
As a good girl waiting for her chance to be bad, Grace McAllen felt lost and discontented. But all that changed one day when a gorgeous stranger with ocean blue eyes rode into tiny Edenville, Texas, on a Harley. Grace knew in her heart that the chance meeting was just the beginning of a grand new adventure....
A prequel story to bestselling author Susan Wiggs's novel The Ocean Between Us.
a cognizant original v5 release october 09 2010
Contents
My mother always warned me about men on motorcycles, so I suppose that was why, as a fresh-faced college girl in the 1980s, I found them so intriguing. Bikers in general, and Steve Bennett in particular.
On the day I met him, I had no idea a great adventure awaited us. On that day, in fact, I was feeling lost. This was pretty unusual for me, for I had spent my whole life up to that point doing what was right. I got good grades in school because it was easy, and because it pleased my parents. I dated Travis Hunt because he was kin to the Hunt brothers, and in Texas, that meant money and prestige. I attended Trinity University in San Antonio, because it was exclusive and according to my parents, I'd be likely to meet the "right" sort of people.
It was the summer of my junior year, and I'd managed to bitterly disappoint my family by failing to attain, in addition to my B.S. in business, the vaunted "Mrs." degree they wanted for me. Although I still had a year to go, I felt the weight of their expectations pressing like a yoke across my shoulders. When you're the only child, you bear so many hopes and dreams alone, it's a wonder you don't collapse.
I had no idea at the time that my life was about to change. The spring semester had just ended, and I went home for the weekend to laze around Eagle Lake with two of my sorority sisters. The three of us drove the sun-baked back roads of the Texas hill country in RaeLynn Cullen's cherry red vintage Ford Fairlane convertible with the top down and our shirts off to display bikini tops that would make the Delta Delta Delta house mother blow a gasket if she knew.
The three of us---RaeLynn, Trudy Long and me---had a favorite swimming hole on the north shore of the lake near the revival camp of the Halfway Baptist Church. In May, the sun was still a kindly presence in the wide blue sky rather than a roar of deadly heat, which it would be when August arrived. The spring-fed waters of the lake were downright chilly, and we took our time easing in.
I put off the inevitable plunge by sitting on the dock for a while, staring out at the flat, bright water and thinking of nothing. The sun warmed my head and a light breeze shimmered through the trees, and I busied myself by contemplating my toes. I'd tried a new shade of polish called Tangerine Dreams and I liked it a lot. The fact that I was thinking about nail polish at all was a pretty darned clear indication of my own discontent. Here I was, twenty years old, a mature college girl, and for the life of me, I couldn't decide what to do with myself.
"We can't make up our minds between Cozumel and Acapulco," said RaeLynn, who'd been my best friend since fourth grade at Edenville Elementary. She was quitting school to marry her boyfriend, who had just graduated. "Dallas says the golf is better on the west coast of Mexico."
"It's a honeymoon," I pointed out, squeezing a tube of sunscreen and rubbing the sweetish scent of coconut oil on my shoulders. "He shouldn't be thinking about golf at all."
RaeLynn laughed. "You have no understanding of the male brain, Grace McAllen."
"She's right," said Trudy, outgoing president of the Tri Delts and my second-best friend. A year older than RaeLynn and me, she possessed the special, almost Yoda-like wisdom of a brand-new college graduate. "You don't, Grace. How is RaeLynn going to shop if he's not out golfing?"
"He can go shopping with her," I pointed out.
"That's about as likely as me playing golf," RaeLynn said with a laugh. "We've got it all worked out, Grace. Marriage is one big process of negotiation and compromise."
"Then it's no wonder I'm one of the few in the house who's going to get through college without getting married. I'm not into negotiation and compromise, much to my parents' despair."
Trudy took off her sunglasses to put lotion on her nose. Her brown eyes regarded me with a kindness so sincere it hurt, almost. "So they still haven't forgiven you for dumping Travis Hunt last semester."
The sting of my parents' disapproval over my broken engagement to The Perfect Man was unexpectedly intense. According to my parents, I had blown an opportunity for high society, the best of everything, a golden future. A Hunt, my mother had railed in exasperation. You could be marrying a Hunt, becoming one of the most important women in Texas. My grandmother, whom I'd always regarded as an ally, had been disappointed, too, though she tried to hide it. My father pointed out that as a Hunt, I'd be set for life, never being subjected to the worries of a mortgage, a family. I could have had a life of leisure.
You don't talk to a twenty-year-old about being leisurely. I was full to bursting with restless energy and vague but colorful dreams that were trying to take shape in my imagination. My parents didn't understand that I wanted...more. I wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but there was this sense inside me of reaching, of burning, of embracing the richness of life as it unfolds. I just hadn't figured out what that meant for me. Believe me, it made for pretty weak dinner-table arguments.
I steeled my nerves and dove into the lake, hoping the shock of cold water would wash away the bothersome thoughts. But the water was even too cold for that, so I howled and scrambled back onto the dock.
"Lordy, that's brutal," I told RaeLynn and Trudy, vigorously scrubbing myself dry with a towel. Then I pulled on my cutoffs, lay back on the warm wooden planks and looked out at the stark majesty of the hill country. Sandstone crags and grasslands covered with wildflowers framed the intensely blue, mirrorlike water, the surface as blank, vast and empty as an unwritten page. "That didn't help at all."
"Help what?" asked RaeLynn.
I combed my fingers through my damp hair. "Still thinking about my parents. I try not to let them bother me. But in their eyes," I confessed, "I'm a failure already."
"Listen to you, Grace," Trudy said, putting her shades on and leaning back on the heels of her hands. "Here it is, 1985, and you're still expected to be the little woman. It's like you're in a time warp or something."
"That's my parents. They mean well, I suppose."
"I wish you had a racy big sister to get in trouble so you could fly under the radar," Trudy said. "Having Paulette pave the way always helped me enormously."
Last I heard, Paulette had turned vegetarian and was living in Austin with two guys, both of whom were honky-tonk musicians. She embodied my parents' great fear that if I didn't find an appropriate man, I would wind up in some terrible situation like that.
