Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel

by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

  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."

  Sharon laughs. "That's supposing we want our husbands to have a 'successful career.' I'm already counting the days until Robert's two years are up."

  Donna looks at Sharon – what she said is rather revealing. Then Donna inclines her head as if in agreement, although her own fears prevent her from thinking much beyond each day.

  "Wendy, you continue," Sharon says.

  "Social customs are cultivated through man's efforts to make his companions comfortable and happy," Wendy reads. "Rules may be learned, but graciousness is developed by living with kind thoughts and consideration for others."

  Donna waves her hand to stop Wendy. "Why don't we skip a few pages? This introduction is too much for me. I like the part on dress." She reads aloud: "Fashion and style change, but the Army wife lives by a few proven rules: her own good judgment and her aptness of applying good taste.

  "Slacks and shorts on the tennis court, or about the house, are fine on a cute slim figure …" Donna pauses. "Don't you love it? 'Cute slim figure'!" Then she goes on, "...but are out of place and usually forbidden at the commissary, post exchange, theater, and public places. Since today's fashions stress women in pants, try to be discreet as to where and when you wear them."

  Donna glances at the others. Kim wears a light blue cotton shift with no sleeves. Sharon has on a flower-print cotton skirt and a white short-sleeve blouse. Wendy wears a stylish two-piece pants outfit. Donna herself has on shorts and a top, but she is in her own apartment.

  Kim takes over: "Sunbathing should be done in your own secluded yard." She turns to Sharon. "Are we going to be in trouble for going to the Officers Club pool?"

  "Trouble with who?" Sharon says.

  Kim smiles, then continues: "Hair curlers belong in the beauty parlor or your own bedroom. Other fads that degrade your position as a lady, and the wife of an Army officer, should be avoided. You are your husband's 'lady,' and are expected to attain the same respect that he does."

  Sharon laughs. "Husband's 'lady.' I love it!"

  "It's kind of nice," Wendy says. "Especially the part about respect."

  "Enough!" Donna says, holding up her hand. "All this makes me really nervous. I'm not sure I can do all this stuff."

  "What stuff do you mean?" Sharon asks.

  Donna clasps her hands in her lap. How to explain? "I just can't think like an officer's wife all the time. If I want to wear slacks to the commissary, I'm going to wear them. I can't always worry whether I'm doing everything right – it will drive me crazy."

  Wendy puts her booklet down on the coffee table. "There aren't so many things for us to do," Wendy says. "It just seems that way when we read all the rules together. One at a time there's not that much. I'm sure you can do it."

  Donna walks to the living room picture window. Outside the trees droop, their branches pointing downward as if divining for water. Here inside the room the air conditioner makes the heat bearable.

  Puerto Rico is hot too. There at lunchtime people rest inside thick walls that block out the heat. Here at lunchtime people race around in the sun attending luncheons, teas, reviews – wearing gloves and hats and “appropriate” dress.

  She turns to the others. "I was part of an enlisted man's family for so long. All this seems overwhelming."

  Wendy nods. "We just have to think about it as any other place that has its rules,” she says. “In school we had to follow the rules even if we didn't agree with them. If we didn't, we got in trouble. Here, the trouble we might get into could make it harder for our husbands. We have to help them out."

  Kim's eyes stare into Donna's. "I spent my whole life following other people's rules. I never had a choice. Now for the first time I can actually choose to do these. I want to feel a part of this. I'm so tired of feeling different, of being an outsider."

  These words surprise Donna. Kim, with her blond hair and rosy complexion, looks like the all-American girl. What is she talking about?

  Sharon jumps into the silence. "I'm sure it's occurred to all of you how different the four of us are," she says, looking from one to the other of them. "I expected everyone in the army to be alike." Is that a flush spreading across Sharon's face Donna wonders? "Like hillbillies or something. I was wrong."

  Wendy takes Donna's arm and leads her back to her chair. "My papa warned me the night before Nelson and I left for Ft. Knox. He said we might have a hard time in the army because … of who we are. Yet so far it's been okay, at least the official army part. Maybe these rules help that."

  Sharon nods. "We all benefit from the recommendation to have 'kind thoughts' and 'consideration for others.'"

  Donna feels the tension leaving her body. "You guys are terrific," she says.

  She pauses to take a sip of Coke, then says: "And now I've got a question I've been wanting to ask. Who's using birth control?"

  Wendy's expression gives nothing away; Sharon smiles; Kim looks horrified. Donna holds up a hand as if to halt what she's said. "What I really mean is – who's planning to start a family soon?"

  Wendy says, "I want to wait until we're back home. I just wouldn't feel right being away from my family at such an important time."

  Donna looks at Sharon next. "I'm waiting until Robert is out of the army. I don't want to be left alone with small children." Donna knows that Sharon might be referring to being left alone stateside while Robert serves an unaccompanied tour, although she probably means being left a widow. That is something even Sharon wouldn't dare say aloud, maybe not even to herself.

