Home Front Lines

by Brenda Sparks Prescott

  He looked at Lucy, who hadn’t said anything. “What do you think?” he asked.

  She gazed at the beer clock on the wall. He didn’t know if she were sliding down the cool, clear water that trickled mechanically in the clock’s mountain scene, or if she were wishing that the second hand would sweep faster around the backlit face. She was a good one, but too quiet for Ray. He bet Sonny found her perfect, though, with her narrow face, her smooth charcoal-dark skin, and her track star thighs that did more talking than her mouth ever would.

  Lucy brought her gaze back to the dinner table. “Let’s have a dinner party.”

  “Who’ll cook?” Sonny asked.

  “C’mon. Let’s dance. More people, more fun.” Betty Ann pouted. Most times that was all she needed to do to get her way. Not this time, not with maroon velvet curtains shrouding Ray’s mind.

  “Dinner party would be okay.” Ray picked up his glass to signal another drink to the waitress, then circled it to order another round. “We can have it here. Four, five couples? I could cover that. It’ll be the first of the month—I’ll be flush.”

  Their waitress arrived with a tray full of their main courses. Sonny leaned back to let her slide his steak, cooked rare with onion rings, in front of him. “Of course we’ll help pay.”

  “Then we can have ten or twelve couples,” Betty Ann said. “First Saturday in October.”

  Lucy sent a look to her husband, one that said, “She’s doing it again.” Ray caught it, but Betty Ann was busy guiding her plate of roast beef to a safe landing. She was roping them in, assuming they wanted to spend that much on a party just because it was for her. He used to just accept that was her way. Now he was embarrassed by it. He didn’t know what he was going to say until he opened his mouth.

  “That many people, maybe I should see if Ham could slip us into the Grayson House.”

  Sonny swallowed a mouthful of food. “Ham’s good, but no way José. It would take special dispensation from the pope before a bunch of us would be allowed to party there.”

  Betty Ann kept her gaze on her plate a second too long before looking up as the waitress handed her empty tray to a passing bus boy and continued on to the next table.

  “You ever been there?” Lucy asked.

  “Just once, when Ham was in his cups.” He watched his wife, expecting her to play innocent by asking him what it was like, but she was better than that.

  “How many times has she said it?” she asked.

  She was very good, indeed. The dessert special was Nuclear Pie, but the waitress kept saying “nu-cu-lar.”

  “Four,” he said, smiling despite himself.

  Lucy doctored her baked potato without looking up. “How many times has who said what?”

  She missed Ray’s glance at the sharp-boned waitress in the lime-green uniform, but Sonny caught it. He leaned back to listen. “Five,” they said together. Sonny was a good guy, he knew, even if he didn’t know everything.

  Lucy finally looked up. “Six?” she said. Ray felt a distant affection for her. She wanted to play, even if she didn’t really care what the rules were. She made up her own; that was the artist in her.

  “Wait a minute. What about the Series?” Betty Ann asked. She had lost birthday celebrations to the World Series before. Sometimes she won. She was batting average so far.

  Ray felt the weight of the game tickets press against his chest, even though they were tucked in the jacket hung on his office chair. “They won’t have a Saturday game early in the Series,” he lied. “I promise.” He was good too.

  THE MEN DISCUSSED what they could tell the girls about the situation in Cuba. Not every detail made it into the newspaper. Ray had a map of all of the air raid shelters. Knew exactly how many minutes it would take his family to get to the nearest one. Still, they didn’t want their wives to worry. Meanwhile, amidst the quiet clamor on base, his wife worked with the situation to plan her birthday dinner at the NCO Club. She and Lucy invited Mac and Dorothy, Ted and Gladys, John and Debbie, Todd and Shirley, and the Wilsons. They’d take over the back end of the main room—cozy but still in on the action. Ray didn’t stop her.

