Pieces of Me Read online

  “Kate! Oh my god. Congratulations!” My voice comes out weirdly high-pitched and Harvey bounds in through the door, excited by the noise.

  “Harvey, get out! Go play with Noah!” Kate shouts.

  I stand up and hug her.

  “How far along are you?”

  “Four months.”

  “Wait, so just before they went?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t find out until after he left.”

  I thought about how I’d felt before Adam went away. The desire to keep a part of him with me, an insurance against the what-ifs. I feel a twinge of envy. But it would have been too soon for Adam and I. For most of our relationship one of us has been somewhere else. But still, I feel it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask her. I have spent so much time with Kate in Colorado, it unsettles me that there has been such a large secret between us.

  “I was nervous, I guess,” she says. “I miscarried after Noah. It made me cautious. But I would have told you soon. I won’t be able to hide it much longer.”

  She runs a hand over her belly. I think I see a slight rise, as though she has eaten a big meal.

  “So, are you feeling okay? Is there anything I can help with?” I ask. I have no idea what pregnant people need. I watched my sister’s pregnancy develop via Facebook status updates. I left for Baghdad when she still had six months of her pregnancy left. I didn’t think she’d ever forgive me.

  “I mean, bringing doughnuts is good, whether I’m pregnant or not. But I do have a scan next month, if you’d be free to come to that?”

  “Sure,” I say, in my new American way. “Of course.”

  23

  I did not tell anyone what Adam asked me on top of the palace before he left Iraq. Not at first anyway. I did not tell them the question he asked and I did not tell them that I said yes.

  I visited Adam in Colorado as soon as I could after his deployment ended, on an R and R that was scheduled for one month later. For those few weeks I sleepwalked through my life in Baghdad. Even though Adam had only been gone a few weeks, our time in Iraq already felt like a strange dream. I thought again about Jessica’s tearful words after the first and only time she went to visit Mike. “He was just a different person in his real life.”

  The journey from Baghdad to Colorado took a day and a half. I flew from Baghdad to Kuwait, Kuwait to Washington DC, DC to Denver.

  During the long flight from Kuwait to DC, I stared mindlessly at films. When the lights were dimmed and the other passengers slept, I sat, my face lit up by the small screen in front of me. My mind ran in anxious circles. I arrived in DC exhausted.

  A bored-looking immigration officer with thick bushy eyebrows flicked through my passport.

  “Where are you arriving from?” he asked.

  “Kuwait,” I said. “Well, Iraq. Via Kuwait.”

  The eyebrows moved towards each other and his eyes rose to meet mine.

  “Iraq?”

  “Yes. I work out there.”

  “Are you military, ma’am?”

  “No. Civilian.”

  “What do you do in Iraq?”

  “I work with Iraqis seeking special visas for the US.”

  The caterpillars rose this time.

  “Hm,” he said. I thought about all of the Iraqis that I helped to move here and wondered what kind of reception they received at immigration. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed people in the queue shifting impatiently. The immigration officer was typing rapidly, not giving anything away.

  “I work on the US embassy compound,” I added hopefully.

  “So what brings you to the States?” he asked.

  “I’m visiting someone.”

  “Who?”

  “A US soldier.”

  “That you met in Iraq?”

  “Yes sir.” I don’t know why I called him sir. I don’t call anyone sir. The immigration officer typed a bit more and then handed back my passport.

  “Enjoy your stay, ma’am,” he said.

  I emailed Adam to tell him I was in DC. He replied quickly.

  This day is taking forever. I can’t wait for you to arrive. I’ll camp out at the airport if I have to.

  I don’t remember much of the flight from DC to Denver, other than being sat next to a friendly plump lady who thought my nerves were flying-related and repeatedly patted my hand.

  When I got off the plane, I went straight to the bathroom to try and pull myself together. I stood in front of the mirror, taking in my image. My eyes were red and itchy from dehydration and the in-flight AC. My hair was knotted into clumps at the back of my head from three flights’ worth of friction against the headrest. My mouth was stale from travel.

