I’m decidedly old-fashioned, wearing an apron and a smile as I cross the road to greet the new neighbors. Between oven mitts, I hold a freshly-baked pie, the pan still hot. My hair is done up high and tied with a ribbon. It’s all going so well, my fifties fantasy, until, from the bowels of the moving van, come echoing expletives along with the word: artillery. Then an object comes thundering down the loading ramp. Big wheels. Black steel. A cannon.

“Grant, you id-yut! That’s an original twelve pound Napoleon!” A grizzled man lumbers down the aluminum plank to where the cannon came to rest against a cardboard box labeled, Grant’s books.

“Sorry, dad.” The voice cracks like an adolescent, but when he leans out of the back end of the truck I see that it’s a man, about my age, the age where living with one’s parents indicates failure-to-launch, spinsterhood, a loose screw—or in my case, three out of three. I’m nothing if not self-aware. And I know I’m prone to delusion, but I swear a golden ray of light breaks through the ceiling of clouds as soon as this handsome fellow appears. His brown hair curls to meet a trim beard. His blue eyes seek fatherly forgiveness.

My tongue does that vibrate-thing it always does when I get really excited and it takes a certain amount of control to keep it from lolling from my mouth like a happy dog. I imagine at any moment the song Dream Weaver might start playing in this movie montage I call life, but instead I find myself being reprimanded by the horn of an oncoming Subaru. I continue across, agog, my offering extended.

The transition between the road’s concrete and the driveway’s gravel is not a smooth one. To keep myself from falling, I lurch forward and—oh, fudge—the pie proves treasonous, slipping from my mitts, performing an impressive somersault onto the lawn. I look down at the steaming pile. Gelatinous strawberry rhubarb. Fractured crust.

Then, to my utmost dismay, I feel it happening: the dilating of vessels, the heat moving up from my neck to my ears like mercury in a thermometer, in Hell. I’m cherry-dipped. A candied apple. Without looking up, I cover my burning cheeks with my mitts, turn, and take brisk strides home, ever-conscious of the lack of tread on my saddle shoes.

I spend the night drunk with social ineptitude, the encounter with my new neighbors yet another red-faced disaster. Like anytime I ever wore white shorts. Like when I tripped over a power strip in the computer lab at the community college and erased an entire aisle’s term papers. Like in high school phys. Ed. class when I somehow got tangled in the tennis net. Impossibly, mind-bogglingly, tangled. Arms, legs, and hair. For the longest time after that I was called Fly-ana, some jerk’s clever melding of my name, Diana, and the fact that I looked like I was caught up in a spider’s web. Worse than the net was the aftermath, people discovering that all they had to do was whisper Fly-ana and I’d become a paprika-faced freak.

The next morning, after wrestling my hangover of self-hatred with instant coffee and marmalade toast, I go to the front window and venture a peep of my neighbors’ property, a forty acre spread of field and forest. There are no signs of life, but behind the house, the barn door is open and there are—not one, not two, but three black cannons inside.

Then I notice. The little flag on my mailbox. Raised. It’s far too early for the post.

I throw on my invisibility cloak—obviously I’m not actually invisible, but it’s drab and brown, monkish with a big hood. It does the job, making me feel inconspicuous, less me. I could be anyone. My mom, my dad. A Jedi warrior. I feel my ego dissolve under its weight.

I creep to the curb, practically invisible. I lower the red flag, reach into the aluminum tunnel, and retrieve a folded paper—a Civil War recruitment flyer. It specifically says “Wanted: 35 Able-Bodied Men”, but it feels like a personal invitation. A camp date is set for two weeks, with battle early the next morning at the address across the street. I feel the thrum of inspiration within my bosom.

From the corner of my hood, my eye detects movement and I spot the grizzled man. He sits on a crate holding a pipe in one hand, a tin cup in the other, dressed head-to-toe in Union blue. He looks off to the distant hills, probably strategizing. I look for my crush, and find a moving speck back by the woods heaving dirt. Somehow I just know he is digging the latrines.

Over the fortnight, I prepare. I find both a corset and hoopskirt at a Steampunk boutique downtown. I make a dress out of old dining room curtains with lace at the neck and a floor-length skirt, tasseled and flounced. I find a leather doctor’s bag at an antique store and fill it with tools from my dad’s shed, rusty stuff he never uses, like a hand drill and a hack saw. I cut and sew uncoupled socks to make long rolls of bandages and find a leather belt, just in case I need to make a tourniquet. The weather forecast for battle day is ninety and cloudless, so I sew a sachet of dried lavender into my bodice to help with the age-old issue of b-o.

The morning of, I part my hair severely down the middle and pin back my Clara Barton coils. When I pick up my doctor’s bag and look in the mirror, Mary Poppins comes to mind, but it’ll have to do. Day is breaking and soldiers are emerging from their pup tents across the way.

Standing on my front porch I muster my resolve. I am not Fly-ana. Or even Diana, for that matter. I am the angel of the battlefield.

The first group of soldiers I approach is a young bunch, but, alas, my heartthrob is not among them. I reach into my bag and produce a spoon and a glass bottle stopped with a cork.

“Bottoms up boys,” I say. “It’s time for your daily dose of quinine.”

It’s really tonic water, but I can’t tell them that. All the Civil War reenactment forums say it’s frowned upon to break role. I hold a spoonful out to the nearest man, but he just smirks with modern coolness.

Behind me, a male voice, strong with authority, says, “Fall into line privates and do as the lady says! Do you want to fight or be racked by malarial fever? This regiment requires a prophylactic dose each morning.”

I turn and immediately begin to swoon. There are three stars on the straps of my beloved’s shoulders and golden embroidery at his sleeve cuffs. Lieutenant general. He takes my outstretched spoon and sets a good example, then takes the bottle and instructs the privates to pass it around camp. With his hand on my elbow, he leads me to shade.

“It is good of you to come. The surgeon will need all the help he can get,” he says. Then he points off to the far edge of the property. “The medical tent is off yonder, safe from artillery fire.” He looks me in the eyes.

Like I said, I know I am prone to delusion. But when my eyes meet his, there is deep connection. He is the substrate to my enzyme, the key to my lock. A catalytic reaction ensues and the product is pure, unadulterated love. This time, I cannot be wrong.

He reaches into his haversack and presents me with a piece of dried pork. Oh yes. Oh my. This is real. My tongue vibrates.

The bugle sounds. He must lead his men into battle.

“Go with God,” I whisper, clutching the precious gift of home-made jerky in my palm.

But he tarries, unGeneral-like, and says, “Your pie was delicious.”

I am wrenched from the moment, stunned that he would go so off-script. I picture him eating my fractured pie off of the ground.

When he realizes his faux-pas, color rises from the collar of his uniform. He is an heirloom tomato. A beet. I’ve never seen a man’s cheeks contain such blush.

The shift is sudden and complete, unlocking and solidification, all on my behalf. I feel…opposite-empathy, like I can put myself in his shoes, but why would I want to? I already have those shoes and they suck. The revulsion cuts deep, evolutionarily deep, because surely this manic sense of embarrassment is recessive. Thus, it’s possible I’d end up with a brood of easily-flustered, crimson-faced fools. Caring for them would be out of duty alone—there’d be a hole in my heart where motherly love should reside. I want nothing more to do with him.

The bugle sounds again.

“Fare thee well, General,” I say.

From the front lines comes the first explosion, followed by whoops of men, relishing in the act of war. Their bloodlust makes me quake beneath my bounty of skirts. Would the surgeon know his role and keep a steady countenance? I head off yonder post-haste, ever hopeful.