Home Front Lines

by Brenda Sparks Prescott

  The percolator ceased its husky pops. Coffee was ready and the girls would be in soon. The Hepplewhite commission, added to the orders for ball gowns, would mean many late nights for them all. She also had orders for winter suits, complete with plackets, darts, and pads, for regulars like Mrs. Dupont and Mrs. Neville. Betty Ann poured herself a cup and turned on the radio on the counter. A Maytag commercial gave way to a weather report. A slight chance of rain. It was followed by the ninety-second spot that regularly featured the man with the nasal voice who had all the answers. That day he was demanding that the president send an invasion into Cuba to “get rid of those Ruskies on our back door step.” Sure, Betty Ann thought, that’s easy for you to say from the safety of your soundproof booth. But it’s my husband, and my son, and our friends out there on the planes and ships that will have to go. Jump on Cuba and you touch off Turkey and Berlin and who knows what else. No thanks. She settled with her coffee cup at her worktable. She didn’t allow the girls to have drinks at their stations for fear that a spill would ruin the delicate fabrics they worked, but Betty Ann knew what she was doing.

  She slid the notepaper closer and reviewed her list. Yes, Mrs. H. conjured up the Grayson House, and that always led straight to the captain. Betty Ann thought of her usual flirtations as harmless. Her attraction to the captain was not. Each breach of a rule felt innocuous at first, but together they led to a dangerous territory. She had it under control though, and this new risk only served to recall the thrill of her moments with the captain. She first saw him late in the spring as he jotted notes at a table in the library on base.

  The mustiness of public books mixed not unpleasantly with the sweet-sharp smell of buffed floors. A gridded square of sunshine from the window opposite lit his long, straight lashes and glinted off his pen and the bars on his shoulder. Books about historic homes littered the table. Few scars marred the surface of this study table tucked behind the home and garden stacks.

  It was unusual for such a young Air Force base to have a well-stocked library, complete with an auditorium, in a two-story brick building. This random fortune arose from the installation’s proximity to Washington and the ease with which national and foreign dignitaries could be steered there for both scheduled and unplanned visits. The brass wanted to showcase American might and know-how, hence the rocket and jet monuments on the parade ground, as well as this brick shrine to knowledge imbedded across the street from the movie house.

  “We don’t get many officers in this corner of the library,” Betty Ann had said.

  The captain’s pen stilled as he looked at her. He ran a hand up over his short, blond hair. “I’d never hear the end of it if I brought these books to the office.”

  “I bet,” she said. “Sir,” she added.

  “No need for that.” A hint of a smile and crinkles at the corner of his eyes reinforced his words. “You probably outrank me when it comes to all this.” He waved a hand over the books piled on the table. A gold wedding band flashed in the sunlight.

  “Most men leave decorating to women,” Betty Ann said.

  “So do I usually, but I’m doing something for the general.” On this base, the general was Hepplewhite, the base commander; all other generals had names.

  “Why don’t you ask your wife to help?”

  The captain glanced out the window. “She’s in Nebraska. There’s no room on Officer’s Row right now. She’s waiting until that new development on the north side is finished.”

  “Then maybe I can help. I have lots of experience.”

  He laid down his pen. “Thanks, but I have to keep this quiet.”

  The need for confidentiality allowed Betty Ann to slip into the chair beside him. Her boldness with a white officer surprised her, but not much. “I’m a dressmaker. My clients depend on my discretion.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Master sergeant, loads planes. I don’t bother him with my business affairs.”

  He sat forward and considered her. “He—the general—doesn’t want Mrs. H. to know.”

  “Of course,” she said. She smelled something other than Old Spice, something muskier.

  He covered his mouth with a loose fist and rubbed the black stone of a ring on his bottom lip. He introduced himself, and after she did the same and they shook hands, he paused again, ring to lip. Finally, he told her that the general wanted to pre-empt his wife’s plans to make an old homestead known as the Grayson House into a wives’ club. The general wanted to do an end run by turning it into a VIP club while she was in Germany over the summer with their daughter and new grandson.

