by Sloan Wilson
“Well done, and good luck”; that’s what the skipper of the destroyer said, Bart told his son beneath the lilac trees; “well done, and good luck.” And Bart kept repeating it.
Alone on the raging seas, in command of a ship for the first time in his life, Bart headed for Iceland, the nearest port. The ship had been strained, they soon found, and somewhere gasoline was leaking into the bilges. The smell of gasoline was everywhere. Mr. Redding, the fat engineering officer, found that the pump room was flooded with gasoline, and donning an oxygen mask, he descended into it. Standing in gasoline to his waist, he covered his wrench with a rag so it would not make a spark. At the hatch above, Bart and the other men wore rubber boots so the nails in their heels would make no spark, for a spark was all that was needed to blow them up. Listening to this on a warm summer evening, John almost smelled the gasoline fumes, and he jumped when a firefly throbbed a few feet from his nose.
But the spark was avoided, and Bart brought the ship to port. As a reward he got the Navy Cross, a thirty-day leave, during which he was drunk most of the time, and later, the command of one of the first destroyer escorts built.
“It was supposed to be an honor to get command of a ship so young,” Bart usually concluded, and then he sometimes would start to tell the story all over again, while his son steadily pruned the snowberries and the lilacs and hydrangeas, the big shears going clip, clip, clip. “Sure I understand, Dad,” was all John ever said, and it was impossible to tell from his youthful face whether he really did.
Oh, that was a great summer for stories. Not only did Bart tell them incessantly, but Todd Hasper, lurking with his dog behind the bushes, began to strike up conversations with John, coming to squat down beside him morosely, saying once that this was the first time he had ever seen a Hunter work, saying another time that he wouldn’t expect such a boy from such a mother, and finally telling all the stories he knew, bringing them out gradually, giving John first a small glimmer of what he meant, and then confirming it, until in a rage one day late in August John turned on him with the pruning shears upraised and told him he didn’t want to hear any more, even if it was the truth.
That night John wrote Molly the first emotional letter he had ever written to anyone. He didn’t mention his mother, for she had become a subject which he now thought unspeakable, but he did describe more of his own problems than he ever had before.
“Dear Molly,” he said. “This is a lonely place. To tell you the truth, I’ve had a lousy summer. I guess it’s pretty awful to feel sorry for myself, but I hate school too, and I don’t like the idea of going back. Do you ever get lonely or is this just something funny about me? I don’t know what’s the matter, but it’s been a real lousy summer, and I had to tell somebody.
“I wish you were here and we could go sailing together. The next time I promise I won’t capsize you. A fellow down at the other end of the island has a catamaran, and sometimes he lets me use it.
“Well, that’s all for now. I’ve been working in the garden all day, and I’m pretty tired. The garden is beginning to look nice, though. Someday I hope you can see it.”
He reread this before adding, “Sincerely, John.” It seemed to him to be a pretty silly letter, but he felt Molly would understand, and he mailed it.
Chapter Twenty
MOLLY WAS SITTING in an armchair near the front door of the Carters’ new house in Buffalo when the postman brought John’s letter. She usually managed to be there for the arrival of the mail, because she hated the expression on her mother’s and grandmother’s faces when either of them handed her a letter from John. The postman, the small, dark-complexioned man whom old Bruce had asked about the neighborhood, smiled at her and gave her John’s letter first, as he almost always did. Molly hurried with it to her room. Her face was serious as she read it. When she was through, she put it with a packet of John’s letters in a cigar box with a rubber band around it, which she kept carefully hidden under some spare blankets on the top shelf in her closet. Taking some new stationery Helen had given her with her own name on it, she lay on her stomach on her bed, and using a collection of poetry as a desk, she wrote, “Dear John, It’s lonely here too, and I certainly know how you feel.”
