Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel

by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

  "I'm Anne Grossman and I live next door. I've come to say hi and invite you over."

  Grossman can be a Jewish name, but Sharon doesn't expect to find many Jews down here. Is Anne Grossman Jewish? And is that what the apartment owner meant about them getting together with these neighbors?

  "I'm Sharon Gold."

  The woman smiles even wider. "My husband Michael will be home soon. Why don't you and your husband come over around 8? We can watch tv together."

  Watch tv together? Is this army code for some other activity or does this woman really mean it? In either case Sharon wants to meet people.

  "We'll do that. My husband's name is Robert," Sharon adds.

  "We'll see you and Robert at 8 then."

  As Sharon closes the door behind Anne, Robert comes out of the bathroom. "Did I hear voices?"

  "We've just been invited over at 8 this evening by our next-door neighbors. They might be Jewish."

  Robert smiles. "Don't bet on it. Anyway, come on, let's go to the post. We just have time to get your dependent's ID card before the office closes for the day."

  She is about to officially become an officer's wife.

  **

  They make tuna sandwiches for their first dinner in their new apartment, having stopped by a grocery store on Dixie Highway on the way back from the post. The army dependent ID she got today can't be used at the army commissary until Robert officially goes on active duty May 8th.

  After dinner Robert says, "And just don't blabber away. You have to be careful what you say, particularly about Vietnam."

  "What do you think I'm going to say? That I'm against the war? That I don't want you to go there?"

  He kisses her. "Just remember we're playing by a different set of rules now. And since we're the new kids on the block, we'd better keep our mouths shut."

  She straightens her short skirt and checks her blouse in the mirror. She has on a skirt because perhaps it is incorrect to wear pants when making a social call. She hasn't put on nylons with her sandals. Too hot.

  A second after Sharon and Robert knock, Michael Grossman opens the door and invites them in. Sharon suspects that, even with the television blaring, these neighbors can hear well enough through the thin walls to know when she and Robert left their apartment. Now neither Anne nor Michael turns the television off or the volume down.

  Of medium height with dark hair and dark eyes, Michael looks as if he could be Jewish. He gestures to the television encased in its own mahogany cabinet.

  "Isn't it a beauty?" Michael says. "Everyone in the complex loves it."

  The television flaunts a big screen – probably the biggest she's ever seen.

  "Did you bring it from home?" Robert asks.

  "Absolutely!" Anne says. "We told the army it had to be shipped down here. We didn't care what else they shipped. The television had to come."

  Sharon stares at the television. She hates watching the news from Vietnam roll across the screen: The helmeted soldiers in their splotched fatigues carrying their dead and dying comrades in litters, running for helicopters that just as likely won't make it to a field hospital in time. The images followed by the usual announcements: How many have died today in Vietnam. What new battle has brought the death toll of Americans even higher.

  How can these people want to see the battle scenes on such a large screen, making the figures even more lifelike? Are they really that removed from reality?

  She glances at Robert and remembers his warning. She says, "We didn't ship anything. We didn't know the army would ship anything for us."

  Anne and Michael stare at them as if they are children. "Of course they have to ship some things. Didn't you find out what you were entitled to?"

  Sharon and Robert look at each other, then back at their hosts. They say no in unison. Their hosts' facial expressions clearly say what they think of such imbecilic behavior.

  "You're Jewish, aren't you?" Anne says. When they don't answer immediately, she goes on, "Michael is Jewish, I'm Catholic."

  What can possibly be a courteous response to this admission? Sharon doesn't approve of "mixed marriages." Her parents always told her and Howard that they had to socialize with and marry Jews. What shall she say now to Anne? Michael saves her from replying.

  He turns to Robert and says, "I'm working on a medical discharge. I have some pulled tendons in my right knee – I figure if I play this right, I can get out of the army now."

  Not have to go to Vietnam is what he means, Sharon knows. She watches Robert's face. His expression doesn't change and he says nothing.

