The Red Coat

by Dolley Carlson

  Before Bob left for boot camp, he and Rita went out together a few more times. Their last date ended on Mary Callanan’s front porch with nearly nonstop kissing, until Mr. Callanan flicked the outdoor light on and off before coming out in his stocking feet. “Come on, you two, break it up.”

  The embarrassed couple stood still and didn’t say a word.

  “Rita, I’m leavin’ this door open and I expect you to be on the other side of it in five minutes.” With thumbs tucked under the wide, single-stripe suspenders on either side of his substantial stomach, Mr. Callanan turned to Bob. “And I expect you to see that she is.”

  “Yes, sir, I will.”

  The protective father of twelve slammed the door, and remembering what he’d said only moments ago, opened it abruptly and flickered the porch light again.

  Bob immediately brought Rita’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and held on. “I know it’s kind of early to say something like this—”

  “It really is, Bob.”

  “Rita, I’m crazy about you.”

  “I care for you too, but let’s just wait and see how things go after you get back. Okay?”

  “If you say so, I guess it’ll have to be.”

  Rita’s caution was merited. Her friend Barbara “Bunny” Keeley had experienced a similar situation with a quick, pre-boot camp courtship and pledge of true love that she believed with all her heart meant eventual marriage when her beau declared, “You’re the only girl for me.” Bunny gladly saved every penny she could, bought a wedding gown, and swooned over her soldier boy for the next two years, only to have his final letter explain why an English girl would soon become his war bride. “It sure isn’t something I’d planned on but you’re going to love her, Bunny. I call her my English rose. Sorry about the way things turned out.”

  Rita and Bob both promised to write, and he walked her to the door promptly but not without one more kiss and one last note. “I’ve picked out a song for us. Want to know what it is?

  “Of course, but hurry, please. I have to get inside.”

  “‘I’ll Be Loving You Always,’ … always.”

  Rita gracefully stepped over the threshold and looked back; the diffused light from inside created a soft halo around her petite silhouette.

  “Goodbye and God bless you, Bob Donnelly.”

  “Goodbye and God bless you too, Rita King.”

  It was when Bob Donnelly sent a three-page letter home to his mother, Mrs. Ethel McDonough, 548 E. Fourth Street, South Boston, Massachusetts, and spoke of how much he missed the kids, her, and George Mac, and gave a detailed description of what he was learning and eating, and then slipped in, “Rita King’s been writing to me. She’s a swell kid!” That Ethel McDonough began to prepare herself for what she’d dreaded most of her adult life—the day her firstborn son, Bobby, preferred another.

  Lastly, Bob wrote he didn’t miss his job as cabinetmaker in the least, having seen one too many “men down at the shop lose a finger or two” and planned on “getting into another line of work” as soon as he got out of the Navy.

  When the time came for Electrician’s Mate Second Class Robert F. Donnelly to return home from the war, he and Rita would have already covered with steady correspondence most of what each one wanted to know about the other: likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, who they mutually knew, who they didn’t, favorite foods, colors, movie stars, music and sports, childhood shenanigans, teenage infatuations, and their shared Catholic faith. Bob told Rita what he knew she’d want to hear, “Sunday Mass is mandatory in my book.” And all of it was written with increasing affection.

  Dear Rita, Love, Bob

  Hello Bob, Yours truly, Rita

  Sweetheart, All my love, Bob

  Dear Bob, Fondly, Rita

  To my one and only, All my love always, Bob

  Dearest Bob, Affectionately, Rita

  CHAPTER 23

  May the nourishment of the earth be yours;

  May the clarity of the light be yours;

  May the fluency of the ocean be yours;

  May the protection of the ancestors be yours;

  And may you be buried in a casket made from the

  wood of a century old oak I shall plant tomorrow.

  IRISH BLESSING FOR A NEWBORN

  RITA KING AND BOB DONNELLY met again, more than a year later, at South Station, where he was among hundreds of returning sailors and soldiers leaning out train windows, waving and shouting elatedly to their families, friends, and sweethearts waiting on the platform. Several windows of young men sang a rousing version of “Southie Is My Hometown,” arms slicing the air for happy emphasis.

