Free Homefront by Kristen Tsetsi Page A

lids.
    I’ve never been to a funeral, but
I’ve heard it said that the people in caskets end up looking like
doll-painted wax: pink cheeks, red lips, a “lifelike” skin tone. I
must tell Olivia they can’t do that to Jake, can’t give his light
lips a dark pink finish, can’t blush his cheeks because he doesn’t
blush.
    And what then, afterward? After the
wake, after Arlington, because that’s where he wants to be buried.
Heroes are buried there, and non-heroes, too, flat under headstones
as identical as their uniforms and lined up in perfect formation.
What then, after “Taps,” after Olivia takes the flag and Jake is
lowered into a hole? An empty apartment, a fatherless cat, Jake’s
clothes in the closet and his car parked out front and his files on
the computer. I’ll wonder if it was a mistake, if the man in the
casket was a stranger, one who just happened to look like Jake. And
I’ll wait for him to come through the door, wait for weeks, months,
because I won’t believe he won’t be back to eat his breakfast bars
in the cupboard next to the cereal, or the nuts he hides behind the
flour so he doesn’t have to share.

    ________

    He looks out from the shelves,
smiling in a T-shirt and shorts, holding a liter beer from a German
Hofbräuhaus. I get up and flip each picture facedown. Bad
luck, badluckbadluck to imagine him alive and three-dimensional because that means
he could also not be.

    ________

    The alarm is going off or there’s a
siren or—
    —the phone. I crawl to the desk and
pick up the receiver. “Hello! Hello!”
    Olivia says, “How are you, hon,” and
I can’t answer because I can’t breathe because mucus stuffs my
sinuses and I’m gulping and tears adhere my lips like wet glue. I
gasp that it wasn’t worth it, or something that sounds like it,
anyway, that nothing is worth it, that I
loved him and thank you, thank you for having him so I had the
chance to love him —
    “Mia, what on earth…? Are you okay,
sweetheart?”
    I say, “Jake.”
    “That’s why I’m calling you, hon. I
just got off the phone with him. He’s doing very well. And you have
some mail coming. Isn’t that exciting?”
    I wipe my nose and my mouth on my
sleeve. “He called you?”
    “Oh, I’m sure he’ll—well, Mia, you
have to—I am his
mother. I’m positive he’ll call you soon.”

    APRIL 16, WEDNESDAY

    Forty-eight Maple. Rainwater pours
from a gutter onto a slant of driveway that funnels it into a
flooding patch of soil. Donny jogs to the cab with a newspaper held
over his head and climbs in. Glinting raindrops cling to the ends
of his hair.
    “Where’ve you been?” He drops the
paper on the floor, sets his muddy feet on top.
    “Sick,” I say. “Same
place?”
    “It is if you’re talkin’ about the
construction site.”
    I pull away from his house and see
him staring. “What.”
    “Nothin’. ‘What.’ I can’t look?
Damn, girl, you’re in a bad mood again? It’s been almost a week
since I saw you. You said you was sick, and I was just seein’ if
you looked sick.”
    I don’t know why it matters—it
shouldn’t—but I say, anyway, “Do I?”
    “Naw. Uh, uh. I ain’t sayin’. If I
say no, I’m callin’ you a liar. If I say yes, well—I ain’t even
goin’ to—”
    “Never mind. Forget it.”
    A mile and a half of silence, and
then a long red light. I say, “How’s your wife?”
    “What do you mean, how’s my wife?
Why’re you askin’ about my wife? You know her?”
    Too early. It’s too early for this,
and I’m too tired. “I was just being polite. Fuck it.”
    He laughs. “‘Fuck it’!” He slaps his
thigh and his laughter goes on for a quarter mile. “Girl, you’re
all right. ‘Fuck it.’” He lights a cigarette and drops the lighter
between his feet, picks it up. “I ain’t havin’ such a good day,
m’self.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    He shrugs and looks out the
window.
    “Will you please open
the—?”
    “Sorry,” he says and