Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives

by Tanya Biank

  “Damn, that sucks,” Donna said, as Rita heaved into the toilet. She wet a paper towel and gave it to Rita to wipe off her face. “You need to drink some water.”

  Back in the dining room, two of the men from Club Metro, who turned out to be airmen from nearby Pope Air Force Base, sat at a table near the wives. Tiffany attracted another man’s attention by lifting her shirt up slightly and revealing her backside. Rita scolded her, “That dude could be a serial killer. You can’t be careless with your body. You don’t know what this guy is going to do. He could follow us home.”

  Tiffany shot Rita a look. “It’s just fun.” While Tiffany and Jenna continued to flirt, Rita ordered some toast and coffee. She just wanted to sober up and stay awake, but the next thing she remembered was being poked by eight-year-old Jay, who wanted some cereal.

  “Hey, Mama, time to wake up.” It was 7:00 A.M.

  “Okay, baby, just give Mama a minute.” Rita’s mouth was dry, and she was still woozy. Mandy lived in a three-bedroom house with a carport on a cul-de-sac. Rita had fallen asleep with her tennis shoes still on, in a spare bedroom. She remembered Club Metro, ashamed of her own naïveté. I don’t ever want to be put in that situation again, she thought.

  As Rita shuffled into the kitchen, sunlight through the sliding glass door made her head throb even more. She poured Jay a bowl of Lucky Charms.

  “Don’t eat the whole box.” It was expensive cereal, and there were other children who were going to want some. “You got any Advil?” she asked Donna, who had just come into the kitchen.

  “No, just keep drinking water, Rita.”

  Mandy got some blankets, and the two women curled up on her L-shaped couch and nursed their hangovers.

  “Maybe we should have another drink,” Mandy said.

  “Uh-uh,” Rita said. “I made a promise to God before I passed out I’d never drink like that again.”

  The morning light seemed to erase the previous night’s excesses, transforming the women back into mommies and Mrs. Specialists. They knew how Rita felt about her husband—and it worried them.

  “You’re not going to say anything,” Mandy reminded her. “Don’t tell Brian. Don’t tell him anything.”

  Brian and Rita shared everything, but if she confided in him, he would explode and tell the women’s husbands. Rita didn’t want that. Mandy was a good friend. Yet she wasn’t worth keeping something from Brian. Rita would just have to find the right moment. As Rita rounded up her boys to leave, Mandy reminded her, “Now remember, we promised.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Andrea Lynne sat in Dr. Polhemus’s office, crying. The doctor had asked about Rennie, and now she was unable to hold back the tears. Mark Polhemus was an attractive Army major in his late thirties, slight in build, with a receding hairline and vivid blue eyes. He had treated Andrea Lynne for her diabetes since her return to Bragg in 1998, and the two had become friends. It was Monday afternoon, April 2, and Andrea Lynne had gone to Womack Army Medical Center for a scheduled appointment before her trip to Hawaii to meet Rennie at his commanders’ conference.

  Dr. Polhemus walked around from behind his desk and sat beside her, studying her face. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Nothing!” Andrea Lynne said, realizing it sounded like something. She looked down at her hands. “Nothing. I’m fine, really I am. I just don’t want to talk about Rennie.” She began to cry again. Dr. Polhemus came closer and put his hand on her back. “Andrea, is there someone else?”

  She stuttered and laughed, “Oh, no!”

  “No, really, do you suspect that he—”

  “Mark, no. Not no, but hell, no! Not Rennie, not ever. The very idea makes me laugh. The man writes me twice a day—love letters. Letters that make me blush. He calls every day. Especially now … I mean … if either of us would cheat, it would be me and no! That is not it.”

  Dr. Polhemus smiled. “It’s not you?”

  Andrea Lynne regained her humor and smiled back. “No—who has time?”

  Laughing, the doctor encouraged her to talk seriously.

  “I can’t describe the emotion,” she said. “I can’t concentrate, and there’s too much going on. All I know is that even speaking his name makes me cry. I feel like … like I’ll never see my husband again.”