I tried not to think about the disappointment in their eyes and the displeasure in their voices when I told them that not only did I not wish to marry Travis Hunt, but I also didn't intend to move back to my sleepy little hometown after graduation. And finally, when I made it clear to them that the likelihood of me marrying a man they approved of was slim to none.
Yet I did want things. I wanted a husband and family, I wanted a life filled with passion and purpose. Unfortunately for me, I had no idea how to go about finding it. I just knew it wasn't waiting for me like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right here in Edenville.
Braving the chill water, Trudy and RaeLynn went swimming to wash off the heat of the day. I wandered back to the car to get the novel I was reading, Lucky by Jackie Collins. I sank into the story, wanting to be Lucky Santangelo, prowling the glittering casinos of Vegas and having all sorts of imaginative sexual adventures. Heavens, who wouldn't want that?
Far in the distance, up on the county road, the rumble of a powerful motor intruded into the quiet lapping of the lake upon the shore.
I remember glancing up in the direction of the road, seeing the dark silhouette of a motorcycle rider, backlit by the late afternoon sun. The girls were still paddling in the water and chatting, but I stayed on the shore, caught by something I couldn't quite define.
Did I know even then, with that first glance? It seems impossible, given that we hadn't seen each other's faces or exchanged a single word.
But there was this feeling, deep in my gut. It was a twist of certainty and I can't say it was pleasurable, but it was very intense. At any rate, I must have sensed something. Because at that moment, my thoughts rang crystal clear.
He's here. At last.
I felt the rumble of the Harley's engine deep in my gut, and with the sunlit dust rising in a cloud, the rider looked like something out of a dream. Down at the lakeshore, my girlfriends didn't notice him the way I did. I think that might have been because at that point, their lives were set. RaeLynn was going to marry Dallas Sitwell, and Trudy was headed off for a summer of travel before law school. I was free, still searching for what my life was to become, and for that reason, I was open to anything.
Especially if it was a black-clad stranger on a Harley, driving straight toward me.
I had always been a rational, no-nonsense person. Raised the way I was, I learned early on to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground and my head out of the clouds. Still, at that moment, as the stranger crested the hill leading down to the lake, I felt a strange shifting inside me, a tightening in the pit of my stomach.
The girls were still oblivious, splashing water at each other and laughing. I walked toward the road, completely intrigued by the approaching rider. The dusty Harley shuddered like a live thing as he brought it to a stop a few yards away from me. Stirring up a swirl of caliche dust from the road, he planted his feet, in knee-high boots, on the ground. Despite the heat of the day, I felt a chill pass over me like a breeze.
Do men remember what they were wearing on certain occasions the way women do? I doubt it. Women always do, though. I can recall, with the clarity of a photograph, what I had on for any significant occasion of my life. I wish I could say I had on something like Lucky Santangelo might wear, a leopard print bikini and gold mules maybe. However, on this particular day, I was wearing faded cutoffs and a blue bikini top, flip-flops and a shiny coating of sunscreen. No makeup other than toenail polish, and my hair in a ponytail, which made me cringe. This was supposed to be an all-girl weekend and we had dressed accordingly.
The stranger, on the other hand, looked spectacular in black jeans and those tall boots. A shiny helmet and aviator shades gave him an air of mystery. I didn't recognize the ganglike insignia and the logo "VAQ 465" on his black T-shirt, but the cryptic symbols only added to the enigma.
"Howdy, ma'am," he said, polite as you please.
I asked, "Are you lost?" A mundane question on the surface, but given everything that happened after, it was strangely prophetic.
"Yes, ma'am," he said in a voice as smooth as melted butter, "I believe I just might be."
Then he took off his helmet and shades, and I saw his face for the first time. A light-brown beard stubble beautifully accentuated the lines of his jaw, chin and cheekbones, and even though I couldn't tell from a distance, I somehow knew his eyes would be blue. Just as I was getting nervous---what if he's a gang member, an outlaw? What if my mother's right after all?---a wonderful smile unfurled, a funny half grin that caught at my heart.
"Um, can I help you? Where are you headed?" I asked.
"I'm looking for someone..." he said with an unexpected awkwardness that was curiously endearing. "But I've forgotten who. My God, I can't even think straight. You are just about the prettiest sight I've ever seen."
For a few seconds, it didn't register that he was actually flirting with me. I actually whipped a glance behind to see if he was talking to someone else, but no, he was looking directly at me. Grace McAllen, Grace the invisible, Grace the overlooked. I never thought of myself as pretty, you see. Nice-looking, that was me. Nice-looking Grace, who had never done anything noteworthy in her entire life.
When I finally figured out that he was offering me a compliment, I blushed, of course. And I hate blushing. It makes some girls look becoming, but on me, it's just a heated rush of color staining my face like a sunburn.
I couldn't bring myself to thank him. "What can I do for you?"
What can I do for you? Lordy, Grace, I scolded myself, could you maybe be a little more obvious?
Yet somehow the stranger made it all right, letting that half smile stretch into a grin. With unhurried movements, he removed his leather gloves, took out a surprisingly white cloth handkerchief and slowly, deliberately, without taking his eyes off me, wiped his hands.
Then he stuck out one hand toward me. "My name's Steve Bennett."
Like Elizabeth Bennet in my favorite novel. It must be a sign, it had to be. I put aside my practical nature and suddenly believed everything was a sign---the way two herons rose from the water and arrowed toward the sun, the nodding branch of a redbud tree arching over the road, the backfire blast of a passing truck. It was like the universe was telling me to pay attention, this was an important moment.
Life does that, I've come to believe. Life hands us moments, brings us to turning points, and it's up to us to make what we will of the situation. Right then and there, I could have turned away, murmured that I needed to get back to my friends. Or, I thought, I could stay right there and see where the moment took me.
I stayed. Nothing could have turned me from him at that point.
I never did remember to thank him for the compliment. I was simply too flustered. It was all I could do to introduce myself.
"Grace McAllen," I said, and put my hand in his.
His touch was electric, even though it was only a handshake. The very air around me felt electric, too, humming with possibility. I took my hand away just so I could think straight.
"I'm looking for a town called Edenville," he said. "Would you happen to know where that is?"
"As a matter of fact, I do."
"Then I'm not so lost after all." He was definitely Texan, with that accent, although the tags on his bike were from Florida.
