Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel

by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

  Now Kim watches Sharon breaststroke the length of the pool.

  Here at Ft. Knox sex isn’t the only thing Kim has to worry about. Although Kim wouldn't admit it to Sharon, she had been a little nervous about going over to Wendy's for the committee meeting – the first time she'd ever been inside a black's home. Kim still remembers what one foster mother yelled when Kim's cleaning hadn't met the woman's perfection standard: "Ya clean just like a nigga!"

  Now perhaps for the first time Kim thinks about Wendy, about a black person, growing up in the South, being treated like scum, the way many of the foster parents treated Kim. It was terrible, just terrible, to be treated like that – no matter what your skin color.

  Kim couldn’t credit herself for helping others less fortunate than herself. Growing up she didn’t know anyone less fortunate than herself and her sister. Only once had Kim been able to help someone else feel better about herself.

  In third grade Kim’s reading partner had been a girl named Linda, an exceedingly lucky girl in Kim’s eyes as she lived with her parents and younger brother. Yet one day the teacher had asked to speak to Kim after school. The teacher said that Linda’s brother had “mental problems” and that Linda wanted to make up to her parents for this by being called Tom. When Kim hadn’t understood what this meant, the teacher had explained that Linda wished to be the boy her parents wanted. The teacher said that the principal felt Linda’s request couldn’t be granted, but perhaps Linda could be called Lynn, a name that could be either for a girl or a boy.

  Would Kim help this name change happen by being the first one to call Linda by the name Lynn? Kim had said yes, surprised that a child living with her parents could feel unwanted.

  Now Kim thought about Patty. The little girl lived with her parents and younger brother. Yet she seemed unhappy – always out of step with what her mother wanted. Was there anything Kim could do for Patty? Or was Patty destined to be another lost soul? Forever feeling inadequate and unloved. Or at least until she married.

  SHARON – XI – June 23

  President Nixon claims allied drive into Cambodia "the most successful operation of this long and difficult war" ... June 3, 1970

  “You may use your cards to accompany gifts (but never Christmas gifts), to issue invitations, to answer invitations, and for messages of thanks or farewell.” Mrs. Lieutenant booklet

  "Three diamonds," Robert says, winning the bid.

  "I'm dummy again,” Sharon says. “Anyone want anything?" Robert, Kim and Jim shake their heads, intent on the bridge hand.

  Sharon opens the refrigerator, letting the cold air blow on her body. Before Kim and Jim arrived, Robert watched the news about the War of Attrition in Israel. The question of American Jews' loyalty to Israel had come up in the background check on Robert necessary for a security clearance for his MI branch transfer request.

  Robert's high school friend Charles had told Robert about when FBI agents doing Robert’s background check questioned Charles' mother, a social-register Southerner. "Would Robert put loyalty to Israel above loyalty to the U.S.?" they asked. Robert's friend didn't know what answer his mother gave – it must have been all right, though, because Robert got the branch transfer. Yet how dare the FBI agents ask such a question? American Jews are Americans first!

  Although Sharon's grandfather had escaped the czar, he still faced anti-Semitism in America. His junk business had first been in a Southern Indiana small town with only two or three other Jewish families. The Klu Klux Klan burned a cross on one family's lawn sometime between the two world wars. The message: No Jews wanted. Her grandparents stayed for a few more years, then moved to another small town 50 miles away. And there her mother as a teenager had an early curfew because, as one of two Jewish families in town and the only one with children, her parents didn't want anyone to think that Jews had a "loose" daughter.

  And Robert's mother in New York City in the early 1940s had a hard time getting an entry-level job because she was Jewish. Sometimes she was told: "We've already hired our one Jew." Other times she was told: "We don't hire Jews."

  While Robert plays out the bridge hand, Sharon replays in her head the phone conversation she had earlier this evening with her parents.

  "What’s new, Sharon?" her mother asked.

