Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (15 page)

Sharon fingers the bedspread. She stares
around the bleak bedroom.

After the ROTC protest that day she met
Robert, Sharon resolved to better understand why young men would
willingly enroll in ROTC. She told herself this was simply an
academic interest on her part with no connection to the young man
she’d let bleed on her Villager sweater.

Ten minutes before the end of class Sharon
slipped into Wesley Fishel’s classroom. As “State News” feature
editor she’d assigned herself a feature piece on Professor Fishel's
current views on the Vietnam War. One of the U.S.’s first civilian
advisors in Vietnam, Fishel was blamed by some for encouraging the
U.S. to become more involved in the ensuing conflict. He’d written
books on Vietnam, and of course he’d previously been interviewed by
“State News” reporters. Sharon had read those old articles and then
convinced herself the paper needed an update from him.

Sitting in the back, she spotted Robert
sitting two rows from the front. Her stomach lurched, her palms
perspired. Then she realized it made sense for an ROTC guy to take
this course – to hear Fishel explain his beliefs why the war
couldn’t be won the way the U.S. was fighting it – the military not
being allowed to bomb North Vietnam into submission.

"That's all for now," Fishel said to the
class. "I'll see you on Monday."

Sharon inched up towards the front of the
classroom. Turn around and see me, she thought. Robert did not turn
around.

"Hi, Robert," she said, coming up alongside
him.

He turned around. "Sharon!"

She pointed at Fishel, talking to another
student. "I've come to interview him."

"He's a fascinating guy."

"You can read my story in the ‘State
News.’"

He smiled. "Why don't you tell me in person?
A friend of mine is having a party tomorrow night. I could come by
the sorority house at 8."

She hesitated. Shouldn’t she stop this right
now?

"That'll be great" came out of her mouth as
if someone else said it. Before she could snatch back the words
Fischel said, "Miss Bloom, I'm ready for our interview."

"See you tomorrow night," Robert said.

Fishel waved her to a classroom seat. She
took her reporter’s steno notepad and a pen out of her purse.

"I'm not sure there's anything I can add to
my previous interviews," Fishel said. “We’ve screwed this up,
probably beyond repair. We’ve gotten ourselves entangled in
Vietnamese politics. We don't understand the Communists or what to
do to fight them. We don't have the staying power. But we still
have the responsibility not to abandon our allies."

Fishel's familiar responsibility refrain.
Sharon's pen dashed across the lined pages of her notebook,
capturing his remarks with a combination of handwriting and
shorthand symbols.

"What about our responsibility to the
Americans who are dying over there for a war that can't be won?"
she asked.

The professor swiped his arm across his eyes.
“It’s always soldiers who die because of inept leadership.”

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 armor officer says to the
19-year-old enlisted man quivering beside 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.

The explosion lifts his body up into the air,
twisting it around before dumping it on top of the tank, his
sweat-stained face turned downward as if searching for the softest
place to land.

The 19-year-old screams.

“
When your husband returns to civilian life, his
military record will be his only recommendation and reference for
the past two years.”
Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

Five o'clock. The first bars of a bugle
blowing retreat over the loudspeaker system. As required even for
civilians, Donna stops her Buick at the side of the road, gets out,
and stands at attention. The bugle sounding retreat always bring
memories of other posts, of a small girl clinging to her mother's
hand, of feeling special, as if she too, for the moments the bugle
played, was a real American.

Donna thinks about her father, an army supply
sergeant, and the places they lived throughout the U.S. and in
Germany and the Orient. In Korea they lived in an apartment so cold
they only took baths once a week. In Germany her father's rank
didn’t entitle them to army housing, so they lived "on the
economy." They overcame the prejudices of their German neighbors
and were greeted on the street in the same formal way Germans greet
each other. In the U.S. they lived in small towns and on large
bases. At each post she and her family learned to adjust, working
hard to be accepted in the enlisted men's community and by their
neighbors.

A tremor shakes Donna. Although her father is
now stationed at Ft. Riley, Kansas, her brother, her only brother,
is a forward artillery observer in Vietnam. For him it's the price
of going to OCS, of becoming an officer. Donna knew, without her
brother telling her, that forward observers spend their first six
months in Vietnam living in trees, positioned ahead of the rest of
the troops, peering into the jungle praying to spot the enemy
before the enemy spots them.

Whenever she thinks about her brother her
entire body trembles. She hasn't always felt this way about
Vietnam. That was before ...

This morning she reread her brother's last
letter, trying to gauge between the lines his mental state. No
clues in the few scribbled words. She felt compelled to write him
today even though she could mail him a letter next week that could
get to him before the one she mailed today. Writing was almost like
saying Hail Marys when she was a child. If she just wrote enough,
if she just believed enough, her prayers would be answered.

Retreat ends. The sudden silence causes Donna
to look around herself, the wooden buildings of Ft. Knox pulling
her back to the present. She gets back in the car and drives the
few remaining yards to where she will pick up Jerry.

Because she doesn't carpool with anyone the
way Kim and Sharon do, if she wants the car for the day she has to
drive Jerry both ways. In the morning she doesn't always have time
to dress and she'll wear a robe just to drive. This doesn't seem to
bother Jerry although she's gotten looks from some of the other men
as she’s pulled up to drop off Jerry.

Now she parks her car and waits.

Last night Donna lay next to Jerry after they
had sex. "Did you have a good time?" she asked.

"Yes." He leaned over to bite her shoulder,
then put his arm around her and drew her closer. Within seconds he
fell asleep.

Donna watched his chest rise and fall, his
blond hair almost invisible against his pale skin. A strand of her
dark hair fell across her eyes and she brushed it away. How
unlikely that the two of them had married.