There was the duty to write something else then, a thing which embarrassed her, but it had to be explained. “You can see by this paper,” she wrote, “that my name has been changed from ‘Jorgenson’ to ‘Carter.’ I don’t like this very much, but Mother and Granny seemed to think it’s very important. Mother’s changing her name back to ‘Carter’ too. I guess ‘Jorgenson’ wasn’t a good name, as Mother says, but it’s a funny feeling to change it like that. Anyway, I guess you better address your letters to ‘Molly Carter’ after this, because the mailman has been told about it and everything.”
Molly paused. That was the part she had dreaded most to write, and now that it was on paper she felt better. Rereading it, she added, “This whole divorce business is pretty silly, if you ask me. Mother says we can’t go to Pine Island again ever, so I guess I won’t be able to go sailing with you, although I’d love to see a catamaran. My dictionary has a good picture of one, and it looks as though it would be fun to sail. I’d also like to see your garden. Is it the one where we looked for goldfish? I’m getting quite interested in some tropical fish I keep in an aquarium I have here in my room. I have two neon tetras, two black mollies, two angel fish, and some guppies. Mother says they’re disgusting, but I love to watch them swim around. I put a light over the aquarium, and the neon tetras especially shine beautifully.”
Molly added a few more sentences about the fish, and finished with, “Sincerely, Molly.” Putting an airmail stamp on it, she hid the letter under her sweater and walked down to the mailbox at the corner.
Margaret, who at seventy was still unusually spry, was on a stepladder washing windows. She watched Molly go, knowing exactly what had happened. The child always answered that boy’s letters immediately, and whenever she went out for a walk soon after the arrival of the mailman, it meant that she’d got another one. Still carrying her polishing cloth, Margaret got down and walked to her granddaughter’s room. She didn’t hurry, for it always took Molly fifteen minutes to get to the mailbox and back. Going to the closet, Margaret took down the cigar box and with practiced hands slipped off the rubber band. Standing by the window, she took her glasses from her apron pocket, and put them on. Then she read John’s latest letter through twice.
When she had first started reading John’s letters, as soon as Molly had returned from boarding school in the spring, Margaret had been surprised at their innocence. Maybe they had a code, she thought, and were saying things which weren’t apparent. Helen had agreed with her that it was wise to let the letters continue as long as they were carefully watched. Soon, Margaret thought, the children would betray themselves, if they were trying to put something over, which after all, would not be surprising. Things like that happen every day, Margaret knew. You don’t reach the age of seventy for nothing, she often told herself.
Now she read this letter from John a third time. The talk about loneliness was dangerous, she thought; that’s the way men always began. They started by saying how lonely they were, as though all they wanted was companionship, oh sure.
The talk about sailing also deserved close scrutiny, Margaret felt. Remembering the last sail John and Molly had taken together, and the way it had ended up, she felt that the reference to boats and the sentence, “Next time I promise I won’t capsize you,” were vaguely leering. Margaret replaced the letter in the packet carefully and put the box back on the closet shelf under the blanket. It was time to stop this foolish correspondence, she was sure.
For the last year Margaret had been worried about Molly. Already she was beginning to develop a rather startling figure. Surely it was unnatural for that to begin so young, Margaret thought; she felt there was something almost obscene about it. Both she and Helen had always had “dainty” figures, by which Margaret
meant flat-chested, and no member of the family had ever looked like Molly.
It was the Swedish blood that did it, Margaret told Helen; for although Molly had, luckily enough, inherited dear Helen’s dark hair, she was a Swede at heart, Margaret was sure, and everybody knew how the Swedes are. They walk around naked on the beaches even today, Margaret had heard, and in a magazine article she had read that they have trial marriages, and legalized abortion, which certainly was sensible enough when it was necessary, but making a law about it obviously would encourage all kinds of things. If anybody doubted that the Swedes were immoral, all they had to do was to follow the careers of the movie stars who came from Sweden, which Margaret did with malignant avidity.
