“No, really—I am alright,” Dave said. “ … Just need a little more time for a few things.”

He leaned heavily against the kitchen counter and flicked for the umpteenth time through something on his phone.

Standing by the other half of the L-shaped counter, Jon sipped pitch-black coffee and regarded his younger brother closely. “Would you like to go back to Philadelphia—when you can?”

“Well, as long as it’s somewhere I can’t see Dad and his I-Told-You-So plate in every RV lot.” Dave took a thoughtful bite of toast. He then scrolled on while chewing with some concentration. “Look, I don’t need the meds anymore. I sleep okay now. But all the practical stuff of getting your life back—oh, man … ” He shook his head.

“That owner of your old apartment in Philly might be willing to rent it out to you again, after the renovation,” Jon kept on.

Dave’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Bro, there’s nothing for me there. I need to find someplace new to live, maybe L.A.”

“My mom might be able to fix you up in L.A.,” Carrie suggested from the kitchen table. She was busy feeding Michael lumps of bread to stop his whimpering. Michael had had a bad morning and couldn’t concentrate on eating. 

“Here, have some milk, pliskie.” Carrie gave up on the bread and instead inserted the baby bottle’s teat between her 6-year-old son’s lips. Finally, he stopped whimpering. “I think my stepdad owns some apartments, too.” She looked quickly at Dave.

“Okay, if you could ask, that would be fine,” Dave said noncommittally. 

Outside a car honked by their driveway.

“That’s Ernesto.” Jon straightened his uniform shirt, even though it was unnecessary. 

He leaned down to kiss Carrie on the cheek and then Michael, who was still concentrating on his baby bottle. 

Emma had been sitting silently at the end of the kitchen table, staring everyone down. The pale desert morning light through the kitchen window made the young girl’s face look white.

Jon went over to her. “Have a nice day at school, pumpkin.”

“You know I won’t, Dad.” 

Dave stopped scrolling.

Jon glanced at Carrie. “Did you talk to her principal yet?”

“I will. Soon.” Carrie put her coffee down hard on the table. “I just need to swallow my coffee, okay?”

“Milk!” Michael said loudly and patted his mother on the arm with the empty bottle. 

“Jesus Christ—” Carrie began.

“Let me.” Dave took the bottle and got the milk and cream out of the fridge.

Michael’s eating disorder left him thin as a matchstick and Carrie put cream in his milk as often as she could. Fortunately, his messed up senses didn’t have a problem with that.

Dave looked over his shoulder. “Vitamins?” 

“Just get him more milk.” Carrie crossed her arms and looked at the wall.

Emma was still quiet as if she hadn’t noticed anything that was going on.

Outside, Rodriguez hit the horn again, and Jon steeled himself. He put a hand on Emma’s shoulder.  “I’ll see if I can get off a little early and pick you up from school.” 

Emma looked at her father’s gun. “I want to kill Meredith.”

“Emma!” Carrie snapped. “Don’t say that.”

“But she is so mean,” Emma shot back. “Do you know what she did yesterday?”

“You haven’t told me, no,” Carrie said, her voice a study in self-control.

“She and Lyanne took the necklace Uncle Dave got me from Mali and flushed it into the gym’s toilet.” Emma glared at her mother like she had done the actual flushing.

“I’ll get you a new one …” Dave started.

“Milk!” Michael cried.

“Get him the goddamn milk.” Carrie turned on the chair and Dave quickly placed the refilled bottle in front of his nephew.

“It’s going to be a while before you get back to Africa, though …isn’t it?” Jon stood in the doorway, but he was looking directly back at his brother.

Dave had gone over to hunch down between Carrie and Michael, one elbow resting on the kitchen table while he tried to nudge Michael to take some bread with the milk.  “Yeah … I guess it will be a while before I go back.”

“You’re not going back?” Carrie crossed her arms even harder. 

Dave shook his head. “Well, it was rough but …”

“Dave—those bedouins almost killed you.”

Dave smiled carefully. “They are called Sahil Wilaya,” he said. “Islamic State – Sahel Province.”

“That’s not the bloody point!”

“Alright,” Jon said. “Can you two handle it from here? I need to know now.”

Jon regarded his wife, as he always did in these situations—without giving anything away. But the air was thick.

Carrie nodded wearily. “We’ll handle it. But see if you can get off early, okay?”

“I’ll ask Jefferson if he can cover for me.” Jon closed the door like he was saying farewell to a funeral party.

There was a heavy silence in the small kitchen after Jon had left.

The only sound was the occasional car passing by outside and then Michael finally chewing on a lump of bread, albeit spitting half of it out again.

Emma hadn’t moved.

Dave went over to pull out a chair so he could sit down beside her. He put his arm around her. “Your dad left the car for us. Wanna sit in the passenger seat, while I drive you to school?”

Emma’s lips moved and for a moment it was like she was going to say something, but then she broke down in tears. 

Dave held her firmly, while Carrie watched stiffly—looking somehow even more bereft than her daughter. But she didn’t flinch. She still had to feed Michael and say the right things.

