Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (20 page)

Now she must ask. "You wouldn't ... you
wouldn't go to Canada, would you?"

Howard puts his fork down. "This war is
wrong, totally wrong. Yet I'm not sure it's right to run away from
my country. I’d first try for a medical deferment."

"Any particular ailment?" Robert says.

"Allergies. The sinus headaches I get can be
horrendous; sometimes I have to stop studying and lie down. That
would certainly interfere with being a good soldier."

"Allergies? Allergies!" Robert pushes away
from the table and strides outside.

"What's the matter with him?" Howard asks
Sharon. "Just because I said the war is wrong?"

"It's not that." How to explain it to Howard?
"It's probably what you said about allergies. Robert has such bad
allergies he had to be hospitalized at ROTC summer camp for
pneumonia. But he didn’t get kicked out of the program because his
training officer said the army needed smart people too."

Howard laughs, then says, "Is Robert a good
soldier?"

She doesn’t answer, instead getting up to
refill the applesauce bowl.

Is Robert a good soldier? She ticks off a
mental list: hair cut the regulation length, brass and shoes shined
to a high gloss, fatigues always starched and pressed by the
laundry up the road, and follows all the instructions given in
class. Yet isn't a good soldier by definition a soldier who's good
in battle?

Robert's father always bragged how good a
soldier he was fighting in Europe during WWII. During a Friday
night brisket dinner or a lox-and-bagel Sunday brunch he'd retell
his war stories for the hundredth time. Neither he nor Robert’s
mother ever mention that the war separated them for years soon
after they married.

"My unit saw so much action," he'd say, "that
when the war in Europe ended, the army decided to award my unit by
not sending us to the Pacific. The irony is that the European units
sent back to the States en route to the Pacific got released in the
U.S. as soon as the war with Japan was over. And my unit got stuck
in Europe another year cleaning up the mess."

Sharon would help Robert's mother serve the
meal while Robert's father talked about being a good soldier. All
this recounting of his dangerous exploits – how could Robert not
feel obligated to equal his macho father?

Yet in all the times his father talked, she
never heard him express his opinion of Robert's ROTC commitment. He
talked only of the past, not of the future.

Regardless of what Robert's father thinks,
Sharon prays that Robert won't have the opportunity to find out if
whether he is a good soldier in combat. She can live her whole life
without ever knowing the answer to Howard’s question.

**

"Yes, Mother. And thanks again for sending
everything down with Howard," Sharon says the next morning.

Sharon hangs up the phone as Robert comes up
behind her and hugs her. "You know what?" Robert asks. "After
breakfast, let's go over to Kim and Jim's for a few minutes."

"They might be at the PX. Why?"

"Because I have to qualify on a pistol, and
I'm not very good at it. Jim has his own pistol at home – he keeps
it next to the bed – and I want to practice holding it and aiming
it."

Sharon pulls out of Robert's arms. "I'm not
going. I don't want you to practice with a loaded gun."

"Honey, it's not loaded. No one keeps a loaded gun next to his
bed."

“
An officer leaves one card for each adult member
of the family (and house guest) and a lady leaves one card for each
adult lady (over 18 years of age), but neither leaves more than
three.”
Mrs
.
Lieutenant
booklet

Kim answers the knock on the door to find
Sharon and Robert outside.

"Is Jim here?" Robert asks. "I need to ask
him something."

"Come on in," she says, then goes towards the
bedroom to get Jim.

"Hi," Jim says as he follows Kim back into
the living room. "What can I do you for?"

"Could I practice a little with your pistol –
just getting the feel of it – to help me qualify?" Robert says.

"Just a sec,” Jim says. “I'll unload it."

"Unload it! You keep it loaded!" Sharon
says.

"Of course it's loaded," Jim says. "What good
would it do otherwise?"

Kim looks at Sharon’s face. "Would you like
to sit down?" Kim says.

"No thanks. I'll stand."

Jim comes back out of the bedroom and hands
the gun, handle first, to Robert. Robert points the gun at the base
of the ugly ceramic green table lamp, pulls the trigger a few
times, then hands the gun back to Jim. "Appreciate it."

