I was twelve years old now and still rattled by her unwelcome explanation of the miracle of menses a few months earlier when I’d demanded we call an ambulance for her “tummy cramps.” Fearing another such truth-telling debacle, I decided it was best to stop my line of questioning right there, but I knew something was up.
* * *
—
Months earlier, a group of U.S. Army paratroopers was thousands of feet above us on a routine training jump when a reckless soldier started goofing off. He was carving wide circles in the air, paying no attention to what was beneath him, and his feet hit something. He’d inadvertently stepped into the parachute of a soldier below. When the chute began twisting around this soldier’s legs, he panicked and began trying to kick free. Only when he’d succeeded did he realize that he’d done so at the expense of the soldier below.
The chute below collapsed, and now the unfortunate soldier hanging from it began falling through the air, the ground racing up toward him. This soldier’s name was Jeff. Jeff quickly began working to get air back into his chute, but when it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, he deployed his reserve. But it was too late. Boom!
He blacked out when he hit the ground, so he didn’t feel it when he bounced and hit it all over again. Broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a busted knee, and a fractured hip—he looked like a cartoon character in traction for many weeks, but he felt very lucky to be alive. The real despair came when the doctors determined that he could no longer jump. He was already a decorated Special Forces soldier at twenty-one, and this should have been the beginning of a heroic military career. Instead that dream was over.
Jeff’s commanding officers promised to reassign him wherever he wanted to go in the military. Jeff looked around his hospital room and said, “Maybe I should just stay here.”
Once he was well enough to walk again, that’s exactly what he got: orders to report to the headquarters of the U.S. Army laboratory division.
On his first day of work at the army medical center, Jeff carefully pressed and pulled on his white dress uniform, then his Special Forces beret. Free of a helmet, bandages, and bruises, Jeff was an honest-to-God U.S. military hottie, with a perfectly fit body topped with a handsome baby face and a thin hipster-style mustache he could hardly grow but that said loud and clear, “I’m a little bit of trouble.” He drove to the hospital and parked his crappy car at the end of the lot so as not to injure his playboy reputation. As he walked toward the hospital’s front doors, he surveyed his new haunt, catching sight of a blonde with perfectly set curls sitting in a car putting the finishing touches on her blue eye shadow and peach lips. There were a lot more women here than on a Special Forces obstacle course. Nurses galore. Maybe this wasn’t the end of the world after all.
Jeff was at the hospital that day to discuss his experience with the lab’s sergeant major, who explained that this base housed a large laboratory made up of several divisions and specialties. Jeff thought about it and asked, “What about microbiology?” Jeff knew that in microbiology, most everything had to be done by hand. He thought that sounded like a better time than feeding machines.
The microbiology department was all as one might expect—full of test tubes, beakers, and petri dishes—until the very last room. There, a cluster of doctors was hovering around something that clearly fascinated them. But whatever it was, it was small enough to be blocked from Jeff’s view. As the sergeant major completed the tour, Jeff kept glancing back at the huddle until it finally broke apart in a burst of laughter. At the heart of it was that same hot blonde with the blue eye shadow from the parking lot out front, now perched atop a lab stool like a little mouse. Jeff looked at her and smiled. That hot blonde, well, she smiled right back at this tall, handsome, and much younger soldier with the troublemaker mustache.
The hot blonde, of course, was my enduringly well-behaved, nearly forty-year-old, and most certainly married Mormon mom.
The sergeant major decided it was only right to give Jeff every advantage and team him up with the lab’s best and brightest. So Roseanna Black’s new job was to show Jeffrey Scott Bisch the ropes.
The micro section was made up of many different benches: one where lab techs received specimens, and others for reviewing respiratory, urinary, wound care cases, and so on. Over the next few months, Jeff had to learn how to care for each bench’s specimens and cultures, with Anne by his side to show him all the proper procedures. In that time, in little ways, things began to get flirty. But Anne was a good Southern woman and a devout Mormon, so any temptation was quickly sublimated into setting Jeff up on dates with women his own age who liked to do twentysomething things. The thing is, Jeff had left home at seventeen. He’d been to war. He’d seen and done things most men would pray never to see or do in their lifetimes. It was hard for him to connect with twentysomethings. And Jeff loved that Anne could actually relate to his stories, hopes, and concerns.
