Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (30 page)

Kim moves towards her husband. Perhaps she
can distract him, prevent him from getting upset about the men's
discussion.

She has almost reached Jim when she hears
Nelson say: "I'm thinking of going RA."

Regular Army!

"It's a good opportunity for me. A guaranteed
job and built-in career advancement."

Kim glances at Jim. His face dark, as if he
can't believe what he's heard, as if someone has told him a
whopper.

"Maybe the army doesn't want you," Jim says.
"The officer corps is mainly Southern whites. We're the ones who've
got a tradition to uphold. You ... blacks sure don't."

Kim's stomach flip flops. How could Jim be so
cruel?

Before Nelson can answer, Robert slings an
arm around him.

"I'd take this guy any time,” Robert says to
Jim. “He's one of the best in our class."

Jerry and some of the others nod.

Jim strides away from the men; he hasn't seen
her. She turns to follow him.

Wendy stands a couple of feet away, her hands
clenched at her sides, her body as stiff as a shirt left out to dry
too long. She has heard what Jim said!

Poor Wendy! First Nelson's announcement about
going Regular Army – did she even know about that? – then Jim's
terrible words.

Kim's legs carry her to Wendy. "Come taste my
corn bread,” Kim says. “It's the Southern dish I make best."

Wendy stares at her. Then she blinks. "I'd
like that."

Kim doesn't take Wendy's arm – she’s not
comfortable doing that. Instead she smiles encouragement, leading
the way over to the picnic things. She hands Wendy a piece of corn
bread.

Sharon stops chatting with Donna to ask Kim,
"Did you eavesdrop? I’m dying to know what they're saying."

Dying. Isn't that what they are all
considering? Whether going voluntary indefinite will reduce the
men’s chances of dying in Vietnam?

“
Cards for first and second lieutenants are the
same, ‘Lieutenant’ being correct for both of them.”
Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

"Honey, I'm sorry to ask you not to do the
play. You do see my point, don't you?" Nelson says as they undress
for bed in the trailer that night after the picnic. "It could be
held against me that you're in a play poking fun at the army."

"Nelson, this is the American army. It's not
the South. Things are different here."

He slides into bed. "This is important to me
– even if I don't go Regular Army."

Regular Army! She presses her fingers against
her chest. A week from tomorrow the men must declare their
intentions. And ever since the picnic earlier today she has wanted
to get up the courage to ask Nelson about what he said to the other
men. Perhaps she heard him wrong.

Now he has said it to her.

She faces him, her nipples pushing out the
thin cotton of her nightgown. "Nelson, you said if I was against
it, you wouldn't consider going Regular Army."

Nelson wraps his arms around her, pressing
his nude body into hers. "Sugar, I'm just trying to do what's best
for us." His lips clamp onto hers, his tongue probing for an
opening.

He seals shut her mouth with a passionate
kiss, ending the discussion before it’s begun.

**

The next morning Wendy parks her car in front
of Kim's apartment. Her hands twitch as she drops the car keys into
her purse. She has the prepared speech as memorized as her lines
for the play – the lines she won’t be reciting. Will the women
understand?

She has to trust her husband – she owes it to
her parents. The evening of her parents' visit to the trailer her
mama and papa said good-bye after the fried chicken dinner. Her
papa hugged her, then whispered in her ear, "We will never, ever
understand why our son was taken from us. We don't want to lose
another son. Take care of Nelson."

Kim opens the door to Wendy's knock. "Sharon
and Donna are already here."

Wendy isn't surprised. She dawdled,
straightening things in the small trailer, things that didn't need
straightening because there's no room to put anything except back
in its place.

"We have a lot to practice." Sharon says.

Wendy stays in the center of the room. She
inhales. "I ... I can't."

"You can't practice today?" Sharon asks. "Do
you have a doctor's appointment or something?"

"I can't ... be in the play at all." There,
she's said it.

