Chapter 7

The silence of the silky-smooth September night felt like an embrace, and Margaret could swear she heard her skin sizzle when the cool air hit it. She stepped over to the porch rail and took a deep breath, lifted her shoulders up as high as she could, and let them fall back down as she exhaled.
The air was so different here, it felt much heavier. Back home, there was always the ocean, always the movement of the water. The scent of salt and seaweed, the whispers of the secrets deep down below. The air in Hannibal smelled like soil. The faint, lingering scent of a surprisingly warm day mingling with all the spices of early autumn, and the promise of the rest that would soon fall over the fields. She heard the door close behind her, and steps approaching.

"Hey there, gorgeous, are you here alone?"

Two arms embraced her from behind.

"Radar, are you crazy!" she hissed. "Not here! Hawkeye and Patty are right inside!"

Hawkeye snorted a laugh; she felt her hair move with the puff of air.

"Funny. Almost as funny as when I do this back home, and you pretend to think I'm my father."

"Yes, sure. Pretend."

That got another chuckle out of him. She turned her head and looked at him. There was a red spot on his neck, from where his unease had gotten the best of him, and she hoped he would let her put some ointment on it later, when they got back to the hotel. She looked forward to that, for it to be just the two of them again. The afternoon and evening had been so full of impressions, of people and voices, and she needed to sort through everything, try and untangle all her thoughts and emotions.

"Are you okay?" she said.

He kissed her cheek and pulled her closer.

"Yeah. It was just so hot in there, it felt like a greenhouse. A greenhouse filled with some very chatty plants. I didn't think there would be so many people, not tonight."

"I know. This isn't playing out like it did in my head."

"Right?"

He leaned his head against hers, and she bit back on a comment about not messing up her hair. It was a lost cause anyway; the long day of traveling and being stuck in traffic had drained it of every ounce of volume. Besides, she really wanted him close.

"It's so annoying when people don't follow the scripts they don't know they're supposed to follow," he said. "Also, I had to feel up Mrs. Morgan, and she was very squishy. Smelled like mothballs and buckwheat."

"Wow, you're a lucky, lucky man, doctor."

"Don't I know it."

They stood in silence for a while. His warmth against her back, and the cool night air against her face, was so restful. The faint murmur of voices from the inside sounded like a brook. That too reminded her of Korea. When she stepped outside post-op at night, to go get something or just breathe for two seconds. Suddenly, she had been alone in the darkness. Some nights it had felt like an embrace, and others like it wanted to choke her. Or when she stepped out of the O-club, leaving the sound of music and voices behind, and had suddenly been alone with only the sound of her steps in the gravel, the other people a world away, like she had just glimpsed through a door to a strange, parallel reality.

"He looks good now, doesn't he? Better. BJ."

Hawkeye's voice was soft and low against her ear.

"He does."

"I mean, I haven't had a chance to talk to him, not for real, but I think he's doing better."

"Me too."

