Then Betsy came into the living room, trailing behind Lulu, looking sleepy, rubbing her eyes. She was wearing a huge tee shirt and white ankle socks. “Why did you wake me up?”
Jolene picked Lulu up, carried her to the sofa, and sat down. “Have a seat, Betsy. We need to talk to you guys. It’s important.”
Michael sat down on the sofa beside Jolene.
Betsy stopped suddenly. “Are you getting divorced?”
“Elizabeth Andrea,” Mila said. “Why would you say such a—”
Michael sighed. “Just sit down, Betsy.”
Betsy knelt on the ivory-colored shag rug in front of them, crossing her arms, jutting her chin out. “What?”
They were all looking at Jolene. She almost lost her nerve; she looked at Michael, who shrugged.
She was alone in this. What a surprise. With a sigh, Jolene looked at Betsy and then down at Lulu. “You remember the story I told you about when I joined the army?” she said. “I was eighteen and had no direction. My parents had just died. I was so alone. You can’t imagine how alone. Anyway, you all were a dream I had, but of course, you were in my future then.”
Betsy sighed impatiently. “Duh. Can I go back to sleep now?”
“I’m not doing this well,” Jolene said.
“Just tell them,” Michael said.
Lulu started bouncing on Jolene’s lap. “Tell us what?”
Jolene took a deep breath. “I’m going to Iraq to help—”
“What?” Betsy said, clambering to her feet.
“Huh?” Lulu said.
“Oh, Jolene,” Mila whispered, bringing a hand to her mouth. She sank into the celery-colored, overstuffed chair by the window.
“No way,” Betsy said. “Oh my God, no one has a mom in the war. Will people know?”
“That’s your concern?” Michael asked.
Jolene was losing control of this.
“But you’re a mom,” Betsy cried out. “I need you here. What if you get killed?”
Lulu’s eyes filled up with tears. “What?”
“That won’t happen,” Jolene said, trying to keep her voice even. “I’m a woman. They don’t let women in combat situations. I’ll be flying VIPs around, moving supplies. I’ll be safe.”
“You don’t know that. You can’t know that,” Betsy said. “Tell them you won’t go. Please, Mommy…”
At that, the small Mommy, Jolene felt a tearing in her heart. She wanted to hold Betsy close, reassure her, but what comfort could she offer? This was a time for strength. “I have to go. It’s my job,” Jolene said at last.
“If you go I won’t forgive you,” Betsy said. “I swear I won’t.”
“You don’t mean that,” Jolene said.
“You love the army more than us,” Betsy said.
Beside her, Michael made a sound. Jolene ignored him.
“No, Bets,” she said quietly. “You and Lulu are the air in my lungs. The blood in my veins. Without you, my heart stops. But I have to do this. Lots of working women have to leave their kids sometimes—”
“Ha!” Betsy screamed. “I’m not stupid. Do those moms get shot at on their business trips?”
“You’ll come home, right, Mommy?” Lulu asked, biting her lower lip.
“Of course I will,” Jolene said. “Don’t I always? And in November I’ll be home for two weeks. Maybe we could even go to Disneyland. Would you like that?”
“I hate you,” Betsy said and ran out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.
Mila got slowly to her feet. She started to walk toward Jolene, then stopped dead, as if she couldn’t make her legs work quite right. “How long will you be gone?” she asked. Her voice wobbled with the effort to appear strong.
“One year,” Michael answered.
Lulu frowned. “How long is a year? Is that like next week?”
Jolene turned to her husband. “Maybe you should talk to Betsy.”
“Me? What the hell am I supposed to say to her?”
That single question brought it all crashing down on Jolene and scared her as much as everything else combined. How would he be a single father? Would his children be able to count on him in a way that Jolene no longer could?
Jolene stood up. She tried to put Lulu down, but the child clung like a barnacle. So she said nothing to Michael or Mila, just walked out of the living room and down the hallway to the guest bedroom, carrying Lulu. It wasn’t ideal, trying to talk to the girls together, but nothing was ideal about this situation.
She knocked on the door.
“Go away,” Betsy yelled.
“I am,” Jolene answered. “That’s why we need to talk now.” She waited a moment, collected herself, and then went into the room, which was papered in a wild 1970s foil paper and decorated with a collection of whitewashed furniture.
Betsy sat on one of the wicker twin beds with her knees drawn up. She looked royally pissed off.
“Can I sit down?” Jolene asked.
Betsy nodded mulishly and scooted sideways. Jolene and Lulu sat down beside her. Jolene wanted to jump into the ice-cold water of the conversation, but she knew Betsy needed to find a way through this, so she waited quietly, stroking Lulu’s hair.
Finally Betsy said, “Moms aren’t supposed to leave their children.”
