This Enemy Town

by Marcia Talley

  Holding one paintbrush in her teeth and the other in her hand, Dorothy strolled over to check it out. “Thass goot,” she mumbled around the paintbrush. She removed the paintbrush and grinned. “Thanks. That looks absolutely super.”

  I wasn’t so sure about the super, but it would certainly do, especially from the vantage point of three rows back. “Guess I better attack the banner now.”

  The banner I was referring to was the one used by Pirelli to hawk his elixir. I’d frame the edges of the banner with gold curlicues, I thought, and in ornate script, neatly centered, I’d paint in crimson edged with gold:

  Signor Adolfo Pirelli

  haircutter-barber-toothpuller

  to his royal majesty

  the king of Naples

  And under that, in big, bold black:

  Banish baldness

  with

  Pirelli’s miracle elixir!

  Since Pirelli was supposedly Eye-talian, I’d decided on a fancy script, appropriately called Informal Roman. I was shameless: I used a package of stencils I found at Michael’s crafts store.

  I’d painted as far as “the king of Naples,” trying to decide if “king” should begin with a capital or a small K when a bell rang and the two midshipmen who had been working on the backdrop plopped their brushes into jars of paint thinner and hurried away. Dorothy and I were alone, and the silence lengthened between us.

  Finally, Dorothy spoke up.

  “Hannah?”

  “Hmmm?” I’d given the king a small k and was working on a capital N that would have made a medieval monk proud, so I didn’t even bother to look up.

  “Hannah?” she said again.

  I turned to see that Dorothy had finished with the parlor flat, stripped off her rubber gloves, and was sitting on the concrete floor with her back resting against the wall.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did your husband …?” she began, her voice echoing hollowly in the cavernous room. She folded her hands as if she were praying, then pressed them tightly against her lips.

  I waited, knowing something important was coming and not wanting to rush her.

  “I feel ugly as sin,” she announced. She grabbed the crab cap by the bill and lifted it off her head. “Look!”

  The wisps of hair I had noticed earlier were about the extent of it. Except for a line of peachlike fuzz along her forehead, Dorothy was bald. Before I could say anything, she clapped the cap back on, quickly covering her baldness. “Gross, huh?”

  “We’ve all been there,” I said reassuringly. “You hair will grow back. Trust me!”

  But Dorothy refused to be reassured. She sat on the concrete, stone-faced, her feet tucked up under her. “After your surgery,” she said after nearly a minute had ticked by, “did your husband lose interest in you?”

  I knew where Dorothy was going with that question and decided to make it easier for her.

  “Sexually, you mean?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I balanced my paintbrush on the rim of the open paint jar and crossed the room to sit next to her. Even though we were the only two people in the set shop, I didn’t feel comfortable shouting across the room about my sex life. “Actually, Paul couldn’t have been more loving and supportive,” I told her after I’d gotten settled. “It was me who pushed him away.”

  Dorothy turned to me in surprise. “Why on earth would you do that?”

  I shrugged. “I took it into my head that since I was damaged goods, Paul was only being nice to me out of pity.”

  A tear rolled down Dorothy’s cheek, and she quickly brushed it away. “Pity? I’ll take pity, but Ted shows absolutely no interest in me whatsoever.”

  I reached across and took her hand. “Sometimes post-surgery, men are at a loss about what to do. Ted might be afraid he’s going to hurt you, for instance.”

  It had always amazed me how many support groups there were for cancer survivors, but I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the support groups that were available for their families—their husbands and children.

  Dorothy shook her head sadly. “Ted doesn’t even try. He spends hours and hours at the office. And when he gets home, he says he’s too tired.”

  “But he’s an admiral at the Pentagon! Didn’t you tell me he deals with supplies and matériel? There’s a war on in Iraq, Dorothy. Surely it’s not so hard to believe that he has to spend a lot of time at the office.”

