Purple Hearts(29)

“Just real quick,” Elena said, nervous, smiling at the group. “I just wanted to say that all of us wives and girlfriends . . .”

“And husbands,” Gomez said, putting her hand on the back of her husband’s neck.

“And husbands, of course. We’re all going to miss y’all so much. We’re going to be waiting every single night for you to come home safe. And until then, we’re behind you one hundred percent. We hope you accomplish what you set out to do, which is keep our country safe. God bless America.”

“God bless America!” the group repeated, lifting their glasses. They cheered, bumping the rims across the table, proud. I cheered with them.

“Hooah!” Armando shouted.

“Hooah!” we repeated.

Cassie looked at me, a glint in her eye. I gave her a steely look back. She was on the verge of a joke. I shook my head.

Hill stood, and started a cadence. “The Army Colors, the colors are blue . . .”

“To show the world, that we are true,” we sang back.

“The Army Colors, the colors are white . . .”

Frankie smiled at me as we sang together. “To show the world that we will fight.”

For every sidelong glance Cassie gave me, I sang louder. My heart lifted. This is the song we sang in boot camp on the track every morning when we ran. We’d sung this song as I discovered the feeling I could get from accomplishment, from dreaming.

When the song ended, Hill raised his glass, growling, “To bombin’ some mothafuckin’ Arabs!”

“Hooah!” Everyone cheered and drank.

“Holy shit,” Cassie said, in her regular voice. I tried to catch her eyes. Maybe she hadn’t realized it had slipped out. “Are you serious?”

My company members’ faces turned toward me, silent. My mouth was dry. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

“That’s fucked up,” she said, louder.

Hill sat down back at his place at the head of the table, leaning back. “Uh oh. PC police.”

“I’m just, like, trying to digest the fact that you’re celebrating taking lives. Do you always do this?”

Now she was looking at me. “Uh . . .”

“And where are the cheers about building roads and schools?” She was disgusted. She was mocking me. “Not to mention how phenomenally racist that is.”

My face burned.

Hill put his arm over his wife’s chair, a conspiratorial smile growing on his face as he looked at me, sighing. Women, right?

“Let’s not get into this,” I said, begging with my eyes. Almost done. She looked away and shrugged my hand off.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Hill said, pretending to speak gently.

She tilted her head. “My name is Cassie,” she said. “What.”

“You might not know this, but that’s our job. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but you gotta do it.” He gestured at his wife, who was staring at the table, with his beer still in his hand. “It’s not easy being an army wife. Ask Jessica.”

“I’m not a fucking ‘army wife,’?” Cassie said, sarcastic, and stopped midbreath. She pressed her lips together.

My stomach dropped. The one thing we were trying to prove. The one reason we were even here in the first place, she had knocked down. The truth.

“Cassie,” I got out. I gestured to Cassie, confused, and to Hill. “Corporal, she doesn’t mean it that way . . .”

The only sounds were the clash of forks on plates, the ting-ting of Top 40 over the speakers, and someone, probably Gomez’s husband, saying, “Yikes.” Down the table, Frankie stayed frozen, his eyes on Cassie. He wasn’t indignant, though, or offended or surprised. He looked sad. Regretful.

Cassie stood, scooted around her chair, and folded her napkin in the center of her plate. I stood with her, my hands in fists. There was a pause, the table braced. Cassie opened her mouth, closed it into a serene smile, and walked out.

“Excuse us,” I said. I swallowed.

I willed myself to follow her, though all I wanted to do was roll my eyes and watch her go. As I closed the door, I could hear the chatter of my friends rising again behind us, knowing whatever they were saying was full of relief that we were gone.





Cassie


I drove us to a motel, still seething, though Luke, staring out the passenger window at the car dealerships and gas stations whipping by, didn’t seem to notice. PC police. Sure, whatever they wanted to call it.

And then I had all but blown our cover. Was it worth it? Depended on which part you were talking about. Was being around a bunch of xenophobic, oversized children worth the one thousand dollars a month? Was calling out a bunch of xenophobic, oversized children worth throwing away the health insurance? Either way, my mother was right. This was crazy. And thank fucking God we were almost done.

“Well, are you coming in or do you want to officially call this thing?” Luke asked as we pulled into the parking lot.

Instead of answering, I parked, and followed him out of the car. He was already bounding up the motel steps.

“It’s 201,” he called out to me.

We creaked up the metal stairs to the second-level balcony.

The room was a smoker’s lung with a funguslike carpet and walls peppered with blurry watercolor prints by Thomas Kinkade.