But she had to avoid being too cold, because she could be seen as robotic or mannish. She had to look to the care of her troops, but without any outward shows of affection that could be interpreted as “Mommish.”
Nina carried a lot of weight. Broker’s job, despite all his misgivings about her career, was to give her a safe place to lay it down for a few days.
They bumped together. They shared the trait of grace in action and being awkward in polite society. She reached for Kit with the happy growl and nuzzle of a cougar for her cub.
But Kit drew back and cried. Her teared eyes reached out to
“Daa-dee.”
Nina bit her lip, stumped. Withdrew back into her armor.
Kit scrambled into Broker’s arms. “Patience,” he said gently.
They kissed chastely. As they always had in public. The chill of the Yugoslavian mountains lingered on her lips.
On the one-and-a-half-hour drive home, by unspoken agreement, they avoided subjects with dead people in them.
They would not talk about Bosnia or Caren until after Christmas. She scanned the diary Broker had brought for her, a list of Kit’s vocabulary, menus, sleeping schedules, sickness. She read seriously, cramming for a test.
When they arrived, Nina entered a house that was hardly ready for inspection. So shoot me. Everything takes longer with a kid. He hadn’t cleaned up the living room, which looked like it had been shot point-blank by a howitzer full of toys. The tree was probably overdecorated. Presents were lumpy, amateur-wrapped. “Puf” the scowling dragon wore a huge crimson bow around his bronze neck. Broker had put out a punch bowl for eggnog and hung a sprig of mistletoe from the living room ceiling fan. The turkey dinner in the fridge was catered from Grand Marais.
When she’d left to go back in the service, the big living room was half done, rolls of insulation spilling from the naked studs. Broker had painstakingly completed the finish work himself; sometimes working with Kit slung in a back-pack harness, up on the roof, putting in the skylights. Now the room was snug with maple siding, trestle beams, a chandelier.
“This is very nice, but is it us,” said Nina.
Broker narrowed his eyes: army brat. She had lived her life in base housing, dorm rooms, barracks and officer billets.
“I know what you mean. Why don’t I knock out that corner over there; we could have a party, fill some sandbags, teach Kit how to build a bunker, rig a shelter half.”
“Asshole.” She lifted a plate of her armor, jabbed, explored a weary smile.
“Ah, we don’t swear in the house, elephant ears is listening,” cautioned Broker.
“A-S-S-H-O-L-E,” she spelled. Then she pirouetted, put out her arms and, in an ultimate gesture of trust, collapsed backward into the deep couch cushions. With a freckled grin, she let down her guard, and he saw the jaws of bone-deep fatigue yawn and crunch her. She probably hadn’t slept more than two or three hours a night for months.
While Kit watched, Broker knelt, unlaced her boots and eased them off. Gently, he removed her tunic, trousers and socks.
Her lidded eyes clouded, then glazed. She sighed, “That’s the nicest thing anyone ever did for me in my whole life.”
Tawny and sleekly muscled in her olive drab underwear, she wantonly molded herself to the cushions.
“There’s a king-size bed in…”
Too late. She was ten fathoms down, sinking to the bottom locker of sleep.
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.