  Michael now turns to Sharon, "What's your favorite at this time of night?"

  It takes a moment to realize he means television program.

  Two hours later Sharon and Robert lay naked under the sheets, having survived watching Anne and Michael’s favorite television programs.

  "Robert, shhh. They can probably hear every sound through the wall."

  The bed creaks, and the headboard pushes up against the wall – only thin plasterboard separates them from the headboard of Anne and Michael's mirror-image bed next door.

  "One more state we've done it in," Robert says.

  His hands tiptoe across her breasts. She forgets about the neighbors – and their giant television.

  KIM – II – May 6

  Governor Reagan closes down entire California university and college system in effort to cool student tempers ... May 6, 1970

  “Play the game according to the rules and do not try to change them.” Mrs. Lieutenant booklet

  Kim unpacks the black-and-white photo in its battered metal frame, placing it on the small table next to the bed in the furnished apartment. The uneven table legs cause the picture to slant to one side, making the man standing against the wooden frame house seem shorter than the woman next to him, her hand resting on his arm.

  The first time Jim saw the picture he offered to buy her a new frame. Kim refused, saying she liked the old frame. She lied. She hated the poor frame, hated the thought that this was all that she had. Yet she can't give up any part of the only thing she'd ever been given as a young child just for herself.

  Jim comes into the room with a carrying case. He takes the gun from the case and places it in the nightstand drawer. "We're all set now," he says.

  Kim slides Squeaky in his cage into the closet, leaving the door open a crack for air. Best to keep Squeaky out of Jim's sight. He sometimes accuses her of paying more attention to the pet rat than to him.

  Then she avoids Jim’s eyes and instead speaks to the photo. "Why can't we get a phone?"

  Jim sits down on the bed and pulls her to him. "Honey, we've been through this already. It's only for a few weeks and we can save the money. Who are we going to call except my parents and your sister? And we can call them from a pay phone every Sunday."

  She says nothing. They were lucky to get this apartment – nicer than the student housing apartment they had. This is the first one they saw up here, and they took it immediately.

  "Can I take the car to the store? I need some more things."

  "Just come right back."

  Kim takes her purse off the bed and leaves the apartment. She wasn't sure Jim would let her go by herself. He might have thought she didn't yet know her way around. When they had first married and lived in student housing, he worried she'd get lost on campus. He drove her almost everywhere she wanted to go rather than let her walk or take the bus.

  Now she noses the Ford into a place alongside an old Chevy in front of the little store up the road from the apartment. She'll get some ingredients to make sugar cookies. This should please Jim.

  Two clerks stand behind a counter covered with items for sale. A man in olive green fatigues and combat boots faces the two clerks.

  "Where can I find the baking items?" she asks the older of the two clerks. He points to the far corner along the street side of the store.

  The soldier turns toward her. "Honey, I could sure help you find the sugar
."

  Kim ignores him as she walks toward the baking goods shelf with the soldier trailing behind her.

  "Hey, honey," he says, "I'm talking to you."

  She takes a small bag of flour and a box of sugar off the shelf along with a can of baking powder. She has salt, vanilla and butter at the apartment.

  Although he has said nothing more, Kim can hear the man’s footsteps behind her as she returns to the counter.

  The older clerk is no longer there. She hands her packages to the younger man. He smiles at her. There is something not quite right about his eyes and the way he moves sort of slow. When he asks her if this is all, his voice sounds slurred.

  The soldier bumps against her. "Excuse me, mam," he says. "I'm just trying to be friendly." His breath smells of beer.

  She doesn't answer. The clerk says, "She don't want to be bothered. Go away." He makes shooing motions with his hands.

  "No one tells me to go away!"

  "Go away. Go away," the clerk says.

  Kim stuffs her hand into her purse to find some money and leave. But the soldier runs out the front door. She now counts out the exact amount, smiles at the clerk, and says “thank you.” At that moment something explodes behind her!