Of course, Anne wasn’t half as young as she looked—or as Jeff assumed. She had conveniently failed to tell him her true age, that she was married, or that she had three boys at home. It all must have slipped her mind…in the same way her wedding band had starting slipping off into her lab coat pocket each morning, starting back on that very first day Jeff walked in.
But Anne knew from the start that she wouldn’t be seated on her stool forever, that he’d watch her swing in and out of the lab on her crutches day in and day out and take note of her twisting back. Then whatever crush he’d had would fade. For now, she was simply going to enjoy what she could of his attention while it lasted.
The trouble is, the first time Jeff remembers seeing Anne walk around was when a new girl who was just starting at the front desk rang the lab and said, “Mrs. Black, could you please come up to the front desk to pick up a specimen for your area? I sprained my ankle and I’m on crutches and can’t bring it back to you.” When Jeff passed Anne in the hallway that day, she had a devilish grin on her face as she swung up to the front desk on her hip-high braces and crutches and asked that girl with the sprained ankle for the specimen. It was a big container filled with twenty-four hours’ worth of collected urine—heavy as a gallon of milk. And before the girl could apologize, Anne grabbed it up and swung it all the way back down the hall to her lab. Jeff saw the pride on Anne’s face when she came in and set it down on her bench. That kind of moxie was sexier to Jeff than any pair of working legs.
Then one day, near break time, Anne dipped her hand into her lab coat pocket and felt around for something. Two things, actually. She checked the time, looked over at Jeff, and got up off her stool. Gripping her crutches a little tighter, she made her way to the laboratory door via Jeff’s bench. It was far from a direct route. She leaned in, and as if offering some sort of illicit drug, she quietly asked, “Hey, why don’t you go on break with me? I’ve got some hot chocolate.”
Her heart was racing. She knew exactly what line she was crossing. She hadn’t felt like this since her days flirting with the young priests and push-boys in the children’s hospitals, or since her first moments with Don or Raul. It felt dangerous and impossible.
“Okay,” he said. Once they were alone in the break room, she pulled the instant hot chocolate packets out of her pocket, ripped them open, poured the powder into two mugs, and added hot water. The deed was done. As if that transgression weren’t enough, on their walk back to the lab, she mentioned the one thing that made her heart race even faster than hot chocolate: McDonald’s apple pies. Devilish little vixen.
That Sunday night, instead of going drinking with his barracks buddies, Jeff drove through McDonald’s for dinner and added an apple pie to his order. On Monday, when he and Anne dared go on another break together, he said, “I got something for you.” Her heart leapt. He pulled the pie from his pocket and gave it to her. A confectionary line had been crossed. Now Anne began bringing him Froot Loops, Rice Krispies, an actual container of sugar, a
nd a little bowl. She even bought him a plant for his window in the barracks. She was incrementally stepping away from all she knew to be true and moral in her church, the promises she’d made her “priesthood holder” husband in a temple. She was leaning back into her Southern roots, not quite taking the bull by the horns but damn sure looking it in the eye.
* * *
—
Then one sunny weekend, Jeff’s planned trip to see some old army pals out at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas was unexpectedly canceled. Over the phone, Anne could tell that he was down about it. She suggested, “Why don’t I come pick you up and we’ll go get some ice cream?” He thought that sounded nice. She spent the next hour making herself perfect, and struggling to find civilian clothes that didn’t look too Mormon. She told us three boys that there was a work emergency and she had to go in to the lab. Her performance was so believable that I have no distinct memory of this moment. Later, of course, I got all of the details.
