This Enemy Town

CHAPTER 3

Seeing me at the musical rehearsal had apparently pegged Emma’s guilt-o-meter, too, because when I got home that evening, Paul told me she had called.

“She leave a message?”

Paul looked up from the crossword puzzle he was working. “She apologized profusely for ignoring us and asked that you call her back. She left a number. I think it’s her cell.”

I returned Emma’s call at once, because I wanted to see her. I was keen to find out why she had returned to the Academy. The last time we talked, she had been planning to call it quits.

Emma and I arranged to meet before rehearsal the following day in the Hart Room of Mahan Hall, which had been, until Nimitz opened in 1972, the main reading room of the Naval Academy library. In the years since then, the Hart Room had been used for everything from wedding receptions to spare office space, but had recently been converted into an elegant student lounge. When the cappuccino bar went in, I rejoiced, and occasionally met Paul there for coffee.

Flags representing each of the fifty states flanked the marble staircases that led from the center of Mahan lobby up to the Hart Room. Because the cappuccino bar was on the south side of the building, I chose the staircase to the left. As I climbed to the second floor past Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana, I wondered what Emma wanted to talk to me about, and if it had anything to do with why she’d returned to the Academy, or what I’d overheard of her conversation with Kevin the night before.

On the phone, she’d sounded worried, but when I pressed her for details, she put me off, saying it wasn’t a good time. Privacy, I knew, was a rare commodity in Bancroft Hall, where everyone had one, sometimes two, roommates, doors were rarely locked, and first classmen-“firsties”-could walk in on you, unannounced, at any time.

I was early. Emma hadn’t arrived, so I bought a Tropicana grapefruit drink from the cashier at the counter and settled into an upholstered chair to wait.

The room was magnificent-like Cinderella’s ballroom-with enormous windows that stretched all the way to the ceiling some thirty feet over my head, highly polished wooden floors, and a Romeo and Juliet-style balcony that overlooked the terrace below. As long, I swear, as a football field, the room had doorways at each end that linked it to classrooms in Maury and Sampson to the north and south, respectively.

Midshipmen were sprawled, some of them sound asleep, on sofas and chairs that had been arranged in conversational groupings about the room. Several mids were seated at tables, talking in low voices over open textbooks, and if the mid clicking his way from website to website on his laptop at the next table was any indication, computer services had thoughtfully provided wireless computer access to users of the room.

I checked the clock that hung over the doorway leading to Maury. It was two-forty. Emma was late. It wasn’t like her. I had just tossed my empty Tropicana bottle into the recycling bin labeled “glass” when she breezed in, full of apologies and out of breath, her books and uniform cap tucked under one arm.

“Want anything to drink?” I asked. “My treat.”

Emma shook her head. “No thanks. I brought my own.” She produced a can of Sprite from under her cap.

“Cookies? Chips?”

She grinned and patted her thigh. “Uh-uh. Gotta watch out for that Severn River hip disease.” The midshipmen diet was calorie-rich, to support their active regime. It proved particularly hard on the women.

“Like you need to worry,” I teased, envying Emma’s solid but trim figure. “Any particular place you want to sit?”

Emma glanced around, then gestured with her soda can to a pair of chairs set at precise right angles to one another on the fringed edge of a Bokhara carpet. “How ’bout over there,” she suggested. “More out of the way, and nobody’ll bother us.”

“I was glad to see you last night,” I told her as we settled comfortably into the plump leather cushions. “When we didn’t hear from you in September…” I shrugged. “Well, after our heart-to-heart last spring, I assumed you’d decided not to come back to the Academy.”

Emma popped the top of her Sprite and took a long swig. Without her stage makeup, without makeup of any kind, in fact, Emma was a beautiful young woman. She was blessed with clear, almost translucent skin and rosy cheeks, a look that millions of women aspired to but no regimen but diet, exercise, and… well, youth could even begin to duplicate. Her dark hair was cut in a neat bob, curling gently under at each ear, well off her collar, as required by Navy regulations; a swoop of bangs was caught to one side and secured at her temple with a plain silver barrette.

