Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (25 page)

"We'd been given a second chance,” he says
again. “We weren't going to blow that."

She stares into his face. "And now I'm grown
up and married and you can't protect me all the time anymore. It
must be terribly hard on you."

Her papa buries his head on her shoulder. A
patch of moisture spreads across her blouse.

She won't tell him now that Nelson has talked
about going Regular Army.

“
Junior officers and theirs wives are not
expected, nor encouraged, to extend themselves beyond their
financial capabilities.”
Mrs.
Lieutenant
booklet

Robert breezes in the front door. "What's for
lunch?"

"Tuna fish."

He grabs her around the waist. "I've got a
better idea," he says as he pulls her towards the bedroom.

He leans her against the bed so her back and
head lie on the bed and her legs dangle over the edge. He pulls his
starched green fatigue pants and jockey shorts down to his ankles –
"I can't take my boots off, they take too long to re-lace" – yanks
her undies off, and stands next to the bed thrusting into her.

She wipes herself off in the bathroom and
puts on her undies. Do the men in Robert's AOB class talk about
sex? Do they brag to each other how often and how good? She would
never consider talking to Kim or Wendy or Donna about sex with
Robert. It's too private.

She walks into the kitchen and puts their
tuna fish sandwiches on the table. Robert eats his in large
bites.

The sex reminds her of Mark Williamson and
what she and he did and didn’t do in high school when their paths
converged for a second time. She pictures the two of them dancing
at the Officers Club. He’d held her close but not close enough that
her husband could have objected.

She wonders whether Mark had a lot of
experience dancing quite close to those Vietnamese women she's
heard about, their thick black hair hanging straight down their
backs, their native costumes – Sharon isn't quite sure what these
look like so she pictures the revealing garment worn by the young
lieutenant's Polynesian girlfriend in the film version of "South
Pacific" – leaving bare shoulders exposed and no undergarments
underneath.

Will Robert be dancing with those sexy
Vietnamese women soon?

"Have you decided about vol indef?" she asks.
"Are you going to sign up for the third year?"

"That year buys us valuable time.”

It's time to tell him. "Robert?"

He looks up in mid-bite.

"Donna told me that Jerry could probably get
an exemption from going to Vietnam."

"I didn't know he had a medical problem."

"He doesn't."

"Then what does he have?"

She stares down at her plate. "Donna ...
Donna was married before. Her first husband ... was killed in
Vietnam."

Robert’s expression doesn’t change.

"Jerry never said a thing."

He wouldn't have. Admitting you are the
second husband at the age of 22 probably isn't something a man
would relish.

Sharon looks at Robert. He's eating as if all
she's said is "please pass the milk."

"Kim and Wendy don't know. Donna only told me
and I didn't tell them."

"I won't say anything."

"That's not the point." She hesitates.
"Apparently it entitles him to an exemption from Vietnam."

"Is he going to use it?"

"Donna told me the moment she found out he
was eligible. He didn't even know at that point."

Robert gestures with his sandwich. "I'll bet
he isn't going to use it. He's pretty patriotic. There's another
guy who's going to use the sole surviving son exemption – the sole
support for his parents' old age. Jerry doesn't think much of the
guy. Ol' Jerry is pretty gung ho on doing his duty."

Duty. Robert's friend Kenneth did "his duty,"
Donna's first husband did "his duty." And what did it get them?

Death.

**

"Are you sure you really want to go to this?"
Robert asks her two days later on Sunday as he heads the Fiat out
of the apartment parking lot. "We don't really know anyone."

For response Sharon clutches the grocery bag
on her lap filled with three different kinds of chips. True, she
isn't enthusiastic about this picnic sponsored by the Jewish Wives
Club. She has already learned at Judy Weinstein's house that she
doesn't have much in common with these women. Yet the picnic is
something to do, a distraction from her concerns.