Although it had been a struggle, it was lucky that Helen had succeeded in convincing Molly to change her name, Margaret thought. Not only would it be inhuman to force a girl to explain why her name was different from her mother’s every time she was introduced, but it would be wrong to pin the name of an evil man like Jorgenson on an innocent girl, whether a former wife or a daughter. Helen had made a mistake in marrying Jorgenson, but there is such a thing as forgiveness, and there was no point in commemorating a sin with a name. Beyond that, a Swedish name like that for a young girl would be an open invitation to seduction, Margaret thought. “Jorgenson” indeed—how vulgar it sounded!
In spite of her good marks at school and a medal she had been given for writing poetry, Molly was really stupid, Margaret thought; she was so slow to realize the practical advantages of a fine name like “Carter” over “Jorgenson.” The girl had insisted on “maintaining her identity,” a ridiculous phrase, for heaven’s sake, something she had picked up in one of the books she was constantly reading. It had been necessary to explain to her in some detail what an evil man Ken really was before she became convinced. All the gossip Margaret and Helen had heard about Ken and Sylvia had had to be repeated, with all the elaborations they could devise. After reading this latest letter from that woman’s son, for heaven’s sake—really, you’d think that Hunter family would be content with seducing one generation—Margaret went to the dining room, where Helen was polishing silver. Quickly they agreed that the time had come for the correspondence to stop.
When Molly came home from the mailbox she found her mother and grandmother sitting in the living room. “Dear, have you been getting more letters from John Hunter?” Margaret began directly.
“Yes,” Molly said, looking startled.
“Your mother and I have been awfully worried about it.”
“Why?”
“Well, you know, he’s a nice boy, dear, but we can’t forget the kind of woman his mother is, and his father, you know—the drinking and all that. Your mother says that everybody was talking about it at the island that summer. He drinks like a fish, they say, like an absolute fish.”
“What’s that got to do with John?”
“There is such a thing as bad blood, dear,” Helen said sadly. “I know it’s difficult to face, but it’s a scientific fact.”
“John isn’t bad!”
“No, dear, it hasn’t shown up yet, perhaps, but it will. And anyway, it isn’t good form for a girl your age to be engaging in steady correspondence with a boy. It isn’t correct.”
“I don’t care.”
“Not now, but it’s already hurting you, dear,” Helen said. “You haven’t made any friends here this summer. Peggy Talbert next door said her Anne has been quite hurt.”
“I don’t like Anne Talbert.”
“Why not?”
“She belongs to fan clubs.”
“What’s the matter with that, dear? It’s innocent fun.”
“It’s goony,” Molly said.
“That’s beside the point. What I’m trying to make you understand is, these letters must stop. You may write him once more and tell him that.”
“I won’t,” Molly said.
“Don’t be rude, child,” Margaret interjected. “You must honor your mother.”
“You don’t have to tell him if you don’t want to,” Helen said, “but you must stop answering his letters. That might be more correct.”
“No,” Molly said.
“Are you defying us, dear?” Helen asked, her eyes narrowing.
“There’s nothing wrong in writing letters!”
“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong in his letters,” Margaret said, “but if you examine this last one closely between the lines…” Margaret stopped, not greatly embarrassed at having made the slip, but annoyed.
Molly’s eyes blazed. “Have you been reading my letters?”
“It’s our duty, dear,” Helen said. “A young girl…”
Molly turned, ran to her room and locked the door. Blushing furiously, she took down the box of letters and read every one, trying to make sure there was nothing her mother and grandmother shouldn’t have seen. No, it was only her imagination that they were love letters, but still Molly blushed. Carefully she tore the letters up in minute pieces and walked to the bathroom, where she flushed them down the toilet. Never again would she keep letters, she thought.
For about an hour Molly lay on her bed, staring at the new plaster ceiling. Then she took out her letter paper, and placed it on her volume of poetry.
“Dear John,” she wrote. “Mother thinks that we shouldn’t write each other, so until I go back to school you better address me care of general delivery at the post office, and I’ll go downtown to get my mail. Otherwise there will be a stupid fuss every time a letter comes.”