  I pulled a toothbrush from my bag and brushed my teeth, then splashed water on my face and rubbed in moisturiser. I began to feel better, even though my reflection looked the same. A woman next to me leant in towards the mirror to reapply her lipstick. I looked at myself again. Maybe it was me who would seem different in the real world, not him.

  I checked my phone and saw two messages. The first was an excited email from Anna.

  OMG, ARE YOU THERE YET? HOW IS IT???!!!! XXX

  The second was from Adam.

  The board says your flight arrived. Where are you, babe??

  I couldn’t hide in the bathrooms any longer. I shoved my toiletries into my wash bag and walked back out into the airport.

  I saw Adam as soon as I entered the arrivals hall. He was stood back a bit from the crowd, with his arms crossed and feet apart in the same stance he’d been in that first day by the pool. He wore a blue checked shirt and I realised I’d never seen him in a collared shirt before. He looked different, not quite real. I’d become used to the 2D Skype version of him already. Perhaps this was what it was like for people who saw celebrities in the street, out of context or out of place.

  His eyes locked with mine and a smile broke across his face and now he was moving quickly through the waiting crowd, dodging children and roller suitcases. I felt sick and awkward and remembered I hadn’t reapplied deodorant.

  Then he reached me. He wrapped his arms around my body and my head was buried into his chest. I closed my eyes and breathed in his familiar smell. I was back in Iraq, with the whir of helicopters and the rumble of military vehicles and the warmth of the night. I was back with Adam, my Adam.

  I leant back and looked up at him.

  “Hey,” I said, smiling. He lowered his head to kiss me and his lips felt familiar on mine.

  “Hey,” he said. “I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind.”

  *

  “The journey home might take a while,” said Adam as we got into his car. It was a large truck-type thing, not so different to the one he drove in Iraq. “It’s usually about ninety minutes, but we’re gonna hit peak traffic.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Honestly, I’m just glad to not be on a plane.”

  As we drove away from the airport, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the white tent-like peaks of Denver International. Everything felt wide and spacious, so unlike the claustrophobia of Baghdad. I finally relaxed.

  For the first part of the drive we talked about my journey over – the films I had stared at, the merits of British Airways versus United, the concerned lady on the final leg. Adam asked me a bit about Anna, work, but there wasn’t much new to talk about.

  When Adam was in the States and I was still in Baghdad, we talked on Skype almost every day, right up until I finally left, six months after he did. Sometimes the conversations would be a snatched “How are you? I miss you. I love you.” Other times they would last for hours.

  Sometimes we spoke about how we met, the same way we still do now. Other times we spoke about the future. Sentences began with “One day” and “When” and we imagined our love in a future far beyond Skype calls and emails and short, intense periods together. But always we talked. We lived half-lives. Our own and each other’s. Our relationship filled the space between u
s.

  In Adam’s truck we fell into an easy silence. I sat, one hand resting on his leg, marvelling at how the landscape seemed to roll on forever, transitioning from plains to hills and eventually the mountain range. Occasionally Adam would reach over and run a hand over the back of my head or wrap his arm around my neck and pull me towards him to kiss the side of my face. Other times he just looked over and smiled.

  Gradually darkness fell and the deep grey mountains melted into a purple sky. Headlights lit up the wide roads. We passed stores and restaurants with flickering signs that advertised liquor and fast food. Then we took the back roads and when I looked out of the window there was the type of deep reassuring darkness you could never find on the compound. I rested my head against the low vibrations of the window and closed my eyes.

  When I opened them again, we were stopped at traffic lights on a busy street. Groups of people walked along the pavement, enjoying their Friday night out. They wore jeans and jackets and even cowboy boots; real leather boots, not the fake type that had been popular in England one summer while I was at university. Some women wore skirts and I stared at their bare legs. I wondered how many men coming back from deployment must have done the same. Even with the windows of the car shut I could hear a medley of country and pop music blaring out of bars, the kind I had only ever come across in Baghdaddy’s at the weekend.