“Emma …” she started slowly, “I am going to see the principal today. This has to stop. If your teacher isn’t up to it, Mrs. Collins will stop it.”

“What is going on in that school of hers?” Dave asked quietly, while Emma was sobbing with her head on his shoulder.

“It’s a long story,” Carrie said, sounding like this was indeed a funeral and she had been told she could never go home from it. “It seems that Sun Sky Elementary School also has got its share of militants. Only, these are 9 years old and their religion is just to hurt each other as much as possible.”

“Okay,” Dave said. “I’ll drive both the kids to school. You can stay at home and make the call, sure, but get some rest, too.”

Carrie wiped something from her eyes and shook her head. “There has to be someone in the backseat with Michael, or he’ll freak out. And if Emma is in front—”

“Okay.” Dave looked down. “We all go. After that, you can drop me off by Arizona@Work … I think Jon is getting a little impatient.”

Carrie put a hand on Dave’s shoulder and held it there while she got up from her chair. “Don’t worry about it. He loves you dearly.” She forced a tired smile. “And he does what I tell him to.”

“Ah,” Dave grinned. “Perish all doubt then.”

Carrie slipped behind both of them and hunkered down to put her arm around Emma, too. “We’ll solve this now, hon. I swear. Here—wipe your eyes.” 

She gave Emma a paper towel from Michael’s package of baby wipes, which was always standing close by because he always wanted his eyes wiped when he was upset about something while counting in a certain sequence.

“I don’t want to,” Emma muttered. 

“Wiping your eyes or going to school?” Carrie asked gently.

“Both. I don’t want to do anything.”

“Eyes!” Michael erupted and looked at his sister. 

“He wants you to wipe your eyes,” Dave said.

“Okay …” Emma said halfheartedly. “I’ll wipe them.”

She wiped them and counted in the ‘right’ way. “0-2-4-6-8-1-3-5-7-8-10.”

Michael smiled.

“Maybe you can say Emma is sick?” Dave suggested to Carrie. “I’ll stay here with her. You take Michael to his school. How about that?”

“It just postpones everything …” Carrie didn’t sound like she wanted to go many more rounds.

“You can go to her school next. Maybe catch the principal in person.”

Emma looked up at her mother.

“Alright,” Carrie said. “I’ll drop Michael off and then go catch Mrs. Collins in between a meeting. But don’t tell my daughter any more stories about how great it is to work for a humanitarian organization and see the world, okay?”

Dave shook his head. “I’m not sure I think any of those things are so great anymore. And I’m not sure I am a ‘humanitarian’ anymore, either.” He chuckled but without joy. “Sometimes I did want to kill those sons—” He then stopped himself and squeezed Emma’s shoulder again. 

“When is this going to go away, Uncle Dave?” Emma asked, tracing a finger over the red lines around Dave’s wrists.

“The doc said, it might be a few weeks more,” Dave explained. “Not as long as the rope was there.”

“You are going back, aren’t you?” Carrie still had an arm around Emma, but she was focused on him. 

Dave gazed out the window. The quiet suburban street seemed like a photo that had been in the sun for too long. “Part of me wants to say ‘fuck them’ and go back, yes. Get on with the, uh, mission, I suppose you could say. Part of me just wants to never go anywhere again. It’s not easy.”

Carrie nodded. “It never is …” Then she looked at her daughter again. “Em, when I get back I can tell you some more stories about Uncle Tim. I’m sorry I didn’t have … time the other day.” 

She blinked something away. “But you know, maybe it’s a sign—because that same night I did find an old photo album in the attic. I don’t think I have opened it since I left Skye!”

“I don’t want to hear more about why you shouldn’t go out in the world,” Emma said, not for the first time sounding much older than she was. “Uncle Tim went to Afghanistan, but I’ll never go to war. I just want to travel and help out.”

Dave quickly got up. “I’ll get Michael’s stuff ready. Diapers in the bathroom, right?”

Carrie nodded. “Don’t forget his bottles.”

“‘Bottles’!” Michael was happily shaping each lump of bread he had spat out into letters.

“Yes, little man,” Dave said. “Spot on, as always.”

Carrie stroked Emma’s hair gingerly. “I won’t sneak in another lecture, hon, I promise. But it’s from when Timothy and I lived in West Berlin, with Grandpa and Grandma. I was only a few years younger than you. I thought you might want to see how I looked when I was seven—almost eight.”

“Did you have curls?” Emma asked. “Everyone had curls then.”

“I had a few curls, yes.” Carrie smiled. 

“Okay, then.”

Relief smoothed the fine lines under Carrie’s eyes. Behind them, Dave was scrambling with fresh baby bottles and a thermo bag. 

She caught his eye. “It looks like we can continue the mission, brother-in-law.”

“We can,” Dave agreed. “Wherever it takes us.”

*

DAVE, CARRIE, EMMA, JON & MICHAEL – FEB 2016

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Cover photo by Molly Blackbird on Unsplash

Berlin Wall by photo by Tomas Val on Unsplash

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33-020324.1240