The Longest Night (27 page)

A
T THE END OF
A
UGUST,
the Summer Olympics were held in Rome, and to Nat and the girls' amazement these were actually shown on TV. This had never been done before and everyone was abuzz with it, grocery shopping at the PX, riding the bus:
Did you see
the opening ceremony? Did you see those shots of the Colosseum?
The events were recorded during the day and flown to the CBS studio in New York each night, and every morning Nat and her daughters awoke and headed straight to their magical box to watch real footage of the athletes. Heck, with entertainment like that, they might not have needed a car at all.

Nat was captivated by the women's swimming, and Australian Dawn Fraser in particular. Dawn Fraser was like Superwoman. In plain clothes—collared shirtdresses and pumps and everyday polyester pants, posing for photographs—she could have been any other freckly young woman, cheerful, square-chinned, perhaps with slightly rounder shoulders than most girls; but in the water she was a rocket, a jet, something propelled by science or magic and not mere human muscle and effort. Fraser had won all golds and silvers in the 1956 games four years prior, and big things were expected of her.

Esrom came by one afternoon just as the TV announcer was working up to the women's 100-meter freestyle. He stood gabbing at the door in his usual easy manner, and for a moment Nat, embarrassed by the private thoughts she'd had about him and trying to comfort herself with the fact that he could not know them, had trouble looking him in the eye. Then she realized she was going to miss the race if she didn't get back inside, so she grabbed his arm and dragged him into the house.

“What, what?” he laughed. “Was someone sneaking up behind me out there?”

“I'm sorry,” she said, “but I don't have time for your
Cow gave birth last night
and
Boy is there a big melon on the vine
today.”

“I wasn't going to say either of those things,” he protested.

The girls came hopping over with
Mr. Esrom, Mr. Esrom
piping every which way.

“Is this pajama day?” he asked. “Where're all the pretty dresses?”

Nat looked around and realized that things had gotten a bit out of hand: There were dishes in the sink, the girls were still in their nightgowns, hair back-combed by sleep and never fixed, teeth a bit scummy from eating licorice whips and watching the world's finest athletes for half the day.

“Haven't you been watching the Olympics?” she asked.

“We don't have a TV.”

“At the apartment, or on the ranch?”

“Either.”

“Do you like sports?”

“Sure.” He shrugged. “What's this, a swimming race?” He sat on the floor, Nat beside him on the couch, the girls clambering knees-elbows-hair against his face and neck, and Nat didn't even tell them to settle down.

“It's the women's swimming,” she said. “That's Dawn Fraser from Australia.”

“It's hard to tell them apart what with the caps and the swimsuits—”

“Lane four. She's favored to win.”

“Shouldn't we root for the American?”

“You can if you like,” Nat said. She grinned at him. “It might be fun to root against you, actually.”

“Well, all right,” he said. And when the gun went off Nat cheered for Dawn Fraser, and Esrom and the girls, not even knowing which lane they were supposed to focus on, shouted, “Go America! Go America!” at the tops of their lungs.

It was silly—really, it was ridiculous—but watching Dawn Fraser swim, Nat wanted her to win with a nonsensical fervor, as if Fraser's success had some kind of bearing on her own, placid life. She clenched her fists, she felt short of breath as Fraser and Chris von Saltza pulled neck and neck, fighting for the pool wall with all they had, their arms spinning circular froths of water. A dozen men in suits, holding stopwatches, stood poised above their heads. The world had paused to watch these women swim.

Fraser and von Saltza touched the wall at what looked like the same moment, and, as one, the men bolted from the poolside to confer. The whole thing had lasted only one minute and one second. Nat grabbed her own hair, awaiting the verdict. Esrom reached up and touched her arm and said, “You okay there?”

A minute later the newscaster's head and shoulders appeared and in his cultivated voice announced that Dawn Fraser had, for the second Olympics in a row, won the women's 100-meter freestyle, and Nat stood, yelling with joy.

Instantly, Sam and Liddie took on Nat's happiness as their own. It was mayhem for a few minutes until the three of them quieted down. The girls were bouncing all over the couch, so Nat eased beside Esrom onto the floor, despite his protestations that it was too hard and so forth.

“Goodness, I'm not a princess,” she said. She pointed at the TV, where assistants were wreathing the podium for the medals. “Did you see her? Did you see how amazing she was?”

“I did.”