  Adam looked over.

  “Nearly there, babe,” he said.

  I nodded and rubbed at my eyes, looking out at the made-up women and feeling the staleness of travel anew.

  The traffic lights changed and we carried along the strip a bit further. I noticed a couple of men in military uniform stood outside one of the bars.

  “What are those soldiers doing?” I asked Adam.

  “Military Police,” he replied. “They keep an eye on things in town. Make sure the guys don’t roll out drunk and start causing trouble.”

  The MPs I had been used to seeing were mostly on Camp Victory, lurking around corners with their speed guns to stop you if you rolled through a stop sign or broke the 10mph limit. There was the other time I spoke to them too, but my trip was before that happened. Things hadn’t changed.

  “Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked Adam. “I mean, isn’t it up to you what you do when you’re not at work? It’s not as if you’re deployed.”

  He shook his head.

  “A soldier’s a soldier, Em, off-duty or not.”

  I hadn’t realised that the military permeated everything, even so far from the battlefield. Seeing men in uniform out on the streets was something I associated with Iraq, not normal life.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he continued, glancing at me. “They only get involved if you’re being an idiot. Plus, it keeps relationships with the community on track.”

  I noticed the way he said “community”, as if he saw himself and the army as separate from everyone else living in Colorado Springs. I started to realise that Adam was defined by his identity as a soldier at home just as much as he was in Iraq.

  “Here we are,” said Adam, turning off the main strip of bars and restaurants and into a small parking lot outside an apartment building. It wasn’t what I’d been expecting and he must have read my face. “Like I said, a lot of single guys live in condos downtown. The married guys have bigger houses further out.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “I guess you’re close to the bars.”

  “Yeah,” he hesitated. “But it’s just temporary. We can find somewhere better, that suits both of us, if, when… Well, y’know.”

  “I know,” I said, with a nervous smile. “But I’m sure it’s fine. We’re not even inside the place yet.”

  The apartment was on the sixth floor of the building, second from the top. He wheeled my suitcase through the door of the apartment block and across a shiny floor that smelled of cleaning products. Inside the lift I rested my head on his shoulder, turning away from my tired reflection in the mirror. When we arrived at his floor, the lights flicked on in the hallway. We walked to the furthest of the four doors and he fumbled with his keys as he tried to let us in, reminding me of the nerves I had felt the first time he came to my room in Baghdad. He reached into the apartment to turn on the light, then stood back and motioned me in.

  I walked inside and looked around. I had seen the place countless times on Skype. A glimpse of part of the wall or the television or the kitchen behind his head. Once, he’d tried to give me a tour, but the angle of the camera wasn’t quite right so I had little sense of space or how the different rooms fit together. It was strange to see it in real life, the same way I found when booking accommodation for R and R that the hotel rooms were simultaneously the same and totally different from the photos that advertised them online.

  The decoration in the apartment was basic. Functional. No wonder my soft lighting and throw pillows in Iraq had surprised him. The walls were white and most of the furniture was a combination of blacks and greys. There was a brown leather sofa that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the decoration, a large television with a neat stack of DVDs to one side of it and a small glass dining table that looked like it had never been used.

  “I don’t remember seeing the table before,” I said to him.

  “Yeah… I, uh, got it for your visit,” he said, his hand running around the back of his neck.

  The open-plan kitchen didn’t look like it had been used much either. On the counter was a bunch of gerberas in a pint glass of water. The bright pinks and yellows looked almost embarrassed at their vibrancy amongst the controlled hues of the other decoration.

  “Sorry. I didn’t have a vase,” said Adam coming in behind me. “And I didn’t know what kind of flowers you liked. Or if you even liked flowers.”

  “They’re lovely,” I said, standing with my rucksack still hung over my shoulder.

  “You can put your bag down,” he said.

  I put it on the stool by the counter. I had become used to his room in Baghdad, but in this space I felt foreign.