  Dorothy snorted. “Well, if he is at his office, he sure as hell doesn’t answer his damn telephone.”

  “Maybe he’s somewhere else?” I offered helpfully. “Like at a meeting?”

  She shook her head emphatically. “That’s what cell phones are for, right? No, this has been going on for some time now. Long before my surgery. Frankly, Hannah, I think Ted is having an affair.” She looked at me with her sad clown face: circles of color reddened her cheeks, mascara bled into her smudgy blue eyeliner.

  She rose up on one hip and dug into the pocket of her jeans with two fingers. When she found what she was looking for, she held it out to me. “I found this in his toiletry kit, the one he takes with him on business.”

  The pill on her palm was encased in a foil bubble, like the last cold tablet I had taken. The pill was triangular and blue. I recognized it from the ads I’d seen on TV: Viagra.

  I stared at Dorothy stupidly for a few moments, trying to think of something reassuring to say and coming up with nothing, zilch, nada. “Uh—” I began.

  “Exactly,” Dorothy interrupted. “Ted’s not taking Viagra to enhance my sexual experience, that’s for sure.” She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “Oh, Hannah, sometimes I think I’d be better off dead. If it weren’t for Kevin—”

  “Don’t say that!” I shouted. I leaned toward her and added in a quieter voice, “You are an interesting, talented, and very attractive person. Hair or no hair!” I began pedaling as fast as I could. “Think of that Irish singer, what’s-her-name … Sinead O’Connor! And Demi Moore in G.I. Jane! And Sigourney Weaver in Alien3.”

  Dorothy sniffed and dabbed at her nose with a tissue she’d extracted from her sleeve.

  “Emma Thompson was fabulous in Wit!” I added, “and that wasn’t just makeup, Dorothy. Those women shaved for those roles and took their bald heads home with them.”

  Dorothy tucked the tissue back up her sleeve, leaned back against the wall and, to my very great surprise, began to laugh. “Hannah, you crack me up! Where do I go to get that kind of optimism? Laughs-R-Us?”

  I didn’t know about the optimism, but I had a good idea where I could go for information about Admiral Hart. Paul had taught at the Academy for a million years. He had students who had gone on to be senators and congressmen, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, captains in the U.S. Navy and, yes, even admirals. One former student was an ambassador; one or two others had been Deputy Assistant Under Secretaries of the Navy for This, That, and the Other. Paul had to know somebody at the Pentagon who could shed some light on the extracurricular activities of a certain Theodore E. Hart, Rear Admiral, USN, and I planned to ask my husband about it the moment I got home.

  CHAPTER 6

  As it turned out, it was a good thing I’d made Dorothy no promises, because begging with my husband to find me an informer inside the Pentagon was going to have to wait.

  I left Dorothy with a hug and good intentions, but what is it they say about good intentions? That the road to hell is paved with them.

  My personal hell started when I left Alumni Hall and headed home along the path that skirted the sea wall. As I approached the footbridge that spanned Weems Creek, connecting that part of the campus to Hospital Point, I noticed Emma talking to a female officer. All Naval Academy staff wear plastic name badges, usually black with white lettering and a miniature Naval Academy seal in the corner. I could see that this officer was wearing a name tag, but I wasn’t close enough to read it. I knew she was a lieutenant, though,
by the two broad stripes circling the hem of her uniform sleeve.

  Emma was animated, waving both hands around in the air as if she were directing traffic. Finally, she turned on her highly polished Corfam shoes and stalked away in the direction of the library.

  What was that all about? Hardly a career-enhancing move, I thought, for a mid to argue with a superior officer. It was against the rules.

  I opened my mouth to call out to Emma, but thought better of it. Instead, I watched until she disappeared around the corner of Nimitz Library, heading in the direction of the temporary trailers that had filled the parking lot since Hurricane Isabel caused the Severn to crest at eight and a half feet, wiping out more than half of the Academy’s classrooms.

