Sons (53 page)

I took out Charlotte Wagner that Friday night, and discovered that she wanted to talk exclusively about the old days at Grace School, recalling incidents I had either forgotten or never been a part of, remembering classroom jokes and school outings, student and teacher characters, all the games she had cheered, and even the cheers themselves, turning to me in the parked automobile, eyes glowing, to chant, “With a G! and an R! and an A! and a C! and an E! With a Grrrrace School...” and then pulling away when I tried to kiss her, and telling me I had never answered the postcards she’d sent me from Cape Cod in the goddamn summer of 1944! I called Sarah Cody the next day, and went to pick her up in high expectation because she had always been a fun-loving kid with a fine Irish sense of humor and adventure, and a smile that broke like a sunrise, with a good figure besides and a reputation for being pretty easy, or so Michael Mallory had reported. She was even prettier than I remembered, sleek black hair and a pert fresh mouth and sparkling blue eyes, the conjured image of every Irish lass who’d ever been kissed in a haystack, but she told me almost immediately that she had been scheduled to go out with a senior from Northwestern who had come down with a bad cold, and so I was extremely lucky that she was free, it being a Saturday night and all, and then expressed keen disappointment when I told her that what I had in mind was a movie when her original plans had been for dancing at The Empire Room. Sarah Cody, it seemed, was being dated almost every night of the week by university boys who found her ravishing, witty, sexy, responsive, inventive, brilliant, and nothing if not perfect. The movie was lousy. I did not try to kiss her goodnight because I didn’t wish to mar the flawless line of her lipstick. In desperation, I called Margaret Penner that Wednesday and said, “Hello there, Margie, this is Will Tyler, I don’t know if you...” and she hung up, small surprise. In an agitated state of extreme critical revision, I decided that perhaps I missed Dolores Prine, I guessed.

We had said goodbye one October night, huddled together in a hotel bed, Dolores warm and trusting and weeping in my arms as I let lies fall like autumn rain around us, gently pattering on the sodden leaves of what she thought was an undying love. Dolores, I said to her, I’ve never met anyone like you in my life, I hate to leave you now, but I’ve got to go back to Chicago, I’ve got to go home to find my roots again, can you understand that (and she said, Yes, love, weeping) and I said, I’ve been through a war, Dolores, and there are a lot of things I don’t yet know about myself or about what’s waiting for me in civilian life, and so I’ve got to go back, and I can’t take you with me, not yet, can you understand that (and she said, Yes, love, weeping) and I said, Maybe after I’ve been there a while, maybe after I’ve had a chance to find this person who is Will Tyler, to look at myself in the mirror (Yes, love) and come to terms with myself, know what it is I really want, why then maybe, Dolores, I can send for you and we can be together again, but not now, Dolores, can you understand that, not now (Yes, love, weeping) and made love to her again before dawn because if I was going to be a rat, if I was going to lie to this eighteen-year-old kid (Yes, love, yes) and cause her to believe that I would one day send for her, cause her to believe that this was not truly the end, not truly goodbye, then I might as well go whole hog, might as well be the consummate bastard, take all I could get from her before I left her flat, yes love yes love yes, and we said goodbye.