  Sharon had glanced over at Robert reading on the couch. "We're trying to make up our mind whether we're going to go voluntary indefinite."

  "What's this 'we' business?'" her father on the extension line said. "You're not in the army, only Robert is."

  Sharon doesn’t answer. Instead she explains the third year commitment required in order to go to Europe first. "Mom, it will postpone Robert going to Vietnam for at least a year. And we really think the war may be over by then."

  "Europe is so far away!"

  Not as far as Vietnam.

  After hanging up the phone, Sharon sat on the couch, recalling how a month after the ROTC Commissioning Parade, Sharon had broken it to her parents that she had fallen in love with someone committed to serving on active army duty.

  "Robert's coming to visit later this summer," Sharon said after a family dinner. She was home for quarter break before going back to MSU for the summer quarter to take a full-time course load besides working full-time at the “State News” as feature editor. This was a plan that would require considerable time manipulation to pull off. But after unexpectedly gaining a whole quarter’s credits by taking two poetry courses at Harvard Summer School the previous summer, she had decided she wanted to graduate a year early.

  The moment had come to tell her parents after Howard had gone out with friends. She first told her parents that she would come home from school for the weekend to be here when he visited. They knew Robert only as the boy she had casually introduced at the sorority house when her parents helped her move her stuff to the apartment she had sublet with other “State News” staffers for the summer. She had said only that she and Robert had become “good friends” in the past few months.

  She hadn’t told her parents much about Robert before because ... because she hadn’t been ready to hear their objections. Yet when she spoke to Robert last night on the phone, right before he left Philadelphia for army officers’ basic training summer camp at Ft. Riley, Kansas, she had impulsively invited him to visit as he passed through Chicago on his way back to MSU. That left her no choice but to tell her parents.

  As briefly as possible she had explained that he would be at Ft. Riley for the next few weeks before coming through Chicago en route to MSU where he would complete a master’s in communications in one year thanks to being dually enrolled his last undergraduate quarter at MSU – and also thanks to a one-year deferment from active duty in the army.

  “Active duty in the army!” her mother said.

  "What kind of thing is that for a nice Jewish boy?" her father asked. "And what are Robert's long-term career goals?" her mother added.

  She could read in their eyes "Can’t you find a nice Jewish doctor to marry?"

  How to explain Robert's army commitment to her parents, especially since Sharon herself was adamantly against the war in Vietnam? On the high school debate team she argued the topic: "How can you sacrifice Americans to save a country for democracy that doesn't have democracy now and may never have it?" Her parents attended the debates where she argued the rightness of this position and they agreed with her points.

  They also were patriotic – her father served in World War II, having been called up after he finished two years of junior college. But he saw no fighting – he spent his entire army service fueling airplanes at a base in Florida. And her parents certainly understood the desire to escape repressive regimes. Except that Vietnam was halfway around the world and had seemingly so little connection to the lives of most Americans.

  Once ass a young child Sharon had begged to be taken to Riverview amusement park during the month of August, a time when prudent mothers would not allow their children to go. August had been the major polio-new-case mon
th and, until Salk polio vaccine became available when Sharon was in elementary school, Riverview earned the distinction of a prime place to contract the virus. Her mother explained the dangers inherent in insisting on fun over safety. Now Sharon realized that falling in love with an army officer during the Vietnam War could be as dangerous a thrill as going to Riverview during polio season.

  "Sharon! You didn’t answer my question about Robert’s long-term plans."

  “I’m not sure what they are. Why don’t you ask him when he’s here?”

  But before the weekend that she met Robert back in Chicago, there were several weeks at the sublet in E. Lansing. And Robert had used the sublet’s address for his forwarding address while he attended Ft. Riley.

  One early evening upon Sharon’s return from the “State News” office she had found in the mail a regular letter-size envelope with the return address of Robert's college apartment. The addressee: LT Kenneth Rogers, APO New York.

  Scrawled across the envelope: Return to Sender. Addressee Deceased.

