Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel (8 page)

Robert squeezes
her. "Maybe for some men a married woman is more exciting – the
lure of the forbidden."

“
When you have received an invitation to a social
function, acknowledge it within twenty-four hours.”
Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

Kim drops the mixing bowl into the sink. Two
filled cake tins occupy the tiny oven, the thin batter transforming
into a dense chocolate cake.

She came home from the PX with Sharon and
immediately started to bake – a calming activity. She's not sure
about this carpooling. She and Sharon are so different.

Last night as she and Jim drove home from
Sharon and Robert's apartment, Jim said, "They seem nice, don't
they?"

Kim didn't answer. She watched her husband's
profile as he drove, aware of how much she wanted to fit into the
role of an officer’s wife. Had she said the right things? Or had
she embarrassed him?

"Robert's idea to carpool is a good one," he
said. "You'll have to spend a lot of time with Sharon but at least
you won’t be alone."

Kim knew what her husband wanted to hear –
her having a personal escort wherever she went on the post was
important to him – so she said: "We'll have a good time
together.”

Jim turned the car into their apartment
complex. "You can hang out at the Officers Club. Just stay away
from the other officers."

Kim's face burned. Why did Jim always have to
warn her about other men? Didn't he know how much she loved him?
That she would never look at another man in that way? She knew why
he was suspicious of her ...

She got out of the car and walked beside her
husband.
Her husband
. Such strength, such
comfort in those two words. How could she ever live without him?
Every night she prayed she wouldn't have to.

They walked into the apartment and Jim turned
on the television. Kim didn't stay to watch the news. There was
nothing she wanted to know from that box. Instead she headed to the
bedroom and extracted her pet white rat from the closet.

Squeaky never failed to comfort her. Just
watching his little nose quiver as he ran around the bedroom took
her mind off "things." That was the word she used for what she
wouldn't even permit herself to think about – the war her husband
might have to fight in.

Now she removes the cake tins from the oven
while she thinks again of Sharon Gold. Number one, she is a
Northerner so she probably doesn’t like Southerners. Number two,
she comes from a large city so she will obviously be more
sophisticated and make Kim feel like a country bumpkin. Number
three, she is Jewish so she will ... be different than Kim. All in
all, three good reasons not to like her.

Kim doesn't have a lot of experience with
friends. Her foster parents hadn't encouraged her to invite friends
over. And she would have been too embarrassed to go to a friend's
house and never invite her back. She kept to herself in school and
came straight home afterwards to her chores and homework.

Kim and her sister had done everything
together, which meant not very much in a small town. Kim had been
able to keep the money made from babysitting other people's
children – caring for the foster parents' children was just one of
her regular tasks – so she and her sister went to the movies
sometimes. And they spent a lot of time in the library. It was a
safe place with no one asking them to do any chores. Both of them
read romance novels, dreaming of the day a pair of white knights
would ride off with them, taking them away forever from their
unhappy lives.

As a college man, two years older than she,
Jim had seemed to be that white knight for her. Just like in the
books he practically swept her off her feet. She had felt totally
protected by his love.

When they married and lived in student
housing, she didn't have a chance to meet any women friends. Then
it was okay, because she was busy with her job in the college's
biology department.

Here she has nothing to do. She doesn’t want
to be all alone day after day. Stuck without a car or a phone.
Sharon seems nice. And Jim wants to carpool with her husband.

After all, it is only for nine weeks. Kim has
put up with unhappy arrangements for a lot longer – almost her
whole life.

Kim swishes chocolate icing over the two cake
layers as a car stops right outside her first-floor apartment door.
Kim puts down the icing knife and walks to the door to kiss her
husband.

He follows her into the kitchenette. "Look at
that cake," he says, sticking his finger into the bowl of icing and
then licking his finger.

He gives her another kiss. "So what did you
do today, hon?"

Kim continues to ice the cake as she speaks.
"I went with Sharon to the PX. We saw some nice things there and it
was good to get out."

