Home Front Lines

by Brenda Sparks Prescott

  A car door slammed on the next street over. The wind roiled in their enclosure and swirled the crackling dead leaves at their feet. A silence grew between them.

  Rosita put her hand in her pocket. “My family thinks you’re worthless, and I get tired of defending you. Now this. Tell me one thing you’ve done for us.”

  Ramón whipped around and stabbed a finger at her. “I’ll tell you.” His lips barely moved. “I killed my brother.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. He wasn’t to be trusted, but Quique trusted him. Carlos did too. Your daughters were at stake. So I drugged him.” He slid down to a sitting position against the wall and bowed his head. “I rolled him over.” He put a hand to his forehead. “Into the lime.” He dropped his hand like a boom lowering.

  “Really.” Rosita’s tone was flat, disbelieving.

  “You don’t believe me?” Ramón looked up at her. Sweat bathed his face.

  “You never said anything.” She withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket and offered it to him. He didn’t respond, so she returned it out of sight. “After we find out what you did to Tomasito, suddenly it was you who did in your brother.” She shook her head. “What’s happened, Ramón? We used to tell each other everything.”

  He stretched both hands to her. “Please forgive me.”

  “My poor, dear one,” she said. “You’ve always taken care of your own, haven’t you? That’s one thing I’ll always love about you.” She knelt and gazed at him for a long time.

  “Rosita, my love.” Again his hands went out to her.

  “I forgive you, but I can no longer trust you.”

  She took the Derringer out of her pocket. It wasn’t very powerful, but it did excellent close work. She laid it on the concrete between them. Ramón furrowed his brow as he glanced from her face, to the pistol, and back again.

  She rose and stepped back. “I’m going to see about dinner. You stay and rest.” She turned and descended the steep stairs into the life of the Montero House.

  Appointment with Mrs. H. 5

  MRS. HEPPLEWHITE’S MAID eventually returned to the front door, ushered Betty Ann and Lucy into the sun room off the library, and indicated a floral couch. Lucy sat, but Betty Ann had never made it into this room when she had worked on Mrs. H.’s dress, so she took a quick look around. In front of the windows facing the backyard, two white wicker chairs faced the couch, their cushions a soft yellow pulled from the couch’s floral pattern. A knitting basket snugged beside one of the chairs with an unfinished baby’s sweater peeking out. This was clearly Mrs. H.’s room.

  A painted demilune cabinet stood against the brick chimney back of the library’s fireplace. On it sat a portrait of Harry in his Marine dress uniform with a silver watch hung from a chain draped over its frame. Betty Ann understood something about the Hepplewhite household from this location of their late son’s photo. In the homes of her friends, a formal portrait of a son in uniform who had given the ultimate sacrifice for his country would have been public property in the living room, a shrine and patriotic statement for all to see.

  Harry’s picture and its watch told a different story, the way she saw it. His death was automatically public property by virtue of his being the son of a base commander. Visitors who mattered already knew about the family’s loss. But the general was the head of a larger family, one that extended off the base in whichever direction his people were deployed. His orders could lead to the loss of whole squadrons or more; his people had to think that he cared about them as if they were his own sons and daughters. The whole base had turned out for Harry’s funeral, yet the general’s personal grief was to remain private, tucked away and ably presided over by Mrs. H. The portrayal of Harry’s military crispness was in sharp contrast with the easy lines of the classical scenes painted on the cabinet’s door, yet this memory of a beloved son fit right into this woman’s world.

  Betty Ann reached out to adjust the position of the picture but stopped when she realized it was angled perfectly for optimal viewing from Mrs. H.’s wicker chair. Mrs. H. entered the room just as Betty Ann returned to the couch. Lucy rose beside her. Mrs. H. wore a lavender day dress and a diamond-shaped gold locket and chatted with her guests as if she had expected them. This surprised Betty Ann, but she figured that Mrs. H., as a Southern lady, was observing the niceties of polite society, much like she imagined Lucifer’s civility as he welcomed his denizens to Hell. Mrs. H. eventually waved for her guests to sit and sat herself in her wicker chair near the windows.