  She jumps, then swivels towards the bang. The soldier stands in the doorway, a rifle in his hands. He whirls and runs out. Kim turns back toward the counter as the clerk moans and slumps over. A circle of red slowly balloons across the counter, mixing with the candy and gum lined up in neat rows.

  She screams and screams! From somewhere the older clerk appears. He looks at her, then at the other clerk. Then he screams too. "Jesus Christ! He killed Marvin!"

  Kim sinks down onto the floor and rocks back and forth on her knees. The older clerk explains, "Marvin was harmless – just a bit touched in the head. He didn't mean nothing." She keeps rocking.

  The clerk says, "I have to call the MPs. It won't be that hard to find the guy. His name was on his fatigues. You'll just have to wait to give a statement, then you can go home."

  "No, no!" She jumps up and runs out the door, clutching the grocery bag to her chest. She drives off as the balloon of blood spreads itself farther and farther in front of her eyes.

  She can't believe what has happened. It is like a movie, or maybe the news on television. What will she tell Jim? He'll be able to tell she's upset, that something has happened. He'll think the worst if she says nothing.

  She'll tell him ... the truth, someone shot the clerk. She won't tell him why, won't say the soldier had been pestering her, the clerk had tried to protect her, that she's responsible for his death.

  She parks the car in front of their apartment and bends her head over the steering wheel.

  The first stabs of a migraine jab above her eyes.

  **

  She must go in. She has sat here too long. Jim could come out of the apartment any minute looking for her.

  She opens the apartment door and puts the grocery bag down on the table. "What took so long?" Jim says.

  Then he must notice her tear-streaked face because he flings himself off the couch. "Did someone mess with you? Who did it? I'll kill him." He turns towards the bedroom where the gun is as she screams, "No, no! Sit down and I'll tell you!"

  She clasps her hands together. "The clerk at the store was killed by a soldier. The soldier just shot the clerk."

  "While you were there?"

  She nods, staring at her hands.

  "Oh, honey, it must have been terrible for you,” he says. He jumps up and hugs her. “Some of these guys, they get crazy, all that killing they see in Vietnam, makes them do crazy things. “ He nods his head as if agreeing with himself that this happens.

  "Besides, even down home people do go crazy with their guns," he says. "Happens all the time. Just sorry you had to be there." He asks no other questions.

  During the next few days she stays in the apartment, afraid to go out except when she has to go with Jim to the post to get her ID. While there Jim insists she call Susanna Norris to thank her for the dinner and tell her where they found an apartment.

  Now, on the first day of Jim’s AOB class, Kim sits in the living room, hot even with the room air conditioner running, and crochets little squares of green yarn and yellow yarn that will become an afghan for her sister Diane's Christmas present.

  And over and over again Kim wishes for a phone. She wants to call her sister, be reassured that things are fine at home. Without a phone here she would have to go out to make the call, the closest phone at the little store. And she sure isn't going there – not ever again.

  Kim squeezes her eyes shut to block the mental picture of the ballooning blood just as the doorbell rings.

  "Hi," Susanna says, ushering her children through the door. "Thought you might like a little company."

  Kim doesn't tell Susanna what happened. Instead she sits listening to Susanna chatter about life as an army wife. "And it was so much fun meetin' Bill in Hawaii. You know, for R & R after six months in Vietnam. Patty and I loved the beaches. And at night Bill and I really pumped those bed springs."

  Kim has never met anybody who talks so much, who tells all the details of her life without hardly even knowing the person she's telling.

  Susanna fans her face and pops a bottle in Billy Jr.'s mouth. "Just wait till you're invited to your first official function. It'll be so much fun to meet everybody."

  Kim's thinking how much agony it could be, worrying about saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing, when Patty slips off the couch and walks to the kitchenette. "ooies!" she says.

  "That's how she says cookies," Susanna says to Kim. Then Susanna says, "Patty, come back over here. It's not polite to ask for food."