“That’s it?” Sharon asks him. Robert
nods.

"Would you like some Coke?" Kim asks.

"No, thanks, we have to go," Sharon says.

Outside the door Kim hears Sharon say, "I
told you so!"

Jim goes into the bedroom once more to return
the gun, then comes back into the living room. He sits down
cross-legged on the floor next to his military strategy game.

Kim sighs. Jim will be occupied for hours.
She might as well write to her sister now.

Thinking of her sister Diane brings a throb
to Kim’s temples. Kim had done well in school. She had tried hard,
grasping at anything as a possible means of escape from their
miserable lives. Diane, two years younger, found school harder. She
needed as much help as Kim could give her: "Please, Kimmie, please
help. Pretty please with sugar on top." Sometimes Kim wished she
and Diane had been sent to separate homes so she wouldn't always
feel so responsible. Yet they had never been separated until
now.

Come on, Kim tells herself, she left town and
went off to live at college with Jim when they married. Yet they
had been only an hour away from Diane and they saw her almost every
weekend. She came to visit or they went back to stay at Jim's
parents' and saw her then.

Diane's letters describe the customers at the
grocery store where she works full-time now that she's finished
high school. At 18 she moved out of the last foster home into a
tiny one-bedroom apartment. "It's a relief," Diane wrote, "not to
have to do any ironing except for myself." Yet Kim can tell her
sister's also lonely, so lonely.

What could Kim do even if she were home now?
Have Diane live with them? Kim wonders what Jim would say to that.
Try to find young men to introduce to Diane?

Kim closes her eyes and imagines herself and
Jim living in a pretty white-frame house on a quiet street. She
pictures her sister married and living a few blocks away in an
equally pretty house on an equally nice street.

She opens her eyes. Is it so wrong to want
this?

She picks up the pen.

**

"It's sort of spooky here," Kim says two days
later. She stares out the window of Sharon's car as they drive the
winding back road to Louisville. They’re taking the Fiat to be
checked by a mechanic who works on foreign cars. Sharon hasn't been
able to find anyone around the post who knows anything about a
Fiat, so Kim offered to drive with her to Louisville. Sharon wanted
to avoid driving Dixie Highway so they’re on this back road.

The scenery outside the windows looks as
remote and inhospitable as the backwoods of the South. Blackened
junked-out cars and trucks surround the crumbling houses. Scrawny
dogs bark at the car from the edge of the road. The scents of wild
flowers mix with smoke from small bonfires. Few cars pass them on
the road.

"Why is the car jerking so much?" Kim
says.

"I'm sorry," Sharon says. "I wanted to see
something."

"What?"

"There's a car behind us. The driver seems to
be keeping pace with us. Whenever I speed up, he does. And when I
slow down, he does."

Kim twists her head to see behind her. All
she can see is a cap on the driver's head. "He can't pass you on
this road, so he has to keep pace. You're just imagining
things."

Sharon frowns. "You're the one who said it's
spooky out here."

"We should have brought the gun."

Sharon gasps. "I wouldn't have let you. It's
too dangerous."

Kim knows from first-hand experience that
guns are dangerous. She still wakes up nights dreaming about the
pool of Marvin's blood growing larger and larger. Yet while the
soldier used his gun to kill a poor soul who wouldn't have harmed
anyone, Kim wants Jim’s gun for self-defense.

Kim looks out the window as they pass more
dismal little houses, so like the one with the peeling yellow paint
she lived in with her sister and parents before ... How can you
ever depend on someone's love?

"What are you so scared about?" Sharon asks,
breaking into Kim’s thoughts.

Kim twitches in her seat. She looks at
Sharon, unclear to what Sharon is referring

"The loaded gun next to your bed and
everything?" Sharon says.

"Rape."

"Rape?"

Kim nods, her eyes glued to the road ahead.
"If I were ever raped, I'd kill myself."

"Even if you had children to take care of?"
Sharon asks.

"I wouldn't want to live anymore,” Kim says.
“It would be too shameful."