"Not really."
"I'm on my way to visit a fellow named Bud Plawski. You happen to know him?"
Know him? As it happened, I had grown up on the same street as Seymour "Buddy" Plawski, and deemed him the most annoying boy in Hayes County. A year older than me, he was one of those skinny, restless kids who was always getting into trouble in school because he couldn't sit still. Yet he was fiercely smart and zoomed through the toughest math and science classes Edenville High School had to offer. He once got in trouble for climbing the water tower, not to spray paint "Seniors 1980" like everyone else, but to shoot a homemade rocket at the sky.
We were all shocked when the time came to go to college, and Buddy was offered an appointment to the United States Naval Academy. It was rare in Edenville for a boy to aim himself so high, and we all looked at Buddy through new eyes. On those rare occasions when he did come home for a visit, we didn't just look, we gawked. He'd bulked up like a bodybuilder, razored his hair in the style of a seasoned recruit. The physical changes were one thing, but it was the change in his demeanor that I always found so dramatic. Although he used to be an awkward boy, he now had confidence, even a swagger, and an air about him that set him apart from ordinary mortals, like a priest, maybe, or an astronaut.
"Yes," I said. "I know him. He lives on my street, as a matter of fact. I mean, he doesn't anymore and actually, I don't live there anymore, but..." I paused and admonished myself to quit babbling. "Anyway, our parents live on Alamo Drive, and Buddy's at home. According to his mother, he's recovering from an injury. Maybe you know he's in the U.S. Navy? He was hurt in a flight training accident."
Steve Bennett didn't seem to mind the babbling. In fact, he seemed perfectly happy just standing there, checking me out, and I'm not ashamed to say I liked it.
I became aware that in the background, my sorority sisters were whispering and giggling, having finally noticed the stranger.
I didn't ask him how he knew Buddy, where he'd come from or how long he was staying. None of that mattered to me, and I suppose a part of me was afraid to push. It was like not wanting to awaken from a magical dream for fear of losing it.
Anyway, I had no idea what lay ahead and I wasn't about to question fate. All I saw was a man who took my breath away.
I was always the good girl in my sorority house. I was the designated driver, the one who made excellent grades and didn't get caught up in all the passions and dramas of college life. At the end of junior year, RaeLynn had jokingly made a sign for my door that designated me the "Oldest Living Virgin of Delta Delta Delta."
My friends thought I had been born well-behaved. I'm sure my parents like to believe it was their training.
But what nobody knew was that I never was a good girl. I was just waiting for my chance to be bad.
Steve Bennett was that chance, even though he didn't know it the first day we met, and even though being bad with him was the best thing that ever happened to me.
When he said he needed directions to Bud Plawski's house, I made it sound overly complicated on purpose: take the lake road past the broken rock at the entrance to the Ryder fishing cabins, and head into town on the old farm-to-market road.... As I spoke, I could see him taking it all in, and he probably could have navigated his way through town to Alamo Drive just fine.
But I was feeling bold and maybe just a little bit bad, so I said, "I could show you right where your friend lives, but I don't have my car." I gestured vaguely in the direction of RaeLynn's convertible.
I knew what he'd ask. Lord help me, I was hoping he'd ask it.
"Ma'am, I'd be obliged if you'd show me."
"Ma'am" to a twenty-year-old. He was definitely a Texan. "Show you. You mean, ride with you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
He probably expected me to say no. Even though I was more than ready to be bad, I still looked well-behaved on the outside. And he had to know how he looked---big and muscular, clad in all black, riding a Harley Softail. I smiled at him and said that would be fine, and then I went to tell my friends.
You would have thought I'd told them I was going to start selling my eggs or move to Detroit. They were mortified.
"You can't just hop on the back of some guy's motorcycle, Grace," RaeLynn said. "It's not safe."
"What if he abducts you?" Trudy demanded.
Oh, please, I thought. Please let him abduct me.
"I'll be fine," I assured them. "He's going to see Buddy straight-arrow Plawski, of all people."
Not good enough for my girlfriends. They approached Steve Bennett and peppered him with questions, thus learning more from him than I'd managed to extract in my tongue-tied state. He was on a rare two-week leave from the Navy and had ridden all the way from Pensacola just because he felt like it, and because a friend had invited him. I felt foolish for not concluding he was in the Navy as soon as he said he was a friend of Buddy.
He told my girlfriends he'd ridden all day from Pensacola, Florida to see him. It was a shock to hear that he'd driven straight through, stopping only for a nap at a rest area outside Lafayette, Louisiana. He must be dead tired, I thought.
"Let's go," I said to him boldly.
With my friends' protests growing fainter in my ears, I put on a blue denim shirt and my grubby Adidas sneakers. I always used to wear Adidas because, unofficially, the name is an acronym for All Day I Dream About Sex. Which, as the oldest living virgin in my sorority house, I pretty much did.
Steve Bennett probably realized I'd never been on the back of a motorcycle before. He was kind enough not to ask, but my inexperience was pretty obvious. I mean, I fumbled with the spare helmet, unsure as to how to put it on. I couldn't figure out the footrests until he showed me, and I wasn't even sure which part of the seat to straddle.
Riding with someone, anyone, on a motorcycle is a strange situation of forced intimacy. Our pelvises fit together like spoons, and my bare legs were snuggled next to his muscular thighs. At first, I put my hands demurely on either side of his waist.
"You're going to need to hold on a lot tighter than that," he said and pulled my hands all the way around his thick, hard torso.
Finally, he turned on the motor. I felt the jolt of power course through me, and I clasped him even tighter.
"Ready?" he yelled over the sound of the motor.
"Ready."
The bike rolled off its kickstand as my sorority sisters stood in the roadway, calling warnings I couldn't hear and wouldn't have heeded even if I could.
When I rode into Edenville on the back of Steve Bennett's Harley, I felt like a different person. The ride from Eagle Lake into town was short, but it took me on what was to be the first step of the longest journey of my life.
With my arms around his tree-trunk middle, I dared to press myself against his back, and then he wasn't the only one who was lost. I was, too. I grew dizzy with his smell and with the feel of the wind in my face and the roar of the motor in my ears.
