Bed & Breakfast

by Lois Battle

  Peatsy’s touch suddenly felt abhorrent. Josie slid her hand out from under Peatsy’s and stared out the window to keep herself from saying, “How dare you speak so knowingly about my husband.” But she knew how Peatsy dared.

  She had known almost from the beginning—at least a decade before she been willing to admit it consciously—that there were other women. One night, soon after they were married, they’d been at a big going-away party. A buddy of Bear’s, in his cups as Bear had been, had been swearing eternal devotion to his girlfriend, and Bear had said—she’d never forget it—“Don’t listen to him, girlie. Just ask yourself: if you knew you might die tomorrow, what would you want to be doing tonight?” The crowd had roared with laughter, and Josie’d laughed too, but she’d thought, “I’d want to be with you. And if I couldn’t be with you, I’d want to be alone to think about you and pray about you.” And she’d actually believed, or had kidded herself into believing, that he felt the same way.

  Over the years she’d shrugged off excuses she didn’t quite believe, and refused to challenge him on explanations that didn’t quite ring true. She’d usually been able to talk herself out of her fits of doubt and jealousy, reasoning that if you were married to a charismatic, highly sexed flying ace who was gone for months on end, a certain amount of insecurity went with the territory. She’d forgiven the flirtations she’d witnessed—easy enough since they were usually initiated by women—and struggled to build her own self-confidence. But sometimes, alone after she’d put the girls to bed, she’d be powerless to put the awful “What if . . . ?” out of her mind. “What if Bear is having . . . a dalliance?” She always used that word because it made the threat seem trivial. A dalliance couldn’t really hurt anything but her ego; besides, she probably wouldn’t know about it. She was sure that she was first in his heart, that he’d never do anything that would directly threaten their marriage. Hadn’t he told her that she was the great love of his life? And didn’t we all survive by putting the dreadful “what ifs?” out of our minds?

  But there was no denying the reality that Christmas he’d called from Okinawa to say that his commanding officer, who happened to be General Gibbs, had canceled his leave. She still didn’t understand how she’d known—had it been his tone of voice, the unnatural pauses in the conversation, the static crackle that made her feel as though he were on another planet?—but she had known, undeniably, that he was lying. Why, she’d sputtered, would Lamar Gibbs (who was, after all, a friend of sorts) cancel his Christmas leave unless there were a military emergency? When would she learn, he’d answered, that a CO was a CO, not a friend? She hadn’t said any more, hadn’t even been able to feel anything. But after she’d hung up. . . .

  That awful fight with Cam! Cam seemed to feel it was Josie’s fault that Bear wasn’t coming home, and her you-can’t-control-me attitude and look of defiance were so much like Bear’s that Josie’d lost all control and slapped her face. But it was she, not Cam, who’d burst into tears. Shaking and ashamed, she’d ordered Cam to her room, then bundled up Lila and Evie and sent them to play at a neighbor’s. She’d gone into the living room, shut the door and drawn the shades, sat on the secondhand chair she’d reupholstered, and put in a call to Bear, dialing the long-distance operator, as one had to in those days. Even though she said it was an emergency, it had taken such a long time for the operator to make the connection that she’d almost calmed down. He was probably just as disappointed as she was, and how could she burden him with the problems of raising kids when he was thousands of miles away? She was ready to say, “Darling, I was so upset I just had to hear your voice again. . . .” But the voice at the other end of the line, Bear’s master sergeant, told her that Captain Tatternall had left base without giving a destination.