“It's so
hard
to swim like that.”

“I actually thought they were going to swim maybe six or eight more laps.”

Nat looked at him to see if he was joking. “No,” she said, “it's a two-lap race. But they swim all-out the whole way. It must feel like sprinting a mile.” She suddenly felt almost teary over what had been accomplished, over how great it must have felt to swim that way, to get into the water and move all your muscles at once and breathe fast and ragged till you thought you might die. And with everyone cheering like crazy on top of it, studying you through binoculars from the stand, breathing along with you because they wanted so badly for you to win.

“You know, I had an idea,” Esrom said. “When the baby's a little older, you could lifeguard at the pool.”

She turned to him with a delayed reaction, trying to put together what he'd said. “I could be a lifeguard?”

He started to stammer as if fearing she found this laughable, as if it contained some fault he hadn't anticipated. “Well, you know, they always need lifeguards. The lifeguards get to swim for free when they get off work.”

“
Thank
you,” Nat said, wanting, for a delirious and stupid second, to lean over and kiss him. She was still embarrassingly choked up from the joy of Dawn Fraser's win, from her mild case of lonesome self-pity, from the end-of-summer blowing through the air and leaves gathering on the windowsills and doorstep.

He studied her. “Are you all right, darlin'?” he asked. His voice was unbearably fond and kind, and she couldn't stop herself from sliding beneath his arm, resting her head on his shoulder, and taking his far hand in her own. He froze; she felt his heart speed up beneath his shirt and he kept his arm somewhat stiffly in the air, as if he were being held at gunpoint. Then he settled his arm onto her shoulders, loosely, and this sent such a charge of closeness and contentment through her that she shifted position just a hair every minute or so to be against a different part of him, cheek on shoulder, chin on clavicle, eyebrow against the warmth of him through his shirt. It was a muted ecstasy of affection. Even in its restraint it made her heart pound because it was so wanted and so new, but also nothing, of course; so they watched that way as Dawn Fraser and Chris von Saltza and Natalie Steward climbed in bathrobes onto their podiums, and the stodgy, brassy Australian national anthem, which neither of them had ever heard before, cackled through the speakers of the television set.

J
eannie was partial to her house when her husband was not in it. She hadn't been disappointed to hear that he was going on a weeklong trip to Greenland to visit that god-awful army base; the week of his departure sat ahead of her on the calendar like a pretty little vacation. Certain simple things had come to feel like a luxury at this point in her life: taking a couple of days off from vacuuming; eating canned tomato soup for dinner a few nights in a row, by herself, after Angela had been put to bed; watching TV in a quiet house until the programming ended at midnight and the screen went black, just because she could.

Whenever he was away, however, Mitch felt the need to call home. Jeannie found this irritating and odd, considering that he could live in the same house with her and not feel the need to speak for weeks. He was a sporadically sentimental man, and being away was about the only thing that made him appreciate his family. Or perhaps he liked other soldiers to witness him making a phone call to his wife; it made him seem upstanding and responsible. She didn't know, and she didn't particularly care.

As expected, he called on Friday, around dinnertime.

“Mitch,” she said, trying to infuse her voice with warmth, although she was peeved that the phone cord did not reach far enough to get her to the wet bar for another drink to pass the time.

“Hello, milady!” said Mitch in a jolly voice. “How's life on the mainland?”

“Everything's good, dear. We're just finishing dinner.”

“What did you have?” Mitch asked.

Jeannie sighed. He acted as if he were a prison inmate, desperate to know what people were eating on the outside. He was away for one week, for God's sake, in a place where people cooked nice meals for him.

“Tomato soup,” she said, though only Angela had eaten, and she'd actually had white bread and baked beans. But that took too many words to say. Jeannie glanced at her child, who was silently pushing the last of her baked beans to the edge of her plate and then boosting them over one at a time, like lemmings. “Angela,” she sighed, “if you are done eating, then you may be excused.”

“What?” Mitch nearly hollered.

“How's Greenland?” Jeannie asked.

“Cold as a witch's tit!” Mitch marveled. “We're living beneath the ice. In tunnels.”

“Is it pretty?” Jeannie asked, without interest. “I'd imagine that Greenland would be pretty.”

“Hell, no,” Mitch said. “Is an ice cube pretty?”

“Maybe,” Jeannie said.

“Well, this place isn't. And the men are stir-crazy and weird. There's not a woman in sight for two hundred miles.”

