Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel

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Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel Page 6

by Phyllis Zimbler Miller


  Sharon reads the paper inside. The typed invitation requests the pleasure of the company of the wives of the members of the AOB class at an orientation coffee in their honor the next day at Quarters One, Fifth Avenue – the home of the commanding general.

  "Will you go?" Robert asks, putting his arms around her.

  Regardless of her feelings about the army, Robert wants her to be a part of his new life. "It's Kim's turn to have the car tomorrow, so I'll go if she does."

  "Then you'd better see if she'll go." He kisses her and releases her.

  Since the Bentons don't have a phone, she has to drive over there now or walk over first thing in the morning. She isn't sure what her welcome will be. Kim was pleasant after the incident at the PX. Yet when Sharon dropped her off at her apartment afterwards, Kim didn't invite her in or make plans for tomorrow.

  Sharon glances around the living room of the small apartment. She can't stage a sit-in, refusing to budge. And Sharon reminds herself of her liberal principles – not judging someone on one small incident.

  “I'm not sure she wants to spend time with me,” Sharon says.

  Robert throws her a questioning look. Sharon hesitates before continuing, “In fact, I don't know if the carpool thing will work."

  "Why not?" Robert sits down on the couch.

  Sharon tells him what happened in the PX, then asks, "Why is she so upset about black men?"

  "You're the one who's assuming it's about black men. Maybe it's all men. Maybe she thinks all men are always looking at all women." He smiles. "Which is probably true."

  She picks up one of the sofa cushions and beans him with it. "You better not be!"

  He holds up his arms to fend her off. "Not me of course. Other men, looking for – conquests."

  Sharon sits down next to Robert. "I think it was only because he was black. Besides, it's obvious we're not single or we wouldn't be here."

  Robert squeezes her. "Maybe for some men a married woman is more exciting – the lure of the forbidden."

  KIM – III – May 14

  70 injured in clash on Wall Street between construction workers and student anti-war demonstrators ... May 8, 1970

  “When you have received an invitation to a social function, acknowledge it within twenty-four hours.” Mrs. Lieutenant booklet

  Kim drops the mixing bowl into the sink. Two filled cake tins occupy the tiny oven, the thin batter transforming into a dense chocolate cake.

  She came home from the PX with Sharon and immediately started to bake – a calming activity. She's not sure about this carpooling. She and Sharon are so different.

  Last night as she and Jim drove home from Sharon and Robert's apartment, Jim said, "They seem nice, don't they?"

  Kim didn't answer. She watched her husband's profile as he drove, aware of how much she wanted to fit into the role of an officer’s wife. Had she said the right things? Or had she embarrassed him?

  "Robert's idea to carpool is a good one," he said. "You'll have to spend a lot of time with Sharon but at least you won’t be alone."

  Kim knew what her husband wanted to hear – her having a personal escort wherever she went on the post was important to him – so she said: "We'll have a good time together.”

  Jim turned the car into their apartment complex. "You can hang out at the Officers Club. Just stay away from the other officers."

  Kim's face burned. Why did Jim always have to warn her about other men? Didn't he know how much she loved him? That she would never look at another man in that way? She knew why he was suspicious of her ...

  She got out of the car and walked beside her husband. Her husband. Such strength, such comfort in those two words. How could she ever live without him? Every night she prayed she wouldn't have to.

  They walked into the apartment and Jim turned on the television. Kim didn't stay to watch the news. There was nothing she wanted to know from that box. Instead she headed to the bedroom and extracted her pet white rat from the closet.

  Squeaky never failed to comfort her. Just watching his little nose quiver as he ran around the bedroom took her mind off "things." That was the word she used for what she wouldn't even permit herself to think about – the war her husband might have to fight in.

  Now she removes the cake tins from the oven while she thinks again of Sharon Gold. Number one, she is a Northerner so she probably doesn’t like Southerners. Number two, she comes from a large city so she will obviously be more sophisticated and make Kim feel like a country bumpkin. Number three, she is Jewish so she will ... be different than Kim. All in all, three good reasons not to like her.

