“Yes,” Francesca agreed, which was different than letting me off the hook.
119.
AT AROUND THIS TIME,Paul and I went to a wardroom dinner aboard theGilmore. The wardroom was a windowless wood-paneled room deep in “officers’ country,” and the dinners, which had all these opaque protocols, were always painful, in part because the U.S. Navy hadn’t allowed alcohol to be served aboard a ship since 1913.
We got stuck at a table with the Jenkinses and had to listen to Mary Lou tell a very long story about her son, Chris, who had just gone to homecoming. “I wish I could have been there to help him pick out a corsage and take pictures, you know?” she said, and I thought of my own mother, who had laughed so hard she’d nearly choked when Lenny had worn a pair of waders and a bow tie to homecoming his sophomore year. My mother still talked about it, which made me feel a little sad for Mary Lou. She was the command’s biggest cheerleader, but the job did not come without sacrifices.
After dinner a steward came in to set up the projector.
“What are we watching?” Laura asked him, and when he turned over the canister and readPlanet of the Apes, all the wives groaned.
“What?” he said.
“Does anyone even care that we’re here?” said Beverly to the room at large.
“I do,” said Tim, and he made a kissy-face at her.
“If that were the case, you wouldn’t subject us to two hours of talking apes.”
While the steward threaded the film through the projector’s sprockets, the wives scrambled to swap seats. Only Mary Lou and the XO’s wife, Patricia, remained where they were.
“Anyone want more coffee?” asked J.R.
“No,” said Rita, who was thirty-six weeks pregnant and leaving for Naples as soon as her mother showed up to watch her kids. “But if there’s more of that carrot cake in the galley, will you nab us some?”
A new girl named Janet Kingry asked what everyone was doing for Thanksgiving, but all anyone wanted to talk about was the flyers that had gone up all over town.
“Is it really true that three babies on the island have been born with this skull thing?” asked a girl named Meredith Green, who had a toddler at home and was actively trying for her second.
“You all have got to start reading the papers,” said Bev.
“They’re in Italian,” said Laura defensively.
“That’s no excuse,” Bev said. “There was a huge article inLa Spedizionea couple of weeks ago. By Eileen’s friend.”
I thought I detected the raise of Bev’s eyebrow on the wordfriend, but I ignored it.
“Scott says it’s just a coincidence,” said Meredith. “A statistical anomaly.”
“That’s what Bobby says, too,” said Laura.
“What do I say?” Bobby shouted from two tables away.
Laura craned her neck to get a look at him. “That I’m the most gorgeous creature you’ve ever laid eyes on.”
“True enough.”
“Are you worried about all this stuff?” Meredith asked Rita with a nod toward her ever-expanding stomach. Rita shook her head but then admitted that she’d been drinking nothing but bottled water ever since finding out she was pregnant.
“That’s most of us, though, right?” said Meredith. “We’re not supposed to drink the water.”
“No, definitely not,” said Bev.
Janet announced she’d just found out she was pregnant, which elicited a round of congratulations. “Now I’m wondering if I should go home and live with my parents until I give birth.”
“That’s a long time to leave your husband to his own devices,” said Laura, which was a biting comment that made me wonder if her problem was not so much with Janet leaving her husband as with Janet being pregnant in the first place.
“What do you think about all this, Eileen?” Meredith asked, and I froze because I didn’t want to be put on the spot, particularly with Paul in the room.