  The flash flood of sobs produced a runoff that soaked her blouse collar. Robert's last letter to Kenneth – it didn't reach him in time! Robert must never know.

  She flew into the kitchen of the sublet house and reached for the matchbox on the sink counter. She ignited the envelope, then dropped the burning letter into the sink.

  "What's that smell of smoke?" one of the housemates called down from the second floor of the house.

  "I'm burning something."

  "Be careful, Sharon."

  Be careful. You could live your whole life being careful and then be run over by a car on a visit to St. Louis in your old age like her great-grandmother. Or you could volunteer for Vietnam and be killed before your 23rd birthday like Kenneth.

  Or before your 12th.

  **

  Last night Sharon had not told Robert the content of her phone conversation with her parents. She had just said everything was fine in Chicago.

  Now at the club Sharon turns over onto her stomach as Kim slathers on more suntan lotion. It's close to 5 p.m. and the swimming crowd has thinned. Robert and Jim will be coming home late tonight, so she and Kim are staying at the club longer than usual.

  Here she is suntanning next to a Southern Baptist who until a few weeks ago didn't even know one Jew and whose ideas on blacks are positively primitive.

  Sharon flashes to the spring of 1968. In her sorority house bedroom Sharon surveys herself in the full-length mirror, checking her sleeveless lime green gabardine dress and black t-strap heels. Twenty prospective pledges will be here for the sorority rush formal dress event and she's hurrying to be downstairs.

  As she fastens a pearl stud earring she hums along with the radio playing the Seekers' "Georgy Girl." They are singing the words "so fancy free" as an announcer breaks in:

  "We interrupt this program with a news bulletin. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. has been shot and killed today in Memphis as he ...."

  Martin Luther King killed! Sharon freezes, the second pearl stud halfway to her ear.

  The loudspeaker cackles. "Everyone downstairs immediately. We're opening the door to our guests."

  Sharon snaps off the radio, shoves in the second earring, and runs down the stairs. She wills herself to concentrate on the evening, to give these potential pledges her full attention. Then afterwards she glues herself to the sorority's single television set, both hands wadding the moist tissues.

  What did Kim as a white Southerner think when she heard about Martin Luther King? Did she clap, the way some white Southerners reportedly did, or didn't she pay any attention to his death? Sharon doesn't dare ask – they have stayed off controversial topics since Kim reported Jim's reaction to the book “While Six Million Died.”

  "Can we get you both a drink?" a voice above Sharon says.

  Mark Williamson stands there in a tight-fitting bathing suit, water dripping down his legs. Water dripping down his legs. Sharon last saw Mark at the end of the summer after senior year of high school. He stood on the raft in the middle of the quarry, water dripping down his legs, as she said good-bye and dove into the water to swim to shore. She hadn’t looked back.

  When she doesn’t answer Mark says, "This is Wayne Sawyer," gesturing to his friend also in a wet bathing suit.

  The man smiles at Sharon. "Who's your friend?"

  “We're busy," Sharon says. At her side Kim stiffens.

  The men pull up chairs. "It turns out we're stuck here longer than we expected," Mark says, stretching out his legs. "Haven't seen you at the club at night recently."

  "Our husbands have been busy studying,” Sharon says. “We've been home with them."

  The other man says "Your husbands." He looks up. "Might these two be they?"

  Robert and Jim are walking towards them! Robert smiles. Jim's face flushes purple.

  Kim rushes towards him as Mark and his pal quickly evacuate their chairs and head in the opposite direction.

  "Jim," she says, "Jim ...”

  Jim spins away from Kim and strides towards the club building. "I'll see you at home tonight," he says over his shoulder.

  Sharon exhales, steps closer to Robert. "What are you doing here?"

  "We were given a break before the next class. Jim and I came over to grab something to eat."

  Sharon says, "Kim and I will go home right now. Talk to Jim. Tell him he's got it all wrong. Mark came over to say hello to me. Kim didn't even say a word to either man."