“That's probably good for everyone involved.”

“Hey, I ran into an old friend of ours.”

Jeannie perked up. “How is that horrid Collier?”

“As enchanting as ever.” There was a pause; Mitch was trying to be clever, and he wanted Jeannie to appreciate it. She let out one stingy giggle to satisfy him. This seemed to be the encouragement he needed because he kept going. “That man walks around this place like he sat down hard on a broomstick. His clothes never even know they got taken off the hanger.”

Jeannie laughed, genuinely. “Mitch!”

“This is the perfect place for that man. I can't think of any landscape to which he'd be better suited.”

Mitch was actually being funny. Jeannie was impressed. “Well,” she said, “at least you only have a few days there. Then you won't have to see that sorry fellow again for a while.”

“It's a shame,” he plowed on, covering Jeannie's last couple of words, “that he's got that nice wife waiting for him at home. What could she see in him? You know? What
is
there?”

“It's a mystery to me,” Jeannie said, feeling less generous toward her husband now. She looked at her fingernails, then out the window. The street was quiet; everyone went inside like clockwork at dinnertime. “She doesn't seem to miss him much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing.” Jeannie snapped her head irritably toward the hallway. “Angela! What are you doing in there?”

Angela let out a string of muffled, unintelligible words, but Jeannie figured that if she could speak, everything was all right.

“What do you mean, she doesn't seem to miss him much?” Mitch pressed.

“I just meant, how
could
she miss him much?”

“I never understand,” Mitch said, “how men like him win women like that.”

Jeannie felt annoyance ripple under the entire surface of her skin like an electrical impulse. “Mitch, it's unseemly to talk about another woman from four thousand miles away. Are there people around you?” She sighed, and decided to give him what he wanted. “I hardly think he's ‘won' her,” she said, “because she's been out gallivanting all over town the entire time he's been away.”

“Really?”

“Yes. She's been seeing some townie cowboy. He's at her house every time I drive by. He bought her a
car
.”

“That's fascinating!” Mitch said. “She's been running out on that sour-faced Collier?”

“Let's talk about something else.”

“I wouldn't expect that of her,” Mitch said. “I just really wouldn't have expected that.”

Jeannie guffawed. “You don't know her in the least,” she said. “How would you know what to expect and what not to?”

“I just never would have—”

“I need to put Angela to bed,” Jeannie said. “Would you like to say hello to her first?”

“Why, sure.”

“Angela!” Jeannie called. The little girl scurried in as though she feared she might be in trouble for something.

“Say hello to your father,” Jeannie snapped. “He's in Greenland.” Of course that could mean nothing to Angela, who took the phone cautiously from her mother.

Jeannie could hear Mitch's blustery voice on his end, starting and stopping in long strands of conversation. Angela listened patiently, concentrating, with her mouth open. Mitch must have tried for a reply because Jeannie could hear several short, insistent questions in a row before she gently pried the phone from Angela's grip and said, “She's a little tired; it's almost her bedtime. Isn't it late for you out there, Mitch?”

“Was she really on the phone?” he asked. “I couldn't hear her.”

“She was. You should have seen her smile when she heard your voice,” Jeannie lied.

“Oh, good. Well, I'll be home Monday morning. Flying all day Sunday.”

“All right.”

“They say there's a little nightlife here on Saturdays. Can you imagine?”

“Well, have fun.”

“Mm.” There was a long silence, so, to fill it, Jeannie quipped, “Give my love to Collier.” She was immediately annoyed with herself. She hated playing into Mitch's weakness. He obviously grew a little excited each time Nat Collier was mentioned.

“I still can't believe what you said about his wife,” Mitch said. “I wouldn't have taken her for that kind of girl.”

Jeannie felt a stab of unease, coupled with distaste for her husband. “It's certainly something we should keep quiet,” she said, suddenly pious. “It really isn't any of our business.”

“Oh, I know. I guess I'm just amazed. I guess I thought—”

“Mitch, I need to put Angela to bed. Have a good night. We'll see you Monday.”

“Can you believe it's fall already?” Mitch said. “Hell, before we know it, it'll be Christmas.” Christmas always made him happy.

“All right, Mitch,” Jeannie said, and she set down the phone with a gentle click. It was not until a few hours later, when she sat bolt upright in bed and felt a wash of anxious self-doubt, that she realized what she might have set in motion.