Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (28 page)

Would Kim help this name change happen by
being the first one to call Linda by the name Lynn? Kim had said
yes, surprised that a child living with her parents could feel
unwanted.

Now Kim thought about Patty. The little girl
lived with her parents and younger brother. Yet she seemed unhappy
– always out of step with what her mother wanted. Was there
anything Kim could do for Patty? Or was Patty destined to be
another lost soul? Forever feeling inadequate and unloved. Or at
least until she married.

“
You may use your cards to accompany gifts (but
never Christmas gifts), to issue invitations, to answer
invitations, and for messages of thanks or farewell.”
Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

"Three diamonds," Robert says, winning the
bid.

"I'm dummy again,” Sharon says. “Anyone want
anything?" Robert, Kim and Jim shake their heads, intent on the
bridge hand.

Sharon opens the refrigerator, letting the
cold air blow on her body. Before Kim and Jim arrived, Robert
watched the news about the War of Attrition in Israel. The question
of American Jews' loyalty to Israel had come up in the background
check on Robert necessary for a security clearance for his MI
branch transfer request.

Robert's high school friend Charles had told
Robert about when FBI agents doing Robert’s background check
questioned Charles' mother, a social-register Southerner. "Would
Robert put loyalty to Israel above loyalty to the U.S.?" they
asked. Robert's friend didn't know what answer his mother gave – it
must have been all right, though, because Robert got the branch
transfer. Yet how dare the FBI agents ask such a question? American
Jews are Americans first!

Although Sharon's grandfather had escaped the
czar, he still faced anti-Semitism in America. His junk business
had first been in a Southern Indiana small town with only two or
three other Jewish families. The Klu Klux Klan burned a cross on
one family's lawn sometime between the two world wars. The message:
No Jews wanted. Her grandparents stayed for a few more years, then
moved to another small town 50 miles away. And there her mother as
a teenager had an early curfew because, as one of two Jewish
families in town and the only one with children, her parents didn't
want anyone to think that Jews had a "loose" daughter.

And Robert's mother in New York City in the
early 1940s had a hard time getting an entry-level job because she
was Jewish. Sometimes she was told: "We've already hired our one
Jew." Other times she was told: "We don't hire Jews."

While Robert plays out the bridge hand,
Sharon replays in her head the phone conversation she had earlier
this evening with her parents.

"What’s new, Sharon?" her mother asked.

Sharon had glanced over at Robert reading on
the couch. "We're trying to make up our mind whether we're going to
go voluntary indefinite."

"What's this 'we' business?'" her father on
the extension line said. "You're not in the army, only Robert
is."

Sharon doesn’t answer. Instead she explains
the third year commitment required in order to go to Europe first.
"Mom, it will postpone Robert going to Vietnam for at least a year.
And we really think the war may be over by then."

"Europe is so far away!"

Not as far as Vietnam.

After hanging up the phone, Sharon sat on the
couch, recalling how a month after the ROTC Commissioning Parade,
Sharon had broken it to her parents that she had fallen in love
with someone committed to serving on active army duty.

"Robert's coming to visit later this summer,"
Sharon said after a family dinner. She was home for quarter break
before going back to MSU for the summer quarter to take a full-time
course load besides working full-time at the “State News” as
feature editor. This was a plan that would require considerable
time manipulation to pull off. But after unexpectedly gaining a
whole quarter’s credits by taking two poetry courses at Harvard
Summer School the previous summer, she had decided she wanted to
graduate a year early.

The moment had come to tell her parents after
Howard had gone out with friends. She first told her parents that
she would come home from school for the weekend to be here when he
visited. They knew Robert only as the boy she had casually
introduced at the sorority house when her parents helped her move
her stuff to the apartment she had sublet with other “State News”
staffers for the summer. She had said only that she and Robert had
become “good friends” in the past few months.

