Lettuce by Natalie Sypolt

WE SEE THE SKY getting dark and Chris goes out to cover the lettuce. He wants the vegetables safe and unbruised, has tarps and buckets collected in the outbuilding for must such an occasion. I’ve learned not to ask if he wants help. When I used to offer, he thought it was because I figured he couldn’t do it himself. But it wasn’t that. Or maybe it was. It doesn’t matter anymore.

The clouds roll in and I watch him cover his lettuce fro the kitchen window, remembering the time I was ten and visiting my aunt in Illinois. We had a storm, what the news people said was a derecho, like a wall of hell. A horizontal tornado, some said, but it rolled more like a hurricane. It lasted a long time and I was crying before it was over. When we looked at the sky, the layers of dark heavy clouds, I was sure it was the end of the world. But it finally cleared, and people picked up, cleaned up, moved on.

The rain starts falling fast and hard. I see Chris stoop, but he doesn’t wasn’t to sacrifice the tender lettuce. He puts the tarp over some, weights it down with big rocks. He places buckets over the tomato and pepper plants.

Then the hail comes, pellets hitting the roof of the porch, tinny and loud. Chris tried to cover himself by holding his non-arm over his head, but he doesn’t quit, because now his work is even more important. Some wives would run out, grab an umbrella or a pot or something that would happen in a movie. I stand and watch, wondering how long it will take him to give in.

Before the storm came, I’d been grating carrots for a salad. Chris is vegetarian now. This has irritated me from the beginning, not because I care about the food, but because it seems so predictable, like something that would happen in a movie. That’s what this all feels like sometimes—not our real life, but some melodramatic, made-for-TV movie. Boy goes off to war, sees unspeakable, loses left arm in an IED explosion, can’t stomach the blood and flesh of meat anymore. I can’t name any movie where this happens, but I’m sure it has. It’s not that I don’t have any compassion, until I couldn’t be anymore.

When I was grating carrots, I heard a car coming up the drive. Really, it wasn’t in our drive, just going slow up the bumpy dirt road, but as I jumped to look, I slipped. The carrot nub flipped out of my hand, and my knuckles went down hard and fast across those sharp teeth. It took a minute to sink in, the way it does when you hurt yourself in some stupid way and can’t look down for fear of what you’ll see. Pictures flashed in my head of shredded skin, white knuckle bone shining through blood and gore. I grabbed a dishtowel and pressed it to my knuckles, but when I looked down I saw that a few tiny drops of blood had dripped into the salad bowl. The red was bold and hot against the orange of the carrots, and I knew that I should throw it all out. But the big wooden bowl was full of tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, and peppers. Throwing it out would be wasteful, and there wasn’t time to run to town for more vegetables.

This is how I told it to myself. And when I came back downstairs after washing my hand and bandaging my knuckles, I mixed the the carrot shreds up good so the bloody spot were gone. That’s what I did and I’m not sorry.

“Son of a bitch came on fast,” Chris says when he bangs in, soaking wet and dripping all over the kitchen floor. “I think I got it in time. Hope I did.”

“I’m sure you did,” I say, but I don’t have much in my voice to convince him. He doesn’t notice, so I don’t try too hard.

“I don’t remember the weatherman saying it was going to rain today, do you? Is it still hailing? You know what they say about hail.” Chris looks out the window, though we can hear the ice bouncing off the porch roof. They say hail is sometimes a sign a tornado is coming, but I don’t know what Chris means anymore. He could mean anything.

“You’re dripping,” I say. “You shouldn’t track that mud upstairs. Just strip your clothes here, then go put on something dry.” His face goes a little funny because he doesn’t like the idea. “Come on, Chris. It’s a mess.”

“Fine,” he says. I cross my arms and watch as he pushes off his boots, then, one-handed, undoes his buckle, button, and zipper; he sloughs his wet jeans off like a snake losing his skin. His boxers are wet through, but I decide not to push it. I wonder if he’ll leave the non-arm on as he tries to get his wet T-shirt off, or if he’ll release this contraption I hate. I see he’s also wondering which would be best.

He doesn’t like for anyone to see his scars, not even me, and it’s not because of vanity. Chris is a good-looking man, always has bee, but doesn’t try too hard. No hair gel or fancy clothes. He still wears the same brand of drug store cologne his mother bought him when he started shaving, even through the army, even still. I think he’s afraid the scars and stump and machine-like parts of the non-arm make him look weaker. He already feels weak, even after all the months in physical therapy, even though his good arm is stronger than most two put together. Some men get to hid their damage, but Chris has to wear his—artificial flesh-toned and creepy veiny—every day.

It took a while, but now he can dress and undress himself, take care of his bathroom things. He can do garden work and some of the farm work for his daddy, like drive the tractor. “Use the arm,” the therapists told him. “It’s not like the old prosthetics. These new pieces are incredibly.”

At first, they wanted to give him a hi-tech, robot-like one that could grasp cups. It was an experimental model and they tried to tell me how it works—something about nerves being re-routed, muscles in the chest learning to twitch in a way that would make the fingers move. I didn’t understand. When they showed me, I couldn’t stop staring at the icy silver of it.

