This Enemy Town

by Marcia Talley

  “Not now!” screamed Professor Black, twisting in his seat to reproach the midshipman who was in charge of the sound board at the back of the auditorium. “And turn it down, for pity’s sake!”

  “From the top!” Once again, John Tracey’s hands attacked the keyboard.

  “‘Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd …’” sang a young man in a ragged overcoat. He was helping another man drag a body bag onto the stage.

  “‘He served a dark and an angry god …’” sang the second player.

  “Yes! Yes!” Professor Black was pleased.

  Actor by actor, the stage filled as the chorus arrived to lay out the background story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I watched as a disheveled woman poured ashes from an urn over the “body.” Dorothy punched my arm. “There’s Kevin!”

  “Where?” I asked. She couldn’t have meant the woman with the urn.

  Dorothy pointed a finger with a badly chewed nail. “The one in the ridiculous wig.” She turned to smile at me in the semidarkness. “I should talk about ridiculous wigs, shouldn’t I? Like mother, like son?”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” I said as Kevin, dressed in a long frock coat and an unruly white wig, opened his mouth.

  “‘His needs were few, his room was bare …’” sang Kevin in a clear, high tenor.

  “‘A lavabo and a fancy chair …’” sang another.

  We watched appreciatively while Anthony and Sweeney, fresh off the boat from Australia, made their entrances. And then the beggar woman arrived sporting a remarkable petticoat under a bundle of colorful rags. “Alms, alms for a miserable woman …”

  Another elbow in my ribs. “That’s Kevin’s friend, Emma.”

  I squinted at the beggar woman. She looked vaguely familiar. I wondered if Kevin’s friend was “our” Emma, Emma Kirby, one of several midshipmen we’d been sponsoring since they were plebes, providing them with a “home away from home,” particularly during their difficult first, often lonely, plebe year. That pile of rags could have been Emma Kirby, I supposed, but it was hard to tell exactly what was under all that makeup.

  “‘Wouldn’t you like to push me parsley?’” Emma sang, turning to Todd pathetically. After a few more naughty but hilarious measures, Todd shooed the beggar woman away, and she scuttled to the edge of the stage, sat down on the steps and peered out into the audience, such as it was, while shading her eyes with a hand wearing a tattered, fingerless glove. She waved at me. I waved back. Definitely our Emma.

  Except for sporadic e-mails, I hadn’t talked to Emma since the previous May, when she left on her summer “gray hull” cruise. I wondered why she hadn’t been by to see us. We needed to catch up, and I promised myself I’d give her a call.

  On stage there was a subtle lighting change. Professor Black yelled, “Where is it? Where is it? Go back and get it!” while the midshipman playing Mrs. Lovett cooled her heels, rhythmically slapping her rolling pin against her open hand. Within seconds the tech crew scurried in with a long narrow table, set it down firmly in front of Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop, and scurried away again.

  Now that she had her pie-making table, Mrs. Lovett launched into the intricate patter song about the worst pies in London and I was really getting into it, until I became distracted by a midshipman, costumed like an inmate of Fogg’s Asylum, who slouched down the aisle and planted herself in the seat next to Dorothy. “Hi, Mom,” she said.

  This puzzled me, until I realized she was addressing Dorothy by her nickname.

  “Hi, Greta,” whispered Dorothy. “You looked good up there.”

  Greta sighed a long-suffering sigh. Clearly she didn’t agree. From my vantage point, Greta was a sullen piece of work, sitting with clenched jaw and narrowed eyes, mouthing Mrs. Lovett’s lines, loudly filling in missing words. Fortunately there were few, or the actress on the stage—who seemed more than capable of handling the challenging role—might have leaped off the stage and strangled her.

  Then Mrs. Lovett fluffed a line.

  “What a mistake they made casting her!” Greta groused. “I tried out for the part and would have been so much better in the role. Just because she thinks she can sing …” She heaved another sigh. “Professor Black is nuts.”

  Professor Black didn’t seem nuts to me. He seemed extraordinarily competent, coaching quality performances out of what were, after all, young engineering students, using firmness, tempered with humor. Greta needed to take a pill.