She had written eight letters to me, none of which I’d answered. I went upstairs to my room now, and read them over again. In the last letter, she had enclosed the snapshots we’d taken the day before I left New York. Clipped to the twelve prints was a slip of white paper with the single word “Remember?” scrawled onto it. I looked at the black-and-white photographs now, trying to reconstruct in my mind the exact moment when the camera’s shutter had clicked to freeze Dolores into one or another characteristic pose, realizing all at once that the girl whose pictures lay spread out beside me on the bed was not just
one
girl, not
only
Dolores Prine, but really a rather extraordinary and startling
collection
of girls: Dolores munching on a jellied apple, her hazel eyes opened wide in surprise as the camera clicked on a ravenous bite; Dolores striking a mock sexy pose against a lamppost on Lexington Avenue, coat open, one hand on her hip, the very image of a Parisian streetwalker, eyes slitted, mouth curled in sensuous invitation; Dolores gazing down at the river outside her building, sunlight caught in the shimmering web of her hair, her eyes all but closed, her face in silhouette as clear as alabaster, as soft as snow; Dolores leap-frogging a fire hydrant, legs akimbo, hair floating, eyes and mouth wide open, shrieking in girlish delight as the shutter clicked; Dolores angry and frowning because I had been saying, “No, your head a bit more to the right, that’s it, no, a little more, yes, perfect, no,” until she shouted, “Go to hell, Will!” just as I snapped the picture. I studied this crowd that was Dolores, trebled it, multiplied it by a thousand, converted it into a mob of Doloreses, and then reversed the procedure, condensing, solidifying this universe of girls into one alone, Dolores Prine, who seemed to me now the most marvelous girl I had ever known. In those frozen snapshots on the bed, I detected a pulsating life, and I wanted to hold it close and fierce, and never let it go again. I went into my father’s library, missing her desperately, telling myself that what I wanted to do was go down to New York for a few days, maybe a week, spend some time with her, nothing was happening in Chicago anyway.
Dear Dolores,
I wrote, and crossed it out,
Dolores darling,
I wrote, and crossed it out, and wrote
Dear Dolores
again, and then wrote,
I’ve been here in Chicago for several weeks now, doing all the thinking I told you I’d have to do before corning to any knowledge of myself and,
oh, shit, I thought, and crumpled the letter and threw it into my father’s wastebasket. I got up from the desk and began pacing the room, walking past the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, my eye traveling over books that must have been bestsellers when my father was about my age, stuff like
Miss Lulu Belt
by Zona Gale and
The Valley of Silent Men
by James Oliver Curwood, and
Mooncalf
by Floyd Dell and a very hot little number called
Jurgen
by James Branch Cabell, which I took from the shelf and thumbed through, finding a long underlined passage in it. I became curious about some of the other books then, and began leafing through them at random to see if my father had marked any more pages. Most of them looked unread. There was, however, a corner niche of World War I books which were dog-eared and heavily annotated. I carried some of those over to the desk and scanned the notes he had boldly scribbled into the margins, indignant outbursts like
Nonsense!
or
This did not happen!
sympathetic praise like
Yes, God, yes!
or
I remember the stink, too!
Intrigued, I found myself reading a paragraph in the middle of one book, and then turned back to the first chapter, and then moved from my father’s desk to the big leather chair near the Franklin stove, and suddenly lost all interest in writing my letters. That afternoon, I discovered that I did not miss Dolores and I did not miss flying.

What I missed was war.

I missed the uniform, and I missed the routine, and I missed being awakened in the pre-dawn hours and going to the latrine with a dozen other guys and shaving and putting on my flying gear and going to the briefing hut and being told that today we would provide penetration, cover, and withdrawal for another bombing raid. I missed the excitement, I missed the killing, I missed the war.

That night, I went out to get drunk.

I found a bar on the South Side that reminded me a lot of The Eucalyptus on Wilshire Boulevard, which Ace and I used to frequent a lot when we were hotshot pilots in Transitional Training and making the long haul down from Santa Maria every chance we got because there was so much sweet pussy in those Los Angeles hills. It was late, the jukebox was going, a few hookers were hanging on the bar, there was a pleasant hum, a familiar clink of glasses. I felt warm and cozy. I knew I would get drunk and that pleased me because I did not feel like thinking about my future, or wondering whether I’d go to college or go to New York or go into my father’s business or try writing or contact Pan-American to see if they needed a very good combat-experienced pilot to fly one of their airplanes. I didn’t want to think about anything. I merely wanted to get drunk and then go home to sleep.

I don’t know what was on the jukebox, I really can’t remember. I’d had two or three drinks already when the guy sitting next to me at the bar turned and said, “This is a nice number,” and I said, “I’m sorry, what...?” and he said, “This song,” and I listened for a moment, and then said, “Oh yeah, it is.”

“I’m a musician,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yes, I play tenor sax and clarinet. I work with a little combo over on Woodlawn. Do you know a place called Frankie’s?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s where I work. Tonight’s my night off, though. It’s the chord pattern that makes a song good or not, you know. This one’s got a particularly good chart.”