At that point, I didn't know anything but his name, and that he rode a Harley, was in the Navy and had ocean-blue eyes. It's funny that I could see a blue ocean in my mind's eye, because the only saltwater I'd ever actually seen was the gray-brown Gulf of Mexico from the seawall of Galveston during wild-girl weekends from college.
Yet though I knew little about him, I understood something deep inside---this chance meeting was changing the course of my life.
I pointed the way to Alamo Drive and wondered if he was amused by the quirky names of things---the Halfway Baptist Church, Adam's Ribs B-B-Q and the Celestial Café, the filling station with its hand-lettered sign, "We sell gas to anyone in a glass container." Until I went away to college, this had been my whole world. It was imminently, almost oppressively safe, as small and tightly knit as a Catholic school uniform.
Back then, the sight of a Harley roaring across the courthouse square brought on glares of righteous disapproval. People in those parts still talked about hippies and beatniks as though the countercultures were still a threat. Maybelle King came out to stand under the awning of Eve's Garden Shoppe, planting her hands on her hips in consternation. I laughed aloud. No one knew it was me on the back of the bike, but I wouldn't have cared if they did.
Buddy Plawski's house came up far too quickly, in the neighborhood where I grew up. When I got off the Harley, I still felt the buzz of the motor deep in my bones. Alamo Drive hadn't changed in decades, and for all I know, it's still the same: a quiet lane shaded by live oaks and lined with genteel Victorian-style houses and white picket fences.
After Steve parked the bike and took off his helmet, he looked around with a puzzled expression.
"Not what you expected?" I asked, handing over my helmet.
"It's fine. I can't imagine growing up here."
"Where did you grow up?"
He had such a fine, gentle smile. "Honey, you don't want to know."
"What, is it a secret?"
"Nope. Just depressing."
"I'm a very cheerful person. Bet I can handle it."
He also had a long, slow way of eyeing me that made my spine tingle, I swear it did. "I bet you can, too."
But he didn't say anymore. Instead he said, "Let's talk about you, Grace." And with almost embarrassing eagerness, I told him the sum total of who I was---born and raised in Edenville, the only child of parents who expected much of me, the only grandchild of a widow who expected nothing but love and honesty from me. Twenty years old, a business major at Trinity.
In turn, he told me virtually nothing. This was surprising to me. Most men would be quick to whip out their most impressive credentials and most women, myself included, would be quick to be impressed.
However, at that moment, I had nothing from him, nothing but that brand-new incessant tingling inside telling me to step through the door he held open.
"Thanks for the help," he said.
"You're welcome." I racked my brain, trying to figure out a reason to linger.
"Didn't you say you lived near Bud?"
"Right down the street." I pointed out my house.
"What are you doing tonight?" he asked.
The girls and I planned to see the brand-new movie Back to the Future at the Lone Star Drive-In and stuff ourselves with popcorn and syrupy Dr Pepper.
"Nothing," I said.
"Let's go out," he said.
"I thought you were here to see Buddy."
That unforgettable grin flashed. "Not anymore."
As I got ready for our first date, my parents bombarded me with questions. They were convinced that I had ruined any chance I had at a decent future by dumping Travis Hunt, and they were determined to dislike anyone else I might bring home. I had no answers to the questions they fired at me, so I dodged them, saying simply that tonight's date was someone I'd met recently and that they'd meet him when he came to pick me up.
I worked for a good two hours getting ready. Shampoo, hot rollers, makeup, the works. After much internal debate, I settled on jeans, cowboy boots and a pink T-shirt from a Willie Nelson concert up in Luckenbach. I wanted to look casual, as though going on a date on the spur of the moment was nothing new to me.
Steve looked wonderful when he showed up, freshly showered, wearing clean jeans and a cowboy shirt and boots. In fact, he looked so good I almost wished I'd dressed a little better myself. Like in a white organdy gown with a twelve-foot train, I thought fancifully.
I was slightly disappointed to see he'd borrowed the Plawski's Plymouth instead of bringing the Harley.
During the overly long conversation in the parlor, where my mother served iced tea and the frosted lemon bars my grandmother had made that afternoon, I squirmed in my chair. My father opened fire with the questions at Steve Bennett.
"Where'd you grow up, son?"
"Houston, sir."
Everyone waited for him to elaborate, but he simply sat patiently while I squirmed.
"And who are your people?" asked Gran.
Oh, lord. My grandmother still lived in a different era.
Steve gave a quick, enigmatic smile, though he looked Gran in the eye. "Ma'am, I have no family to speak of. I was a ward of the state and lived in a series of foster homes until I was old enough to enlist in the Navy."
A shifting, uncomfortable silence greeted this disclosure. Kids grew up in foster homes for a variety of reasons, none of them good. I felt an odd ache in the pit of my stomach as I tried to read between the lines of what he'd said. A person's childhood defined him, didn't it? I wondered how deeply those early years had shaped this man's character. What was etched on his soul?
Gran said, "How sad for you, having no family."
My mother was silent, but I could feel her disapproval growing and swelling like an invisible tumor.
My father cleared his throat. "So you're in the service." He jumped right on that. I could tell he was toying with liking Steve Bennett.
"Yes, sir."
"And what do you do in the Navy?" my father inquired.
"I'm a second lieutenant, sir. I'm finishing up pilot training."
Well, well, well. I sat up a little taller on Aunt Mamie's Duncan Phyfe divan, which she'd given to my mother before going to live at a retirement home. An officer and a pilot. My instincts about this man were even better than I thought.
People toss around the term "whirlwind courtship," but I don't think anyone really understands what it means unless they've experienced it. Surely that's what happened to me, right at a moment in my life when I didn't think anything interesting would ever come along.
Whirlwind. It's one of those words you take for granted, assuming you know what it is. Well, I certainly found out first hand the weekend I met Steve Bennett. I had the sensation of stepping out into a storm during hurricane season, swept up into a dizzying rush of tingling emotions.
Falling in love with him was easy. Too easy, perhaps. I was incautious, willfully so. I wanted everything he was and all that he stood for and never paused to consider if a headlong rush was the best way to shape my future.
