How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [48]
I wanted to scream, I can know, too! I am an adult! Anger caused my blood pressure and pulse to shoot up, and the on-call nurse rushed in. I didn’t need to be told what was wrong. It was my heart, same as always. They would give me some new drug mix; I’d stay a couple of days and then go home. It would get stronger again. It always had. I had to keep believing that. I pushed all my doubts away.
Charlie came back in and sat down next to me. He patted my hand. “What did the doctor say?” I asked anyway.
“Not much.” Charlie looked at me sideways. He was honest—my father had been right about that. A terrible liar.
“What, he say I gonna die today?”
Charlie leaned back, his eyes on a far wall. A nurse walked by. There was no privacy here. “He said you had to stay so they can run some tests.”
“Great.” I stared at my husband, willing him to tell me the truth. We’d been through so much together. True, I didn’t love him when we first got married. But love can grow.
DURING ONE PERIOD in the Navy, Charlie went to Alaska with a spy group every few months. He stayed on the ground while pilots spied on the Russians. Charlie had said there was nothing much to do but sit around and wait for the planes to come back. He was there in case someone got hurt. The worst thing he ever treated was a runny nose.
He went walking on the beaches there. One morning, he found some jade. Real, deep-green jade. He took it home and had it made into earrings and a necklace for me. I knew that was how he showed his love.
In Vietnam, he rode in helicopters with the Marines through enemy fire to retrieve wounded men out of the jungle. But he never told me about the details, never wrote, “You wouldn’t believe how many times we got shot at today! I saw the intestines coming out of five Marines!” Instead, he wrote, “You wouldn’t believe how cheap the silver is here!” He brought back tortoiseshell bracelets, ebony salad bowls, hammered silver cuff links. Only once did he talk about it. Sue’s hair got singed while she was blowing out birthday candles and Charlie got a faraway look in his eyes. “Nothing’s worse than the smell of human hair burning,” he said. “Smelled that and human flesh all the time in Vietnam. Put me off steak for a long time.” Then he shook it off and smiled. “Not forever, though.”
DEATH LY ILL PEOPLE filled the ICU. The man in the next bed died that night—from what, I didn’t know. I never saw his face, only heard his machines and his rasped breathing through the thin polka-dot curtain separating our beds.
Charlie went home only once in two days. I told him I was fine, that all I needed to do was sleep. “But you can’t stay alone,” he said fretfully, reminding me of an old woman. In fact, he looked more like one every day, his angular features filling out and softening, breasts forming under his shirt. I could not remember the last time we had been intimate. Years. In his religion, intimacy was for the purpose of baby-making, not for fun. I didn’t know if the church had told him this or if he had decided on his own. I used to miss it, taking care of myself with the Hitachi magic wand that Charlie thought was a shoulder massager.
“I stay alone, Charlie. There nurses here.”
“They take a half-hour to answer your call button.”
“Only since they know you stay.” He was annoying me, always hanging around rattling his newspaper or dozing off. He had never spent so much time staying close to me at home. I had had enough. Charlie never listened to me unless I was brusque. “I better faster if you go away.”
He scratched his chin. He hadn’t shaved in days. It looked awful, all salt-and-pepper whiskers that scratched my face when he kissed my cheek.
“But they should know . . .”
“Go home and sleep!” I said, wanting to get up and push him out. “Call Mike. I go home tomorrow. Too much fuss, eh? What matter with you?”
He paused a moment, and I thought he would tell me what the doctor said in the hallway.
I made a shooing motion at my husband. “Go away,” I said,