"What do you mean?" Donna asks.

Wendy swivels her wedding ring around her
finger. What did she and Nelson rehearse?

She says, "Nelson is afraid he can get in
trouble for it."

The others stare.

"He thinks ... Nelson's thinking about going
Regular Army." Their expressions don't change. Maybe Kim told them
what she overheard. "He has to be accepted into the program so he's
been trying to do really well here. Because he's black, I mean
we're black, this play could be held against him. It makes fun of
the army."

"The army in 1776," Sharon says.

"It's really the army now."

Wendy sinks into the armchair. "I don't know
how to explain this. I understood when Nelson explained it to me. I
just can't seem to explain it now."

Donna pats her hand. "I understand. Now that
I'm married to an Anglo I don't feel so vulnerable. When I was
growing up, the only Puerto Rican kid in my classes at the army
post schools, I felt I had to do everything right. If I missed the
volleyball, they would think Puerto Rican kids weren't good at
sports. If I couldn't do well on a spelling test, they would think
all Puerto Ricans couldn't speak English."

Donna does understand! "And Nelson feels that
if the army gets angry at this play, they won't punish your
husbands. They'll use him, the black, as a scapegoat. And he
doesn't want this to hurt his time in the army, whether he goes RA
or not. He's trying to prove he's as good as the ... whites."

Sharon nods. "Wendy, I'm truly sorry to have
put you in this position. We can give up the play and do something
about fashion or etiquette or ...."

"I want you to do the play," Wendy says.
"It's funny and different and everyone will like it. I just can't
be in it."

Sharon looks at Kim and Donna. "What do you
think?"

"I want to go on with the play," Donna says.
"There will only be women there, no men, and I don't think even the
senior women will be upset. If they are, don't army regulations
require them to be gracious even when they disapprove?"

Wendy laughs with the others. All those silly
rules in “Mrs. Lieutenant” – they could use some in their own
favor.

Sharon turns to Kim. "Are you comfortable
going on with the play?"

Kim nods.

"We'll go on as planned,” Sharon says. “I'll
just change things around so that we can do it with three
people."

Wendy stands. "I'm sorry again. And I'll be
leaving."

Sharon reaches an arm towards her. "Oh, no.
I'm going to make the changes right now. At the luncheon you can be
a guest. For now we're going to put you to work as our
prompter."

**

When Wendy gets back to the trailer after the
rehearsal, she leafs through her copy of “Mrs. Lieutenant,” looking
for answers to her present problems.

On one page she reads: "Your husband's job
should never be discussed. Don't relay tales of business
personalities to your friends. If your husband is fortunate enough
to have a wife with whom he can air his problems, be sure that you
don't betray his trust by discussing his affairs with others."

Should she have withdrawn from the play
without saying why? Did she need to tell the others about Nelson's
fears?

It's easier to tell the truth than say
nothing. This way it's Nelson who forced her to stop, not she
herself. She hasn't abandoned her friends. They understand that
loyalty to her husband has to come first.

“Mrs. Lieutenant” is so strange! Two
paragraphs after this serious instruction comes the following:
"Restrict your telephone calls to five minutes. Make your
appointments over the phone and do your real chatting in person.
Having long conversations on the telephone is a bad and hard to
break habit, but your accomplishments will certainly be greater if
you can overcome it."

Wendy turns to the last page: "Be gracious to
and understanding of your friends as they too learn and mature.
People more often need help than criticism.”

Wendy relates to this advice – it’s something
her parents have taught her.

"To a truly gracious person, there will be
many times when she feels the proper thing to do will be the
incorrect one. Rely upon her judgment and be gracious yourself by
accepting her ways when her manner of doing things is different
from yours."

And then the final paragraph: "Sometimes it
is better to do the wrong thing graciously than the proper thing
rudely."

Maybe she did the wrong thing graciously
instead of the proper thing rudely. If Nelson is upset by what she
said, she could show him this page.