  Then she’d done something she knew Bear would never forgive her for: she’d put in a call to his commanding officer. This time, to her surprise, the operator made a direct connection. Josie gave her name to Lamar Gibbs’s secretary and scrambled to think what she would say, but General Gibbs picked up immediately, shocking her even more by saying, “Mrs. Tatternall—Josie, my dear—I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you.” In that high-pitched voice the men all made fun of, he’d asked how she was doing, how the girls were doing, his unprecedented warmth making her feel she was sinking into quicksand. “Now, Josie,” he’d said, after the miserable preliminaries, “you know and I know that men like Captain Tatternall—Bear—are only in their element during a war. Peacetime training bores them. But they have to understand that despite the great service they’ve performed for their country, despite their popularity with the men, they are not exempt from getting with the program.” She murmured assent. “I don’t suppose it will surprise you,” he went on, “to hear that your husband has had a lot of UAs.” (She went blank, then translated UAs as unauthorized absences.) “Apparently Bear has an off-base”—she heard him search for the euphemism—“interest that is consuming a good deal of his time. . .”—an interest? Lightning translation: another woman—“and possibly a good deal of his money. Let me ask you, ma’am . . .”—she was no longer Josie, or even Mrs. Tatternall, she was ma’am as he cut to the chase—“about your recent allotment checks. How much have you been receiving?” There was no point in withholding information; if he didn’t already know, he could find out. “Ah-huh, ah-huh,” he’d said, when she told him, “well . . . I thought so. I’m going to check that out as soon as Captain Tatternall returns to base.” He’d inquired about the girls again, told her she was a fine example of a devoted military wife, said he’d convey her best wishes to Peatsy (though she hadn’t mentioned Peatsy), wished her a merry Christmas—then hung up.

  She’d written to tell Bear that she knew about the other woman. By the time she’d finished writing it, the letter was tear-stained, making it look trashy and melodramatic, but she put it in the mail before she could change her mind.

  A week or so later she’d received a belated Christmas card from Peatsy and Lamar Gibbs, Peatsy’s scrawl telling her that Okinawa was so boring she’d spent the holidays in Tokyo on a shopping spree (“Wait’ll you see the kimonos I bought!”), and a terse P.S., printed in block letters, from Lamar, saying, “Situation under control. Best wishes for the New Year.” She knew neither Bear nor General Gibbs would tell her what had transpired in their confrontation, but she assumed Gibbs had given Bear a proper dressing down and told him to increase her allotment, because a few days afterward she’d gotten her monthly check, with a fifty-dollar increase, from the paymaster’s office.

  She’d written to Bear again, a businesslike letter informing him that she’d received the increase and asking what, if anything, he had in his savings account.

  Bear had called about a week after that, dodging her questions about money and saying that he’d be coming home by the end of the month. And what about “her,” she’d asked? He’d paused, then said in a flat, dismissive voice, “You know that didn’t mean anything. It’s over. There’s nothing to discuss.” And when she’d howled, “Don’t tell me there’s nothing to discuss,” he’d said, “Nobody talks to me like that, girl. Not even you,” and hung up, leaving her screaming, “Who the hell are you! God?” at the living room wall.

  She’d imagined the woman as everything from a young but unexceptional camp follower to a sophisticated beauty, but strangely, the fact that Bear been squandering money pained her even more. She’d believed that she and Bear were partners, making mutual sacrifices to save for the future. When she thought about the times she’d struggled onto buses instead of taking cabs, used Mawmaw’s birthday checks for household necessities, done her own hair instead of going to the beauty parlor, bought beans instead of steak . . . then pictured him paying the rent on a shack-up, or buying a round of drinks for a roomful of strangers . . . her sense of injustice bubbled like lava.

  She’d thought about divorce, but she’d never mentioned it. She had three children to raise. She’d never worked. Where would she go? What would she d
o? The military would guarantee her some money, but not enough. She would have to go home and live with Mawmaw, and be reminded, every day of her life, that she’d made a tragic mistake.

  There had been times when she’d wanted to scream his guilt from the rooftops. He hadn’t just betrayed her. He’d willfully, irretrievably tarnished his own reputation. But no matter how she cursed him in her heart, she couldn’t bring herself to belittle him in front of his daughters. The girls thought he’d hung the moon, and she couldn’t bear to rob them of that illusion.

  When he’d finally come home, it had been the worst period of her life. She’d hoped, against all prior experience and knowledge, that he’d talk to her about what had happened. But of course he hadn’t. (It was only after his death that she’d understood not that he wouldn’t, but that, because of his nature, he simply couldn’t talk to her.) But her trust had been violated in the deepest way. She would never recover. She would never be able to take him back into her bed, let alone her heart. And yet . . .