  When I turned back to see what the lieutenant was up to, she was nearly out of sight, halfway across the footbridge.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Dorothy, who had just caught up with me on her way to retrieve her car. “Do you know?”

  Dorothy stared into the setting sun, shading her eyes with her hand. “Can’t say for sure, not from the back, but she walks like that woman who’s been hanging around rehearsal lately. I saw her talking to my son, but I didn’t think anything of it. Next time you see Kevin, why don’t you ask him?”

  The next time I saw Kevin, it was the following afternoon in the basement of Mahan, and he was actually wrapped up in a conversation with the lieutenant, his broad shoulders blocking the narrow hallway just outside the dressing room door. The officer shrugged. Kevin snapped to attention, delivered a proper salute, did a textbook about-face and left. The lieutenant stared at his back for a few moments, then turned, walking down the hallway in my direction.

  The first thing I noticed was her lips. Fat cupid’s-bow lips slathered with lipstick in a nonregulation shade of frosted pink I hadn’t seen since college.

  The next thing I noticed … boobs. A prodigious pair, straining the dark fabric of her uniform, challenging the brass buttons that held her jacket together. And teetering precariously on her right breast pocket, pointing in my general direction was her name tag: LT GOODALL.

  I started. Blood pounded in my ears. I stood frozen in the hallway, staring so hard at the woman’s name tag, willing the letters to slide around like Scrabble tiles and spell something, anything else, that she couldn’t help but notice. She glanced down, then up, one pale, puzzled eyebrow raised.

  I should have said something, apologized maybe, but I was trying too hard to breathe.

  Goodall.

  Jennifer Goodall?

  I’d never met the woman face-to-face, but I was all too familiar with the black and white photos in the Baltimore Sun that had spoiled my breakfast every morning for two and a half months. Five years had gone by, but the blond hair seemed right. And the breasts. Jennifer Goodall, the midshipman whose baseless accusations of sexual harassment had nearly cost my husband his reputation and his career. What was she doing back at the Academy?

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Jennifer Goodall said crisply.

  I was standing stupidly in the doorway, blocking the exit.

  “Sorry.” I stepped aside and she chugged past me, leaving traces of Irish Spring soap in her wake.

  I backed into the dressing room, found a chair and sat down in it, struggling to assemble a single coherent thought. Jennifer Goodall was back.

  One thing for sure. I had to tell Paul. I fumbled at my waist for my cell phone, but when I flipped it open to a screen devoid of bars, I remembered you couldn’t get a signal down in the bowels of Mahan, so I hustled outside. I stood by the memorial fountain and had paged down to Paul’s number before it occurred to me that I was practically at his office anyway, so I hurried over to see him.

  I found him grading papers at a long flat table in Chauvenet Hall, a pen in his right hand and a mug of coffee, probably stone cold, in his left.

  He smiled up from his work when I came in, “Hannah! To what do I owe …” The smile vanished and a puzzled expression took its place. “Hannah, are you all right?”

  “You’ll never guess who I just ran into,” I said, plopping down heavily in the armchair next to his worktable.

  “Who?” He put his pen down and turned toward me, giving me his full attention.

  “Jennifer Goodall.” I waited for this news to sink in.

  Paul didn’t even blink.

  “She was down in the dressing room, talking to one of the mids.”

  Paul’s features hardened. They could have been chiseled into the face of Mount Rushmore. He dragged his chair over to face mine. “I know,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  Rage boiled up inside me. “What? You knew?”

  Paul nodded glumly. “I ran into her in the sandwich line at Dahlgren one day.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me?” I exploded, each word a piece of shrapnel aimed straight at his heart.

  “I thought it would upset you.”

  “Upset me?” I sputtered, fighting for breath. “Upset me? Why do you think it would upset me?”

  Paul leaned forward and captured both my hands. He stood up, dragging me along with him, enclosing me in his arms, crushing me to his chest. “And I see I was right.”

