An Indication: A short story
My boyfriend, Private Jeremy Bellam, was nineteen years old. There wasn’t much to him. We graduated from high school in Red Deer the spring of our nineteenth birthdays. We were rams. He was the only one between us who bought into that. I was meek. He was stubborn. I couldn’t have joined anyone’s army.
Jeremy flew to Afghanistan sure-shot. He came back incapable. Among other things.
We liked each other. I liked his hair and thick neck, how I could sit on his shoulders. He liked that I’d sit with him while he played video games with his friends and not be a pain. I played sometimes, and he let me win. That’s how we were. He liked that I wasn’t a prissy girl, and I liked his patronizing bullshit.
He joined the army in the summer following two months of dissatisfaction and frustrating working at his father’s garage. He never told me he was a shit mechanic. At first, he made it sound like his old man was just being too hard on him. But after a while it became obvious Jeremy barely knew what a car was, let alone how to affix parts. I knew more about engines than he did. His heart wasn’t in it, and Jeremy was never very good at things he didn’t love.
I worked at a hair salon in a corner plaza. I thought I would get more reading done as a receptionist than I did. I just became addicted to gossip. I learned more sordid details about people only marginally more famous than myself, and I learned the right facial expressions for shallow applied horror. I began to have some seriously contrived opinions about seriously contrived love affairs.
Unlike Jeremy, I was good at things I didn’t care about. That was one of the big differences between us. Among other things.
Of course I tried to talk Jeremy out of the army. My argument crumbled early. He wasn’t qualified for any jobs that weren’t equally dangerous. He could just as easily get killed in the oil fields or the hydro repair, putting up turbines or fixing power lines. The army would pay for college, and they only needed him for three years. He wouldn’t even be out of the country half the time, and there was only a 30% chance he’d even see active duty. I read the pamphlets. The good money was on in reconstruction, building bridges, roads, schools. Jeremy was in great shape, and would have no trouble getting through basic training.
He knew how to shoot a rifle. He knew how to follow orders. Any argument I had against it withered away in a half handful of afternoon arguments.
The more time passed, the more Jeremy talked himself into signing up. He convinced himself there was better in this life for a guy like him. He hadn’t particularly aced high school, and he was sure the army would help us get to where we wanted to be. It would get him ample work. In a couple of years, we could afford a house. We could afford to raise a child. It was a crazy, son of a bitch gamble, and one I still don’t think he should have done. But you talk a young man out of serving his country. Once the thought is secure, there’s no turning him.
The girls I worked with didn’t help. Their men were all quarter life crisis man-boys. They had mostly gone to college or university and come out having no clue who they really were. None of them had the balls to try something like the army. The girls swooned when I told them.
The night Jeremy left, he did his goddamn best to get me pregnant. The condom broke and he knew it but didn’t stop. I caught him and kicked him from underneath. He stopped pretty quick. I don’t think he was all there in trying. I think it was some unconscious part of his brain that tried to tie me down while he was away. After he got off, I told him I believed hard in abortions and he wasn’t getting a baby out of me until I said one could come. We fought half the night about it. Somehow, we didn’t break up.
Jeremy and I got high pretty much all week leading up to the day he had to leave. There wasn’t a day we weren’t high or drunk or too hungover to do either. The sobering reality of letting him go for a considerable amount of time ate at me, so I turned to the good ol’ illegals. I didn’t tell Jeremy this, but I was fucked up the whole week after he left, too. I couldn’t fucking take it. I went through extreme bouts of nausea, as if the fucker actually had impregnated me. I blew through four pregnancy sticks just to make sure.
I bought a new cell phone so we could chat all the time. There wasn’t an hour went by without some update. Most texts or voicemail messages were short and to the point. He loved me and missed me and this is what he was doing. He told me about the workout regimen and how when he visited I would be shocked at how much better looking he’d be. He took a picture of his abs. When I received that text, I was making change for a woman. I showed it to her and we both laughed. She told me to facebook it to everyone, and I did. Jeremy was mad for a few minutes, then “LOL’d” me. I took a little pride in knowing that everyone knew I was with someone like that.
