Marcia Talley: This Enemy Town

“Hopkins,” she said.

“Ah. Another good reason for choosing the Pentagon over Hawaii.”

Although the medical care in Annapolis is first rate-Paul theorizes that doctors like to set up practice near their sailboats-we’re just thirty miles from Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and if you need them, the best hospitals that Philadelphia and New York City have to offer are only a few hours north by train.

“After the mastectomy, my follow-up treatment was definitely a prime consideration,” Dorothy continued. “And then there’s Kevin, of course.”

I didn’t know Midshipman Hart, but I wondered how gung-ho the young man would be about a mother hanging over his shoulder. My own daughter, Emily, had attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania-two hours flat from our doorstep to hers. She’d been a capable student, but a difficult and headstrong young woman. Back then, two hours had been about right: it kept us from killing one another. But now…?

“Do you have children, Hannah?” Dorothy asked as if reading my mind.

“A daughter,” I replied.

Dorothy had acquired a glass of wine from a passing server and I watched as she sipped at it, cautiously at first-as if testing the bouquet-then more thirstily.

“Emily lives in Virginia, near Staunton. Her husband works at a chi-chi health spa up in the mountains.” I took a rejuvenating swig of my own wine and thought how much I envied Dorothy having her son so close by. Staunton-and my two adorable grandchildren, Chloe and Jake, were more than three hours away.

Dorothy asked a few polite questions about my son-in-law, Dante, and the health spa he worked in, but she looked so washed out and worn that I actually considered calling up Dante and ordering an emergency full-body massage for the woman. Compliments of moi.

Then I did the next best thing. I set my wineglass down on a cloth-covered serving tray, smiled reassuringly at Dorothy, took a deep breath and paid it forward. “Is there anything I can do to help? Anything at all?”

Dorothy paused, nibbled on a miniature totem pole of cheese, olive, and salami and considered. “Actually, there is.”

I snagged a shrimp for myself and waited for her to continue.

“Kevin’s landed a role in the Glee Club musical,” she told me, “and in some insane moment, I agreed to help out. But, I’m just exhausted, Hannah. Some days I can barely put one foot in front of the other.” Her eyes went wide and shone with desperation. “But I hate to disappoint Kevin.”

I nodded. The Glee Club is the Naval Academy’s premier musical organization. Every February they take time from their busy academic schedule to produce a Broadway musical that’s so good it routinely outdraws all the amateur theaters in the Baltimore/Washington area. Combined. Paul and I never miss a show. The year before they’d staged a spellbinding version of Fiddler on the Roof. Everyone was still raving about it.

And the competition is stiff. Kevin would have had to beat out dozens of other singers for a role-any role-in the show.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“Sweeney Todd.”

I was working on a second shrimp, and I swallowed it then, practically whole, in my haste to respond. “Oh my God!” I croaked. “I love Sweeney Todd ! When the DVD with Angela Lansbury finally came out, I ran straight out to Tower and snatched one up. I must have played it a hundred times already.”

“It is wonderful,” Dorothy agreed. “Kevin’s excited about being given the opportunity.”

“What role’s he playing?”

“Jonas Fogg,” she said, “the guy who runs the insane asylum. It’s not a huge part, but Kevin’s a fine tenor, so they use him in all the company numbers. And he’s understudying the role of Beadle Bamford, so there’s always the possibility…” Her voice trailed off and she blushed, as if embarrassed about where that thought was taking her.

“I’m surprised I haven’t seen the posters yet,” I commented. “ Sweeney Todd is a mega hit. It should really pack them in.”

“Who’s Sweeney Todd?” someone warbled from the direction of the crab dip. I turned to face one of my least favorite people, Margaret Atkins, wife of the chairman of the math department, aiming an overloaded slice of melba toast directly at her mouth. Even though Paul had been completely cleared of sexual harassment charges brought against him several years before by a former student, Margaret still regarded him, and me, with deep suspicion.

“Dorothy Hart, meet Margaret Atkins, who, clearly, has spent the last two decades living under a rock.” I said it with a smile so Margaret would know I was teasing, but she took my remark the wrong way, as usual.

“I still work, Hannah,” she snorted, pointedly reminding me that since I’d been riffed from my job in Washington, D.C., I didn’t. “ I had to take a day off to come to this luncheon.”

Out of the corner of my eye I caught Dorothy in mid-gape, so I knew I wasn’t the only person in the room who found the woman’s behavior boorish. Margaret was round and stumpy, stuffed like a sausage into a tailored two-piece suit of the same improbable red as her hair. She was also the pain-in-the-ass manager of the Academy branch of the Naval Federal Credit Union, so I had to deal with her on occasion, like it or not.

It was an effort, but I decided not to walk down any mean streets with the woman. “It’s about a barber named Sweeney Todd who was unjustly exiled to Australia,” I explained with exaggerated sweetness. “He escapes back to London where he goes into business over Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop-”

“The worst pies in London,” Dorothy chimed in.

“Exactly. And the two of them plot revenge against the lecherous judge who framed Sweeney and raped his young wife.”

Margaret took a step back, one hand pressed flat against her bosom. “Oh, yuck!”

“Sweeney uses his razors to knock off his customers,” Dorothy added, leaning toward Margaret and emphasizing every word, “by slitting their throats.”

The hand bearing the melba toast began to waver. A glob of crab dip slid sideways onto the floor.

“But Mrs. Lovett’s pretty darn resourceful.” Dorothy threw me an exaggerated wink, clearly enjoying herself at Margaret’s expense. “Pretty soon all of London’s lining up for a taste of her delectable meat pies.”

“‘Shepherd’s pie peppered with actual shepherd…’” I sang softly.

Dorothy smiled mischievously, then toasted Margaret with her empty wineglass. “Think about that the next time you stick your fork into a meatball, Margaret.”

I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it. I’d swallowed a good bit of wine on a nearly empty stomach, after all, which probably upped my silliness quotient by fifteen or twenty percent.

Margaret gasped, then looked down, staring with embarrassment at the creamy, cheesey glob on the rug next to the toe of her patent leather pump. She waved down a passing server. “Somebody’s dropped some crab dip,” she informed the young woman. “It needs wiping up.”

I caught Dorothy’s eye. Somebody? she mouthed.

Margaret turned on me as if I’d delivered the line about the meatball. “Well, I can’t imagine anybody wanting to see a show about… about that! ” And she flounced through the double doors that led to the club lobby, heading in the general direction of the ladies’ room.

Dorothy selected a chicken strip from a chafing dish and waved it in the air while chanting Mrs. Lovett’s line from the musical. “‘It’s priest. Have a little priest…’”

“‘Since Marine doesn’t appeal to you, how about rear admiral?’” I quoted back, giggling, then stifled myself with a hiccup when I remembered that my new friend was actually married to a rear admiral.