Going Overboard (2 page)

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I THINK MELANIE IS TRYING TO SAVE ME

T
he next night I left my husband. I kissed the tops of our sons' heads—their wispy baby hair sticking to my lipstick—squared my shoulders, and walked out the front door, only stopping to collect my keys from the bead-board telephone stand in the kitchen.

Well, OK, so I wasn't really abandoning them, but it must have felt that way to Dustin when I waved over my shoulder and left him with a hungry newborn and a two-year-old wearing a silver colander on his head like his favorite cartoon character.

I was headed to a Spouse Club meeting, which is the Navy's answer to keeping military dependents occupied and informed. Navy pilots like my husband are organized into “squadrons,” and their significant others are lumped into “Spouse Clubs.” Membership isn't required, although thirty years ago, when my mom became a Navy wife, service members were “graded” on their spouses' participation. Back then, it was also called the “Wives' Club,” but that's considered politically incorrect today, in case female members of the squadron have husbands who'd like to be occupied and informed.

Besides the name, however, not much else has changed since—well, since never. The Spouse Club is and always has been a cross between a sorority and Habitat for Humanity. On the one hand, there is the group's notable contributions to the community—raising money for underprivileged families, doing volunteer work, providing meals for single sailors at Thanksgiving—but one cannot ignore the Club's other side, which is kind of like a Parent-Teacher Association gone horribly wrong.

It doesn't help that our husbands, in their professional lives, are segregated by rank, a notion that is supposed to be overlooked in the Spouse Club but never ceases to be an irritant. Every so often an argument breaks out about “seniority,” which none of us spouses are supposed to have anyhow.

In fact, there's an urban legend in military-spouse culture about an Admiral telling a group of wives to arrange themselves according to rank. The women shuffle around murmuring things like “I think my husband is senior to yours” and “My husband is a Commander. Isn't yours just an Ensign?” but once they are lined up from the “most important” to the “least important,” the Admiral says angrily, “Wrong! None of you have rank! Only your spouses are in the military.”

Alas, this story, admonishing as it may be, hasn't stopped the constant bickering among some wives about whose husband bosses around whose. It'll take someone higher than an Admiral to change the natural instincts of women.

Basically, imagine drinking wine and playing truth or dare—while planning a bake sale—with your husband's boss's wife, but having to pretend she is “just another friend,” and that her husband doesn't have any influence over yours. That's what the Spouse Club is like.

Of course, the Spouse Club's primary function is to be a support system for family members left behind when the troops are
deployed. In this way, friendships formed within the Club are truly indispensable and border on the familial.

But the Spouse Club is also an excellent source of information for questions ranging from “Can I call my husband while he's on the ship?”(No) to “Why do the other guys call my husband ‘Dancing Bear'?” (You don't want to know).

Love it or hate it, the Spouse Club is one of Uncle Sam's necessary evils. When your husband is leaving for six months and he's just penned his social security number on the elastic of his last pair of clean white briefs, there's nothing like a bickering Spouse Club to cheer you up and make you feel ordinary.

It makes sense, then, that on this night, three months before the men were to leave for a six-month deployment, attendance at the meeting was expected to be phenomenal. Wives would flock together with lists of questions about the upcoming assignment. They would gather for support and encouragement and, of course, to see who had gained (or lost) the most weight during the holidays.

Oh, all right, we were also flocking to see if Rhonda showed up or if she truly did ask her husband for a divorce the day after Christmas.

The point is, with the clock counting down the days until our husbands' departure, it was important for us to be together to commiserate and swap stories. In the interest of bonding, of course.

Melanie would be the only exception.

Opposed to any form of gossip, Melanie was truly going to “help out” and “get information.” And she was my ride to Kate's house that night, because she had the directions. Melanie always had the directions.

I waited for her on our short concrete driveway, trying to make O's with my breath and wishing I had taken down the Christmas decorations because now they just looked drab. The
red front door, once so cheery and festive with a green holiday wreath, looked dirty and dusty. The wreath, in fact, had turned brown and most of its needles were on the stoop below, where they'd probably stay until they disintegrated and became dust, which I'd never sweep up.

Our house wasn't large by any means. I think our builder affectionately called it a “starter home,” but it suited us just fine. Our children, Ford and Owen, shared a room, we had a bed next to the computer for guests, and if we parked carefully enough and climbed through the rear hatches of our automobiles, we could fit both our pickup truck and Explorer in the garage.

What sold me on the place, however, was the large picture window in front. Staring at it now from the driveway, I admired, once again, the perfect way the rectangular panes framed our one bold red wall (my idea) and my grandmother Doris's baby grand piano (my mom's idea). Warm light coming from a metal lamp on the piano's ledge reminded me of something out of a Dickens novel.

Who would think such a horrible fight had happened in there the night before? Who would picture “Dustin and Sarah: the world's cutest couple who had known each other since birth” standing inside that very doorway shouting? Who would imagine me throwing laundry out onto the grass and then dusting my hands in good riddance? Who would know that I spun around on my heel and ran into Dustin's chest like an animal flailing against the steel bars of its cage? And who could guess that Dustin grabbed me by the forearms and said flatly, “I can't wait to get out of here”?

