The Longest Night (4 page)

On cue, Lupe appeared. “I will take you, girls,” she said, smiling and holding out her hand. The nannies had been well supplied with several boxes of Cracker Jack, an RCA Victor to listen to, and a stash of increasingly sticky dolls.

For a moment it seemed Nat's younger daughter might burst into tears, but seeing her older sister trot down the hall she tripped along after her, looking back just once. Nat gave her an encouraging wave and turned back to Jeannie, shifting the plate in her arms. “Where should I put this?” she asked.

Mitch looked at it. “What do we have here?” he asked jovially, as if to a child.

“It's a meatloaf.”

“How nice of you to bring something,” Jeannie said. “Let's go set it down.”

Nat followed her to the kitchen and paused. Jeannie saw her take in the smorgasbord on the countertops—a foil-covered platter of roast and carrots, tomato aspic, red Jell-O salad studded with marshmallows and pretzel bits like an ocean after a shark-thronged shipwreck—all in Jeannie's matching orange Pyrex.

“Oh,” Nat said, “I thought we were supposed to bring something.”

Jeannie smiled. “Don't worry about it,” she said, gesturing for Nat to set her burden on the counter. Nat nudged aside a bowl and shifted the platter heavily down. For a moment both women studied the oily, olive-studded brown loaf.

“I was sure I'd read it was a potluck,” Nat said. “I'm so embarrassed.”

Jeannie laid one manicured hand on her arm and caught Nat glancing at it. “It's always nice to have variety. Come, let's meet all the wives.” She led Nat around the wet bar, past the knee-high stone panther Mitch had brought back from Korea, to the couch and love seat where the women had congregated.

“This is Nat Collier,” Jeannie said. She stepped back, fingers linked at waist level.

“She looks like June Carter!” Minnie Harbaugh pealed.

Jeannie could see the resemblance: It was Nat's dark hair and open expression, pretty but slightly toothy mouth; the almost playful tomboyish figure she cut in her belted shirtdress.

“Well, I sure wish I could sing,” Nat said.

The wives were curious about Nat: Where had she moved from, when did she get to Idaho Falls, would she be having more children? This last question was asked right out of the gate and left Nat stammering a bit, but it was fair game, after all, as they were women and their business was babies.

Nat said she was happy, for now, with her two.

“I'm finished at three,” Patty confessed, and the other women let out a near hiss of disappointment.

“I have four,” said Brownie, “but if God let me I'd have a million!”

In such conversations, Jeannie was always passed over (her one, late child hinting at years of resentment or a sexless marriage, neither of which encouraged inquiry) as was Kath Enzinger (who was just strange). Resentment was, indeed, a large part of Jeannie's personal history: It had taken her sixteen years to become pregnant with Angela. By that time she had bitterly mourned and resigned herself to a life without children, throwing herself into wives' committees and charity work. Then one winter evening, having enjoyed a six-course meal with some friends and plenty of vino to wash it down, she came home and vomited the night away while Mitch slept on the couch. Eight months later Angela came to join them: a chunky black-haired babe who sucked her left thumb until it resembled the striated landscape of a fictional planet. Jeannie loved her in a puzzled sort of way; sometimes she feared she'd so desired a child that she'd used up all her passion on the wanting. And her mind, long accustomed to envy, still blazed at pregnant women, women with prams full of babies, women with twins, women with toddlers tumbling out of their shopping carts, all this fecundity where she had been so silent. Wanting something that badly for that long had turned an odd key in her, and she felt that she might never be entirely normal.

She cleared her throat. “Do you have any hobbies, Nat?”

“
Besides
having children?” Nat laughed. “Well, not really.” She thought a moment, then brightened. “Oh, I like the beach. I used to enjoy hiking. Does that count?”

“Have you met many other wives yet?” This from Patty.

“Not really,” Nat said. “I don't get out a lot with the girls so small.” She looked down at her drink with a shy, bobbing nod, and Jeannie wondered if this self-deprecation were overplayed.

“Maybe people don't need as many friends as they think they do,” Kath Enzinger said. This seemed oddly mystical, and no one picked it up for examination.

