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by Lina Marino
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By early February 2004, Carl’s new battalion, the 2/4, had been training for several months for their upcoming tour to Iraq, but having just joined them, Carl caught the tail end. He worked overtime to catch up: extended days, recurrent overnights, coming home to Nora sheathed in field dust and sweat, the stink of unwashed bodies, ripe with unspoken tension as his departure date drew close. Neither of them could say the words. For the first time in his career Carl would deploy to a war zone, where Marines sent before him had died.
Nora slid beside him on a cold metal folding chair in a building as nondescript as any on Camp Pendleton, aligned with the 2/4 battalion headquarters. She paged through the packet of pastel photocopied checklists making its way through the aisles, reminders about next of kin and last rites some fatalistic ghoul had compiled. “These pre-deployment briefs are bogus.”
“It will be good for you,” Carl said.
“But I already know—”
“They’re starting.” He cupped his palm over her wedding ring, a habit started when he received his official orders. He would act as Headquarters Operations Chief on this mission, whatever that meant, coordinating far from the front lines, Nora hoped—he didn’t tell her much.
“While your Marine is deployed we will ensure their loved ones, you, have the support you need here.” Carl’s commanding officer, Major Grinny—the name incongruous with his cardboard-faced demeanor—leaned into the podium and surveyed the fidgety crowd. Who is he playing to, Nora wondered, the wives or the men? In a drafty auditorium packed with Marines in civvies, the major wore his uniform, the sand colored cammies Carl was issued for the desert battlefield: three sets, and two pairs of suede hot weather boots.
Nora tugged her sweatshirt zipper higher. She should’ve worn a coat, stubbornly acting the tough New Yorker despite the recent drop in temperature. Who was she fooling? Her blood had thinned decades ago. At least she’d bundled Matt and Paulie in down jackets, and tucked them out of earshot in the kids’ room as soon as they arrived—free daycare provided by Wives’ Club volunteers. “Kids don’t wear this in fifth grade,” Matt had griped, he and his brother insulated from this charade—upper management spouting platitudes while revealing absolutely nothing to the attendees.
Paulie had charged forward to gorge on juice and cookies, but Matt had clung to Nora’s side. “It’s all babies in there.” He’d crossed his elbows, stretching the polyester fabric tight across the armholes like a self-imposed straightjacket. She wondered if he was sulking in the corner like he had been since the news of Carl’s deployment, turning away friends who came calling after school, prowling around the house, like when he was a toddler, poised at the back door waiting for his father’s return. She wondered how he would act when Carl was actually gone.
“This is Sheila,” Major Grinny introduced his wife, a gaunt woman who posed beside him knock-kneed, smiling for no reason, living up to their foolish name. Without asking Nora, Carl had given her their home phone number. As head of the Wives’ Club and family liaison her job was disseminating battalion news to the spouses on her list, but already Nora erased three messages about a “Getting to Know You” coffee klatch off the answering machine before Carl noticed.
“Make sure you know where to go for assistance.” Major Grinny glanced up from his notes. He blinked at the impatient audience. All strangers to Nora; she scanned her row. She hadn’t met anyone in Carl’s new battalion yet. Not that they socialized much, but he always introduced her to his next in command and a couple of peers from every workplace, just in case.
This was happening too fast. She didn’t need names or ranks or the ages of their children watching a Disney video together to sense the bond she shared with these people—waiting for the man in charge to say something relevant. Her frustration was boiling over. Where, exactly, was Carl going? When was Carl coming home?
She rifled through the packet in her lap again, hunting for answers.
Create a Power of Attorney (POA), bold letters shouted off the grainy paper.
They’d taken care of that, ten years ago, when Matt was born. “Just a precaution,” Carl said, but they’d kept it in place.
An icy current blasted her neck. Air conditioner in February? Faulty machinery clicked on overhead like a mechanical cricket in the ceiling. The building reeked of neglect—the over-waxed tile yellowing under buzzing fluorescents, cracks running up the walls. She hunkered closer to Carl, absorbing the heat banking off his bare arms, a constant she relied on.
He shifted against her reassuringly.
“Of course, security measures must be taken for the safety of the troops.” Major Grinny cleared his throat. “We’ll do our best to keep families informed, but there will be times when we go dark.”
“Dark?” Nora nudged Carl.
“Later.” He shushed her.
Create your will. Review your life insurance coverage.
When Matt had finally ventured into the daycare room one of the sitters offered him a chocolate cupcake. Not gluten free, but Nora let it pass. He’d been sneaking other forbidden foods at school, trading lunch treats and paying the price at home (indigestion, nightmares, eruptions on the toilet), rejecting the diet that helped to stabilize his moods. She couldn’t control him anymore. How would she get him to behave, keep him out danger when Carl was away?
Establish a joint bank account with your spouse so your bills can be easily paid. They had that covered. Carl had handed her his paycheck since their wedding day; on his meager salary she set up a house buying fund, retirement accounts, even small college savings for the boys.
President Bush, she’d read, approved another increase in the US defense budget. Colossal sums dumped into operations in Afghanistan and Iraq—none of that reflected in Carl’s pay.
She knotted her hands, the wrinkles betraying her age, thirty-five years, blue veins swollen to fuel each pregnancy never shrunk back to normal. The ceiling cricket rattled: click. Her ears froze shut. She resisted an impulse to yank up her hood, straining to cut through Major Grinny’s bullshit.
“Communication will be dispatched down through the chain of command.” He paused. A slow talker following a script, as company commander he’d likely given this speech before, now with an edge his vague midwestern accent couldn’t quite disguise.
Nora flipped through her pink and blue pages organized by tab, the table of contents burning her eyes. Someone made an effort to be thorough: proforma legal contracts, family care guardianship plans, emergency contact procedures—the message clear; Carl, and all of these Marines, teenaged boys with young brides, many cradling newborns, brothers, sisters, might not make it back. “This is the big game,” a lanky kid in the seat in front of Nora muttered.
Important Documents. Money Management.
She suppressed an urge to scream.
Carl braided his fingers into hers, thwarting her assault on the crumpled pages.
The major gave up the stage. The chaplain, freckled ears jutting from his flat blonde skull, ventured from the wings and palmed the microphone. “Let us pray for the brave soldiers about to embark on this journey.”
“He’s a good man,” Carl told her. “He’s deploying with us.” His whispered remark meant to comfort Nora.
She and Carl had no religion. They hadn’t taught Matt and Paulie to believe in anything, a lapse she regretted now; a religious underpinning might’ve helped the family cope with whatever was to come. She bowed her head.
But no amount of prayer relieved the pain, the stab in her heart, her mind probing the minutes and hours and days ahead as she pictured a car switching off its engine on the street where Matt and Paulie toss a ball, imagined footsteps approaching her front door, Nora watching for the two most unwanted men in uniform, grim reapers sent to perform the worst duty in the military, deliver the worst news.
The seven long months she and Carl would be forced to part stretched out in front of her like an endless desert. She gazed at the families assembled in the drafty hall, breathed in their scents, listened to their prayers and murmurs, all of them united, bowed heads receiving the young chaplain’s blessing. His plea they be protected as ineffectual as Major Grinny’s stilted noncommunication.
And was not comforted. Not one bit.
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Lina Marino was married to a Marine for thirty years. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from Binghamton University. She is published in The Comstock Review, Twyckenham Notes, and Atlanta Review, with work forthcoming in The McNeese Review. “Pre-Deployment Brief” is an excerpt from her debut novel, for which she is seeking representation.
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