Actually, she is relieved that Sharon forced
her to leave the apartment even if the trip to the PX didn't go
that well. The shooting still bothers Kim. She doesn't want to
mention her fears to Jim because she doesn't want Jim asking more
questions – possibly finding out that the shooting happened because
the soldier bothered her. Jim might think she started up with the
soldier. Thank heavens the MPs haven't traced her and then come by
to ask questions.

She follows Jim back to the bedroom, where he
takes off his uniform. His high school football muscles still bulge
underneath his undershirt. She didn't know him in high school even
though their hometown has only one high school. Jim's parents sent
him to military boarding school in a nearby town – they thought the
discipline would be good – and those schools played football in a
different league. The boarding school hooked him on military
strategy games. He always had a game in progress in their married
student housing apartment. Now it is the same here.

"Dinner's ready," she says, then goes back to
the kitchenette, where Jim joins her.

"What's for dinner?"

"Fried chicken and homemade biscuits."

A parasitology major, Jim wrote his senior
thesis on parasites in pigs. He became convinced that pigs were
about the unhealthiest animals on this earth. Now he won't touch
pork. They have fried chicken a whole lot.

She sets the plate of hot food down in front
of him and puts another plate at her place. Then she sits down.

"Jews like blacks a whole lot, don't they?"
she asks as Jim forks the first mouthful.

He chews before answering. "What do you
mean?"

"Today at the PX, a black man held the door
for us just so he could stare at us. I told Sharon that he was
staring at us. She said he was just being polite holding the door
open."

Jim swallows his milk. "Now look, Kim, it's
not just Jews think that way. That's Northerners' thinking. They
just don't know what we know, living with them the way we do.”

Kim nods. It isn't just that Jim has a
college degree and she doesn't. He hasn't been out of North
Carolina, just as she hasn't, until they came here, yet he knows a
lot about so many things.

For probably the millionth time she thanks
her lucky stars that she has Jim. He is everything to her – father,
mother, husband. He is also the reason she doesn't want children.
Things are just perfect the way they are between the two of them.
Children would somehow change that. And she can't risk losing this
closeness.

The doorbell rings as she puts away the last
of the washed supper dishes. Who could it be? The MPs? A stab of
pain above her left eye punctuates her fear.

Jim gets up from the couch and opens the
door. Sharon stands outside.

"Sorry to bother you,” Sharon says. “I need
to talk to Kim before tomorrow."

From the kitchenette Kim watches Jim motion
Sharon to come in. What is she here for? To say she doesn't want
their husbands to carpool anymore? That she doesn't want to share a
car with Kim?

Kim walks into the living room. "Have a
seat," she says, gesturing towards the couch. The small apartment
smells of fried chicken – that’s okay, Kim thinks, it isn't
unpleasant. She watches Sharon glance around before sitting down.
Probably checking for Squeaky.

"I just wanted to know,” Sharon says, “if
you’re going to the orientation coffee for the AOB wives tomorrow.
We could go together."

"See you, ladies," Jim says, walking towards
the bedroom.

Kim sits down in the armchair facing the
couch. "What coffee is that?" she asks.

"Didn't you get the invitation? It's for all
the AOB wives who are here."

Kim shakes her head. Sharon glances towards
the bedroom, then says, "Robert brought it home for me. Maybe Jim
forgot to give it to you."

Kim stands. "That doesn't sound like Jim.
Hold on while I go ask him."

Kim finds Jim sitting on the double bed
reading from an army manual. Kim closes the door and comes up to
him. She smiles. "Did you forget to give me an invitation?"

Jim closes the manual and stands up. "Honey,
I'm sorry. I did forget. I have it right here." He reaches into his
pants pocket and withdraws a folded white envelope. He gives her a
quick kiss as he hands it to her.

Kim walks out of the bedroom before she
realizes that Jim now wears the civilian clothes he changed into
when he first got home. That means he transferred the invitation
into those pants. Did he purposely not give it to her so she
wouldn’t know about the orientation coffee? Is he worried that his
uneducated wife might embarrass him in front of the other officers’
wives?

