Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (16 page)

Sharon laughs. "That's supposing we want our
husbands to have a 'successful career.' I'm already counting the
days until Robert's two years are up."

Donna looks at Sharon – what she said is
rather revealing. Then Donna inclines her head as if in agreement,
although her own fears prevent her from thinking much beyond each
day.

"Wendy, you continue," Sharon says.

"Social customs are cultivated through man's
efforts to make his companions comfortable and happy," Wendy reads.
"Rules may be learned, but graciousness is developed by living with
kind thoughts and consideration for others."

Donna waves her hand to stop Wendy. "Why
don't we skip a few pages? This introduction is too much for me. I
like the part on dress." She reads aloud: "Fashion and style
change, but the Army wife lives by a few proven rules: her own good
judgment and her aptness of applying good taste.

"Slacks and shorts on the tennis court, or
about the house, are fine on a cute slim figure …" Donna pauses.
"Don't you love it? 'Cute slim figure'!" Then she goes on, "...but
are out of place and usually forbidden at the commissary, post
exchange, theater, and public places. Since today's fashions stress
women in pants, try to be discreet as to where and when you wear
them."

Donna glances at the others. Kim wears a
light blue cotton shift with no sleeves. Sharon has on a
flower-print cotton skirt and a white short-sleeve blouse. Wendy
wears a stylish two-piece pants outfit. Donna herself has on shorts
and a top, but she is in her own apartment.

Kim takes over: "Sunbathing should be done in
your own secluded yard." She turns to Sharon. "Are we going to be
in trouble for going to the Officers Club pool?"

"Trouble with who?" Sharon says.

Kim smiles, then continues: "Hair curlers
belong in the beauty parlor or your own bedroom. Other fads that
degrade your position as a lady, and the wife of an Army officer,
should be avoided. You are your husband's 'lady,' and are expected
to attain the same respect that he does."

Sharon laughs. "Husband's 'lady.' I love
it!"

"It's kind of nice," Wendy says. "Especially
the part about respect."

"Enough!" Donna says, holding up her hand.
"All this makes me really nervous. I'm not sure I can do all this
stuff."

"What stuff do you mean?" Sharon asks.

Donna clasps her hands in her lap. How to
explain? "I just can't think like an officer's wife all the time.
If I want to wear slacks to the commissary, I'm going to wear them.
I can't always worry whether I'm doing everything right – it will
drive me crazy."

Wendy puts her booklet down on the coffee
table. "There aren't so many things for us to do," Wendy says. "It
just seems that way when we read all the rules together. One at a
time there's not that much. I'm sure you can do it."

Donna walks to the living room picture
window. Outside the trees droop, their branches pointing downward
as if divining for water. Here inside the room the air conditioner
makes the heat bearable.

Puerto Rico is hot too. There at lunchtime
people rest inside thick walls that block out the heat. Here at
lunchtime people race around in the sun attending luncheons, teas,
reviews – wearing gloves and hats and “appropriate” dress.

She turns to the others. "I was part of an
enlisted man's family for so long. All this seems
overwhelming."

Wendy nods. "We just have to think about it
as any other place that has its rules,” she says. “In school we had
to follow the rules even if we didn't agree with them. If we
didn't, we got in trouble. Here, the trouble we might get into
could make it harder for our husbands. We have to help them
out."

Kim's eyes stare into Donna's. "I spent my
whole life following other people's rules. I never had a choice.
Now for the first time I can actually choose to do these. I want to
feel a part of this. I'm so tired of feeling different, of being an
outsider."

These words surprise Donna. Kim, with her
blond hair and rosy complexion, looks like the all-American girl.
What is she talking about?

Sharon jumps into the silence. "I'm sure it's
occurred to all of you how different the four of us are," she says,
looking from one to the other of them. "I expected everyone in the
army to be alike." Is that a flush spreading across Sharon's face
Donna wonders? "Like hillbillies or something. I was wrong."

Wendy takes Donna's arm and leads her back to
her chair. "My papa warned me the night before Nelson and I left
for Ft. Knox. He said we might have a hard time in the army because
… of who we are. Yet so far it's been okay, at least the official
army part. Maybe these rules help that."

