Page 34 of Justice for Radar

“Technically it’s from the grass family,” he said.

“Grass? Really?” I asked.

“Really,” he answered.

“How do you know?”

“My dad worked the fields when he came over from Cuba with my mother who was pregnant with me. She worked cleaning hotels.”

“Oh,” I murmured. “My dad worked the cornfields,” I said. “My mom was a bank teller.”

“Always nice to find some common ground,” he said taking a sip of his drink. I sipped mine, fruity, cool, and delicious.

“Except from what I know from you and Lucia, your parents were great.”

“Yeah, that they were,” he said.

“Mine, not so much,” I replied with a sigh.

“Aw, yeah? How’s that, if you don’t mind me asking, that is?”

I breathed out and reminded him; another brief overview of my wretched childhood with added detail, glossing over the truly ugly parts as fast as I could and leaning back in my seat, rocking gently and trying not to let the awful feelings creep out from their vault to overshadow the day.

“Shit, yeah, they sound like real douchebags,” he said and shook his head chewing his bottom lip in thought.

“Right? My therapist said that it’s not unusual to wind up in a relationship with or even marrying someone similar when you don’t have any therapy under your belt or the tools to recognize what you’re doing. I guess it was just my luck that instead of marrying someone similar I ended up running and marrying someone who would turn out to beworse.” I grimaced. I felt so stupid for that… so, so, stupid.

“Your therapist ever say why it is people do that? Seems a bit counterintuitive if you know what I mean.”

“She said something about familiarity,” I said. “That when something is your normal, something healthy seems both foreign and scary. She also told me not to beat myself up for it too much, that it was extremely common… still, I feel dumb.”

“Don’t,” Radar said, shaking his head. “From everything you’ve told me, you have no reason to. You couldn’t magically look into a crystal ball and see that boy-o couldn’t handle his shit.”

I opened my mouth to defend Rodney a bit then, which I know sounds crazy, but it wasn’t exactly fair to characterize any veteran that way to my mind.

“You don’t have to,” Radar said, holding up a hand. “I think I know what you’re going to say, and I agree with you to an extent.”

I looked amused. I was sure.

“Okay, what was I going to say?” I asked.

“Not fair to paint a war vet with that brush,” he said, and I laughed slightly.

“Okay, you’re right, so why did you?”

“Let’s go back a few seconds, what Ishouldhave said was something more along the lines of, a lot of soldiers come back fucked up by the shit they had to deal with over there. Where they fail to handle their shit, is by not taking the opportunities that Iknoware available to deal with it in a responsible manner. No, instead they hit the bottle and, no offense, take it out on their wives and then expect a pity party afterward.”

“That’s scarily accurate,” I said dryly.

“Oh yeah?” he asked.

I sipped my drink. “Mm-hm, nailed it all the way through the pity party. He tried a temporary insanity defense, the only thing that stopped the jury from believing it is that he took too much time to premeditate the attack.”

“Fuck,” Radar muttered and shook his head. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, me too,” I murmured. “It’s like between my family and him, I just… I don’t know, it’s like I don’t know how to operate within society anymore. I feel so broken and…” I faltered. “And maybe I am. I mean, just look what happened.” I got really quiet then, thinking about Billy, tearing it apart and putting it back together, just so I could tear it apart all over again convinced that it justhad to besomething that I’d done.

“It wasn’t you, baby.” Radar’s voice was soothing and empathetic as it interrupted my thoughts.

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