The Colonel Came Home With Her Chapter 10
The next morning I went to the battalion HQ.
I went to see Chaplain Harding.
His office door was open. He was wearing reading glasses, going through paperwork.
He looked up, saw me in the doorway, took his glasses off, and stood.
“Ms. Bennett.”
I noticed the switch. From Mrs. Hayes to Ms. Bennett. He was faster than I was.
“I’m here to file something.”
I laid the divorce petition on his desk.
“You’re the battalion chaplain. You’re also his superior. Military divorces have to go through you first, by regulation. So today, you preside. I’ll speak. He listens.”
Chaplain Harding looked at the papers, then at me, and told me to wait in the small conference room next door.
Ten minutes later Ethan came in.
He was in Class A. His collar was crisp.
He sat across from me, hands clasped on the table, another ring of red around his eyes.
Chaplain Harding sat at the head of the table, cleared his throat, said, Let’s begin.
Then he asked me, “Have you really thought this through.”
“Yes.”
“You have a child. Not even five yet. Have you thought about the boy.”
“It’s because I’ve thought about the boy that I’m doing this.”
I set the pen down beside the petition.
“Two months ago, Sam asked me whose baby the aunty was carrying. He’s four years old and he already knew to ask that.”
“He saw his father on his knees in the gravel. He saw his mother being cornered on her own porch. He saw his mother taking him out of the base in the middle of the night.”
“Chaplain, do you think it’s good for him to grow up in an environment like that?”
Chaplain Harding didn’t answer.
Ethan finally spoke, his voice muffled, as if through a door.
“Nora. Can we just not separate yet. I’ll move into the BOQ. You keep the house. Go to work if you want. I won’t bother you. Whenever you calm down — “
“Whenever I calm down?”
I cut him off.
“Ethan. You think I’m doing this because I’m angry? You think if my anger passes I’ll come back?”
“Let me ask you something. Two months ago, behind the laundry room, I asked you if the baby was yours. What did you say? Give me a little more time. Two months went by — and what time did you give me?”
“Time to be cornered by Mrs. Miller? Time to be publicly called out by Mrs. Harding?”
Ethan didn’t answer.
The hands on the table clenched.
“Let me tell you why I have to do this. Because from beginning to end, you never treated me as someone standing beside you.”
“When you were carrying this thing, the one person you didn’t think about was me.”
His eyes went red.
He unclenched his fists, laid his palms flat on the table, looked down at the calluses on his hands.
After a long time he spoke.
“I’ll sign.”
Chaplain Harding looked at both of us and said, Tuesday morning next week, Cumberland County Courthouse. You go together. I’ll file the paperwork for you.
When we broke, I stood up first and walked toward the door.
Ethan stayed sitting. As I reached the door, he called my name.
“Nora.”
I stopped without turning around.
“You were right. I didn’t treat you as someone standing beside me. I’m sorry.”
“Too late.”
I pushed the door open and walked out.
The day we got divorced was sunny.
I got to the Cumberland County Courthouse first. Then Ethan arrived.
In the queue in front of us, another couple was applying for a marriage license.
The girl was wearing a red dress. The boy was wearing brand-new dress shoes. They laughed a couple of times at the window.
When it was our turn, the clerk slid two forms out through the window. I took them and started filling them out.
Under reason for separation I wrote irreconcilable differences.
When she stamped the receipts there was a small, soft click.
She slid the receipts back out.
She pushed one across to each of us.
Ethan picked his up, unfolded it, glanced at it, folded it back, tucked it into his shirt pocket.
Coming out of the courthouse the sun was just right. The magnolias by the entrance had scattered their leaf-shadows across the pavement.
Ethan called out behind me. I turned. He was standing on the top step.
“Where are you going to live.”
“Apartment across from the hospital. One bedroom, small balcony.”
He nodded. His lips moved and then closed.
He said only one thing — If you ever need anything.
I looked at that face. The weight he’d lost, the hollow beneath his cheekbones.
“Ethan. From now on, whatever else you run into, remember one thing. What you owed your wife wasn’t an I’m sorry. It was that you never treated her as someone standing beside you.”
“I’ll remember.”
“Goodbye.”
I picked Sam up, turned, and walked away.
That night I didn’t go back to the apartment.
I took Sam to Millbrook.
Mom saw me at the door and blinked, then her eyes fell on the divorce petition receipt sticking out of my bag.