There was a two day period where I didn’t hear form Jeremy, and I worried like crazy. Eventually, Jeremy did call me. He said his phone had been taken away as a punishment. He told me that he so far hadn’t impressed his superiors. It took me a while to get this out of him. At first, they didn’t understand him. It was all them, them, them. But eventually he admitted his faults. He was having trouble with basic training, and was nearly last in his regiment. They were going to step up his training so he could catch up. I didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t tell me. I didn’t share any of this with my facebook.
I was putting the pieces of poor Jeremy together. He was never a great student. He was useless in his father’s garage. And now he wasn’t even that great a soldier. To a sane girl, to one not in love, all this evidence might suggest that there wasn’t much to Jeremy. Objective advice given from someone distant might point out that maybe I should leave the loser while I still had the chance, before he got a baby in me for real. But I loved him, and he was good at loving me. I could see all his faults, but he was good at me. I might have been the only thing he was good at. I couldn’t very much leave him for what he failed to do outside our relationship.
I was doing well at the salon and they wished the best for me, so much so that even when I began interviewing for better jobs they’d fix me up first. It didn’t take me long to get a new job. I was still a receptionist, but the office was downtown and my employers were lawyers. I still found time to visit the salon, and I kept all the girls as close friends. I did my best not to forget people I didn’t see every day. I found my circle of friends growing. It wasn’t long before I was having lunch with the other employees at the law firm. I was able to save money, too. I hadn’t moved out of my parents’ yet, so by the time Christmas came around I had enough money to buy everyone I knew beautiful presents.
It was during Christmas I finally saw Jeremy again. Our phone chats became further and further apart, so there was lots I didn’t know. Jeremy’s personality had changed a little. He was quieter. The other men in his regiment made fun of him for being so attached to me, for expressing so many feelings. But he had improved, supposedly, and he would finish his basic training in a few weeks. That didn’t mean he was coming home. It just meant he could do a lot of pushups, and he’d soon be doing them in sand. He had two and a half years to go, and then he’d be able to hit college, get a solid job, and take care of me.
He didn’t get shot in that time. He held guns and shot them, but nobody ever shot back. My husband killed three Afghani civilians. None of them were armed. He tells me that he still hears them.
After Christmas, I sent him away with kisses and cuddles. We had sex twice a day while he was here, and though he was in better shape, he was marginally worse at it. I chalked it up to lack of practice.
I’d heard stories from my girlfriends about how some of their boys cheat. I figured Jeremy was pretty safe in the army, but I honestly couldn’t blame him if he were to succumb to another woman while away. I would have been jealous, but I can’t say I couldn’t understand. Oddly, Jeremy never cheated. At least, he never admitted to anything. I can’t say the same.
I first cheated on Jeremy on Valentine’s Day, the night I met Ben.
Jeremy was about to ship off to Afghanistan, and I’d gone out with my single girlfriends to some anti-valentine’s theme party at a pub. I loved valentine’s day. I loved the schmaltz. I escaped my friends to get a new drink from the bar, and ran into Sam, an older, richer, married man. These were details I learned later. When I ran into him at the bar, he gave me his card and smiled. We only talked for a minute. I didn’t want anyone to think I was flirting. They still think I was about to throw a drink in his face, but didn’t want to wait for another one. It was only after my friends disbanded at the end of the night that I called him. He picked me up at the bar and took me back to his place. He owned a house. His wife was out of the country on business. It was an illuminating evening. Among other things.
Of course I felt guilty for a little while. It was the first time I’d ever cheated. That sort of thing doesn’t just happen without serious emotional response. I felt guilty for a sum three hours the morning after, which I took as a sign that I was either a psychopath or had done something arguably reasonable.
If the guilt had stayed, I wouldn’t have the arrangement with Ben I still enjoy. His wife goes off for business trips, and we find the time. It’s very nice. He loves his wife, and I love my husband, and neither of us can handle the loneliness.
Jeremy’s first trip to Afghanistan took four months. He came home happy, surprised he never had to even pull his gun, and proud of his accomplishments. It was the most productive four months of his life, and the first time in mine I saw what Jeremy could be. His back was straighter. He spoke with more confidence. His parents were so proud. When he saw my smile at the airport, he burst into a run and grabbed me and held me high.