  The week before the big event, Ray and Betty Ann finished the day by watching The Late Show. As usual, he slouched in the recliner and Betty Ann lounged on the couch, her feet tucked beneath her. She had just finished hemming one of her own skirts. Ray thought he would face the Grayson House situation head on, would bring it up calmly and give his wife a chance to set him straight. He sustained this image of himself and his wife right up until he lowered the sound on the television and slipped the tickets onto the coffee table in front of her. She looked at them, flicked a glance at him, and went back to her sewing.

  “We’ll be gone Saturday night.”

  Betty Ann brought the new hem up closer to her eyes. Suddenly she ripped it apart. “How do you get to go to the World Series with all of this other”—she waved the needle around, clearly searching for a word—“commotion going on? Is this what you call combat readiness?”

  “He finagled it so it’s part of our duty.”

  “Your patriotic duty to uphold American institutions or your duty-duty.”

  “We’re inspecting a base or something.”

  “Jesus, God, I’m glad he’s on our side.” She folded the skirt and slipped the needle and thread into her sewing basket. She carried her glass into the kitchen. Sid Caesar came on the TV, and though the sound was muted, Ray smiled at his grin and not so innocent eyes.

  Betty Ann reappeared at the corner of the dining room. “How long have you known about this?”

  Before he could land on an answer, one that wouldn’t break them apart, she crossed in front of the TV and stopped at the entrance to the hallway.

  “You owe me,” she said.

  He owed her nothing. “Since the Grayson House.” There, he had said it. He half expected the lights to flicker or the floor to drop away. Or at the very least for his wife to catch her breath.

  “Oh.” She came back into the room far enough to pick up her sewing basket. She clasped the handles and shielded herself with her folded arms. She turned toward the TV but didn’t seem to be registering the men sitting on the talk show set. “What do you want to do?” Not defiant, not contrite, seemingly relaxed except for her grip on the basket. A stranger might have thought she was waiting for a bus rather than to hear the fate of her marriage.

  Ray remembered the first time he saw her and how much he knew about her from the set of her shoulders. He realized he knew this moment would be in the future, and maybe not even just once. That was the time to make a decision to walk away, not now. Guys always said they wanted to know, but for what? As long as this thing lay dormant, they could continue on. Not exactly the same way, but also not as shattered pieces.

  “You owe me,” he said.

  She relaxed her grip and settled her shoulders, the way she had the day they first met. But this time, he had chosen her.

  “Enjoy the game,” she said.

  Betty Ann turned and went up the hall. Ray wondered what rhythms had just changed. He had time to discover them. He was a pattern man, he would figure this out. He turned up the sound on the TV.

  The Man with the Spanish Shoes 3

  THE NEW MOON came and went without the disappearance of Ramón’s daughters. He heard nothing about the preparations for what he hoped would be a temporary separation. During the day everything seemed normal, but Rosita was cold to him at night. She either slept in Margo’s bed all night, to the satisfaction of their youngest, or rolled to the edge of their bed with her back to him. As the moon waxed to a quarter full, Rosita asked him to withdraw a large sum of cash from the bank. Although most of the money came from her family, the bank officials would question a woman acting without her husband’s approval. He did as Rosita asked.

  At the end of that week, Ramón and Rosita hosted the quinceañera for Virginia at the family’s beach house. Everyone was there, including Carlos Figueroa. Guiller
mo also attended, and even Guillermo’s ex-wife and their two kids were welcomed. Ramón’s girls flocked around Guillermo as soon as he arrived. He was an alluring uncle with his flaunting of convention and reputation for late nights out. He often had something for the kids, dispensing gifts such as firecrackers and small, soft leather pouches he made from the trim of hides at work. Soon a horde of kids piled into his Chevy for a ride along the beach.

  While they were gone, Ramón smoked with the other men in rocking chairs on the veranda of the big house. The family’s original cabin still stood at the bottom of the hill, but as the Monteros prospered in tanneries and shoe factories, they had built a grand two-story house with tall, shuttered windows and a wraparound porch at the top of a bluff. Set back from the shore, it caught the fresh ocean breezes but was protected from the full force of northern storms. For years the family had used it as a vacation house, but recently the older Monteros had to move in to keep it from appropriation by the officials (for the People, of course). On the porch, Carlos’s night business was an open secret among the men, but even within the safety of the Montero property lines, no one spoke of it directly.