“There’re so many new ones,” I said, “I can hardly keep up with them.”

“Especially when you’ve been away for a while,” he said. “That’s right, how can you tell?”

“I don’t know what it is, but a guy who hasn’t been wearing civvies for a long time looks really weird in them. Take me, for example. I look as if I just got out of prison last week, and this is the
suit
they gave me, do you know what I mean?”

“I know
just
what you mean,” I said, and began laughing.

“I was with the Fifth Army in Italy,” he said. “I just got back to Chicago in August.”

“I was with the Fifteenth Air Force,” I said. “Also in Italy.”

“Oh? Where?”

“Foggia.”

“Where’s that?”

“Near Bari. Down on the heel.”

“I didn’t get over to that side of the boot. We landed in Salerno.”

“No, Foggia was on the Adriatic side.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m glad all
that
shit’s behind me. What are you drinking there?”

“Scotch and water.”

“Bartender, let’s have another scotch and water, and a bourbon on the rocks here. My name’s Bob Granetta, I play under the name of Bobby Grant, you can call me both or either.” He extended his hand.

“Will Tyler,” I said.

“Pleased to meet you, Will.”

He was taller than I, leaner, with a thatch of curly black hair, dark brown eyes, a grin that climbed crookedly onto his face as he shook my hand briefly and then picked up his drink again. Leaning on the bar, he said, “How do you like being home, Will?”

I shrugged.

“Yeah, me too. I kind of got a kick out of Italy, you know. Hell, I ran into half my goombahs over there, it was like Christmas on Taylor Street. Were you born in Chicago?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Me too. Ah, thanks,” he said to the bartender, and then raised his glass. “Will,” he said, “here’s to rehabilitation or whatever the hell they call it, huh?”

“Here’s to it,” I said.

“Salute”
he said in Italian, and drank. “When I think of some of that piss we were drinking overseas,” he said, “I get just
sick
thinking about it. Where do you live, Will?”

“Over on East Scott Street.”

“Oh boy, I’ve met my first millionaire,” Bobby said, and began laughing.

“No, not quite.”

“I’m only kidding. I used to walk that whole Astor Street neighborhood when I was a kid, though, wishing I could live in one of those great old houses. Are you living with your folks?”

“With my father and sister. My mother’s dead.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Well, it was a long time ago,” I said, and suddenly realized that it was.

“I couldn’t stand living with my folks any more,” Bobby said. “I was in the Army for three years, you know, I couldn’t come back and all of a sudden have my mother telling me to pick up my socks. Pick up your own socks, I felt like telling her. So I have a place of my own now over on South Kimbark, do you know that area?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s a nice place, this guy I know helped me fix it up real nice. Also, it’s close to where I’m playing, which is very convenient. I don’t finish till three, four in the morning, later on weekends because we usually hang around to jam, you know. It’s great to be able to walk only two or three blocks and flop right into bed. How’s that scotch doing?”

“I’ll get the next round,” I said, and signaled to the bartender. “I feel like getting drunk tonight.”

“You and me both. We’re lucky we ran into each other. I hate drinking alone, don’t you?”

“Worst thing in the world.”

“Hate doing anything alone, matter of fact.”

“I had to fly that mother-fuckin’ airplane alone,” I said.

“What kind of plane did you fly, Will?”

“The P-38. The Lightning,” I said. “Bartender, another round here, please.”

“That’s a pretty plane,” Bobby said. “That’s the one with the tail like this, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, with the twin booms.”

“Yeah, that’s a great airplane.”

“A
great
airplane,” I said. “How come you didn’t get into an Army band?”

“Not good enough, I guess,” Bobby said, and shrugged. “You’ve got to realize the Army had its pick of some of the best musicians in the country. They were drafting guys from Benny Goodman’s band, Glenn Miller’s, even Al Di Luca’s — which happened to be the band I was playing with before they grabbed me. I’m sure you’ve heard of
him,”
he said, and laughed.

“Everybody’s
heard of Al Di Luca,” I said.