  “Who’s Mark?”

  “A guy from my hometown.”

  "I'll see what I can do," Robert say, then follows after Jim.

  Kim shoves suntan lotion, magazines, towels into their swim bags.

  Suddenly Mark’s friend is standing next to them again. The friend leans over Kim. "Honey," he says, "is your husband always this friendly?"

  Kim doesn't look up. Sharon notices Kim’s hands tremble although her eyes remain dry.

  The man bends closer to Kim, his face inches from hers.

  "Good thing your husband didn't have a gun with him."

  **

  The next morning Sharon stands in her kitchenette. If only Kim had a phone! She and Kim didn’t make plans for today and Sharon suspects Kim is hiding in her apartment, unwilling to go anywhere.

  Last night when Robert came home Sharon met him at the door. "What happened? Did Jim calm down? What did he say?"

  "He wouldn't talk about it and he wouldn't let me talk about it."

  Now Sharon grabs the apartment key and heads across the overgrown field behind her building.

  The weeds and long grass snap against her bare legs. The pollens tingle her eyes and nose. Please may Kim be okay, please may Kim be okay.

  At the apartment door Sharon knocks.

  No answer.

  "Kim! Kim! Are you there? It's Sharon."

  The door opens. Kim stands in the doorway, dressed in a cotton bathrobe.

  Sharon says, "I came over to" – make sure you're alive? make sure you're all in one piece? – "to ask you for some sugar. I just ran out."

  Kim gestures for Sharon to enter the apartment. "I don't think I can go anywhere today," Kim says. "I ... I don't feel so well."

  Sharon sits down on the couch. What can she do?

  Before Sharon can figure out what to say, Kim says, "Do you swear not to tell anyone what I'm about to tell you?"

  Sharon nods.

  "You have to swear."

  "I swear."

  "I've never told anyone this." Kim swats a fly off her arm. "Before we met Jim had an affair with a married woman. Now do you see?"

  Regardless of what Sharon may think of this, she knows that many people wouldn't consider Jim's affair such a big deal. Sharon asks, "What does that have to do with you if it was before you and Jim met?"

  Kim clasps her hands in her lap. "Jim is terribly afraid that I'll have an affair with someone."

  "Why would he think you'd have an affair just because he once had one? It's obv
ious how much you love him. The other woman must not have loved her husband."

  "He ... he thinks women are weak. That a woman will just fall for any man who wants her."

  "Does he think that because he started the affair with the married woman?" Sharon asks.

  Kim brushes tangled curls out of her eyes and swats at the fly again. "He says the woman started it. She was a waitress at a drive-in. She asked him to meet her after work. He knew she was married – her husband worked the night shift at the nearby factory."

  “I still don’t understand,” Sharon says.

  Kim stands up. "Could you wait a minute? I'd like to show you something."

  Sharon puzzles the significance of Kim's story while Kim walks towards the bedroom. What is Kim really saying?

  Minutes later Kim returns wearing navy blue slacks and a flower-print blouse, her hair combed. She holds a frame out to Sharon.

  Sharon takes the cheap metal frame in her hands. There is no glass over the picture.

  "These were my parents."

  Sharon knows that Kim's farmer parents were killed in a car accident, knows that the only family Kim has is a younger sister back home. That's all she knows.

  What can she say? Looking at a picture of a man and woman who would not live to see their children grow up, who would not know whether their farm would ever provide a decent living, who would not know the name of the elected president every four years since they died. Who would not know about the Vietnam War.

  "There’s a family resemblance,” Sharon says. “Do you have a photo of your sister too?"

  Kim takes back the frame and leaves the room again, returning with an unframed school photo. "This is her senior year picture. We do look alike."

  "She's as pretty as you are." Two spots of pink dab Kim's cheeks.

  Sharon hands the picture back. "Thanks for showing me these pictures."