Chapter 30: A Sailor Like My Daddy

December 5, 1991, Chicago, Illinois

“Why the family meeting, Jen?” I asked as all of the adults were gathered in the great room on Thursday evening.

“We’re going to need to find some new babysitters.”

“Uh-oh,” Elyse said. “What happened?”

Josie laughed, “No, nothing like that. Nothing bad. April is getting married. It seems she found herself in the family way!”

“Oops,” I chuckled. “Is this her steady boyfriend?”

“Donny? Yes. She’s due sometime in late April or early May. But you haven’t heard the best part!”

“The best part?” Elyse asked.

“Triplets!” Jennifer said, as she and Josie started laughing.

“Oh my God!” Abbie gasped. “That’s nuts!”

“Uhm, I thought she was on the Pill,” I said, nervously.

“She was,” Josie said. “But recently she’s been having this odd swelling in her feet, so she was taking St. John’s Wort.”

“You can’t take that with the Pill!” Jessica objected. “It counteracts the effects!”

“Obviously!” Josie giggled. “And April never mentioned to her doctor she was taking that herbal supplement.”

“Unbelievable!” I said, shaking my head.

“Did you ask Keisha about her and Jill covering the other week each month?” Kara asked.

“Yes,” Jennifer said, “but High School girls aren’t really interested in giving up another Saturday night during their Senior year, especially with all the stuff that goes on in the Spring before graduation. And remember, they’ll most likely be gone by the end of the summer. Both of them have applied to colleges that are either out-of-state or far enough from Chicago that they couldn’t be reliably available.”

“What’s the plan?” Jessica asked.

“I didn’t have one,” Jennifer replied. “That’s why the meeting. Most of our friends don’t have teenagers, and neither do most of yours, meaning all of you.”

“What about some of the college girls who hang around on Sundays for the Rap Sessions?” Abbie asked. “Or maybe Leslie? I think she might be willing to babysit once a month. She loves all of the kids.”

“She seems like a pretty together girl,” Jessica said. “She’s a High School Senior, though, so does that help?”

“I guess not, now that you mention it,” Abbie said. “She’s applied to Purdue as her first choice.”

“Why not ask Keisha and Jill?” Elyse said. “They have to have friends who are Sophomores at this point. If we found the right girls, they could sit for a couple of years before we have to replace them.”

“I’m curious,” Josie asked. “But how old do the kids have to be before they don’t need sitters?”

“Old enough for the oldest ones to properly watch out for the youngest ones,” Jessica said. “And I think that means we need a pair of sitters until Ashley is at least four. Jesse would be nine, Matthew and Kristin eight, and Birgit seven. Even that’s pushing it a bit, I think.”

“Sure,” I agreed, “but at that point, with no diapers and the kids able to eat by themselves, and mostly wash themselves and put themselves to bed, you could get away with a single babysitter instead of a pair. But that’s four years from now. What do we do now?”

“I’ll talk to Keisha and Jill next week, since this weekend is the Guys’ breakfast,” Jennifer said. “And take it from there. Sarah and April are available until probably March, but Sarah doesn’t want to take primary responsibility, so when April is done, she’s done, too.”

“Ask Keisha about her younger siblings,” I said. “I don’t know their ages or if they’re boys or girls.”

“Good idea,” Jennifer said.

“Are we forgetting Gerry?” Jessica asked.

I laughed, “No, but he, Jesse, and Matthew would get so engrossed in Nintendo, the other kids could burn the house down and he’d miss it! You’ve seen him when Al and Belinda come over!”

“It’s true,” Jennifer said. “When those guys are playing video games, the world could end and they wouldn’t notice so long as the electricity stayed on! Let me talk with Keisha and Jill and see what I can come up with.”

December 6, 1991, Chicago, Illinois and en route to Blue Ash, Ohio

“Have fun in Ohio,” Jessica said at the entrance to the ER.

“Oh yes, because the counseling session with Doctor Mercer tomorrow morning is going to be loads of fun,” I sighed.

“Even after the surprise phone call on Wednesday night?”

“OK. THAT part will be fun,” I chuckled. “I haven’t seen her in ages. But even so, she has her firm rules just as I do!”

“Did you decide what to do about Bethany?” Jessica asked.

“The answer to that is the exact same one I gave you last night before we fell asleep. I’m still leaning heavily in the direction of keeping the agreement she and I made that day she asked me to stay with her after Nick died. This is one of those decisions that you can’t take back, no matter how badly things go.”

