Murder in the Navy

Nine

She stood before the full-length mirror in her room, not wanting to awaken her roommate and not yet wanting to go to bed.

She looked at herself as if she were meeting the reflection for the first time, and she felt rather idiotic about the sudden bursting feeling within her.

She had never met anyone like Chuck Masters before, never in all her life.

She’d been born on a farm in Minnesota, the proverbial farmer’s daughter, except that her father was a strict, Godfearing man who wouldn’t have allowed a salesman within four acres of his property. She could still remember the wheat fields, even now far away from them, the slender rods of grain swaying on the afternoon breeze, the sky a solid mass of blue beyond it, the sun glaring in the sky overhead. She had loved to walk in the wheat when she was a young girl, her head almost covered by the swaying golden wands.

She was a quiet, introverted child, Jean Dvorak. She loved the farm animals, and her favorite stories were those in which animals figured largely. She had never liked boys much. There was a nice boy living on the neighboring farm, a boy called Sven. He would often come to visit with his father, and he’d hop down from the wagon and they would face over the fields together, barefoot, laughing at the sun. This was when they were both very young, before she fully realized there was a difference between boys and girls.

When she was twelve, and her breasts began to pucker with adolescence, her mother explained what was happening to her. She could still remember her mother quite clearly, her hair as golden as the wheat fields, her eyes as blue as the sky beyond. Her mother was a gentle woman who put up with the harsh ways of her father patiently, and she remembered 90 now the extreme sense of loss she’d felt when her mother died. They had laid her to rest in the rich Minnesota earth, and she had wept silently, and her heart had gone out then to the woman who had been her friend all her life.

She had three brothers and no sisters, and with her mother gone, there was no one to tell her things any more. Sven would still come over with his father, but he had begun to notice her as a girl now, and when he leaped down from the wagon bed, he would stand around and foolishly worry the ground with his big toe.

She preferred her books to Sven.

She went on to high school, and she was considered a quiet, studious girl. She was asked to join a sorority, but she refused. She was asked out often, but she rarely accepted dates, even though the boys never stopped trying. There was something exceptionally appealing about her dignified good looks, and she could have been the belle of the school had she tried, but she did not try.

Her mother had died of cancer, and the cruel injustice of her death had remained with Jean for a long while afterward. She wanted to do something to help. Her father was not a rich man, and so she abandoned any hope of becoming a doctor. But nursing was a worth-while profession, and she discussed it with the student adviser at school, who suggested that she go into the Navy upon graduation.

She had been a good student, and she was a good nurse, highly respected at the hospital.

This thing with Chuck — she could not fool herself about this thing with Chuck. He was the first man who’d really captured her interest, but she wondered now if she were really in love with him, or if she were simply experiencing something she should have felt when she was fifteen.

She looked at herself in the mirror again, and then she began undressing, taking off her jacket and then her hat.

He was not really a handsome man. She had met handsomer men, and they had all left her cold. Nor was he more intelligent than most, or more sincere, or more trustworthy, or more anything, for that matter. He had simply appealed to her, and he still appealed to her, and that was the long and the short of it, she supposed.

She took off her blouse and her skirt, and then went back to the mirror, standing in her bra and half slip.

She supposed she was an attractive woman. Her bust was as good as most she’d seen — and God, she’d seen enough of them since she’d entered the Navy — and whereas she was a little hippy, she supposed her figure would do. Chuck seemed to like it, anyway. Or so she imagined.

That was the danger of a thing like this, the fact that a girl could let her imagination run away with her. She had met a lot of men in the Navy, and every man she’d met seemed to feel her nurse’s uniform was a symbol of promiscuity, or at least a promise of it. She really couldn’t understand this. She had heard stories about Waves, of course, and she had also heard stories about her sister nurses, but a uniform didn’t necessarily make its wearer a loose woman. She was, in fact, willing to wager that the uniform had nothing whatever to do with it. Those same girls would undoubtedly have behaved in the same manner in civilian dress. Claire, for example. Well, there was no sense thinking about Claire, God rest her soul.

The important person to think about was Chuck.

Was it possible that he was like all the rest? He had, after all, asked her out the moment he’d met her, practically, and that hardly spoke well for an enduring friendship. And the second time he’d met her, he’d been drunk, and he’d probably have settled for anything in a skirt.

She had been quite carried away with him that second time. There had been something immensely attractive about him, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. Perhaps a stilted sort of mother complex, a protection of the poor drunk. But that didn’t explain her reaction to his kisses. No mother ever felt that way about her child.

Now let us draw up the reins, Miss Dvorak, she warned herself. This may just be a grand little fling for the good lieutenant, and if it is, he’s going to be sadly disappointed.

It doesn’t seem as if he feels that way, but there’s really no way of telling. Not yet, there isn’t. And he has been a perfect gentleman, except for his kisses. No perfect gentleman kisses that way.

So let’s just take it easy. He’ll be in New Jersey for a while. Now, where in New Jersey? He didn’t even tell me, which shows how much he cares, but he did promise to write. What more can you expect of a fellow?

Still, and nonetheless, I really honestly feel we should bide our time and step forward cautiously. We’ve already exhibited our heart on our striped sleeve, and that was the wrong thing to do at this stage of the game.

Perhaps I should get to know some other men.

Perhaps I should go out more often. What’s wrong with me, anyway, falling like a silly adolescent for the first man that comes my way?

I’ll go out with other men.

Well, maybe I won’t. Chuck will only be gone for a short time, and he did say he’d write, though maybe he won’t. We’ll see, I suppose, and besides, who’d ask me out if he doesn’t?

Well, that’s silly. You’re certainly asked out often enough, so don’t make excuses for the Lieutenant. You know darned well you’re crazy about him already, so don’t tell yourself... Well, why not? What’s wrong with going out with some other men while he’s gone? Am I engaged to him or something? Am I married?

Mrs. Charles Masters.

Oh, wouldn’t that be lovely?

Go to sleep, you silly little fool, she told herself, and then she whipped off her underclothes and headed for her bed.