  The wound had started to heal. The scar remained, but she would never let anyone, even Bear, see it. If she was going to live with him she wasn’t going to reheat his sins for breakfast.

  Habit, necessity, and a mutual concern for their girls, fueled by some still-burning coal of love she’d thought must be dead, had brought them to an unspoken acceptance. After a year, they were almost back on track. She had almost gotten to the point where she could acknowledge her physical desire for him without feeling like a masochist. All marriages suffered storms, she’d told herself. Theirs had been more destructive than most, but there was a certain pride in knowing that they’d weathered it. After such havoc, what could hurt them?

  It had been a New Year’s bash at the Parris Island Officer’s Club. They were sitting at the head table with three other couples, including Peatsy and General Lamar Gibbs. Bear had given her an orchid corsage and, while they were dancing, he’d come as close to an apology as he would ever get, smiling down at her, his eyes moist, saying, “It doesn’t matter if you crash; what matters is getting up and walking away from it.” They’d gone through the worst; their love was strong as steel. That night, she thought, when they got home, she wouldn’t put in her diaphragm. She’d take this one last chance and gamble with fate, and maybe give him the boy-child he’d always wanted.

  When Peatsy, wearing a silver dress that fit her like fish scales, had asked Bear to dance, Josie fiddled with her swizzle stick and smiled at General Gibbs. She tried to talk to Gibbs, but he was so galvanized by the sight of Bear and Peatsy gyrating and bouncing that he barely acknowledged her. When the fast number had finished in a blare of trumpets, the dancers applauded, broke, drifted back to their tables. But Bear and Peatsy stood, inches apart, not talking but waiting, then rolling like quicksilver into one another’s arms as “Mood Indigo” started up. Josie virtually pulled General Gibbs to the dance floor, pressing her breasts (in a strapless outfit she was afraid might fall down) against his medalled chest. Gibbs dipped and twirled her, his mouth creasing at her little jokes, but his eyes continually strayed to Peatsy and Bear, who danced in wordless, unsmiling bliss.

  Dear God, Josie’d thought in panic, what are Bear and Peatsy doing? Peatsy clearly was settling some of her own scores by humiliating Gibbs, but Bear? Didn’t he realize that he was gambling with his career as much as if he and Peatsy had actually stripped and had carnal knowledge on the dance floor? But then she’d understood, as through a glass darkly, that Bear, the foundling boy who hated all authority, was deliberately saying “screw you,” daring General Gibbs to punish him. And she’d known at that very moment that Gibbs was past forgiveness and would oblige. He would block any promotions and make sure that Bear finished his days as a flight instructor, waiting for retirement. Which is what had happened.

  Josie’d accepted more than her usual glass and a half of champagne, and when the New Year was toasted, raised her glass with the rest of them, but she’d been deep in desperate and befuddled thought. Some things, broken, could not be mended. No matter how she loved the man, she must never trust him again. If she stayed with him—and even then she’d known that she would—her wifely duties would only be a pose. She’d have to make her own plans. She’d been silent all the way home. Bear, expansively singing along with Guy Lombardo’s broadcast from Times Square, seemed oblivious. The TV was still on, showing the test pattern, and the coffee table was littered with Coke bottles and a bowl of popcorn, but the girls were all asleep in their beds. She went into the bathroom, took off her makeup, and put in her diaphragm. Bear made love to her passionately, but she felt an emotional distance that was entirely alien to her nature. She knew that she would never be able to abandon herself to him again. Afterward, when he’d fallen asleep, she got up to check on the girls, then went into the bathroom, washed herself carefully, and sank to the little bath mat. And wept.