“No,” Jolene said, feeling the sharp point of those words sink deep into her. “They aren’t. And I’m sorry, baby. I really am.”
“What if you said you wouldn’t go?”
“They’d court-martial me and put me in jail.”
“At least you’d be alive.”
Jolene looked at her daughter. There it was, the fear that lay beneath the adolescent fury. “It’s my job as a mom to keep you safe and be with you and help you grow up.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“But it’s also my job to show you what kind of person to be, to teach you by example. What lesson would I teach you if I ran from a commitment I made? If I was cowardly or dishonorable? When you make a promise in this life, you keep it, even if it scares you or hurts you or makes you sad. I made a promise a long time ago, and now it’s time to keep that promise, even if it breaks my heart to leave you and Lulu, and it does … break my heart.”
Jolene willed her tears away. Nothing in her life had ever hurt like this, not even hearing Michael say he didn’t love her anymore. But she had to keep going, had to make her daughter understand. “You’ve grown up safe and loved, so you can’t know how it feels to be truly alone in the world. When I joined the army, I had nothing. Nothing. No one. I was all alone in the world. And now my friends need me—Tami, Smitty, Jamie. The rest of the Raptors. I have to be there for them. And the country needs me. I know you’re young for all this, but I believe in keeping America safe. I really do. I have to keep my promise. Can you understand that?”
Tears sprang into Betsy’s eyes. Her lower lip trembled mutinously. “I need you,” she said in a quiet voice.
“I know,” Jolene said, “and I need you, baby. So much…” Her voice caught again; she had to clear her throat to keep going. “But we’ll talk on the phone and e-mail, and maybe we’ll even write good old-fashioned letters. I’ll be home before you know it.”
Lulu tugged on her sleeve. “You’ll be home before I start kindergarten, right?”
Jolene closed her eyes. How was she going to do this, really?
“Mommy?” Lulu said, her voice shaking.
“No,” Jolene said finally. “Not for kindergarten, Lulu, but your daddy will be home for that…”
Lulu started to cry.
Michael sat on the couch, alone now, and looked up at his mother. He could see the concern in her eyes, the unasked question. She wondered why he was out here while Jolene was handling this alone.
She stared at him for a long, assessing moment. Then she walked out of the living room and came back a few minutes later, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate full of baklava in the other. Of course. Food. Her answer to everything.
She put the cup and plate on the table beside him and then sat down on the sofa next to him. She placed her hand on his knee. “When I was young … during the war … it was a terrible time in Greece. My father and uncles and cousins were all gone. Many of them did not come back. The family stayed strong, though, and faith kept us together.”
He nodded. He’d heard her stories all his life. World War II had seemed distant to him, barely understandable; now he thought of the relatives he’d lost to enemy fire. They’d been just names in a book before. Without thinking, he reached over for a baklava and began eating it. God, he wished his father were here now.
“I will move into the house and take care of the girls.”
“No, Ma. There’s no bedroom for you, and you’ve got the Thumb. I’ll hire someone.”
“You most certainly will not. No stranger will take care of my grandbabies. I will hire another part-time employee for the store.”
“The store can’t afford that.”
“No, but I can. I will be at your house after school each weekday. I’ll pick Lulu up from preschool and meet Betsy’s bus. We will be just fine. You can count on me, and the girls will count on you.”
“Every day, Ma? That’s a big job.”
She smiled at him. “I am a big woman, as you may have noticed. I need to help you, Michael. Let me.”
He didn’t know how to respond: he still couldn’t wrap his mind around how completely his world had changed.
“These are details, though, and not the thing that matters most.” She looked at him. “You should be with her now, telling your children they will be fine.”
“Will they … be fine?”
“It’s not your children you should be worrying about right now, Michael. Their time will come.”
“And Jo?” he said. “Will she be fine?”
“She is a lioness, our Jolene.”
Michael could only nod.
“Already you are letting her down. Your father was like this, God rest his soul. He was selfish. This is a time for you to see beyond yourself.” She touched his cheek, resting her knuckles against his skin as she’d done so often in his youth. “You be proud of her, Michael.”
He knew he was supposed to nod and agree and say that of course he was proud of his wife, but he couldn’t do it.
“I’ll do what needs to be done,” he said instead, and knew that he’d disappointed his mother.
How many more people would he let down before this was over?
Michael spent the weekend watching his life as if from a distance. Betsy alternated between being blazingly pissed off and desperately clingy. Lulu was so confused she became overwrought and cried at everything. Michael couldn’t bear any of it, could hardly look at the pain in his daughters’ eyes, but Jolene was a warrior, as strong as tested steel. He saw how carefully she treated the girls, how tenderly. It was only when they weren’t looking that her pain was revealed; tears welled in her green eyes, and when they did she turned away quickly, dashing the moisture away with the back of her hand.