“I thought about it all summer,” she said, “while I was on cruise.” She gazed at me with serious green eyes flecked with amber, inherited, no doubt, from her father, an Irish Catholic from Boston. But their almond shape, and her blue-black hair, came directly from her mother, a native of Taiwan.

“Tell me about your summer,” I urged, steering the conversation gently in another, less land-mine-strewn direction.

That seemed the right tack. Emma’s frown vanished and she launched cheerfully into an account of her summer training. “For most of June, I was on the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship,” she said.

Despite Paul working for the Navy for years, I’d never thought much about ships. I must have looked puzzled, because she hurried to elaborate. “It looks like an aircraft carrier,” she explained, “with a flat deck for the planes, but it’s much smaller. I was one of a thousand crew members, but if we needed to, like helping with the war in Iraq or something, we could have taken on as many as sixteen hundred troops.”

I’m not particularly good with figures, but even I could do the math for that. “That’s twenty-six hundred people, give or take. That’s huge!”

“Bigger than my hometown,” she joked. “But an aircraft carrier is almost twice as big. Take the Nimitz, for example. It carries six thousand people, is approximately eleven hundred feet long by two hundred fifty feet wide and is taller than an eighteen-story building. The Bonhomme Richard is just 844 by one hundred six. Quite a difference.”

My synapses were firing on all cylinders as I struggled to put those statistics into context. I thought about Connie’s sailboat, the only boat I’d ever sailed on. It was a mere thirty-seven feet long and probably as wide as the average Volkswagen Beetle measured bumper to bumper.

“Holy cow,” I said at last.

Emma reached for her notebook and extracted a postcard from between the pages. “Here’s a picture of her,” she said, handing the postcard to me across the table.

The USS Bonhomme Richard, LHD6, had a nickname, I learned: the Revolutionary Gator. And Emma was right; it did resemble an aircraft carrier, with airplanes lashed, like children’s toys, to the deck. Unlike an aircraft carrier, though, amphibious vessels could drive home, straight into the gaping black hole in the vessel’s stern. “A ship like that,” I said, handing the postcard back, “you must have been rocking and rolling. I’d have been barfing nonstop.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” she said. “They keep you pretty busy, so you don’t have time to think about getting sick. The Navy assigns us to petty officers-they call them running mates-and we follow our running mates around, learning the enlisted side of things.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows comfortably on her knees. “Most of our training comes from books, so it’s great to see what really goes on. I can tell you one thing.” She gestured with her soda can. “You haven’t lived until you’ve spent a couple of weeks following a petty officer around. Those people really work hard.”

“I guess they want you to walk in enlisted shoes, see what it’s like before they make you an officer and put you in charge.”

She nodded. “Next summer, part two. We’ll shadow officers.” She tipped up her soda can and finished it off.

“Where did you sail?” I asked.

“From Hawaii to San Diego. And in a way,” she continued, rolling the empty can back and forth between her palms, “being on that ship really cinched it for me. You know I’ve never wanted to do anything but fly helicopters. The Bonhomme Richard carries forty-six Sea Knight helicopters, some ASWs and six Harrier attack planes. It made my heart sing just to stand on deck and look at them. And when they practiced night takeoff and landings…” Her eyes took on a faraway look and I could tell she was standing again on that pitching deck with wind from the prop wash tearing at her hair. “When push came to shove, there really was no choice. I had to come back.”

For a midshipman, the summer between youngster and second class year was fish-or-cut-bait time. It was the last chance a midshipman had to tell the Navy, “No thanks, not for me,” without incurring a five-year military obligation, or more. Once a midshipman started his second class, or junior, year, he owed the Navy (and the taxpayers) big-time. Emma was now committed to the Navy. The ships and the choppers had apparently changed her mind.