“Join a cards club,” Patty suggested.

Brownie pushed on through this distracting commentary to resume her discussion of paint-by-number kits. “I started with Sarah's,” she said, invoking her teenage daughter, “but I ordered some more sophisticated ones. Nat, you would love them,” she added, a diagnosis made with remarkable speed.

“She just said she liked hiking,” Kath complained.

“There are nature scenes,” said Brownie. “Beach scenes. I prefer still lifes and dolls, teddy bears. There's almost no way you can make a mistake. You can work on them while your babies are sleeping,” she said to Nat.

“She's not going to make friends
that
way,” Patty said.

“Jean, this is just
ideal,
” Minnie Harbaugh said, her southern accent looping like cursive. She waved an arm to encompass the drawing room, the drinks, the starched doilies and bright arching flowers. “How do you do it? What's your secret?”

Jeannie laughed, but everyone looked at her expectantly, as if she were supposed to have an answer. “It's just what I do,” she finally said.

“Some people are blessed,” Minnie said with a sigh.

“Some people are
perfect
.” Brownie rolled her eyes. She removed a handkerchief from her breast pocket and dabbed the shine from her forehead and chin.

Jeannie sat back, watching the women talk. She found her drink and sipped it several times in quick succession, the ether flaring soothingly beneath her nose. Things were going well. Brownie and Patty and Kath had arrived in Idaho Falls over a year ago, so in army wife terms they were practically townies, and their relative comfort made conversation easy.

Eventually she remembered that the roast was cooling, even under its foil tent, so she moved everyone to the table. She had set up name cards to disperse the couples, an icebreaker she'd read about in
Woman's Day.
If any of her guests blanched at the realization of this avant-garde setup, they carried on admirably. Nat Collier sat at the far end of the table, three seats away from her husband, Paul, who stared at his blank plate with intensity.

Mitch settled into the seat next to Nat. She gave him a bright smile, which seemed to turn on some switch in his brain, and in a moment he was leaning in on her, holding forth on some topic or another with buzzed animation.

Now, wait a minute,
Jeannie thought. Had she really placed Mitch next to Nat? She froze, halfway to the table, thinking. No, she had most certainly put Mitch next to Kath Enzinger, as a little inside joke to herself, and arranged Nat on the other end of the table. Now Nat was on the very end, next to Mitch. How could the place settings have been switched? The only explanation was that Mitch had switched them, wanting to sit next to pretty young Nat.

Jeannie squirmed with a visceral irritation. Mitch, that idiot, thought he was so smart, thought she wouldn't notice. Well she'd figured it out in two seconds but she was still trapped, because people were seated now. There was no way she could make them get up and move again.

Patty rotated in her seat and tapped Jeannie's arm. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

Jeannie shook herself and smiled. “Yes. Thank you. I was just lost in thought.” She cleared her throat. “Mitch, the roast.”

Mitch held up one finger while he finished his speech to Nat.

Jeannie felt her face purple. Holding up his finger, without even looking at her! She smoothed her apron, teeth gritted. Nat was nodding, leaning slightly back in her chair as Mitch leaned forward, his hand draped over the top rung.

Finally, Mitch wrapped up whatever insight Nat was lucky enough to hear to completion, flapped his hand in Jeannie's direction without looking, and went into the kitchen for the roast. He always carved the roast when they had company, but never would have remembered to fetch it himself; he would have sat there at the table, grinning and blinking, and wondering where dinner was. Oh, she was hard on him, she knew. He did look handsome, walking back with the broad orange platter. Tall and barrel-chested, with that silver-streaked hair; all the women smiled at him. Everyone nodded and twittered as Mitch pulled out the carving knife as if he had felled the beast, skinned it, and cooked it himself.

Jeannie fetched the side dishes and Nat's ungainly meatloaf. Some part of her knew that she was using Nat as a foil to her own superior domesticity. And yet, Nat had brought the thing! It would have been rude to leave it parked alone in the kitchen. She arranged each dish on the table, sliding in spoons at an angle for easy self-service. The food represented hours of work and would be devoured in a matter of minutes.

