get to see her till she was nearly four months old.
We landed at Elmendorf and while I was waiting for the transport up to Ladd, looking for a place to warm the baby’s bottle, a girl come up to me, little newborn scrap in her arms and another one at foot, and she says to me, ‘Why, Peggy Shea! It is you. I’m not usually wrong about a face, but you’re carrying a few extra pounds these days.’
Last time I remembered seeing Betty Glick was when Future Homemakers catered a Mother-Daughter Spaghetti Supper for the Class of ’42, and she was in charge, in her sweetheart apron, giving her orders, little piggy eyes and a real homely face.
She already knew Ladd. They’d been on the base nearly a year and she’d just been back to Texas for the birth of little Sherry. So we were a marriage made in heaven, me not knowing what in the world I was going to and Betty never happier than when she was showing somebody the ropes.
Four years of marriage and motherhood had left its stamp on her. She’d lost her puppy fat and got herself a permanent too. She seemed real grown up, compared to the way I felt, but then, I think Betty was born grown up. And she was so proud of her Ed. I never thought he was all that. Everything about him was kinda hard and square, even his head. Lois reckoned he was made outta sheet metal.
‘I swear,’ she used to say, ‘Ed Gillis was not born of woman. I think they just punched in a few rivets and rolled him off the line at Boeing.’
Me and Vern were okay, when he was around – which wasn’t much. They were putting in long hours, training on the Superfortress, and then when he did get a 96 he liked to go off fishing. Now I think back on it, we didn’t hardly know each other.
‘Love ya,’ he used to say, when he was drifting off to sleep. ‘Whoever y’are.’
So I started hanging out with Betty Gillis, née Glick, picking things outta the Sears catalogue and clipping recipes for tuna bake and generally raising hell. Summer nights up there, when it never gets dark, if Vern and Ed were standing the duty, I’d go round to her quarters, tuck Crystal in with Deana and Sherry, and we’d sit out front, drink iced tea and wonder what became of all those other big shots from Topperwein High.
Audrey I met later on, when we rotated through Kirtland. She rang my doorbell, told me there was a coffee klatsch at the Officers’ Wives’ Club and signed me up for the Blood Drive. Wouldn’t take no for an answer on either score.
You could go to some of those wives’ clubs not knowing another soul and come away in the same condition, none of the in-crowd being inclined to get off their backsides and welcome a newcomer. But I’ll say this for Audrey: she had an open and friendly way about her. She’d stride across any room in her white bucks and make herself known to lonesome strangers.
She was married to Lance Rudman and they made a handsome pair. They were the kind of people knew where they’d come from and where they were going. Lois called them the Class Presidents.
Lo came on the scene while we were stationed at Kirtland too. She was married to Herb Moon. He was kinda dopey-looking, seemed slow on the uptake, except when he climbed into the cockpit of a B-50. Up there, so I heard, he was one cool customer.
‘Life’s a bitch,’ she said, when she found out we’d done a tour in Alaska. ‘Herb woulda loved that. All that rugged scenery and weather and stuff. ’Stead of all those cans of Dinty Moore I been feeding him, he coulda bagged himself a whole caribou. But no. He just had to go an’ draw Hickam Field, Hawaii. Heaven on earth, girls. You ain’t had a rope of Hilo violets hung round your neck, you ain’t lived. Papaya juice. Pineapples. Mangoes. I tell you something. Herb may not be no dreamboat, but that man took me to paradise, no mistake.’
‘Well, she’ll have to trim her cloth a bit different now.’ That’s what Betty said when Lois fell pregnant with Sandie. But she was wrong. Took more’n a little baby to slow down Lois Moon. They took her straight from the Aztec King Bowling Alley to the General Landers J. Hooverman Mother & Baby Unit and not a minute to spare. I heard language that night I couldn’t even begin to spell.
Course, didn’t matter what Lois said or did, Herb thought the sun rose and set by her, and seems like nothing since has made him change his mind. They were a pair a love-birds, in a manner a speaking, even though they didn’t always fly in formation.
Gayle and Okey were the real pigeon pair, known each other since the day they were born, near enough.
First time I saw Gayle she was hanging around in the laundry room at Drampton, didn’t know how to work the driers and too scared to ask. I thought she was somebody’s brat, till we got talking. I took her under my wing a little, after that, specially when Okey was away on assignment. There are lonely times when you’re married to the military. You gotta hope you can click with a few girls on your post, hang out with them. You gotta get through the days as best you can, waiting around for friend husband to come home from the pad.
Audrey used to pass her some of her story books, but Gayle was no reader, nor much of a homemaker neither, though Betty did try giving her a few lessons. I reckon Gayle lived on potato chips and Dr Pepper, and when Okey was home, they just lived on love. Planned on having a houseful of kids and living happy ever after. On an LT’s pay, best of luck was what I thought, but I never said it.
Gayle didn’t come with us that day. She said she’d sooner stay behind in Lois’s nice warm quarters and mind Sandie than wave off some old king, and that suited Lois just fine. ‘I’d go and watch for a freight train to go by,’ she said. ‘Anything to get off this God-forsaken base.’
I wasn’t so sure, myself. It was a raw morning, misty too, and there was some creature out in that fen making a unearthly noise. Vern reckoned the whole place belonged under the ocean. He used to say, ‘They took this place from the water, and one of these days that water’s gonna come and take it right back.’
He left me to answer the tricky questions from Crystal, such as would it come higher’n our house and how could fishes breathe?
Me and Betty took our girls to school, and I don’t know who was more excited, Deana and Sherry ’cause they got a extra Milky Bar in their lunch-pail, guilt candy from mommy, or Betty because she was getting out from under.
Then we picked up Lois and Audrey and there were sharp words, on account of Lois wearing a red windbreaker and Betty suggesting she could have showed more respect. I drove and Betty sat up front with me, and she never stopped yammering.
‘The Duke of Windsor,’ she said, ‘he’s come sailing in from New York. He’s got some nerve, I must say, running off with that home-wrecker, leaving everybody in the lurch. Ask me, he as good as killed his poor brother, and the queen, of course, the old queen, she’s not been seen. She’s at … hold on, here, let me get this right …’ She’d brought her newspaper clippings with her. ‘Marlborough House, that’s where she’s at. Must be heartbroken…’
Audrey, being no slouch, had been following all of this, but she said, ‘Whoa, Betty, just back up, would you? You just lost me. I thought the old queen was gonna be on this train we’re heading to see?’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I see where you’re getting confused. Okay. At this time, they have three queens. There’s Queen Mary. She’s the one at Marlborough Castle. Then they have Queen Elizabeth, who was married to the king, just passed away. She’s the one we’ll be seeing.’
I said, ‘What about Queen Mary? Didn’t she get a king?’
‘Of course she did. He was King … something, I’ll remember it in a minute. Then, there’s the new Queen Elizabeth…’
Lois said, ‘Are we seeing her?’
‘No, no. She’s gonna be meeting the train when it gets to London. See, she’ll have had to stay there, attend to affairs