“Have you talked to your parents?”

Emma sat up as if she’d been shot. “God, no! You met them on parents’ weekend, Hannah. American Gothic all the way. Can you imagine? Dad would go ballistic if he found out I’m gay.” She pointed to one of a series of oil paintings that lined the walls on both sides of the room, portraits of famous admirals. “See that painting up there?”

I nodded. It was a full-length portrait of Admiral William J. Crowe, USN, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ambassador to Britain during the Clinton administration. Crowe was standing behind a chair, smiling benevolently, like a favorite uncle, with his hat tucked under his arm.

“Well, picture Crowe with a poker up his butt and frowning, and that’d be my dad.”

I had to smile. I’d met Emma’s father one Parents’ Weekend. I didn’t know about the poker, but there was an uncanny resemblance between the two men. “How about your mom, then?” I asked.

“That’s a laugh. She’d insist that I change. She’d sic her prayer group on me, and if that didn’t work, she’d find somebody to kidnap me and drag me off to some Bad Girl Camp for deprogramming. The Baptists have their ways.”

“You’re not serious about the deprogramming.”

She tapped her mouth with an index finger. “Read my lips. I’m deadly serious. Dad owns the only farm supply store in Galena, Iowa. Can you imagine all those good ol’ boys dropping by, tonguing their chaw from one cheek to the other just to tell Daddy how supportive they are of his only daughter’s alternative lifestyle?” Emma slumped into the cushion and crossed one black-clad leg over the other before continuing. “I got appointed to the Academy by Senator Tom Harkin, for heaven’s sake. Harkin was a jet pilot in the Navy during Vietnam. I’m doomed!”

I opened my mouth to say something reassuring, but Emma cut me off. “It gets worse. I was grand marshal of Galena’s memorial day parade, sitting on top of the mayor’s stretch Caddy, riding down Church Street to Courthouse Square behind my high school band playing ‘I’m Proud to Be an American.’ Oh, this’ll go over just great in Galena.” She raised her arm and used an index finger to write an imaginary headline in the air. “Galena Girl Goes Gay.”

She sighed deeply, stretching her legs out straight on the carpet in front of her. “Well, you know what they say. If they don’t ask, I’m certainly not going to tell.”

Emma blinked rapidly, fighting back tears.

“This is going to make life difficult for you here, isn’t it, Emma?” I said gently.

“Well, it’s not like I’ve actually done anything, you know,” she said, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “As I told you last spring, I’ve had these feelings since junior high, but I didn’t do anything about it. I thought that being attracted to my girlfriends was normal. That one day I’d grow out of it. I’ve read the storybooks! I thought that eventually some guy’d walk into my life and bells would start ringing and my heart would go pitter-pat. And when that didn’t happen, what did I know? I thought I just hadn’t met the right guy.”

“But…” I struggled for the words. “If the Academy finds out…”

Emma waved a hand dismissively. “I know, I know. But, they won’t. If I don’t act on my feelings…” A sly smile crept over her face. “I figure if I leave my black leather jumpsuit in the bottom drawer and lock up my nipple ring-”

“Nipple ring?” I interrupted in a hoarse whisper, but I could see from her ready grin that she was just kidding about the nipple ring. I wasn’t so sure about the jumpsuit.

“Is there anybody special?” I dared to ask.

Emma was staring at another one of the admirals, two or three portraits down from Admiral Crowe. “This summer, while on leave?” She stared at the wall dreamily, and I knew Emma was miles away, on some deserted South Pacific beach, perhaps. She shuddered, dragging herself almost physically back to the present. “Well, let’s just say that something crystallized for me on Waikiki, and after that I knew there was no going back.”

“I’m glad you told me,” I said.

“You’re right, though, Hannah. It’s not going to get any easier. Take Kevin, for example.” She closed her eyes and tilted her head heavenward. “Take Kevin, please!”