That night, we went to Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin. Townes Van Zandt was playing. His mournful, thin-voiced rendition of "Pancho and Lefty" brought tears to my eyes, and when I looked over at Steve, I saw a faraway expression on his face and wondered what he was thinking. Then, as if he felt my stare, he reached over and squeezed my hand.
That was it. That was the moment I started to love him. It felt so real to me. I'll always keep that moment folded away in my heart, like the pressed flowers of a homecoming corsage. I remember perfectly the twang of the guitar and the notes of the sad song, and gazing into a face that was new to me, yet that I felt I'd always known.
My hormones raged. There was such a sense of wanting in me that I could hardly catch my breath. I wondered if it was as magical for him as it was for me. I suppose men think differently. Maybe they don't count the moments the way a woman does.
We held hands for a time and then went to the beer garden annex to share a pitcher of Lone Star, clinking our frosty mugs together. Then he asked me to dance, and that was a surprise. The men I'd met at college didn't dance. He did, though. He gave me that spectacular grin and said, "I learned in officer training school."
Social graces were only one of the many small ways the Navy shaped him. As we got to know each other, I learned more about all the things that came his way through the Navy---a life, a home, a purpose, a sense of belonging. Lacking all of that in his early life, he found it in the service of his country.
I admired his ambition so much. It was one of the first things I loved about him. I never stopped to consider that one person's ambition might create tensions when there were two people to consider.
But on our first night together, all of that was far from my mind. I was lost in him, and in the dreams that were igniting fireworks in my heart.
At the end of our date, Steve drove me home and walked me to the door. We stood together on the front porch, holding hands and facing each other, making small talk in order to put off saying goodbye. I was grateful that my parents no longer waited up for me, and had no fear that they'd be hovering on the other side of the door when I walked inside. That, thank goodness, ended with high school.
I wanted him to kiss me but was too shy to say so. Four years older than me and more experienced than I could possibly know, he wasn't shy at all. With exquisite delicacy, his hands cupped my face, and a soft darkness fell between us as he leaned down and touched his lips to mine, lightly, with a restrained passion that turned to fire. I forgot to breathe, and grew light-headed with the heat that surged through me.
"I'd better go," I said, never wanting to leave his arms.
"I'll call you."
"Yes," I said.
When I went inside, there was a light on in the parlor. I was surprised to see that my grandmother was still up, sitting in her chintz-covered chair and watching Johnny Carson on TV.
Gran came to live with us when I was in high school, after Granddaddy died. She had a suite of rooms at the back of the house, and they were cluttered with mementos of her sixty-year marriage. There was a shelf of sepia-toned photographs of her as a young bride, and a series of pictures of my mother and Uncle Kyle, growing up in Edenville. Gran had a collection of thimbles from all the places she'd been---New York City, Hollywood, Miami, Mexico City, Niagara Falls. She had a passion for knitting and the soap opera As the World Turns, and it was no secret that the money in our family came from her. She was the daughter of an oil field roughneck who struck it rich, married a genteel Daughter of the Republic of Texas and became genteel himself. It wasn't a huge fortune, but enough to allow the next generation to live well in the slow-paced small town world of Edenville.
Despite her old-fashioned ways, my grandmother possessed a deep and subtle wisdom about life. She rarely gave advice or even offered her opinion, but when she did, she was always right.
"Are you okay?" I asked her. "Couldn't you sleep?"
"I'm fine, Grace," she said, turning down the TV. "How was your date?"
"Perfect," I said. "I think I'm already falling for him."
"Then," she said with a sparkle in her eye, "what are you waiting for?"
I took my grandmother's advice to heart and flung myself headlong into this relationship. Was I naively premature to call it a relationship?
Steve and I spent nearly every waking moment together for the rest of the weekend. We went swimming in Eagle Lake and then lay together in the shade of a cypress tree, looking up at the sky through the branches. Later we sat on the wicker divan on my parents' front porch with Asleep At The Wheel playing on the radio. On Sunday, we went to a pancake breakfast at the firehouse, and my sorority sisters gave him the third degree. Trudy Long, even before she entered law school, had a way of prying information from people.
Thanks to her, I learned that the Navy paid for him to attend Texas A&M, the best school in the state. I learned that he was in training to fly carrier-based aircraft.
At the time, I didn't know how dangerous it was to launch a jet from the deck of a moving ship, and, even more dangerous, to land on the four-hundred-foot runway, praying the tailhook would catch a wire and stop the plane. It all sounded terrifically romantic to me, and I loved his dream so much that it seemed like my own.
Everything about that weekend was precious to me, every moment sharp-edged and distinct.
He asked me what I planned to do after college.
"Interview for a job, I suppose," I said. "What I'd really like to do is go into business for myself."
"What sort of business?"
"I'm still trying to figure that out." I leaned my head on his shoulder---I was comfortable with him already, my body learning how to fit into the space of his. "I just want a life that I love, but I'm not really sure what that means."
However, by then I was starting to get a picture in my mind's eye, and Steve Bennett was the main focus of that picture.
After Steve left Texas to go back to Pensacola, I spent every waking moment thinking about him, and I dreamed about him when I slept. I lived for his calls and would lie on my bed late at night, whispering into the phone and picturing him in my mind's eye. That summer, I worked at a transport company in San Marcos, and I was good at my job, though everything seemed inconsequential.
My parents, of course, advised me to forget him. They saw no future for me with a man in the service, a man whose fate was controlled by the dictates of duty. He was a passing fancy, they said, not a sound plan for the future.
I was sitting on the porch one evening in late June when I heard a faint rumbling sound and felt a subtle change in the atmosphere, like the tinge of rain in a coming storm. I jumped up and rushed to the porch railing. In the street, hazy with the colors of sunset, he rode toward me on his motorcycle and suddenly my world came back into focus.
I rushed out to meet him and flung my arms around him, feeling the heat of the day in his shoulders, and our kiss was filled with yearning, passion and promise. He'd ridden all day to see me, nearly five hundred miles with only stops for gas. I'd never been that important to anyone before.
After he got cleaned up, I brought him a glass of iced tea. Since my parents were gone for the day, taking Gran to Austin for new bifocals and tea at the Driskill, we had the house to ourselves. We took full advantage, kissing long and hard, working ourselves into quite a state.