Sharon nods. "We all benefit from the
recommendation to have 'kind thoughts' and 'consideration for
others.'"

Donna feels the tension leaving her body.
"You guys are terrific," she says.

She pauses to take a sip of Coke, then says:
"And now I've got a question I've been wanting to ask. Who's using
birth control?"

Wendy's expression gives nothing away; Sharon
smiles; Kim looks horrified. Donna holds up a hand as if to halt
what she's said. "What I really mean is – who's planning to start a
family soon?"

Wendy says, "I want to wait until we're back
home. I just wouldn't feel right being away from my family at such
an important time."

Donna looks at Sharon next. "I'm waiting
until Robert is out of the army. I don't want to be left alone with
small children." Donna knows that Sharon might be referring to
being left alone stateside while Robert serves an unaccompanied
tour, although she probably means being left a widow. That is
something even Sharon wouldn't dare say aloud, maybe not even to
herself.

Donna turns to Kim. "What about you,
Kim?"

"I'm ... I'm not sure when I want
children."

Donna smiles. "I'm ready now but Jerry isn't.
He wants to wait a couple of years."

She passes the chips around to the others who
sit silently as if waiting for her to end this conversation. "I'm
lucky that I've lived all over the place so I know about birth
control. You know Maria Perez? The Puerto Rican wife who only
speaks Spanish? I asked her about birth control. She doesn't even
know what I mean – she's married three months and pregnant already.
That's what living among all Catholics does to you."

No one still says anything. Donna places the
bowl back on the table. "Why don't we get down to entertainment
committee business?" she says.

"Wait till you see what I now have planned,"
Sharon says.

Wendy laughs. "I just hope it's not going to
get any of us in trouble."

**

Later that day Donna pushes her shopping cart
through the commissary aisles overflowing with cereal boxes, baby
food and juice. As a child the post commissaries seemed to her like
fairylands. So many different kinds of food, so much of each kind,
so many long, long aisles to roll the cart down. She could have
spent hours among the boxes and bottles and jars and cans.

Up ahead a woman stares at Donna as they
approach each other in the aisle. "Donna, Donna Garcia?" the woman
asks.

The wheels of Donna's cart clank to a stop.
The woman used her maiden name! Donna stares at the woman in a
starched white blouse and pleated navy skirt. An officer's wife
Donna thinks, then reminds herself that she's an officer's wife
too.

"I'm Donna Garcia – or I used to be. Donna
Lautenberg now.” She smiles at the woman. "I don't recognize
you."

"Sylvia Obermeyer – now I'm Mrs. George
Warren – my husband is a sergeant in the 194th. You sat next to me
in sixth grade."

Sixth grade? Donna tries to remember what
post that was. Ft. Sill in Oklahoma? She can't remember her class,
or her teacher, or anything else about that year. She isn't
surprised. The posts where she was happy she can remember quite
well; the periods when she felt most like an outsider are black
holes.

“That was a long time ago,” Donna says.

"Is your husband stationed here? Or are you
visiting your parents?" the woman asks.

"My husband is here at Armor Officers
Basic."

The woman stares at Donna, then says, "Your
husband is an officer?"

"Yes, he is."

The woman grips her cart and turns it away
from Donna. "That's certainly a step up for you." A flush spreads
across the woman's face. "Excuse me, I've got to hurry." And with
that she disappears down the row of laundry detergents and bathroom
tissue.

Donna grabs her own cart and heads in the
opposite direction. She has just remembered Sylvia Obermeyer, also
the daughter of an enlisted man – the two of them bullied all year
by Jennifer Turner, the daughter of a major. Jennifer would open a
magazine and point to a picture of white girls. "Donna," she would
say, "none of these girls looks like you. They all have light
skin." Or Jennifer would say to her and Sylvia, "It's too bad you
both have to walk home all the way to the enlisted men's area. The
officers' quarters are so much closer." Whether Jennifer learned
her bullying at home or came to it naturally Donna never
decided.