  Kim doesn't have a lot of experience with friends. Her foster parents hadn't encouraged her to invite friends over. And she would have been too embarrassed to go to a friend's house and never invite her back. She kept to herself in school and came straight home afterwards to her chores and homework.

  Kim and her sister had done everything together, which meant not very much in a small town. Kim had been able to keep the money made from babysitting other people's children – caring for the foster parents' children was just one of her regular tasks – so she and her sister went to the movies sometimes. And they spent a lot of time in the library. It was a safe place with no one asking them to do any chores. Both of them read romance novels, dreaming of the day a pair of white knights would ride off with them, taking them away forever from their unhappy lives.

  As a college man, two years older than she, Jim had seemed to be that white knight for her. Just like in the books he practically swept her off her feet. She had felt totally protected by his love.

  When they married and lived in student housing, she didn't have a chance to meet any women friends. Then it was okay, because she was busy with her job in the college's biology department.

  Here she has nothing to do. She doesn’t want to be all alone day after day. Stuck without a car or a phone. Sharon seems nice. And Jim wants to carpool with her husband.

  After all, it is only for nine weeks. Kim has put up with unhappy arrangements for a lot longer – almost her whole life.

  Kim swishes chocolate icing over the two cake layers as a car stops right outside her first-floor apartment door. Kim puts down the icing knife and walks to the door to kiss her husband.

  He follows her into the kitchenette. "Look at that cake," he says, sticking his finger into the bowl of icing and then licking his finger.

  He gives her another kiss. "So what did you do today, hon?"

  Kim continues to ice the cake as she speaks. "I went with Sharon to the PX. We saw some nice things there and it was good to get out."

  Actually, she is relieved that Sharon forced her to leave the apartment even if the trip to the PX didn't go that well. The shooting still bothers Kim. She doesn't want to mention her fears to Jim because she doesn't want Jim asking more questions – possibly finding out that the shooting happened because the soldier bothered her. Jim might think she started up with the soldier. Thank heavens the MPs haven't traced her and then come by to ask questions.

  She follows Jim back to the bedroom, where he takes off his uniform. His high school football muscles still bulge underneath his undershirt. She didn't know him in high school even though their hometown has only one high school. Jim's parents sent him to military boarding school in a nearby town – they thought the discipline would be good – and those schools played football in a different league. The boarding school hooked him on military strategy games. He always had a game in progress in their married student housing apartment. Now it is the same here.

  "Dinner's ready," she says, then goes back to the kitchenette, where Jim joins her.

  "What's for dinner?"

  "Fried chicken and homemade biscuits."

  A parasitology major, Jim wrote his senior thesis on parasites in pigs. He became convinced that pigs were about the unhealthiest animals on this earth. Now he won't touch pork. They have fried chicken a whole lot.

  She sets the plate of hot food
down in front of him and puts another plate at her place. Then she sits down.

  "Jews like blacks a whole lot, don't they?" she asks as Jim forks the first mouthful.

  He chews before answering. "What do you mean?"

  "Today at the PX, a black man held the door for us just so he could stare at us. I told Sharon that he was staring at us. She said he was just being polite holding the door open."

  Jim swallows his milk. "Now look, Kim, it's not just Jews think that way. That's Northerners' thinking. They just don't know what we know, living with them the way we do.”

  Kim nods. It isn't just that Jim has a college degree and she doesn't. He hasn't been out of North Carolina, just as she hasn't, until they came here, yet he knows a lot about so many things.

  For probably the millionth time she thanks her lucky stars that she has Jim. He is everything to her – father, mother, husband. He is also the reason she doesn't want children. Things are just perfect the way they are between the two of them. Children would somehow change that. And she can't risk losing this closeness.

  The doorbell rings as she puts away the last of the washed supper dishes. Who could it be? The MPs? A stab of pain above her left eye punctuates her fear.

  Jim gets up from the couch and opens the door. Sharon stands outside.

