Georgie laid on their borrowed bed watching her husband duct tape cardboard into a space around the little air conditioner he picked up from Home Depot the day before. He squeezed the panel into one of the trailer’s back bedroom windows, cancelling out some of the light. The ensuing darkness felt like she was hidden within the walls of a tiny tin cave.
When he first unboxed the unit, his arms moved around, and his hands wagered at the window space. Georgie thought Scott’s eyeballing and his intent on thinking concisely was sexy. Those fingers holding on, his eyes checking me out, him moaning. He put the uncut cardboard in front of the cold air for a minute.
“I think that defeats the purpose.” Georgie let out a soft snort.
Scott looked pissed. “You want to fucking do this?”
Not really, just trying to have some fun, she thought. Happy exchanges with Scott disappeared little by little after each one of his deployments. Anymore, he was just an asshole. Sex was lame, especially when he came home this last time. Georgie thought about rolling off the bed and leaving his makeshift construction zone.
Instead, she stayed put and went back to reading her book. She wore a gypsy skirt with purple flowers and red hues of lace. When she laid back it wound up between her legs, summiting high around her bare thighs. She knew her shape showed the trail to that sweet spot Scott used to favor. He didn’t notice. He was distant, farther away than ever before. This time, when he wasn’t cussing at her, he hung on tightly to constant silence. Georgie decided Scott wasn’t proud of himself or his military calling anymore.
* * *
Every so often Georgie looked up from her book to survey the cardboard duct tape mission. She thought about her dad. Scott was not her father’s first choice. He wanted her to get out of their ugly neighborhood, have a good career, find a nice man, be comfortable, raise a family right.
Scott dropped out of high school and later he had no choice but to join the army. The judge said, “Boy, I’m giving you two options and I don’t gotta give you any.” He shook his finger at Scott. “Your burglarizing and sneaking into neighbors’ windows, stealing liquor, credit cards, tools and all that mess, you’re a varmint. Unless someone knocks some sense into you, you’re gonna grow up a worse criminal or dead. Here’s my deal, boy, you can go to jail until you’re 21 or you can join the army.” Right before his initial tour to Afghanistan, Scott married Georgie, his girl down the street.
* * *
When Scott returned from the desert the first time, his drinking started. In the morning, he woke up, went to work on the fort, and came home drunk. Before breakfast, Georgie often found him passed out on the living room chair looking like a corpse. She was worried but she still believed that Scott was proud of his military duty back. “Yay Babe, being a combat medic means we are out there with bullets whizzing by when we’re moving in to get to our people. I was scared most of the time, but I always knew what I was supposed to do it. One time, these troopers parachuted down into shit and on their way down they got all tangled up. We had to go get to ‘um. We were under fire the whole way. When we got there, both guys were dead, but we still had to get us and them out, without us being killed too.”
* * *
Scott’s anger grew in leaps and bounds after his second tour. “Shut up, just shut up. I don’t want to hear your fucking voice.” He’d destroy some of Georgie’s belongings at random. “Your grandfather wouldn’t want you to have this. You’re a whore. I know you’re messing around on me when I am out there fighting for our country.”
In slow motion, Georgie watched Scott place a small blue music box with its ocean scene on the floor in front of him. “No. please, please don’t. I love you. I swear I only love you. Nooooo.” He raised his right leg and smashed down on the pretty little thing, crunching it to pieces with his boot.
Even her vacuum cleaner was executed. Scott picked up the appliance and bashed it on the floor to his left, then swung it up over his head to bash it on the floor to his right. Small plastic pieces flew around the tiny kitchen in all directions.
Then, a few days before his third deployment to the desert, Scott hurled her coveted collection of Princess Diana commemorative plates against their trailer’s living room wall. After that, Scott left with the Army once more. Georgie was mad at herself for feeling relieved.
* * *
After returning from his third tour, Scott held the shears he used in his right hand, he looked like a soldier who had taken his victim’s scalp. The rays of golden threads slipped through his fingers. Sobbing, Georgie watched her long hair land in a curled-up pile on the yellow and grey checkered linoleum. She loved her hair. Georgie looked up from the floor and gazed at their wedding picture hanging on the wall. She treasured the thick strawberry locks resting along her bare shoulders. I could, I could be like Princess Diana, she thought.
At church, Georgie opened the truck door to climb out. Georgie’s mother hurried over. “Your hair, what did you do to your beautiful hair?”
“I was sick of being so hot, Ma. I wanted something more modern. All the magazines have girls that look like this.” Georgie ran her fingers through the right side of her cut and shook her head a little, trying to appear cute and light. “I really like it, Ma.”
“But all these years, Baby girl.” Her mother looked down to hide her disappointment.
Georgie didn’t know what to do anymore. She couldn’t tell her father or her mother; she simply could not tell anyone. Before he came back that last time, she read up on soldiers who get messed up with combat experience. At dinner one night, she mentioned PTSD. She said, “It’s not your fault.” Scott shut her down. “Leave me alone, I’m not bothering you right now. I don’t need this. Get the fuck away from me.”
Just hold on a little longer, she thought, until he goes again.
* * *
Georgie looked up a few times to watch Scott finish tucking the board in tight for the sake of the bloody hot summer. A few days later, he was headed out to Afghanistan for a fourth time to a bloody hot summer of his own. For a moment, Georgie looked forward to him going. She convinced herself that her relief with his leaving had nothing to do with the breakdown of their relationship. Then, she felt self-loathing regret, like something was wrong with her that she couldn’t love him anymore. After watching Scott silently move around the window to board up, she knew if he goes again there is no love between them. She shook off her bad feelings and went back to reading. The sweet new darkness of the bedroom helped the book’s passages carry her away. The story’s hero was now her secret boyfriend.