  The troops disembarked in record time, shining faces expectant and duffle bags slung over their shoulders. When they entered the fray, war-separated families and couples fell into each other’s arms, many sobbing, some composed, most simply ecstatic, all grateful.

  One injured soldier slowly made his way down the train steps, crutches in one hand, the other clutching a porter’s arm, until his three brothers rushed up, raised him on their shoulders, and pressed through the crowd.

  “Comin’ through, comin’ through. We gotta get this hero to his welcome home party. They can’t start without him. Comin’ through, comin’ through.”

  At the same time, another family circled their returning son and prayed, eyes wide open; they didn’t want to lose sight of him. “Thank You, God, for bringing our boy home.” The father took notice of a teen sailor wandering and looking for his people, with no one there to meet him. He made a long reach and pulled the appreciative young man into the loop. “Thanks for bringing this one home too, God.”

  Bob spotted Rita right away, alongside his family, and how could he miss her? She was wearing the red coat and standing on tiptoe, but still didn’t see him. Rosemary’s visit home was perfectly timed for Rita’s need to look her best for Bob’s return. “Ro, could we please trade coats for a day? Mine’s not so bad, but yours is stupendous and red for goodness sake.”

  She’s here. my girl is here. Bob dropped everything, ran straight to her but turned his head and said, “Hi Mum,” as he picked Rita up. His cap fell off in the process.

  Eight-year-old, towheaded Dicky put it on and turned around to see his oldest brother locked in a kiss. “Aw, mush!”

  There was no doubt about the young couple’s love for each other, and days later, after Sunday Mass, they walked arm in arm down the steep steps of Gate of Heaven Church onto the icy sidewalk and up the street, so animated in conversation they stopped a couple of times along the way, despite the freezing January weather. Rita’s fair beauty was never more radiant as snowflakes collected on her hat and coat. “I can’t believe you’re here, Bob. This is like a dream come true.”

  Icy crystals glistened on the sandy blonde crown of Bob’s hatless head and wool topcoat. “For me too, Rita. I want it to be like this always.” His adoring eyes were irresistible.

  She leaned closer, both hands holding on to his left arm, and they continued walking in the direction of greatly anticipated hot coffee and honey-dip donuts as he laid out his plans for the future. “I’m taking a test for the Boston Police Academy next week. And after that, who knows?”

  “I’m sure you’ll pass it with flying colors, Bob Donnelly.”

  He kissed her cold nose. “Stop right there.” Without warning, Robert Padraig Donnelly, having first asked Mr. and Mrs. Callanan the day before for her hand, got down on one knee in the newly fallen snow and proposed marriage to Rita Margaret King. “Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”

  “Bob, what are you doing? Your trousers will get ruined.”

  Bob was so nervous when asking Mr. Callanan’s permission to marry Rita, he continuously jingled the coins in his pocket without thinking. “Tell you what, Bob, stop makin’ that racket with the change and you’ve got our blessin’.”

  “I’m asking you to marry me, and I’d like an answer before I get frostbite.”

  They both laughed and Rita b
rought her gloved hands together. “Yes, yes, I can’t wait to be your wife.” And he said, “I can’t wait either.”

  Bob Donnelly’s bended knee didn’t escape the attention of people waiting in line outside Mae’s Donuts, one of Southie’s favorite after-church stops. And when he and Rita joined them, a gaggle of giddy teenage girls sang, “The bells are ringing for me and my gal!” When it was clear they intended to sing the entire song, a few others joined in, “Everybody’s been knowing to a wedding they’re going.”

  Bob used all of his mustering-out pay for the down payment on a “decent-sized diamond ring,” and he nervously asked Rita would she mind if he put off their engagement celebration until he had a couple of paychecks under his belt, grateful to have secured work at the shipyards, until he found out if the Boston Police Department was going to work out or not. She assured him the ring was enough, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

  Bob Donnelly went all out and made reservations at Blinstrub’s in person, to make sure they’d be seated in a booth, and politely stressed to the affable host, Stanley Blinstrub, who had heard it hundreds of times before, “This is a really special occasion, sir.”