She hadn’t told her parents much about Robert
before because ... because she hadn’t been ready to hear their
objections. Yet when she spoke to Robert last night on the phone,
right before he left Philadelphia for army officers’ basic training
summer camp at Ft. Riley, Kansas, she had impulsively invited him
to visit as he passed through Chicago on his way back to MSU. That
left her no choice but to tell her parents.

As briefly as possible she had explained that
he would be at Ft. Riley for the next few weeks before coming
through Chicago en route to MSU where he would complete a master’s
in communications in one year thanks to being dually enrolled his
last undergraduate quarter at MSU – and also thanks to a one-year
deferment from active duty in the army.

“Active duty in the army!” her mother
said.

"What kind of thing is that for a nice Jewish
boy?" her father asked. "And what are Robert's long-term career
goals?" her mother added.

She could read in their eyes "Can’t you find
a nice Jewish doctor to marry?"

How to explain Robert's army commitment to
her parents, especially since Sharon herself was adamantly against
the war in Vietnam? On the high school debate team she argued the
topic: "How can you sacrifice Americans to save a country for
democracy that doesn't have democracy now and may never have it?"
Her parents attended the debates where she argued the rightness of
this position and they agreed with her points.

They also were patriotic – her father served
in World War II, having been called up after he finished two years
of junior college. But he saw no fighting – he spent his entire
army service fueling airplanes at a base in Florida. And her
parents certainly understood the desire to escape repressive
regimes. Except that Vietnam was halfway around the world and had
seemingly so little connection to the lives of most Americans.

Once ass a young child Sharon had begged to
be taken to Riverview amusement park during the month of August, a
time when prudent mothers would not allow their children to go.
August had been the major polio-new-case month and, until Salk
polio vaccine became available when Sharon was in elementary
school, Riverview earned the distinction of a prime place to
contract the virus. Her mother explained the dangers inherent in
insisting on fun over safety. Now Sharon realized that falling in
love with an army officer during the Vietnam War could be as
dangerous a thrill as going to Riverview during polio season.

"Sharon! You didn’t answer my question about
Robert’s long-term plans."

“I’m not sure what they are. Why don’t you
ask him when he’s here?”

But before the weekend that she met Robert
back in Chicago, there were several weeks at the sublet in E.
Lansing. And Robert had used the sublet’s address for his
forwarding address while he attended Ft. Riley.

One early evening upon Sharon’s return from
the “State News” office she had found in the mail a regular
letter-size envelope with the return address of Robert's college
apartment. The addressee: LT Kenneth Rogers, APO New York.

Scrawled across the envelope:
Return to
Sender. Addressee Deceased.

The flash flood of sobs produced a runoff
that soaked her blouse collar. Robert's last letter to Kenneth – it
didn't reach him in time! Robert must never know.

She flew into the kitchen of the sublet house
and reached for the matchbox on the sink counter. She ignited the
envelope, then dropped the burning letter into the sink.

"What's that smell of smoke?" one of the
housemates called down from the second floor of the house.

"I'm burning something."

"Be careful, Sharon."

Be careful. You could live your whole life
being careful and then be run over by a car on a visit to St. Louis
in your old age like her great-grandmother. Or you could volunteer
for Vietnam and be killed before your 23rd birthday like
Kenneth.

Or before your 12th.

**

Last night Sharon had not told Robert the
content of her phone conversation with her parents. She had just
said everything was fine in Chicago.

Now at the club Sharon turns over onto her
stomach as Kim slathers on more suntan lotion. It's close to 5 p.m.
and the swimming crowd has thinned. Robert and Jim will be coming
home late tonight, so she and Kim are staying at the club longer
than usual.

Here she is suntanning next to a Southern
Baptist who until a few weeks ago didn't even know one Jew and
whose ideas on blacks are positively primitive.

Sharon flashes to the spring of 1968. In her
sorority house bedroom Sharon surveys herself in the full-length
mirror, checking her sleeveless lime green gabardine dress and
black t-strap heels. Twenty prospective pledges will be here for
the sorority rush formal dress event and she's hurrying to be
downstairs.