It was the truth; BJ did look better, more like himself than last time they saw him. Six years ago. Dear Lord, how was that even possible?
They were newlyweds back then, Hawkeye and she, both of them giddy with excitement while waiting at the airport for the Hunnicutts to arrive. So eager to spend a summer week with them, to finally see BJ again, and meet Peg, Erin, and baby Alice.
The giddiness had left Margaret as soon as she saw BJ. He was so thin and looked so tired. Without the mustache, he should have looked younger, but his face was gaunt and old. His mouth was pressed into a thin line, that spread into a smile as he came closer. He picked Margaret up and spun her around, his arms like twigs around her back. The smile had stayed on his face, but his voice sounded different, his words seemed carefully chosen. Peg had smiled too, looked just like the prim and proper woman Margaret had seen in pictures and in the short anniversary movie, but there had been shadows under her eyes that no amount of carefully applied makeup could hide. Margaret knew from personal experience how hard it was to cover darkness like that. It always peeked through.
The first couple of days together were strange. Polite, no conversation ever took off. Both Margaret and Hawkeye tried so hard, one topic after the other, one memory after the other, but everything fell flat to the ground, BJ not picking up a single thread, and Peg smiling politely with a face that seemed frozen. To try and lighten the strange mood, Margaret had found herself asking questions, a myriad of them, about anything, everything. The weather in California, the plants in the Hunnicutt's garden, their house. What kind of tiles were in their pool, and how had they ended up choosing that particular kind, what were the other options? How did the water get filtered? Anything to not let silence take over.
BJ and Peg hadn't really talked to each other at all. If they did address one another, it was through the kids. 'Did mommy forget your blankie upstairs, she's such a silly mommy, isn't she?' 'Daddy's gonna lie down on the couch for a while, he's just so tired from doing nothing all day.' They addressed one another at night, though, in whispered arguments that swept through the house like vengeful ghosts, not able to find any resolution or comfort.
It had all come to an end one afternoon out on the porch, Hawkeye throwing a 'what the hell is your problem' at BJ, who had spent the day sitting in a deck chair, mostly communicating with huffs and grunts while downing beer after beer. Suddenly BJ was up and facing his old friend, beer knocked over and slowly seeping into the wood of the floor. Their raised voices had made the warm afternoon air quiver, and BJ's eyes seemed to be turning darker by the second as he spat accusations and insults, how Hawkeye didn't understand what it was like to come home to any kind of responsibility, how suffocating it was, how Hawkeye could just slip back into his old, perfect little life, nothing to worry about, that he didn't know anything about real hardships. The only thing that had kept Margaret from getting up and slapping BJ in the face was Erin sitting on her lap, breathing heavily through her nose, while clutching a yellow crayon in her hand. 'Girl trip!', Margaret had announced instead, before carefully putting Erin down and grabbing her hand. She reached her other hand out for Peg who was sitting in the hammock, cradling baby Alice's head, and staring at her husband in disbelief. No, not disbelief. Rage. Despair.
They had walked down to the beach, Margaret and Erin looking for shells and pretty pebbles down at the water line, while Peg walked in silence. They had made their way down to Daniel's house, where else. Still very much a work in progress back then, the renovations of the old house Daniel had bought when Margaret and Hawkeye got married just getting started. But there he had been, and in his usual calm and kind way, he had taken Erin to look for pirate treasures in a cave further down the beach, while Margaret and Peg sat in deck chairs out on the lawn and talked. While Peg's hands fiddled with Alice's blanket, she had told Margaret about the anger in BJ, the storm always brewing right under the surface. It was in his eyes, in his voice, in his whole body. It was in the dreams he didn't want to talk about, the ones he insisted were nothing, that he didn't even remember.
Peg had hoped time would help, time and love. And it did, it helped a little, but the anger kept bubbling up, at the strangest moments, over the tiniest things. A lawnmower he couldn't fix. The paper boy throwing the morning paper in the rhododendron instead of on the lawn. Peg changing a lightbulb by herself without asking for help. Closer and closer to the surface the anger rose, spreading like an oil spill, sticky and all-consuming. Just in his voice, though, in his words, never had he raised a hand at anyone, never had Peg been afraid he would. But she had started to lose sight of the real BJ, the man she had married was buried under a thick layer of anger and frustration.
So, she had waited some more. Talked and waited and hoped he would heal with time. The baby had been unplanned, but so welcome and so loved, and BJ's love for his girls was always present, never ending. But he had kept going sour on the world, and the bottles in the liquor cabinet kept going empty.
'Was he like this in Korea too?', Peg had wanted to know, and Margaret had held her breath, trying to find the right words. She wanted to find the ones that would soothe, but yes, she had seen the darkness in her friend back there too. He had been quite good at hiding it, though. BJ, the good guy, the family man. Jokester supreme together with his partner in crime. All those pranks and jokes that would have been considered cruel if delivered by someone else, someone lacking a charming smile and a goofy mustache. His drive to pitch people against each other, to not take responsibility. His entitlement, and notion that his suffering was worse than anyone else's. When the smiling mask fell away, there had been a darkness in his eyes. Margaret loved the man like a brother, but yes. The answer was yes.
Daniel and Erin had come back, Erin full of excitement and pirate's treasures in her pockets. Daniel had winked at Margaret, and she mimed a 'thank you' as Erin showed Peg all the doubloons they had found. They looked an awful lot like ordinary cents and pennies, and Margaret knew they had come straight out of Daniel's pockets, but they made Erin's eyes shine as she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet.
When they eventually made their way back, BJ had come walking down the small path to meet them, his shoulders slouching and his eyes red. He and Peg had stayed down at the beach for a long time, and when they came back up to the house, the air around them had changed a little bit, it seemed lighter, and they looked each other in the eye for the first time. And the light had stayed for the rest of their visit, and more of the kind, friendly BJ had shined through, the one both Margaret and Hawkeye had missed so much. It had been beautiful, to get entangled in memories together, even though some were light and some with a dark edge to them.
But Margaret had been worried when they said their goodbyes back at the airport. She and Hawkeye had watched the Hunnicutts walk away, Erin walking backward and waving for as long as she could. When they were gone, the two of them stood in silence, and Margaret had wished with all her might that there would be a happily ever after. But the body remembers trauma, it remembers the wrath. Everything simmering under the surface, everything you feel. All the things you should put into words, but you don't, because even with all your education, all your experience, all the helpful advice you can dole out to others, words are the hardest. Anger is easy, anger is a mask, Margaret knew that. And it can break you, break others, even if you don't mean to.

