Story of Us (4 page)

Steve and I had no honeymoon, but that hardly mattered. Every day with him was a honeymoon. No luxurious resort could have made me feel more pampered, more special, more in love with my new husband.

Since we knew we’d be going to Italy soon, we lived in a tiny furnished apartment. Quickly realizing that the garage sale was a huge part of Navy life, I learned to shop for the sort of household items you don’t really want to spend much money on, but that you know you’ll like having around—that extra radio, an unopened box of candles, the odds and ends that might sit around a civilian household for years. In a Navy household, a possession had to earn its right to be there, to be wrapped, moved and unwrapped over and over again.

Sometimes I couldn’t resist a whimsical item. I found a thick ceramic pitcher in the shape of a chicken, its mouth open to form a spout. However, when the time came to pack our belongings and move overseas, the pitcher just didn’t make the cut. I sold it in a multifamily garage sale a week before we left.

Naples was a revelation. People had warned me about the dangers of thieves and scam artists who haunted its medieval stepped alleys and crooked streets, but I never felt vulnerable there. We explored the entire hill of humanity together, wandering hand in hand through the Spanish Quarter and Spaccanapoli, or along the seafront area called Lungomare. We handed coins to accordion players in the Funiculare, fended off hustlers and explored the breathtaking antiquities of Pompeii and Pozzuoli. At a candlelit chapel, a sculpture of the Veiled Christ moved me to tears, and at a cameo factory in the Sulfatara, he bought me a pair of earrings. I swore I would treasure them always.

The Italians are a demonstrative people, and around every curve in the hilly streets, we found embracing couples lost in each other. Our new marriage and the wonder of discovering each other made us fit right in with these postcard lovers.

I learned enough Italian to go from shop to shop each day, preferring this to the commissary. I bought milk and butter at the
cremeria
, bread at the
panetteria
, vegetables fresh from the earth, sold by a farmer in a three-wheeled flatbed truck. As the weeks flowed by, I grew bold enough to brave the
pesceria
, where mounds of gleaming fish, shells and octopus lay in big tubs. Buckets of silvery sardines, tanks of clams and whole swordfish inspired me to try my hand at cooking, with decidedly mixed results.

Steve seemed proud that I’d learned Italian. He devoured plates of spaghetti
alle vongole
and
melanzane parmesan
. We celebrated the successful attempts and weathered the failures with humor and a soothing glass of
vino di tavolo
, and each night we made love for hours. With no television and spotty phone service, there was little else to occupy us.

I developed a passion for taking photographs. I took snapshots of the old men outside the
tabacchi
. They were immaculately dressed in pressed trousers and freshly shined shoes, hands resting atop their canes. I made shot after shot of the swags of laundry strung across narrow alleys, women bringing up their groceries with buckets on ropes. I also pursued darker subjects, things that troubled and frustrated me. I disliked the preponderance of litter on the streets, and it hurt to see the tiny children forced to beg for coins. The stray dogs, rummaging in garbage and dodging taxis were a heartbreaking fact of life.

And I phoned home, for what it was worth. In Italy, the phone system was so poor that our home phone was all but useless and I’d make a weekly quest out into the city to find a pay phone that worked better. My parents gave me nothing but warnings about traipsing around the globe like a gypsy, but Gran, bless her, got it right. “Such an adventure,” she would say. “You’re making memories for a lifetime.” I hope she knew how much that meant to me as I stood in the rain at the waterfront, hunched against the wind, shouting my greetings to her into the cold steel receiver of a pay phone.

One day I tried to rescue a dog that followed me home. It was a little lop-eared mutt, typical of the street-smart dogs of Naples. And, in the way of dogs, it never lost its innate happy-go-lucky trust in humankind. Over the weeks, I’d learned not to encourage dogs by petting or talking nonsense to them, but this particular dog followed me anyway. At a busy piazza, a delivery truck nearly ran over him, so I snatched him out of harm’s way.

That night, Steve came home to find us both waiting for him. The dog had been freshly bathed and given its shots at the vet, and I was excited to show him our new addition. All day long, I’d imagined the companionship a dog would give me. By the time he walked through the door, I’d almost settled on a name for him.

His reaction was less than delighted. “Ah, honey. Dogs aren’t allowed on base. There’s no grass for them.”

“He’s just a little thing. He doesn’t need much.”

“I didn’t make the rules.”

“Then let’s move off base.”

“We can’t do that, either. I don’t want you alone in the city when I’m away.”

“But you’re here with me. You’re not away.”

“Gracie. Sometimes I have to go. It’s my job.”

“If I keep the dog, I won’t be alone,” I pointed out.