  Donna turns to Kim. "What about you, Kim?"

  "I'm ... I'm not sure when I want children."

  Donna smiles. "I'm ready now but Jerry isn't. He wants to wait a couple of years."

  She passes the chips around to the others who sit silently as if waiting for her to end this conversation. "I'm lucky that I've lived all over the place so I know about birth control. You know Maria Perez? The Puerto Rican wife who only speaks Spanish? I asked her about birth control. She doesn't even know what I mean – she's married three months and pregnant already. That's what living among all Catholics does to you."

  No one still says anything. Donna places the bowl back on the table. "Why don't we get down to entertainment committee business?" she says.

  "Wait till you see what I now have planned," Sharon says.

  Wendy laughs. "I just hope
it's not going to get any of us in trouble."

  **

  Later that day Donna pushes her shopping cart through the commissary aisles overflowing with cereal boxes, baby food and juice. As a child the post commissaries seemed to her like fairylands. So many different kinds of food, so much of each kind, so many long, long aisles to roll the cart down. She could have spent hours among the boxes and bottles and jars and cans.

  Up ahead a woman stares at Donna as they approach each other in the aisle. "Donna, Donna Garcia?" the woman asks.

  The wheels of Donna's cart clank to a stop. The woman used her maiden name! Donna stares at the woman in a starched white blouse and pleated navy skirt. An officer's wife Donna thinks, then reminds herself that she's an officer's wife too.

  "I'm Donna Garcia – or I used to be. Donna Lautenberg now.” She smiles at the woman. "I don't recognize you."

  "Sylvia Obermeyer – now I'm Mrs. George Warren – my husband is a sergeant in the 194th. You sat next to me in sixth grade."

  Sixth grade? Donna tries to remember what post that was. Ft. Sill in Oklahoma? She can't remember her class, or her teacher, or anything else about that year. She isn't surprised. The posts where she was happy she can remember quite well; the periods when she felt most like an outsider are black holes.

  “That was a long time ago,” Donna says.

  "Is your husband stationed here? Or are you visiting your parents?" the woman asks.

  "My husband is here at Armor Officers Basic."

  The woman stares at Donna, then says, "Your husband is an officer?"

  "Yes, he is."

  The woman grips her cart and turns it away from Donna. "That's certainly a step up for you." A flush spreads across the woman's face. "Excuse me, I've got to hurry." And with that she disappears down the row of laundry detergents and bathroom tissue.

  Donna grabs her own cart and heads in the opposite direction. She has just remembered Sylvia Obermeyer, also the daughter of an enlisted man – the two of them bullied all year by Jennifer Turner, the daughter of a major. Jennifer would open a magazine and point to a picture of white girls. "Donna," she would say, "none of these girls looks like you. They all have light skin." Or Jennifer would say to her and Sylvia, "It's too bad you both have to walk home all the way to the enlisted men's area. The officers' quarters are so much closer." Whether Jennifer learned her bullying at home or came to it naturally Donna never decided.

  Now Donna laughs aloud. Donna being married to an officer would upset Jennifer's vision of the world, a world in which military rank passes down from generation to generation. Once in a caste always in the same caste.

  Too bad Sylvia hurried away. They could have had lunch together at the Officers Club.

  The cart wheels squeaking on the linoleum seem to ask a question. Donna could take an enlisted man's wife to the Officers Club, couldn't she?

  SHARON – VII – May 26

  Union for National Draft Opposition issues calls for open resistance to Selective Service System ... May 21, 1970

  “For a formal invitation written in the third person your answer should be handwritten on plain white note paper in the third person, the same manner in which it was extended.” Mrs. Lieutenant booklet

  Sharon turns over the two rib steaks sizzling in the broiler. The steaks are part of the treasure trove of kosher meat she and Robert bought in Louisville, and she doesn't want to burn them.

  The lit broiler adds to the heat, which, as usual, the living room air conditioner can't alleviate. She doesn't care. For a change they will have a good dinner.

  Grease splatters her hand as she closes the broiler. She retreats to a chair in the living room in front of the air conditioner.

  With its minimal furniture this apartment seems like a student apartment at MSU. It was to just such an apartment that Robert took her on their first date.

  "You're just like all the girls I know back home in the East," Robert said as he led her into his friend's apartment. Was he insulting her?

  "I mean it as a compliment,” he said. “You know, sophisticated. You don't seem like a Midwesterner."

  He couldn’t know that her secret ambition was not to be a backwater Midwesterner. And she hoped she didn't look like a Midwesterner either. She wore another of her Villager sweater and skirt sets, this one in a pink blend. Classic and comfortable.

  Robert looked good in jeans, a white turtleneck and tweed sport coat. He took a bottle of rum from his back pocket. "I'll mix us rum and Cokes."