Jerry's parents hadn't been overjoyed when he
brought her home to St. Louis to meet them. They expected an
all-American wife for their all-American son. Instead they got a
Puerto Rican and a ...

Donna pushed the thought out of her mind.
Instead she pictured Jerry's father displaying Jerry's high school
tennis trophies. She had to laugh. Tennis was not high on the
required skills list for the daughter of an enlisted man – bowling
at the PX alleys more her speed. She'd been suitably impressed.

His mother took her up to the attic to show
off Jerry's school papers. In a corner of the attic stood a small
filing cabinet along with a bookcase of photo albums.

In the filing cabinet the elementary, junior
high and high school report cards had a special file of their own.
"See all the As and Bs Jerry got," his mother said. "And all the
teacher comments are so wonderful. We didn't reward him with a $1
for each A – not like some parents did. He did well just for
himself." And for you, too, Donna thought.

Donna flipped through the other files, one
for each school year. At the file marked "School Year 1965-66" she
stopped and pulled it out of the file drawer. Jerry had once told
her about a paper he did senior year of high school. She wanted to
see it for herself.

And here it was: "The Future for Diverse
Ethnic Groups in the United States by Jerry Lautenberg." While his
mother watched, Donna skimmed the paper. She already knew it
offered an optimistic thesis, fueled by Jerry's belief that the
civil rights movement began a nationwide acceptance of people
different from the white majority. Although Jerry still believed in
his premise first proposed four and a half years ago, Donna thought
this envisioned utopia seemed unlikely to be achieved in the near
future.

"Come on, dear," his mother said, rustling at
her side. "I have some other things I want to show you." Donna put
the file back as his mother lifted the first photo album off the
shelf.

"These are Jerry's own souvenir albums. The
family albums – with the good photos – are downstairs; you've
already seen those. These are the ones Jerry made of his souvenirs
from trips and other things he did. He even saved the stubs from
all the movies he saw and labeled each movie."

Now Donna watches the first few men of the
AOB class exit their classroom building. Jerry isn’t among this
first group.

Donna thinks about how, when Jerry asked
Donna to marry him, she hadn't considered saying no because of his
ROTC commitment. "It's this way or be drafted as an enlisted man,"
he told her. "I'd rather be giving orders than receiving them."

Whenever Donna thinks of her fear – the fear
that Jerry will ... – she distracts herself by thinking of what
they did the night before, what they will do tonight, and tomorrow
night – together.

The entertainment committee is a welcome
activity, a good excuse to get out. In her apartment building
there's nothing to do and no one to talk to. Elderly couples occupy
the other units in the building. At night they probably put glasses
up to their adjoining walls to listen to what she and Jerry are up
to. One old woman always passes her on the stairs with a
penetrating stare.

Jerry tells her to ignore the other
occupants, to enjoy herself. After their weeks here they'll move on
to Ft. Holabird. In Baltimore they can take advantage of the big
city, get a little culture. Here she should just soak up the sun,
work on her tan. "I'm already dark enough," she tells him. He
laughs and kisses her. "I like women with swimsuit marks. It's
sexy."

Donna laughs at the thought as Jerry walks
towards the car, his smile for her lighting up his face. He could
have had his pick of apple-pie American girls. Instead he chose
her! She prays that Jerry won't have to serve in Vietnam. Hasn't
her family done enough?

**

The next day Donna dumps the potato chips
into a black lacquer bowl and sets the bowl on the imitation wood
coffee table. She volunteered to host the meeting of the
entertainment committee today – Sharon asked if they wanted to take
turns having the meetings.

Donna would like to serve a Puerto Rican
favorite, fried green bananas, but she can't get the right bananas
around here. She'll have to wait until her mother comes to visit
her and brings the bananas. Then she can show these women a true
Puerto Rican treat.

Glancing around the living room, Donna thinks
that the apartment isn't so bad. The few personal items they
brought with them make it seem cozier.

Her eyes land on the black lacquer bowl. She
looks away. She told Jerry it comes from when her family lived in
the Orient. This isn't the truth. And even though the truth is
painful, she can't bring herself to give the bowl away or even not
use it.

The doorbell rings. Wendy stands outside.

"Hi," Wendy says, holding up a slim booklet.
"I brought my copy of ‘Mrs. Lieutenant’ like Sharon asked us."

Donna smiles. Sharon thinks they might enjoy
reading some of the rules and regulations together. Donna herself
studied the booklet from cover to cover the moment she got it.
Being part of an enlisted man's family is totally different from
being an officer's wife. She wants to avoid making obvious
blunders. Yet the instructions in “Mrs. Lieutenant” are so detailed
and lengthy for each type of occasion that the booklet makes her
more nervous.

Before Donna can offer Wendy something cool
to drink the doorbell rings again. Sharon and Kim have arrived.
They don't look anything alike, but since they go everywhere
together, Donna thinks of them as "the twins." It's better that
than "the couple."

Donna puts the bottles of Coke and 7-Up on
the coffee table, and Sharon reaches for some chips. "That's a
beautiful bowl. Did you get it in the Orient?"

Donna nods; she doesn't trust her voice. What
did she expect? That no one would notice the bowl? Hasn't she put
it out to be noticed?

Donna turns to Kim. "Did you bring your copy
of ‘Mrs. Lieutenant’?"

Kim laughs. "Do you think Sharon would let me
forget it?"

Donna asks, "Sharon, do you want to
begin?"

"Why not?" Sharon opens her booklet and
reads: "This book is written for 'Mrs. Lieutenant' and other Army
wives who would like a direct answer to the many questions
pertaining to military life." She takes a sip of Coke before
continuing:

"It has been said that when a man acquires a
commission, the government has gained not one, but two – the
officer and his wife. If the wife is well-informed as to what is
expected of her, the probability is greater that the officer will
have an easier and more successful career."