Beyond the Point(108)

While the final plane taxied up to the gate, a stewardess reminded the passengers that the seat belt sign was still on and not to move from their seats. The man seated next to Hannah pulled out his cell phone and turned it on. A woman a few rows ahead reapplied her lipstick, blood red. The cabin grew hot and stuffy as passengers donned their jackets and scarves, preparing to battle the cold outside. Tim would never get another winter, Hannah realized. He wouldn’t be there to celebrate another Christmas or his birthday or even go on that trip to Hawaii they’d planned to take when their deployments were over. Every realization was a new death. He died a million times a day in her mind.

Pulling her camouflage rucksack down from the overhead compartment, Hannah found her tiny flip phone inside, powered off. Normally, after a long flight, she would have immediately shot off a few text messages to tell her family that she’d arrived. But she had no desire to turn it on. It only brought bad news, thin apologies, and people’s thoughts and prayers, which, to Hannah, felt like a really poor response to someone’s life ending. She was grateful in some ways that people cared enough to reach out. But she couldn’t text back, I don’t want your prayers. I want Tim back. So she’d stopped looking at her phone altogether.

Finally, when the flight attendant at the front of the cabin opened the airplane door, the passengers filled the aisle, trapped in a long line of anticipation, eager to get off the plane and back to the people they loved. The cabin was airless and all the energy pushed forward, though people weren’t moving at all. Hannah’s body surrendered to a cold sweat.

“Thank you for your service,” said the woman with red lips. “I’m sure you’re glad to be home.”

Hannah stared at the woman with grotesque horror and felt a surge of bile in her throat. She fought the urge to scream. The woman’s words were like sandpaper over an open wound. Hannah’s neck turned red, and she touched her forehead with her hand. It was clammy. She saw the people at the front of the plane shuffling out, but she still couldn’t move.

She didn’t know it was going to feel like this. Like every moment that passed was a step deeper into grief. She wanted to be walking straight. Instead, every step forward felt like a step down.

Eventually, the plane cleared and Hannah made her way through the terminal. It had been ten days of this. Ten days of moving, waiting, and remembering, with nowhere to go where Tim wasn’t dead. Dead. The word had no meaning anymore; she’d thought it too many times.

Her soldiers had convoyed to the next building site in Afghanistan without her. She didn’t care. Grief had filled her with a kind of numbness she’d never experienced before. She felt either far too much and wanted to hold back, or far too little and wondered why she couldn’t muster any emotion. Most of all, she was tired and hungry and angry at herself for being tired and hungry. How could she eat when Tim would never get to taste ice cream or bite into a peach ever again? How could she sleep when Tim’s eyes had been shut forever? She didn’t want to live in a world he wasn’t in. She didn’t want to go to sleep and add another day to the days he’d been gone. Someday, Hannah thought, she would have more days without him than the days she’d had with him.

And just like that, he died again.

EVENTUALLY, SHE FOUND herself at the top of an escalator, with the sign for baggage claim pointing down. She took a deep breath, adjusted her backpack, and stepped on the moving staircase.

They waited at the bottom of the escalator. Her mother, wearing a gray turtleneck. Her father, standing tall with his silver mustache, wearing a black half-zip sweater. Emily and Mark, holding a squirming Jack in their arms. Dani and Avery, one in a leather jacket, the other in uniform. Hannah buried her face in her father’s shoulder.

“You’re home, sweetie,” said Bill. “You’re home.”

They hugged quietly for a long time.





31


November 28, 2006 // Fort Bragg, North Carolina

The house was quiet early the next morning, when Dani heard the doorbell ring. She pulled on a pair of black sweatpants and stepped into the hallway, carefully tiptoeing around Hannah’s father, who’d slept on a pile of blankets right outside Hannah’s door. Hannah’s neighbor, Michelle Jenkins, had brought over a spare air mattress, and Dani and Avery had blown it up in the upstairs office, sleeping next to unpacked boxes of books. Avery had already left for work, and even though it was ten A.M., no one had made the coffee. No one had dared wake Hannah up.

Dani was certain she would never forget the way Hannah had looked when she’d moved slowly down that escalator at the airport. Her face appeared ghost white. Her eyes bulged, her skin pulled taut with fear. Grief had aged her, and she looked sixty years old—even her hair looked tinged with gray. When they’d arrived back at the house, Hannah had walked straight to their bedroom, their closet, where she’d pulled a pile of his clothes to her face. Dani and Avery had waited outside the door, sitting in the hall. After hours of crying, Hannah had crawled into the bed, laid her head on his shirts, and finally fell asleep.

Downstairs, Dani opened Hannah’s front door, just as a man in uniform reached to ring the doorbell again.

“Mrs. Nesmith?” the man asked. The man had brown eyes, dark brown hair, and a slightly Hispanic accent. He wore an Army combat uniform and held a stack of binders under his arm.

“She’s upstairs,” Dani explained. “Can I help you?”