A "Whiter Shade of Pale" sung by Procul Harum
fills the Fiat. Waves of heat press down on Sharon as they drive
past trees whose leaves look desperate for a cool drink. Even the
heat here is different – the humidity worse than in Chicago.

The concept of being different keeps
recurring to her. Growing up, she lived in an area with a large
number of Jews. She was part of an imagined, if not actual,
majority. She attended Jewish summer camps, took after-school
classes in ballet, swimming, and tennis with other Jewish kids,
and, after a bumpy start at college, belonged to a Jewish sorority
and socialized with the college newspaper's editorial staff, a
large percentage of whom were Jews.

Until the first day of college, when she met
her assigned roommates, only one other time in her life she could
remember feeling like an outsider – the summer when she'd been 12
and hurt herself in a bike race with Howard. She'd run into a tree,
so intent had she been on winning, and cut her left knee wide open.
The cautious orthopedic surgeon decreed: "You'll have to be on
crutches for a week. We want to ensure that nothing more serious
develops."

Unfortunately, that week Sharon and her
family had reservations at Fidelman’s resort in Michigan. She spent
the entire vacation on crutches – no swimming – although she
participated as fully as possible in other resort activities.

One afternoon she signed up to go horseback
riding, a perfect activity she figured since she'd be seated. The
mother of some other children saw Sharon preparing to go. The woman
came over to Sharon and said, "How can you go riding? You're a
cripple, honey."

Rage coursed through her body. Rage at being
made to feel diminished, less than other humans. On top of it the
woman was wrong. That afternoon Sharon rode as well as any other
novice.

"Here we are," Robert says as he swings off
the highway. Although there are “No Parking” signs along the edge
of the grass, all the other cars have parked there. Robert pulls
alongside. "These guys must know something we don't," he says.

Sharon and Robert walk across the ground
towards the men and women. Children play with balls nearby. All the
women at the meeting at Judy's are here – obviously Nancy hasn't
had her baby yet, plus a couple others. The men, of course, she has
never seen.

"We just started cooking the hamburgers,"
Elaine says by way of greeting, then she introduces Sharon and
Robert to the others.

Sharon can't remember all the new names. She
does catch that the dark-haired man supervising the hamburgers is
Judy Weinstein's husband Fred.

A muscular man in shorts and a plaid shirt
asks Robert what he's doing at Ft. Knox.

"Armor Officers Basic school."

"How'd you do that?"

"ROTC."

The man shakes his head. "Why join ROTC?"

Before Robert can reply Fred asks, "How could
you sanction this war by voluntarily joining the army?"

Sharon's palms tingle as Fred doesn't give
Robert a chance to answer. "It's one thing for us to take the
army's money,” Fred continues, “so we could afford to go to med
school – and hell, these people deserve good medical care too – but
to volunteer to be part of the war machinery!"

Robert fixes his eyes on Fred. "All Americans
have a duty to serve their country," Robert says, his hands hanging
straight at his side, “regardless of whether the country is engaged
in a 'righteous cause.' How many Americans weren't in favor of
going to war against Hitler? They still served."

"Hey, guys!" someone shouts from behind
them.

They all turn towards another man in shorts
standing in front of the parked cars. An MP stands next to the Fiat
writing something.

Robert leads the way across the grass. As
they all reach the car, the man who shouted asks the MP, "Why are
you only writing up the Fiat and not any of the other cars?"

"The rest of the cars have officer tags,
sir," the MP says.

Fred steps forward. "This car also belongs to
an officer." He gestures at Robert. "It just doesn't have officer
tags because he's a student here, not yet permanently
stationed."

The MP turns to Robert. "May I see your ID,
sir?"

Robert fishes his wallet out of his back
pocket and extracts his official army ID card.

"Sorry, sir," the MP says. "Please obey the
'No Parking' signs in the future."

Fred waves a hand in the departing MP's
direction. "He was going to give an enlisted man a ticket but not
an officer for parking in a 'No Parking' zone. What a place!"

