by Gwen Bristow
His eyes were stinging. He pushed his shoulder against the door and shut it quickly, lest somebody come by and see that he was crying.
11
Dick announced to his parents that he was not going to finish this year at UCLA, and not going to wait at home until he was eighteen. He was going to join the Marines right now, if they’d have him.
Spratt told him to go ahead. “This is one place where you’ve got to make up your own mind,” he said. “I’m not going to boss you.”
To her own surprise, Elizabeth was able to answer him steadily. If it had to happen, it had to happen. She said, “Go ahead, Dick. It’s all right with me.”
“Thanks,” Dick said shortly. But he stood there, evidently wanting to say more. After a moment he pulled up a chair with his foot and sat straddling it. “I was talking to Kessler the other day,” he began. “He told me a lot about the war, and all that. He said he thought I ought to tell you—” He hesitated.
“Tell us what, Dick?” Spratt prompted him.
“Well—about making you understand that I didn’t want to join the Marines just because I was excited or anything like that. About why this war is something we’ve got to do. You know it’s got to be done, don’t you?”
“Yes, we know it’s got to be done,” Spratt answered decisively. “I don’t mind saying I’m sorry you’ve got to do it, Dick. But since you’ve got to, I’m glad you want to.”
“And this war’s got to be different from the last one,” Dick persisted. “This time we’ve got to finish it, not leave everything up in the air the way it was before. You understand that too, don’t you?” He looked at Elizabeth.
“Oh yes!” she exclaimed fervently. “I’m not very good at praying, but I feel like going down on my knees a dozen times a day to ask, ‘Oh God, make this one different!’”
“That’s a coward’s prayer,” Dick blurted rudely.
“Why—what do you mean?”
“I mean it is. Honestly, I’ve got a lot of things straight I never had before. Kessler didn’t say just this, but I mean—well,” he said defiantly, “just asking God to make this one different is being like some squash-bottomed middle-aged dame eating chocolates and praying, ‘Please, God, don’t let me get fat.’ God answered her prayer when he gave her brains enough to know candy would make her fat. The rest is up to her. If this war is going to be different we’ve got to make it be different—don’t you see? It’s up to us. Unconditional surrender, and then go on from there. Don’t you see what I mean?”
He spoke with a pleading earnestness. His parents were hearing him in astonishment. They had never heard Dick talk like this before.
All of sudden, as Dick went on to tell them something of what Kessler had told him, Elizabeth realized that Dick had grown up. It dawned upon her that this must inevitably have happened whether or not there had been a war. Spratt had understood this better than she had, and it was this understanding, and not merely a smaller realization of the price of war, that had made Spratt less reluctant than herself to let him go. War or no war, they could not have kept him, and if this means of separation was a particularly cruel one, it was still only another way of bringing about what would have had to happen anyway. How much worse it would have been, she thought with a painful wrench, if he had clung to them. Hard as this was, it would have been harder to have Dick try to evade what Spratt had called the challenge of his generation.
But instead of trying to evade it he had tried to understand it, and now, in halting sentences full of clichés and schoolboy colloquialisms, he was trying to make them understand it too.
The future against the past—he was right.
“It makes sense!” Dick was saying. “You do get it, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do get it,” Spratt answered decisively. “I’m proud of you.”
“Well, I didn’t figure it out all by myself. I’m not that smart. But in times like this, you do like to know what you’re doing.” Dick stood up and kicked his chair aside. “I guess you do understand,” he said, and gave them a grin that was half embarrassed and half relieved.
Elizabeth came over to him. “Yes, we do. Go ahead, Dick. I mean it.” She took his face between her hands and kissed him. It was the first kiss she had given him in a long time, and he kissed her back without minding it.
“I’ve got to go call up Pudge,” he announced. “He and I have been talking a lot about the Marines.”
He went out, banging the door so lustily that Elizabeth started. She went over and sat on the arm of Spratt’s chair. He put his arm around her and she leaned against him.