She stares at the booklet. If Nelson goes RA she'll have to live by
these rules for the next 20 or 30 years. Will it be any harder than
living by white folks' rules?

“
If a soldier salutes you after recognizing your
military car tag, smile and thank him for the courtesy.”
Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

Kim sets the table for dinner after she drops
Sharon off. The Beatles singing "Day Tripper" keep her company.
Since the picnic two days ago Jim has been speaking to her, and
she’s trying very hard not to do anything that could upset him
again.

Earlier she and Sharon drove through the
troop area to borrow an MP helmet from Robert’s school friend Ken
Tottenham. Sharon promised that she would run into the building for
only a minute. Then they stopped at the hospital clinic to borrow a
white doctor’s coat thanks to Sharon’s friend Dr. Fred Weinstein.
Even here Kim stayed in the car.

Yet she hadn’t stayed in the car at their
next two stops. As they approached Ft. Knox Sharon had said,
"Getting the props should take no time at all. Then we'll have the
rest of the afternoon. Why don't we drive over to Donna's apartment
and wish her good luck on her pregnancy – show we're really happy
for her? Then on the way back we can stop at Wendy's trailer and
show her we don't have any hard feelings about her dropping out of
the play."

Kim shook her head. "Jim may not approve of
my paying a social visit to Wendy."

"You're probably uncomfortable doing this for
the first time,” Sharon said. “If I were feeling lonely, I'd sure
want someone to show support for me."

And Sharon had been right. Donna and Wendy
had both been pleased to see them.

Donna chatted about plans for the baby. "My
mama's making maternity clothes. Then she'll start on clothes for
the baby."

"How will she know what kind of clothes to
make?" Kim asked.

"She'll make newborn clothes that can be worn
by a girl or boy. Then once the baby's born she'll make more
clothes."

Kim clenched her hands together. Donna had a
mother who could sew maternity and baby clothes, who would be
excited to hold her infant grandchild, who had always been present
in her daughter's life! Something an orphan could never have.

Kim felt relief when Sharon said to Donna,
"We have to go. We're stopping by Wendy's on the way home."

When Wendy saw them on her doorstep her face
lit up like a Christmas tree. "Come in, come in," she said.

With less than a week before the men had to
decide, the conversation naturally turned to the question of
voluntary indefinite. "I told my parents about going vol indef,"
Sharon said. "Europe sounds so far away to them."

Kim's parents – the two people in her broken
picture frame.

Her parents didn't own a camera, of course.
One day a traveling salesman knocked on their farmhouse door. Her
parents said there was nothing they needed. Only later did she
realize there was probably nothing they could afford. The man
offered to take a family photograph in exchange for a meal. "We
don't need no photograph," her mother said, "but you’re more 'n
welcome to stay for supper."

When the man left, she and Diane tagged along
behind him to the yard gate. Her parents stood together in front of
the house. At the gate the man turned around and snapped a photo.
Her parents had been surprised, didn't pose or smile into the
camera. When the photograph unexpectedly arrived in the mail they
laughed at their expressions.

Her mother said she hoped she didn't look
that bad. Her father said it was foolishness. Kim stared at the
photo. In her parents' faces she could see pieces of herself and
her sister. She had her father's eyes, her sister had her mother's.
And there was something else in the faces, something that as an
adult Kim has considered over and over – hopelessness, resignation.
As if, as the photo was snapped, her parents foresaw their brief
future.

"Can I have this picture? Can I?" she had
asked. Her mother walked over to the cabinet where she kept the
family papers. From a small drawer she pulled out a metal picture
frame displaying the Lord's Prayer. "Got this in Bible class," her
mother said. "This here photo should fit in it." And she placed the
photo on top of the prayer, saying, "The prayer's still here too in
case you ever have need of it."

Her sister cried. She wanted a picture too.
Her mother said, "There'll be time for more pictures." There hadn't
been time.