The Lesson (33 page)

“I’ll think about it. Really I will.” She meant it, too. “But the spring quarter is about to end and I have final exams coming up. Between my job and studies there isn’t much time for socializing. As it is, I’m struggling to keep my grades up with all the hours I put in at Big Bick’s. It doesn’t help that you keep me up half the night talking on the phone.”

“There’s going to be an air power demonstration off the flight deck of a nearby aircraft carrier. And strike-fighter fly-bys. They’ll probably break the sound barrier too.”

“I’m not male. You can’t tempt me with fast machines and things that go boom.”

“No? Well then maybe you’d like the marching band and the formations.”

“You got me there. I love all that military pride and patriotism stuff.”

“You’ll come then?” He squeezed her hand.

“I’ll try.”

#

Every night that week the phone rang in Gina’s living room several times, but she purposely did not answer. And every time she checked the answering machine there was a message from Kevin. Her grades truly were falling. She needed to study. It was rude not to answer, but their late night phone conversations were robbing her of sleep and stealing time she needed to complete a burdensome amount of required reading for her English classes. Discussing any subject with Kevin was far more entertaining than her textbooks for Theology of Suffering and U.S. Diplomatic History. Kevin read as much as she did but he read different subjects, consequently he always had a different, refreshing view on local news stories and global events. She didn’t trust herself to pick up the phone and speak to Kevin. They usually talked for hours. But mostly, she was so mixed up about her feelings for him that it was just easier to withdraw. She was a coward, but she needed to think, something she couldn’t do when he was pursuing her all the time.

She was catching up on her required reading on Wednesday evening around seven when there was a knock on her apartment door. She opened it, and there stood Kevin wearing his hole-y sweater over a
nondescript shirt, thin from years of washings, paired with loose-fitting slacks. Gina groaned. He looked like a younger, poorer version of Mr. Rogers. He held a spool of thread in his hand with a needle jammed into it. He pushed it toward her.

“You left this in my car.”

Gina looked at the spool, dumbstruck, and then at Kevin. “Kevin, can’t you do better than this?”

“You’re not picking up your phone.”

“That’s because
you
take up all my study time. Kevin, I’m going to flunk out if you don’t back off. And when that happens,
you
can deliver the bad news to my parents. I intend to live to see twenty-one.”

“Can I come in for a few minutes?” he said.

“Where have I heard that before?”

“I promise,” said Kevin.

“Come in, come in.” She sighed audibly and closed the door behind him.

“Now, why are you really here?” she asked.

“Well, actually I did want to bring you your thread and needle. We can’t have you running around with your buttons popping off.”

Gina rolled her eyes. They were still standing in her living room just behind the door.

“I got into my glove compartment to get the left over abalone and saw your thread and needle there. The leftovers were delicious, by the way.”

“Kevin, you don’t have a kitchen. How did you refrigerate the leftovers?”

“I didn’t.”

“What do you mean you didn’t?”

“I just put it on two pieces of bread and ate it.”

“Right from the glove compartment?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“On Monday.”

“Kevin, we went to Alioto’s on Saturday. That means the abalone sat in your glove compartment for two days.”

“So?”

“You could die of salmonella!”

Kevin looked down and dramatically patted his chest and then his thighs as if he were checking to see if he were real and not a ghost.

“I don’t think I’m dead. I seemed pretty alive when I left Concord. But then again, Thomas touched Jesus’ body after he rose from the grave, so maybe I’m just resurrected.”

“You can’t eat two-day-old abalone unrefrigerated and not get sick.” How could anyone not know that?

“When I lived in Chicago we had lots of neighbors who couldn’t afford refrigerators in their apartments. They kept their milk on windowsills during the cold months. I don’t know of anyone who ever got sick
,” said Kevin.

“Did you come over here to compare yourself to someone who rose from the dead?”

“No,” said Kevin. “I came over because you still haven’t committed to accompanying me to Fleet Week. It starts this weekend. I want you to come. I want to show you around. I’m expecting a transfer to a shore position in a few weeks. This might be your only chance in a lifetime to tour a real Navy vessel. The Flint’s scheduled for a Westpac about the same time I’m transferring to shore. My buddies will be shipping out, and I want you to meet some of them too. Besides, you’ll like seeing the ship. I’ll show you all the interesting places and how things work.”

“I don’t know, Kevin. I have so much school work. And I’m behind.”

“A day away from the grind will refresh you.”

“You got a point there.”

He reached for her hand and put it to his lips. “For me. Please come.”

Her heart melted. “Okay. I’ll come.”

USS Flint AE-32

Concord Naval Weapons Station

No child on the dock could have been more excited about the big gray boat than Gina. The flags, the music, the hundreds of sailors all dressed alike in their white “milkman” uniforms, aka summer whites. It was like the
fourth of July, only decidedly Navy. She liked the deep, blue-green water lapping at the edge of the dock. She liked the big, perfectly clear blue sky that stretched endlessly across the Pacific. She liked the sleek white birds flying overhead. Everything was beautiful and sparkling, reflecting the brilliant May sunshine. Even the ship sparkled, as much as a gray hulk can sparkle.

For today she had chosen a shapely, short, A-line sun dress in softest rose with straps that buttoned in front over bare shoulders, figure flattering but not tight. She overlaid it with a white bolero jacket. She had made it herself and was quite
proud of it. She finished the look with white sandal heels.

But slipping it over her head this morning brought back memories. She had made this outfit for another, earlier event. As Gina gazed at her reflection in the mirror, she remembered doing a fashion show for Michael to show off her new creation. She had worn it the first time to visit his new law office, which had also been in the spring, a time of newness and hope.