Sharon pushes her sunglasses further up her
nose. "Why are you Southerners obsessed with rape?"

Southerners! Surely all women are terrified
and horrified of being raped, of being violated! "Obsessed? We're
not obsessed. We just know what's right and wrong."

Sharon doesn't turn to look at her; her eyes
straight ahead on the winding road. "Then you're obsessed with sex.
Always seeing sexual motives lurking behind every tree – or
door."

Kim clasps her hands together. "I was just
trying to explain about rape – that’s why I wanted the gun with
us."

“I don’t understand living in fear all the
time,” Sharon says.

Kim doesn’t reply. Can Northerners really be
so unconcerned about the terrible things that can happen to
women?

A mile further down the road Sharon says,
"Kim, when did you first learn about sex?"

Again Kim says nothing.

"My mother bought a book for me," Sharon
says. "Something about not being taken advantage of by men. She
told me not to read the book until I was ready. So I didn't read
it."

Sharon pauses. "Then one day I was at a
girlfriend's house with another friend – either 9th or 10th grade.
The girl whose house we were at had a book she found on her
parents' bookshelves. The three of us walked over to a nearby park
and read the book together. We were so surprised."

Kim nods in agreement. "I ... I was surprised
too when I read about it in a book."

Sharon laughs. "I was still so naive. When I
was a freshman in college I went to this foreign film – Swedish I
think. After the couple had sex the woman used a towel to wipe her
legs. I didn't understand why. Another freshman girl explained to
me about the semen dripping down the woman's legs afterwards."
Sharon hesitates, then says, “If the man had been using a condom,
the towel wouldn't have been necessary."

"Is that what you and Robert use?" Kim
asks.

Sharon shakes her head, her eyes on the road.
"I take birth control pills. My brother Howard always lectures me
on the dangers."

"I take them too."

Kim smiles. They’re back on safe ground
again.

**

That evening Kim and Jim enter the Officers
Club and head for the tables occupied by the AOB class members.
They find two chairs at the end of one table and Kim sits down
while Jim stands over her.

‘"Would you like something to drink?" he
asks.

"No, thanks, I'll wait."

The band hits the opening chords of the
Foundations' "Build Me Up Buttercup" as Sharon and Robert walk in.
Kim waves them over to the table. Jim is talking to some single
officers off to one side of the room, so Kim gives Jim's chair to
Sharon while Robert goes off to join Jim.

"Lots of people here,” Kim says. “Some have
been dancing."

"I love to dance."

A good-looking guy across the room looks
familiar. "Sharon," Kim whispers, "there's Mark Williamson. He's
heading straight towards us."

"Hello, ladies," he says as he comes up to
them. Then he bows at the waist and says to Sharon, "May I have
this dance?"

Sharon hesitates. Kim can’t believe this! Kim
wouldn't hesitate. She’d know to say no. But Sharon stands up,
following Mark onto the dance floor.

The band plays Neil Diamond's "Sweet
Caroline." It's a fast dance so Mark isn't touching Sharon. Kim
glances at Robert but he has his back to Sharon talking to another
man.

The song comes to an end and the band
switches to a slow dance, the Lettermen's version of "Goin' Out Of
My Head." Mark sweeps Sharon into a tight embrace and dances with
his body pressed against hers. Mark leans his head down and says
something in Sharon's ear.

Kim looks over at Jim. If he sees Sharon
dancing with Mark like this he might think Sharon a bad influence
on Kim and not let her be with Sharon anymore. Thank heavens Jim
stands at the bar getting a drink, his back to the dance floor.

The song ends. Sharon steps out of Mark's
arms, curtsies, and walks back by herself to the table.

"I love dancing," Sharon says as she sits
down again, her face flushed. She pushes a strand of damp hair out
of her eyes.

Before Kim can ask wasn't Sharon ashamed to
dance that close with another man, Jim and Robert return from the
bar with their drinks and stand behind the two women.

In unison the AOB men raise their glasses and
shout to the theme song for the Mickey Mouse Club:

Mickey Mouse, AOB!

Forever let us hold our banner high!