  “That old place would be perfect with a little updating,” Betty Ann said. “The dining room could be turned into a large conference room, and you could tear down a wall upstairs and make a smaller meeting area.”

  “Exactly. How do you know the Grayson place so well?”

  She smiled. “Why couldn’t it be for both wives and VIPs?”

  “The men won’t want wives anywhere near it.”

  “That kind of place?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Can’t imagine it’ll get too bad, though.” He capped his pen and flipped his notebook closed. “It’ll be quite a challenge to pull this off before Mrs. H. gets back. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in going out there with me to take a look. Strictly professional, Scout’s honor.” He held up three fingers and grinned.

  The grin said that although he was an officer, he was no scout. That suited Betty Ann just fine. She had an instinct for men. This one wouldn’t get too obnoxious and looking at the house would be fun.

  “Sure,” she said.

  He shut the book and piled it with the others in front of him. “I can’t use regular channels on this. You know Mrs. H.”

  Everyone knew about her far reach. “I have sources Mrs. H. doesn’t know anything about. Guaranteed,” Betty Ann said. Several Negro tradesmen would benefit from this connection.

  At home later that afternoon, Betty Ann gloated over the stipend Captain Bledsoe had offered for her expertise and discretion. She would’ve done it for free, just to spend more time with a man who paid attention to her decorating ideas. She smoothed her hand over a piece of maroon damask she had pulled from the hall closet. Most people would pair gold with it, but she would argue for silver. She tried to tell Ray about the decorating project when he got home, but he was too intent on an early season baseball game to listen. She didn’t mention the captain that first night, and later it just seemed better not to.

  Betty Ann had rules. No white men. No officers. No one she might like as much as Ray. But with Martin, she always followed her favorite rule: exceptions were good for life. The next several weeks were filled with consultations late in the day and necking sessions in the empty rooms of the Grayson House or in his car, hidden behind warehouses in the industrial parks they visited. Then on a summer Friday, her husband called to say that their plans for dinner and a movie were off because he had to work a double shift. She had been looking forward to some adult fun since their youngest boys were going to be out of the house at sleepovers. When Martin called about inspecting the installation of her draperies at the Grayson House, she had no reason not to go. She told him she wouldn’t be free until early evening, which was long after the installers would depart. When Martin spoke again, his voice had dropped a notch. They both knew what the timing meant.

  The early evening sunlight glowed burnt orange in the back of the house, leaving the front parlor cool and dim in its maroon and silver dressing. Her damask sample had given way to a lush velvet chosen by Martin. The dark wood floor had just received a new polish, so they took off their shoes and glided in stocking feet to the front window. Betty Ann ran her hand up the curve of silver fringe and down the soft maroon. She turned to him.

  “Good choice, Captain. Very good choice, sir.”

  Martin answered her with a kiss. He closed the drapes, then left her at the window and pulled a plaid car blanket out of a duffel bag. Like the Boy Scout he
wasn’t, he was prepared. He spread the blanket on the new Oriental rug in front of the fireplace, then pulled out a transistor radio and put it on the mantle. He twirled its small opalescent dial. Snatches of songs and deep, confident voices jumbled out until he settled on Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife.” He reached into his bag one more time and liberated a brown leather portable bar set, which he stood on the coffee table.

  Betty Ann trailed behind him but stopped at the radio. Darin was trying too hard to swing. She rotated the dial, moving down in megahertz.

  “Do you mind?” she asked.

  “Of course not.” Martin knelt before the bar set, which he splayed open like an upright book. He poured amber liquid into two gold-rimmed glasses.

  Betty Ann stopped on Billy Eckstine’s fluid voice singing “My Foolish Heart.” The radio’s dial recalled the mother-of-pearl ground of a silver Nefertiti brooch her mother wore to church. Her mother had always said that white men see only one thing when they look at us.

  What did Martin see when he looked at her? She wanted him to see the woman who had conjured the luxury of this parlor room. Every time a white man sat down in this room, it would be on a chair or a couch she had chosen. Every party girl who gazed out the window while being sweet-talked from behind would caress silver fringe that Betty Ann had sewn onto maroon velvet. She took the glass of bourbon that Martin offered and let herself be kissed by the thin, hard lips that had said “yes” to maroon and silver.