With him back and brighter, I felt our relationship complications for the first time. Jeremy was in the army so he could take care of me, but more and more I found I didn’t need to be taken care of. I moved out of my parents house in the late spring, and moved into an apartment with a girlfriend from the salon. I’d saved thousands of dollars, and wondered if maybe I should look at Calgary for better work. It wasn’t that far away, and there was far more opportunity. I was becoming really good on a computer, something I’d barely touched before the law office. I could type like a demon, and focused better than some of the young lawyers. I could make more money in the city. I began looking at classes I could take. Colleges. I could pay for an entire year out of pocket.
I’d also been working on my own health. I ran every morning as the sun rose. Jeremy noticed. The first time we were naked together, he remarked on how much better I looked. He smothered me with dirty affection. We were out of practice sexually, and suffered for it. Sex is not like riding a bike, but we practiced our tight asses off. I told him we needed to get back into sex shape. Jeremy still had to report to base every day, but it was mostly for briefings and information on future missions. We used the evenings to their fullest. We made them wet and sticky and hot, and in between the love making Jeremy showed me how well he’d learned to cook and clean. It was like the army was teaching him how to be the perfect boyfriend. If he was home and I wasn’t, he’d tidy the apartment. My girlfriends were impressed. There are few things more attractive than a house cleaned by a man. I loved him an insane amount. I didn’t care if I was smarter or made more money, Jeremy was the man in my house.
I saw our plan slowly changing, shifting from his expectation a year before to my plan two years from now. He didn’t need to take care of me. I’d take care of him. I didn’t want to be with a rich guy, or some successful playboy. I wanted to work, and I wanted Jeremy at home, ready for me when I got home, ready to love me. I was happy with my poor soldier.
My plan worked out, sort of. I do make all the money. Jeremy is at home, ready to love me. Though I do sometimes wish I had the real Jeremy, the one I remember from his first year in the army, before he went back to Afghanistan and they tore him apart.
On his second mission back, Jeremy killed three civilians in a friendly fire travesty. They hadn’t done anything. They hadn’t even raised their hands. Jeremy shot them out of instinct, fear, and probably a little racism. He was written up but nothing serious happened to him. Friendly fire accidents were apparently very common. More civilians have died in the war than the people we were there to actually kill. Jeremy came back with war face. It’s like how women get a certain sourness in their face after working at a bar too long. Bar face. Jeremy’s was like that, but it only took him a year to earn it. The next time I saw him, he had a year left in his contract and absolutely no will to go. The murders, as he referred to them, tore him apart. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t make love. He told me several times how he secretly hoped to die on the third run.
I was having none of it. I supported his decision to join the army, and I continued to support it right through. It was the right call for him. He wasn’t talented, and he wasn’t a prodigy. But he was a good man, and good men serve their country. I believed it entirely.
Nothing happened to him on the third run. He didn’t shoot any more civilians. He didn’t shoot any bad guys. Nobody shot at him. Jeremy helped build a bridge. He kept watch nights. He slept better during the day, like a house cat. He became pretty good at poker.
And when he came home, finally, forever, he came with money and papers. He would get to go to college the following semester, paid for by the Canadian government for his service to the cause. His parents were extremely proud of him. I praised him endlessly. Eventually he stopped talking about the people he killed, and in the years since he’s hardly even talked about being a soldier. It’s like the whole thing didn’t happen.
But before the army, Jeremy would have never been my husband. I would have moved to Calgary, like I did the following summer, and he wouldn’t have come with me. We wouldn’t have moved into a one-bedroom apartment five miles from my downtown office, where I worked during the day as a law secretary. I studied at night, learning more and more about law. In a few years, I became a paralegal. I made enough money to support both of us.
Jeremy hooked up our new stereo. I was proud of him. He buys the groceries. He cooks. He looks after our new cat.
I’ve never seen a relationship like ours. Maybe it’s new. I don’t mind any of it. I don’t mind at all being in charge. I don’t mind getting what I want. I don’t mind a man who will give it to me. I love Jeremy with all my heart, and I know he’ll never leave me.
We were married in Red Deer with our entire family present. We honeymooned in Las Vegas. Jeremy lost a thousand dollars playing blackjack, and I bought us tickets to a couple of glitzy shows.
And at night in our apartment, we watch television shows he’s downloaded off the internet, so we can watch them whenever I get home. Sometimes I work late. Sometimes I don’t come home at night. Jeremy is always there, waiting. I’m all he has, and it’s the best thing a girl could hope for.
