Beyond the Point(13)
As the second child, she’d spent her childhood watching Emily get into trouble for talking back, sneaking out, and getting bad grades. That was why Hannah had been so compliant: she’d learned early that it was easier to follow the rules than to break them. And the rules worked. If she studied hard, she aced the tests. If she went to bed on time, she felt refreshed in the morning, just like her parents promised. There was no need to rebel when following the rules worked in your favor every time. West Point’s offer of admission was the direct result of all the success Hannah had accumulated by following the rules. Hannah was confident that she was making the right choice, and of all the people in her family, she’d assumed her grandfather would understand her decision. She’d expected him to look at her with joy and pride and respect. Instead, the worry in his eyes stretched across the swing, cutting Hannah like a knife.
“You don’t think I can do it,” she said, more of a statement than a question.
Her grandfather reached over and grabbed Hannah’s hand. For the first time in her life, she realized that his skin was old—paper-thin, with veins pulsing purple below the surface. But his grip hadn’t lost its strength: his long fingers wrapped around her palm and squeezed warmly.
“It’s not a matter of capability. I know you can do it. I just don’t think you should have to.”
The cross on her necklace slid up and down its chain as Hannah prayed for the right words to land on her tongue. How could she make him understand?
When Hannah was in sixth grade, her grandparents had taken her to West Point for her grandfather’s fortieth class reunion. They took a tour of campus, ate dinner in the mess hall, cruised the Hudson River on a party boat. Hannah watched white-haired men shake hands and retell old stories while their wives stood behind them, smiling with patience. Watching, Hannah decided she never wanted to stand on the sidelines as her husband told his stories. She wanted stories of her own. She loved her grandmother, but she didn’t want to spend her life serving pies; she wanted to serve people.
Soon after that trip to New York, a neighbor in Austin had invited Hannah to church, and the preacher spoke at length about being “on mission” for God, helping the poor and defending the defenseless and living up to the call God had placed on your life. While he preached, Hannah felt a burning in her heart and remembered experiencing that same thrill at West Point. She took that sermon, that feeling, as a sign, and hid it away in her heart.
Though Hannah was new to faith, she knew that people who believed in the eternal could be unattached to outcomes in a way that perplexed people who didn’t. The more you believed, the more you were willing to sacrifice. It was how someone like Mother Teresa could spend her life among lepers. It was how someone like Martin Luther King could risk his life marching for a dream. It’s how Hannah could sense the concern in her grandfather’s eyes and decide, in a moment, that she was okay if he never understood.
The general stood up from the swing and rubbed Hannah’s shoulder. “If you want to go to West Point, there’s probably nothing I can say to stop you. But there are things I’ve endured that no woman should have to endure.”
And then he rubbed his hands together, in anticipation of pie, as if he’d just had a conversation about the weather.
THE NIGHT BEFORE Reception Day, most incoming cadet candidates booked cheap hotel rooms for their families outside West Point’s gates. But a member of the women’s basketball team, Sarah Goodrich, had connected Hannah’s family with a free place to stay on campus. Apparently, one of Sarah’s professors, Colonel Mark Bennett, and his wife, Wendy, often hosted families for R-Day.
“The Bennetts live just a few hundred yards from the stadium,” Sarah had told Hannah over the phone. “Wendy is amazing. You’ll see. She’s just like Martha Stewart. They’re excited to have you.”
As active-duty members of the military, West Point’s faculty lived on campus in houses maintained by the Army. Quarters on other Army posts looked like prefabricated boxes, Hannah knew, because she’d visited her grandparents at Fort Leavenworth and Fort Knox, when he was still a lieutenant colonel. But West Point’s housing matched its historic greatness.
At the center of campus, just in front of the granite barracks, stood a statue of George Washington, looking out over a green parade field known as the Plain. On the north side of the Plain, the superintendent’s whitewashed mansion sat next to the commandant’s home, a Tudor. Next to that was the massive redbrick mansion of the academic dean. Hovering behind the barracks, up a hill, was the towering Cadet Chapel, a reminder to Hannah that God was above it all. In another area of campus, there were tightly packed neighborhoods for junior faculty members, apartments for bachelor professors and TACs, short for “tactical officers.” Within West Point’s stone gates, a mini self-sufficient community existed solely to serve cadets.
The Bennetts lived in Lusk Area, a wooded neighborhood of high-ranking professors, comprising two-story redbrick homes, situated behind Lusk Reservoir and Michie Stadium. To Hannah, the homes looked like a string of paper dolls—each one a mirror image of the one that came before. American flags flew from each front stoop. Doorsteps displayed black and white placards indicating the name of the family who lived inside. COL. Carter’s Clan. Team Turner. The Bostwick Brood. Hannah’s parents sat in the front of the rental car, while she and Emily sat in the back, and when they pulled up to the right address, Hannah noticed the straightforward placard waiting in front of them. It simply read, The Bennetts.