06.Evil.Beside.Her.2008 (12 page)

Thanksgiving came and passed. Linda roasted a turkey with stuffing, the first she’d ever attempted, and James ate heartily, commenting that it was superior to Tina’s efforts on holidays past. They rarely saw Chris or Tina anymore, only when James determined they had to visit to keep up appearances. Though Linda urged him to call home to Houston, James rarely did. “Why should I call them after what they did to me?” he’d ask, portraying the injured victim. “They forced me into the navy. It’s their fault and Chris’s that I’m stuck for another two years.”

In fact, almost everyone was off-limits. James argued he didn’t want to share her and insisted on every available minute alone together before he left for sea, so Linda gave up suggesting she spend any time with Penny, Gayle, or Diane. Of course, couples’ activities were out of the question because of their husbands’ higher ranks. The only friends James was willing to see socially were Earl, whom he’d known since boot camp in San Diego, and his girlfriend. Earl tended to drink too much and was sometimes crude but had an offbeat sense of humor. The only word to describe his girlfriend was “young.” Often, in the evenings, they would go to Earl’s apartment to watch movies, usually comedies, on his VCR.

The gold crew was scheduled to maneuver the
Ohio
back into Puget Sound and around Hood Canal to the Delta Pier
just two days before Christmas, and time was passing before James would again be at sea. Linda was sure that explained his jumpiness and irritability. She tried to be sympathetic; the last thing she wanted was a repeat of her husband’s last patrol. “I thought if I kept things on an even keel before he left, he’d be okay,” Linda later said.

But as December neared, Linda noticed James acted increasingly agitated. Just the mention of the ship’s impending arrival was enough to send him into his old diatribe against the navy: that he’d been lied to and that the submarine service was nothing like he imagined it.

One night in early December, Earl and his girlfriend invited James and Linda over to drink and play cards. When they arrived, Mack, a tall, blond shipmate of Earl’s whom Linda had never met before, was also there. Earl brought out a board game and they all sat in a circle at the table, ready to play. It was a drinking game, the kind wherein every time a player loses a hand, he has to chug a beer or throw down a shot of whiskey. The object was to collect the most cards.

It wasn’t long before all five of them were giddy from liquor. Linda’s face felt flushed and she laughed uncontrollably at the silliest things, like once when James got up to go to the bathroom and almost toppled over the board. Before long, Mack, too drunk to play, casually pitched his cards toward Linda and said, “Here, they’re yours.”

By the time Linda got up and walked to the bathroom a few minutes later, he was almost asleep on the couch. Without thinking, she paused and bent over him. “Thanks for the cards,” she laughed, flirtatiously. “Maybe now I’ll win.”

James barreled up from behind and pinched her arm until she winced with pain. “Wait until I get you home,” he whispered in her ear. “You goddamn bitch. I owe you one.”

Because the others were embarrassed or simply lost interest, the gathering broke up after that, and Earl left to take
Mack back to the base. A few minutes later, Linda was putting the game back in its box when she noticed Earl’s girlfriend on the balcony pitching dirt from a flowerpot onto cars parked below. James stood behind the girl, rubbing her shoulders. Confused and angry, Linda grabbed her coat and went outside for a walk to clear her head. She wasn’t outside for more than a few seconds when James bolted down the apartment stairs after her, grabbed her shoulder, and flung her around to face him.

“Just let me get some fresh air, okay?” she shouted, resentfully.

“You’re coming back inside,” he demanded.

“Let me take my walk,” Linda said, straining to pull her coat free from his grasp.

“You’re coming upstairs with me, now,” he persisted, yanking so hard, the coat’s shoulder seam ripped open.

James wrenched her toward him, and Linda toppled to the ground. Suddenly she was flat on her back in the parking lot, James on top of her. He slapped her over and over, as she kept shouting, “No, stop it.” Then he seized her hair in his fists and beat the back of her head against the asphalt. Neighbors in the complex rushed out and pulled them apart.

