The Longest Night (22 page)

Kinney tipped toward Mitch, all twitchy fawning, desperate to speak before Slocum could. “Master Sergeant, did you hear? Deke Harbaugh's passed.”

“Oh, no!” Brownie cried.

“Good God,” said Mitch.

“Just this evening,” added Slocum. “His wife called.”

“It was the lungs?” Brownie said. “The lungs thing?”

“Yes,” said Kinney. “He went into the hospital yesterday. Didn't want anybody to know.”

Jeannie felt a twinge of guilt; she was the Liaison Office wife, she should have known. Someone had probably called her house that evening, but of course she'd been out. Now she'd have to make it up to poor, grieving Minnie Harbaugh. From the corner of her eye, she saw Eddie advancing; everyone wanted to know what the fuss was.

“This changes things,” Slocum said, looking directly at Mitch. There was an intensity to this statement, like a coded message, and the three operators looked at one another.

“Shit,” said Mitch.

Brownie blinked at him, wet-eyed. “Poor Minnie,” said Brownie. “Can you even imagine? Your husband
dying
?”

“Maybe I can,” said Jeannie darkly. Everyone's surprised glances told her she'd gone too far, so she patted Mitch's arm, laughed in a strained manner, and said, “Of course I'm kidding. I'm sorry. This is all horrid.”

“You're in shock,” Brownie said, stroking her arm. “We'll have to organize something for Minnie straightaway.”

Jeannie nearly jumped at the thought. “Well, it's certainly too late tonight,” she said. A long night's vigil at the widow's bedside, all the light of Jesus radiating from her shiny face: This was just what Brownie Franks would see herself doing. Not Jeannie. Nope. Rest in peace, Deke Harbaugh, but Jeannie was going home to her bed.

“Someone needs to sit with her,” Brownie fretted. “I'll go tonight. Jeannie, will you come tomorrow?”

Jeannie's heart sank. There was no way out of it.

Brownie was glancing toward the kitchen. “I'd bring her a plate but we're mostly out—”

“Well, you can't bring scrambled eggs,” Jeannie said, then tried to soften this: “I'll bake a casserole.”

“Oh, good. Yes, perfect. Lasagna?”

“I don't know,” Jeannie said irritably. “Whatever I have on hand.”

When Franks and Len got to them the whole thing started again, and it seemed to take twenty minutes for Jeannie to get Mitch out to the car. By now she truly
was
tired, but Mitch couldn't stop talking.

“Deke Harbaugh,” he said. “I don't believe it. So suddenly. He looked all right last week. Didn't you think?”

“I hadn't seen him in months,” Jeannie said.

“His color was poor, but then again it always was. His eyes were bright. He came in on Wednesday, or maybe it was Thursday, and I thought: He looks like a satisfied man today. His eyes are bright and cheerful.”

Jeannie sighed. Was Mitch his personal doctor? And where was the shock in this news, really? She'd been relieved whenever Harbaugh made it through an evening's dinner. She'd liked him: his slightly crusty personality, his directness. But anyone could see he walked around with one foot in the grave.

“We worked well together,” Mitch went on. “We…cooperated. See here's the thing, Jean. We get someone new in, and they aren't going to know the drill. They won't know our method.”

“I'm sure they'll pick it up quickly.”

“I don't think you understand.”

“Change is difficult for everyone.”

“You don't
understand,
” Mitch said again, and it would turn out that Jeannie didn't.

J
EANNIE'S MORNING COFFEE WAS
cooling beside her on the kitchen table, her hair still in rollers and her feet in their slippers, when the phone rang. She stood, surprised, wondering who would call on a Monday morning at seven just as the schoolchildren down the street climbed aboard the bulky, hyperventilating yellow bus. School had started a week ago, and the morning air already felt different, a little cooler, as if summer had finally been packed away.

“Hello?” she said. She leaned against a cabinet, unwinding a curler from her hair and setting it on the counter. Her hair sprang back against her head in one red loop, a firm rose.

“Jeannie?” said a male voice.

Her fingers paused on the next curler. “Yes.”

“This is Specialist Hollister. Eddie.”