"I came to talk to you about something," he said, and he seemed nervous. "I'm being transferred to Naples."
"Naples," I said, thinking of a golf resort in Florida. Then my mind, sluggish from kissing him, grasped what he was saying. Naples, Italy. What did I know about Naples? Pizza and vaporetti, lemon groves and traffic and antiquities. It was half a world away. "Italy. You're going to Italy. For how long?"
"A few months, and then I'll be transferred somewhere else, probably Virginia."
"Well," I said. "Well. Send me a postcard."
"That's not going to work for me," he said.
It wasn't going to work for me either, but who was I to stand in the way of such an opportunity. "I wish you weren't going away," I said, my heart on the ground. "We've only just met."
"That's why this is so crazy. I'm in love with you, Gracie. I swear I am."
Those words lifted my heart up to the stars. "Really?"
"Yeah. You took me by surprise. I never thought---never expected I'd find someone again."
For some reason, the "again" didn't register. All I heard was "I'm in love with you." Maybe I should have probed deeper, asked him about the word "again." But I was flying high and this feeling felt so new and fragile that I didn't want to disturb it. I said, "The day I met you, I told my grandmother I was falling in love with you. She didn't think it was so crazy."
He smiled at me, and there was such joy and relief in his face that I hugged him. Then he said, "I want you to come with me, Grace."
"To Naples?" It was surreal, a concept beyond my grasp.
"To Naples. And everywhere else I go." He was awkward as he went down on one knee and took a small velvet box from his pocket. "Grace McAllen, I want to marry you."
I forgot how to breathe for a moment. Then I cried, with relief and trepidation and with the absolute certainty that this was exactly what I was supposed to do. I collapsed against him, and he sheltered me in his arms, and a great warm wave of calmness came over me.
"Yes," I said. "I want to marry you, too."
Most people would consider it a coup to marry an officer in the U.S. Navy, but the McAllens counted it a failure on my part. Some fathers would even thank their daughters for eloping, but that was not the case for me. I heard nothing but displeasure and bitterness. Dropping out of college for a man I barely know, gallivanting off to a foreign country to live among strangers. Where had they gone wrong?
They didn't want to hear about my happiness, my excitement about our future. They didn't believe me when I said I'd finish my degree. They didn't trust Steve when he said he'd take care of me.
I was mortified that he had to face my parents' stiff disapproval and their dour predictions that we were making a disastrous mistake. I admired him for facing their skepticism with calm fortitude. In private, he told me, "If this is going to drive a wedge between you and your family, we'll find another way. Maybe we should wait—"
"We could wait until doomsday and they'd never come around. I don't want to wait."
Only my grandmother gave her blessing, wishing us joy and reminding us to be good to each other.
I considered the possibility that my parents' extreme reaction was caused by fear of losing me. Unfortunately, I never really believed that. Their disappointment was so deep and bitter that we never recovered from it or breached the rift. In a way, that was their gift to me. Now I was free to devote all my energy to loving Steve and making a life with him.
As for my parents, they seemed willing to write me off. It was their loss, I told myself. They never had the chance to know Steve. I promised to keep them in the loop, sending photos and cheerful letters, but only Gran seemed to appreciate my efforts.
It hurt to be forced into making a choice between the man I love and what my parents wanted for me. My heart paid a toll when I became estranged from them in this way.
"I feel like an orphan," I said to Steve.
"Welcome to the club," he said, and pulled me into his arms. Then he told me about his own mother, a drug addict living in a crummy apartment on Telephone Road in Houston. She had simply drifted away one day when he was little, and the neighbors turned him in to child welfare. I was horrified by that. I couldn't imagine a mother who would turn away from her child for any reason.
My parents threw me away because I refused to live the life they wanted for me. That wasn't my job, but that's what they raised me to do. Steve was abandoned by a mother who couldn't help herself. Mine was completely rational when she turned her back on me. In our own ways, we each paid a toll. Sometimes we felt like two shipwreck survivors, adrift in the world.
My heart was heavy, but as the miles sped back on the journey to the Naval Station at Pensacola, I counted my blessings and my anticipation soared.
Like all girls, I pictured myself as the bride in a grand wedding. Was I let down by the private ceremony conducted by a Navy chaplain, attended only by Steve's friend and fellow officer Whitey Love, who stood up as witness? Honestly, I was not. The marriage ceremony was merely a formality to be dispensed with as soon as possible so we could start our life together.
My wedding night, spent in a room at the Navy Lodge overlooking Parking Lot B-19, more than made up for the low-key ceremony, the lack of pomp and circumstance. That night, there were fireworks and comets and whirlwinds, and I found such joy in the arms of my bridegroom that I was overwhelmed with emotion.
When I admitted my inexperience, he seemed startled and perhaps even moved. He kissed me tenderly and said, "I didn't know you'd saved yourself for marriage."
"I didn't," I said. "I saved myself for you."
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."
When my husband went to sea, there was an almost complete lack of communication. In the early days of our marriage, email, satellite phones and conference calls were unheard of except for communication at the very highest level of command. My only hope of talking to Steve was via ham radio, when we happened upon a friendly, anonymous operator somewhere who was willing to hook us up. There were calls on the few occasions he made port.
That our marriage survived the stress, excitement and uncertainty of long separations is sometimes a wonder to me. One of the key elements of our survival was something I was never aware of as a civilian---the support system of spouses and families, which is the Navy's gift to us. During deployment, my life was transformed, not just by my husband's absence and my new-found independence, but by a special society very few are aware of---the world of the Navy wife.
When I married Steve, I was automatically inducted into a sisterhood far more intense and real than my college sorority. This was a revelation to me. We were women from all walks of life, balanced upon a single common denominator---the United States Navy.
I was gratified by the swiftness with which my sisters embraced me. There were welcome coffees and farewell teas, sightseeing and shopping expeditions, baby showers and family socials. We learned to make friends quickly, knowing our time together was limited. These women were my guides through the intricacies of Navy life. I felt as though I had moved not just to another country but to a new plane of existence.