  A thought occurred to Dr. Polhemus, and he brought up Andrea Lynne’s situation—being alone at Bragg, coming out of command, Rennie’s obvious success, and her social responsibilities.

  “Is Rennie on the fast track?” he asked.

  Some officers get ahead of their peers by being workaholics or playing politics and forgetting about those closest to them, or at least that is the general perception in the military.

  “No, Mark,” Andrea Lynne answered quickly, almost as if it were an insult. “He’s a due-course guy and a family man to boot. He’s never neglected me.”

  Dr. Polhemus nodded. He felt he knew Andrea Lynne well enough to ask another question: “Are you getting support from your friends? The other women at Fort Bragg?”

  It seemed an odd idea to Andrea Lynne, but maybe there was something to it.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Well, you’re thin and attractive and rather charming; some women might find that threatening, especially with your husband on a yearlong deployment.”

  Andrea Lynne understood what the doctor was getting at. She listened as he emphasized his point. He told her she had made a big splash at the Mardi Gras Ball the previous spring wearing a figure-hugging gown.

  Andrea Lynne loved that floor-length dress with its spaghetti straps, white sequins, and embroidered flowers. The night she wore it to the 82nd Airborne Division’s spring formal she felt like Marilyn Monroe. But she wouldn’t let Rennie see her in it until they were ready to go out. She wanted her appearance to be a surprise, and it was. The magic was always there for Rennie.

  That afternoon, before Rennie came home, she drank some pineapple juice, checked her blood sugar, and went upstairs to put on Crosby, Stills & Nash. “Guinevere had golden hair …” always inspired her. She washed her own hair, conditioned and combed it, then bobby-pinned some curls on top and let it dry in ringlets. Completely nude, she sat back in her chair and assessed her body. Women at the gym often asked Andrea Lynne what exercises she did for her abs. Gave birth to four children and nursed them, she’d respond.

  Andrea Lynne had a large round mirror at her dressing table, and unless she was cold or there were children running in and out, she often waited to dress. It was important for her to appreciate her body and be comfortable with it. There were no lights out for her when it came to sex. Rennie loved her body. He knew every inch of it. Rennie noticed the folds of her skin, the curve of her waist, the nape of her neck, and the pink of her nipples. And over the years his adoration gave her confidence as well. When you’re told that you’re beautiful years after the honeymoon, you believe it.

  The sun was streaming in the window near her dressing table. She plucked a few stray eyebrow hairs, filed her nails and toenails, and painted them with clear sparkly polish. She went downstairs to crush some ice and then wrapped it in a washcloth and took it back to her room. Plumping two pillows for her head and two for her feet, she got into bed, settled in, covered her eyes with the ice pack and slept for an hour. When she woke, she drew a hot bath filled with blue bath salts and a drop of Chanel No. 5, and soaked, careful not to let any water touch her hair.

  Midway through her marriage, Andrea Lynne had learned that men are fascinated by what Rennie called the “prep process.” Rennie loved to watch her bathe, and he often came upstairs while she was in the tub. As she dried herself off, she’d caress her husband. She knew what he was thinking: She’s giving me my fantasy … . She doesn’t care if I mess up her hair …

  Andrea Lynne slipped on shimmer hose, nothing else, and wriggled into her dress. She applied a berry-stain lipstick to her outlined lips and rubbed on some gloss. She stepped into her shoes and grabbed her beaded pur
se and a short cashmere sweater with a boa collar—the Lafayette Ballroom could be so cold. Finally, at five o’clock she floated downstairs, where her husband, in his mess dress uniform, and children were waiting for her. The ball had a Mardi Gras theme, so Andrea Lynne fastened a pair of white satin devil’s horns in her hair—in honor of the White Devils, her husband’s battalion—and the kids took pictures. Andrea Lynne paraded around with her Mardi Gras mask, acting glamorous while Rennie smiled patiently at her antics. When the 5:30 cocktail hour loomed, her husband started getting nervous about the time. Fortunately, the officers club was just a moment’s drive away.

  The division formal was for officers in the rank of major and above and command sergeants major. The Corys joined the other couples upstairs in the club’s Hodge Room, where Dave, the bar manager, made Rennie a Jack and Coke and poured Andrea Lynne a dry martini with two green olives. He always knew what the two of them were drinking.