Dazed and crying, Linda followed James back into Earl’s apartment to collect her things, when a squad car pulled up outside, lights flashing. James answered the door and a uniformed officer peered in at both of them. Linda could feel him sizing up the situation, the stench of alcohol and her torn coat and tear-streaked face.

“Someone called about a disturbance,” the cop said, warily. “Let’s all step outside, down to the squad car.”

“It’s okay,” Linda said, quickly, not wanting James in any trouble that could backfire and hurt his career with the navy. “He’s my husband. We just had too much to drink.”

But she was bruised and her pink and gray wool coat had a wide rip across the shoulder.

“It looks like more than a little argument to me,” he said. “Come on.”

Outside, Linda talked to one officer, while the other interrogated James.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”

“From the look of things,” her officer said, “I think we’d better take him in.”

With that they frisked and cuffed James, directing him toward the squad car. “We had a couple of drinks,” Linda heard James say. “I just wanted her to come back inside.”

Linda felt groggy from the alcohol and the beating, but she couldn’t believe what was happening. “It’s just the booze. He’s a little drunk,” she said again to both officers. “I’m okay, really. Please don’t arrest him.”

“He’s going in,” the first officer concluded. “We’re going to book him.”

Linda’s eyes followed as the squad car pulled out of the parking lot with James in the backseat.
James was just drunk,
she thought.
That’s all.
But she could see him staring back at her, glaring. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he hadn’t had a thing to drink,” she’d later say. “He looked sober. Stone cold sober.”

The next day at the apartment, Linda saw James drive up in a van. He got out, and another man, tall and lanky with glasses, climbed out of the driver’s seat and followed James up the stairs. Linda pulled on a sweater to conceal the red and blue bruises that covered her arms, and opened the door. The other man offered her his hand. “I’m Steve Swartz, your husband’s chief,” he said. “I picked him up last night at the jail and he spent the night on the base.”

Linda invited Swartz, whom she’d heard James talk about but never met before, inside, and James followed.

“The thing is, we’ve had a talk, Linda,” Swartz said, nervously. “James promises me he won’t do anything to hurt you. That it’s all right now. Is that okay with you?”

Linda nodded yes.

“Well, then, I’ll go,” said Swartz, turning to talk to James. Pointing a stern finger at him, he ordered, “Be good and don’t lay a hand on her.”

Swartz left.

Linda was relieved to see James. More than anything, she wanted to sit down together and talk, to figure out what went wrong the night before. The way she saw it, they were both at fault. Her main concern was what the navy might do. Penny and the others had told her stories about sailors who got in trouble and were summarily shuffled out of the submarine corps. She’d been frantic all morning, imagining that James would be dishonorably discharged and they’d be headed back to Houston, the promise of his career in the navy lost.

James, however, didn’t seem in the least concerned about his situation, just angry. “Steve says a lot of women get drunk and act dumb,” James said to her derisively as he walked toward the bathroom door, ready to take a shower. “You know what I was thinking about when I was hitting you, Linda? How you bent down and thanked that guy for his lousy cards.”

“What was wrong with thanking him? What did I do—” Linda started.

“It’s up to you, Linda,” James cut in. “Do you want me to get kicked out of the navy?”

“No,” Linda answered. “I don’t.”

“If we’re going to get them to drop the charges, you better come up with a story. Tell the prosecutor it was your fault,” he warned. “Tell them that you were drunk and that I pulled you back because I didn’t want you to get hit by a car. That you just don’t remember what happened, except that I was trying to help you.”

James turned and left; minutes later he was in the shower. Without saying another word, he then pulled the shades and climbed into bed, where he stayed, sleeping the rest of the day. For a long time that afternoon, Linda sat alone in their apartment, trying to make sense of her husband’s actions. Her
body ached under the patchwork of bruises that covered it. But more than anything she felt stunned by James’s indifference.
He didn’t even apologize,
she thought.
He wasn’t sorry.

Christmas came and James and Linda decorated a small tree and brought gifts to Chris and Tina’s for their two sons. Everything was so tentative between them, neither bought the other a present. “He was acting like I had beat him up,” Linda said later.

