chapter5
“When I told you in 2013. I told you in 2014. I told you at Christmas of 2015. I told you in the garage at the lake house in the summer of 2016. I told you in the hospital when Mom had her hip replaced in 2019. Each time, you stopped listening when I got to the part where I was the lead pilot, and you went and asked Mom what she thought of the pickup truck you were looking at.”
He had not known any of this.
He had also known all of it.
I watched the knowledge land on him.
“You made me look stupid in front of my platoon, Vivian.”
He used my full name. He had not used it in years.
“I did not make you look stupid,” I said. “Hulkcom made you look slow. Hulkcom did not mean to. He had no way of knowing you did not know.”
“You should have told me before tonight. Before I walked in there with my Marines and let them say Cupcake.”
“Dominic, what? I am forty years old. You are twenty-eight. I have known about Sangin for thirteen years, and you have known about Sangin for thirteen minutes. I am sorry that the order of those two numbers is uncomfortable for you. I am not sorry the numbers are what they are.”
He looked at me then.
He had his father’s face. He had had his father’s face since he was a boy. He had not had his father’s eyes until the year before he enlisted.
He had them now.
He was a Marine looking at a sister he did not know how to look at, and he had no rank in his pocket that would help him.
“Mom is going to call you.”
“I know.”
“She’s going to ask why you did not tell me.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“The same thing I am telling you.”
He breathed out. He took his hands out of his back pockets. He did not put them anywhere. They hung at his sides.
“You have a Cross.”
“I have a Distinguished Flying Cross. There is no Air Force Cross for stayed on station. The Air Force Cross is one level above. There are men in the Air Force who deserve one and do not have one. I am not one of them.”
“You have a DFC with a V.”
“Yes.”
“You have never said it out loud to me before.”
“You have never asked.”
He looked at the asphalt again.
The moth in the streetlight had stopped beating against the glass.
“I do not know what to do with this,” he said.
“I do not need you to do anything with it tonight.”
“You’re going to leave tomorrow.”
“I am going to leave Monday.”
“What do you want me to do?”
I had not known until he asked.
I had not known I had a thing I wanted from him.
I thought about it for the length of a slow breath.
“I want you to go back inside and sit down at your own promotion party and let your platoon Gunny tell you the truth. I do not want you to interrupt him. After that, I want you to think about it for a week. Then I want you to come and find me on your own, with no Mom and no platoon and no beer. I do not want a public apology. I want a private one.”
He nodded.
He nodded the way a Marine nods.
“And Mom?” he asked.
“Mom is going to be Mom. I am not going to fix that for her. I am not going to fix it for you. She gets to find her own way to whatever this is.”
The door behind me opened.
Hulkcom was framed in it.
He did not say anything.
He looked at me and held the door open. Then he looked at Dominic and still did not say anything.
I went back in.
Dominic followed me.
Hulkcom pulled out my chair without making a show of it.
The Marines were sitting. The cake was on the table. The Gunny had cut it. He had given me the corner piece.
I ate it.
May you like
So did Dominic.
The sheet cake had blue frosting in the shape of chevrons. The frosting was sweet enough to hurt your teeth.