  “You’re the most beautiful woman in the room,” Rennie whispered into her ear, and that was how she felt. Everyone seemed to notice her. Even the top brass.

  When she inadvertently dropped her sweater on the way down to dinner, both Major General McNeill (his rank at this time) and Lieutenant General Buck Kernan bent down to pick it up, bumping heads in the process. Finally Kernan pulled rank and presented her with the wrap as they streamed into the cavernous Lafayette Ballroom.

  The crowd mingled near the round tables arrayed around the wooden dance floor under a large portrait of the French general the marquis de Lafayette, the Revolutionary War hero for whom Fayetteville was named. Lafayette had a smug, somewhat amused look on his face. By now he had presided over hundreds of galas in that space. Beneath the crystal chandeliers the tables had been draped in burgundy and white linen and set with china virtually elbow to elbow. The women shivered slightly in their bareshouldered gowns. The temperature in the room was better suited to the dress blue and dress mess uniforms their husbands wore. As the officers and wives watched, soldiers drove golf carts—decorated by each unit—into the ballroom for a “Mardi Gras parade” and threw beaded necklaces to the crowd.

  Then they all found their assigned seats, and after the call to mess, posting of the colors, the national anthem, and the invocation, conversations resumed. Suddenly, with the clanging of knives against water glasses, all movement stopped. Conversations hushed, and men and women stood for the traditional series of toasts, a litany Andrea Lynne knew almost by heart.

  “I propose a toast to the commander in chief, the president of the United States,” bellowed an officer at the head table in a baritone so loud one might think Bill Clinton was actually in the room.

  Wineglasses were raised to the thunderous response: “To the president.”

  The wine was sipped, and the toasts continued.

  “To the United States Army.”

  “To the Army.”

  “To America’s guard of honor, the Eighty-Second Airborne Division.”

  “To the division.”

  “To the secretary of defense.”

  “To the secretary.”

  “To the chief of staff of the Army.”

  “To the chief.”

  Again and again the toasts were called out, honoring everyone but the general’s dog.

  “Gentlemen, seat your ladies.”

  The men then raised their glasses one last time.

  “To the ladies.”

  “The ladies.”

  Over the years I’ve been to lots of Army formals myself and raised my glass for similar toasts, and I’d never thought much about them until an acquaintance who knew little about the Army said, “That’s horrible! Wives should be the first to be toasted.” It reminded me that normal military goings-on are seen through a different lens by those on the outside. Many Army wives think it is a gracious gesture to be acknowledged at all during these formalities. After the toasts at a recent Army formal, I had to smile when a wife leaned over to me and muttered, “They finally got to us.”

  That night at the Lafayette Ballroom, after dinner, songs from the 82nd Airborne Division Chorus, a video clip, and speeches, the dancing finally began. As Andrea Lynne headed across the room, a married colonel caught her by the elbow. Colonel Lance Mifton was drunk, and he looked Andrea Lynne up and down as if she were a dessert.

  “You’re going to dance with me later, right?” he said.

  Andrea Lynne was caught off guard. “Sure, just come on out on the floor and grab me,” she answered. But the colonel wouldn’t let go of her arm.

  “Are you horny?” he asked.

  Andrea Lynne was mortified. She laughed uneasily, but the colonel motioned to the horns on her head. Andrea Lynne still was not amused; she hated that word. She turned to the colonel and moved in close. “Oh, I’ve never been that,” she said. “Rennie never gives me a chance.”

  Turning abruptly, she walked away. The colonel came up behind her and whispered in her ear, “Promise me a dance?”

  “You wish,” she muttered and kept going.

  Later that night, Major General McNeill stopped Andrea Lynne in the middle of the ballroom. “What are we going to do about Rennie going to Vietnam?” he asked. He seemed to want her take on the matter, maybe even her permission, Andrea Lynne thought.

