Tuesday, May 8, 2001

Clear
High—71°F
Low—53°F
Dew Point 53 °F
Chance of Rain—0%
Wind 8 mph (E)
Sunrise 5:03 AM Sunset 6:59 PM
Moonrise 8:18 PM, Full, 99% of the Moon is Illuminated

Portsmouth Marine Terminal Offices, 07:55

Sometimes, Nancy thought, the last thing you want to see when you arrived wherever it was you were going, was a flock of relatives. And yet here I am, arriving at my office—at work, at my job, at my place of business—and my poor secretary is surrounded by my mothers. All four of them.

"Good morning, Penny. Good morning, Mothers. What brings you to the Marine Terminal this morning?" As if she didn't know. "Arranging to ship something overseas, are we?"

"Nancy Virginia! Aren't you going to invite us into your office?" asked Mother Lois.

Nancy returned Mother Lois's stare with a considering look. One week earlier, that question in that tone would have had me scurrying to open the door, apologizing as I scurried. Now... "I suppose, out of consideration for Amy, that might be best." She turned to Amy, smiling, as her mothers' jaws dropped, some of them at least. "I'm sorry about this invasion, Amy. I'll have them out from underfoot as quickly as I can so we can get back to work." She opened her door and waved a casual hand to usher her mothers inside.

"Should I hold your calls?" asked Amy.

"No reason to—this won't take long at all." Behind her she heard a mew from more than one of her mothers at that calm observation. She entered her office, closing the door, and took her seat.

Folding her hands on her desk, she addressed herself to Mother Lois. "I see no reason to go into this extremely personal matter while I am at work." As her mothers tried to speak, she raised her voice a little. "You made your disapproval quite clear on the phone. That's fine—your approval is no longer my top priority, my future husband's approval is, and he approves of me as I am, thank you very much.

"Now if there is nothing further..." she started to rise.

There evidently was. Four middle aged women began speaking at once, without regard to age or precedence. Nancy had never seen her mothers at such a loss. Even if Nancy had wanted to listen carefully to their "reasoned discourse" she could have never separated their words. Without words, Nancy relied on facial expressions to "get the gist."

Mother Lois and Mother Kelsey were angry or at least very cross. She moved her gaze to Mother Lena; passionately concerned? Shifted again to Mother Marianna. Ouch! Momma Mar was not angry, or cross, or merely concerned—she was about to burst into tears! Holding up a hand to the others, Nancy rose from her desk to kneel in front of her most needy mother.

"Momma Mar, are you alright?"

"No!" she said, followed by a sob. "My daughter is getting married, and I want to be there." The sob was followed by others as Nancy took her hands, which morphed into a full-fledged hug in seconds.

After that exchange of comfort against a background of murmuring, Nancy leaned back and raised her mother's chin to look in her eyes. "I'd love to have you there, Momma Mar, but would you feel comfortable coming to my wedding without your wives? I wouldn't feel as comfortable only inviting some of my—"

If the previous cacophony was indecipherable in four voices, the protests raised now were equally so in but three. It was Mother Lena's hand that stifled the angrier voices this time to allow her to say, "Nancy, I want to be there, too! Forgive us this display of badly expressed concern. After all, you gave us no warning, not a hint that another marriage was in the offing."

"That's true and I'm sorry, but I was still fighting myself on this until just this weekend."

Mother Lena still hand her hand up, and Mothers Lois and Kelsey were nearly silent, if champing at the bit. Nancy recognized a long-standing tradition of her parents that meant "I have the floor" and realized that she had invoked it herself—and it had been honored—when she went to Momma Mar. As Mother Lena dropped her hand, Nancy raised hers again.

"Here it is, all laid out. Captain Robert E. Lee of Virginia will marry my wife Deborah and me in the Norfolk Naval Base Chapel tomorrow at noon." Strangled protests didn't quite violate the invoked rule, and Nancy continued. "There will be no fancy wedding dresses, no fancy flowers, no bridesmaids in taffeta, no groomsmen in tuxedos, no music that I know of, no huge guest list and no reception afterwards. I'd love to have you all and my fathers if they can take time off. There will be no discussion of the agenda or the timing. This is simply the way it will be."

Before she lowered her hand, she repeated, "No discussion. And now I need to get to work. She untangled herself from Momma Mar's embrace, thinking, If I had realized that I could have an uninterrupted say just by raising a hand... But then she remembered doing so when younger and being treated like a schoolgirl with a question. She swelled with emotion realizing that somehow, sometime, her mothers had begun to think of her as an adult, even if they'd never admit it.

Another proof of that status was Mother Lena shepherding Mothers Lois and Kelsey out of her office. They still didn't look happy, but they had actually accepted that there would be no more arguments. At least, not here and now. Family dinners and reunions might be different.

Nancy would have followed them to the elevator had not Amy's voice on the intercom said, "Mrs. Hubbard, Receiving on line one."

Hubbard House, 08:15

Sometimes, Deborah thought, the last thing you want to see when you arrived wherever it was you were going, was an ex-husband. And yet here he was, the Dick, sitting on her front porch, hers and Nancy's, as though there wasn't a one-hundred yard restraining order to prevent that very thing.

"Hello ... Dick. What brings you to within a hundred meters of either me or Nancy this morning?" As if she didn't know. "Arranging to spend time at the county farm, are we?"