  She watched Peatsy’s chest rise and fall but she was certain Peatsy wasn’t asleep. I could ask her now, she thought. I could say, “Did you have an affair with my husband, Peatsy? It doesn’t matter anymore. You can tell me now.” But even at this late date she couldn’t rely on Peatsy to tell the truth. And of course she, too, would be lying, because it did really matter. Strange, she’d thought as she stared at the tubes and bottles, the vase of yellow roses, the trees outside the window, all of which looked flat and two-dimensional, that what two people, one of them now dead, might have done alone in a bed forty years ago could still pain her so savagely.

  “But she still seems very tired,” she told Dozier, pulling herself back into the present. “She was sleeping when I left. They’re going to delay surgery until after the holidays. Then they’re going to do that procedure where they put balloons into your veins and blow them up.”

  “Angioplasty,” Cam said.

  “Yes, I think that’s it. And it turns out that Alonzo, that good-looking young foreign man who lives with Peatsy’s son, is a registered nurse, so he’s going to come down here and help while she recuperates.”

  “He’s a nurse,” Dozier asked, his squint into the rearview mirror showing that he thought nursing a gender-specific occupation.

  Cam said, “Walt Whitman was a nurse during the Civil War.”

  Dozier snorted. “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Does it ruffle your feathers because he was gay, a nurse, a Yankee, or a poet?” Cam asked.

  “None of the above. I didn’t even know he was a queer.”

  Cam sighed dramatically. Josie realized that Cam and Dozier were going to have one of the teasing-verging-on-argument discussions that they so enjoyed. “Can’t you say ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’?” Cam asked.

  “I can’t say ‘gay,’ because gay means something else to me. It means happy or full of delight. I don’t take it kindly when people change words on me. It’s like the Negroes. First they want to be called blacks, then when we get used to that, they tell us they’re African Americans. Soon’s we start callin’ ’em that, they’ll want to change it to something else. It’s like you when you were a little kid”—he raised his eyebrows and smiled over at her—“you wanted to pick your own name. Remember that, Josie? When Cam was’bout six years old she insisted that kids ought to be able to pick their own names? For a while there you wanted to be Rosa, then you had us all callin’ you Esmeralda. Lord only knows where you came up with that one.”

  “Actually, I think Esmeralda suits me fine. Language is constantly changing,” Cam said, “you say ‘Negro,’ but your folks would’ve said ‘colored’ without blinking an eye.”

  Dozier considered this, probably even accepted it, but held his ground. “I’m seventy-five years old and it’s too late for me to be giving new definitions to words I’ve been using all my life. And I’ll bet your friends in New York who are so—” Dozier kept his eyes on the road, but Cam could tell from his expression that he’d drawn a blank. He threw a glance at Josie. “PC? PC? What’s that expression mean? Proper conduct?”

  “Uh-uh,�
�� Josie told him. “It means politically correct.”

  “Well, politically correct! That’s something old-line communists tried to be.” His brow puckered in an agony of concentration until he found the thread of his thought. “As I was saying, I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that your New York friends who want everyone to be so politically correct would call me a redneck in a heartbeat—and you know as well as I that I’m no farmer. The only time my neck gets red is when I’m out on my boat, and even then I wear sunscreen.”

  “I know you’re not prejudiced,” Cam said. “I just don’t want you to sound as though you are.”

  “Well, the way I look at it, prejudice is a vagrant opinion without any visible means of support, but I can support my opinions all the way down the line,” Dozier asserted with energy, “And you people—”

  “Have I become ‘you people’ just because I live in New York?”

  “The most prejudiced people are the ones who fancy themselves exempt from prejudice,” Dozier warned.

  “Please. Please,” Josie said, holding up a hand. “Let’s not turn this into an argument.”

  “Mama, you’ve never understood! When people argue they define their positions, they listen, and they change.”

  “Mostly they don’t listen,” Josie said. “And mostly they don’t change. It isn’t just what people say. It’s the way they say it. You start contradicting each other, not because you’re listening to what the other person has to say, but because you don’t like the tone in which he’s saying it.”

  “Well, that’s true enough,” Dozier agreed, thinking about his almost daily feuds with Edna, but, looking at Cam’s expression, he couldn’t resist getting in a last lick. “Now, I always listen, but Cam here, she does get strident when she argues.”