Sharon passes her hand across her perspiring
forehead, the heat pressing in on her.

Rank may have its privileges but rank won’t
save Robert from being killed in Vietnam. Before the branch
transfer to military intelligence came through, Robert had the
shortest life expectancy in Vietnam – as a second lieutenant in
infantry.

**

The next night Robert hands Sharon a drink as
he joins her at an Officers Club table occupied by some of the AOB
class members and their wives.

"Hey, Gold!" someone from the other end of
the table yells. "Let's drink to long life!" The man holds up his
beer glass.

"I'll drink to that," Robert shouts back.

"You should,” the man says. “You came awfully
close to buying it today!"

Sharon's heart flutters. "Robert," she says,
tugging on his arm to get his attention. "What's buying it
mean?"

"Nothing."

On her other side a man who looks familiar
says, "He was damn lucky today on the firing range. Some idiot
pointed in the wrong direction and missed your husband by
inches."

"It's not real ammunition, is it?"

"What else would we use?" the second man
says. His laughter almost muffles his words. "That's why Gold
almost 'bought the farm' – a little piece of earth!"

Robert was almost killed today!

"Lay off, Geist," Robert says to the man.

Geist again!

Robert then turns to Sharon. "Accidents like
this happen in shooting practice."

Geist's face twists into a sneer. "Good thing
it wasn't a fragging. Then you probably would have 'bought
it'."

She's drowning but she has to know. "What's a
fragging?"

"Hey, guys, little lady here wants to know
what a fragging is!" Geist yells up the table.

"Come on, Sharon, let's dance." Robert pulls
her to her feet.

Geist takes hold of her other arm. "It's a
slang term – officers getting killed by their own men – on
purpose."

She collapses back into her chair. "I don’t
understand."

Now Robert faces her. "Fragging is when an
enlisted man purposely kills his officer – usually by tossing a
grenade at him."

"Happens a lot in Vietnam," Geist says.

The bile rises in her throat. She staggers up
out of the chair and rushes from the room. She stumbles out the
front door of the club and slams her right foot against the curb.
The stabs of pain slow her down.

Robert catches up to her. "Sharon!"

She collapses onto the ground and fights to
catch her breath.

"Robert, it's horrible enough to be killed by
a heartless enemy. To be killed by your own men – on purpose!"

He crouches beside her. "It doesn't happen
that much. Reports are highly exaggerated. Geist should have kept
his mouth shut."

"Why do they kill their officers?"

Robert offers her his hand to pull her up.
She doesn’t take it.

"The men are drafted. They don't want to
fight in a war that makes no sense to them. There's lots of drugs.
They hate their officers who risk getting them killed. So they get
rid of their officers. The next ones may be better."

Her knees shake. She can barely stand. She
wraps her arms around her chest. "I want to go home."

"I'll drive you back now."

"Home to Chicago."

Robert puts his own arms around her, then
shakes his head.

"You're an officer's wife now – for better or
worse."

The tears drip down her nose.

“
To repay an elaborate dinner with a hamburger
cookout, minus apologies, is quite appropriate and your
thoughtfulness will be appreciated.”
Mrs.
Lieutenant
booklet `

Donna staggers through the door of Wendy’s
trailer. "Where's the bathroom?"

Wendy points and Donna runs. She heaves into
the toilet.

When she emerges, water drops clinging to her
face, Wendy asks, "What's wrong? Are you sick?"

Donna sinks onto the couch. "It must be
something I ate."

Wendy sits next to her and studies Donna’s
face. "How long has this been going on?" Wendy asks.

"A couple of weeks."

"A couple of weeks! You need to see a doctor.
Promise me you'll go to the clinic tomorrow morning."

Donna nods. "I'll go. I'm awfully tired of
feeling so sick."

There's a knock at the door. "It must be Kim
and Sharon," Wendy says.

"Please don't say anything to them," Donna
says.