“We trust you, Tiger. Kara and I told you that last night.”

“Yes, but I don’t trust myself.”

“Well, have fun, say ‘hi’ to Nicholas and Bethany for me and I’ll see you Sunday evening. Is she staying for a couple of days?”

“That’s the plan. She’ll go home on Wednesday morning.”

I gave Jessica a very soft kiss, then watched her walk into the ER. I took Kara’s hand in mine, and we started on the way home.

“I hear you’re the object of lust of every male Freshman chemistry student at UofC,” I teased.

“Where did you hear THAT?”

“From Crystal, on Tuesday,” I chuckled. “I had thought about not mentioning it, but I find it amusing.”

“You’ve seen how I dress for teaching!”

“Kara, you could wear a burlap sack and eighteen-year-old boys would drool over you! Probably some girls, too!”

“But I’m married and have kids!” she protested.

“So, you’re Mrs. Robinson!” I laughed. “Or the friend’s mom they’d want to fuck!”

“Like Trudy Spencer?” Kara smirked.

“Yes, like Trudy Spencer! But I refrained. Barely. But I think that proves the point, don’t you?”

“Yes. You didn’t do it only because of your rule. Otherwise, you would have done it.”

“In a heartbeat,” I acknowledged.

“You just did it again, Snuggle Bear.”

“What?”

“Violated your no ‘What if?’ rule.”

I sighed, “Yes, at times I will say things like that that technically violate it, but it’s different from someone straight up asking the ‘What if?’ question and asking for an answer. Do you see the difference?”

“I suppose. But I think you might want to relax a bit on that. Not from the standpoint of trying to change the outcome of the past, but from analyzing your behavior. Don’t you do that when you write in your journal?”

“Sure, but analyzing what I did and why I did it, is different from saying that if I’d done something different I could predict the result.”

“So explain that with regard to Trudy.”

“See, that’s the problem. If I hadn’t had the rule in place, I might well have had sex with Melanie when she was with Pete, or somehow wrecked my relationship with Melanie or both of them in another, and then never had the chance to be with Trudy. In other words, without the rule, the situation might not even have occurred to give me the chance to violate it! It’s that endless backwards string of events that makes that kind of speculation silly.”

“That makes sense. There’s no way to just sort of flip that one bit, if you will, and leave all the others exactly as they are, since so many things happened beforehand.”

“Kara, where the heck did you come up with ‘flip one bit’?” I chuckled.

“You do know chemists use computers, don’t you? Do you think somewhere along the way I might have learned just a wee bit about some of your precious technology secrets?”

“Never mind,” I said, laughing. “But you see why I don’t like doing speculating that way?”

“Yes. It’s like asking what would have happened if Angela had never told Jessica that Al was her father. All history would change in ways that we wouldn’t even begin to be able to predict.”

“Exactly. Maybe the whole ‘multiverse’ theory is right, and every single decision actually occurs, splitting reality at that point. And maybe we could find a way to peer into those realities. But the problem is, simply observing them changes them, and as such, we have no idea what would have happened if that thread went unobserved.”

“You could drive yourself crazy with that speculation!”

“Bingo. Now apply it backwards.”

“You win,” Kara said firmly. “And I don’t mean that as in ‘fine, shut up’, but that you’ve made your point perfectly, at least to my satisfaction.”

We arrived back at the house and I exercised, showered, had breakfast, then packed my weekender bag. I made sure to say goodbye to the kids, kissed Kara, then headed for Meigs Field. I pulled into the parking lot and saw a familiar figure pre-flighting a Piper Archer. I grabbed my bag, locked the BMW, and walked through the gate.

“Hi, Aimee!” I called out.

“Steve!” she exclaimed and ran over and literally jumped into my arms.

I was glad I’d dropped the bag as soon as she ran towards me. I caught her, hugged her, and we exchanged a quick, chaste kiss, then I put her down.

“That’s it? That’s the greeting you give a sailor come home from war?”

I chuckled, pulled her to me, and did my best to recreate the Times Square photo from VJ-Day. The French kiss was, well, friendly, not sexy, which was an interesting feeling. Though it still stirred certain feelings! I released her and she gasped for breath.

“Better!” she grinned. “We’re almost ready. I just need a last weather check and we’re out of here!”

Aimee went into the operations building and was back less than ten minutes later. She grabbed my bag and tossed it into the plane. She finished whatever she had been doing outside the plane for her pre-flight, climbed in, and I got in, put on the headset, and buckled myself in. Eight minutes later, we were turning east over Lake Michigan. Ten minutes after that, we were level at altitude.

