When Mommy Goes Off to Fight a War

摘要

It's funny how the hot and dry brings out the evil in men," my wife said on the phone one night last July. It was not a statement that gave a husband comfort from 6,000 miles away. "Did something happen? Are you OK?" "Fine," she said. "It was just a long day. Why don't you tell me about your day?" I sat in the family room and stared at the wall. "Peter?" "Yes," I said quietly, "I'm here." I thought about her in the Iraqi desert, and smiled then. She looks tiny and childlike when she's buried beneath a mound of fatigues and body armor, blond wisps of hair escaping from under her Kevlar helmet.