With a sense of concern, Keith ordered Cushing’s depth increased. His mission was going to be more difficult than he had imagined. There were millions of square miles of solid ice in the Arctic Ocean. This reality brought home the implacability of the environment against which he was pitted. On his side, he had a fine ship with a sturdy hull and a magnificent, ever supplying heart, the reactor. But compared to the vast expanse of solidity under which he must maneuver, Cushing was indeed a matchstick, suspended by an infinitesimal thread, under a flat ceiling of ice. And the ice stretched as far as the eye or the imagination could reach, in every direction.
10
Peggy Leone’s almost twice-weekly drop-in visits had become a real bore, but maybe her pattern was beginning to change. If so, Laura was grateful she had not yet shown any of the impatience she had been beginning to feel. Maybe the problem was starting to solve itself. So far there had been but one subject on Peggy’s mind, worked over interminably, through infinite variations: her desire that Keith exercise his option to retire from active duty at the completion of twenty years of commissioned service in the Navy. His retired pay would be fifty percent of his active-duty pay (she hardly acknowledged Laura’s comment that the allowances for subsistence and quarters, a substantial part of the total pay package, would not be included in the computation, nor would submarine extrahazardous duty pay). He could easily get a job paying him at least that much again. They would buy a home somewhere, have a flower and vegetable garden, plant permanent roots. Ruthie and any later little brothers and sisters would grow up in a stable home environment. They would no longer be gypsies, traveling hither and thither at the behest of BuPers. They would at last be the same as other people. Keith had already made his contribution to the country and the Navy; not only during the war, but afterward. The twenty-year retirement option had been created for dedicated people like Keith. He should exercise it. Now that he was a commander, he had advanced in rank about as far as the Navy would allow a nonacademy graduate to go. (Laura reminded her that the highly honored first skipper of the first nuclear sub, the Nautilus, had not been an academy graduate either. Commander Wilkinson was now a captain, with every prospect of becoming an admiral in a few years. This, too, was irrelevant to Peggy’s thesis.)
Laura was bone weary of citing the holes in Peggy’s arguments. It did no good. Like Peggy, she was only repeating herself, but unlike her, she was tired of trying to think of new verbal clothing for the same old facts. Keith’s prospects were every bit as bright as Wilkinson’s, or Rich’s, for that matter. Besides, he so obviously enjoyed what he was doing. The Cushing was one of the best commands in the Navy. Bud Dulany was three years older and a couple of years senior to Keith, and he had campaigned with every means at his command for the assignment to one of her two crews. Cushing, a standard Polaris submarine in all respects otherwise, had been built with a strengthened sail and superstructure designed to take far more than the usual impact with hard sea ice — everyone in the New London-Groton area knew that — and by consequence was expected to be a candidate for all sorts of special missions. It had been a feather in Bud’s hat, and an even greater one in Keith’s, to have been ordered, respectively, as skippers of the gold and blue crews of this somewhat special ship. But Laura might as well have been talking to herself. None of her arguments made the slightest impression. Peggy simply was not receptive to anything which, in the slightest way, contradicted her already cemented preconceptions.
But for the better part of a week now, Peggy had not called. Laura was beginning to hope the careful speech she had planned might not be necessary. She hated the idea, had finally nerved herself to do it. There was no way out of it. She just had to tell Peggy that she simply could not discuss the subject of Keith’s possible retirement anymore. Merely saying this would be sure to offend the woman, possibly have repercussions on Keith’s relationship with Rich also, but this she would have to risk. “Look,” she would say, “I’ve told you all I can tell you. It’s Keith’s future, and yours. No one can make this decision for him.” She would enlarge on this theme briefly, then conclude, “Please don’t ask me about it anymore. Keith would resent it, I’m sure, if he knew, and so might Rich. And please don’t talk to Rich over Keith’s head. Rich would be furious if I did anything like that, and it must be the same with Keith!”
This morning, however, after a gap of five days, there had come the usual telephone call. Could Peggy stop in on the way over or back from her doctor in New London? This in itself was a variation; she had never mentioned a civilian doctor before. Perhaps she was seeing a private psychiatrist. Most Navy wives, Peggy included — up to now, at least — went to the infirmary in the base on the Groton side of the Thames River for ordinary ailments. Until now, Peggy had cited a shopping visit across the river, or a sick friend whose existence Laura had begun to doubt. Or maybe she had been seeing a “psych” all along, and only now was coming a little closer to telling the truth. If so, perhaps he was doing her some good.
Instead of offering morning coffee, as had been her habit, Laura changed the signals by inviting Peggy to a cup of tea in the late afternoon. Rich’s return automatically would put an end to the visit. Now they were sitting in the Richardsons’ small living room, a pot of tea and some cookies on the low coffee table between them.
“Keith’s been gone three weeks,” Peggy was saying as she replaced her cup on its saucer, “and already it seems like a year. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to having him away at sea like this.”
“You know the old Navy story, don’t you?” Laura said. She was determined to keep the conversation light. “It’s a fair deal if you’re happy half the time. So in the Navy you get a sure thing, because your husband is at sea half the time. One way or the other, you can’t miss.”
“It’s all right for the men,” Peggy said, after a pause barely long enough to acknowledge the ancient joke. “They’re so wrapped up in their boats they can’t think of anything else. It’s the ones who have to stay home who suffer. The wives and kids.”
Laura recognized her inability to deflect the direction of her guest’s thought. Different pattern or not, Peggy was the same. With an inward sigh, she decided her next half hour would be dedicated to providing what solace she could. Perhaps that really was what Peggy needed. The speech, perhaps, could wait. The necessity to prepare for Rich’s return home would give her an excuse gracefully to extricate herself. “Nothing is perfect, Peggy,” she said. “At least our husbands have an exciting life and we share some of it. Just living in the same old place and doing the same thing over and over again for years can be pretty dull, too. I’ve read somewhere that there are far fewer divorces in the Navy than anywhere else, for example.”
“But that’s not the point. The point is that some people are ambitious, and that’s fine. The Navy needs them. They go to the Naval Academy, and then they’re in. They get promoted, and when they’re admirals they’re in charge. But people like Keith don’t have a chance. He’ll never be an admiral. He’ll be lucky if he makes captain!”
“That’s ridiculous, Peggy!” The flat statement would do no good. It got out before Laura could stop it. As she said the words, Laura knew she had already failed her earlier resolve. This was not the way she had planned to begin that speech.
“That’s all right for you to say, Laura. Your man is an Annapolis graduate. They look out for each other. Keith’s always going to be an outsider.”