Evan Hunter - Sons

That’s some funny dream, don’t you think? What do you think of it?

Well, here I am in the same pink nightgown I had on in the dream (but no grease on it) and I feel just miserable in this heat. I hate Chicago in the summer, don’t you? As a matter of fact, I also hate it in the winter. I sometimes wish I could just leave this damn city and go someplace where nobody knows me. You fellows are lucky, though you don’t realize it. You get a chance to travel all over the country and even the world with Uncle Sam paying for it. Maybe I will join the Wacs, do you think that’s a good idea? Though brown isn’t my color. Maybe the Waves.

The dance tonight was very depressing, I don’t know why. I am a very moody person, Will, I guess you don’t know that, but it’s true. Sometimes, when Freddie calls me long distance from Ohio, I feel as if I have nothing to say to him because I’m in one of my moods. He’s a very nice fellow and he wants to be an engineer when the war is over, which is why the V-12 program is so good for him. It is paying for his college education, and he will also be an officer when he gets into the Navy. He says the Navy is the best place to be because you always know where you’re going to be sleeping that night, not like the Army, and also because you get hot meals. I think that’s very sensible. I sometimes wonder what it would be like married to an engineer. I don’t even know what it is engineers do. Do you plan to continue flying when you get out of the service? I guess all the airlines will be hiring you boys who have flying experience.

Did you get my picture? If so, what did you think of it? I know it’s not a very good picture, but I am interested in your opinion. It’s so damn hot here, you have no idea. I probably will go to the beach again tomorrow, and then tomorrow night it’s into my little bed early because Monday morning I have to go back to work. I certainly hate to go back after such a nice vacation.

Well, I seem to be running out of words, so until I hear from you, I guess I’ll sign off. Let me know what you think about my crazy dream, as I’m very interested in your opinion. Also about the picture I sent to you.

Affectionately,

6/25/44

Dear Will,

First of all, I hardly know the girl. As I told you, we met at a U.S.O. party, and she casually said (with a lot of coy arching of the eyebrows) that you and she were (little nudge of the elbow) very close (Get it, dearie?) and what a shame it was that she didn’t have your address. So I gave her your address. So a week later, I had just come back from the beach with Iris (the weather here has been so beastly, you could die) and the phone rings and it’s Margaret Penner. Margaret who? I said. Margaret Penner. Okay, hello,

Margaret Penner, how are you? (Aside to I: Who the hell is Margaret Penner?) Margaret Penner explains who Margaret Penner is. She is the girl who gave the U.S.O. party at her house, remember? and she used to know my brother Will, remember? So I said Oh yes, Margaret Penner! Whereupon she told me she had sent you a letter at Santa Maria but now she wasn’t sure you would get it because I had mentioned something about your perhaps going overseas soon, or into the pilot pool, or whatever, and did I think it would be all right if she sent you a second letter? So I said I certainly didn’t think you’d mind, and it was very sweet of her and all that, our dear beloved boys in the service of this mighty nation being very greedy for mail. Goodbye to Margaret Penner.

Until tonight.

Tonight, I washed my hair and I was in my pajamas listening to Eddie Cantor and the telephone rings again. It is (guess who?) Margaret Penner again, and she’s in tears. Apparently my dear brother Will wrote her some kind of filthy letter describing in detail all the things he would like to do to her, and Margaret Penner wanted to know from me whether I thought she looked like that kind of girl, the kind of girl you could write that kind of letter to. I assured her she looked every bit as sweet as Moll Flanders, and that you probably had written your letter in a drunken frenzy, the strain on fighter pilots being intolerable, and that you were probably sorry as could be afterwards.

I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Will, I think the Air Force has made you a little dotty. I don’t mind straightening out your romances (like hell I don’t) or handling nutty girls on the telephone right when Parkyakarkus is coming on, but I’m really disappointed that you could write a letter like that to anybody, really, Will! I might as well tell you this now while you’re still in the States, because I guess once you’re overseas I’ll have to be very careful of what I say, otherwise some nasty Nazi will shoot you down in flames and I’ll be sorry the rest of my life. I think it was a lousy miserable and not very comical thing to do, and you should be ashamed of yourself. There.

Besides, aren’t there any girls out there in California?

We had driven down to Los Angeles from Santa Maria, and were sitting with a sodden captain from the Van Nuys Army Air Base in a bar called The Eucalyptus on Wilshire Boulevard. The captain’s name was Smythe, and he had received a Dear John letter from his wife the day before. He was telling us that all women were tramps and that you could not trust them as far as you could throw them.

“To coin a phrase,” Ace said.

“Absolutely,” Smythe said, “to coin a phrase.”

He had a red mustache, and he stroked it now and lifted his empty shot glass, tried to drain it all over again, realized there was no whiskey in it, and said, “Bartender, let me have another drink here, willya? My glass is empty here.”

The jukebox was bubbling with red and blue and yellow lights and oozing “Harlem Nocturne” into the scented dimness of the bar. From the leatherette booths came the muted hovering whisper of men engaged in earnest negotiation with all the town whores, the clink of melting ice in whiskey-sodas gone two a. m. flat, the lamentable sound of someone puking in the men’s room behind the hanging flowered curtain.

Smythe sipped at his fresh drink with remarkable restraint, and then began to describe his wife’s lover in far too meticulous detail, it seemed to me, almost with reluctant admiration, almost as if he longed to poke us with an elbow every now and then, and grin fraternally, and say, “How do you like that son of a bitch?” The son of a bitch was a real estate agent in Smythe’s home town somewhere in Massachusetts. Naturally, he was 4-F, but apparently not too physically handicapped to have escaped Mrs. Smythe’s attention. “Knew the fellow all my life,” Smythe said. “Went to school with him. To school. With him. Her, too. Went to school with both of them.”

“He could have had the decency to stop while you were talking,” Ace said, and laughed, and said to me, “Do you know that one, Will?”

“Yes. I do,” I said.

“You know him?” Smythe asked. “You know the man who womanized my wife?”

“Never heard of him,” Ace said.

“Went to school with him,” Smythe said.

“What school was that?”

“Saint Thomas Aquinas.”

“Are you a Catholic?” I asked.

“No,” Smythe said. “Saint Thomas Aquinas was a Catholic, but I am not a Catholic, no. My wife is a Catholic. Was a Catholic. The man who womanized her is a Catholic. I should never have gone to Saint Thomas Aquinas. That was my first mistake.”

“That was your second mistake,” I said.

“What was my first mistake?”

“What was his first mistake, Ace?”

“Getting,” Ace said.

“Getting what?” Smythe asked.

“Born, married, drafted, screwed.”