I quickly made friends with Alicia Romano of San Diego, who was six months pregnant and who was a master of fantastically detailed counted cross-stitch. Her father had been in the Navy, and she taught me the art of shopping on base at the Navy Exchange and the commissary, dealing with gas coupons, red tape and banking. The wife of Steve's commanding officer was a dynamo named Rachel Weeks, who had four children, and, though barely forty, had appointed herself mother hen of the squadron wives. At Captain Weeks's Change of Command ceremony, I watched her fasten the Command Pin on her husband, and I finally understood the role the wives---and very occasionally, the husbands---played.
It's her job---her duty---to be willing to send him off in the service of his country, even if that meant sending him into harm's way.
We junior officer's wives were a needy lot, many of us away from home for the first time. I don't think I could have survived that first deployment without the company of these women, each of whom knew exactly what I was going through.
As is true for any group of women, we were a diverse bunch. Along with the Alicias and Rachels, there were gossips and back stabbers, women who drank too much and women whose husbands fooled around. Affairs were strictly forbidden---and predictably rampant. Saddest of all were the wives for whom their husbands' absences were too lonely to bear.
As for me, I was determined to do more than wait. I wanted to live a rich, full life.
That's what I learned from my fellow Navy wives. The ones who suffered and sometimes failed during deployment were those who allowed themselves to be defined entirely by their husbands. They could not imagine any sort of life beyond their role as a wife.
That, I quickly discovered, is the kiss of death when it comes to marriage. Any marriage, even a civilian one.
The women who thrived even while their husbands were gone were those who did what my instincts have always urged me to do. They cultivate lives that fulfill them even when their husbands are far away, assuming their husbands tolerate this. I'm sorry to say that some men don't. They expect their wives to do nothing but wait and hope and worry about them.
I'm proud to say that Steve always encouraged me to be an independent wife. If he felt threatened by a woman with a mind of her own, he never let it show. Over the years, when he was away for months at a time, I learned foreign languages, taught myself to cook, learned to serve coffee to a crowd of fifty women. Despite the dire predictions of my parents, I finished my degree. I stayed active in the Officers' Spouse's Clubs worldwide, a path which has had a significant impact on me. In short, I made a life for myself, one that works whether or not my husband is by my side.
Sometimes, I admit, there were things I found very appealing about deployment. I was in charge. It was up to me to determine how that day would go, and that sense of control has always felt natural and right. Each time Steve returned, I welcomed him with open arms. But sometimes I struggled to surrender control to him, biting my tongue when he organized the bathroom his way, rehung pictures on the wall, made dates and appointments without checking with me. As a wife, I felt the tension of mixed messages. When my husband was gone, I was strong, independent, sure of my ability to deal with things. Upon his return, my role shifted to that of partner and helpmeet.
Small things, really, a pebble in the shoe. For the most part, life was a joy. It was the adventure Gran wanted for me.
I wrote letters to her and to Steve. Sometimes I would lie awake at night and, against my will, I'd find myself imagining the very events a military man is trained for---enemy strikes, explosions, plane crashes, bombings, terror attacks. At those times, I'd pull my pillow over my head, shut my eyes tight and pray.
I've never met a Navy wife who didn't know how to pray.
Both Steve and I greeted my first pregnancy with a sense of tenderness and awe. This was exactly what we wanted, to bring a child into the circle of love we'd created. Then when we discovered I was carrying twins, I longed for him to beg for a deferment from the next deployment. Having a baby alone was a frightening enough concept. Having twins was, well, doubly terrifying.
However, by then I'd learned the ways of a Navy wife. "We'll be fine," I told Steve with a brave smile. And we were, of course.
Brian and Emma were born while Steve's CO's wife gripped my hand in the delivery room and encouraged me. Three years after that, back in Pensacola once again, our little Katie joined the family while Steve was in special training to face the terrors of Desert Storm. Did he lose something by not cradling those brand-new slippery bodies in his strong hands and watching our children take their first breaths? Does it matter that he never saw our newborns take on the flush of life and open their eyes for the first time?
Oh, I hope not. Missed milestones and moments have always been our reality. The year the twins were born, we went into debt to get the best videotape recorder money could buy, and we've done that several times over the years. I've never regretted that investment.
Another acquisition during our second stay in Pensacola was that same old chicken pitcher. I had bought and sold the silly thing when we were first married and, walking along, pushing three children in their doublewide stroller one day, I found it again. I knew it was the same because of its imperfections, and I bought it again, vowing I'd keep it with us from now on, no matter where we went.
It was like a talisman or affirmation of some sort. When you rediscover something you've lost, it's a good idea to take care of it.
Of all the places we've lived over the years, my favorite is the place we moved the summer before the twins' senior year in high school. We actually talked about letting them stay in Texas for senior year, but they're Navy kids. They were ready for the next adventure, too. So we moved as a family to Whidbey Island, Washington, a long narrow island in the glittering blue waters of Puget Sound.
As we stood on the deck of the ferryboat from Seattle, I looked at Steve and said, "I'm in love."
He kissed me, and even after all the years we'd been married, I still had the same reaction.
"Oh, ick," said Katie, now fourteen and righteously mortified by her parents.
We shared a grin. Steve made an expansive gesture. "What's not to love, Grace? Look at this place."
Brilliant white-capped mountains rose straight out of the sea, the sky a dazzling deep blue, majestic evergreens lining the shore.
I'm going to like it here, I thought. No, I'm going to love it here.
That sentiment proved to be small comfort when I made a suggestion Steve never expected. I wanted to buy a house. I wanted to live here on this magical island, not just for this tour but forever. A legacy from my grandmother, combined with income from a small business I intended to start, would make it possible.
He opposed the idea, and when he was deployed, for the first time in our marriage, we parted on bad terms.
We swore we would never do that, but it was, as the Navy would term it, a mishap---an unanticipated disaster. I think every woman imagines a variety of disasters in her marriage. Navy wives in particular. We are, after all, people who have a great deal of time to imagine the worst-case scenario.
Left on my own, I'm facing changes that, for the first time ever, are starting to scare me. My two older children are leaving the nest. In a few years, Katie will be gone, too. I have to figure out what my life will be when I'm not the mom, the CEO of a busy household. What am I then?
I think about that adventurous girl I was when I first married. I am not her anymore, but I still want adventure. Not by following my husband around the globe. I'm grateful for that part of my life, but now it's my turn.