The logic didn’t work on Steve. “We can’t keep it. You’ll have to give it up or you’ll get hurt,” he said. “I don’t ever want to see you hurt, Grace.”

We took the dog to his friend Whitey, who had a wife and two kids in the little town of Bacoli. When I saw the dog in the tiny walled yard with two happy boys, I couldn’t deny that it was the best situation all around. Still, I wanted that dog. I wish I’d fought harder to keep him.

I wouldn’t call that our first quarrel. But it was…something. Like a hairline fissure in a ceramic piece, harmless unless brought under pressure.

Steve worked long, hard hours at the base at Agnano, and I came to realize that pursuing his dream carried a huge price tag—for both of us. He described his workweek as six Mondays in a row, but he never complained, and neither did I. If I felt any prickle of discontent when he left our bed before dawn and often came home after dinner had grown cold, I pressed it down and shoved it into a corner of myself, leaving it unacknowledged.

Most of the time, we found a rare, heart-soaring bliss as we discovered each other. Steve was funny and sexy and strong, and he was devoted to the Navy and to me.

We were in a lot of ways two strangers bound by a wedding ring, getting to know each other. I experienced doubts, excitement and lord knows, passion. Sometimes in a quiet moment, I’d wonder how this could possibly last a lifetime. My love for Steve felt as beautiful and fragile as a soap bubble, and I had to treat it with caution. I felt as though I was peeling away his layers, finding more to love as each new facet was revealed.

On a warm September weekend, Steve surprised me with a three-day leave. In our tiny yellow Fiat 600 we drove away from the city with the windows rolled down and opera music playing on the tinny radio. The winding, impossibly narrow road along the sheer edge of the Sorrentine Peninsula was treacherous and exhilarating, the oncoming traffic a challenge around every curve. Scooters, pedestrians and the occasional herd of goats crammed the motorway. The lumbering local buses had scratches along the sides from cars trying to squeeze past them.

Tiny towns clung to the rocky hillsides, the houses and shops stacked like sugar cubes in white and pastel hues. Each town had its
duomo
with bells that rang every hour. In Ravello, where we stayed, the
duomo
contained a vial of blood from St. Pantaleon in a vessel amid the stonework of the altar. Although the vessel was never touched, the blood was said to liquefy on the saint’s feast day in June. The locals swore that this was so, and who were we to argue with their sturdy faith?

We found a place of magic there, in an ancient town perched like an eagle’s nest atop craggy mountains. The sea was a deep and dazzling azure. The hills were banded by terraced groves of lemon and olive trees. It seemed that every square inch that wasn’t rock had been cultivated. The stone halls and splendid gardens of the ancient hilltop villas seemed to whisper to me, and I sensed the presence of ghosts. Steve smiled at me when I told him that, but he never laughed.

The Villa Ilina, where we stayed, was a tiny house done in the Moorish style, with white plaster arches and floors tiled in blue and green painted ceramic. We wandered the winding streets and stone staircases, pausing often to look out in wonder at the scenery. Somehow, these stops always ended with a kiss, and in Italy, that was normal behavior.

We drank wine with dinner each night and when the stars came out, we sat on the patio, sipping ice-cold
limoncello
from tiny glasses. Then we made love, of course, late into the night and again in the morning with the sun falling across the bed. These are the moments that define us, not the grand gestures or anniversaries, but the small things we hold in our hearts. I knew I’d always cherish memories of the kindness of Steve’s smile and the way he held me as though I were precious and breakable.

When we drove back to Naples, replete with great sex, good food and sunshine, I didn’t think anything could mar the perfection of our life together.

I was wrong, of course.

When we returned home from our time on the Amalfi Coast, Steve showed me a thick folder stuffed with documents.

“We’ve got orders,” he said.

Just like that, our time in Italy was done.

Over the next two decades, I would hear “We’ve got orders” nearly a dozen times, often without warning.

Sometimes it happened like that. Plans changed, orders came quickly. It was an adventure, I told myself, and tried not to feel overwhelmed and frustrated as we settled in Norfolk. This was my way of life now. It was strange and mostly wonderful for a small-town Texas girl. Like diving into the cold, clear water of Eagle Lake back home, I plunged into the unfamiliar culture of military life. I tried not to dwell on the uncertainties and usually succeeded.

That’s what love did for me. Come what may, I knew I was blessed because I had a husband who was my lover, my best friend, my whole world. I learned to read his moods, to know whether the lines in his face appeared there from laughter or fatigue.

Then one day, I sensed a difference in him. A strange tension hung in the air of our small apartment, and that night I discovered the reason.

He held me and kissed me, and then spoke the word that would make all the difference in the years to come.