Margaret sighed and leaned closer against Hawkeye.

"I really wish Peg had come," she said. The absence at BJ's side really worried her.

"Yeah, but I think it's like he said, both of the girls have colds, and Peg didn't want to leave them alone with their grandparents. She didn't know the Colonel anyway, so…"

Hawkeye tightened his grip around her. He worried too; Margaret could hear it in his voice.

"Hey." She turned around in his arms and grabbed his face with both hands. "BJ and Peg are fine. They're strong and brave, and they will make it, they have come so far. It's just two kids with a cold who wanted their mother, nothing more."

He smiled down at her and secured his grip around her waist.

"I know, that's what I said."

"Yes, you did, but I said it better."

She gave him a big grin, and he snorted a laugh.

"You did, you had more of a lilt. Remember when the Colonel said that, that BJ had more of a lilt in his voice? When we were trying to decide who was the king of joke-telling."

Margaret groaned.

"The one with the…"

She let go of Hawkeye, lifted her arms up with her elbows out, and flapped them like they were wings.

"Such a stupid joke."

"I know, it's great!"

There was a sparkle in his eyes that made the dark night seem brighter. Margaret could see both him and BJ back in the O-Club, flapping around in the crowded room, both of them so eager to win, neither able to resist the tiny victory of being named joke teller extraordinaire, for reasons she was sure neither of them really could explain. Like two little kids, two brothers competing for attention. Annoying as hell in the moment, but kind of endearing seen through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia.

"Bird imitations," he said, and chuckled.

Margaret shook her head.

"Nope, still lacking lilt."

"Oh, yeah?" He pulled her closer. "Well, you know, I may lack lilt, but I am a very cunning linguist."

Margaret groaned again, rolled her eyes at the terrible pun, and tried to break out of his embrace. He held on, though, gave her a Cheshire cat-grin, bent down, and kissed her. A sweet, loving kiss, there to give comfort and find some in return. No performance, no malice, no agenda, the opposite of what had once happened between them in the crowded post-op. When the kiss ended, they stayed close, and leaned their foreheads together.

"You wanna head back inside?" Margaret said after a while.

"No, not yet. It's too hot. And Mrs. Morgan might want me to squeeze some other body part of hers, and I'm scared. We could head back to the hotel soon, right? I'll give you another massage. I trust you found the one you got last night satisfying?"

"Well," Margaret said, and made the short word linger, "it certainly was enthusiastic."

Hawkeye laughed softly, and leaned back so he could look down at Margaret.

"Well, I am a growing boy with raging hormones, so wild enthusiasm is to be expected. I'm also a bit tipsy, actually, I didn't expect that for tonight."

"I know, that punch should come with a warning."

"Can't you just see him in there? Colonel Potter? With a glass in each hand, having the time of his life?"

"Yeah, he would have loved this."

Margaret let her arms rest over Hawkeye's shoulders and took a deep breath, felt the pull of the Colonel Potter-shaped absence like a black hole.

"I was so jealous of you, you know?" she said. "Back in Korea, of you and BJ. You could just invite him over to The Swamp whenever you felt like it. Have a drink, and talk. Or sing. I heard you in there, you know. I could never do that."

"You were in there too, sometimes."