She wanted to stop there, but the slender black fountain pen in her hand and the white paper beckoned. A rush of thoughts came to her head, and her hand seemed to be detached from herself as it wrote, “I hate my mother and I hate my father and I hate my grandparents. I hate them all, every last one of them, and I hate your mother too. They’re all rotten people, and I wish they’d die. You write me if you want to, and I’ll write you.” She signed it, “Sincerely, Molly,” and knowing that she’d tear it up if she reread it, she shoved it immediately into an envelope. Her hands shook as she addressed it. Walking through the living room, she said to Margaret, “I’ve written him. No more letters will come.”
“Good, dear,” Margaret said. “I knew you’d see reason.”
Molly ran down the street to the mailbox, and she clanged the metal door covering the slot defiantly after she had dropped the letter in.
Chapter Twenty-One
KEN AND HELEN’S DIVORCE soon went through the Florida courts, but it was December 1954 before Sylvia and Bart’s divorce became final. Both Sylvia and Ken won the right to have their children visit them a month a year, but it was a hollow victory, for John never even answered Sylvia’s letters any more, and Molly had stopped answering Ken now too. The day he got a letter from Helen’s lawyer saying briefly that Molly was changing her name, Ken got drunk for one of the few times in his life, and Sylvia cried They both agreed to keep writing their children, even if they never got replies, and they did so regularly once a week, but the letters were difficult to compose. They had not seen their children for so long now, that it was like writing strangers. Children grow so fast, Sylvia said sadly. She didn’t know what books to send John for his birthday, and Ken had to quit sending Molly clothes because he knew her size had changed, and anyway a Fifth Avenue shop where he and Sylvia had picked out some dresses for Molly returned his check, because they said the dresses had been sent back, and the person to whom they had been shipped declined to have alterations made or to accept replacements.
Well, Sylvia said grimly, we shouldn’t expect this sort of thing to be easy; it can never be. She was becoming more and more moralistic, obsessed with the conviction that sins have to be paid for in full. He is a just God and an angry God, precisely as the Bible says, and there was proof of that enough for anyone with the wits to look around.
But the Bible says there is forgiveness if there is repentance, Ken said angrily, and God kn
ows we’ve repented enough. No, Sylvia said bitterly; perhaps it’s an Old Testament world, not New Testament, and there is only damnation. In that case, the only choice, Ken said, is to be not penitent but defiant, and what was getting into them anyway to have all this solemn talk? “We’ve got our wedding coming up,” he said. “Let us forget the divorces, and if we have to, let us forget our children. We have a life of our own to lead, and a man and woman would have to be extremely foolish to deny themselves happiness after going through so much hell to get it.”
“No, Ken,” she said wearily, “we can’t be that rational. Not you and I. Neither of us can be really happy if we know our children are miserable. It’s funny, in a way. When the children were born their happiness was in our hands, and for one reason or another, we haven’t done a very good job. Now I can’t help feeling that the tables have been turned, and in a strange way, our happiness is in their hands. There’s not going to be much for you and me, unless some day we are convinced that the children are all right.”
“But that will take time!” he replied. “Meanwhile, we have to do the best we can!”
So a wedding was planned. Sylvia said flatly that she wanted to be married in a church. She had never been religious before in her life, but now was the time. Her father had been an ardent atheist and her mother Catholic, so it seemed logical to her to become a Protestant. A Congregationalist minister agreed to marry them, and said that after a series of talks with her, he would accept her as a member of the church. Rather uneasily, Ken agreed to become a Congregationalist too. His father, whom he hardly remembered, had become a stern Swedenborgian, almost a fanatic, shortly before he died, when Ken was only twelve years old, and religion had terrified him ever since.
The question of whom to ask to the wedding was a troublesome one. Sylvia did not like the idea of just having an official witness there; she wanted to be surrounded by friends and relatives. But her parents were dead, and all their old friends were split into factions over the two divorces, and it was hard to know where anyone stood. Since she and Ken had been living together, a lot of people they knew had dropped out of sight.