  I returned my attention to the stage, where a new scene was beginning. The actor playing Beadle Bamford entered from stage right calling, “Mrs. Lovett! Mrs. Lovett!” crossed to the plain box that would become a harmonium—one of the projects that would soon end up on my To Do list—sat down and started singing, “‘Sweet Polly Plunket lay in the grass, turned her eyes—’”

  “Stop! Stop!” Professor Black flailed his arms.

  All eyes turned to Beadle Bamford, whose hands remained gracefully poised over the fake keyboard.

  “Midshipman Monroe, what have you done to your head?”

  The midshipman caressed his glossy, hairless scalp. “I shaved it, sir.”

  “Why, pray tell, did you do that?”

  “Last night was Service Assignment Night, sir,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  “Tell me what that has to do with you showing up for rehearsal today wearing a bowling ball on your shoulders.”

  “I’m going Marines, sir.”

  “I see.” Medwin Black rested both hands on the back of the theater seat in front of him, bowed his head, and seemed to be consulting the toes of his brown oxford shoes. A deathlike silence fell over the auditorium until he looked up again and said, “So, you and the other jarheads went out to celebrate, I presume.”

  “Yes, sir. With the senior Marine, sir.”

  “And then you came back to the Hall and shaved your head.”

  The midshipman playing the Beadle shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, sir.”

  Professor Black sighed. “Never mind, we’ll work around it.” He waved an arm. “Continue!”

  Beadle Bamford’s parlor song was interrupted once again by the arrival of box dinners. Rehearsal ground to a halt while the midshipmen launched a full-frontal assault on the food tables. Dorothy and I decided to avoid the stampede and wait until after the midshipmen had eaten before picking up our boxes.

  In the meantime, Dorothy invited me up on the stage, where she spread out the sketches the set designer had made on top of Mrs. Lovett’s pie-making table and discussed with me what still needed to be done. “A lot will be taken care of by the backdrop we’re renting,” Dorothy said, to my great relief. “How would you like to be in charge of the barbershop?”

  I turned and tipped my head back to get a better look at the structure. From where I stood, perhaps a dozen steps led up to the platform that would eventually be transformed into Sweeney Todd’s place of business. There was a back wall—wallpaper would cover that—but other than that, the room was open on three sides, nothing to keep me from tripping and tumbling ass over teacup onto the stage eight or nine feet below.

  I shook my head. “I don’t do heights,” I explained. “I went to Paris once. At the top of the Eiffel Tower there are iron girders that still carry the impression of my fingernails.”

  In the end, I volunteered to construct the oven, while Dorothy would work upstairs, concentrating on making Sweeney’s diabolical barber chair—also rented—function properly.

  Suddenly I grew light-headed, whether from hunger or from the stage lights raining relentlessly down on us, it was hard to tell. Sweat prickled my scalp and gathered under the sweatshirt I wore, running down my back and between my breasts.

  Dorothy noticed, and tugged at her wig. “Are you hot, too, Hannah, or is it just me?”

  I managed a laugh. “My late mother always said, ‘I don’t have hot flashes. I have short, private vacations in the tropics!’” I gathered up my bag. “Let’s get out from under t
hese lights.”

  We moved to the edge of the stage, where the lighting was less ferocious, and sat down, side by side, dangling our legs over the lip. “Remember when you said you wanted me for a role model?”

  Dorothy wiped her forehead with the tail end of her shirt. “Yeah.”

  “Well, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve brought you something.” I set the bag I’d been carrying on her lap. “Open it.”

  Dorothy grabbed the handles of my duffel and pulled them apart. She peered into the bag, and I watched a smile spread slowly across her face. “Hats!”

  “Friends gave them to me,” I confided, “more than I could ever use. I don’t need them anymore, thank goodness. I thought you might find wearing a hat more comfortable than a wig, at least while you’re working. I know I did.”

  Dorothy pulled out a blue canvas hat with Sea Song embroidered on it in white script. “Sea Song is my sister-in-law’s sailboat,” I told her. “We should go sailing sometime.”