She was standing at the stove, spatula in her hand, oil still dripping from it. She just stood there looking down at it for a while.
The corner of the receipt envelope stuck out of my canvas bag, sharp under the yellow kitchen light.
She didn’t say anything. She put the spatula back in the pan, turned to the cabinet, took down two plates, and served food.
She put one in front of me, one in front of Sam.
Rice piled high, two slices of pot roast on top, just like the meals she used to make when I was still living at home.
Dad sat at the far end of the table, focused on his food. His fork moved around his plate, and he plucked a green bean off and dropped it on Sam’s plate, then went back to eating.
Halfway through, he set his plate down, stood, and went into the back room.
The door wasn’t fully closed. I could see him sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to the door, shoulders shaking.
In his hand, clenched tight, was the red scarf he’d bought me when I was in elementary school. His knuckles were white.
Sam looked at the back-room door, then at me, and tugged on my sleeve.
“Mama, what’s wrong with Grandpa?”
I smoothed his hair.
“Something got in Grandpa’s eye.”
That night after I got Sam to sleep, I sat alone on the porch and looked at the moon.
The magnolia in the yard was still there. You could still see the rope marks on the branch where I’d hung a swing when I was little.
Moonlight lay in a pale wash across the stone path to the door, like a thin layer of frost.
Old Mr. Callahan’s radio was playing next door — an old song drifting over the wall, sometimes closer, sometimes farther. Patsy Cline, Crazy.
I sat there. I wasn’t thinking about Ethan. I wasn’t thinking about anything back at Fort Bragg.
I was just thinking about going to the farmers’ market in the morning and picking up some ribs to make Sam a chicken noodle soup.
He’d been eating hospital cafeteria food with me for half a month at the apartment. His chin had gone sharp.
I didn’t know the day Ethan left.
By the time I found out, it was on the news.
Something had happened in theater. A forward operating base was hit. Surge deployment on emergency orders.
Captain Reyes called the hospital office three times. Mrs. Coleman passed the message along.
After my shift I called the battalion HQ. Chaplain Harding answered.
He said Ethan had put in for it himself.
Command hadn’t wanted to approve his voluntary redeployment request. They’d sat on it for two weeks. But a forward battalion in theater had a vacancy for a commanding officer, and he’d volunteered to go.
The orders came down three days ago. He hadn’t said goodbye to anyone. He’d only left some money for me and Sam, and a letter.
Chaplain Harding forwarded the letter to me at the hospital.
I opened it.
It wasn’t long. Seven lines.
Nora,
You were right.
What I owed you wasn’t an apology. It was that I never treated you as one of my own.
I’m a slow man, and my mouth is slower. All these years, you carried too much.
Six years married, and you never made me worry about anything at home.
The day I deployed, you stood at the door and said come home safe. I carried that the whole way.
The things you told me to remember, I remembered. I won’t make those mistakes again.
The house is still there. Whenever you want to come home, the door is unlocked.
— Ethan
I folded the letter back into the envelope and slid it into the last page of the photo album.
Right next to the picture of the three of us before he shipped out.
Lily came to see me once, with Michael Jr.
Michael Jr. had grown a lot. Chubby now, round-eyed, lying in his little wrap not fussing.
Lily laid him on my bed. I glanced at him.
He smiled up at me.
She set a can of formula on the table and pushed it toward me, head down. “Nora, this is from Mike’s survivor benefits.”
I told her to keep it for herself.
She stood there and then suddenly looked up, her eyes red.
I poured her a glass of water and pushed it over.
“You were Mike Doyle’s fiancée. That’s his child in your arms. None of this was ever your fault. If you want to blame something, blame the war. What the war owes you isn’t what Ethan owes me.”
Lily lowered her head. Her tears fell on Michael Jr.’s wrap and spread into a small dark circle.
“Are you going to go back to Fort Bragg?”
“No.”
I sat down across from her.
“I’m doing well now.”
I smiled. I meant it.
Even without any of this, we probably weren’t right for each other.
Sam was running around in the little playground downstairs. I turned my head to watch Lily and the baby in her arms.
Everything was quiet. No more noise from the housing area.
Tomorrow was another day off. I was planning to go back to Millbrook for dinner.
These things, these people — none of them had anything to do with me anymore.
Eyes forward. One foot in front of the other. That’s enough.
From here on out, it would be me and Sam, together.
That was enough.
— End —