  "Sorry to bother you,” Sharon says. “I need to talk to Kim before tomorrow."

  From the kitchenette Kim watches Jim motion Sharon to come in. What is she here for? To say she doesn't want their husbands to carpool anymore? That she doesn't want to share a car with Kim?

  Kim walks into the living room. "Have a seat," she says, gesturing towards the couch. The small apartment smells of fried chicken – that’s okay, Kim thinks, it isn't unpleasant. She watches Sharon glance around before sitting down. Probably checking for Squeaky.

  "I just wanted to know,” Sharon says, “if you’re going to the orientation coffee for the AOB wives tomorrow. We could go together."

  "See you, ladies," Jim says, walking towards the bedroom.

  Kim sits down in the armchair facing the couch. "What coffee is that?" she asks.

  "Didn't you get the invitation? It's for all the AOB wives who are here."

  Kim shakes her head. Sharon glances towards the bedroom, then says, "Robert brought it home for me. Maybe Jim forgot to give it to you."

  Kim stands. "That doesn't sound like Jim. Hold on while I go ask him."

  Kim finds Jim sitting on the double bed reading from an army manual. Kim closes the door and comes up to him. She smiles. "Did you forget to give me an invitation?"

  Jim closes the manual and stands up. "Honey, I'm sorry. I did forget. I have it right here." He reaches into his pants pocket and withdraws a folded white envelope. He gives her a quick kiss as he hands it to her.

  Kim walks out of the bedroom before she realizes that Jim now wears the civilian clothes he changed into when he first got home. That means he transferred the invitation into those pants. Did he purposely not give it to her so she wouldn’t know about the orientation coffee? Is he worried that his uneducated wife might embarrass him in front of the other officers’ wives?

  Her face feels hot as she shows Sharon the envelope. "Here it is. He did forget to give it to me." Kim sits down again, reaches inside the envelope and removes the invitation.

  "Should we go?" Kim asks.

  "It might be fun," Sharon says. "Besides we're probably expected to go.”

  “What should we wear?" Kim asks.

  SHARON – IV – May 15

  Between 75,000 to 100,000 young people demonstrate peaceably in Washington against the Cambodian incursion ... May 9, 1970

  “Certain social functions have an official aspect and should be considered obligatory.” Mrs. Lieutenant booklet

  As Kim drives, Sharon checks the map, then looks out the window. In the army, it appears, everything, even the houses, are by rank. Here in an area of officers' housing are four-family buildings – for the lieutenants on permanent assignment at Ft. Knox, then the semi-detached homes – for captains and majors, and finally the single-family homes starting with the colonels. When she and Kim reach the large house on a rise above a circular drive, there is no question who lives here.

  Kim pulls into a space at the end of the parked cars. "Wait a minute," she says as she powders her near-perfect nose.

  Sharon sighs. Her nose is near-perfect too, although it has been helped, the kind of help Kim probably can't even imagine.

  "You look beautiful," Sharon says to Kim.

  "You too," Kim says.

  Both women wear sleeveless summer dresses, low heels, and nylons – in spite of the heat. Again, Sharon's dress ends higher above her knees than Kim's. They both carry purses, and in the purses, each has tucked a pair of white gloves.

  "I can't believe you have gloves, too," Sharon said when they discussed this yesterday. "When I was growing up my mother always made me wear them for shopping on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. I don't think most women wear gloves any more."

  "Mine are for wearing to church," Kim said. "Do you think we should wear them to the coffee?"

  "Let's take them in our purses and we can always put them on there. If we wear them and we're wrong, we'll feel ridiculous."

  Now neither woman wears a hat. They talked about this, too. "The only hat I have is a red felt one that a sorority sister brought me from Florence – Italy," Sharon said. "I'd feel funny wearing it."

  "I have a straw hat I wear to church,” Kim said. “I won't wear it if you don't want to wear yours.”

  As they get out of Kim’s car, Sharon says, "I hope we're not making a big mistake with our clothes."

  Kim frowns. "How can they expect us to know what to wear? It's not as if they've told us a thing."