  The next hat out of the bag was one decorated with red, white, and blue sequins. Dorothy settled it over her wig. “This seems appropriate,” she announced, turning her head from side to side as if examining herself in an imaginary mirror. “How do I look?”

  “Patriotic. When you get home, you can experiment with wearing it without the wig.”

  Dorothy’s smile faded. She removed the bespangled hat and placed it, along with the blue canvas one, in the bag with the others. “I’ll have to think about it,” she said. “I’m not sure that Ted …” She clutched the duffel bag to her chest. “Let’s say I’ll take them home. And, thanks, Hannah. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.”

  Kevin appeared—without being asked, he had fetched box dinners for his mother and me—then just as quickly, he disappeared. Dorothy and I ate passable ham and cheese sandwiches in companionable silence, cardboard boxes balanced smartly on our knees.

  After rehearsal ended, Dorothy dragged me into the hallway, where the lumber, Sheetrock, and power tools were being temporarily stored. I gasped. There was enough material in the hallway to build a home for Habitat for Humanity. Maybe two or three of them.

  “Let’s go,” I said with a smile. “I hope we’re not going to need all this material! Way too depressing! I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

  “Need a ride?”

  It was after eight o’clock, but I wanted to walk. “No, that’s okay, Dorothy. Prince George is one way, so you’d have to drive the long way around. It’s shorter for me to go on foot. Really,” I added when she looked doubtful. “But I’ll walk you to your car. Where is it?”

  “Out front.”

  On our way to the parking lot, we noticed Kevin and Emma standing next to one of the empty coatracks at the end of the hallway. Dorothy opened her mouth to call out to her son, but I threw out an arm to restrain her. “It looks like a private conversation,” I warned.

  Whatever the two young people had been discussing, the conversation was clearly over. “I’m really sorry, Kevin,” Emma was saying, her voice small and tight. “But I’m not going to do it. I’m just not!” She hoisted her book bag over one shoulder and hurried down the staircase that led to the exit on the lower level. Kevin stood in stunned silence for a moment, then ran after her, his words echoing hollowly off the marble walls. “Emma! Wait up!”

  “Oh, dear, I hope there’s nothing wrong,” Kevin’s mother said, her brows drawn together in a frown. “I think he has a bit of a crush on that girl.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, you know what they say?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The course of true love never runs smooth.”

  “So they say.”

  The fact was, in the course of the past two years I had grown to know Emma Kirby fairly well. Kevin might be standing on the platform, but that train was not coming into the station for him.

  CHAPTER 3

  Seeing me at the musical rehearsal had apparently pegged Emma’s guilt-o-meter, too, because when I got home that evening, Paul told me she had called.

  “She leave a message?”

  Paul looked up from the crossword puzzle he was working. “She apologized profusely for ignoring us and asked that you call her back. She left a number. I think it’s her cell.”

  I returned Emma’s call at once, because I wanted to see her. I was keen to find out why she had returned to the Academy. The last time we talked, she had been planning to call it quits.

  Emma and I arranged to meet before rehearsal the following day in the Hart Room of Mahan Hall, which had been, until Nimitz opened in 1972, the main reading room of the Naval Academy library. In the years since then, the Hart Room had been used for everything from wedding receptions to spare office space, but had recently been converted into an elegant student lounge. When the cappuccino bar went in, I rejoiced, and occasionally met Paul there for coffee.

  Flags representing each of the fifty states flanked the marble staircases that led from the center of Mahan lobby up to the Hart Room. Because the cappuccino bar was on the south side of the building, I chose the staircase to the left. As I climbed to the second floor past Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana, I wondered what Emma wanted to talk to me about, and if it had anything to do with why she’d returned to the Academy, or what I’d overheard of her conversation with Kevin the night before.

  On the phone, she’d sounded worried, but when I pressed her for details, she put me off, saying it wasn’t a good time. Privacy, I knew, was a rare commodity in Bancroft Hall, where everyone had one, sometimes two, roommates, doors were rarely locked, and first classmen—“firsties”—could walk in on you, unannounced, at any time.