Now Donna laughs aloud. Donna being married
to an officer would upset Jennifer's vision of the world, a world
in which military rank passes down from generation to generation.
Once in a caste always in the same caste.

Too bad Sylvia hurried away. They could have
had lunch together at the Officers Club.

The cart
wheels squeaking on the linoleum seem to ask a question. Donna
could take an enlisted man's wife to the Officers Club, couldn't
she?

“
For a formal invitation written in the third
person your answer should be handwritten on plain white note paper
in the third person, the same manner in which it was extended.”
Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

Sharon turns over the two rib steaks sizzling
in the broiler. The steaks are part of the treasure trove of kosher
meat she and Robert bought in Louisville, and she doesn't want to
burn them.

The lit broiler adds to the heat, which, as
usual, the living room air conditioner can't alleviate. She doesn't
care. For a change they will have a good dinner.

Grease splatters her hand as she closes the
broiler. She retreats to a chair in the living room in front of the
air conditioner.

With its minimal furniture this apartment
seems like a student apartment at MSU. It was to just such an
apartment that Robert took her on their first date.

"You're just like all the girls I know back
home in the East," Robert said as he led her into his friend's
apartment. Was he insulting her?

"I mean it as a compliment,” he said. “You
know, sophisticated. You don't seem like a Midwesterner."

He couldn’t know that her secret ambition was
not to be a backwater Midwesterner. And she hoped she didn't look
like a Midwesterner either. She wore another of her Villager
sweater and skirt sets, this one in a pink blend. Classic and
comfortable.

Robert looked good in jeans, a white
turtleneck and tweed sport coat. He took a bottle of rum from his
back pocket. "I'll mix us rum and Cokes."

The room's furniture had been shoved aside to
provide dancing space for the crush of people barely visible in the
dim light. Cigarette smoke and liquor smells flushed the air.

"Duke of Earl" sung by Gene Chandler spun on
the 45 record player. Robert handed her a drink and pulled her down
next to him on a battered couch.

"I'm going to Vietnam," he said.

She couldn’t believe he said this to her just
like that! "How can you fight in such an immoral war?" she
said.

"My father fought in Europe in World War II.
His father served in the Jewish Legion in World War I. It's what I
have to do."

Sharon’s eyes darted around the room. No one
was close enough to overhear them. “To prove yourself a man to your
father?” she said. And without letting him answer, she continued,
“How can you support the war machine?"

"I'm not 'supporting the war machine' – I'm
not even saying the war is right. I'm simply doing my patriotic
duty for my country."

The tantalizing smell of broiling steak yanks
her back to the present. She could discuss her fears with Kim, yet
she won't. That sharing of innermost feelings with friends, that
vulnerability, stopped a long time ago. She realized this the
summer after seventh grade, one year after her life changed. At the
concluding campfire of overnight camp she stood dry eyed as the
other girls cried. One boy, a chubby specimen of adolescent
insecurity, said, "Sharon's not crying. She's taking it like a
man." She didn't tell him she'd already shed a lifetime of
tears.

Robert's key in the lock startles her. "I've
got some important news," he says as he comes through the door.
Then he swivels towards the kitchenette.

"Hey, smells like steak,” he says. “Let me
change first and sit down for dinner. We'll talk while we're
eating."

Robert strides out of the room before she can
say anything. What can the news be? Is it about going to
Vietnam?

Her hands shake as she lifts the steaks out
of the broiler, places one onto each plate, and sets the two plates
on the table to join the waiting bowls of salad and green beans.
Sharon sits down across from Robert as he returns from the
bedroom.

"How would you like to live in Europe for a
year?" he says.

Europe?

"Can you believe it?" Robert forks a bite of
steak into his mouth. Sharon wants to swipe the piece out of his
mouth.

“What are you talking about?”

He swallows. "It's called voluntary
indefinite – vol indef. We agree to sign up for a minimum of at
least a third year of active duty, and we're promised to first go
to Europe for a year on an accompanied tour – we can take our wives
– before they send us on a 'short' tour."