  He would see a woman whose name could never be associated with the success of the Grayson House, but who could christen it with her essence, right now, before it opened. Ray could never have given her this, but would Martin have given it to her without the assumption of the act to come? She slipped away from him. Martin watched her, drink in hand.

  She took a healthy gulp of bourbon. Its warm cascade ran straight down toward her true desire. The rest of her world disappeared into the tingle of her pelvis. She stepped onto the blanket and sank down, first to her knees, then to her hips, with her bare feet tucked beside her. She held Martin’s gaze the whole time. She knew what she was doing.

  Soon, a last rule was about to fall—no going all the way—when Martin shifted his hips away from hers and said, “I can’t do this.”

  Betty Ann didn’t understand. All indications were that he could. “Baby, everything’s okay.”

  “Jesus, I don’t deserve you,” he whispered. He scrunched his eyes closed, as if that were the only way he could speak. “I wouldn’t do this with a white woman. With a lady, like you are. I’m not like that. We’d go to a fine restaurant, check into a fancy hotel.” He smiled, eyes still closed. “Mr. and Mrs. Jones.”

  Betty Ann allowed herself the same fantasy. It was interrupted by the hotel clerk’s lascivious stare that was guaranteed, even if they were actually married. She sat up and surveyed her room: the tufted leather club chairs, the silver leaf frame on the mirror over the fireplace. “This is better than any hotel that would have the two of us.” She clasped her hands behind his neck and drew him close again.

  Betty Ann had another rule: never bring it home. Those floozies that got caught in their own beds were just plain stupid. Not like her.

  She was back in her car, alone, by ten.

  At home, a thorough washing dampened the sensations of her skin, and by eleven she was ready for her own bed. She slipped into the smooth coolness of freshly ironed sheets and fell right to sleep. She awoke momentarily when she turned over to embrace Ray’s solid bulk and her hand fell to the flatness of the empty side of the bed. She pinched one of his pillows under her cheek and went back to sleep.

  BETTY ANN WAS wide awake to the dangers those memories held now that Mrs. H. was coming into her life. She crossed out Grayson House repeatedly until the paper tore, then dropped the pen and picked up the black skirt. The news came on the radio. A double tractor trailer had jackknifed on the new highway circling the District and was snarling traffic. The initial excitement of a White House dress faded, and Betty Ann was left with the weight of possible disaster. She had trained her mind to skip away from the moments of humiliation at the hands of Mrs. H., but in light of the upcoming meeting, she had to revisit them.

  It was just before Labor Day and the Grayson House was finished. On a last visit, Betty Ann and Martin had kicked off their shoes and were smooching on the new sofa in the parlor when they heard voices in the front hall. They jumped up and straightened their clothes but didn’t have time to retrieve their shoes before General Hepplewhite and his wife appeared in the doorway.

  Betty Ann scooped up her clipboard and pencil. “I’ll make a note of that, Captain.”

  General H. touched his wife’s arm. “Honey, this is Bledsoe, the captain I was telling you about.”

  No one introduced Betty Ann. Mrs. H. stared at Bledsoe’s shoeless feet but didn’t broaden her glare to take in Betty Ann’s.

  “We didn’t want to soil the new Oriental,” the captain said.

  Mrs. H. stepped into the room and surveyed its furnishings: the plush curtains, the deep, tufted leather sofa and chairs, the mahogany cabinets, the portraits of early Air Corps heroes, the beveled mirror and its silver-leaf frame over the fireplace. She turned in profile to her husband behind her. “You two men couldn’t have done this well on your own.”

  “Cap’n Bledsoe is very good with these things,” he said.

  “Actually, ma’am, I had a lot of help.” Bledsoe pointed at Betty Ann, but when Hepplewhite shook his head behind his wife’s back, the captain’s hand continued upward into a pass over his brush cut and down to rub the back of his neck.