  The room's furniture had been shoved aside to provide dancing space for the crush of people barely visible in the dim light. Cigarette smoke and liquor smells flushed the air.

  "Duke of Earl" sung by Gene Chandler spun on the 45 record player. Robert handed her a drink and pulled her down next to him on a battered couch.

  "I'm going to Vietnam," he said.

  She couldn’t believe he said this to her just like that! "How can you fight in such an immoral war?" she said.

  "My father fought in Europe in World War II. His father served in the Jewish Legion in World War I. It's what I have to do."

  Sharon’s eyes darted around the room. No one was close enough to overhear them. “To prove yourself a man to your father?” she said. And without letting him answer, she continued, “How can you support the war machine?"

  "I'm not 'supporting the war machine' – I'm not even saying the war is right. I'm simply doing my patriotic duty for my country."

  The tantalizing smell of broiling steak yanks her back to the present. She could discuss her fears with Kim, yet she won't. That sharing of innermost feelings with friends, that vulnerability, stopped a long time ago. She realized this the summer after seventh grade, one year after her life changed. At the concluding campfire of overnight camp she stood dry eyed as the other girls cried. One boy, a chubby specimen of adolescent insecurity, said, "Sharon's not crying. She's taking it like a man." She didn't tell him she'd already shed a lifetime of tears.

  Robert's key in the lock startles her. "I've got some important news," he says as he comes through the door. Then he swivels towards the kitchenette.

  "Hey, smells like steak,” he says. “Let me change first and sit down for dinner. We'll talk while we're eating."

  Robert strides out of the room before she can say anything. What can the news be? Is it about going to Vietnam?

  Her hands shake as she lifts the steaks out of the broiler, places one onto each plate, and sets the two plates on the table to join the waiting bowls of salad and green beans. Sharon sits down across from Robert as he returns from the bedroom.

  "How would you like to live in Europe for a year?" he says.

  Europe?

  "Can you believe it?" Robert forks a bite of steak into his mouth. Sharon wants to swipe the piece out of his mouth.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He swallows. "It's called voluntary indefinite – vol indef. We agree to sign up for a minimum of at least a third year of active duty, and we're promised to first go to Europe for a year on an accompanied tour – we can take our wives – before they send us on a 'short' tour."

  "A 'short' tour?"

  "Vietnam."

  Three years minimum rather than the now-required two years of active duty! “And you'll still go to Vietnam!"

  "Hear me out," he says, putting down his fork. "First, it's a great opportunity to see Europe. ROTC guys usually don't get a European assignment because an accompanied tour to Europe is supposed to be for three years – it’s for career guys. Second, Nixon has to end the war before the elections in '72 or he won't get reelected. This year in Europe buys us time – the war may be declared over before I have to go."

  Sharon fingers her fork, then looks up at Robert. “You were gung ho on going to Vietnam – just not in infantry. And your branch transfer to military intelligence took care of that.”

  “I was gung ho on being in the army, being as brave as my father, as patriotic. The more time I spend in the arm
y the more I realize I don’t have to get myself killed to prove I’m a man. If I serve in Europe I’ll still have done my duty.”

  There has to be a catch. "Why is the army so generous?"

  "They need more officers. An extra year of active duty from each ROTC guy goes a long way towards helping meet that manpower requirement.”

  Robert hands her a sheet of paper. "And we're invited to attend a meeting – separate meetings for the MI and armor guys – wives too – to hear more about this. Some MI major's flying here from Washington to talk to the MI guys and an armor major’s coming too for the armor guys."

  "Where in Europe would we go?" Sharon asks.

  Robert switches his eyes to the steak. "There are a few small units in Belgium and Italy. The main army posts are in Germany."

  "Germany!"

  Robert looks up. "Now, Sharon, the war's been over for 25 years. We won't see Nazis standing on every corner."

  "Germany!" Sharon shrieks again. "We're going to live in Germany!"

  **

  Sharon tugs down the skirt of her black-and-white seersucker two-piece suit – is it too short? – and enters the designated post building. The voluntary indefinite meeting for the Armor Officers Basic men commissioned in military intelligence will begin in five minutes.

  Germany! Since last night she's been haunted by goose-stepping Nazi soldiers snapping off their "Heil, Hitler" salutes. Then she pictures Jewish men, women and children crammed into sealed boxcars traveling across Europe with no air, no water, no food, and no toilet facilities for days and days – eternity – before reaching the death camps. A rabbi once told her it took the Greek Jews 10 days to reach the death camps in Poland. “The lucky ones died before,” he said.

  Robert waves as she enters the room. She walks over to join him where he sits next to Donna and Jerry, an MI officer like Robert. The meeting for the armor guys will be tomorrow. Robert and Jim have arranged their carpooling schedule so each wife would have her own car to drive to the respective meetings. Wendy and Nelson, an armor officer like Jim, will be at tomorrow's meeting with Kim and Jim.