“You’re a good sport, Elizabeth,” he said to her.
“No I’m not. I’m shaking inside. But he doesn’t know it.”
“So am I,” said Spratt, “but he doesn’t know it. I think he’s a pretty good sport too, if you ask me.”
They stayed like that for a long time, but they did not say anything else. How good it was, Elizabeth was thinking, to be married to a man you could communicate with even when you were not talking.
Early in March Dick and his friend Pudge went down to enlist in the Marines.
Elizabeth was in her room, writing checks for the month’s bills, when he telephoned her.
“Mother!”
“Yes, Dick? What happened? Tell me!”
“Mother, they took me!”
(“This is your chance, Elizabeth,” she was telling herself. “Do it right”)
“Oh Dick, they did really? I knew they would!”
“They took us both, me and Pudge both! He’s phoning his folks now. They took us both, mother!”
“After all, how could they help it? As if they wouldn’t be proud to get you.”
“Well, I sort of thought they’d take me, but you know how it is. They said there was nothing wrong with me, and gosh, by this time they’d sure know if there was. You never heard of such an overhauling as they gave us. There’s nothing wrong with your son, Mrs. Herlong.”
“I knew there wasn’t. I’m so proud of you, Dick.”
“We’ll be going to boot-camp any day now. San Diego. Look, I’ve got to get out of this booth, there’s other fellows wanting the phone, but I just wanted to tell you they took me. You’ll phone the boss?”
“Right away. When are you coming home?”
“Pretty soon. We kind of want to talk about it.”
“Of course you do. I’ll call the boss now. He’ll want to know it.”
“Okay.”
Dick banged up the phone. Elizabeth heard the click and replaced her phone for a moment, then picked it up and dialed the studio. “Extension 269, please,” she said. “Lydia? This is Elizabeth Herlong. May I speak to my husband? Spratt, this is Elizabeth. Dick just called from downtown. He’s passed his physical. They took him.”
“They did? Sure, I knew they would. Nothing wrong with Dick.” He hesitated an instant. “And you?”
“Fine.”
“You mean it, don’t you? You sound like it.”
“Of course I mean it. I’m all right, Spratt.”
He laughed softly. “Good. Keep it up.”
“Can I keep it up?” she wondered when she had put the phone back again. “Of course I can. Nothing we can give up to win this war can be compared to what we’ll give up if we lose it. We lost the last one. Nothing would be worse than making Dick’s generation do it again after this. Oh God, please give us strength to get it over this time! Don’t let them go through it twice!” Remembering what Dick had said about a coward’s prayer, she repeated, “Give us strength to get it over.”
She went back to her desk and began counting the meat coupons. There should be chops at least for dinner tonight, something in the way of a celebration.
She had to try at three markets, but at last she got the chops, and made it a celebration. Spratt was proud, Brian f
ull of envy and excitement, Cherry a little tremulous but thrilled. “It will be the first time any of us have been separated, really,” she said, but she spent half the evening calling up her friends to tell them she had a brother in the Marines. Dick was delighted. “If they had turned me down—gosh, it must be tough on those 4F fellows. Imagine wanting to go and having them turn you down.”
After dinner he went off to see Pudge. Elizabeth smiled proudly to herself. Strange, but you really could take it when the time came. That night Spratt came into her room.
“Thought I’d sleep in here with you. Mind?”
“Mind? I was just going in to sleep with you. Spratt—I was all right, wasn’t I?”
“You bet you were.” They got into bed and he put both his arms around her. “Now you can say anything you please about it. If you feel like crying, that’s all right with me.”
“You should know by this time I’m not much given to crying. I just wanted to be with you.” She put her head against his shoulder. “You were pretty splendid, Spratt. Anybody would have thought going off to war was just what you’d hoped he’d do since the day he was born.”
She felt him draw a long breath. “Well, it wasn’t. Lord, I wonder if it’s this tough on everybody.”