As she fastens a pearl stud earring she hums
along with the radio playing the Seekers' "Georgy Girl." They are
singing the words "so fancy free" as an announcer breaks in:

"We interrupt this program with a news
bulletin. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. has been shot and
killed today in Memphis as he ...."

Martin Luther King killed! Sharon freezes,
the second pearl stud halfway to her ear.

The loudspeaker cackles. "Everyone downstairs
immediately. We're opening the door to our guests."

Sharon snaps off the radio, shoves in the
second earring, and runs down the stairs. She wills herself to
concentrate on the evening, to give these potential pledges her
full attention. Then afterwards she glues herself to the sorority's
single television set, both hands wadding the moist tissues.

What did Kim as a white Southerner think when
she heard about Martin Luther King? Did she clap, the way some
white Southerners reportedly did, or didn't she pay any attention
to his death? Sharon doesn't dare ask – they have stayed off
controversial topics since Kim reported Jim's reaction to the book
“While Six Million Died.”

"Can we get you both a drink?" a voice above
Sharon says.

Mark Williamson stands there in a
tight-fitting bathing suit, water dripping down his legs.
Water
dripping down his legs.
Sharon last saw Mark at the end of the
summer after senior year of high school. He stood on the raft in
the middle of the quarry, water dripping down his legs, as she said
good-bye and dove into the water to swim to shore. She hadn’t
looked back.

When she doesn’t answer Mark says, "This is
Wayne Sawyer," gesturing to his friend also in a wet bathing
suit.

The man smiles at Sharon. "Who's your
friend?"

“We're busy," Sharon says. At her side Kim
stiffens.

The men pull up chairs. "It turns out we're
stuck here longer than we expected," Mark says, stretching out his
legs. "Haven't seen you at the club at night recently."

"Our husbands have been busy studying,”
Sharon says. “We've been home with them."

The other man says "Your husbands." He looks
up. "Might these two be they?"

Robert and Jim are walking towards them!
Robert smiles. Jim's face flushes purple.

Kim rushes towards him as Mark and his pal
quickly evacuate their chairs and head in the opposite
direction.

"Jim," she says, "Jim ...”

Jim spins away from Kim and strides towards
the club building. "I'll see you at home tonight," he says over his
shoulder.

Sharon exhales, steps closer to Robert. "What
are you doing here?"

"We were given a break before the next class.
Jim and I came over to grab something to eat."

Sharon says, "Kim and I will go home right
now. Talk to Jim. Tell him he's got it all wrong. Mark came over to
say hello to me. Kim didn't even say a word to either man."

“Who’s Mark?”

“A guy from my hometown.”

"I'll see what I can do," Robert say, then
follows after Jim.

Kim shoves suntan lotion, magazines, towels
into their swim bags.

Suddenly Mark’s friend is standing next to
them again. The friend leans over Kim. "Honey," he says, "is your
husband always this friendly?"

Kim doesn't look up. Sharon notices Kim’s
hands tremble although her eyes remain dry.

The man bends closer to Kim, his face inches
from hers.

"Good thing your husband didn't have a gun
with him."

**

The next morning Sharon stands in her
kitchenette. If only Kim had a phone! She and Kim didn’t make plans
for today and Sharon suspects Kim is hiding in her apartment,
unwilling to go anywhere.

Last night when Robert came home Sharon met
him at the door. "What happened? Did Jim calm down? What did he
say?"

"He wouldn't talk about it and he wouldn't
let me talk about it."

Now Sharon grabs the apartment key and heads
across the overgrown field behind her building.

The weeds and long grass snap against her
bare legs. The pollens tingle her eyes and nose. Please may Kim be
okay, please may Kim be okay.

At the apartment door Sharon knocks.

No answer.

"Kim! Kim! Are you there? It's Sharon."