It was one of those days when I thought things couldn’t get much worse—and then, of course, they did. 

It was my day off, and I’d promised Carrie I’d pick up Michael from his special school and that she could borrow the car. The school isn’t far, though, so I didn’t even take the bus, just walked with the stroller. 

Naturally, on the way home, we got caught in one of those sudden downpours—the kind we get maybe three times a year in Yuma. 

We were soaked. I was exhausted, thinking about work—Jefferson and that hit and run driver yesterday while searching a vehicle for drugs out near Blaisdell— how to get Michael to eat some bread—his new skin infection that might be brewing and send us to hospital again with a boy who can’t talk—and—and—and—

But somehow, we made it home.

Carrie was in the kitchen. And I thought, What is she doing here? She was supposed to be in the Plaza Mall or somewhere out to eat with Jenna, having fun.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Dad called,” she said, leaning heavily against the counter. She looked haggard.

“Is he—?”

“No, no, he’s all right  …”

“Then why’d you come back early?” I was trying to have normal conversation while untangling myself from wet clothes and dealing with Michael, who was already bouncing off the walls, on the verge of a meltdown because his blood sugar was low.

I was also trying to make the kid some ice cream, one of the only two things he eats, while feeling like a drowned rat. 

“What is it?”

And, yes, I did try not to let an edge creep into my voice. But … no.

Then Carrie spilled it: “He wants to go to Argentina—to the Falklands. And he wants me to go with him.”

“The … Falklands? Why?”

“He’s been talking online with this soldier, Pablo, about meeting. Well, mostly Google translating I guess but … he thinks it was the guy who shot him back then.”

And that’s when things really got hairy.

Let me rewind a little and give you the Cliff Notes here. 

Carrie’s father lives in Scotland. We live in Arizona. She rarely sees him. Their relationship has been strained for years—too complicated to get into right now.

The gist is: He was once a highly skilled commando, trained for special ops. But he managed to get himself shot in the knee by a sniper before he even saw any real action. 

It always bothered him; he felt like he got sent home too soon. It messed him up. 

So Calum McDonnell started drinking, couldn’t hold down a job. His military career was over, aside from some training gigs he did here and there. 

Eventually, he and Carrie’s mother divorced. She moved to the States, met me, we got married, and the rest is history.

Now the old man wants to go to Argentina. You might think, That’s beautiful! Meeting the enemy, reconciliation, finding peace after all these years. But it’s not that simple.

(Excuse me.  Michael started screaming because the ice cream wasn’t coming fast enough. He hadn’t eaten at school, was starving, and probably about to have a hypoglycemic episode.) 

Anyway, you’ve probably heard this before, but we have an autistic son with multiple challenges—it’s hard enough for two of us to handle him, let alone one for a week. So …

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“How long would you be gone?” I asked my wife. 

Carrie shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe at least a week? Maybe more? It takes time to get there.”

“But why do you have to go with him?” My voice was getting harder. 

Because she just stood there, like she wasn’t even fazed that our son was close to wrecking the kitchen. 

Then she snapped out of it, as Michael’s screams escalated.

“We have to talk about this later.” She hugged him and picked him up to carry him to his room, so he could sit on her lap and write on the old laptop, something which always calmed him. And got him calm enough to eat a little. 

He is seven years old and he can write all the ingredients in all the things we have in our fridge, which he has memorized. But he doesn’t understand them. Or eat any of it.

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“Later” came, as usual, very late. 

We were both exhausted after a long day with Michael. We had zoned out on the couch like zombies, watching some election coverage on TV. 

For once, we weren’t even arguing about if Trump was the worst or Hillary was the worst or the other way around. We were just too damn tired—like we are every day. It’s a struggle for Michael to fall asleep even with his meds. 

I asked Carrie again, “Why do you have to go?”

“I speak Spanish.”

And it’s true, she’s fluent. If she didn’t have to be home most of the time with Michael, she might have gotten that interpreter job she wanted. But being “on call” when your kid needs you 24/7 makes that kind of work impossible.

“So? He could hire an interpreter down there, right?” I said, downing more beer, eyes glazing over the talking heads on TV.

“He is going to spend most of his savings on the trip,” she said. “And for me to go with him, of course.”

“But if you don’t go, he can use that money for a local interpreter for a week,” I said. “Even in Argentina, it can’t cost that much.”

“It’s more than that,” she said. “—Why are you being so negative?”

“’Negative’? This was supposed to be my day off! I traded that to take care of Michael so you could go out! Instead, you come home early, and we’re talking about this Argentina thing all day while trying to get our son to eat something. 

“Jonathan—”

“If you go, the  two weeks of vacation I have left this year are gone. You know that.”

“My mom can come help. She’s getting better with him.”

“Yeah, but not enough, Carrie. She’s not ready for one week, or two. And the new nanny? Forget it. She can only be here five hours on Saturdays, right?” 

“No,no. Bridget could—”

“When are you even going?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Later in the year, I guess. It’s winter there now; the seas are rough.”

“You’re planning on sailing to the Falklands? With this Pablo guy?”

“That’s the idea,” she said. “I think Dad had been up all night thinking about this when he called. He just had to tell me right then. You know I really want to do this for him.”

“What can I do, Carrie? I go to work, you take care of Michael, that’s how we survive. But we need time for ourselves, too.”

“I know you had planned to go fishing with Rodriguez.”

“Not for two weeks straight, but, yes, more of that. I don’t have much in the way of a life on normal weeks.”

“You think I have?” She looked despondent.

Silence fell. Everyone else—the sane ones—were asleep.

But she was not going to do the guilt trip thing with me. I work my ass off to make this family work and get shot at, too, while I am at it. Or hit by a truck like Jefferson.

I have like zero point zero reasons to feel guilty that Carrie has to hold the fort here.

Zero.

“I get it, if it’s too much,” she said quietly. “I can tell Dad that. That’s what I should do, probably. I’m not thinking straight.”

She wasn’t talking about how Calum should get an interpreter if she didn’t go, and we both knew it. 

Then she went to bed. 

None of us said good night.

I turned off the TV, staring out at the silent street. My beer had gone warm, but I kept drinking. 

Carrie’s relationship with her father has been a mess ever since the Falklands. 

Not because of PTSD, not like what I went through after Iraq. Not because he regretted going to war—though I know he lost a friend on the Sheffield. 

It wasn’t any of that.

It was because he felt like he hadn’t made a difference in the war he trained for.

That he failed

That’s what started the drinking, the anger… everything. He was furious with Carrie when she was sixteen—sixteen!—for choosing to stay with her mom in the States. 

Didn’t speak to her for ten years. They’d patched things up somewhat in recent years, but it was never good.

He wants to go on this trip so they can finally put to rest the reason their family fell apart. 

It’s not about reconciling with some Argentinian soldier or revisiting old battlefields. It’s about going there with his daughter so they can finally have some peace.

A laugh caught in my throat. I felt like laughing, but I couldn’t. It would wake Carrie, and probably  Michael and then he would be up all night. 

But here’s what’s funny in a way that things are funny when you are heading toward a cliff and you can’t really do anything … 

My wife and her messed-up relationship with her father, that’s what’s funny … I mean, I thought I had problems with my old man! Not even close.

And now I was the only one standing in the way of them trying to fix it. 

I don’t know if it’ll work, but she believes it will. Old Calum believes it. 

And me?

Well, I’m a soldier, too. Just a different kind. I knew what I had to do.

I just had to figure out how to survive it.

*

JON, August 2016

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End of Pieces of Peace – part I

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72B-140824

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Cover photo by Dane Wetton on Unsplash

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Song: Robert Tepper – “No Easy Way Out”

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