  “Thank you both for your kind sympathy cards. There has been so much to do, I haven’t had a chance to acknowledge them all. You know Harry was so very popular,” Mrs. H. said.

  Betty Ann wondered if she actually remembered their cards or just assumed they had done the right thing.

  The maid brought in a coffee set and served them. Betty Ann and Lucy waited for their host to pick up her cup before they reached for theirs. Mrs. H. took a sip and glanced at Harry’s picture.

  “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” She did not look particularly pleased.

  Betty Ann wished to be anywhere but here, yet she had a job to do. She resolved to do right by Lonnie and Harry and all the other boys in uniform, so she scooched forward on the couch and put her coffee on the table. “Believe me, we would not dream of bothering you at a time like this if we could see any other course of action.”

  “Yes?”

  “Some information has come to our attention. I would rather not say how, but it concerns your son, Harry.”

  “Go on.”

  Betty Ann drew an audible breath and let it out again. “What happened out there. It wasn’t just an accident. Someone gave bad orders. Men died.”

  Silence.

  “Including your son.”

  Silence.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, and believe me, if there were any other way—”

  “How do you know this?” Mrs. H. guided her coffee onto the table, without looking down, while staring at Betty Ann. Her motionless friend might as well have been invisible.

  Betty Ann fumbled in her pocketbook and drew out the scrubbed version of the Japanese translation. She handed it over. As hard as this was for her, and as much as she disliked Mrs. H.’s treatment of her, she couldn’t imagine being in the other woman’s place and having to maintain her composure while a subordinate delivered even more bad news about your son.

  Mrs. H. held the edges of the page, as if it might be contaminated, and read down through its contents. Twice. She looked up with steady, steely eyes. “Where did you get this?”

  “We can’t say,” Lucy said. “But, Mrs. Hepplewhite, we would not be here if we didn’t know it was true.”

  Betty Ann was glad for the cover, as Mrs. H. turned her scrutiny on Lucy.

  “You know how it is. There’s an accident, which is unfortunate, but in recovering someone makes a mistake. That’s unfortunate too.” Lucy paused and shook her head. “But to put the fortune of electronics over the precious lives of our sons. And then to cover it up?” She pounded a fist on her lap. “That’s unforgiveable.” Mrs. H. continued to stare. “In our book, anyway.” She slumped back in the couch.

  Betty Ann was surprised by Lucy’s obvious anger—she had no sons in the military. Of course, her Tony was a few short years from eligibility and the possibility of orders from some idiot officer. Betty Ann patted her hand.

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Mrs. H., I may be reckless, but I’m not stupid.” Betty Ann snapped, proving her first point, at least. “This is no time for games, even for me. And this,” she indicated the letter, “is no joke.”

  Lucy squeezed Betty Ann’s hand.

  Mrs. H. let the paper fall from her fingers onto the table. She rose and went to inspect an ivy topiary on a table near the French doors to the patio. She picked off a few dried leaves and dropped them onto the soil below.

  “My boy is dead,” she said with her back to them. “I
know what people say about me. Maybe you think I would want revenge.” She turned to them. “No amount of revenge can bring my boy back.” She narrowed her eyes. “But we can keep some son of a bitch from killing more of our own people.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Both Lucy and Betty Ann sat up straight.

  “What do you propose to do?” Betty Ann asked.

  Mrs. H. fingered the locket at her throat and turned back to the glass doors. Betty Ann noticed that she hadn’t looked at her son’s picture. Not once. Betty Ann wondered if the locket held her son’s photo or a lock of his hair.

  Mrs. H. watched a gardener push past with a wheelbarrow full of branches. “You have your secrets, I have mine.”

  “As you wish,” Betty Ann said. She rustled as if preparing to leave.

  “Of course, if you want to keep secrets, you shouldn’t tell that pretty little Clara Menendez.”

