Chapter One

I'm being followed by an invisible woman. Pesky girl, she trails me almost everywhere I go. She's not here at the moment, so I can tell you about her: she's probably baking something delicious in her spotless kitchen. Or writing a thank-you note, or packing up the tenth care package she's mailed to her deployed husband this month, or having an engaging but noncontroversial conversation with her girlfriends. She's the Perfect Army Wife, a mythical creature who seamlessly, selflessly performs every domestic task with patriotic resolve that would make Uncle Sam sit down and weep Yankee Doodle tears. She's mindful, graceful, emotionally composed, and eternally in the right. She never falters, and heavens to Betsy, she never swears. For all I know, once the sun sets, she dons a red, white, and blue cape and flies around military installations solving crimes. Because she's invisible, I can't tell you what she looks like, but I can tell you one thing: I hate that girl.

Understand that there is nothing in my suburban punk-rock past that indicated that in 2002, I would marry an Army officer, thereby becoming an Army wife myself. My one connection to the military was tenuous-my dad was drafted into the Korean War, but that was long before I was born. In my family, my father's stint in the Army was mentioned only in passing, like his former hobby of playing the saxophone or the fact that, when he packed out of sleepy little Sandusky County, Ohio, to attend Harvard on scholarship, his only suit was a helplessly out-of-date plaid. My husband was the