Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (39 page)

"We can't have sex until the bleeding
stops."

Jerry kissed her. "We can wait a week to
start our family."

She asked him again, that night, when they
were lying side by side in their bed. "Did you mean what you said
about taking the exemption?"

"I understand how important it is to you,” he
said. “I'm giving my time to the army. I don't have to give my life
when you need me so much."

She kissed him. She didn't want to excite
him, but she couldn't restrain her happiness. Even Miguel's face,
hovering above Jerry, couldn't squash it.

She isn't superstitious, doesn't believe that
Miguel's ghost caused the miscarriage. There will be other
pregnancies, successful ones. She knows it.

“
For receptions held later in the evening, a
dinner dress is suitable.”
Mrs.
Lieutenant
booklet

Wendy studies the interior of the trailer.
The bare Formica surfaces stare back at her, absent of any
indication that she and Nelson have lived here.

Everything is now packed in the car. They
will leave for Ft. Hood immediately after this morning's graduation
ceremony. She's pleased about going to Texas. Although it isn't as
good as going back home, it'll be somewhat familiar.

The phone rings.

"Mrs. Johnson, this is Mrs. Donovan."

Mrs. Donovan!

"I just called to thank you for your
wonderful work at the hospital. The men have told me how much they
enjoyed your visits. They'll miss you and the committee will miss
you."

The other officer's wives! Wow!

She remembers her own manners. "Thank you,
Mrs. Donovan, for calling. I really appreciate having the
opportunity to help out."

"Good luck at your next post. You'll be able
to help out there too in some capacity."

Incredible. A senior officer's wife calling
just to say thank you. Maybe Nelson is right that army etiquette
can make life easier for them.

Nelson comes back into the trailer from
checking the car. "Are you ready?"

In the car Nelson flips on the radio and
catches the end of "Smile a Little Smile for Me" sung by the Flying
Machine. The song reminds her of the drive home with Kim – watching
for a sign that Kim was okay.

Will Kim ever be okay? Donna remarried soon
after her first husband's death. Yet Kim seems so much more fragile
than Donna. Can Kim ever risk loving someone again after Jim?

Wendy shakes her head. She won't allow
herself to think about Jim, about Donna's first husband. About
Nelson going to Vietnam. She'll think only of settling into Ft.
Hood, joining the officers' wives club there, making new friends.
She'll call her parents as soon as they reach Ft. Hood, assure them
that she and Nelson are fine. And they will try to stay just fine.
Please God.

“
Note that gloves are usually worn while
proceeding through the receiving line.”
Mrs.
Lieutenant
booklet

The United States flag limps in the humid
air. Sharon sits in the viewing stand with Donna and Wendy while
their husbands in their Class A uniforms go through their paces.
The AOB graduation ceremony flies by. The senior officers must be
as affected as everyone else by the heat.

If only Kim could be sitting next to the
women now and Jim out on the parade ground with Robert, Nelson and
Jerry. If only, if only …

"It's certainly hot out here," Donna
whispers.

"Hot enough to melt," Wendy says.

Her friends. Sharon has come a long way from
the person who arrived here – scared of an alien culture, convinced
she would be all alone among people so different from herself.

For this ceremony Sharon wears the red felt
hat that her sorority sister brought her from Florence. It's the
only nice hat she has. And she can see there's a practical reason
for wearing hats at outdoor official ceremonies – protection from
the sun.

Out on the parade ground the men step up in
turn to receive their graduation diplomas. Surely not as goofy as
the wives' diplomas.

Now, the ceremony over, the men march off the
parade ground. The women rush forward to kiss their husbands. It's
time to say goodbye.

"Let's take a picture of all of us in front
of the gold. So we can prove we were at Ft. Knox," Sharon says.

"Gold for the Golds," Jerry says.

She asks another AOB class member to use her
camera. The six of them stand together for the last time: Donna and
Jerry, Wendy and Nelson, Sharon and Robert.

"Say Mickey Mouse AOB," the cameraman says.
They all smile.

The men wish each other luck and kiss the
wives. The wives kiss each other. "Drive safely," they say.

Then Robert salutes Jerry and Nelson. They
salute him back. "At ease," he says. They all laugh.

Sharon climbs into the passenger side of the
Fiat. Her journal, new the first week in May, is now filled with
her experiences here. And her friendships.

Robert drives the Fiat out of Ft. Knox and
back onto Dixie Highway. They drive north, on their way to Ft.
Holabird – one step closer to Vietnam.

“
The receiving line should normally be formed
from right to left, although sometimes, due to the physical being
of a room, this may not be practical and necessitate the
opposite.”
Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

From a distance the grass appears unmarred,
stretching in a straight line from the front of the Lincoln
Memorial to the reflecting pond, then rising slightly to the
Washington Monument and on to the Capitol building. Only as Sharon
reaches the actual location in Constitution Gardens can she see the
cutout in the ground for the memorial wall designed by Maya Ying
Lin for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The wall can be viewed by taking a downward
sloping path from either the east or west end. The first black
granite panel is a sliver on Sharon’s left as she starts down the
path. The panels grow in height from both ends, until at the bottom
of the path the two sides meet as tall wall panels.

