One Was a Soldier

Tell me.

She kept promising herself later. After the communications committee meeting. After she took Morning Prayer. After her family arrived. After dinner at Margy’s house. After the rehearsal. Then Russ was kissing her, smiling as their lips parted, murmuring, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” laughing as Lyle hauled him away to some hunters’ bar.

She had run out of later. In her bedroom, she smoothed a hand over the white dress hanging from her closet door. From its velvet box, she took the ring she was supposed to give Russ tomorrow. She let it rest in her palm. Such a small thing to bind up so many promises. With all that I have, and with all that I am, I honor you, she would say. She closed her hand into a shaky fist. Some honor.

Her heart pounded. Her mouth was dry. She tried to slow her breathing down, name exactly what it was that scared her so.

If I tell him, he’ll be furious with me.

No. He’d be upset, and worried, and overprotective, but he wouldn’t be angry.

If I tell him, it will get out, and everybody will know what a failure I am as a priest.

That was closer to the bone. The thought of being exposed made her nauseous. She already had enough problems trying to live up to her position. Who wanted an addict for a priest?

Addict. She had never used that term before. She thought of all the ways she would describe herself. Priest. Pilot. Christian. Woman. Soldier. She wet her lips. “Hi, my name is Clare Fergusson and I’m a drug addict,” she whispered. The words tasted like bottle dregs and the hard plastic coating on pills.

If I tell him, I’ll have to stop.

That was the bottom of it. If she told him, she’d have to stop, and that scared her more than anything. Facing every day, every night without her chemical crutches-she didn’t know if she could do it.

Tomorrow, Julie McPartlin would say, I require and charge you both, here in the presence of God, that if either of you know any reason why you may not be united in marriage lawfully, and in accordance with God’s Word, you do now confess it.

So here she was, huddled in a dark, cold Jeep while her parents thought she was out on a pastoral emergency. She’d been waiting over an hour, expecting him back at his mother’s well before now, praying that none of the neighbors called in a suspicious vehicle to the cops. Both her fear-fueled adrenaline and her amphetamines had given out long ago, so it took a beat, then two, before she realized the headlights coming down Old Route 100 were slowing down. The turn signal winked on, and Russ’s truck bumped into his mother’s wide dirt drive.

Clare tumbled out of the Jeep, shaking herself to get the cramps out of her legs. He was crossing to the kitchen door. “Russ.” She kept her voice low, but he spun around like a gunslinger.

“What the-Clare?” He walked toward her, jamming his hands into his jacket pockets against the chill. “What are you doing here, you crazy woman?” He peered past her toward her car, tucked in beneath the dark hemlocks at the edge of his mother’s property. He shook his head. “Waiting outside in the cold.” He kissed her lightly. “It’s Saturday, you know. I’m not supposed to see you.”

“I need to talk to you.”

His face shifted. “Okay.” He glanced toward the house. An outdoor light cast a glow over the granite steps and green door. A single lamp lit one of the living room windows, but otherwise the place was dark. “Come inside. We can talk in the kitchen.”

She shook her head. “Not here.”

He looked at her closely. “My truck.” He opened the door for her and then walked around to his side. When he got in, the pickup leaned beneath his weight for a moment. His door shut with a solid thunk. He turned on the engine and adjusted the heaters so they would blow on her. The air was still warm from his ride home. He reversed out of the driveway and headed west into the mountains. They rumbled over the stony Hudson River. “Okay. What is it?”

Face-to-face, in the moment, she panicked. Her throat closed. “I don’t,” she started. She pressed her fist against the ache in her chest. “I don’t know-”

He held out one hand. “Hold on tight and tell me.”

She grasped his hand and squeezed her eyes shut. “I have a problem. I haven’t told you. I’ve been taking pills. Lots of pills. I’m addicted to amphetamines.”

He breathed out. “Hang on.” She heard the tick-tick-tick of the turn signal and then the pickup was turning, bumping along an unpaved road. Finally he stopped. The truck jerked as he hauled on the parking brake. “Love? Look at me.”

She cracked open her eyelids. They were surrounded by hemlock and pine. Russ’s face was outlined in the green-amber light of the dashboard. “Tell me,” he said.

“I started taking sleeping pills and stimulants in Iraq. I came back with a, with a problem.” Admitting it a second time wasn’t much easier. “I also had antibiotics that I used to treat myself with. And Percocet. For a while I was taking a lot of Percocet.”

Russ pressed his lips together and nodded.

“I was close to running out a couple weeks ago. I talked Trip into giving me a prescription for Ambien and Dexedrine. He told me I couldn’t drink while I was on the pills, and he said he was going to spring a surprise blood test on me to make sure I wasn’t mixing.”

Russ closed his eyes. “The blood test you were supposed to get the day we found out about Ellen Bain.”

“I told him I just needed to get through the wedding-” Russ made a noise, a kind of despairing discovery, and she grabbed his arms, digging her fingers into his jacket. “No. Not like that. It doesn’t have anything to do with you, it never had anything to do with you.”

“I pushed you.” He winced, as if he were pulling a splinter out of his hand. “I should have taken it slow and given you time, but I was so goddamn fixed on getting us married-”

“No. Listen. I told Trip I needed the pills to keep my head on through the craziness of the past couple of weeks, but I was lying.” She hadn’t known that until she said it. “I was lying. I would’ve come up with some other excuse to keep the prescriptions going after the wedding, and if he wouldn’t give them to me I’d find some other way. Oh, God.” She could feel her eyes begin to fill. “I’ve been lying to everybody.” Her voice broke. “I’ve been lying every time someone asked me how I’m doing. I said I was fine, and I’m not fine. I feel like there’s something ugly inside me all the time, and I just want it to go away.” Her tears spilled hot over her cheeks, and she covered her mouth, trying to keep the misery and shame inside where they belonged.

Russ tugged her toward him. “C’mere.”

She leaned across the console and buried her face in his shoulder, awkward and ridiculous. She hiccupped and coughed, and a big blob of mucus splattered over his jacket. “Oh, God. I’m sorry.” She pawed at her pockets, feeling for a tissue, but of course she came up empty. She started to cry again. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry. Let’s just call the wedding off. It’s not too late.”

“Whoa.” He pulled a half-acre-sized handkerchief out of his jeans and mopped her face with it. “Because you got a little snot on my shirt?”

“Weren’t you listening to me? I’m a wreck. I’m a wreck and an addict and a failure. I’ve killed people, Russ. I flew the ship and gave the orders and people died right in front of me and I don’t know where to put that so I just keep drugging myself up until I don’t feel anything anymore.” She pushed her damp hair off her overheated face. “I’m not Linda. I’m not anything like her, and I never will be.”

His mouth opened. He let out a huff that was almost a laugh. “Where did that come from?”

“You loved her. You never would have left her, and you loved her, and she died, and I can’t replace her. I just keep coming up short.”

“I don’t want you to replace Linda.”