“Eddie,” Jeannie said. She froze for a moment, then took a deep breath and unrolled the next curler. “How are you?”

“I'm fine. Can you talk for a minute?”

Mitch had left for work just moments before. The space in the driveway still held some faint notion of him, as if he might instantly reappear.

“I can talk,” she said.

“It was nice to see you at the party,” he said.

“It was certainly a surprise to see you.”

Eddie chuckled. “A good surprise or a bad surprise?” he asked, in that light, teasing drawl.

“Well, a little of both, I suppose.”

“How's your friend's wife?”

“Who?” Jeannie asked.

“The man who died at the party.”

“Deke Harbaugh? He didn't die
at
the party.”

“You know what I mean.”

Jeannie sighed. What a polite and depressing line of conversation. “Minnie's making do,” she said. It had been two consecutive nights of sitting vigil, good God, Jeannie holding one of Minnie's hands and Brownie the other, until Minnie's family finally made it into town from out of state and they could hand her off like a weepy, stubborn, oversized child.
I can't fall asleep if you don't rub my back.
Deke always rubbed my back. Can you make me a gin and tonic? Every night Deke made me a gin and tonic
. Either this were a fantasy lived out postmortem or Deke, lead man at work, had at home suffered in oppressed servility to his plain, frowning, liquor-and-touch-demanding wife. And how did he manage it with all the coughing? Frankly, by night two, Jeannie didn't give a care. She passed Minnie's hand to the sister from South Carolina, and down the street she flew.

Eddie cleared his throat. “So you have a baby girl now.”

“I do.” This perked Jeannie right up and she recalled, through the weird and risky rush of adrenaline Eddie's voice made her feel, that the pleasant chatter from the back room was his child's.

“She's a sweet girl? Smart?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Aw,” said Eddie. He hesitated. “Does Mitch know?”

“Absolutely not,” Jeannie said, with a sudden coldness in her abdomen, and she put a hand there in reflex. “He never will, either,” she added. She hadn't even meant to tell Eddie about Angela's parentage, really, except that soon after she got pregnant back in Belvoir, Eddie had taken up with this ridiculous little daffodil in bobby socks and, in a blaze of jealousy, Jeannie staked out his house for an afternoon and confronted him after the girl left. He was delighted by the news, moved; he knew he and Jeannie were special together. He also had quite a banner day for lovemaking. To his credit, he ditched the teenager and treated Jeannie like a lady up until her departure for Idaho Falls.

“I'd like to drop by,” he said.

“That's out of the question.”

“Just for a few minutes.”

Jeannie shook her head, though of course he couldn't see this.

“Come on, Jeannie. Please?” The “please” came out very southern, with two syllables.

“It's not a good idea.”

“Aw, Jeannie. I need to see my little beauty.”

And this was where Jeannie's vanity got in the way, because despite what they'd been speaking of immediately prior, she assumed that he meant her.

“You can't charm me, sir,” she said, the corner of her mouth pulling up into a smile, which she covered with her hand, as if he could see. When he waited her out she sighed and said briskly, “Fine. Ten o'clock. No sooner.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” said Eddie, and he hung up.

B
Y THE TIME TEN O'CLOCK
came around, Jeannie had vacuumed, wiped down the front bathroom mirror and sink, fed Angela breakfast and cleaned her up, taken a shower and shaved her legs, applied her makeup, and finished styling her hair. Angela watched her solemnly from the living room as if she could somehow read the motives behind all this hustle and bustle and knew it was no good. Luckily, it was Martha's morning to watch Angela. Jeannie packed nanny and child off to the library with instructions to eat lunch in the park afterward. When they left, she paused for a moment, holding her uneasy stomach. Then she sprang into motion again.

She scooped up the small pile of toys that had appeared in the space where Angela had been. Then she paced up the hallway for a few minutes, aggrieved to notice that her pale blue pumps left marks in the freshly groomed carpet. These seemed suddenly, incredibly obvious, like tracks left in snow by some desperate, lunatic squirrel. So she vacuumed that strip again, shoeless, and then sat at the kitchen table, smoking her third cigarette, as ten rolled by and then ten-fifteen and then ten-twenty.