The names of the dead cover the surfaces of
the panels, name after name in continuous flowing lines.

A man parks his wheelchair in front of a
panel. Sharon glances at his face. He's about the right age. Is he
remembering his buddies?

And who has left the box of Cracker Jacks at
the base of another panel? It's out of place surrounded by flower
wreaths and miniature American flags, even a cap with the slogan
"Reenlist."

A woman bends towards one panel, her left
hand pressing a sheet of paper against a name, her right hand
rubbing a pencil over the paper's surface. A rubbing. Like the
rubbing of a tombstone.

An older woman leans on the arm of her
middle-aged daughter, both their faces damp. Is the older woman
here to honor her son or the middle-aged woman her husband? Or
both?

"It was a difficult decision," Sharon hears a
young man – probably in his twenties, too young to know firsthand –
say to his companion. "Whether to go."

Two teenage boys turn to their mother.
"Thanks for taking us, Mom," they say.

An African-American family is on the path in
front of Sharon. The man pushes a stroller with a sleeping baby
while his wife holds the hands of twin girls. Sharon flashes to
Donna Lautenberg’s description of the black woman standing in the
clinic line at Ft. Knox feeding bread to her young son. The woman
had been eight months pregnant with this son when her husband was
killed in Vietnam. Is this man here to show his children his
father's name on the wall, the father he never knew?

Ahead of Sharon appears the spot where the
two sides of the wall meet. At the bottom of the last west panel is
the date 1975 – the last year of casualties – with the
inscription:

Our nation honors the courage, sacrifice and
devotion to duty and country of its Vietnam veterans. This memorial
was built with private contributions from the American people.
November 11, 1982

At the top of the first east panel appears
the date 1959 – the first year of casualties – with the
inscription:

In honor of the men and women of the armed
forces of the United States who served in the Vietnam War. The
names of those who gave their lives and of those who remain missing
are inscribed in the order they were taken from us.

"In the order they were taken from us."

How eerie to be walking this path now.
Richard Nixon, the president who escalated and then ended the
Vietnam War, has just died at the age of 81. Many of the Vietnam
War dead lived less than one-fourth of that time.

Sharon stops at a panel and randomly counts
the minuscule round indentations representing 10 lines of names.
She is not looking for any specific name.

Above her at ground level Robert is checking
the directory – the directory that will give the panel location of
Kenneth’s inscribed name. Sharon does not want to look in the
directory for the names of Nelson Johnson or Mark Williamson. She
prays their names aren’t there, but she can’t bring herself to find
out.

Sharon reflects that clerks probably compiled
the names of the dead for this memorial. And it is an unknown clerk
who changed Robert’s life. In October 1969 Robert was due to report
to Ft. Benning, Georgia, for Infantry Officers Basic at the end of
that month. He called the army personnel office in St. Louis and
told the civilian clerk, “I haven’t yet heard about my branch
transfer request.” She said, “Don’t go. I’ll put your orders on
hold until you hear.” A few months later the transfer to MI came
through with orders to report to Ft. Knox in early May for Armor
Officers Basic before MI training. The army clerk’s delay by six
months of Robert starting active duty coupled with Nixon
withdrawing troops from Vietnam are probably what saved Robert’s
life.

Because, as it turned out, Robert had been
right in the spring of 1970 at Ft. Knox during the AOB class
members’ discussions of whether to go voluntary indefinite. Robert
had said then that, if Nixon wanted to be re-elected to a second
term, he’d have to end the war in Vietnam. And indeed in the fall
of 1971 the army began bringing home troops from Vietnam. Due to
that troop drawdown Robert never went to Vietnam.

Sharon’s fingers trace the chiseled lettering
of the unknown name in front of her eyes.

What were all the American deaths in Vietnam
for?

She flashes on the chaotic images of the
American embassy at the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, captured
on news footage: The last American helicopters lift off from the
roof, desperate South Vietnamese civilians trying to cling to the
helicopter skids. And in the embassy compound below, watching their
last chance take off, are the masses of South Vietnamese who will
become fodder for the brutality of the victorious Communists.

Rivulets of tears splash down Sharon’s
cheeks, blurring the names on the panel in front of her.

The perspiration drips down his face, oozing
into his eyes and sliding over his mouth. He swipes at the beads
dripping from his nose with the arm of his filthy fatigue shirt.
"This heat is unbearable," the army officer says to the 19-year-old
enlisted man quivering besides him inside the tank. "How do the
Vietnamese survive?"

The officer pops the hatch, standing upright
in the commander's seat to check the terrain. The enemy hides
somewhere nearby.

He lowers himself back into the tank and
battens down the hatch. The 19-year-old drives the tank
forward.

An officer's wife.
Not an officer's widow.

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