With each passing day he wondered how to tell Ines, knowing this deceit amounted to infidelity. He would be branded, and Ines would be forced to wonder: if ever their lives diverged, was she also in danger of being psychically killed off, of being denied the emotional afterlife deserved by all those with whom one once shared a bond of affection — thumbed photos, the random wistful sigh, the occasional mention. She would have to ask, If you could kill your family, where does that leave me? God, would she be upset. When Achilles told her that his mother had died, Ines cried so hard you would have thought she knew Anna, and she never forgave herself for being out of the country when it “happened.”
He hadn’t planned it this way. He’d only wanted to protect their relationship from the bad luck haunting him like a phantom limb. Everybody liked freaky white girls, and he couldn’t be blamed for having been turned on by the dreads and dashiki. He couldn’t be expected to walk up to a woman and say, “Hi, I’m Achilles. I was adopted by white parents because mine didn’t want me and my brother’s missing.” He had often asked himself what he would have done differently had he known Ines was black, or at least had black relations. He had just as often answered, Nothing, even though he had been quick to tell Naomi under the cover of night, in a raspy murmur, wondering if he would die before knowing who he really was, and afterwards swearing her to secrecy.
Besides, if he didn’t find Troy, he would have to bear Ines constantly asking, “Have you heard from your brother?” Even if he could persuade her not to ask that directly, he would still see the question reflected in her eyes during family gatherings, in church, and whenever one of them received the piece of king cake with the baby in it.
Wages would understand, but he called Wages less and saw Ines more, until his life was riven into the old friends who would never know who he had become and the new friends who would never know who he was. Everyone, truly everyone — his mother included — had tacitly agreed to stop mentioning Troy on the phone except for the brief awkward pause at the beginning of calls when each waited to hear if the other had news. The less he spoke to old friends, the better he felt, until some days he could believe that normal was all he’d ever known. He had always clerked at Boudreaux’s firm. He had always eaten boudin with breakfast, and spent Saturday mornings seated on the carpeted floor leaning back on the sofa, reading the comics aloud while Ines rested her legs on his shoulders. He had never been given up for adoption or gone to war.
Not that he wasn’t proud of serving his country, it was just that no one else cared. Iraqi and Afghanistan vets weren’t spat upon like Vietnam vets, but they certainly weren’t greeted with ticker tape parades. He’d seen a commercial where returning soldiers were applauded as they walked through an airport. What a joke.
Vets didn’t exist. It wasn’t as much a war as a campaign issue, a mere budgetary concern, and if so many had died, and continued to die, it was only because no one had accurately forecasted the ultimate cost. The nonwar had continued so long without him it didn’t seem like the same war. But he knew it was the same war, officially or not, “Mission Accomplished” or not, whenever he spoke with recently returned vets. They understood that after digging out of the dirt overturned by mortars, the sand in your mouth tasted like sugar. He refused to discuss Afghanistan with anyone else, especially the voyeurs. There were the morbidly inquisitive, people who thought they could comprehend, secondhand, how death trumps reason, as if they could understand how often the dead appear to be grinning, or that if you stare too long a dead friend looks more and more like a stranger, while a dead stranger looks increasingly like a long-lost friend. There were the gung-ho civilians who couldn’t point out Kabul on a map, but swore that if it wasn’t for fallen arches or tennis elbow, they would zip right over there and singlehandedly cap every towel head. (When he wasn’t around, did they say sand zigger?)
Republicans patted his back, hawks strutting like pigeons, as if inviting him to award them a medal. Weepy Democrats said, “You should have never even been over there,” and apologized for the terrible things “you must have been forced to do.” As if there were someplace in the world where, when people shot at you, you didn’t duck and, if armed, shoot back.
Worst were kids like Ines’s little cousin Sammy, who regarded him with such awe, when Achilles knew it wasn’t a matter of bravery, skill, or grit. He was simply lucky — lucky that Geary’s Humvee caught the IED on the Khyber Pass, lucky that Howser’s chute malfunctioned over the Kurdish airstrip, lucky that Merriweather was assigned to point that day. Lucky to have been shot with nothing more than a camera.
He occasionally looked at his old photos to remind himself that he had done something that mattered. He’d come to understand how Wages felt, how it demeaned you to take orders from a fat coward. Some days, when Ines wasn’t home, he took his old battered black ammo box out on the corner of the condo deck, where he could feel the sun on his toes and watch the ships travel their steady courses while thumbing through old photos. He had three favorites: one in the ’Stan, one in New Orleans, and one in Maryland.
In the ’Stan: Achilles, Troy, Merriweather, Wages, Wexler, and Jackson stand shoulder to shoulder in the shadow of the Herc that will shuttle them to Dubai for a little R&R. Their faces are gaunt, pants loose, smiles brazen. Even in the shade they squint, except Wexler, who, with one eyebrow raised and a left dimple deep enough to swallow sunlight, flashes the look that earned him the name Sexy Wexy. They’ve all casually slung their M16s over their shoulders, except Merriweather, who stands with his rifle butt to the ground, leaning on the barrel as if it is a cane. Troy’s face is a bit smudged, but for once he is nearly as dark as Achilles, who remembers the date and time of the snapshot; Chan, the PFC from Kansas City who took it for them; and feeling like he finally belonged.
It’s a favorite photo because Wages is sober; Merriweather is happy, eager to see his first beach; Wexler — with his long, slim neck — does look like Prince; and Achilles and Troy finally look like brothers. Achilles locks the ammunition box whenever he begins to drift upriver, following the tugboats headed upstream, wondering how different their lives could have been, and if different meant better, and if better meant normal, like life with Ines, the star of his favorite photo from New Orleans.
It’s an informal shot taken at Ines’s cousin’s wedding reception. Mrs. Delesseppes has hastily herded the wedding party into the center of the parquet ballroom at Gallagher Hall. Ines wears a strapless red satin gown and her dreads are woven into three thick braids like a gold headdress. Again, and over and over, Achilles watches other men watching Ines, window-shopping, and swells with pride. He waits until a cluster of two or three men direct their common attention at her, then walks over and runs his palm down her back, and she stand as straight and tall as if in formation. He feels equally officious in his tuxedo, the first since his prom. Ines insisted he purchase one because men don’t rent clothes. Achilles and Sammy wear matching cummerbunds. In the photo, Sammy stands between Achilles and Ines. Simultaneously, as if instinctively, as if magnetically, Achilles and Ines reach for each other to hold hands behind Sammy’s back. This is the moment the shutter winks: everyone else is staring at the camera, but Ines and Achilles have eyes only for each other.
Later, she didn’t so much as frown after missing the bouquet, but she glared when the garter dropped like a scud missile, the impact scattering men across the parquet halls, the echoes of their footfalls fading into awkward laughter, the tone of embarrassing relief surprisingly similar to the chatter in the wake of a near miss. On the drive home she said nothing at all. It was the first of three weddings that summer, and Achilles tried dutifully to appear to be dutifully trying to catch the garter at the next two weddings. Weeks passed before he finally understood that reluctance to catch a garter is considered natural, but sprinting across the room like someone has yelled “Fire in the hole!” appeared a reluctance to be with her for the duration. The duration. She often speaks of the duration. She never utters the word marriage.