Elizabeth felt a pain coming up into her throat. Though she was not, as she said, much given to crying, the pain turned into a sob against Spratt’s shoulder. She whispered, “I’m sorry, Spratt.”
“Sorry?” said Spratt. “What do you suppose I’m here for?”
Though the days that came afterward were not easy, they were easier than the first one. She seemed to have a great deal to do. There were parties, with Dick rushing about importantly and Cherry engrossed with clothes, for nearly all Dick’s friends were going into some branch of the service. Brian strutted. “My brother, you know, the one that’s in the Marines. Getting off to boot-camp next week.”
Dick left for boot-camp early one morning. Elizabeth was not sure what either she or Spratt had said to him. There was a great deal of, “Lucky it’s only to San Diego. You’ll be getting in for Sundays sometimes.” And Dick, “Wait till you see me in a GI haircut. Won’t know me.” Spratt shook hands with him, grinning in spite of a faint mist about his eyes. Elizabeth kissed him goodby. As she did so, Dick whispered to her, “You two are swell. Tell the boss I said so. Some of these mothers—the scenes they do put on! You wouldn’t believe it.”
It was an accolade. Elizabeth got into the car to go home, knowing she had done it well.
Brian and Cherry went to school. Spratt had to go to the studio, but before he left he said, “Let’s go out to dinner tonight. There’s no sense moping through the first evening. I’ll reserve a table at Chasen’s.”
“Oh yes,” she exclaimed, “let’s do go out. With some other people.”
“The Stems? Kessler?”
“All right.”
“I’ll call them,” said Spratt. He got into his car again, and waved at her.
Fortunately, she was very busy around the house. It was the day for the laundryman, the cleaner and the gardener, there was a call from the Red Cross blood bank asking if she wasn’t ready to make another donation, and another call from a man who asked if she would consider taking a shift at an aircraft observation post. She had no time to stop and think. When Brian and Cherry came in, they were very busy too. Brian had to see Peter Stern about an important Scout meeting for the salvage drive. Cherry said, “It seems queer without Dick around, doesn’t it? I’ve got to go down to the canteen. I may be latish getting in, but Julia’s mother will be there, she’ll drive us home.”
Spratt came in early. “The Sterns and Kessler will meet us at Chasen’s. How do you feel?”
“Fine. I’m glad you thought of going out. It is better than just staying around. I’m going to wear that tight black dress and the crystal necklace.”
When she was dressed and standing before her mirror, Spratt came in. “You look beautiful. Thank the Lord for a woman who keeps her figure.”
“I don’t get time to sit down long enough for it to spread. I do look rather well in this dress, don’t I?”
“You look rather well, period,” said Spratt. He picked up her mink coat from the bed. The fur brushed his cheek as he held it out to her, and he grinned. Elizabeth said,
“Remember when you got raised to a hundred a week?”
“Do I! Never had heard of so much money.” He chuckled.
“Neither had I,” said Elizabeth. “You came dashing into the apartment like the boy who had just made the only touchdown of the game. You said—” She stopped. What he had said was “And just at the right time, too! Now we can afford a special nurse when you have the baby!”
Spratt remembered too. His mouth tightened. He said, “I guess we can’t help it, can we? But it’s no use trying not to remember those things.”
“No. We’ve had such a lot together, and we have such a lot. I’m not cracking up, Spratt. Believe me.”
“I believe you. You’re all right, Elizabeth.”
He put the coat around her. She smiled at him as their eyes met in the glass. “And he’s only gone to San Diego,” said Elizabeth.
Chasen’s was gay and full of noise. Mr. and Mrs. Stern met them there, and Kessler arrived a few minutes later. While he was giving her a compliment on how well she looked, Elizabeth was thinking, “Mr. Kessler knows how tough this is, even better than Spratt knows. Mr. Kessler knows what war is. Spratt, these others, they can imagine it, but they don’t know.”
“Drinks?” said Spratt.