  "Smile," Sharon says, "we're on Candid Camera."

  At the door an attractive woman in her late twenties, several years older than Sharon and Kim and wearing a two-piece seersucker suit and a broad-brimmed hat, greets them. She wears gloves. Sharon and Kim look at each other.

  "Welcome," the woman says. "Please leave your calling cards and pick up your nametags." She indicates the hall table supporting a silver tray and a pyramid of yellow nametags. "Mrs. Brisby, the commanding general's wife, is receiving inside."

  Calling cards? Several white cards are stacked on the silver tray. Sharon shrugs as she picks up her nametag with MRS. GOLD written below the words "ARMOR – The Combat Arm of Decision" and SHARON written under MRS. GOLD. "Illinois" and "AOB" are written in the two corners above the word ARMOR.

  Sharon and Kim stand in the hall pinning on their nametags. "Let's put our gloves on too," Kim whispers. "Good idea," Sharon says.

  As they slide their hands into their gloves a thin man in his 50s wearing fatigues appears from the back of the house. Without even glancing at them he opens the hall closet and takes out a canvas bag, then ducks out the front door.

  "Do you think that's the general himself?" Kim asks.

  "He had one star on his fatigues," Sharon says.

  They walk down the hall and enter a room overflowing with chintz-covered armchairs and couches. There are other older women scattered around among younger women who look to be Sharon and Kim’s age. “The calling cards must be of the wives of officers stationed here at Ft. Knox,” Sharon says to Kim. “The ones who have post housing,” Kim says.

  Sharon indicates the Japanese fans decorating one wall. "He must have done at least one tour in the Orient," Sharon whispers to Kim. There are also Hummel figurines from Germany lining the glass shelves of a cherry wood cabinet. Flowery perfumes and the scent of spring flowers whiff towards them accompanied by waves of chatter.

  Sharon pictures herself back in the first round of sorority rush at MSU, entering house after house filled with strangers whose mandate is to look her over. The strangers must judge whether she is the right caliber for their "organization" while simultaneously she must decide whether she is interested in "joining." Only here at F
t. Knox she is a part of this group whether she wants to be – and still subject to inspection.

  Another woman in her late twenties, this one wearing a purple linen suit, approaches them, glancing at their AOB nametags. "Welcome, Mrs. Gold and Mrs. Benton. I'm Mrs. McDermott. Let me introduce you to Mrs. Brisby." She leads Sharon and Kim towards a gray-haired woman in a pink summer knit suit.

  "Mrs. Brisby, I'd like to introduce Mrs. Gold and Mrs. Benton from the new AOB class."

  Mrs. Brisby smiles. "Good afternoon, ladies. Welcome to Ft. Knox. I hope your stay here is pleasant."

  Mrs. Brisby's voice matches her appearance – gracious and authoritative. Sharon imagines Mrs. Brisby herself commanding a battalion of tanks, ordering them to fire on the enemy.

  "Thank you," Sharon says as Mrs. McDermott sweeps her and Kim towards the refreshment table, their moment of official greeting by the wife of the post commanding general over.

  "Please help yourselves, ladies," Mrs. McDermott says. "The formal part of our program will start shortly." Then she leaves them, scurrying to new women entering the room.

  Sharon and Kim survey the refreshments displayed on a rectangular linen-draped table. "The cookies look good," Kim says. “I think we take off our gloves to eat,” Sharon says.

  After removing their gloves and placing their cookie selection on china plates, they walk over to an unoccupied loveseat.

  A young black woman sits on a wing-backed chair facing the loveseat. Sharon smiles at her and the woman smiles back. Even without looking at her nametag Sharon can tell the woman is the wife of an AOB class member – the woman's stiff posture telegraphs her uncertainty in this setting.

  "I'm Sharon Gold and this is Kim Benton,” Sharon says to her. “Is this your first time at one of these things?"

  The woman smiles. "Yes, we just arrived a few days ago." Her voice is soft. She sounds Southern, like Kim.

 

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