  Mrs. H. followed the altered gesture. She caressed a brass reading lamp with a gloved hand. “You’re not telling me a little colored gal is responsible for this elegance.”

  Behind her, General H. narrowed his eyes at the captain.

  “No, ma’am,” Captain Bledsoe said.

  She turned her back on the room and said, “Congratulations, Happy. You seem to have won this one.” As she left she said, “Come on, boys, show me the rest.”

  The captain slipped on his shoes and followed the general and his wife without once glancing at Betty Ann. She carefully set the clipboard on the table.

  After that incident and the end of the project, Betty Ann had no real excuse to see the captain again. No useless phone conversations or suggestions of unsavory rendezvous followed. Even so, one day a few weeks later, Martin appeared early in the morning at Betty Ann’s studio, before the girls came in. She leaned against her worktable and he stood near a bare dress form. He touched it lightly on the shoulder and said, “I wish . . .” Betty Ann moved closer. After a moment he took off the onyx ring and slipped it on her index finger. He cupped one of her cheeks and gave her a long, slow kiss on the other. He strode to the door and went out without looking back. She had leaned into the kiss but didn’t follow him to the door. After all, letting him go was for the best.

  Chita

  The Discretion of the Monteros: 3

  MY SISTER LOLA will tell you she’s important because of this or she’s important because of that. Sure, she has the café, but whom did she marry? What is the Santos name in this city? That José is a loyal soldier but he has no imagination. He conducts life by the book, even when everyone knows that the people who write the rules are the last ones to follow them. Not so long ago, his family lived in the fields and no one bothered to learn their last name. Lola saw something in him, though, and convinced Papi that they should wed. I’ve said more than once that José should’ve taken the Montero name. Instead, Lola took the Santos name. Thanks be to God that she had enough sense to train her children to always use Montero Santos and never let anyone shorten it to the nondescript surname of their bland father.

  Of course I was much more sensible than headstrong Lola. I married a La Luz. And our oldest, romantic Rosita, well, her husband was completely useless. Ramón was one of those anemic boys who finished school in the States and returned with nothing m
ore than bad habits. The only way he managed the tannery was through the ready fists of that drunkard brother of his. Theirs was another last name not worth remembering.

  The La Luz dynasty ruled an important aspect of life: mechanics. Their name was synonymous with the best of the sugar mill shops, and my Diego’s grandfather worked on the first cars to land here. He was among the first to cross the island by auto when the trip involved hacking out a path across the mountains. Diego was known for his expertise with any type of engine, but particularly with those in luxury American cars. The Revolution curtailed the imports from the North, but it never diminished the Cuban appetite for magnificent wheels. Diego continued to be in demand. He put in long hours but always came home with hands clean enough for a judge, as he would say. He even cleaned around his fingernails, unlike the men who worked for him.

  If Lola hadn’t married a Santos, everything would be different now. He was the one that brought the Russians into our lives. The day that Lola came to tell me about her enlistment to cook for them, she stayed until the evening birds chattered and squawked. Then she took her officious air away from the Montero House.

  Yes, I, Chita Montero de La Luz, the middle sister, lived in the family home. It had a grand inner court and large guest house; it also was a mishmash of styles that an early sea merchant originally from New England had acquired a taste for on his travels around the world. He had copied the wrap-around front porch and the widow’s walk on the roof of a whaling captain’s house he visited on the island of Nantucket in his native Massachusetts. However, instead of using the North’s wood clapboarding and shale shingles, he covered the house with island stucco and the humps of red Spanish roof tiles.

  Wings flew off behind the staid front of our house and formed the Mediterranean-style courtyard. A windowless wall of the guest house enclosed its fourth side. A fountain in the shape of a lion’s head hung in the center of the wall and was smothered by the grape vines growing along the wall. Legend had it that the original owner kept his mistress in the guest house, which was why its back faced the main house with no access to the courtyard. Family lore claimed that the merchant’s wife, ensconced in what was one of the finest houses in Versalles, didn’t bother to be jealous of anyone she couldn’t see.