33
She slept for sixteen hours, waking before dawn on Christmas mas morning. Broker, who got up regularly to cover her and Kit during the night-“both his girls”-heard her cautious reconnaissance of the unfamiliar kitchen in the dark.
Coming out, he found her hugging her blanket, stumbling, still groggy with fatigue. But now she smiled more readily.
They kissed; a clumsy married embrace, lips off target, lousy footwork.
“God.” She made a sound between a giggle and Bronx cheer. “When we courted, you were an acrobat; what happened?”
“Got beyond that physical mastery stuff. How are you doing?”
“Need coffee.” She pointed to the cupboards. “You changed everything.”
“I organized everything.”
“Coffee,” she repeated.
While Broker made the coffee, Nina stood over Kit’s crib and passed her right hand over her daughter, palm down, caressing a cushion of air. Not quite ready to touch.
The aroma of brewed coffee brought her back to the kitchen. Steaming cups in hand, they crept into the living room.
Broker turned off the Christmas tree lights. They sat on the floor, backs against the couch, and watched the dark horizon melt from iron to pewter to nickel until it caught fire with the day.
“Hard to believe I had her inside my body,” she wondered.
“Only thing we come equipped to do, replace ourselves,”
said Broker.
She patted his cheek. “You’d like that, see me barefoot and pregnant in there again.” She nodded at the kitchen.
It was the truth. He wanted her out. “You know me: Fuck the army.” He shrugged.
“They don’t say that anymore, they like the army now,”
she mused.
“Bad sign. The army should be ugly and dangerous, and they should bitch every minute they’re in. If it’s a nice place to be, God help us in the next real war.”
Nina didn’t take the bait. This particular subject tended to get irrational; she had fought tinhorn Panamanians and Iraqis. And won. He claimed the moral high ground, having been beaten by one of the great warrior races of history, the North Vietnamese.
“I’m sorry,” Broker apologized. “It’s Christmas.”
“Don’t apologize. Glad to see you still have a few of your old edges.” She tweaked an inch of his belly fat between her thumb and index finger.
Indignant, Broker huffed. “You try taking care of that kid and finding the time to-”
“Shhhh, hey dude, I love you.”
Broker moved closer, no longer clumsy. “Glad to see you still have a few of your old weaknesses.”
“Mmmmm…”
“Why don’t we just tiptoe to the bedroom,” he suggested.
The sunrise forgotten, arm in arm, they had made it halfway across the room when Kit started wailing and started throwing, first her tippy cup and then her stuffed animals, out of her crib.
Clad in bathrobes, they opened presents, crunching through wrapping paper, cardboard and ribbons. Broker’s parents called from Arizona, extolling the joys of sunshine. He gave her the latest lightweight long underwear and socks from the Outfitters in Grand Marais. Kit got an old-fashioned wooden sled with steel runners. Broker had bolted on a wooden box to hold her for now.
She gave him an ornate Macedonian dagger from the fif-teenth century.
Kit’s presents from Broker’s mom and dad were evenly split between dolls, puzzles, and videos. The dolls with dresses Nina marched off, out of sight. She approved of the puzzles. And of the box of Winnie-the-Pooh movies.
Broker was thinking of reheating the skipped dinner when Nina emerged from a long hot shower and disappeared into the bedroom. He went in to check. An old T-shirt he’d brought back from New Orleans, black, with a chorus line of alligator skeletons across the front, was hooked in her right elbow. She had fallen asleep again, in the middle of putting it on.
Broker spent an enjoyable hour, walking with Kit on his shoulder, watching his wife sleep. The first night, on the couch, she had curled in a defensive ball, knees drawn up, arms crossed across her chest. A cold scent had seeped off her skin; nerves marinated in steel, solvents, mud and leather.
Tenderized by rest, hot water and lotions, her clenched limbs began to sprawl. Her hard round arms were flung over her head. Tidy breasts pulled taut, faintly webbed with stretch marks. A light sepia stripe of pigment ran from her reddish pubic hair to her navel, intersecting the half moon bikini scar where Kit had entered the world. Modestly, her carved knees were tucked together.
Shadows collected in a scarred whorl below her left hip where she’d taken two AK-47 rounds during Desert Storm. She’d kept the skull and crossbones tattoo on her left shoulder. Maybe it helped win over the grunts when she walked into a tent wearing an sleeveless T-shirt. She wore her copper hair in a practical wash and wear shag; but it was long enough to curl over her ears to conceal the scarred lump where Bevode Fret had sliced off her left earlobe, nearly two years ago.
Nina’s rib cage rose and fell. Kit’s soft breath bussed his neck. Mommy was a fast ship pointed in harm’s way; their marriage was a voyage in uncharted waters. More than once Broker had awakened of a dark night and rehearsed standing at a graveside, next to his young daughter. Practiced reaching out to accept the precisely folded flag.
He faced it straight on. Why she chose him. Amen.
He put Kit to bed.
She and Kit woke in the late afternoon. Nina yawned, moving in one slow languid stretch. Famished, she flung open cupboards, loaded pots, pans, fired all the burners, the oven and filled the table with plates of turkey and trimmings.
After they ate, Broker wanted to try out the sled, but Kit let Nina carry her on her shoulder. Soon they were swept away in a conspiracy of baby talk-girl talk. Nina put a Pooh video in the VCR, and constructed an elaborate nest in front of the TV: couch cushions, pillows and blankets.
Broker watched them crawl into this lair, curl up and watch the cartoon. Nina coached: “Now, see that one, Tigger. See the way she moves-”
“Nina,” protested Broker. “Tigger is a guy.”
“Not anymore,” said Nina, snuggling Kit into her arms.
Long after the sun went down, when Kit had fallen asleep in Nina’s arms and had been lowered into her bed and tucked in, they turned their backs on the living room, a toy town sacked by a marauding horde of Santa’s elves.
And finally, they wound up in the same bed.
When they’d met, she’d been between hitches, a graduate student in Ann Arbor. Broker had never shared a bed with a jet-lagged woman wearing dog tags. She wore the two steel ID wafers taped together with black electrician’s tape. So they wouldn’t jingle. Like he’d worn his.
Until 1993, all the dog tag blanks for the military had been made at the Duluth Federal Prison Camp. He didn’t know where they made them now.
The tags and chain twined, cool steel between the skin of his chest and a cushion of smooth muscle where her ribs met. He was very aware of the tiny notch incised into each tag. The notch was a guide for Graves Registration, to help insert the disc between a corpse’s teeth. A swift kick from an army boot drove it into the cold gums, good and tight…
Not exactly an aphrodisiac.
But then, they were not a sensual couple. What they were good at was removing each other’s armor, layer by layer, without being awkward or giving offense.