"I know, but so were you and BJ. If I wanted to talk to him alone, I had to have an errand, I could never just invite him over for a casual drink in my tent, that would have been weird. I had to go to his office, or catch him in the mess tent, or in the O-Club, and there were always other people, always someone who needed him too. Always someone pulling him away. Or jumping around telling stupid bird-jokes."

"Imagine that, who would ever do such a thing?"

He made a little sound and rolled his eyes, as if he couldn't believe such barbaric behavior even existed.

"But the time you did have with him meant so much, right?" he continued. "Even if it wasn't enough, even if it was interrupted by fantastic jokes, you two had such a connection. It went way deeper than just drinking or singing together. It was love."

A soft September breeze blew a strand of hair over Margaret's face, and he gently pushed it behind her ear.

"Tonight, we drink for him," he said. "Tomorrow, we sing for him in church, and then we'll say goodbye. But every one of us will go home with so many memories of him, so the love never dies."

Margaret nodded.

"Drink. Sing. Love. That sounds manageable." She cleared her throat, it felt very narrow, and her heart was starting to beat fast again. She gave him a small smile and tried to find a lightness in her voice. "Quite profound too, it should be embroidered on a tapestry."

"You're so lucky you're married to the funder of an incredibly successful tapestry-empire, with the soul of a poet."

The porch door swung open, and the sudden noise made them both jump and take a step apart, like they were teenagers caught making out. One of the Potters' neighbors stepped out on the porch, took a deep breath, and belched with real gusto, the sound almost shocking in the night air that had been so quiet only seconds ago. He then patted his rather impressive stomach, stepped off the porch, and disappeared into the darkness, apparently without even noticing Hawkeye and Margaret standing there. Margaret threw her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. Hawkeye didn't bother to try and sensor himself, though, he leaned his head back and laughed heartily. Margaret took her hand away and let her own laugh mix with his, it drifted through the night and mingled with the voices from inside.

"Drink. Sing. Love. Burp," she said, still giggling. "Now, that's a phrase for a tapestry!"

"There you are."

Margaret turned towards the voice and saw Mildred step out onto the porch.

"I was wondering what happened to the two of you."

"Sorry, we didn't mean to disappear," Hawkeye said. "We just needed some air."

"No need to apologize, dear," Mildred said and walked over to them. "It is very crowded in there, isn't it? It was supposed to be just family and a few friends tonight, but then the whole town found out all of you were coming, and I guess they really wanted to see you. Sherman talked about you so much, so this is like having some real celebrities in our midst. And, of course, there is the chance of getting a free consultation. Simply irresistible."

"Yeah, I have already had the pleasure of feeling up Mrs. Morgan," Hawkeye said.

"Oh, yes, I saw that. You have made her whole year; she has told me twice already what a charmer you are. All of them are very nice, but everything is just… It's a lot to handle at once."

Mildred's small smile faded, and Margaret studied her face, suddenly worried about the older woman. Did she look a little pale?

"Do you feel okay?" Margaret said and stepped closer to Mildred. "Do you need to sit down? I can get you a glass of water."

"Oh no, dear, I'm fine, just a bit overwhelmed. You are so sweet for asking."

She reached her hand out and gently stroked Margaret's cheek. It was such a lovely gesture, and it made Margaret's throat close up again.

"You know," Mildred continued, "when Sherman first told me about you, I imagined this six-foot-tall Valkyrie with shoulders like a linebacker, the way you ran such a tight ship. But he told me no, she's this dainty little doll in army drab, who looks a bit like Doris Day. And then I saw your picture, and he was right, you were this cute little thing, looking like you had just stepped off the top of a Christmas tree."

Margaret felt her heart grow warm and heard Hawkeye chuckle.

"Only you and the Colonel can get away with calling this one a cute little thing," he said, and Margaret had to laugh too. He was not wrong, 'cute little thing', and the likes, would sound demeaning coming from other people's mouths. Like Doctor Jarvis at work. Mediocre surgeon who wore too much after shave, liked to stand too close and kept calling Margaret 'my sweet little soft serve'. Apparently, when she wore her hair up it reminded him of the treat, and the grin the unwanted nickname always came with made Margaret's fingers curl into a fist every time she heard it. But when spoken with love, coming from people she cared about, 'cute little thing' felt like an embrace.

