Ian Slater: WW III

“Thank you, Daddy, but that isn’t what you told Ray or Robert when they had troubles. You said when the going gets tough—”

“Yes, yes,” he answered. “But with men, Lanny, it’s different. They’re expected—”

“Oh, Daddy!” she said angrily, storming from the room. He made to follow after her but couldn’t get up from her bed as quickly as he used to. “Now, I didn’t mean you’re not equal, honey,” he called out.

“Yes you do,” she said from the kitchen, snatching a tissue, hating herself because for her it was different than for the boys. They hadn’t broken down. Besides, these days women were supposed to be as tough.

“All I’m saying, Lanny,” continued her father, “is that you don’t have to beat your brains out. You can… well, do something else for a while.”

Lana, now that the floodgates were open, that her uptight, high school “girl most likely to succeed” image had been shattered, steered the discussion self-destructively back to her exam failure, indulging in a whining catechism of other petty and/or imagined failures, about how she really hadn’t done anything with her life, about how she was finished before she’d even started. She’d never even had time for boyfriends, no “serious,” lasting relationship. John Brentwood looked over at his wife, Catherine. In an age when condoms were as easy to get as gum and an aging Geraldo Rivera was wrestling on TV with near naked women in mudpits, they were thankful there had been no serious relationships. But they understood well enough what it was she was telling them — that she wasn’t even experienced as a woman. Still, John Brentwood turned it over to his wife to deal with, to tell Lana there would come a time when she was more settled, when she knew better what she wanted, that there’d be plenty of time for men and “that kind of thing.”

“Take a year off,” her father said in his wife’s silence. It was announced with the surprise of a captain with a wounded frigate suddenly recognizing the virtue of a retreat. “Return to port,” he said half-jokingly. “Get your surface vessel out of range of the sub, eh, Lanny?”

“Oh, John,” said Catherine Brentwood. “We’re not in the Persian Gulf. Last thing she needs is to ‘return to port,’ as you put it.”

“Catherine, I was only trying to—”

“I know, sweetie. But what Lana needs is something to do, something concrete. Take herself out of herself. That’s what you used to tell the boys. You still tell David the same thing. Not that he takes any notice.”

“Well,” John Brentwood began, but stopped himself. Lana was flushed, in that difficult mood, for self-pity and vengeance and for asking where was God anyway?

“There you go again,” Lana told her mother, her eyes liquid-bright. “The boys again. The boys are different. The boys are special!”

“ We don’t mean that,” said the ex-rear admiral lamely. Sons were so much easier to deal with. “I never meant that.”

“You don’t think I can handle it alone,” snapped Lana. “Well—” She hesitated, lips quivering. “I can. You’ll see.”

What they saw was Lana dropping out of college altogether, going back to her old love of horseback riding, spending hours at the stables.

“I hope,” said John Brentwood, despairing of his daughter’s future while leafing through the evening newspaper — reading of more trouble in Yugoslavia, Serbs against Croats—“that Lanny doesn’t turn into one of those ‘horsey women.’ “

“And what,” asked Catherine, her hand steady with crochet needle, “is a ‘horsey woman’?”

“You know,” replied John, turning on the remote control TV. “Look at that. Montreux Convention distinctly guarantees us right of passage through the Dardanelles and Bosporus.” There was an inset map behind the TV announcer showing the narrow straits at Istanbul that lead into the Black Sea and the coast of Bulgaria and the USSR. A Bulgarian destroyer had “bumped,” the announcer said, a U.S. destroyer off Odessa on the boundary line of the twelve-mile territorial zone.

“Those Bulgarian bastards,” said John Brentwood, peering over his bifocals. “Ivan snaps his fingers and they play the monkey. Ah—” He waved his hand disgustedly at the TV. “We won’t do anything. Diplomatic notes. Now, if that had happened in Reagan’s day—”

“It might just have been an accident,” his wife commented.

“Catherine,” began John Brentwood exasperatedly. “A naval vessel doesn’t accidentally ‘bump’ another naval ship, for Chrissake!”

“You did once.”

“Damn it, woman!” He tore the newspaper away from his lap. “I did not! How many times have I told you that that son-of-a-bitch sub was snooping on us — trying to get a good noise signature for their goddamned mines — and I surprised him. Cut engines and the bastard couldn’t turn quick enough. He bumped me, goddamn it!”

“Don’t swear. Well, whatever. All they said was it was a Bulgarian ship. We’re getting on fine with the Russians now.”

“Now, yes. I wouldn’t trust those sons of—”

“What were you saying about Lana?”

“What — oh, yes. Well, I just don’t want her turning into one of those horsey women. That’s all.”

“I know lots of men who like horses. And they—”

“Don’t bait me, Catherine. You know perfectly well what I mean. One of those women who won’t go anywhere near anything unless it farts and eats hay.”

“Jay La Roche doesn’t do either. Far as I know.”

“Jay who? That perfume guy?”

“Yes. You remember. You met him at the equestrian ball. The night you were so grumpy. You and that admiral busy jawing about the president’s cuts in defense. I think he’s rather glamorous. And he’s well connected.”

“She’s been seeing him? I mean — seeing him a lot?”

“Quite a lot.”

Brentwood grunted. He was glamorous in a way. Do his little girl good to get out and around away from those damned horses. On the other hand, there was something about La Roche he didn’t like. Haughty — that was it. Millionaires’ club haughtiness. Or was it because the cosmetics magnate didn’t like career service officers? He certainly gave that impression despite the ultrapoliteness. Lot of those people around. Thought being in the service meant you wanted to kill everybody. Young David at college in Washington State had noted the same thing. Some liberal artsy-fartsy types baiting him about “mucho macho.” And with the new palsy-walsy public relations between Moscow and Washington and the defense cuts, it made it even more fashionable to put down those in uniform. Christ, they were still on about Vietnam, and that was an age ago.

“Lanny say anything to you about him?” he asked Catherine.

“No. But I can tell. She spends a lot of time getting dressed.”

“Good God, that’s no criterion. Half the women I know take most of the day getting dressed.”

“Oh, and how many have you known?” she teased. “Quite a few, I expect.”

He ignored it, watching the TV, shaking his head disgustedly. “You see, that’s the sort of thing I mean. This Supreme Court business — women in future being ready for combat. Take ‘em half an hour to get their war paint on.”

Catherine was hooking the crochet needle in an end stitch. “You’re a dinosaur,” she said simply. “But I love you all the same.”

“What happened to that pilot she was going out with from Andrews? Nice young fella.”

“Shirer. I thought you warned her off servicemen — if I remember correctly. Too many billets. Strain on the marriage?”