“Chris would be able to hold your hand,” one therapist said. She was a young girl with the bright eyes, a long curled ponytail, intricately applied makeup. She wasn’t much younger than us, but she seemed like a kid. To her, the idea of Chris being able to hold my hand again probably sounded sweet, romantic.

I touched the robot hand and tried to imagine the cool fingers beginning to tighten. I thought I felt a twitch and jerked away.

“What good is this doing?” Chris asked the girl. “I’ll never be able to feel her hand. Why would I ever do this in real life?”

My cheeks went red then, imagining real life and what he might do with his bionic arm. Images flashed in my head of our bedroom, Chris saying, “Look how my chest muscles make my fingers close. Look how I can move them on you.” I felt a sick quake in my stomach and had to get up. I was outside the door quick, and slid down the wall.

The pretty girl couldn’t understand. She met men like Chris and wives like me every day, but then she went home to her boyfriend who still has everything he’s supposed to have. Some farm boy who still has his twinkle, who hold her and undresses her and touches her with two warm hands.

“That’s the last time she’s in here,” I heard Chris say to the girl.

CHRIS HAS A DIFFERENT sort of arm now. This one fastens around his body with thick straps and is still incredible, but now quite as incredible as the robotic one. He thought that one scared me, and that I was embarrassed. He told the therapist it just didn’t feel right, that maybe he wasn’t strong enough yet. So instead he has one that looks more like “the real thing” from the elbow down. The hand is always slightly bent, ready for gripping. The doctors say that the technology is improving all the time, especially now with such demand. Chris tells me he’s on a list to get a better arm permanently. I read about it on the internet—the “Luke” they call it, after Luke Skywalker’s bionic arm in the Star Wars movies.

I WATCH CHRIS STRUGGLE, trying to get the wet T-shirt up and over his non-arm. Normally he could do it, but the shirt is wet and stuck to his skin. “Okay, Jenny,” he says finally. “Help me.”

I peel gently from the bottom, first over his good arm so he can help, then over the non-arm, then over his head. I’m close enough that I can see the little welts on his shoulders and forehead where the hail hit him. That’s when I remember to listen, and hear that it’s stopped.

“Just rain now,” I say, and realize I”m still holding the shirt above his head and that our chests are touching. On my tiptoes I just can reach his lips because he is tall and I am not. I’m surprised that I kiss him because I didn’t think I would. My hand is in his hair, long now, grown out, so that I can grab it, wrap my hand up in it like he used to in mine.

“Jen,” he says around my lips, but I keep my hand in his hair, and kiss him so hard that I taste blood in my mouth, his or mine I don’t know.

If he would take off the arm, I would lick his scars. When he’s awake, he won’t let me touch them, doesn’t want me to look, but sometimes when he’s asleep, I kneel on the floor beside the bed and run my finger around each purple crevice, each indentation. I cup the missing piece. The pills make him sleep deep and I’m glad, because if he woke to find me there, he would howl. He’d push me and my kisses away like he does every time.

I pull his hair, force his head back and kiss his throat.

“What’s gotten in to you?” he says. He’s trying to move away, trying to laugh me off, but I don’t want to let him go.

How would the movie go? If we were living out this drama on the screen, would he push me away now, again, or would this be the climax where Chris finally lets me unstrap his non-arm and lies down on the cold kitchen tiles? Would he cry? Would the hail start again, or the lightning and thunder, rolling over us?

I USED TO LOVE those nights when the air got thick with electricity. The thunder rolled around the house in waves, the lightning showing Chris to me in flashes as it lit up the bedroom. When it was over, there was just the slow, soft rain. We’d lie close together. I knew everything then.

WITH HIS GOOD HAND, Chris pats my shoulder. “Isn’t it about time for dinner?” he asks. “I’ll go get some dry clothes on. Okay?” He’s using his hand to disentangle mine from his hair. He doesn’t want to hurt me. He just wants to go.

I watch him gather his wet clothes from the floor. I think I should go get the mop and take care of the puddles, but I don’t. Instead, I get the vegetarian lasagna from the oven. I get the salad from the refrigerator.

The storm has somehow circled us and, when we sit to eat, the rain is loud again. When the thunder comes, I can feel it in my whole body as the house shudders.

“Here it comes again,” Chris says. He’s wearing a blue T-shirt from high school, with the school mascot—a wildcat—on the front. His hair is in his eyes. He looks so young, so much younger than I feel. How unfair that he can look like that and I have to feel like this. His non-arm is resting on the table. He’s waiting for me to serve him.

“This looks good,” he says as I cut the lasagna and scoop it onto his plate. I’m not a good cook, especially when it comes to dishes where delicate vegetables are expected to pull together and make something hearty.

“Have some salad.” I use the plastic tongs to fill our bowls to the top.

I spear some with my fork, but don’t put it to my mouth until I’ve watched Chris take a mouthful, mostly lettuce, streaked with shreds of orange. He chews and when he sees me watching, he smiles.

“At least I can make salad,” I say. I take my bite, already knowing that after he goes to sleep tonight, I’ll sneak out and drive the forty-five minutes to Morgantown to get a greasy fast food cheeseburger. Maybe two.