"You're not getting married tomorrow." The Dick delivered that statement ... command ... threat in an absolutely dead-cold voice, like nothing Deborah could remember hearing when they were married. Deborah felt cold pricklies racing up and down her spine and she took a step back away from her own porch. The Dick stood up. Deborah stepped back again.

Then just as she always had, she stood her ground. Naval training, natural stubbornness, whatever, Deborah faced her problem head on. "Whether we marry tomorrow or not is no longer any concern of yours. A judge has long since decreed your interest in our affairs at an end, and more important, Nancy and I have decreed we don't want you in our lives."

While she spoke her defiance, the Dick had closed the distance between them to less than an arm's length—her arm's length. His arms were longer and he reached out to grab her wrist with his left hand. Deborah reacted as she'd been trained, and occasionally practiced. There are simple maneuvers that turn the arm in such a way that pressure is placed on the thumb, the weakest point of a simple grip, allowing the hold to be broken. At the same time, Deborah made a grab of her own then applied pressure to the Dick's elbow to make him stumble past her and fall to his knees.

She released immediately and ran up the porch steps, intending to put a stout oak door between herself and Richard. The door shook from his shoulder, but not until she'd thrown the deadbolt. Deborah breathed a sigh of relief.

Then the frame around the door split away from the wall and Deborah realized that the Dick had become, since she last saw him, much more violent than she'd ever seen him. The door wouldn't last more than seconds against him. She looked at the telephone in the parlor and thought, no time, and the bedroom doors won't last any longer than ... She ran to the kitchen and the door smashed open behind her.

She realized her keys were still in hand and thought, Back door! Around the house, in the car, get away!

But the Dick caught her in the kitchen, struck her from behind on her shoulder which spun her back-first into the refrigerator, her shoulder striking it in agony. This time the Dick grabbed her left wrist in his tightly squeezing right. Those moves for freeing one's self from a hold don't work quite as well when a prepared individual is grating one's radius and ulna against each other, when that person's fingers and thumb circled one's wrist enough that fingers alone maintained a grasp and the thumb was a lock on it.

The Dick was thundering about "listening" and "teaching" and "lessons" but Deborah wasn't listening or learning whatever his lessons were. She was all about "surviving" and "escaping" with no attention left for anything else.

The Dick yanked her away from the refrigerator and she found herself almost bent over the counter. As he used his, and Deborah must be forgiven for thinking it, "vise-like grip" to spin her back around, she managed to grab one of Nancy's most cherished kitchen tools and swing with all her power and the momentum of the spin Dick had started...

After the first contact, his grip was much looser and his thundering had stopped, so Deborah applied it a second time, with nearly as much force as the first, again to the side of the head. The Dick hadn't fallen nor had he released her, though she was certain she could break his grip now. Instead, she applied the tool a third time in a fine overhand swing.

The Dick let go. The Dick fell down. The Dick was very, very quiet. Deborah ran out of the house through the shattered front door into the arms of a police officer, causing her to drop Nancy's marble rolling pin. She hoped it wasn't chipped.

It took nearly two minutes to explain and absorb the explanation that Mrs. Grundy across the street had called the police the moment that Deborah had gotten out of her car instead of driving away. She'd given the emergency dispatcher a running account of the assault in front of the house and the breaking and entering that had expedited response. Deborah added the details of the restraining order.

As a second unit pulled up, the officer's partner reported that there was nobody, conscious or otherwise, in the kitchen. While the details were radioed in, the second unit did a careful room-to-room search of the house.

I've got to call Nancy and warn her. That son-of-a-bitch may go there, next.

Submarine Cadre Detachment, Norfolk, 08:30

Sometimes, Bob thought, the last thing you want to see when you arrived wherever it was you were going, was someone to whom you were deeply in debt, the kind of debt that defies repayment. And yet here I am, arriving at my ship's office, and there he is, he finished aloud, "bigger than life and twice as ugly!"

"Like you're any great prize! Still, I hear conga-rats are in order. Find a couple of blind women to walk the aisle with you, did you?"

"Blind women! Who was it that always said, 'there's someone for everyone' and 'beauty's only skin deep' and "ain't no ugly folks, just some's less beautiful than others' and so on?"

"That was me. But it'd take women with a particular appreciation for the absurd to consider getting hitched to you!"

"I'll have you know that many women consider me a fine catch."

"Yeah, but they all 'catch-and-release.' Who'd want to keep a scaly runt like you?"

Bob couldn't help it. He started laughing. "One of these days, you're going to chase a posse of women until they catch you, and then we'll see who laughs last."

"The only reason you'll ever laugh last is because it takes you longer to catch the joke."

The Cadre Office was not particularly crowded. The crew had earlier mustered, gotten their assignments, those who were here, and been dispersed. The few who remained, however, were looking sorely perplexed by this byplay. Bob placed a hand in front of his mouth and said as an aside, "Old friend. Got me through the academy. Hoping he'll stand up for me at the base chapel, tomorrow."

Frowns turning upside down, he faced his visitor again. "So, old friend. Going to stand up for me at the wedding tomorrow?"

Bob watched as his "old friend's" face fell. "Lord, Bob, I'm sorry but I can't. I'm on a flight out this morning for the west coast to join my new command as Exec."

"Congratulations!" Bob replied. "Those conga-rats are flying every which-way today." He punched his friend lightly on the arm. He kept a smile on his face to hide the disappointment he felt.