him, and they’d been in each other’s life so long that he didn’t believe for a second that she was really through with him this time. Still, he missed her when everyone else was getting loved visibly and he was standing there with no one to say good-bye to. Even her love was strategic, goddamn her, and he felt more violently toward the men he imagined touching her in his absence than toward the imaginary enemy they’d been war-gaming against. On the plane he had stared out of the window at more water than he’d ever seen at once, and thought of the look on her face when he said good-bye.
She had come to his going-away party like it was nothing, showed up in skintight jeans and that cheap but sweet-smelling baby powder perfume and spent a good twenty minutes exchanging pleasantries with his mother before she even said hello to him. She’d brought a cake that she’d picked up from the bakery at the second restaurant she worked at, told one of the church ladies she was thinking of starting her own cake business. Really? Georgie thought, before she winked at him and put a silver fingernail to her lips. Lanae could cook a little, but the only time he remembered her trying to bake she’d burnt a cake she’d made from boxed mix and then tried to cover it up with pink frosting. Esther wouldn’t touch the thing, and he’d run out and gotten a Minnie Mouse ice cream cake from the grocery store. He’d found himself silently listing these nonsecrets, the things about Lanae he was certain of: she couldn’t bake, there was a thin but awful scar running down the back of her right calf, her eyes were amber in the right light.
They’d grown up down the street from each other. He could not remember a time before they were friends, but she’d had enough time to get married and divorced and produce a little girl before he thought to kiss her for the first time, only a few months before he got his orders. In fairness, she was not exactly beautiful; it had taken some time for him to see past that. Her face was pleasant but plain, her features so simple that if she were a cartoon she’d seem deliberately underdrawn. She was not big, exactly, but pillowy, like if you pressed your hand into her it would keep sinking and sinking because there was nothing solid to her. It bothered him to think of Kenny putting his hand on her that way, Kenny who’d once assigned numbers to all the waitresses at Ruby Tuesday based on the quality of their asses, Kenny who’d probably never be gentle enough to notice what her body did while it was his.
It wasn’t Lanae who met him at the airport when he landed back where he’d started. It was his mother, looking small in the crowd of people waiting for arrivals. Some of them were bored, leaning up against the wall like they were in line for a restaurant table; others peered around the gate like paparazzi waiting for the right shot to happen. His mother was up in front, squinting at him like she wasn’t sure he was real. She was in her nurse’s uniform, and it made her look a little ominous. When he came through security she ran up to hug him so he couldn’t breathe. “Baby,” she said, then asked how the connecting flight had been, and then talked about everything but what mattered. Perhaps after all of his letters home she was used to unanswered questions, because she didn’t ask any, not about the war, not about his health, not about the conditions of his honorable discharge or what he intended to do upon his return to civilian society.
She was all weather and light gossip through the parking lot. “The cherry blossoms are beautiful this year,” she was saying as they rode down the Dulles Toll Road, and if it had been Lanae saying something like that he would have said Cherry blossoms? Are you fucking kidding me? but because it was his mother things kept up like that all the way around 495 and back to Alexandria. It was still too early in the morning for real rush-hour traffic,
She had come to his going-away party like it was nothing, showed up in skintight jeans and that cheap but sweet-smelling baby powder perfume and spent a good twenty minutes exchanging pleasantries with his mother before she even said hello to him. She’d brought a cake that she’d picked up from the bakery at the second restaurant she worked at, told one of the church ladies she was thinking of starting her own cake business. Really? Georgie thought, before she winked at him and put a silver fingernail to her lips. Lanae could cook a little, but the only time he remembered her trying to bake she’d burnt a cake she’d made from boxed mix and then tried to cover it up with pink frosting. Esther wouldn’t touch the thing, and he’d run out and gotten a Minnie Mouse ice cream cake from the grocery store. He’d found himself silently listing these nonsecrets, the things about Lanae he was certain of: she couldn’t bake, there was a thin but awful scar running down the back of her right calf, her eyes were amber in the right light.
They’d grown up down the street from each other. He could not remember a time before they were friends, but she’d had enough time to get married and divorced and produce a little girl before he thought to kiss her for the first time, only a few months before he got his orders. In fairness, she was not exactly beautiful; it had taken some time for him to see past that. Her face was pleasant but plain, her features so simple that if she were a cartoon she’d seem deliberately underdrawn. She was not big, exactly, but pillowy, like if you pressed your hand into her it would keep sinking and sinking because there was nothing solid to her. It bothered him to think of Kenny putting his hand on her that way, Kenny who’d once assigned numbers to all the waitresses at Ruby Tuesday based on the quality of their asses, Kenny who’d probably never be gentle enough to notice what her body did while it was his.
It wasn’t Lanae who met him at the airport when he landed back where he’d started. It was his mother, looking small in the crowd of people waiting for arrivals. Some of them were bored, leaning up against the wall like they were in line for a restaurant table; others peered around the gate like paparazzi waiting for the right shot to happen. His mother was up in front, squinting at him like she wasn’t sure he was real. She was in her nurse’s uniform, and it made her look a little ominous. When he came through security she ran up to hug him so he couldn’t breathe. “Baby,” she said, then asked how the connecting flight had been, and then talked about everything but what mattered. Perhaps after all of his letters home she was used to unanswered questions, because she didn’t ask any, not about the war, not about his health, not about the conditions of his honorable discharge or what he intended to do upon his return to civilian society.
She was all weather and light gossip through the parking lot. “The cherry blossoms are beautiful this year,” she was saying as they rode down the Dulles Toll Road, and if it had been Lanae saying something like that he would have said Cherry blossoms? Are you fucking kidding me? but because it was his mother things kept up like that all the way around 495 and back to Alexandria. It was still too early in the morning for real rush-hour traffic,
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