  I was early. Emma hadn’t arrived, so I bought a Tropicana grapefruit drink from the cashier at the counter and settled into an upholstered chair to wait.

  The room was magnificent—like Cinderella’s ballroom—with enormous windows that stretched all the way to the ceiling some thirty feet over my head, highly polished wooden floors, and a Romeo and Juliet–style balcony that overlooked the terrace below. As long, I swear, as a football field, the room had doorways at each end that linked it to classrooms in Maury and Sampson to the north and south, respectively.

  Midshipmen were sprawled, some of them sound asleep, on sofas and chairs that had been arranged in conversational groupings about the room. Several mids were seated at tables, talking in low voices over open textbooks, and if the mid clicking his way from website to website on his laptop at the next table was any indication, computer services had thoughtfully provided wireless computer access to users of the room.

  I checked the clock that hung over the doorway leading to Maury. It was two-forty. Emma was late. It wasn’t like her. I had just tossed my empty Tropicana bottle into the recycling bin labeled “glass” when she breezed in, full of apologies and out of breath, her books and uniform cap tucked under one arm.

  “Want anything to drink?” I asked. “My treat.”

  Emma shook her head. “No thanks. I brought my own.” She produced a can of Sprite from under her cap.

  “Cookies? Chips?”

  She grinned and patted her thigh. “Uh-uh. Gotta watch out for that Severn River hip disease.” The midshipmen diet was calorie-rich, to support their active regime. It proved particularly hard on the women.

  “Like you need to worry,” I teased, envying Emma’s solid but trim figure. “Any particular place you want to sit?”

  Emma glanced around, then gestured with her soda can to a pair of chairs set at precise right angles to one another on the fringed edge of a Bokhara carpet. “How ’bout over there,” she suggested. “More out of the way, and nobody’ll bother us.”

  “I was glad to see you last night,” I told her as we settled comfortably into the plump leather cushions. “When we didn’t hear from you in September …” I shrugged. “Well, after our heart-to-heart last spring, I assumed you’d decided not to come back to the Academy.”

  Emma popped the top of her Sprite and took a l
ong swig. Without her stage makeup, without makeup of any kind, in fact, Emma was a beautiful young woman. She was blessed with clear, almost translucent skin and rosy cheeks, a look that millions of women aspired to but no regimen but diet, exercise, and … well, youth could even begin to duplicate. Her dark hair was cut in a neat bob, curling gently under at each ear, well off her collar, as required by Navy regulations; a swoop of bangs was caught to one side and secured at her temple with a plain silver barrette.

  “I thought about it all summer,” she said, “while I was on cruise.” She gazed at me with serious green eyes flecked with amber, inherited, no doubt, from her father, an Irish Catholic from Boston. But their almond shape, and her blue-black hair, came directly from her mother, a native of Taiwan.

  “Tell me about your summer,” I urged, steering the conversation gently in another, less land-mine-strewn direction.

  That seemed the right tack. Emma’s frown vanished and she launched cheerfully into an account of her summer training. “For most of June, I was on the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship,” she said.

  Despite Paul working for the Navy for years, I’d never thought much about ships. I must have looked puzzled, because she hurried to elaborate. “It looks like an aircraft carrier,” she explained, “with a flat deck for the planes, but it’s much smaller. I was one of a thousand crew members, but if we needed to, like helping with the war in Iraq or something, we could have taken on as many as sixteen hundred troops.”

  I’m not particularly good with figures, but even I could do the math for that. “That’s twenty-six hundred people, give or take. That’s huge!”

  “Bigger than my hometown,” she joked. “But an aircraft carrier is almost twice as big. Take the Nimitz, for example. It carries six thousand people, is approximately eleven hundred feet long by two hundred fifty feet wide and is taller than an eighteen-story building. The Bonhomme Richard is just 844 by one hundred six. Quite a difference.”

  My synapses were firing on all cylinders as I struggled to put those statistics into context. I thought about Connie’s sailboat, the only boat I’d ever sailed on. It was a mere thirty-seven feet long and probably as wide as the average Volkswagen Beetle measured bumper to bumper.