She picked Jeff up at his barracks in her Malibu, they found an ice cream joint, and they slowly ate their dripping cones. Then she drove him back to his barracks. But this wasn’t a work break. It wasn’t even a lunch break. They had no rules for this. So they just sat there, parked in front of his barracks, talking until they realized the sun had long since set. Jeff was still a little down about not seeing his old Kansas pals, and was working that little nugget for all it was worth. And Anne knew full well what she was doing when she said, “Oh come on, give me a hug.”
He did, and they held each other in the front seat of her car for a good long time, then slowly broke apart, looked at each other, and kissed. The game was over.
They kissed again and again until she finally stopped him with “I’ve gotta get going now.” Jeff tried to act cool. He got out of the car, made his way up the stairs to the barracks, and walked smack-dab into one of the glass doors leading inside. Anne quickly looked away, pretending she hadn’t just seen it happen. She pressed her gas-pedal hand control down and pulled away. A few blocks up, she found herself sitting at a stop sign, not moving, knowing full well that Jeff’s collision with that glass door meant he was as wrapped up in what had just happened as she was. And she thought, What have I done?
Anne got her three boys all dressed up for church on Sunday and tortured herself all the way through services. Sitting in the familiar pews, she thought, I was once a righteous Mormon woman, head of the Relief Society, and now Heavenly Father can plainly see I’m unworthy. The shame this will bring to my family, to my children. There is no happy ending in this. She knew this had to stop.
Come Monday, things were awkward at work. When Anne and Jeff saw each other, they didn’t know what to say. Anne suggested they wait until lunch to talk. He agreed. She drove them to a park just off the base where they wouldn’t be seen together, where she could apologize for her part in this recklessness and end it. They got out of the car, sat at a picnic table, and didn’t eat a bite. By this point, Jeff knew that Anne had been married once, but now she told him what he had also suspected, that she had children—three sons. But even that late-breaking news didn’t seem to throw him, and before she could recite the rest of the affair-stopping monologue she’d practiced over and over again in her head, they were making out again.
After that voracious lunch, Anne bought herself that map of San Antonio and began staking out other public parks.
Sure, Heavenly Father knew what she was up to, but she would be damned if her congregation or Jeff’s fellow soldiers would figure it out. However, not having quite finished her big breakup speech, Anne still hadn’t told Jeff her boys’ ages or even her own, and she’d failed to mention that she was still married to their air force staff sergeant stepfather who far outranked Jeff. It all could get very messy, very fast.
One night, following the pattern of the preceding few weeks, Anne picked Jeff up at his barracks. They had dinner, then drove to yet another darkened public park she had staked out and got down to business. This time, though, a car pulled up behind them and police lights flickered on. Terror hit them both. The cop walked over to the driver’s side, put a flashlight in Anne’s face, then looked at Jeff, at his obvious military haircut, and said, “Get out of the car, son. I need to talk to you.”
Jeff did as he was told, leaving Anne alone with her thoughts in the car. As the cop questioned Jeff, her mind spun out of control. This was the end. She would be humiliated and cast out of her church. Merrill would return and take Jeff to some military tribunal and have him court-martialed. Merrill’s punishment at home would be even more severe, his violent rebuke spilling over onto her three boys, her treasures.
Finally, Jeff returned to the car, and they waited in silence for the cop to pull away.
“What did he say?” she asked.
Jeff said, “He, uh, gave me a warning.”
“Did he take your ID? He has my license plate number.”
“No, he, uh…he just told me to be careful.”
“Of what?”
Jeff stifled a grin and finally let it out: “He thought you were a prostitute.”
Anne whacked him hard against the chest with the back of her hand. He laughed, but it was true! She was relieved, flattered, and offended all at once. From then on, she wore a bit less blue eye shadow and toned down her lip color, but she knew this was a real wake-up call. She and Jeff could no longer risk public encounters. Problem was, he lived in the barracks, and her home was filled with three boys who would give away her age and pictures of a husband that would reveal her current marital status. So Anne checked her credit-card balances and put together a plan only a lovesick mind might find sane.
