Novic Sara - Girl at War

It was now six months since the attacks, and the everyday things were returning to normal, first through an attitude of compulsory courage —fear means letting them win —then in a slow reinstating of routines, until we were again wrapped up in the mundane inconveniences of city life: knocking radiator pipes, subway construction reroutes, and the usual array of vermin. The country was at war, but for most people the war was more an idea than an experience, and I felt something between anger and shame that Americans — that I — could sometimes ignore its impact for days at a time. In Croatia, life in wartime had meant a loss of control, war holding sway over every thought and movement, even while you slept. It did not allow for forgetting. But America’s war did not constrain me; it did not cut my water or shrink my food supply. There was no threat of takeover with tanks or foot soldiers or cluster bombs, not here. What war meant in America was so incongruous with what had happened in Croatia — what must have been happening in Afghanistan — that it almost seemed a misuse of the word.

My phone rang and startled me, and I answered in a shaky voice. It was Sharon.

“Ana? Where’d you go?”

“I just needed some air. Should I meet you in the lobby?” I realized I had wandered farther west than I should have. I jogged back across the avenues and up to the gates of the UN, where a tour group was clogging the entrance portals. I hit Redial on Sharon’s number, but she appeared through the exit moments later with an armful of file folders and my index cards.

“I figured you wouldn’t be able to get back through that mess,” she said. “Do you want these?” She handed me the index cards. “You hungry?”

I wasn’t, but I was eager to get away from the UN and have Sharon to myself.

“I’ve got a reservation. We can walk.”

I trailed behind her back up the stairs, in awe of the ease with which she carried herself in high heels. I still clomped whenever I tried to wear them, and the older I got the more unlikely it seemed I would ever learn the grace other women had. Each time we passed an expensive-looking restaurant, I held out hope we’d be going someplace more casual, where I wouldn’t make an ass of myself. Sharon pecked at her BlackBerry and gestured absently to UN-affiliated properties — the Malaysian consulate, the hotel where all the bigwigs stayed. I looked at them inattentively, but could think only of how I might begin the conversation I’d been suppressing for a decade.

The sun broke through a patch of gray, warming my cheeks and sending India’s mission building shimmering. At the top, the inset porch was now awash in a spring gold, sun spilling through the latticed skylight and glancing off the mirrored cut-ins along the walls.

“It is a beautiful one,” Sharon said, leaning back on her heels. “Something futuristic about it, almost.”

I’d been thinking the opposite — that the russet granite suggested desert, an ancient-temple kind of beauty, but I said nothing and followed her across the street.

The restaurant looked a little dingy, its awning faded and curtains caked in dust. When we entered, though, I was dismayed to find the place was indeed upscale, if not exactly clean. The tables were sheathed in stodgy white linen even for the lunch hour. I looked down at my sneakers.

“I’ll have the house red,” Sharon said to a waiter in a metallic vest.

“Can I have a Coke, please?”

The waiter smiled and took my wineglass away with him. The room was lit with patchy spotlights, and I squinted at the menu. There were no prices on anything.

“I think that went very well, don’t you?” said Sharon. I told her I thought so, too, but in reality I wasn’t so sure. I fiddled with my napkin, folding and unfolding the little cloth rectangle, and asked about her project. She responded with stock lines about busyness and moved her file folders beneath her chair.

“But enough about that. How’s college? And your sister — Rahela?”

The use of my sister’s name, the one no one had called her in years, caught me off guard. “They — we — call her Rachel here.”

“And she’s well?”

“She’s good, yeah. I’m surprised you remembered her.”

“Petar often spoke fondly of your family when we were on duty together. Particularly during the period in which you were…missing.”

Speaking of Petar. For all the times the question had lingered in my mind, it was difficult to shape in my mouth. The finality of knowing. “Do you—” I faltered. The waiter returned with our drinks, and I hoped Sharon, who had not picked up the menu, would tell him to go away. But she ordered a steak salad with mustard dressing, and, unprepared, I ordered the same. When the waiter left, Sharon sipped her wine and looked at me expectantly. “What were you saying?”

“Nothing.”

She paused but decided to take me at my word. “Then tell me more about you. I want to hear all about your new family, your new life.”

I clenched my teeth at her use of the word. New , like I had traded one family for another in a used-car deal. I swallowed the resentment and told her that my family was kind and had taken good care of me. Rahela was healthy now, as if nothing had ever been wrong with her at all. We’d spent most of the last ten years in a suburb of Philadelphia, where everything was clean and calm. That I had come to New York to get away from that quiet. Sharon nodded along like a woman at church. She meant to be encouraging, I knew, or else she was pleased with herself, but either way it bothered me that my life was something for her to evaluate and take some kind of credit for. “Anyway,” I said. I looked down at my plate. “I wanted to ask you about Petar.”

Sharon stopped nodding.

“Do you know what happened to him? The day we left?”

“No,” she said. “The men I sent — they couldn’t find him. Then I was in Germany for a month, and after that Bosnia, out of communication. I was sort of hoping you had—”

“I haven’t,” I said.

“I tried. I wrote letters. Even asked the people who set up the new embassy. But there was nothing.”

“What about all the other guys in the unit?”

“I think of all of them, of course, but none of them were as close — Petar and I were friends. And, after you, I just wanted to know that everything was okay.”

“Petar told me he saved your life.”

“That, too — I owe him. Really it was probably more than once. His unit actually used their guns and we were carrying ours around like handbags.”

My face must have betrayed my anxiety because Sharon said, “I’m sorry. Sometimes I just feel like if I don’t laugh about it, something really ugly could take root in me. I’m sure you understand.”

I said I did.

“You know, in the end, you’re my biggest success story.”

I thought of Sharon’s speech, the photos of the grave excavations. All the others, like my parents, who hadn’t yet been found.

“I don’t know if success is the word.”

She smiled faintly. “Maybe not. Truth is I don’t think I’ll ever get over the things I saw there.” She paused. “But I shouldn’t be putting that on you.”

I told her it was okay.

“Petar would be so proud of you.”

I mumbled a thanks and concentrated on my salad until the waiter mercifully appeared with the check. I reached for my wallet. Twenty and studenthood was an interim existence in which I frequently found interacting with “real adults” awkward, them waving off my offers to split bills as something ridiculous, and making me feel even more like a child.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“Are you sure?” I said, though in this case I was thankful; my work-study check was sure to take a hit from the priceless menu. Sharon gave an exaggerated nod as she tipped back the last of her wine.