May 2
Ron’s July 2
The uniform was in the closet.
Annie hadn’t known it was there. She’d been in his room many times and never once opened the narrow closet beside the bathroom door. It held two robes, a pair of slippers, and a windbreaker with a VFW patch on the sleeve. Behind everything, in a dry cleaner’s bag that looked like it had traveled across three states, a dress uniform.
Ron asked her to pull it out.
He was in bed again. Hadn’t been out of it since the bridge walk three days ago, except to use the bathroom with a nurse’s help. His voice was thinner now, fading in and out like a weak signal.
Some sentences were full and sharp. Others trailed off before they finished, and he’d close his eyes for a few seconds and then pick up wherever he’d left off like nothing had happened.
But this morning, he was sitting up. Pillows stacked behind him. Crossword untouched on the nightstand. Butterscotch wrapper beside it, empty. He’d been waiting for her.
“The closet,” he said when she walked in. “In the back.”
Annie opened the closet, pulled it out, and brought it to the bed. She unzipped it carefully, like handling a treasure that belongs to a museum.
The uniform was green. Army green, the old kind, darker than what she’d seen in movies. The jacket had brass buttons and a row of ribbons over the left breast. Red, blue, yellow, white, combinations she didn’t know the meaning of but recognized all the same.
Below the ribbons, two medals. A Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Annie knew those. Everyone knew those.
Ron studied the uniform like looking at his treasured photo.
“Help me up,” he said.
“Ron—”
“—Annie. Help me up.”
It took a long time. She swung his legs to the side of the bed and let him sit there a minute. His feet were bare and pale and thin on the floor. She put on his slippers, let him grip her arm, pull himself upright.
He swayed. She held him. They stayed like that for a minute, maybe two, while his body remembered what standing was.
“Okay,” he said. “The jacket.”
Annie held the jacket open behind him. He found one sleeve with his right hand. Then the left. His arms shook as she eased it up over his shoulders. The jacket hung on him. He’d lost twenty pounds since the hospital, maybe more. But when she came around to the front, it didn’t matter. The uniform was too big and the man inside it was too small and none of that mattered at all.
Ronald Drummond, Master Sergeant, United States Army. Standing in his room in his slippers and his dress jacket with his medals over his heart.
He looked down at the ribbons. Touched the Bronze Star with one finger. Then the Purple Heart. His hand was shaking, and he let it.
“They gave me this one in Korea,” he said. “And this one in Vietnam. Charlie was there both times. Both times he said the same thing. ‘Ronnie, you’re the bravest idiot I know.'”
Annie laughed. It caught halfway and she turned away.
“Two more days,” Ron said. He was looking at the window. “Two more days and I’m going to keep my promise. I told Charlie I’d see the 250th. I told him I’d be there.” His voice faded. Came back. “And I’m going to be there.”
Annie stood beside him and said nothing. There was nothing to say that wasn’t a lie or a confession, and she’d promised Kim she’d hold both for two more days.
The words were right there. She could feel them in her throat as if she’d swallowed wrong.
Ron, it’s not July, she thought. It’s May. The Fourth is two months away. We moved the whole calendar because I panicked and told you the wrong date and now a hundred people are building you a parade that doesn’t exist for a holiday that hasn’t come.
She didn’t say it.
“Let’s sit you back down,” she said.
She helped him out of the jacket. Eased him back to the bed. He lay down slowly, carefully, like a man lowering himself into water he wasn’t sure would hold. She pulled the blanket up to his chest.
He was asleep almost instantly.
Annie hung the uniform back in the closet. Zipped the bag. Closed the door. Then she sat in the chair by the window. His chair, the one he hadn’t used in days, and watched his chest rise and fall.
The rises were shallow. The falls were slow. There was a pause between each one that lasted longer than it should have, and every time it happened Annie held her own breath until his started again.
The photo was right beside her. Grace. Jamie. A younger Ron, standing straight, arm around his wife, son at his side. Everyone in that photo was gone except the man in the bed. And the man in the bed was barely here.
Two more days, she thought. Then the truth.
Ron’s chest rose. Paused. Fell.
Please forgive me.
Two more days.
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