It was weeks before the icy silence melted. At first, James kept his distance from Linda. Then, as his court date approached, he cajoled her, flirted, and suggested, “Let’s just say it was the booze.”

Steadfastly silent, she fumed that so much had happened and he remained unrepentant.

Finally, in early January with his next voyage imminent, Linda gave in and agreed to consult an attorney to make arrangements to have the charges against him dropped. As James instructed and with him at her side, she recounted how her husband had only been trying to protect her, to keep her from walking in front of a passing car, and that the officers had misread the situation. “I couldn’t even look at the lawyer while I was telling her the story,” Linda remembered later. “It was all such a lie.”

“So in other words, you were intoxicated, Linda,” asked the attorney.

“Yeah,” Linda said. “I was.”

James’s lawyer later met with the prosecutor, and all charges against him were dropped.

It seemed an unsatisfying finish to Linda. Yet as the days before James would go off to sea drew to a close, she became increasingly concerned that they had not yet really made up. More than anything she wanted to avoid a repeat of last summer’s patrol. Finally one afternoon she approached him. “James, I’m sorry about the fight and everything that’s happened,” she said. “I did have too much to drink.”

To her surprise, James answered, “I don’t know if I can
ever get over it. I’ll always remember you bending over to thank that son of a bitch.”

“James, all I can say is, I’m sorry,” she said, weary of the entire episode.

After that day, Linda and James eased back into their old routines. Linda was anxious to put it all behind them and she tried to forget that he had never really apologized for hurting her.

As always, the day before the
Ohio
was scheduled to sail, January 20, 1988, was family night, the one opportunity spouses and children had to tour the submarine. Although James had never agreed to bring Linda on-board before—claiming he couldn’t stand the lascivious way other men looked at her—this time when Linda asked if she could come on-board like the other wives, he agreed. That evening, Linda walked through the
Ohio
’s tight passageways among the throng of wives. Fascinated, she inspected the galley, the front control station, and the small IC station where James worked. Then he escorted her to the nine-man cubicle where he slept. Except for one rolled-up magazine carelessly thrown on the bunk, everything in his cubbyhole was neat and orderly, just as things were at home.

“That’s another guy’s,” said James nervously as he picked up the magazine and discarded it on a lower berth. “He’s always leaving things around.”

Flirting, Linda playfully jumped on his bunk and motioned for him to follow. James did and she pulled the curtain behind them. Over the years, she’d heard many navy wives fantasize about making love to their husbands on-board the sub. At the wives’ club functions, she’d met a few women who bragged that they had done just that. Linda had often wondered what it would be like, stealing forbidden moments together.

To her astonishment, in the privacy of James’s curtained berth, he shushed her to stop giggling and then kissed her. One thing led to another, and before long they were making
love. Linda was exhilarated by the spontaneity of such unplanned, dangerous passion and the joy of telling her friends about it later. The night wore on and the other sailors and their families left. James and Linda made love twice more after the boat fell quiet, then, without intending to, they slept.

Morning came and the boat filled with the hubbub of men shouting orders. James panicked when he awoke and saw her beside him and realized what had happened. “God, I’m going to be in deep shit for this,” he said. “We’ve got to get you off.”

They dressed hurriedly and then he pulled the curtain back, checking to be sure the area was clear. It was. As he frantically pulled her from his bunk, Linda’s gaze fell on the discarded magazine from the night before. It was a detective magazine, the kind with grisly tales of murder. On the cover was a woman, young and beautiful, bound and gagged. It sent a shiver through her.

But James yanked her by the arm and she followed him from his quarters. Though he tried to smuggle her out, the boat was filled with his crewmates and it was impossible to hide. The other sailors laughed and called at Linda as James pulled her toward the back of the sub, where she climbed up a two-story ladder to the deck. To Linda, it seemed a great adventure as they sprinted toward the gangplank and off the boat, surrounded by catcalls.

In the navy jeep as James drove her to the gates, Linda’s thoughts flashed back to the magazine.

“Was that yours?” she asked. “The detective magazine?”

“No,” he assured her. “I told you. It belongs to one of the other guys.”