Work Text:
Still waiting for that Watchtower to open because I’ve been bouncing back and forth between my Mami’s and Dad’s house. Note the nomenclature. My Mami is from Colombia, my Dad was born in London, but to American parents. He was educated there, all the way through college, an Oxford man, and he came back to the United States to join the American Central Intelligence Agency. He was a tremendous operative in the field, first in Europe, then Latin America, where he had a taste for brown women.
Enter my mother, a real beauty, with an eye for upward mobility. Robert McLovin seemed to offer her just that, except he was just playing. Until she got pregnant with me. That was the end of my mother’s game, and he brought her to the U.S.; her very presence in Colombia, along with mine once I was born, could be used against him, even for ransom. She held on to me long enough to see me born in NYC, and he saw her naturalized. He bought her a small apartment building in East Harlem and went about his business seducing new women.
Staying with my Mami meant she was constantly trying to set me up with someone. My grief should be gone by now according to her. New men grew on trees. But staying with my Dad meant ongoing, disapproving looks. I had fraternized with my commanding officer. Fraternized. We were engaged, and then we got captured, and then he died on a torture-camp livestream. The unspoken assignment of blame for bringing shame to our almost spotless reputation in the intelligence community... less his dalliance that conceived me, of course.
Since I was only a support role for these Thunderbolts, I decided to bug John Walker. Plus I missed him. A little bit. Shut up. I know what you’re thinking. He’s separated, not divorced yet.
“Hey J-dub,” I chirped when he answered his phone after the third time I rang him.
“Hey.” Listless. Empty. Not good at all.
“What’s wrong?” Now I was a little worried.
There was a long sigh on the other end. “There was some shooting in the area that woke me up last night. Scared me awake, really. Couldn’t get back to sleep. Still can’t. This whole thing is just fucked up.”
“You want some company for a while? Not a great time to be alone, and I don’t want to stay in the house myself,” I offered.
“Nah, it’s ok, don’t go out of your way like that for me...” He trailed off, but that mildest bit of a pity party spoke louder than his demureness.
“Nope, I’m coming over. I’m pretty sure you’re dying. That was a death rattle.”
“What are you talking about, that wasn’t a death rattle, I’m fine, I just...” he tried to argue, but I cut him off.
“Bad connection, did you pay your phone bill, I’d better come over before you’re dead, you won’t be able to call 911, see you in a bit, byeeee.” And I hung up. I pulled on shorts and some sneakers because I couldn’t very well leave the house without pants, although that might cheer him up, heh. I kept waiting for my phone to go off, for John to insist he was fine, but he did not call me. I was pretty sure my instincts would prove right.
Twenty minutes later, I’m knocking on his door and yelling, “It’s me!”
“It’s open,” he yells back. Not entirely the safest thing to do in his neighborhood. It’s not terrible, but it’s not entirely the best. I open the door and step inside the depressing, darkened living room, the curtains drawn.
John’s sitting on the sofa, looking exhausted. His head is resting on his hand, and he barely acknowledges that I’ve walked into the room. I see he’s wearing his wedding ring, and I feel a twinge. It’s one of those kinds of days. He must be missing Olivia. I sit down next to him on the sofa and lean into his shoulder. Only then does he really notice me.
“Hey, you made it. You didn’t have to.” His face is sad, stressed, tired.
“It was no trouble, it was totally on my way to.... Nova Scotia. Talk to me, J-dub, what’s going on with you?”
He looked around the plain, gloomy walls of his little bachelor’s apartment. “I need to get out of here. Not for a walk or a day, but for good. They need to hurry up with that Watchtower, I hate being in this little rat trap. I can’t relax.”
“You’ve been here a couple of months, so is it the place or was it the sounds of shooting, or are you just ready to be settled in somewhere else?”
“I think that last part. I can’t lie about it. It sounds stupid but it’s lonely being stuck here by myself. I can’t rest over the sound of my own thoughts. Everything keeps revisiting me. Everything I did wrong. Things that I could have done better. Maybe Lamar would be alive. Maybe...”
I put my arms around him to give him a hug, and he clings to me like a drowning man does to a life preserver. I feel like he might cry, and I tell him, “J-dub, honey, we both know that dealing with trauma and PTSD is trying to get past the constant second guessing. You know there’s nothing you could do.”
“I’m just so tired...”
“Then rest now, John, come on.” I curled my legs behind me on the sofa, and pulled him into me, against my chest. I ran my fingers through his hair, long movements of my hand, meant to soothe. And he relaxed, maybe a little too well, and soon he was snoring softly. Great, I had a 6-foot-something, 190lb bear pinning me against the sofa. Any other time it might be fun, but I was gonna have to tough it out until he woke up... which took about an hour.
When he finally did, he looked up at me, and was a little bit surprised that it was me, I think, and not Olivia. And more surprised when he saw the little drool patch on my t-shirt, which I faux-fussed over, partly to get past the sting of the mistaken identity, but I knew that was probably natural still. I mean, high school sweetheart and he was a damned sight far away from high school at this age. And hey, wasn’t that my PTSD and grief and loneliness talking, too. Like the old song, looking for love in all the wrong places?
But I had a solution for his doldrums living alone until the Watchtower was ready for residency. I got on the phone really quick and John was giving me the side-eye when I started talking in Spanish. I don’t doubt he could hear a woman speaking loudly back to me even though my phone was not on speaker. I laughed and said, “Ok, mami, no te preocupes, es el soldado que me rescato, recuerdes? El John Walker? Si, dormirá en el suelo. Ok, pues, nos vemos en un rato.” [“Ok, mom, don’t worry, this is the soldier who rescued me, remember? John Walker, Yes, he’ll sleep on the floor. Ok, then, we’ll see you in a bit.”] I turned back around to face John.
“What was that about?” He was kind of smiling now, because he knew I was talking about him.
“Well, you said you can’t rest over your own thoughts. So pack a bag for at least a week, I’m going to take you to a place where you can’t even hear your own thoughts over the sound of the barrio. You’re gonna come stay with me at my Mami’s place in East Harlem. That’ll teach you to not appreciate peace and quiet,” I laugh.
“East Harlem, isn’t that supposed to be a bad neighborhood?” He looked skeptical now.
I looked skeptical back. “Come on, is my little super soldier scared? White people have a bad habit of calling ‘ethnic’ neighborhoods ‘bad’ the moment they see signs in a language other than English. Sure, it has its problems, but you can get murdered in white suburbia just as dead as you can in East Harlem. But, I’m telling you, that place doesn’t give you time to dwell in your own shit. It’s alive and kicking. You’ll have a hard time adjusting to noise at all hours. If this doesn’t work out, I can always take you to my Dad’s and you can listen to him lecture you in his British accent, that’s a hoot. Either way, you’re sleeping on the floor, but at least we can hang together and you won’t be alone. Plus my Mami cooks some great eats. Arepas, ajaico, sancocho, you’ll get fat, we’ll have to go running. So, what do you say?”
Finally, John cracks a genuine smile that looks like sunshine. “I say let’s do it. I’m up for an adventure.”
I clap my hands and laugh. “Yay! My friends are gonna go nuts, I’m bringing a white boy home! This is gonna tie up the gossip en el barrio for weeks!”
But more importantly, I was hoping it was going to pull John out of his PTSD spiral. We were without Dr. Raynor here in NYC. PTSD doesn’t just go away, it requires a lot of ongoing treatment. I couldn’t be John’s emotional support person when I needed one of my own. Nobody wanted to talk about it. Could we be each other’s emotional support when we’re both damaged? Probably not a good idea, but for the moment, it was all we had.