Lucy comes to me after a week of radio silence. She’s a good friend; she’s resolved herself to stay by my side through the thick of it these past decades.
I’m through half the letters by the time she knocks on my door. Henry’s military schedule had never aligned with mine in any practical way, so we’d taken on writing them. We’ve always been fond of the past, us two – we used to joke we’d been born in the wrong century.
I open the door, and resume my task. She stares, shocked, taking in the sight of me. “What –” she stalks forward with urgency, gripping my arm gently as I reach out to grab another paper. “Don’t do this. You’ll regret it.”
“I can’t have them sitting here anymore,” I tell her, pulling away. “I can’t keep reading them.”
I hate pity – a shame, because people who face tragedy can’t feel that way if they want many friends. I’m not sure why Lucy’s stuck around this long.
“You would rather destroy the last pieces of him?” She slides to the ground beside me, giving up on batting my hand away from the shrinking pile. “You – you would rather have the ashes for memories?”
“I would rather have him.” I stare into the flames, dancing their bitter dance as white edges of paper darkened to a soft golden and splintered with finality to join the mound of black grit beneath.
“Well, you can’t.” Her voice wavered, regretful. I pondered anger, but couldn’t quite muster it. Lucy didn’t mean to be cruel. She didn’t have the capacity for it. “He’s gone. You can’t destroy yourself like this.”
“That’s just life.”
“Not yours,” Lucy says firmly, knuckles white where they press on the rough wooden ground. “Your life is not over. You have me, and you have your daughter, and – you have him, still. Not how you want, or how you should, but…”
I can feel her eyes on me. Waiting. “Fine,” I growl at last, grabbing my jacket and meeting Lucy’s eyes. “I’m going to see him.” I step into the frigid air, leaving the dying whispers of Henry’s last words to me behind as Lucy looks on with that stinging pity I so despise.
____
The memorial is far from the house. I have plenty of time to remember.
In the early days, our daughter had grown quieter than I’d ever seen her. On the second night since those two uniformed officers came to our door with hats removed and solemn condolences, she came to me. “Where will Daddy go now?” she whispered, and I forced my grip to be strong when I took her hand and calmly explained with some miraculous patience that we would bury him in the earth.
“Oh.” She unlinked her fingers from mine, but didn’t seem to be aware of it. “Somewhere he loves?”
“Yes, darling.” But there were so many places he loved. They wanted to lay him to rest beneath some shining marble tribute for the whole world to see. I wanted for him the peace of a quiet little graveyard near home, where I could bring him flowers every day and swallow the pain unobserved. Which would he have wanted? Could I have truly known him so little, after twenty-five years?
I couldn’t escape the truth. Henry carried two worlds in his heart, and only one was meant for me.
I let them have him. They built a statue beside his grave, just as grand as I knew they would make it – the unveiling was a drawn-out spectacle. I looked away, unbearably guilty at how morbid I found it all. That was that.
I think sometimes, if only I want it badly enough, the universe might take mercy and bend the natural laws, firmly yank the ear of time like a scolded child until it reluctantly acquiesces, and changes things back to how they were before. The delicate reels of loss and grief and desperate pain rewind like an old movie, and I watch them flash by my tired eyes.
The attack is promptly unauthorized; the enemy missiles gobble up their fuel and perch neatly at rest deep in the shadows of earth’s bloodstained soil. The fire in the sky stamps out as quickly as it came, and the oblivious sun forgets the billowing clouds of smoke and lights the earth with shining optimism. Homesick army men take a moment to bask in it. Henry crawls out of the burning embers of the once-bleak afternoon and back into his skin.
____
When the Last War broke out, I was relieved – for this time, Henry was too old for the draft. He’d been taken twenty years ago for the Mexican war, a month before our wedding, and returned two years later changed. He’d become a fighter in that time he wouldn’t share with me. He didn’t get along with people quite so easily; didn’t dole out smiles and affection like breathing. But he did his best to be kind, even when the broken pieces of himself were sharp enough to cut.
We barely survived it then, the two of us. When another war declaration was announced, I thanked God he wouldn’t be forced to leave again.
I should have known better from the look on his face. That metamorphosis had never undone itself; he was still a fighter, had been since he was bodily thrown at twenty-two from a world of love and youthful invincibility into a warzone. The American Forces called him, he told me a week after the declaration. They wanted him to lead, for he was uniquely situated to military strategy. It was true – he’d used his first war as a ladder to the top, and they wanted to place him back there.
I didn’t speak to him for a week, not until his bags were packed and uniform neatly buttoned and smoothed; not until I saw through the window the military escort waiting for him outside and felt that familiar rush of heart-splitting panic. I’ll always regret that.
I enter the graveyard and slow the car to a stop.
____
It was an embodiment of hope, they told me, justifying the statue of my dead husband. A symbolic representation of the heroism our country needed in these troubling times.
I’ve always hated it. The thing played Henry up as some kind of mythical legend – it was downright devotional with how the public perceived it, crowding around, snapping photos, hands clutched in silent prayer as though his spirit would protect their loved ones overseas. I’m almost surprised they didn’t charge for tickets for viewing.
I haven’t visited in a long time, but all these people know who I am. I used to practically live here, when Lily was at school and the shadows of the house began whispering some unknowable language. The newspapers dubbed me America’s Widow – Henry’s international fame bled onto me whether I liked it or not. He held a higher rank than I could really conceive of by his death.
Maybe the groundskeeper could read the look on my face as I exited my car and stalked past him towards Henry’s grave, for he ran ahead of me and ushered the group of chattering kids away from the statue. “School field trip,” he muttered, and I nodded, swallowing heavily.
As I approach the statue, I have to crane my neck to meet its eyes. It’s ridiculous, having a conversation with stone, but it feels more real than addressing the gravestone; feels easier than being reminded in neatly carved words that Henry was a HUSBAND and a FATHER before he wasn’t.
They’ve made him stand to attention, clad in the uniform he was wearing when he died. You might mistake him for any general with the impersonal nature of his pose and attire, but his face – they got his face just right, and that hurts so much more. His lips are smiling slightly; pursed but quirked in the corners as though attempting a serious expression while a friend tries to make him laugh. The eyes are tired but proud – he could be overseeing his men execute a drill perfectly.
Or he could, a small voice in my brain whispers, be watching Lily take her first steps with quivering uncertainty, giggling as she tries to run to her father on legs not yet quite built for running – yes, they had taken great care with his face.
I look at this marble ghost in its haunting eyes. It gazes back. Henry gazes back, eyes still laughing, as though challenging me to a staring contest.
I blink. My husband was never one to lose anything, until he lost everything. No half-measures. Not with Henry.
“I would have forgiven you for leaving,” I tell him, “if only you had returned to us.”
I turn my back on the statue, and go to pick my daughter up from school.