“I thought I would call up and tell you, but the truth is I guess I really wanted you to be here.”
And what did the good Dr. McGrory have to say about that? “The woman, whether she’s aware of it or not, hungers for a strong male shoulder to lean on.”
“I’m glad you did,” Pick said.
Am I just being polite, chivalrous? Or what? For Christ’s sake, what?
“I think we’d better go,” Pick said.
Leaving unsaid, Or your mother-in-law, and maybe your mother, too, will really think there’s something going on between us.
The rear of the Cadillac limousine provided upholstered seating for three across the backseat, and two jump seats.
Mr. Mitchell was in the jump seat, the women on the bench, leaving space for Babs on the bench and Pick on the other jump seat.
From which location, when he sat down, he was unable to be unaware of her knees and the lace hem of her slip.
Black. Black is the color of mourning. Also of sexy feminine underwear. What’s the connection there? McGrory probably has a theory.
“I hope Pick—Major Pickering—won’t be offended when I tell you this,” Babs Mitchell said as they were rolling through San Diego. “But he’s just experienced a terrible loss himself.”
“Is that so?” Mother Mitchell asked.
“His fiancée was in a plane crash in Korea the day he was rescued,” Babs Mitchell said.
Why is she telling them this?
Because she has finally picked up on Mother Mitchell’s—or her mother’s—suspicions that I am the reason she doesn’t want to go home to Kan . . . Arkansas. That’s why, stupid.
“Oh, how awful!” Bab’s mother said, sounding sincere.
“She was on an Air Force medical supply aircraft that crashed,” Pick said.
“A nurse?”
“No, ma’am, she was a war correspondent.”
“Jeanette Priestman,” Babs Mitchell said. “Of the Chicago . . . what?”
“Tribune,” Pick said. “The Chicago Tribune. And it’s Priestly, not Priestman.”
“Sorry,” Babs Mitchell said.
“Don’t be silly.”
“My son and his wife, Major Pickering,” Mr. Mitchell said, “I still don’t really understand why, recently became Episcopalians. The funeral service will be an Episcopal service. Are you familiar with—”
“Yes, sir,” Pick said. “I was even an altar boy once.”
“Were you really?”
He’s pleased. He doesn’t think I’m trying to get—or have already been—in his son’s widow’s pants.
“Yes, sir, I was. And before that I sang in the choir of a church also called Saint Paul’s.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sir.”
I think I just made the first goal for Protestant Episcopal Christian virtues.
Hell, make sure!
“Jeanette’s body is being returned later this week,” Pick said. “So I suppose you could say that Babs and I are trying to support each other. . . .”
Unless, of course, you are aware of the McGrory theory concerning two people of opposite sexes who have both experienced an emotional trauma.
There was a Cadillac hearse outside Saint Paul’s Church, through the windows of which a flag-draped casket was visible. And a flower car. And several more Marine-green staff cars. And half a platoon of Marines, in dress blues. Two-thirds of them were carrying Garands, and the others were apparently pallbearers.
A function normally performed by one’s brother officers.
But they’re off on a Far East Deployment and thus unavailable.
Mrs. Babs Mitchell took Major Malcolm Pickering’s arm as they followed Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell and Babs’s mother down the aisle of the church toward a reserved pew near the altar.
As Major Pickering dropped to the kneeling bench—
So you haven’t done this in years.
So maybe you’re a little hypocritical.
So what? The point of the exercise is to convince Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell, Babs’s mother, and of course Mrs. Babs Mitchell herself that you are not only a fine Marine Corps officer and gentleman, but a Christian gentleman who wouldn’t even think of nailing Mrs. Babs Mitchell.
—he saw sitting directly across the aisle from him, in dress blues, Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC. Beside him was Mrs. Dawkins, looking like a slightly older version of the officers’ wives who had been in Babs’s— Mrs. Mitchell’s—apartment.
Both looked at him. Mrs. Dawkins smiled. He smiled back.
Marines carried the casket in and set it on a catafalque in the aisle.
The ceremony began.
It was, Pick thought, mercifully brief.
The Marines carried the casket back down the aisle.
Captain Kane came to the pew and indicated that it was now time for him to lead the widow back down the aisle and out of the church.
Mrs. Mitchell took his arm, and he did so.
She didn’t cry. But that doesn’t mean she’s not all torn up.