Her face feels hot as she shows Sharon the
envelope. "Here it is. He
did
forget to
give it to me." Kim sits down again, reaches inside the envelope
and removes the invitation.

"Should we go?" Kim asks.

"It might be fun," Sharon says. "Besides
we're probably expected to go.”

“What
should we wear?" Kim asks.

“
Certain social functions have an official aspect
and should be considered obligatory.” Mrs. Lieutenant
booklet

As Kim drives, Sharon checks the map, then
looks out the window. In the army, it appears, everything, even the
houses, are by rank. Here in an area of officers' housing are
four-family buildings – for the lieutenants on permanent assignment
at Ft. Knox, then the semi-detached homes – for captains and
majors, and finally the single-family homes starting with the
colonels. When she and Kim reach the large house on a rise above a
circular drive, there is no question who lives here.

Kim pulls into a space at the end of the
parked cars. "Wait a minute," she says as she powders her
near-perfect nose.

Sharon sighs. Her nose is near-perfect too,
although it has been helped, the kind of help Kim probably can't
even imagine.

"You look beautiful," Sharon says to Kim.

"You too," Kim says.

Both women wear sleeveless summer dresses,
low heels, and nylons – in spite of the heat. Again, Sharon's dress
ends higher above her knees than Kim's. They both carry purses, and
in the purses, each has tucked a pair of white gloves.

"I can't believe you have gloves, too,"
Sharon said when they discussed this yesterday. "When I was growing
up my mother always made me wear them for shopping on Michigan
Avenue in downtown Chicago. I don't think most women wear gloves
any more."

"Mine are for wearing to church," Kim said.
"Do you think we should wear them to the coffee?"

"Let's take them in our purses and we can
always put them on there. If we wear them and we're wrong, we'll
feel ridiculous."

Now neither woman wears a hat. They talked
about this, too. "The only hat I have is a red felt one that a
sorority sister brought me from Florence – Italy," Sharon said.
"I'd feel funny wearing it."

"I have a straw hat I wear to church,” Kim
said. “I won't wear it if you don't want to wear yours.”

As they get out of Kim’s car, Sharon says, "I
hope we're not making a big mistake with our clothes."

Kim frowns. "How can they expect us to know
what to wear? It's not as if they've told us a thing."

"Smile," Sharon says, "we're on Candid
Camera."

At the door an attractive woman in her late
twenties, several years older than Sharon and Kim and wearing a
two-piece seersucker suit and a broad-brimmed hat, greets them. She
wears gloves. Sharon and Kim look at each other.

"Welcome," the woman says. "Please leave your
calling cards and pick up your nametags." She indicates the hall
table supporting a silver tray and a pyramid of yellow nametags.
"Mrs. Brisby, the commanding general's wife, is receiving
inside."

Calling cards? Several white cards are
stacked on the silver tray. Sharon shrugs as she picks up her
nametag with MRS. GOLD written below the words "ARMOR – The Combat
Arm of Decision" and SHARON written under MRS. GOLD. "Illinois" and
"AOB" are written in the two corners above the word ARMOR.

Sharon and Kim stand in the hall pinning on
their nametags. "Let's put our gloves on too," Kim whispers. "Good
idea," Sharon says.

As they slide their hands into their gloves a
thin man in his 50s wearing fatigues appears from the back of the
house. Without even glancing at them he opens the hall closet and
takes out a canvas bag, then ducks out the front door.

"Do you think that's the general himself?"
Kim asks.

"He had one star on his fatigues," Sharon
says.

They walk down the hall and enter a room
overflowing with chintz-covered armchairs and couches. There are
other older women scattered around among younger women who look to
be Sharon and Kim’s age. “The calling cards must be of the wives of
officers stationed here at Ft. Knox,” Sharon says to Kim. “The ones
who have post housing,” Kim says.