  “Ma’am?” Betty Ann gave her a pleasantly quizzical look with eyebrows slightly raised. It was the look she used when a cop stopped her for speeding.

  “Little Clara does the Officers’ Wives Club books for me.” Mrs. H.’s mouth pursed into a little smile. “Knowing you, Betty Ann, all I had to do was mention you and her husband in the same sentence and she was sniffling and complaining and spilling all the plans your crowd has hatched.” She glanced between Betty Ann and Lucy. “Why did you invite her? She thinks she’s one of us.”

  In a world divided into black and white, if you were neither, you would want to be on the team that seemed to be winning. Betty Ann knew that including Clara in their scheme had been a bad idea. Sure, she’d contributed intel about the copters, but they could’ve come up with something else. Meanwhile, Mrs. H. claimed herself free of vengeance, but here she was already torturing the bearers of bad news.

  Mrs. H. came back and stood looking down at them. “Did you seriously think your plan wouldn’t be discovered?” She laughed. “I had half a mind to tell the general to move the copters just to watch you all scramble like chickens. In fact—”

  A siren sounded three short blasts.

  Attention!

  A pause.

  The sound came from the tower near the parade grounds. It was loud here, much louder than in their neighborhood to the west of the main base. It reminded Betty Ann of the signals back home in southern Illinois. They lived in town, but her grandparents owned land outside of town where they kept chickens, goats, and a sheep or two. There the signals had been for the volunteer firemen. Her grandfather would stop mid-stride when the signal sounded, then run to the house and his car. He responded every time. You never knew when the blast might be for you. Betty Ann slipped her hand into Lucy’s. Mrs. H. covered the locket at her throat and looked outside.

  Two long blasts, two short. Pause. Repeat.

  Betty Ann let out a sigh. A fire someplace on base, not good news, but better than the cycle of four short blasts that would send them dashing, pell-mell, to fallout shelters, all the while wondering if they would get in.

  Lucy released her hand. They waited for Mrs. H. to speak. The air in the sun room was still, the perfect temperature. Mrs. H. stood motionless at the French doors, her steep nose outlined against the light from outside. The silence lengthened as she held this pose, her face pale.

  “You were saying?” Betty Ann’s words seemed to send ripples through the air, but the waves broke against the shield of silence that surrounded their hostess.

  She and Lucy glanced at each other. In a similar situation, they might smother Mrs. H. in feminine concern, Betty Ann patting and cooing, Lucy fetching a glass of water or sending the maid for a cold compress. But this was the general’s wife, and they sat in her house. She was grieving, yes, but not so much that she couldn’t play her power games. Still, Betty Ann felt sorry for her. There was no larger loss of power than to be genuinely pitied by your underlings.

  “Mrs. Hepplewhite.” Betty Ann shifted as if to rise, which brought Mrs. H. back to life.

  “Yes, quite,” Mrs. H. said. She started back to the seating area but caught sight of the gardener. “Don’t leave yet.”

  She opened the door and stepped out onto the brick patio. The light there, though not direct, was bright enough to wash out her features. She seemed an ordinary woman with an ordinary household to run. She called to the gardener, who set down the wheelbarrow and bowed his head to listen to her. Her guests could hear only the lilt of her voice.

  “Now what?” Lucy asked.

  Betty Ann shrugged and shook her head. “No telling.” She swirled the cooled coffee in her cup.

  The gardener’s dark hair glistened as he nodded and walked away, leaving the wheelbarrow. He disappeared around the back corner of the house as Mrs. H. returned to the sun room. She perched on the other wicker chair facing the couch again and appeared composed. However, she kept up a light tapping with her little finger.

  “I normally wouldn’t do this.” Mrs. H. patted her auburn hair and lowered her voice. “But you have brought me some very valuable information, and I do appreciate that. And I remember you gals did right by me. I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from having the best dress Jackie Kennedy has ever seen on anyone except herself.” She tilted her chin up, lengthened her neck, and pulled her ribs up out of her waist as if she were a prima ballerina. She stared at them with triumph in her tired eyes. On another day, her look may have terrorized. At that moment, though, with certainty stripped away from the world, she just looked ridiculous. She sank back into her waist and her fingers pressed against the crepey skin of her neck. “Besides, I appreciate initiative and loyalty. You two can keep a secret. Not like that Clara.”