“Please,” Jeannie said to the eyes watching her around the table, “enjoy.”

Everyone ate and drank, with patters of conversation here and there. This part Jeannie enjoyed: watching the baking dishes pass, hearing the contented murmurs and the light scrapes of silverware against china. The candles flickered and grew shorter, bit by bit. The voices of the children could be heard faintly at the back of the house, singing along to a record of nursery rhymes the nannies had brought.

The north wind does blow

And we shall have snow

And what will poor Robin do then, poor thing?

He'll sit in the barn

And keep himself warm

And hide his head under his wing, poor thing,

And hide his head under his wing.

They sang this over again and sounded so innocent—their lisped, stumbling words—that Jeannie felt almost tender, sitting there at her table. It was dusk now and toads were calling outside. If this finished well, she would host an outdoor dinner party later in the summer. The air was so pleasant here, not like in St. Louis where she had grown up, where the summer evenings felt like breathing through wet cloths.

“Everything's delicious, ma'am,” said Webb. Brownie Franks's laugh rang across the table at something Kinney had said. Things were going so well. Then Slocum, always an instigator, blurted roughly, “Did you all hear about the latest dog-and-pony show up at Test Area North?”

“Don't get me started,” said Deke Harbaugh, raising both his hands. Jeannie averted her eyes from his fingertips, which were clubbed at the ends, like melted candles. She suspected this was part of his disease from the insulation work.

“Got a tour this morning,” Slocum was saying. “Have an old buddy from Belvoir who went private, works for General Electric now. He took me up there and showed me around. General Electric and the air force are building a hangar for an atomic plane, to the tune of eight million. Don't have a nut or bolt of that craft yet, but they sure have a lot of pretty drawings.”

“Whole thing's a crock of shit,” said Harbaugh.

“Well, now,” cried Jeannie.

Len tried to soothe them: “It will never take off. Eisenhower himself says it's hogwash.”

“That's almost worse, 'cause then all that money will have been a waste! It just drives me crazy,” said Harbaugh, his voice wheezy and full of air, “that we have real, working reactors in the army, and we have to beg for every penny. The CR-1 is falling apart—”

“Whoa, whoa,” people said from around the table; the women turned to their husbands in dismay.

“With all due respect, Deke,” Mitch began.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” Harbaugh coughed lightly, struggling to cover it. His eyes watered with the effort. “I take it too personally. It's just—the money that's been pumped their way for ten years! To build this plane that'll be too heavy to even fly! The army has a track record, but they still make us beg. Our reactor could use some help, but we have to pretend everything's going fine and dandy and just wait for them to dole out the most meager little scraps so we can fix one thing at a time.”

Brownie Franks turned to her husband. “Is there something wrong with your reactor?” she cried.

“No, no,” Franks said.

“But Mr. Harbaugh makes it sounds like—”

“We have a few things that could be improved. He's a little worked up, is all.”

“I'd like another Scotch, that's what I'd like,” said Harbaugh, bumping his fist on the table. “I'd like one on the rocks—” but before he could say any more he was gripped by a coughing spasm and fumbled for his handkerchief, opening it with those froglike fingers. Jeannie saw in horror that the cloth was covered with small gray slugs. He turned his back to them and hacked another one into it.

“Mr. Harbaugh,” she said, “can I get you anything? A cough drop or some Father John's? A glass of water?”

He held up a hand. “No, no. I'll be fine, thank you. I didn't mean to become so inflamed. Minnie tells me I get too stirred up these days—fuck it,” he said, by way of apology, as the cough overtook him again. He got up and headed for the back porch, the door banging behind him on the way out.

Jeannie's mind clanged
Mayday, Mayday.
Grave profanities had been uttered
at her dinner table!
How had she let things devolve? It had happened so suddenly, all thanks to that idiot Slocum. She didn't know if she should stay to manage the table or follow Harbaugh; after a moment's inner struggle she stood to go after him, but Minnie shook her head. “Leave him be,” she said. “He's been doing this more and more. I'm so sorry, y'all. Don't listen to a word he says. It's humiliating.” She put a hand to her mouth and gave one big sob right into it.