I groaned, blowing more frosty air out of my mouth. “The neighbors, that's who.” Many of them were standing in the cul-de-sac when our front door flew open and bits of laundry wafted to the ground like clumsy parachutes.

“Oh, well,” I sighed, taking in the sight of the living room once
more, my chest filling with pride; Mom was going to be so proud of that red wall next time she visited!

Melanie's Suburban rounded the corner and pulled into the driveway. I waved at her and went to gather my purse from the front steps. I was nearly running down the sidewalk, excited about a night out—even if it was for a Spouse Club meeting. (One's standards are so low after two children.)

Then, as soon as I hoisted myself into the passenger seat and saw Melanie's ironed khaki pants and white button-up shirt, I was reminded again that she was probably the only spouse who saw the night for what it was: a meeting.

“How are you?” she said and patted my knee. Her eyes sparkled, but I knew she wasn't wearing any makeup. Melanie never wore makeup.

I rubbed my hands together in the warm air blowing from the vents. “Freezing. How about you?”

“It is unseasonably cold, isn't it?” she said, looking over her shoulder and easing out of the driveway. Then she reached for the radio and adjusted the volume. “Oh, I love this song,” she said.

I paused to listen but didn't recognize the lyrics. The music was mostly violins and an organ. “I don't think I've ever heard this before,” I said.

Melanie smiled distractedly, then hummed along.

As we drove out of the neighborhood, her boxy SUV eclipsed patio homes sitting so close together you could spit out the kitchen window and hit the neighbor's stucco. Melanie lived in the same part of town, but in a different, more sophisticated subdivision, where her large vehicle looked a little less out of place.

At the first intersection, Melanie carefully turned the corner and merged onto a busier road, singing in a breathy voice, “Thy word is a lamp unto—”

Her hands were set steadfast at “ten and two,” and she looked ridiculously petite behind the wheel. I smiled to myself when I
thought what she must look like to someone on the street: a small head with wispy hair the color of sand, all but swallowed up by the brown Suburban.

“Thy word is a lamp unto—” she sang.

Christian music!
I fidgeted in my seat, suddenly feeling like I took up too much space. Maybe it was the irony of listening to religious music less than twenty-four hours after throwing my panties out the front door and watching them land willy-nilly across the lawn. Maybe it was the fact that as I slammed the bedroom door the night before I screamed, “I hate you!” and Dustin's eyes welled with tears. Maybe it was the fact that I felt totally out of control, and secretly, I worried something was wrong with me—wrong with my marriage.

Did Melanie ever feel confused? I turned to look at her, and the way her profile stayed serene as she weaved in and out of traffic told me probably not.

I decided not to acknowledge the music and instead said, “I really appreciate the ride, Melanie.”

She turned and smiled. Her skin was as milky and smooth as velour. “Sure thing!” she said. “I'm glad to have the company.”

Melanie's daughter, Hannah, was only a few years older than Ford, but somehow Melanie seemed more like my mother than a mother of my generation. At times she was out of touch—like the way she dreamed of naming two girls Mary-Kate and Ashley, sincerely having no idea who the Olsen twins are—yet other times she shocked me with her hints of style (Ray-Ban sunglasses, chic jogging stroller, a stylish red Acura she only drove on special occasions). Melanie exuded some kind of parental quality, and although she never talked intimately about her relationship with her husband, on the rare occasion I saw them kiss or hold hands, I recoiled like a kid walking in on his parents.

Maybe it was Melanie's motherliness that attracted me to her, despite our differences. Maybe it was the doilies on her coffee
table, or the painted wood church she used to cover a box of Kleenex. Whatever the reason, something about her frequently caused me to inappropriately announce my feelings in her presence.

“I really think this predeployment stuff is getting to me,” I said suddenly, but Melanie didn't flinch. Perhaps she had already grown accustomed to my unfiltered bursts of emotion.

“I'm so on edge,” I said. “I mean, on the one hand I want to spend as much ‘quality time' with Dustin as possible before he goes, but on the other hand, he's driving me out of my mind and I can't wait for him to just leave already! Maybe it's knowing what might happen over there in Iraq. Somehow it feels different this time.”

I was rambling, so I bit my lip and clutched my sacklike purse closer to my lap. I hadn't thought I was nervous about the meeting, but now I felt like a fake. There I was, the one who had grown up in the Navy, and I was terrified.

“Have you tried praying about it?” Melanie asked. “Maybe you should come to my Bible study group sometime. I'd love to have you come with me.”

I pictured Melanie with her group, and an image of women with bows in their hair came to mind. Yet I was surprised by the lump of emotion that rose in my throat.

Kate's house was on the other side of town, or “across the river,” as locals like to say, in a fancy planned community with concrete swans spitting water in graceful arcs at the entrance. She was older than I, although not by much, so I surmised this higher standard of living (hardwood floors, track lighting) was due to the fact that Kate was a career woman, and always had been. In other words, Kate had her own money, and probably more of it than our pilot husbands.

When Melanie and I came into the house, dozens of women
were already sitting on a sea grass rug in the open living room. They were chatting and throwing back their heads with laughter, while perfume blanketed the air like netting. I felt uncomfortable—and maybe a little responsible—for Melanie, who is sensitive to strong odors and isn't the chatty type.