Memphis(12)

“Memphis?” Brooke asked. “I didn’t know they had nice things down there. Figured everyone would be running around in overalls.” She shrugged and lit a cigarette. Exhaling, she looked Miriam up and down and said, “You celebrating tonight?”

“Aren’t we all?” Miriam said warily, using a tissue to dot the corners of her mouth.

Brooke rolled her eyes. “Oh please. Making major is a big thing, and my Billy still only a first lieutenant.” She sighed. “But we’ll get there. Major. Whew. I’m sure I’d wear a dress like that, too.”

Major. Jax hadn’t told her. Miriam’s hand froze in midair. The large bathroom shrank to the size of a dollhouse in that moment. Her breath caught in her throat, and Miriam felt as if she were a tiny grain of sand falling into a tightly coiled seashell, never-ending in its brutal swirl. Suddenly, instead of her own shocked reflection and Brooke’s half-surprised, half-smug face in the mirror, she saw the worn pages of the Bront? she’d been reading in the old record store on Cooper Street in Memphis. She saw Jax, too—a tall, dark, beautiful stranger trying to get her attention for the first time.

What had happened to that man? To her marriage? Miriam didn’t rightly know. All she knew was that she hadn’t prepared for how lonely marriage could be. Jax always off at training, months-long deployments God knows where, training for war. And then, one came. And off he went, leaving her alone. Once more. Miriam hated the large Victorian they’d moved into after their wedding seventeen years before, with its spiral staircases and secret nooks and crannies, its creaking floors. She hated the space of it at night, after she had put the girls to bed, how her footsteps echoed in the hallway. She had no one to talk to in North Carolina. She missed Memphis. When Jax returned from the Gulf, he returned even more distant than when he had left. Hardly speaking a word, and when he did, it was to argue. They fought about the phone bill—sky high because of her late-night long-distance phone calls to August. They fought when Jax thought his meat overcooked at dinner. They fought when she found the scraps of napkins with women’s phone numbers scrawled across them in lipstick not her shade. And now this: the fact that some uppity white woman in a bathroom knew more about her husband than she did. Miriam was done. She was done with being unhappy all the damn time.

“You must be proud,” Brooke said, eyeing Miriam in the mirror.

“Ecstatic,” Miriam said and smiled wide.



* * *



—

Back in the Tinian Ballroom, Miriam found Mazz nursing his glass of bourbon, feet perched atop a chair, smoking a cigar. She scanned the room.

“He’s talking with the colonel, right over there.” Mazz aimed his cigar at a crowded table.

Miriam took a seat. “Any more champagne?” she asked.

“One of those nights, huh?”

“Yeah. One of those.” Miriam didn’t realize she was shaking until Mazz placed a hand on top of her forearm. “I’m done, Mazz,” she spat out.

Mazz stared at her.

She nodded. “I’m done,” she repeated. “It’s not even about the cheating, right?” Miriam laughed. “I’m considering paying her. She’s doing me a favor. Come take this off my hands. And I’ve tried. Lord knows, Mazz, I’ve tried. To be a good wife. A good mom—” Miriam broke off. “Give me your bourbon if I can’t get any champagne.”

Mazz raised his hand in the air and signaled for a waiter.

Miriam scoffed. “White folk a trip.”

Mazz faked being shot in the heart. “I’m getting the drink for you. Aren’t I the slave here?”

Miriam laughed in spite of herself, accepting a glass of champagne from the waiter.

“There we go. There’s the old Meerkat back.”

“It’d be real nice to have the old Jax back,” Miriam said, throwing her eyes in her husband’s direction.

“You shouldn’t have worn that,” Mazz said suddenly. “I know it’s not my place. Shit, I’m drunk. But damn, Meer, that was a right low thing to do to a man.”

Miriam rolled her eyes. “This was my mother’s dress. I’ll wear what I want—”

Mazz interrupted, holding up a palm. “Those red shoes broke him, Miriam. Fuck the dress. I mean, no. It’s gorgeous. You know what I mean. Why’d you have to wear those?” Mazz seemed angry. Miriam felt both defensive and confused—Mazz had defused many a fight between her and Jax over the years with his humor, the way he seemed never to take sides while somehow being on both their sides. She watched him shift in his seat, take a puff of his Cuban. His eyes were unfocused; he seemed not to be angry with her, but with something she could not see.

“I want you to understand something,” he said. “First and foremost. A commander has the authority and obligation to use all necessary means available and to take all appropriate action to defend his unit and other United States forces in the vicinity from a hostile act or a demonstration of hostile intent.” He rushed through the words, like the way Miriam used to say her prayers as a child—memorized so deep she hardly had to think about their meaning.

“I quoted that direct from the United States Marine Corps Laws of War. Jax followed orders. He used all the means he had available to him to defend us in that fucking daycare, and that’s what he fucking did, all right? I won’t hear anything else but that. First and foremost. The rest…” Mazz trailed off.