"He was so proud of you, you know," Mildred said and took Margaret's hand. "And he worried. When you were going through your divorce, and he saw how much you were hurting, he wished he could have done more for you. And then when you were back home. He was afraid you were gonna spin away too fast, get tangled up in things you didn't really want to."

Margaret didn't feel like laughing anymore. She felt a sharp lump in her throat when she thought of how close she had come to actually let her own life get away from her again, the control just slipping out of her hands as she once again had started to quell her own voice deep within.

"And you!" Mildred said and reached her other hand out for Hawkeye, who stepped closer and took it. "He worried about you too, so much. When you had your episode, and when you went home, and he couldn't keep an eye on you. But then, when he heard you two were an item? Oh!"

Mildred shook her head and gave them both the warmest smile.

"He was so happy! So proud, you should have seen him, trotting around like a Lipizzaner on the first day of spring."

She gave Margaret's hand a squeeze.

"He never had that with anyone, not like it is with you. He had lots of friends from his army days, yes, but all of you, his Korea family, that bond was just so special. I see it still, in all of you, how you look at each other. There is a shimmer. It's painful, I can see that, but it goes so deep. It's beautiful."

The sharp, hot lump in Margaret's throat floated higher, and she did nothing to stop the tears it pushed out. Hawkeye grabbed her other hand.

"If it hadn't been for Colonel Potter, all of us would have shimmered a whole lot less, that's for sure," he said.

Margaret nodded.

"That's true, he was the glue. He held all of us together."

Mildred nodded slowly.

"I like that, the glue. Made of horse's feet and stubbornness."

There was a shimmer around her too, a melancholy smile on her face. Her hair was lit up by the light from inside, making it shine with a soft glow. Maybe that was Colonel Potter's great gift to the world, that he had brought out the shimmer in the people around him.

"Thank you," Margaret said. "Thank you for letting us borrow him for a while."

"Oh, sweetheart, you're welcome. Thank you for looking after him for me." Mildred let go of Margaret's hand and gave her a one-armed hug, her other hand still holding Hawkeye's.

Mildred's perfume smelled like apples, and Margaret wanted to make the embrace last, just live in it for a while. Hold on to the connection to Colonel Potter. She felt very young, like a child on the first day of school not wanting to let go of her mother. But the hug ended, and Mildred took Margaret's hand again. They stood in a circle, the three of them, like they were performing some kind of ritual. And maybe they were, maybe all the love and grief they felt could form some sort of bridge. Margaret half expected to get a sudden whiff of a cigar or hear a booming laugh. Or a neigh from a horse. She expected a black feather

where ghosts tread, black feathers fall

to slowly come tumbling down between them. But there was no black feather, just the three of them. No ghost. Good. That was a good thing. Colonel Potter had spent his days back in Korea looking after all of them, he didn't have to do that anymore. He should rest.

Inside the house, someone laughed, and suddenly Margaret felt like laughing too, even with tears still burning in her eyes. After all this time, emotions still came hard for her, they tended to get tangled deep inside, all twisted up. For such a long time, she had tried so hard to kick her pain and tears and longing into dark corners of her mind, trying to hide them away and show a composed surface, and somewhere deep inside, they still got muddled sometimes. Got mixed up with the joy and love.
Or maybe that was just grief's way, to muddle emotions. It made you so depressed you couldn't stop smiling, so anxious you couldn't stop laughing. It made you desperate to bury yourself in whatever distraction, whatever obsession that was available. Grief was a detonation, an explosion. One that left you changed in ways you couldn't even comprehend, could never have predicted. It tore off your skin, sucked the meat off your bones and turned your words into howls.
Grief was a trickster. Turned tears into laughter, the kind of laughter that strained your muscles til they hurt. It was a limbo between two states of being, the one you were before and the one you would become. The space was vast and frightening, so easy to get lost in. But Margaret wouldn't. She would not get lost; she had a rope to hold on to now. A rope that shimmered.

Margaret squeezed Mildred's and Hawkeye's hands and relaxed. She could admit it now, admit that things hurt. She could pull the right emotion out from the tangled web and allow herself to feel it.

It hurt to lose.
It hurt to let go.
It hurt to live.
It hurt to love.

It hurt to open your heart and let people in, let them leave imprints that would last forever.
And it was all worth it. If it was one thing Margaret had learned from life, and from Colonel Potter, it was this. It was all worth it.