  Ramón realized that he and Carlos were the only two men at the gathering who knew about Lola’s encounter with the missiles and the Sisters’ plans to send away their children. He looked around the veranda at faces wrinkled and smooth, light and dark, and wished he could somehow prepare this extended brotherhood for the pending separations. If he breathed one word, though, the men’s wrath would be enough to scrub the plans, at the very least. He couldn’t be the cause of a delay or even a cancellation. He would remain silent.

  Chita, the hairdresser with the quick mouth, swished through the screen door and onto the veranda. Her hair was piled high on her head and her many silver bracelets jangled. She picked up her husband’s glass, which needed a refill. He smiled at her, eyes trusting.

  “Come around back,” she said to the men. “The table is set up in the garden.”

  “About time,” someone said, and a laugh rippled through the group. The men got up, leaving their empty glasses among the chairs. Someone’s child would be sent to collect them later. They ambled in twos and threes through the house or down the stairs and around on the path. Ramón leaned against the railing to finish his drink and cigarette. He watched Guillermo’s Chevy return along the beach road as it splashed through the spray of high tide or disappeared behind rises in the land.

  Carlos stopped beside Ramón and followed his gaze. “Guillermo needs to fix that junky car,” he said.

  Ramón had said that very thing to his brother, but Carlos was only a relative by circumstance, and even though Ramón now suspected his brother’s disparaging reports on him, he still was not one to agree with too quickly. “It runs all right.”

  “Sure,” Carlos said with an easy shrug. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. I’m looking for a man who’s available for some night work and knows the shoreline around here. Selena and Rosita said to ask you. Interested?”

  “Any travel involved?”

  “No.” Carlos shook his head with vigor. “Nothing like that.” He glanced at Ramón, as if to judge how much he could say to the Velvet Enforcer. “Just some signaling. That’s all.”

  The lives of Ramón’s daughters would depend on the choice of the right collaborator, but he wasn’t supposed to know that. He looked back at the vacated chairs guarded by empty glasses. The children’s disappearance would blindside the other fathers.

  “After curfew?”

  Carlos nodded.

  “You ask a lot, my friend.”

  “Not so much,” Carlos said. “A few hours, a man with balls, and a good story for the patrols.”

  At times like this Ramón tried to put himself in Quique’s shoes. His friend would’ve thought this tame for himself, but would’ve cautioned Ramón. “Careful,” he had said more than once. “You’re not made for excitement.” Right before Ramón’s wedding ceremony, Quique had stopped him when he blindly walked from the church and had propped him up near the altar until Rosita’s beautiful glow drew him to stand unassisted.

  “I wish I could, compañero,” Ramón said. “But a man in my position . . .” He traded on his status in the CDR.

  “Of course.”

  Ramón clapped the other man on the shoulder and gave him a rueful smile. “No hard feelings?”

  “No, no problem.”

  Guillermo’s Chevy topped the drive in front of the house.

  “Come on,” Carlos said. “We’d better get to the table before those hungry kids wolf down all the food.”

  Later, in the deepening night, after the salmon and the cake and the toasts and the speeches, and just as the mosquitoes began to bite in earnest, Ramón took some empty baskets and clean plates out to their car parked in the field next to the house. Rosita and the girls were staying out at the house for the night, but he had to get back to the city for a Sunday morning shift. As he returned, he spied his brother and Carlos conferring under a tree at the far corner of the yard. They finished with a handshake and Guillermo swaggered back toward the house as Ramón took a seat on the porch stairs. Guillermo claimed he despised Carlos, but here he was whispering and shaking hands with him. As his brother neared, Ramon said, “I thought you hated him. Carlos.”

  “Hermanito, Matanzans too often let feelings get in the way of business.” He winked, scrunching the entire right side of his face, and went into the house.