  Patty stays where she is, repeating "ooies" over and over. Kim doesn't know what to do. Should she offer cookies to the child or would that be interfering with the mother's authority? As a child she learned all too well the consequences of interfering with an adult's authority.

  And then Susanna gets up, switching Billy Jr. from one hip to the other, and walks over to Patty. Susanna bends down and slaps Patty. "No cookies. Now come back and sit down quietly." Patty follows her mother back to the couch.

  Kim's chest lurches. She stands up. "I have some cookies I'd be glad to give her."

  "No," Susanna says. "She didn't come over here when I told her to so she can't have any cookies."

  The tears in the child's eyes shine up at Kim. She feels as if she herself has been the one slapped. She herself ... Kim switches her mind back to Patty. The child looks so miserable that Kim asks, "Can I show my pet rat to the children?"

  "Rat!" Susanna says. "Absolutely not."

  She stands up and says, "It's time to go. Billy Jr. needs a nap."

  Kim waves good-bye to them from the door. "Thanks for stopping by," she remembers to say, glad they are leaving. She doesn't want to have to talk to anyone or to feel badly about anyone else. She just wants to feel safe.

  Now Kim hears the Ford outside. She opens the door before Jim can insert his key.

  "How was it?" she asks.

  "Nothing much happened in class," he says.

  He closes the door. "A guy from my class – Robert Gold – invited us over tonight. He's from the North, but he seems like a nice guy. He lives right near here and he says you and his wife might like to meet."

  "He invited us over without knowing us?"

  Jim nods his head. "Guess they do that, so I said yes."

  A warning jab above her left eye. She doesn't want to go out and she certainly isn't prepared to meet any new people yet, especially ones from the North!

  She wants to scream at Jim that he shouldn't have said yes without asking her first – especially when she is still upset – but she doesn't want to start a fight. She'll take some aspirin and get through it.

  At least no one will be shot and killed in front of her eyes.

  SHARON – III – May 13

  House rejects proposal for July 1 cutoff
date for funds to support U.S. troops in Cambodia ... May 7, 1970

  “It will certainly be more advantageous to both of you if his record reflects a man and wife who were sincere in their efforts, could meet and enjoy new people, able to adapt to different and new circumstances, and who displayed an attitude of cooperation and respect.” Mrs. Lieutenant booklet

  At dinner time Sharon leans over the balcony railing to watch for the yellow blur announcing the Fiat's arrival. The sizzling sun fries the few cars mired in the asphalt parking lot.

  In her mind it is morning again, the alarm clock's shrill ring waking her. For a moment she doesn’t recognize where she is. Then she remembers and also what today is – the day Robert reports for the Armor Officer Basic training course. She rolls over to reach for him – he isn't there! A wild fear sweeps over her that the army has already swallowed him.

  "Robert!" she calls. The apartment so small he can surely hear her wherever he is.

  "I'm in the bathroom," he says.

  He comes and sits down on the bed. "What is it?"

  He seems so calm, so self-assured, that she doesn't want to mention her fears. "I just wanted a good-morning kiss."

  "I'll give you more than that," he says, reaching under the sheets for her nude body. "Then we have to get going."

  A few minutes later she slips out of bed and, shrugging on her robe, goes into the tiny kitchen to get coffee started and the cereal set out. Robert joins her at the table, a rosy flush on his chest visible between the edges of his robe. They eat in silence except for "Please pass the milk" and "May I have more coffee?"

  "I'll be right back," Robert says, heading for the bedroom.

  He'll be putting on his uniform, checking one last time, she knows, that his boots are shined, his insignia pinned on correctly.

  She’ll write in her journal today, she tells herself. She hasn’t written anything – the pages all virgin white. Yet today she’ll record her feelings of watching her husband leave to become part of the war machinery.

  Robert reemerges from the bedroom in his uniform, carrying his uniform hat, and stands in front of her for inspection. She wants to say "good luck." The words stick in her throat – don't these words imply the opposite is feared? She says: "You look terrific."