After work one Friday, she sat us boys down and said, “Wouldn’t it be fun if you guys had your own time together, sort of like a campout, but here in the city, near the mall? Marcus could take you to a movie, and shopping, and then you could have your own hotel room for the whole weekend and eat anything you want.”
Her plan was and still is one of the more bizarre affair plots of all time. Why on earth didn’t she just get her own hotel room? Isn’t that how affairs are supposed to go? Why make this so oddly complicated? At the time, I hadn’t yet sniffed out any affair, but I knew that what she was proposing was very, very weird.
A testament to how my mom and I had sheltered Todd, not a whole lot ever worried him, so he thought it sounded like a great idea. I voiced a concern: “What about church?” Marcus slowly ground his elbow into my ribs as punishment for asking such a stupid question.
With just a dash of hesitation, our mom replied, “Well…this will be a little vacation from that. It’ll be guys’ time. Man time. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
Maybe if the men were the Dallas Cowboys and the hotel was a locker room, I thought, but this was a hotel with my brothers, whom I spent every moment with anyhow, and an anxiety-provoking shopping mall filled with looky strangers. Was this a joke? A trap set by priesthood holders to block us from the pearly gates? But Todd loved the idea of skipping church and said so with a giant grin that showed off more than a few gaps where the tooth fairy had made collections. One more look in my mom’s eyes and I knew this was no joke, no vacation, and no diversion from heaven. Our by-the-books Mormon mother with her closet full of floral dresses was going to start sending us away to discount hotels on the weekends because she was holding on to some big new secret.
I wanted more than anything to find out what it was, but Marcus silenced my curiosity. He’d turned sixteen and gotten his driver’s license. With Merrill away and the brakes checked on his old green car, Marcus was loving his newfound freedom. He insisted that this was a portal into countless fantastic new adventures…if only I didn’t ruin it with all my “stupid fucking questions.” So I never inquired about the lingering smell of home-cooked food upon our Sunday-evening returns, or about the new little teddy bear by her bedside that smelled of men’s cologne.
Instead, Marcus turned me and Todd into his accomplices again, this time training us how to help him shoplift from every store we walked into during those strange weekends.
Our job was to stand at the end of aisles, look innocent, and say, “Hey, have you read this,” as a signal that someone was coming. By our fourth cheap hotel weekend, we owned every G.I. Joe, Transformer, and Atari and Commodore computer game we’d ever dreamed of. Sure, we’d gone from picture-perfect church children to expert criminals in the course of one month, but for the first time since Raul had abandoned us, we had what other kids did: new clothes, toys, and even a full-size Commodore 128 for me to hone my programming skills on. Marcus had just picked up that computer and walked right out of the store’s front doors with it like it was nothing. That theft in particular gave him a great deal of confidence. Perhaps too much.
It didn’t take a genius to know that my mother’s affair and Marcus’s heists were short-term solutions to long-term problems. Eventually Merrill would return. And eventually Target would install video cameras inside mirrored bubbles in their ceilings and record Marcus shoving a Summer Olympics computer game down the front of his pants. On that day, he was restrained by a security guard as he walked out of Target’s front doors with the game against his manhood. Todd and I were pulled aside, sat down, and watched in the snack bar area. The security guard called our home to find out who these juvenile delinquents’ rotten parents were. And when Anne refused to answer the incessantly ringing phone, real cops came knocking.
* * *
—
Anne had just served Jeff a spectacular spaghetti dinner complete with marinara sauce made from scratch. This was why she wanted the house and not a hotel room. She knew that Jeff had signed up for the army at seventeen because he hadn’t had the best childhood growing up in Philly. She wanted him to feel the warmth of a home, not the illicit vibe of a hotel room. And she was expert at warmth, not so much at anything too illicit. Her plan now seemed rather clever when considered from the home-cooked-meal perspective. But just as they’d sat down to eat this candlelit marinara masterpiece, the doorbell rang. Her first thought was that Merrill had somehow figured out what she was up to, and all the way from South Korea had called the police to intervene. She convinced Jeff to blow out the candles and wait for the cops to go.
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