Chapter 31
THE NEXT MORNING, Paul woke, bathed, and dressed, then came around to my side of the bed to kiss me goodbye. “You going to miss me?” he asked as he stood to go, and I mumbled something into my pillow, insinuating that—yes—I would be lost without him.
I listened for the sound of the elevator door opening and closing, but I must have fallen asleep again, because the next thing I knew, the phone was ringing and it was a quarter to ten.
“Hello?” I said, my tongue like sandpaper in my throat.
It was Michele at the front desk. “Buongiorno, signora Archer. You have a visitor.”
“I do?” I could count the number of people I knew in La Maddalena on one hand.
There was a pause while Michele asked whomever it was to repeat their name. “Mary Lou Jenkins,” he finally said.
Jenkins. I had heard the name before, but my brain wasn’t working right. Then it hit me. Mary Lou Jenkins was the CO’s wife. “Tell her I’ll be right down,” I said as I leaped out of bed.
I ransacked the wardrobe and threw on the first sundress I found. There was no time for hair or makeup, so I brushed my teeth, pulled my hair into a quick ponytail, slipped on a pair of Dr. Scholl’s sandals, and hurried downstairs.
It was easy to pick out Mary Lou Jenkins when I arrived in the lobby.
She was standing by a ficus tree, clutching a tortoiseshell Lucite handbag, and looked every bit the part of a CO’s wife.
I remember she wore this royal blue A-line skimmer that fit her so perfectly she must have had it professionally tailored.
Her face was carefully made up, and her blond hair was in a chignon, which looked pretty on her, even if it wasn’t exactly in style.
I’ve found there’s this thing that happens to women sometime in their early to mid-forties.
They’ve finally figured out what looks good on them, so they refuse to give it up, even when the dress or shoes or hairstyle or whatever it is begins to look dated.
I say this because, sometime around 1968, Mary Lou Jenkins looked in the mirror and said to herself, Yes, this.
“Mrs. Jenkins?” I said as I arrived in front of her.
“Eileen?”
“That’s me.” For a brief moment, I wondered whether I was meant to curtsy or kiss her hand or adhere to some other obscure protocol that had no doubt been carefully outlined in the pages of The Navy Wife. Thankfully, she extended her hand, and I shook it.
“Nice to meet you,” she said, smiling. “Please call me Mary Lou.” She had stopped by, she said, to officially welcome me to La Madd and to see if I needed anything.
We made polite small talk for a few minutes before she looked at her watch. I was expecting her to beg off, so when she asked if I had time for a quick coffee, I almost fell over. “Sure,” I said.
I followed Mary Lou out of the lobby and into the center of town, where she stopped in front of a café called Bar Fiume. She selected an outdoor table that sat in the shade of a big awning, and I regretted not bringing a sweater.
“How are you finding things?” she asked after I’d ordered a cappuccino and she an americano.
If anyone else had asked me how I was finding life on the island, I might have admitted to feeling overwhelmed. But I was mindful of the fact that Mary Lou was the wife of Paul’s boss’s boss, or maybe it was his boss’s boss’s boss, so I just said, “Great.”
She raised an eyebrow in my direction, like she didn’t quite believe me.
“It can be a difficult adjustment. Especially if this is your first time overseas.” She said this like she’d already sized me up and decided there was no way I’d ever been anywhere.
It was true, of course, but I didn’t like the assumption.
“Have you registered for the Intercultural Relations Seminar?”
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 said strongly encouraged, she might as well have said mandatory. 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-knit community. 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. Your advocate. 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.
I was fairly certain Paul would sooner I starve than go to Mary Lou Jenkins for a loan, but I managed to squeak out a “Gee.”
“Which reminds me,” she said, “I also organize the phone tree.”
“I was under the impression most people don’t have their own phone?”
Again I got that emphatic nod. “That’s absolutely true. It’s almost impossible to get one installed.”
I held up the card and said, “You managed it,” then immediately regretted saying so because I realized it came off sounding slightly confrontational.
“Comes with the job,” she said brightly. “Anyway, the wives who have phones get called first, and then we go door-to-door. I’ve got the whole thing arranged according to who lives where.”
“Is there someone I’m responsible for?” I asked.
“We’ll wait until you’re settled to plug you in. Right now I’ll just call you at the Excelsior if anything comes up. Did you get my message yesterday?”
I cocked my head to one side. “I don’t think so,” I said, slowly.
“I left a message with the front desk. There was a protest yesterday afternoon, and the command issued a restriction of movement order, requesting all active-duty personnel and dependents remain indoors.”
“We saw it. The protest, I mean. On the way back from the beach. But I didn’t get a message,” I said apologetically, and because I wasn’t sure if this was somehow my fault, I actually apologized.
She waved me off. “It looks like it all worked out. We just like to give everyone a heads-up.”
I thought of the young people I’d seen down by the harbor and how they had not come off as very threatening. “Do we know that the protesters meant us any harm?”
“Oh, who knows,” she said, like she could barely be bothered to entertain the question, let alone come up with an answer. “It’s just better for everyone if we don’t tangle with them.”
While we finished our coffees, Mary Lou prattled on about the Officers’ Wives Club she’d left behind back in San Diego, and how the island was too small, unfortunately, to support a full-blown club.
“It’s more practical, in this environment, to do something that all women can join, regardless of rank.
” She said this last part apologetically, like I was going to be disappointed to learn that I might have to drink punch out of the same bowl as a missile technician’s wife.
“That’s great,” I said firmly, so she knew that I wasn’t someone who gave a rat’s ass about that sort of thing.
“We’re calling the group Community of American Women in Sardinia, or CAWS, for short. Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?”
I agreed that it did.
“Everything’s been very unofficial to this point—supporting the command where we can, fundraising for the Navy Relief Society.
But we’re trying to get our meetings on a regular schedule.
And to finalize our agenda for the coming year.
Are you good with numbers? Because we’re looking for a treasurer. ”
I wanted to make friends, but I wasn’t much of a joiner. In college, I had belonged to zero clubs, and I’d have sooner volunteered to shear off my hair than run one. What if I hated CAWS? It’d be too late to bow out without disappointing Mary Lou. “I can barely balance my checkbook,” I lied.
Mary Lou looked surprised, but she rallied quickly. “No matter, we’ll find something for you to do. In the meantime, the commodore’s wife and I are hosting a luncheon this Friday. It’s serving as a sort of bon voyage party for the wife of one of our more senior officers. You’ll come?”
I agreed I would.
“It’s a drive. We’re sending cars to meet the ferry, but since you’re on this side, I’ll just pick you up at the hotel. Does eleven thirty work?”
I told her eleven thirty was perfect, and just like that, my audience with Mary Lou was over.
She signaled to the waiter for the check and removed a wallet from her purse, but when I reached for my own bag, which I’d shoved under the table, she told me not to bother. “This is courtesy of the command.”
“That’s so generous,” I said, although what I was thinking was that if she’d known the command was picking up the tab, she should have told me to order food.