  I wormed a hand between us and pushed him away so I could look into his face. “Of course I’m upset, you idiot! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! And if you’re keeping that little secret from me, I can only wonder what else you may have to hide!”

  “Don’t start that again, Hannah. I thought we laid that to rest a long, long time ago.”

  “I thought we had, too,” I said quietly, remembering the cruise we took to the Virgin Islands that had gone a long way toward mending our damaged relationship. I fell back into my chair, then leaned all the way forward and rested my forehead on my knees. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Paul wisely kept his distance while I struggled to calm the lurching going on in my stomach.

  “But what is she doing here?” I sputtered, looking up at him through wet lashes. “Tell me she’s just visiting.”

  Paul shook his head. “I wish. But no, she’s stationed here. She’s Twenty-ninth Company officer.”

  “How lucky for them.” I sat in my chair and pouted, barely aware of the Mozart symphony drifting from his radio, the volume set to low. “Why did the Navy send her back? I simply can’t believe it, not after all the trouble she caused, not just for you …” I ticked them off on my fingers. “… but the legal officer, not to mention the supe and the ’dant and the Secretary of the whole damn Navy!”

  As if Paul needed reminding. It had been a nightmare. The press had jumped all over it, of course: NAVAL ACADEMY MID ACCUSES PROFESSOR OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT. The Sun and the Post had had a field day, using the news as an excuse to dredge up every scandal that had taken place at the Naval Academy for the past twenty years, from car theft rings to athletes cheating on exams to a female midshipman being handcuffed to a urinal, with sidebars about similar troubles at the Air Force Academy and West Point thrown in for good measure.

  Paul managed a slight smile. “I don’t know, Hannah. Goodall’s detailer certainly didn’t consult me.” He pulled up his office chair, the rollers squeaking. “The military staff changes every two or three years. You know that, so maybe they didn’t know her history.”

  Paul, a tenured professor, jokingly refers to the Academy’s military staff as “the temporary help,” but I didn’t buy it. “That incident had to be included in her jacket, in her fitness report?”

  Paul swiveled his chair so he could look me in the eyes. “After Goodall dropped the charges against me, the Naval Academy graduated her and sent her off to the fleet. End of story.”

  “You mean she went sailing off with a clean slate?”

  Paul nodded. “Conduct issues that are resolved before graduation don’t become part of an officer’s official record.”

  I thought about Jennifer Goodall’s blue eyes, pouty pink lips, and great big breasts blocking my passage
in that narrow hallway. “What a good idea that is.” I crossed my arms across my own, comparatively inadequate chest and scowled at my husband. “Frankly, I was hoping she’d gone to sea and taken a long walk off a short, slippery deck.”

  “‘Hard-hearted Hannah—’” Paul started the song, but I cut him off with a glare, thoroughly unamused.

  “But surely somebody at the Academy remembers,” I insisted. “Or,” I said as a new thought occurred to me, “maybe she’s sleeping with her detailer.”

  “Unlikely. But perhaps she knows where certain bodies are buried. That makes it easier when you need to call in some favors.”

  We sat in awkward silence while I tried to make sense of the Navy’s stupid-ass decision.

  Paul tried again. “I deal with the students, Hannah, not the company officers. Unless one of Goodall’s mids gets into academic trouble, I’m not likely to cross paths with the wretched woman.”

  “With women like Jennifer Goodall,” I fumed, “even three-hundred-some acres is too small. I don’t want you within a hundred mile radius of that—that—” I cast about for the perfect word. “—that bitch,” I finished triumphantly.

  “Don’t worry, love. I have no interest in her whatsoever.” Paul waved a hand toward his papers. “Look, I’m almost done. Let me take you out for a drink?”

  I sat in my chair, arms still folded, mouth still pouting.

  Paul laughed out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” I snapped.

  “You look like a malevolent Buddha.”

  “I feel like a malevolent Buddha,” I grouched. “I’m thinking up Buddhist curses.”