  Here’s my chance, she said to herself, but her pride in Rennie and the MIA mission wouldn’t allow her to take it. Besides, she already knew there were no jobs now for her husband at Fort Bragg. Across the room she could see Rennie watching her. She smiled broadly at him, put on a brave face, and answered the general, “It’s an honorable mission, and we are becoming very committed to it.”

  She went on to tell him how much confidence she had in her husband for this assignment. Andrea Lynne’s father had served twice in Vietnam, Rennie’s four times. Both she and her husband ached for the men who died in that war and the families they left behind. Her comments seemed to surprise the general, who wanted to continue the conversation, but Andrea Lynne begged off when she noticed another colonel beckoning her. Withdrawing first gave her the edge, she knew, but she touched the general’s arm affectionately—something she normally wouldn’t do. She wanted to let him know gracefully that his offer of assistance was now beside the point.

  It had been Andrea Lynne’s experience that no one had ever really helped Rennie in his career, and she wasn’t about to put either of them in an uncomfortable situation now. Besides, the opportunity to get her husband out of the assignment had already come and gone. Someone had to go to Vietnam. What difference would a conversation make? she thought.

  Late that evening Andrea Lynne passed through the foyer—where young bachelor infantry lieutenants stood with loosened bow ties and spat tobacco juice into their beer bottles—on the way to the restroom, where she freshened her lip gloss. When she went into a stall, she suddenly felt dizzy and nauseous. Thinking she was about to vomit, she rested her head on the porcelain. I’m going to ruin my dress. What am I doing? A pain shot through her abdomen. Was it food poisoning? What about the martinis? She had ordered three, but the second was cleared when she was dancing, and she hadn’t even touched the third.

  Her friend April Thornal found her semiconscious, with her face on the floor. April grabbed the club director, then located Rennie. When he couldn’t wake her, he got April’s husband, and they quietly carried her out. April didn’t want anyone to think Andrea Lynne was drunk. Oh, what rumors there would be!

  By the following afternoon Andrea Lynne was in the ICU with a diagnosis of diabetic ketone acidosis. It had all been so sudden—one minute at the top of her game, the next minute weak and helpless.

  When Maureen McNeill got in to see her, the general’s wife was visibly upset. No one knew Andrea Lynne was this sick.

  “Rennie can’t go to Vietnam,” Maureen said.

  The best anyone could do was to transfer Rennie to Fort Irwin, California. And a move was the last thing Andrea Lynne needed, not only because of her health. For a couple with a se
nior in high school and a daughter in college, that kind of transfer only caused more headaches. They declined the offer.

  Officers do have some choices as they follow a career path, although the needs of the Army may override personal preference. If the officer is fortunate, family considerations may play a role in whether he will go overseas alone or move to another post in the States. And sometimes those decisions will have unforeseen and lifelong consequences.

  Dr. Polhemus brought Andrea Lynne back to the present. “I’m worried about you,” he said. “What about the other women at the ball? Does it bother you that some of them may not like you?”

  She laughed him off. “Really? I didn’t feel any ill will. I wasn’t the only attractive woman at that ball, for goodness sake! I have good friends on post,” she insisted, “and I have no reason to be depressed that I know of. I’m moving in a good direction, I have a job I enjoy, I’m going to Hawaii, and I’ll be seeing Rennie soon. I mean, I’m happy … really! I have everything going for me.”

  As Dr. Polhemus walked her out, Andrea Lynne did a few dance steps.

  “It must be my biorhythms,” she said. “You’ve known me three years. You’re so used to me giving you a hard time, no wonder you think I’m depressed.”

  Three days after her doctor’s appointment, little Rennie and Caroline got into a car accident on their way to school. Caroline was driving with her brother when another student hit them from behind. They were okay, and it hadn’t been their fault, but Andrea Lynne felt a stiff jolt when she got the call that morning, as if someone were twisting a knife in her gut. Still in her pajama top, she pulled on sweatpants and headed to the school. Driving Rennie’s truck made her feel as if he were carrying her along, but when she got on the All American Expressway, her calm disintegrated, and she found herself crying. What if she had to tell Rennie one of the children had been killed? The very thought raced around in her head: What if they were dead? I can feel death. Why am I so upset?