How tragic then, that it was at this same promising season, nearly two years earlier, when she should have been embarking on the adventure of her life, that Michael had taken back her precious diamond ring, hard ridges of anger setting his face against her as he told her it was over between them. The rose sundress brought it back with clarity: her youthful optimism on that magical day in Berkeley juxtaposed with the shattered feeling of her heart being broken into pieces. Past and present met together when she looked into the mirror and saw the young woman in the rose dress. Though the images of that earlier, painful spring still smoldered in her mind, for the first time the memory didn’t overwhelm her, didn’t bring a single tear to mar her makeup. Thoughts of Michael, like a bruise on her heart, were shrinking and fading with time. Michael’s opinion of her and her decisions didn’t matter anymore. Life was good again.

A knock at her door transported her to the present.

“You look great.” Kevin smiled ear to ear when he saw her sexy rose sundress, which was set off nicely by a recent tan.

“Thank you,” was all she said.

Perfect.

At the dock they climbed a set of portable metal stairs that led to a portable metal gangplank set high above the water line. Earlier Gina had visions of ropes and wood planks and circling sharks below her feet. She was glad for the metal railing.

Once aboard, Kevin began tutoring her in ship terminology.
Bullnose.
Two holes in the deck that get that name because they look like big nostrils—where the anchor chains slip through from the deck to the water.
Hawser.
A heavy rope or line for docking and towing the ship.
Anchor chain break.
A wheel attached upright to the main deck that Kevin and other sailors used to slow down or stop the movement of the anchor chain. She was fascinated to see his berthing space and his “rack,” or bed, and he showed her how efficiently he could stow all kinds of things in a bin under his rack. The racks were stacked three high.

“Sleeping on the top rack can be good, because no one steps on your face when they’re trying to climb to a higher rack,” he explained. “A smashed face is mainly a problem if you sleep on the bottom or middle rack. But then again, if you sleep in the top rack you have no place to store your geedunk or anything else because the top rack has no storage bin built beneath it.”

“Why does the Navy design the racks to shortchange one-third of the sailors’ storage space?” asked Gina.

“Maybe because of the low ceilings. Which reminds me, be careful or you’ll bang your head on a bulkhead. Or smack your shin. That hurts worse.”

“What’s a bulkhead?”

“All spaces on a naval ship are compartmentalized. That way, if one compartment floods, you can close it off to keep sea water out of the other compartments. The bulkhead is this part,” he said, pointing to a heavy wall that one simultaneously stepped over and ducked under while passing between compartments. “The bulkhead makes it impossible for water to flow between compartments once you’ve shut and bolted this heavy door.”

The doorway through the bulkhead, thought Gina, was more like a person-size hole cut into the wall about sixteen inches off the floor. Stepping over it was most unladylike. She wished her dress wasn’t quite so form fitting.

But then again, maybe not. She’d had a lot of admiring glances since she came aboard.

“I learned pretty quickly on the Shasta to duck my head and lift my knees high when I walked through a bulkhead,” said Kevin, patting his head. “Also, I learned pretty quickly that during emergencies there are up ladders and down ladders, and that you use the starboard side to go to the stern and the port side to go to the aft.”

“What? Please don’t speak
navalese.”

“Sorry. During wartime or emergencies, they don’t want sailors running into each other on the ladders. One guy going up while another guy is going down. They also don’t want fellows running in both directions and knocking each other over out on deck. So during emergencies, if you want to run to the front of the ship, the stern, or if you want to go up a ladder, you use the starboard side of the ship. That’s the right side as you face forward. If you want to get to the back of the ship, the aft, or if you want to go down a ladder, you walk or run, as may be the case, down the port side, which is the other side from starboard.” Kevin smiled teasingly. “Got all that?”

“How are you supposed to remember all these rules when the enemy is firing at you?” asked Gina.

“If you forget the rules around here, during wartime there’s three hundred ninety-nine people on board ready to remind you. During peacetime there’s about two hundred ninety-nine. None of ‘em are shy.”

Gina was amazed to see that everything that could be bolted, tied, or battened down on the ship was bolted, tied, or battened down. Everything was cramped, a little dark, and gray. Very gray. The grayness was worse the lower they descended into the ship away from the port holes. She didn’t like being in the belly of the ship at all. As other sailors and their families crowded into the small spaces with them, she had to push down claustrophobic panic that fueled an insane desire to dash up the nearest ladder to the open air. She was relieved when Kevin said he wanted to go back out on the main deck to look for his friends. She didn’t want him to know that being below deck made her nutty.

As they climbed through a hatch onto the main deck, Gina heard someone, a man, calling Kevin’s name. She looked in the direction of the voice and saw another sailor waving at them. The man was not quite as tall as Kevin, but he had a striking feature: he was the express image of a lumberjack on a paper towel package she had seen a thousand times, handsome and square jawed with heavy brown hair. His face was not one she would forget. Standing next to him and holding his hand was Julianne.

“That’s my good buddy, Larry, the one I wanted you to meet,” said Kevin. “And you’ve already met Julianne. Come on.” Kevin took her hand and led her toward the other couple. Clearly that’s what they were, thought Gina. Kevin made the introductions.

“Kevin talks about you constantly,” said Larry, looking Gina up and down. “I can see why he never shuts up.”

Gina blushed, secretly pleased. “Nice to see you again, Julianne. How have you been?” said Gina.

“Fine. Studying all the time. This is a lot more fun.” Julianne had a smile that lit up her entire face and made her eyes sparkle. Gina had not noticed before.