It had been thirty-four days since those uniformed men came to tell me my Adam was Missing in Action, my mind filled only with terror and dread, worst-case scenarios that pinged day and night like a loose ball on a racquetball court. The death didn’t scare me; the torture did. The starvation, the pain, the indignity. For years, ever since the night we met only three weeks before his deployment, I imagined I could feel Adam, that my heart was connected to his the way the moon is connected to the tide. That connection controlled our world.
Looking back on those thirty-four days, I don’t remember my sons’ laughter. I don’t remember them snuggling in bed with me. I don’t remember my sisters taking turns sleeping with me, my mother feeding me, my grandmother singing to me. It is as though my mind is a bloody crime scene that has been wiped meticulously clean. The only thing I can recall from all those days is my memories of the past, my videos of the happy times, my letters from Adam.
Day thirty-four and still, every time my bedroom door opened, I felt a jolting panic that someone was going to tell me he was gone. My mom had come in just before Caroline and paused my video, which terrified me at first, but I was too weak and exhausted to protest. “Darling,” she said, “time to get up. The boys are having a very hard time without you. If we need to get you to a doctor or on some sort of medication, we can and we will. But you have to get out of bed.”
I thought of my children. I felt like I was crumbling from the inside out. I loved them. I needed them. They needed me. But I was so numb, my heart a desolate desert where nothing could live, nothing could grow. My children were better off without me.
When I didn’t say anything, Mom left. But now Caroline was here, playing bad cop to Mom’s good cop. It was a pretty proven strategy, but it wasn’t going to work on me. It was clear they had decided today was the day for the intervention. But I wasn’t ready to be intervened upon, so it didn’t much matter. Caroline lay down beside me in bed but abruptly got up and moved to the chair—she had forgotten how badly I stunk. If you stink too badly for even your sister to lie beside you, that’s a problem.
She crossed her arms. “Sloane, you are neglecting your children, and quite frankly, you’re neglecting me.” I think she was trying to be funny, but I was past the point of finding anything funny. “Your kids need you, Sloane. They’re miserable and angry and they don’t understand what’s happening. It’s your job to be there for them.”
I was used to Caroline’s insults, her judgment, and her harshness. I braced myself for what she would say next. So when she took a deep breath, softened, composed herself, and said, “Sweetie, I want to read you this essay Vivi wrote for school,” it was actually worse. If she had yelled at me or told me I was being selfish, I could have taken it. But her sympathy meant I was even worse off than I had thought. Changing her tactic from forceful to soft meant something was shifting between us. I didn’t like that.
“It’s titled ‘My Hero.’ ” She cleared her throat, and I knew this essay was about her uncle Adam, her hero. I wasn’t sure I could take it. But I knew how she felt. He was my hero, too.
So it caught me off guard when Caroline read, “My Aunt Sloane is my hero. Her husband, my Uncle Adam, is a sergeant first class in the Army, which means he fights hard for our country and goes on special missions that no one else can do. When he is gone fighting, my Aunt Sloane goes on special missions too. She takes care of my cousins AJ and Taylor all by herself. She even homeschools them. They are really smart. AJ can already read, and even little Taylor knows his alphabet. She cooks all their meals and sings lots of songs and she always remembers to buy me a birthday present even when she’s really busy. She calls my mom every day to make sure we are OK, so we always remember how much she loves us. My Aunt Sloane prays hard to God every day to keep my Uncle Adam safe.
“That’s how I know he is OK, even though he is Missing in Action in Iraq because his helicopter crashed and he was captured by insurgents. Everyone is worried, but I know he is OK because my Aunt Sloane knows he is OK because she prays about Uncle Adam every day. She prays hard and she works hard and she loves her family and is the best mom. That’s why my Aunt Sloane is my hero.”
I’m not sure when I started crying, but I felt something shift in me when Caroline read my eleven-year-old niece’s words that I knew her Uncle Adam was OK because I prayed for him every day. Was that true? Did I know? I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Caroline said.
I nodded. I wanted to say something. I wanted to thank her or tell her to hug Vivi for me, but my mouth wouldn’t work. So instead I let her feed me a little chicken soup. I didn’t want it, but I didn’t want to feel this way anymore either. That was progress, I thought.
“I would kiss you,” Caroline said, “but you smell worse than the crab pots on the dock.”
As Caroline was