“Kevin Hart, you mean? The guy who plays Jonas Fogg?”

She nodded. “That Kevin. Kevin’s not the only guy who’s asked me out. I’ve actually gone on a couple of dates since I came to Annapolis, but nothing. You know?” She glanced away. “And if I don’t start dating soon, I’m afraid somebody’ll guess.”

“Nobody will guess, Emma, if you don’t tell them-” I shut my mouth as an officer dressed in Navy khakis walked by the back of my chair on his way into Maury. When he’d disappeared through the door, I continued. “They’ll just think you’re a Hall Rat, a dedicated mid, working hard and sacrificing your social life to stay at the top of your class.”

We sat in silence. “Kevin does seem to be attracted to you,” I said after a few minutes had ticked by.

“Well, if I ever did decide to have a go with a guy, it certainly wouldn’t be with Kevin. He’s driving me bonkers!”

“What’s the problem? He’s certainly attractive.”

“Oh, right. In a me-Tarzan-you-Jane kind of way. I should take out a restraining order.”

I laughed out loud. “His dad’s an admiral, I hear.”

“And Kevin never lets us forget it. What a prick!” I imagined she was thinking about Kevin when she pressed her empty soda can between her palms and squashed it flat. “And now his mom’s hanging around, too.” She laughed uneasily. “One big happy family.”

“I was with Kevin’s mom last night,” I told Emma, as if she didn’t know. “I’m helping with the sets for Sweeney Todd. I don’t mean to be nosy, Emma, but when we were leaving the building, we saw you talking to Kevin. You didn’t seem very happy.”

“Oh, that! Kevin asked me out-again!-but I told him no. We’re in the same company. Mids aren’t allowed to date other mids in their company.”

“But that’s the perfect excuse! You can remind Kevin that you can’t go out with him. It’s against the rules.”

“You’d think, but he was pressuring me to take a love chit. Can you believe it? I told him to pound sand.”

“A what chit?” I couldn’t believe that I’d heard Emma correctly.

“A love chit. That’s not its official name, of course, but if you fall in love with somebody in your company, and you want to date, you can request permission to be moved to another company.” She moaned. “As if I’d take a love chit for Kevin, or for anybody else, for that matter! I like my company; my best friends are in my company.”

Emma began playing with a button on the front of her shirt, twisting it absentmindedly until I began to fear for the thread. “So, I figure I’ll just go on as I have been. Mind my own business. Graduate. Take my commission. The worst that will happen is that someday the Navy will find out I’m a lesbian and they’ll kick my ass out anyway, but at least I’ll go out proud, holding a B.S. degree in engineering and knowing how to fly a goddamn airplane.”

I couldn’t imagine living a double life like that. What if the strong physical attraction that Paul and I had for each other were suddenly against the law, the lovemaking we enjoyed not even legal in the privacy of our own bedroom? What if Paul could lose his job simply for loving me? It was unthinkable.

“Emma?” I touched her hand where it lay gripping the arm of her chair. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “They’re not supposed to ask, of course, but if they do, none of this honesty bullshit for me. I’ll lie through my teeth if I have to. Make ’em prove it.” She threw both hands in the air. “Isn’t it stupid?”

I had to agree. The military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” policy had to be the most wrong-headed compromise in the annals of legislation, and that was saying something.

Emma looked at me with wide, honest eyes. “If I can hold on, tough it out, maybe they’ll change that ridiculous law.”

I knew where that was coming from. Where there’s life, there’s hope. How many of my desperately ill friends had felt that way? If I can just hold on-one day, one week, one month at a time-perhaps they’ll find a cure before my time runs out.

“I understand, Emma,” I said. “And if there’s anything I can do…”

Emma reached out and squeezed my hand. “Oh, Hannah, I feel so comfortable talking to you. Sometimes I think you’re the only person I can trust.”

She was right to trust me; I hadn’t even told Paul. I knew I could keep Emma’s secret. But, I wondered, could she?