“Do you think you could be pregnant?” Siobhan asked, trying to be helpful, and Maureen went white as a sheet.
“I was so sick with my little Jason,” said a woman who lived in Palau but whose name I couldn’t remember.
Angela clapped her hands, trying to get us back on track. “Okay, that’s enough with introductions. As I mentioned, I’m Angela Bornemann, and I’m a manpower development specialist with the NSO’s Human Resource Management Office. The Intercultural Relations Seminar is one of our department’s flagship programs, intended to help smooth your transition to living among host nationals.”
“What’s a host national?” I asked Laura under my breath. The question was clearly intended for her, but Angela had eagle ears and answered instead.
“The Maddalenini. This mission is sensitive, and we cannot remain in La Maddalena without the support of the island’s residents. Your goal,” she said, looking directly at me, “is to conduct yourself with dignity and to always be a credit to your husband, the navy, and most importantly—the United States government.”
I wanted to die, and the feeling only worsened when Laura gave me a sympathetic nudge.
Angela passed out stenographer pads, ballpoint pens, and these coil-bound booklets that readBenvenuti a La Maddalena. For a minute I thought it was the sameWelcome Aboardpacket Paul had been sent backin Charleston, but then I opened it to the first page and realized that, no, this was something different. It had a lengthy table of contents that covered everything from “Italian Holidays” to “How to Call Home,” which would have been helpful back at Bar Sanna.
While Angela launched into a lecture on the differences between Italians in Northern Italy and Southern Italy, I scanned the booklet’s introduction, where the names of all personnel in the Human Resource Management Office were listed. There were only five, and right underneath Angela was another Bornemann:AGI Daniel Bornemann, HRMS and PAO. I pointed the name out to Laura. She nodded, then reached for her stenographer pad.Husband and wife, she wrote in the corner of the first page she flipped to.
I reached for my own pen.What’s PAO stand for?I wrote.
Laura waited until Angela had her back turned.Public Affairs Officer.
AGI?
Auxiliary General Intelligence, wrote Laura.
I was becoming more and more interested in the Bornemanns by the second.Like a spy?I wrote back.
Laura rolled her eyes in amusement.I think if he were a real spy, it wouldn’t be in his job title.
39.
THE SEMINAR RAN FROM NINEa.m. to noon, but at a quarter after ten, we were given a generous break—long enough to walk around the corner to a bar Angela recommended and get a coffee. I followed Laura, Siobhan, and a few of the other women down the stairs and out onto the street, and as soon as we were out of Angela’s earshot, a woman named Barb said, “What’s her deal?”
“Whose?” said Laura.
“Angela’s.”
“She’s a piece of work,” said Maureen, who had been quiet ever since Siobhan suggested she might be pregnant.
“She told me she grew up in Naples,” said Laura. “That’s where she met her husband.”
“I heard that the Bornemanns came over here in ’72 as part of a package deal,” said a woman named Beverly Bamford, who was probably a decade older than I was. She and her husband, Tim, had two sons, and while she hadn’t written Tim’s job title in sky letters for me, I had deduced he was an officer.
“Angela’s in the navy?” Barb asked.
Beverly shook her head. “Government. Maybe GS-9 or GS-10?”
We had reached the bar, and Beverly held the door for us as we made our way inside. “I’m getting all this thirdhand,” she said, “but at some point, her husband did a stint in Sicily, at Sigonella, and Angela made a real name for herself, helping him with all this outreach to the locals.”
We ordered cappuccinos, except for Siobhan, who said she couldn’t handle all the foam, and Maureen, who said she’d take a pear juice.
Beverly translated for her. “Vuole il succo di pera.”
“How’s your Italian so good if you just got here?” I asked her.
“Oh, we did two years in Sorrento.”
“I see,” I said, and wondered if maybe one day that’d be me—showingup in Sorrento, speaking perfect Italian, and explaining how it was all because of the two years I spent in La Maddalena. I got a little charge thinking about it.
While we waited on our coffees, I prodded Beverly to finish her story.