There's a dream that I've had for a long time, one I never let myself take seriously or pursue because it would mean settling down and staying put. Trying to go for that dream while Steve went for his was a recipe for frustration, since there was only room in our lives for one big career. Still, it must be a powerful dream, because in twenty years, it's never died.
Something has happened, a slow and inevitable need has built inside me. I suppose I could keep ignoring it, but why? It's my turn to take my own shot.
I just turned forty. The flower delivery that should have been from Steve turned out to be from someone quite different, someone I've never met but who has become important to me. He's a client, the first and most important client of my newly incorporated firm, Grace Under Pressure.
I've never been the sort of wife who puts life on hold while her husband is away. It's certainly true of this deployment. I've made some changes: buying a house Steve has never set foot in, joining a gym, changing my image and starting a small business. I've found a new sense of purpose and, in a lot of ways, reinvented myself.
Here's a paradox. The very thing that helped us survive and thrive during this adventure as a Navy family is in fact the thing that might just be our undoing. However much I anguished and missed my husband, I was also cultivating my independence in his absence.
Such a trade-off. The sworn duties that prevented Steve from being present at all the children's milestones, big and small, also enabled us to live a life of rare privilege and adventure. It's been an honor, not a burden, and together we've weathered storms and crises that would tear many families apart.
After nearly twenty years as a Navy wife, I ought to be prepared for any sort of disaster to come our way. We've weathered the storms of separation, upheaval, both Gulf wars and changes that occur at the drop of a hat. Somehow it never occurred to me to prepare for a disaster in our marriage.
I've gotten good at lying awake. I take inventory of the things I know, the things I can trust. And of the things I can't trust.
Steve Bennett brought so much into my life. Passion and adventure, the dizzy joy of homecomings and the wrenching pain of farewells, contentment and pride in our children, opportunities most people only ever dream about, perils that civilians never consider. But there are other things he brought, secrets and evasions, a past I knew nothing about.
I always told myself that our differences were what made our bond of love so strong, but of course, as I've come to find out, I've been wrong before. When I look back at all we've done, all the places we've been the past two decades, I feel a profound fulfillment. Yet when I look ahead, the picture isn't clear to me. It's like I've come to a crossroads with no sign to point the way.
It's hard to believe the twins are about to graduate high school now. They've become the young adults Steve and I raised them to be. They're ready to go off to college next fall.
Brian, as the eldest and only boy, is very well aware that from the moment he was born, his father wanted him to go to United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Years after my own parents had both passed away, I can still remember what it felt like to bear the weight of family expectations in that way.
When Steve gets home from this deployment, Brian has news for him, but I'll let him tell it. He's certainly earned the chance to speak his piece. I hope Emma has some news for her dad, too, but at the moment, she really just seems to be drifting. My beautiful Emma has changed these past months, and I'm not quite sure I understand what's going on with her. Does any adult understand what's going on with an eighteen-year-old? She seems very adult lately, yet pensive and quiet. Perhaps she's struggling with her decision about what to do after high school. Perhaps she needs her father most of all.
And Katie. What can I say about our little Katy-did, our youngest? She's a daddy's girl through and through, which is sort of tough when her father is away so much. She is immensely happy here, on this blue-and-green island where we've found our first real home. She's one of only three ninth-graders who made marching band, has a group of friends she adores, and I think she might even have a boyfriend, though she hasn't said anything yet. The prospect of being torn away from here when the next orders come is unthinkable to her.
I find myself thinking more and more about the dreams I put aside all those years ago to follow Steve on this journey. Right or wrong, I didn't let myself embrace those dreams or even confess them to Steve because his seemed so much bigger and more important. Now I understand that the human heart can't survive without dreams.
Sometimes life hands us moments. We can let the moment pass, or explore and embrace the chance we're given. Right now, life has handed me a new moment.
I don't know what will happen when Steve comes home this time. I keep trying to envision what will happen, but I don't have a crystal ball. How do you tell the story of a marriage?
When my grandmother was still alive, she sent me an article she'd saved from a 1975 issue of Redbook magazine, underlining her favorite passage. On it, Gran had written, "I was married for sixty years. I'm not ashamed to say that sometimes, this was the reason."
The article was by a wise writer named Judith Viorst. The words Grandma had underlined are these: "One advantage of marriage, it seems to me, is that when you fall out of love with him, or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you maybe fall in again."
I think about that a lot these days.
a cognizant original v5 release october 09 2010
How do you tell the story of a marriage? Read the next chapter of Grace and Steve's story in The Ocean Between Us by Susan Wiggs. Look for a new reissue of her novel in print and eBook format in May 2010.
After years of following her navy officer husband on assignment around the world with their three children, Grace Bennett realizes that she's left something behind---herself.
Steve Bennett can't understand the unraveling of his wife's heart. He wants to set things right, but when a secret from his past is revealed just as he's sent out to sea, their already-strained relationship is pushed to the edge. Now, with plenty of space to ponder the true distance between them, Grace begins to reinvent herself.
Just as her new self is coming to terms with her family life, the unthinkable happens. A disaster aboard Steve's ship shatters Grace's world and all she can do is gather her children around and wait for news to come, good or bad. A navy wife's worst nightmare collides with the cold truth that life's biggest chances can slip away while you're busy looking for guarantees.
Susan Wiggs has won many awards for her work, including a RITA from Romance Writers of America. She has also published with a number of houses, including Avon, HarperCollins, Warner and MIRA Books.
In addition to being a militant romance writer, a feminist, a guilt-ridden mother and a perfect wife, Susan Wiggs grows mutant tomatoes, speaks French, and plays the cello. Her hobbies are reading, traveling the world and Fair Isle knitting. She lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, her daughter, and the world's most ill-mannered Airedale. Although she has convinced her family that toiling away at a writing career makes her a candidate for martyrdom, she secretly believes it's the second-most fun to be had.
Wiggs, a Harvard graduate, confesses that a book once saved her sanity. Trapped at Barcelona Airport during an airline strike, she vividly remembers savoring every lush, escapist word of a romance novel. Ever since, it has been her quest to write the sort of books people cling to in crowded airports, or whenever life gets too crazy.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5833-8
The Story of Us
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