At ten-thirty, Jeannie heard footsteps and then a knock. She took one last drag on her cigarette, stubbed it out, and went to answer the door.

“Good morning,” said Eddie, freshly showered and combed like a little boy before church.

“Come in,” Jeannie said.

He stepped over the threshold, and Jeannie cringed for a moment as if some alarm might begin to ring all up and down the street. The street remained silent. Jeannie took a deep breath and led him toward the kitchen table, but he took a seat on the couch, so she turned quickly, circled the couch, and perched opposite him.

“This is a nice neighborhood,” Eddie noted. “They have us in a tiny duplex on Alvarado.”

“How awful,” Jeannie said, sincerely. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Cigarette?”

“I don't smoke Virginia Slims,” Eddie smiled.

“Well, I have Chesterfields, of course. And Lucky Strikes.”

“Maybe later.” Eddie held up a hand, as if he were a model of restraint. “Thank you.”

Jeannie smiled and lit herself one.

Eddie looked around the room. “So, where is she?”

Jeannie blinked. “Who?”

“The baby. The baby girl.”

“Oh,” Jeannie said. “Why, she's out with the nanny.”

“Really?”

“Yes. They went to the library and the park.”

“She's old enough to go to the library and the park?”

“She's almost two years old.”

Eddie shook his head in wonder. “Well, I'll be. I guess I still pictured this little baby. What do two-year-olds do? Is she walking? Talking?”

“Walking, yes. Talking, a little. She has dark hair and long, long eyelashes. She looks nothing like me,” Jeannie said.

This brought a smile to Eddie's face.

Jeannie stood and walked to the wet bar. “What can I get you to drink?” she asked.

“It's ten-thirty in the morning,” Eddie laughed.

Jeannie shrugged, poured them each a gin and tonic without waiting for his preference, and handed it to him with her most brilliant smile.

“Ha. That's good. You're right, it's always five o'clock somewhere.” Eddie slurped without further reservation. Jeannie sat beside him on the couch, at an angle, their knees almost touching: his broad and rounded in their khaki slacks, hers slender and shimmering under panty hose. She reached out and touched his knee, lightly.

“You were always lots of fun,” she said.

“I don't know how much longer I'll be fun for,” said Eddie.

Jeannie cocked her head to the side, as if this statement deserved all the sympathy and care in the world. “Why do you say that?”

“Aw, you know. It's time for me to grow up a little. Me and Estelle, we're both from big families. She has six brothers and sisters. We want at least that many kids.”

“Oh,” Jeannie said.

“And we're partway there,” Eddie grinned. “We got one coming in April.”

Jeannie felt, irrationally, as if she had been slapped in the face. Her stomach gathered into a fist of frustration; hot tears appeared behind her eyes. She felt like some angry little girl about to throw over a board game she had just lost.

“Congratulations,” she said, clearing her throat.

He raised his glass in a toast to himself and drained it.

What did she want from Eddie? Her first impulse, upon seeing him at the Frankses' party, had been to run; but now that he was here in front of her, she felt a desperate pull of attraction. It was not a casual interest but a sudden, deep-seated need. Did she want longer, more admiring glances from him, some clearer sign that she was irresistible? Sure, he smiled at her; he was flirtatious, but not entranced. He was married now, to some brainless little filly who would give him six kids. That shouldn't have mattered. Jeannie had pulled out all the stops. She was powdered and curled and perfumed and high-heeled and caressed by elaborate support garments.

“What do you remember most from Belvoir?” she asked, handing him his refill, and he launched into a stroll down memory lane that was startlingly Mitch-like. He had a wealth of enjoyable memories, it turned out, though none of those stated involved Jeannie. Still, his cheerful yarns carried him through several more drinks until their knees, finally, did brush together, and they were laughing freely. They were having a good time now! He began to tell her about his childhood in Tennessee, being chased by a cow across a field.

“You mean a bull?” Jeannie asked.

“No, a cow.”

“You were chased by a cow?”

“Cows can be mean,” Eddie said. “Cows can get angry.”

Jeannie covered her mouth, giggling. She had lost track of whether this mirth were genuine or slightly manufactured. It had started out genuine, she thought. Maybe she was just helping it along.