Deployment.

It’s not in most people’s vocabulary and if it is, it’s an abstract concept. But to a Navy wife, the word is chillingly real. It means she is being left by her husband. Instead of being a married woman, she’ll exist in some strange limbo, married but alone. As a Navy wife, I knew I’d take pride in the crisp uniforms, the ceremonies, the powerful sense of duty that drove my husband. I also knew there would be times of loneliness and uncertainty, and perhaps a heady sense of being completely on my own.

Gossip was rampant around the base, as it always is before a big deployment. So much secrecy surrounded the mission of Steve’s battle group that I imagined the worst—that his duties would put him in harm’s way. What I eventually came to understand was that in carrier aviation, personnel were always in harm’s way. The very nature of the work was perilous.

Whenever I confessed those worries, Steve would tell me how rigorously the Navy trains its personnel in every operation, for every eventuality.

“Promise me something,” he said the night before he left. “Promise you’ll still be here when I get back.”

I thought he was joking, so I laughed. “Where else would I be?”

“I mean it, Gracie.”

I caught a note in his voice I’d never heard before. Some of the more experienced Navy wives I’d met had told me that predeployment was a tense time in a marriage. Tempers wore thin, stressed by the upheaval of preparation and unspoken fears about separation. Perhaps that was why he seemed so intense, I thought.

“Of course I’ll be here,” I said. “It’s what we signed up for, and we’ll get through it.” I hugged him, pressing my cheek to his chest. Ah, it was such luxury to love this man, to feel his body close to mine. I would miss him every moment. “I swear I’ll be here waiting for you, Steve.”

And with that, the moment passed. I never thought of it again.

As Steve packed his gear and laid out his crisply pressed dress uniform for the next morning’s farewell ceremonies, I felt such love and pride that my chest ached. It was terrible and strange and exhilarating all at once. I knew I was watching the person I loved going for his dream.

On the day Steve left for a six-month deployment, the docks were crowded with couples and families saying goodbye. Yes, I felt it, the sense of pride and purpose. How could I not, surrounded by such splendid ceremony? Still new to this military life, I think I was a little stunned. The reality was closing in fast. At the end of the day, the families of these men and women would be faced with long separations—and this was only the first of many to come.

I watched Steve’s face, tried to figure out the right way to say goodbye. I had already decided he’d hear no complaints from me. In order to come home safely to me, Steve needed to feel confident that things on the home front would be all right. I never wanted him to feel distracted or worried about me.

And, of course, I had no idea how very much he would worry about his wife at home. But even that did not interfere with his goal. He was off to follow his dream and do his duty, and
my
duty was to support that. I was fearful and excited for him. For me as well. What sort of person would I be on my own? Although I would miss my husband, I was interested to find out. I’d gone from my parents’ house to the sorority house to this marriage, and I’d never been completely on my own. This was going to be my time.

Behind him the crowd rolled out, filling the entire area. I saw school-age children clinging and crying, and pregnant women trembling with the knowledge that their husbands wouldn’t be by their sides when they gave birth. Some women seemed to face this farewell with a curious sort of relief. Once he was gone, they’d be in charge again.

“What are you looking at?” he asked.

I flushed, realizing my attention had strayed even though I still clung to his hand. “Just…everything. This is all so new to me, and seeing everyone here, well, I suppose we’re seeing our future, aren’t we?” I gestured at the pregnant wives, the kids of all ages, older people saying goodbye to their sons or daughters. “It’s what we’ll become one day, don’t you think?”

For some reason, that made him nervous. “Is this a problem?”

I smiled and touched his cheek. Sometimes the terrible childhood he’d endured still haunted him. He hadn’t learned to trust in love for the long term. “It looks exactly right to me. It’s a life that I want, Steve. I can tell it won’t be easy, but it feels right. So that’s what I was looking at.”

He picked me all the way up off the ground and into his arms, kissing me with intense, abiding passion. Then he set me down and we held each other, and I felt his hands moving over me as though committing me to memory. I wondered how long the imprint of his kiss would last.

There were whispers that grew increasingly urgent as time ran out: I love you, I’ll miss you, please write to me…but we’d said everything important already, and in the end there was only silence between us, lips pressed together one last time, tears held in with iron-willed control.

This was to become the rhythm of our years. Steve leaving, me saying goodbye, both of us turning away to hide our anguish from each other.

In all the times I’ve said goodbye since that first deployment, there are two words I’ve never spoken aloud, not when I was pregnant with twins, saddled with three toddlers or facing a cross-country move by myself. Sometimes, I admit, I had the thought but I held my silence. Despite the fact that the wish was ringing in my head, I never said, “Don’t go.”