I hadn’t even heard of it.
“It’s a three-day class on Italian culture. Participation is required for all navy personnel. But dependents are strongly encouraged to take it as well.”
The way she saidstrongly encouraged, she might as well have saidmandatory. Which was fine, because I didn’t hate the idea of having something to do for a few days. “Where do I sign up?”
She removed a pen from her handbag and scribbled something on the back of a business card. “The Human Resource Management Office is not in the compound. It’s next to the clinic, on the Piazza Bambino Gesù. It’s a little hard to find, but that’s where you—” I could watch her thinking out loud. “You know what? I’ll stop by on my way home today and get you all squared away. They offer the seminar every two weeks, so it’ll start either this Tuesday or the following. I assume either is fine with you?”
I nodded, then said something dumb about how maybe Paul and I would wind up taking it together.
She gave me a tight smile. “Navy personnel get a slightly different version.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Of course.”
“But I understand you’re recently married. How exciting. There are a couple of other new brides among the wives. I’ll have to introduce you.”
It was an odd phrase.The wives.Like Mary Lou Jenkins was a baseball coach and we were the players on her roster. “How many wives are there?” I asked.
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “there are about thirty-five officers on the tender at any one time, plus a handful of guys at the Navy Support Office. And I’d say all but maybe three or four of them are married.”
“Aren’t there something like fifteen hundred guys on the ship?”
“It’s closer to thirteen hundred, but yes,” she said.
“Can they not marry?”
She laughed. “Oh, they can. Of course. But since they’re enlisted, they’re not guaranteed an accompanied tour.”
“I see,” I said, although I was, frankly, still confused.
“In total, there are about two hundred dependent families on the island, which works out to be about seven hundred dependents, give or take the high school–age kids, who get shipped over to Spain during the semester.”
“Why Spain?”
“Torrejon Air Force Base has a DOD high school. My son, Chris, is a freshman there.”
“That must be hard,” I said, “to be so far away from him.”
She seemed almost ready to admit that it was, then gave her head a little shake and got back on script. “I think you’ll find that we’re a tight-knitcommunity. We really do try to look out for each other.” With that, she nodded at the card she’d handed me. It read:
Mary Lou Jenkins
Ombudsman
+39 349 5230530
“What’s an ombudsman?” I asked.
She took a sip of her americano and gave me a grim smile. “I often ask myself the same question.”
I waited for her to say more.
“I’m an advocate.Youradvocate. If you need anything or run into any problems, I’m who you call.”
I tried to imagine the type of problem I’d feel comfortable taking to this woman. I might ask her where to get my hair cut or my shoes repaired, but I couldn’t imagine going to her with anything more serious, for fear that it would get back to the CO and somehow make Paul look bad. She must have sensed my skepticism because, without prompting, she began to enumerate the types of problems she could help with if given the chance. “Let’s say you’ve got an emergency back home and you need to get back to the States quickly, or you get into it with your landlord and you need a mediator. Maybe your money runs out while Paul’s at sea and you need a loan to tide you over.”
“I call you?”
She nodded emphatically.