  That special night, Southie’s claim to fame featured Les Brown and His Band of Renown, starring songstress Miss Doris Day, and opened with a local group, The Harmonettes, who sang traditional tunes for the older set.

  The newly engaged couple had their picture taken at the table, and Bob held Rita’s hand front and center, so the ring showed; they ordered one photo for themselves, one for his mother, and one more for Rosemary.

  Blinstrub’s jolly photographer wore his fedora tipped back, a photo-price sign tucked in its brown band and he kidded, “You two certainly don’t need me to say smile. Count of three, okey-dokey?”

  They were thrilled to tell his mother, “We got a gift for you. It’ll be ready in a few days,” and every happy detail of the previous evening’s celebration. “You should have been there, Mum. The food was delicious, and the music was fantastic! There’s nothing like a big band!”

  “Honestly, Mrs. Mac, I’ve never seen anyone with hair as blonde as Doris Day’s, and her emerald evening gown was all sparkles. She said she chose green because rumor has it there are a few Irish people living in Boston.”

  Unable to keep her opinion to herself a minute longer, after stewing over it for days, Mrs. Mac asked, as she looked up from the ironing board, reached for a water-filled tonic bottle capped with a clothes-sprinkler stopper, and dampened her husband’s white dress shirt, “Don’t you think it was a bit over the top, you two going to Blinstrub’s? Wouldn’t that money have been better spent on things you’ll need to set up housekeeping?”

  Rita got a lump in her stomach and couldn’t believe the nerve of the question but managed a fairly pleasant attitude for Bob’s benefit. “Honest to God, I don’t mean any disrespect by this, Mrs. Mac, and I realize we’re just getting to know each other, but…”

  The future mother-in-law loathed the “but.” She’d never heard anything good follow a “but.”

  “It would make me a nervous wreck to think you’d be throwing your two-cents in like that about everything we do.”

  The older woman was fuming inside. The cheek of that one! But she remained calm in spite of her tendency to melodramatic outbursts, which, up until then, had been reserved for her family. Mrs. Mac worried she’d lose Bob if she didn’t curb her moods when Rita was around, at least for the time being, and she surrendered. “Enough said.”

  Mrs. Mac put the iron down fairly hard, hung the starched shirt over a doorjamb with other freshly pressed, clean-smelling items, and asked, “Would you two like something to eat?”

  One month later, and after absolute abstinence, the engaged couple passionately went against all reason. Much to their regret, Rita would now have to walk down the aisle on her wedding day with a baby secretly resting beneath her heart.

  Rita’s family had never lived more than a street away from their church, and the Donnellys’ apartment was only a stone’s throw from Saint Peter’s. Norah’s influence was clearly at work. “God makes the best neighbor.”

  When the time came to find a place to live, the soon-to-be Mr. and Mrs. Bob Donnelly hastily rented a charming one-bedroom apartment on Boudoin Street, in nearby Dorchester, for the lone reason of thinking they could hide her delicate condition longer that way. But after the baby was born, Rita longed to move back to Southie. “We never should have left.”

  Within days, they put their name on a waiting list for the fairly new Old Colony Housing Project across the street from Carson Beach and hoped. Meanwhile, Bob made arrangements to meet with a friend of a friend who had connections down at City Hall, and having been told prior to their appointment, “He smokes Camels, if you get my drift,” he bought a carton and a bottle of Four Roses whiskey too, trusting the expense would pay off.

  His contact, a middle-aged man, South Boston born and raised, had himself moved to Dorchester, earning his family the next-step moniker. “Yeah, we’re lace curtain Irish all right. It’s what the wife wanted, but then you know how that goes.” He shook Bob’s hand and wondered at them going backwards. But who can blame ’em? There’s no place on earth quite like Southie.

  “I certainly do, sir.”

  Bob handed him the gifts. Butts and booze, Jesus, what a guy has to do. “Thank you for seeing me at such short notice.”

