I could feel myself falling deeper into the chasm as they took each other’s arms.

  “That’s awesome,” I repeated. “Congratulations.”

  “Hey,” he started. “What if I give you a loan?”

  Elena tilted her head toward him, confused.

  “No, no, no, no.” I put up my hands in embarrassment, then realized I was still holding the brochure. I stuffed it in my purse. “I gotta go to work. I just, um. It was nothing. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Hey,” Frankie said again, and opened his arms.

  I hugged him hard, pinching my eyes against tears.

  “Frankie?” I whispered. “Could we keep this between us?”

  I felt him nod. We let go.

  “It was great to see you, Cass.”

  “You, too, Frankie.” It was. “Good to meet you, Elena.”

  She waved and I walked back toward the playground to my car. The tears came, quiet and thick, putting out the fire of nerves I’d felt earlier. They also dissolved the positive heat I’d felt, the sizzling go for it feelings that had lifted me through the events of the past week.

  Nothing was any different from before.

  I started to see my future. It wasn’t too hard to picture, really.

  I would wake up and test my blood sugar.

  I would go to my shift at The Handle Bar, pass out, wake up, do it again.

  I would keep pushing to make The Loyal a real band, until I got too tired or broke or both.

  If I got lucky, I would find a new, mindless desk job, listening to musicians who were better than me on my commute.

  Maybe if things got a little better, I would get a cat or a dog, or maybe if things got a little worse, I would move in with Mom. I would probably be paying off my medical bills and student loans until I had gray hair, or until I gave in and finally went to law school.

  And, hey, no fake marriage meant I wasn’t doing anything illegal. Everything was the same. No harm, no foul.

  I reached the playground, but I couldn’t bring myself to get into my shitty Subaru just yet. I looked at the swings where I used to pump until I was flying, looping at 180 degrees, positive in my little girl head that any second I would float off the swing and into the sky.

  Luke

  We’d pulled into the Cucciolos’ driveway, and Cassie had walked up in her jean shorts and unlaced Converses, with her hair falling out all over the place, her eyes on Frankie. She’d looked different from the woman I’d met behind the bar, the woman who knew exactly what she was doing and fuck you if you didn’t like it. She reminded me of a photo of her I’d seen on Frankie’s wall the other night, a little girl in a watermelon swimsuit, building sand castles. She was saying something like two thousand dollars extra a month, and at the mention of money, I couldn’t help it. I stayed next to the garage door and listened.

  I still didn’t know how I was going to pay Johnno five thousand dollars in three months, and I was losing time. I had considered a loan from the bank, appealing to their patriotism by pretending I needed it to put a down payment on a house. Help a poor soldier out. Hell, I’d pretend I was married for that one thousand dollars extra a month.

  I started running after her after she turned out of the driveway, toward a little playground down the street. Her words struck a note. After detoxing, it took me months to find a minimum-wage job with regular hours. Even then, it wasn’t enough to cover a life. It was half of why I enlisted. I had two years’ tuition to repay. And now I had Johnno to consider. When I caught up with Cassie, she was wiping her face, her shoulders hunched, about to get in her beat-up white Subaru.

  “Hey!”

  She kept her head down, bringing out her keys with one hand. With the other, she lifted a middle finger. She must have thought I was catcalling her.

  I started over. “Er—excuse me, Cassie?”

  She saw me approaching, narrowed her eyes, recognizing my face. “Oh, hi.”

  I put a hand on my chest. “Luke.”

  She draped her tattooed arms on her door. “Yeah.” She looked me up and down, pausing at my broken face. “Did you run here?”

  I nodded. “I wanted to say, uh—” I stopped. Now that I was able to see her face more clearly, I noticed she’d been crying. “I’m sorry for what happened the other night. At the bar.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and glanced at her keys.

  I took stock. Why had I come? Her plan. A wedding.

  Frankie was focusing on the risks, the alternatives. He wasn’t considering the benefits at all. I guess one thousand dollars meant very little to someone whose parents would pay his way through law school, whose family home was worth seven figures. It wasn’t like Frankie couldn’t be compassionate, but until you’ve wondered how you’re going to feed yourself, there’s a wall between you and everyone who does have to worry about that.

  I’m still on the other side of that wall, and apparently I wasn’t alone.

  “Well,” she said, sniffing, trying to wipe away the traces of tears still left. “Bye. Enjoy building roads and saving lives.”

  “I also
wanted to ask you more about your proposal,” I said quickly. “The one you just made. To Frankie.”

  She stared at the ground, scrunching her face. “You heard that?”

  “Kind of.”

  She looked everywhere but at me. “It was crazy. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She sighed.

  “But it’s actually a thing?”

  “It says so right here in your beautiful little propaganda booklet.” She handed me an army brochure.

  “ ‘Propaganda’ is a bit dramatic,” I muttered, shaking my head at the stock photos. I couldn’t help myself. “This is about as harmless as IKEA furniture instructions.”

  “IKEA instructions aren’t harmless,” she deadpanned. I looked up. “It’s well known that the little stick-figure guy is a socialist.”

  I found myself smiling. “Ha ha.”

  I paged through it, focusing on the spousal benefits sections. With every mention of money, I saw myself writing my signature on a check. I saw the taillights of Johnno’s Bronco fading, never to be seen again. And then Jake, laughing next to me on the couch while we watched the Cowboys. My dad sinking into a chair beside us, the hint of a smile, proud. I swallowed, then handed it back to her, noticing for a moment how the sun made her eyes spark gold. “This is a genius idea.”

  “You think so?”

  “If you could find the right person, yeah.” There it was again, my signature. Good-bye, Johnno.

  We stood in silence. My heart pounded. Finally, she gestured at me. “Are you recommending yourself, or are you just making vague, positive statements?”

  Before I could think, I pushed out the words. “I think I am.”

  She raised her eyebrows. She stepped out from behind the car door, and shut it, muscles visible in her legs from her Converses all the way up to the edge of her cutoffs. “I’m very serious about this.”

  “Me, too.” I felt my chest tighten. I was saying the words before I could comprehend what they meant. But it felt scary and correct at the same time, like in an animal way, a primal way, like sprinting down a hill or waking up suddenly after a long, sober sleep. We were both trapped in a corner of our lives, snarling and biting until we got out.