“Your aircraft,” she said over the headset and pointed to the controls.

“Uh, are you sure?” I asked.

“If you can’t do THIS, you’re useless! Keep the plane on this heading and maintain this altitude. Watch this,” she pointed to the artificial horizon,” and this,” she pointed to the altimeter, “and watch out for anything flying near us.”

I gingerly took the controls.

“Jesus, Steve! It’s not a fucking egg! You used to handle ME more roughly than that!”

“Yeah, but you don’t fly into the ground at 200MPH if I make a mistake!”

“Just hold it like you would the steering wheel in your car. It’s close enough. Got it?”

“Got it,” I said.

“Then say, ‘my aircraft’.”

“My aircraft.”

She took her hands from the yoke.

“Good. How are you doing?”

“Overall? Or right now? Because right now I’m more than a little occupied!”

“You can walk and chew gum at the same time, right?”

“Yes!”

“Then you can fly this tiny plane straight and level while you talk to me!”

“Yes, ma’am, Ensign Shaughnessy, ma’am!” I chuckled. “So what is combat really like?”

“Who knows? I sat in the CIC and watched computer screens and radar screens, and told petty officers to push buttons and make radio calls.”

“Even so, that’s still a hell of a lot closer than I’ve ever been, and I hope I’ll ever be.”

“I think I can tell you our carrier group fired some of the first cruise missiles of the war. It was a really strange feeling to do that and then see the BDA imagery later on.”

“BDA imagery?”

“Battle Damage Assessment. Pictures of what you hit.”

“What were your targets?”

“I can’t tell you specifics, but military stuff. That first night was all military targets. I did get into trouble though.”

“Oh?”

“The Commander took issue with me. I said I felt the earth move when a cruiser near us fired some missiles and asked the First Class who was working the radio if it was good for him, too.”

I laughed hard and accidentally pushed forward on the yoke.

“Steve!” Aimee said sharply. “Pay attention! Ease back gently and climb a bit, then level off.”

“Sorry,” I said, doing what she’d asked.

“Better.”

“You probably should have waited to tell me that story until we were on the ground!”

“We’re coming up on a turn. Do NOT use the rudder pedals. Just make a very slight right turn. Watch the gauges and come to 160°, at the same altitude. If you find yourself losing altitude, make a VERY gentle correction. No jerky, sharp movements. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

“So, I got chewed out, but that was the end of it. I guess the Navy frowns on sexual innuendo these days. It’s too bad, because I’d rather be seen as one of the guys than as the chick who was the first woman in the USS Blue Ridge CIC. I can tell a salty story with the best of them!”

I chuckled, “I bet you can! Did you get any shore leave?”

“Where? Some Muslim country that would flip out if they saw me in my shorts and t-shirt? Or in my bathing suit? I was only ashore long enough to get a flight home for my leave. Right now, we’re helping monitor the ‘no-fly’ zone in Iraq.”

“How’d you manage to get leave?”

“I hadn’t used any since I left the Academy. Combat operations are over, so I could put in for it. It was approved, and here I am!”

“You said you’re going back to the Gulf at the end of next week?”

“Yes. MAC flight to Germany, then to Dhahran, then out to the ship. I’ll take the controls.”

“Pilot’s aircraft,” I said releasing the yoke.

“My aircraft,” she confirmed. “Not bad. I’ll let you fly some more on the way home. I don’t want to overload you. It’s too easy to make mistakes until you learn to properly concentrate.”

“Like most things in life,” I said.

“You said you have plans for tonight and tomorrow morning, but you’re free after that?”

“Yes. Bethany and I are having dinner tonight, and then tomorrow morning I have a meeting. My original flight home was mid-afternoon, so nobody in Milford expected me to be around after lunch.”

“Good. I’ll pick you up at Bethany’s house at 1:00pm, if that’s OK.”

“Sure.”

We chatted the rest of the way to Blue Ash. After we landed and she checked the plane and tied it down, we got into her cherry-red Supra and she took me to Bethany’s house. We exchanged a quick, chaste kiss, and I got out of the car. I waved as Aimee pulled away, and then went in the front door.

December 6, 1991, Milford, Ohio

“Uncle Steve!” Nicholas called out.

“Hey, Nicholas! How are you?”

“Good! Mama at work!”

“I know. She’ll be home later!”