  “This wasn’t necessary, really.” The portly official opened a desk drawer, placed the cigarette carton next to two others, took the Four Roses bottle out of the gift box, swung his chair around, secured the whiskey in his briefcase, and spun back. “Tell you what, Bob. Mayor Curley’s got a soft spot for vets, and he sent word out to all city employees, ‘Vets first, whatever you’re dealing with,’ so don’t worry, you’ll get in soon. Mark my words.”

  The call came when the baby was two months old.

  “Mr. Donnelly, this is Joe Dombrowski from the Boston Housing Authority. A two-bedroom apartment has opened up at Old Colony. Do you happen to know where Pilsudski Way is?”

  Generations of Irish, Polish (the street Rita and Bob would be living on was named for a Polish general), Lithuanian, Italian, German, Czech, Albanian, Armenian, and other ethnicities called South Boston home. But by and large, it was mostly Irish. And so like the Ireland many of them left, Southie had small shops, big families, the sea close by, cafés, pubs, bakeries, street vendors, love of sport, and more Catholic churches per capita, seven in all, than any other city in the state of Massachusetts.

  “A number of Jewish merchants came into South Boston every morning to open their clothing shops, variety stores and meat markets…and did a thriving business…. But every evening they…returned to their homes in the Jewish district of the city, along Blue Hill Avenue. Since blacks had neither business or commercial interests in South Boston there was little reason for their coming into the peninsula except…the beach at City Point or a picnic at Marine Park.”

  South Boston: My Home Town

  by Thomas H. O’Connor

  And this is what Rita missed—stores she’d gone to with her mother, sisters and brothers; people she’d known all her life, even “Looney, Miss Rooney;” fried clams at Kelly’s; that golden-yellow, frosted raisin bread from Helen’s Bakery; Pober’s for the baby’s needs; Woolworth’s for this and that; Mrs. Rosengard’s store for quality discount clothing; and Carey’s Furniture, where she and her girlfriends used to walk around imagining how they’d one day furnish their homes. Thanks to Carey’s “Easy Payment Charge Account Plan,” she and Bob were in possession of a beautiful three-piece bedroom set, cute solid-wood kitchen table with matching chairs, and an elegant roll-armed dark green couch.

  Furthermore, there was Morris’s Drugstore, where Mr. Mac, now her father-in-law, always had a kind word and even reliable medical advice.

  But what she loved most was the sound, smell, and presence of the ocean; and the two churches where she’d been christened, made her First Hol
y Communion, was confirmed, laid her sister and mother to rest, worshipped with her family, and married: Saint Augustine’s and Gate of Heaven. Rita was going home and couldn’t have been happier.

  There was a wonderfully caring and close-knit spirit to be had in South Boston, with fund-raising bazaars, raffles, dances, and myriad other events pulled together at the drop of a hat (not to negate actual hat passing for cold cash) when some deserving person was in dire need. No one closed ranks like the loyal citizens of South Boston when it came to looking out for their own—past, present, and future.

  However, Southie’s striving, hard-working, church-going citizens put a high value on high morals, and God help the boy or girl who even came close to sullying his or her family’s good name with improper conduct.

  Standards were so prim that one incident during World War II sent a crew of French sailors straight to jail. Dick Callahan (not to be confused with the Callanans) was a teenaged lifeguard on Carson Beach at the time. “I couldn’t believe my eyes, and another lifeguard said, ‘We’ve got to get these perverts off the beach.’ They were wearing those small, tight-fitting European bathing suits and positively indecent. We told them to leave, and they wouldn’t, so someone called the cops, and off they all went in a paddy wagon.”

  Even though Rita and Bob were married, the baby in question born and christened, they weren’t out of the woods yet. Their reentry road would be fairly bumpy—but not forever.

  Biddies in the know formed their own mock Celtic court when it came to purity, virginity, and early births. With judgment declared in any number of ways: the silent treatment, cool greetings, brief conversations, that certain look, sighs, or harrumphs, but primarily they kept “an indiscretion of that degree” front and center, so no one thought wool could be pulled over their eyes, and as fair warning to anyone who thought they possibly could. There was very little mercy for a girl who made a mistake.