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence. But we have work to do.” Betty Ann pointed at the paper. “We’ll leave that with you.” She snapped her purse shut and sat forward on the couch to rise.

  “Wait.” The resonance in Mrs. H.’s voice seemed to stop time itself. It certainly arrested her guests.

  Despite Betty Ann’s shallow breaths and tightening throat, she admired Mrs. H.’s command. That’s a main reason why the general married her, she mused in the instant after that one insistent word.

  Mrs. H. rose and closed the door. She returned to stand in front of her guests. “This is something I haven’t even given our maid.” She pulled two blue cards from her dress pocket. “There’s a fallout shelter. It’s not on the maps. It’s at the rear of the yard behind the Grayson House. I don’t think even your captain knows about it. Anyway, with one of these cards, you can get in with three other people.” She held out the cards, and Betty Ann and Lucy took them.

  FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY

  Special Admittance, Four (4) Persons, 6 Maple Street

  Issued by _______________________________

  “There’s no signature,” Betty Ann said.

  “Oh bother.” Mrs. H. took back the cards and got a pen from the cabinet. She signed both and returned them.

  “This is quite a surprise,” Lucy said. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but why?”

  Mrs. H. backed away and opened the door. She remained beside it, signaling the end of their meeting. “I take care of my people.”

  “But why us of all your people?” Betty Ann asked. Just a few minutes before, she had been torturing them. Now this.

  “You could have kept your mouth shut about Harry. Probably would have been prudent to do so. But you didn’t.” She glanced at Harry’s photo, then swiveled her head to look from one to the other. “I appreciate that.”

  “Thank you. Thank you very much.” Betty Ann thought maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about being exposed, but you could never tell. She stowed her blue card in her bag.

  “Let’s just hope that none of us ever has to use them,” Mrs. H. said.

  Lucy nodded and Betty Ann said, “Amen.”

  Mrs. H. shook their hands as they passed and the maid ushered them to the front door.

  Neither of them spoke. Post-storm winds snatched at their skirts and pushed them ac
ross the road. Betty Ann grappled with the feeling that she had just been cut from the herd. For once, they were among the privileged. Of course, their privilege depended on the mercy of the person at the door. As always. She stuck the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it.

  “Not even her maid. Just think of all the crap that woman has to put up with, and she doesn’t even rate.”

  “No telling if we would actually get in.” Lucy echoed her own thoughts.

  Betty Ann felt the new weight of the blue card in her purse as it lay on the seat beside her. The other wives carried no such burden. Instead, they bore their promises to each other and to their children. Gusts buffeted the car. The snap of the grand American flag and the slap of its tether filled Betty Ann’s heart. She felt lighter.

  “Listen. Anything happens, whoever has the kids tries to get as many of them into the shelter as possible. Otherwise, we stick to the plan.”

  Whatever the coming days would bring, Betty Ann would not face it alone. Neither would Lucy. And whether Mrs. H. wanted them there or not, they also had her back. Betty Ann started the car. They had work to do.

  Mutually Assured Destruction 2

  THE STEW WAS ready and the table set. Rosita stood in the archway to the courtyard. “Come eat dinner.”

  Diego and José continued to argue about baseball as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “Come on in,” she said louder.

  Diego stayed her with a finger as if she had interrupted tense negotiations at the United Nations. “We’ll eat out here.”

  “Don’t be difficult. Your wife has set the table inside. Come on now.” She let the screen door bang. Eventually chairs scraped on the flagstone, and the two men made their way into the dining room.

  The Sisters bunched around Rosita at one end of the table, while their husbands sat on either side of Ramón’s empty chair at the other. The glass doors to the courtyard stood ajar, emitting fresh air and the distant noises of an unsettled city.