  Ramón returned his attention to Carlos, who lingered under the tree, and wondered anew about his brother’s wild claims. Would the Sisters trust him if all the stories were true? Carlos finished his cigarette and flicked it away. The curve of its red tip disappeared down the hill. He strolled back toward the house, and when he reached the stairs, Ramón asked, “Did you find what you need?”

  “Yeah, even more than I had hoped.” He leaned closer. “An experienced man.”

  “Good,” Ramón said. Carlos continued into the house.

  Ramón should have felt relief at his own brother’s part in his children’s planned escape, but Guillermo wouldn’t know that children of his own blood would be in the boat. Even if he did, would it matter to him? He always protected his own, but too often that meant only his own skin. Fear shot up through Ramón and pressed behind his eyes and into his temples. Something must be done.

  Rosita came out and sat beside him on the steps. “You should be going.”

  “Yes.”

  “I just spoke with Carlos.”

  He could feel the film of damp air between them. Could he tell her about Guillermo’s shoes? “About that—”

  “Everything’s fixed,” she said firmly. “Nothing for you to do.”

  They used to tell each other everything. “Of course.” He rubbed his forehead.

  “Come say goodbye to your daughters.”

  “I already told them I’m going.”

  She stood up. “Come kiss them.”

  He smoothed his hair back with both hands, stood with a squint against the pressure behind his eyes, and followed her into the house. Children sprawled around the living room and parlor, many of them dozing after the excitement of the day. Virginia reclined among several cousins on a sofa in the living room.

  “Say goodbye to your father,” Rosita said.

  “Bye, Papa.” His daughter yawned. He pulled her up and hugged her, trying to transfer strength to the woman she would become. She groaned but didn’t resist his embrace. When he let her go, she flopped down again, wiggling to regain her place on the sofa. He found his other two among a tangle of arms and legs and pillows on the parlor rug. They were fast asleep. He wanted to wake them, to see their bright eyes again, but couldn’t. He squatted and kissed them. Surely not for the last time.

  He rubbed his eyes as he listened to the slow breaths and soft sighs of the children around him. Adult voices and laughter washed in from the back rooms. Guillermo’s rumble punched through the convivial sounds. He must be stopp
ed.

  That night Ramón dreamed of the Spanish shoes. They grew in size as they slid toward each other on the slippery tannery floor. When they met, they sprouted human arms and shook hands. As they touched, the left shoe palmed a folded piece of paper to the right. The right shoe lifted money from under its tongue and, again in a handshake, passed it to the left.

  Ramón woke with a chill in the hot morning. Quique had trusted Guillermo as he would a brother, and look what happened to him. Now Carlos trusted Guillermo. Ramón bathed but couldn’t wash those handshakes from his mind. He could warn Rosita not to send the girls, but that wouldn’t stop his brother’s betrayals, and the next one might be of someone else Ramón cared about. Or he could tell Carlos, who certainly had friends who took care of traitors. That’s what he would do.

  He paused in the front room. A photo of Rosita on their wedding day gazed past his shoulder at the man he could have been. He went on to the kitchen and brewed a cup of coffee. He popped holes in a rare can of condensed milk as he thought back to the last time he sat with Quique at his house, smoking cigars. Ramón had fretted about betrayals, but Quique wouldn’t speak of them. People do what they must, he said. Not everyone shared his view. Ramón had agreed when it came to Tomasito, although he had tried his best to cushion his brother-in-law’s exile. Now he stewed over the tortures men like Carlos reserved for rats. Did he want to leave his brother to such a nasty fate? Did he want to run away like Guillermo had on the day of the fire? No.

  Guillermo was his brother. He was Ramón’s responsibility.

  He tried to eat biscuits as he sipped his coffee. He was not a man of action, but he was a man of feeling. He forced himself to see his girls in the escape boat on the murky waves. He focused his gaze on the little ones’ eyes as the searchlight of a government boat swept over them. That was enough.

  He retrieved a packet of Rosita’s sleeping potion from the bathroom. On the way back to the kitchen, he raised the packet for her portrait to see. “This will make me a man,” he said aloud. He continued into the kitchen.