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Show Riptide We arrived in northern Virginia in the summer of 1975, a few months before my youngest brother, Bryan, was born. My parents bought a house at 2902 Swanee Lane, the first in a chain of addresses that I would commit, along with my father's social security number, the only number that mattered in the military, to memory. The house, a brick split-level, sat on a cul-de-sac amid a forest of deciduous oaks that threatened the house from every side. Even in the winter, when the branches were bare of leaves, the house felt dark. The two picture windows, one in the living room and one in the dining room, could not let enough light in to warm the rooms. Because there was a fireplace downstairs, we spent most of the winter in the basement, the rusty orange shag carpet and wood paneled walls consuming what little light existed. Having spent the past four years in Hawaii surrounded by sunshine, our house in Virginia felt like a cave. My father drove in to the Pentagon each weekday morning, sometimes in a carpool, sometimes on the Metro, always in the dark. At night his footfalls rang against the brick and announced his return. I could not see him beneath the trees and the sunless sky, but I knew what he was wearing, the same uniform he wore every day for twenty years, the one my mother ironed at night while I watched television, a can of Niagara starch nearby, and the hot smell of iron filling the air. Every three days she washed another load of whites in hot, checking the pockets for ink stains left by the black ballpoint pens issued by the government. Every three days she pressed deep creases back into the polyester. My father took pride in his uniform, shined his black shoes weekly until they 51 |
