The Amateur Marriage Read Online Free Page B

painted tin horn. His girlfriend threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck.
    “Let’s get going, men, double-time.”
    But it was from the east, from St. Cassian Street, that Pauline came running. She had her red coat on, which was how they could all spot her from such a distance. They said, “Michael! Look!” and Michael turned at once in the right direction, although Pauline herself had not called out. When she came nearer they could see why. She had no breath left, poor thing. She was gasping and tousle-haired and flushed—really not at her prettiest, but who in the world cared? She was holding out her arms, and Michael dropped his belongings and started running too, and when they collided he swooped her up so her feet completely left the ground. Everybody said “Ah” in one long, satisfied sigh—everybody except his mother, but even she watched with something close to sympathy. How could she not? They were hugging as if they would never let go, and Pauline was speaking in broken gasps: “. . . thought you were leaving by train, but . . . went to your house . . . went to Wanda’s . . . finally asked a man on the street and . . . Michael, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
    “All aboard!” the man in uniform bellowed.
    Michael and Pauline tore apart. He turned and went back for his belongings. He ducked his head to let his mother kiss him. He sent one last look toward Pauline and then he climbed onto the bus.
    When it pulled out, Pauline and Mrs. Anton were standing side by side, both waving with all their hearts.
    Now carved wooden creches and plaster Santas and ten-inch-tall, cone-shaped green straw Christmas trees blobbed with soap-flake snow stood among the flags in the parlor windows. Mrs. Szapp’s famous angels—a dozen of them, handblown glass—fought for space beneath the palm fronds. Mrs. Brunek marched eight china reindeer straight across her map of Czechoslovakia.
    Almost none of the boys who’d enlisted returned for the holidays. They had left too recently; they were confined to their various posts. In theory, this was something that their families had been prepared for, but still it came as a shock. The streets all at once seemed so quiet. Their sons’ bedrooms seemed so empty. The dinner tables were too sedate and orderly—no long-armed, greedy boys pouncing on the last chicken wing or gulping down milk by the quart.
    Instead, there were mere letters, all of which might have been written by the same person. “Got a ‘grand’ bunch of guys in my unit” and “You wouldn’t believe the tons of gear we have to lug” and “Sure do miss those Sunday evenings with you folks around the radio.” These identical lines, with only minor differences, were read aloud in the grocery store by Mrs. Witt, Mrs. Serge, Mrs. Kowalski, Mrs. Dobek . . . and yet their sons were not alike in any way, or at least had not seemed so till now. “Could take my weapon apart blindfolded and put it together again,” Michael Anton wrote—Michael! so peaceful, so unmechanical!—as did Joey Serge and Davey Witt. It wasn’t just their similar experiences (the KP duty, tetanus shots, blistered feet) but the way they worded things—the slangy, loping language, with too many sets of quotation marks and not enough commas. “Took a 20 mi. hike yesterday and I can tell you my ‘dogs’ are the worse for it . . . Wish you could see how neat I make my bed mom now that I’ve got a ‘sarge’ standing over me watching.”
    Maybe the letters they wrote their girlfriends were more distinctive. Or maybe not; who knew? There were only so many ways to say “I love you” and “I miss you.” But their girlfriends kept their letters to themselves, disclosing only a sentence or two and then just to the other girls. So the older women had to speculate about that.
    Michael wrote Pauline every day, Katie and Wanda reported. Sometimes he wrote twice a day. But none of the lines