  “Sorry it’s not very… homely.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “It’s nice to… Well, to see your real life, I guess.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and lowered his head for a kiss. It was still Adam, still us, just somewhere else.

  “Would you like a glass of wine?” he asked.

  “I’d love one,” I said.

  He opened the door of his almost empty fridge and pulled out a bottle with a familiar label.

  “You remembered,” I said.

  “Of course I did.”

  Adam had seen me drinking the Sauvignon Blanc in Baghdad with Anna on my birthday. The three of us were sat on the floor in my room with a bottle of wine and a squashed birthday cake that Anna had brought back from the UK. Adam had reached for his pocket knife to open the wine, but Anna beat him to it and opened the bottle by pressing the lid of her nail varnish into the cork.

  “We’ve learnt important life skills out here,” I told him.

  Now, in Colorado, he opened the bottle the way people do in the real world and poured me a glass, then got himself a beer. He lifted his bottle and I raised my wine to meet it. The glass touched gently together.

  “Welcome home, babe,” he said. “I’m so glad you’re finally here.”

  24

  It is 8am in Colorado and seventeen hundred hours in Baghdad. The Skype connection is good today. I can see the flick of the scar on his eyebrow, the slight angle of his left front tooth, the pinpricks of stubble on his face.

  “Hang on,” he says. “I have a photo for you.”

  I watch as the loading bar fills from white to blue and click open. It is a picture of Radwaniyah Palace. It must have been taken late afternoon, because there is an orange tint to the colour of the stone. The photo is blurred slightly, as if it has been taken in a rush before the phone was shoved back into a pocket. There are a couple of military vehicles in the foreground and a man in uniform is walking out of shot, casting a glance back to
the camera.

  Everything about the photo is familiar. The antennae on the palace roof. The thick trunks and long, pointed leaves of palm trees. The dark yellow dirt under the vehicles.

  “Bring back memories?” he smiles.

  It does. Adam and night-time and water like silk. Thick warm air that swims around my limbs. The taste of dust and dirt and burning metal. The arm on my neck. The taste of blood.

  “Sure does,” I say.

  “It’s a shame we didn’t manage to get engagement photos up there,” he jokes.

  “Maybe one of the blimps got aerial footage. You should ask.”

  He laughs.

  “So what have you been up to?” he says.

  Adam’s face pixellates. I worry that our good luck with the connection has run out, but then the details of his face return.

  “I went over to Kate’s for breakfast yesterday,” I say. “Did you know she’s pregnant again?”

  “Yeah, Dave’s stoked,” he says. “He’s wanted another one for ages.”

  “Oh. How long have you known for?”

  “A while,” he says with an apologetic shrug. “There’s not exactly a lot to talk about out here. Did she tell you about Dave too?” he asks.

  “About Dave?”

  “Yeah. About him getting out.”

  “Out? What, of the army?” I ask, surprised.

  “Yup. He’s been considering it for a while. I guess the baby has just kinda sealed it for him.”

  “So this is his last deployment?”

  “Yeah. He’ll start transitioning once he gets home. It takes a while, but at least he’ll still be in Colorado. Actually, I think they’re planning on sticking around even after.”

  “I really hope so,” I say. “I’d miss Kate if she wasn’t around.”

  Adam nods but says nothing. We both know the nature of this lifestyle is transient. There’s no guarantee of anyone staying anywhere.

  “So what have you been up to?” I ask him.

  “The usual,” he says. “Lots of training the Iraqi guys. Lots of sweet FA.”

  Work was probably a bad thing to ask about. Adam’s boredom is a constant theme in our conversations at the moment. This deployment is different to his last; 2011 in Iraq is different. US troops are only supposed to be there in an advisory role now, not leading the way in, kicking down doors or picking up targets. There are still a lot of doors that need to be kicked down, but there are far more restrictions and bureaucratic loopholes for the chain of command to jump through to make it happen. It doesn’t feel like mission accomplished, but everything takes longer and time is running out. I change the subject.