“Yes,” said Irene Stern. “I’d like a Manhattan and I feel like having it double.”
“So do I,” said Elizabeth.
Spratt nodded. Irene put her hand over Elizabeth’s. While her husband was saying something to Spratt, Irene half whispered, “I’m just beginning to understand what you’ve been up against, Elizabeth. Jimmy was seventeen yesterday. He doesn’t want to wait to be drafted. Do you think it will be over by next year?”
“I don’t know. I know I need that Manhattan, though.”
When the drinks were brought, she saw Kessler’s eyes on her. He was watching her with a look that was gentle, almost tender. All of a sudden the idea that had not troubled her for months came back with astonishing force. She knew that man, she was sure of it. She was sitting at his right side. Her eyes dropped to his hand, just closing around the stem of his glass. That enormous, strong right hand—sometimes a hand was more revealing than a face. But the hand told her nothing. She looked up at his face again. It must be his eyes, or the way his hair grew. But his hair, though it was still thick, had withdrawn at his temples; if she had ever known him it must have been a long time ago, and no young man’s hair grew like that unless he was prematurely bald—not his hair, then, but something. He saw her scrutiny, and smiled.
“Be honest, Mrs. Herlong,” he said to her in a low voice. “Do you want to talk about the war, or the picture business?”
“The picture business,” said Elizabeth.
He nodded. The others were talking; Kessler said to her, “You are doing this very well, Mrs. Herlong. Keep it up. Don’t forget all we said about it. Now I shan’t refer to it again unless you do.”
She smiled gratefully and picked up her drink. Kessler lifted his, and to her surprise she saw the cocktail trembling in the glass. That strong hand of his was not steady. Odd—she was sure she had never seen it quiver before. He saw her notice it, and when he had set the glass down he said,
“Not tonight, but one day soon I should appreciate having a talk with you. Whenever it’s convenient.”
“Why of course. About me?” she asked.
“No, this time about me. I have a very great favor to ask of you.”
“You know I’d do anything in my power for you, Mr. Kessler. At least I hope you know it.”
“I
believe you would. You are very generous. That is why I don’t hesitate to ask it.”
“Tomorrow? Or will you be busy at the studio?”
“I’ll be at home tomorrow. Will you call me?”
She promised, and picked up her drink again. A cocktail never did any real good, of course, but it did quiet one’s nerves and help keep up the pretense of being a good sport. “I’m glad Mr. Kessler is here,” Elizabeth thought. “It’s a bracer to have somebody around who knows just what I feel like. But I won’t crack up. I’m probably going to drink too much, but we’re all going to; we don’t do it often, but tonight I think we will. But I won’t crack up.”
Spratt ordered another round of drinks, and dinner. Irene said to Elizabeth, “Look at all these boys in uniform. Good heavens, most of them are children. They ought to be at home doing their lessons. Damn Hitler. Damn Tojo. I’m not as brave as you are, Elizabeth. When Jimmy goes I’ll be a shivering wreck.”
“No you won’t. You think you’re going to give way, but you don’t. You don’t think you can take it, but you find you can.”
Irene shrugged. She turned abruptly to Spratt.
“Spratt, I see by the Motion Picture Herald that April Morning grossed a hundred and fifty per cent of average its first week in New York. I’m proud to know you.”
“More than we ever expected,” said Spratt. “But you can’t judge by New York. Wait till it gets to the sticks.”
“The only modest man in Hollywood,” said Irene.
“Don’t you believe it,” said Mr. Stern with a grin. “He’s not modest, he’s just whistling past the graveyard. In case the sticks slap him down, you know.”
Everybody laughed good-naturedly. The party became gay and usual. They were good friends; it did not matter that each one was playing a part and the others knew it. They had come to Chasen’s for the chance to do so. “If you still have your shoe-coupon,” Irene said to Elizabeth, “I saw some beautiful walking shoes at Bullock’s-Wilshire.”