McCoy did the arithmetic in his head, and decided she had the sequence wrong: She and Dutch started their family, and then got married. The old man could count, too, which might be one of the reasons he was pissed-off at her.
How dare she embarrass Past Grand Exalted Commander Pat McCoy of the KC? She not only leaves (or gets kicked out of?) the convent, but she gets herself knocked up by some Dutchy she meets slinging hash at the Highway Diner.
Dutch came home with the LaSalle all greased and polished, then took a bath and got dressed-up in a two-tone sports coat and slacks. Anne-Marie had on a too-tight spotted dress with a flowery print. They loaded the kids in the car and went looking for someplace to eat.
Anne- Marie said the food in the 12th Street Bar Grill was always good, and they didn't ask an arm and a leg for it. McCoy knew she was less concerned with good food and saving his money than she was in going where the old man would be hanging out so he'd see them together all dressed-up, and him driving a LaSalle.
"I saw a place on the way into town, Norristown Tavern… Inn… that looked nice," McCoy said.
"They charge an arm and a leg in there," Anne-Marie said.
"Yeah, they do, Kenny," Dutch agreed. He did care, McCoy decided, what it was going to cost.
"What the hell, I don't get to come all that often," McCoy said.
When they were in the Norristown Inn, in a booth against the wall, Anne-Marie looked up from trying to force a spoonful of potatoes into the boy and whispered, "There's Daddy."
Good ol' Pat McCoy was at the bar, with a sharp-faced female, her hair piled high on top of her head, her lipstick a red gash across her pale face… obviously the second Mrs. Patrick J. McCoy.
McCoy thought it over, and when they were on their strawberry shortcake, he got up from the table without saying anything and walked to the bar.
"Hello," he said to his father.
His father nodded at him. The second Mrs. McCoy looked at him curiously.
He's not surprised to see me, which means that he saw me at the table with Anne-Marie and Dutch. And didn't come over.
"You're home, I see," McCoy's father said.
"About ten days ago."
McCoy's father moved his glass in little circles on the bar.
"Learn anything in the Marine Corps?" McCoy's father asked.
That told his new wife who I am. Now she doesn't like me either.
"I learned a little," McCoy said.
"So what are you doing now, looking for a job?"
"Not yet."
"Maybe the Dutchman'll give you one pumping gas," his father said. He laughed at his own wit and turned to his wife for an audience. She dutifully tittered.
"Maybe he will," McCoy said, and walked back to the table.
"What did he say?" Anne-Marie asked.
"Not much," McCoy said.
He told himself he was being a prick when the bill came and he got mad that Anne-Marie had ordered one of everything on the menu. He'd offered to take them to dinner; he shouldn't bitch about what it cost.
He told Anne-Marie and Dutch that he had to go back to Philadelphia, so he couldn't stay over on the foldaway bed. But he promised to write. Then he dropped them at their row house. Before he left, he asked for Tommy's address.
They were obviously pressed for dough, and he considered slipping Anne-Marie fifty bucks "to buy something for the kids," but decided against it. She'd already started moaning abut how hard it was to make it with two kids on what Dutch brought home from the Amoco station. If he gave her money, she would be back for more.
He didn't return to Philly. He never intended to. Though he wasn't on leave, he didn't have to go back or make the reveille formation or anything. Lieutenant Fogarty had pointedly told him that no one was going to be looking for him around the platoon, and that if he didn't want to use up his leave time, he could sack out in the barracks whenever and check in with the first sergeant every couple of days.
He just wanted to get away from the row house and the stink of baby shit and cabbage.
He stopped outside of town, put the roof up, then drove to Bethlehem and checked into the Hotel Bethlehem. It wasn't the Bellevue Stratford, but it was nice, and when he went down to the dining room in the morning, they had breakfast steaks and corned beef hash on the menu. He ordered it up, fuck what it cost.
Tommy lived in a rooming house, a great big old rambling building built on the side of a hill. He wasn't there, of course; but the landlady, a big pink-cheeked Polack woman told him he could probably catch him at the walk bridge over the railroad tracks when his shift was over, and that if he missed him there, he could find him at the Lithuanian Social Club.
He drove around town. He saw Lehigh University and, just for the hell of it, drove inside. There really wasn't much to see. He was disappointed, and wondered why. What had he expected?
He went back to the Hotel Bethlehem, and checked out. When the eight-to-four shift let out, he was standing at the end of the bridge over the railroad tracks hoping he would be able to spot Tommy.
Tommy spotted him first. Tommy had changed so much he had let him walk right by him. But Tommy saw him out of the corner of his eye, and came back-even though the last fucking person in the fucking world he expected to see was his fucking brother on the fucking bridge wearing a fucking suit.
They went to the Lithuanian Club, and drank a lot of beer. Once Tommy told the guys his fucking big brother was a fucking corporal in the fucking Marines, it was all right with them despite the fucking suit that made him look like a fucking fairy.
The Lithuanian Club reminded McCoy of the Million Dollar Club in Shanghai. Not in looks. The Lithuanian Club was a dump. It smelled of beer and piss. But the Million Dollar Club was the place where Marines went because they had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but get drunk when the duty day was over. And that's all the Lithuanian Club was, too, a place where the enlisted men from the steel mill went because there was no place else to go when they came away from the open hearths, and nothing to do but get drunk.
Tommy reminded McCoy of a lot of Marines he knew, particularly in the line companies.
They wound up in a whorehouse by the railroad station. McCoy paid for the all-night services of a peroxide blonde not because he was really all that interested in screwing her, but because the alternative was worse: He was too shit-faced to get in his car and drive back to Tommy's rooming house or the Hotel Bethlehem.
The Corps was hell on drunk driving and/or speeding. He still hadn't accepted the possibility that he could become an officer. Which was the main reason why he hadn't said
anything about Quantico to either Anne-Marie or Tommy. Besides, they probably wouldn't believe it. Which was easy to understand; he didn't quite believe it himself. But getting arrested for drunk driving or speeding would be the end of it. He wanted to give it a shot, anyway.
Tommy pulled him out of the whore's bed at half-past six in the morning and said he had to go to fucking work and needed a fucking ride and some fucking breakfast: He couldn't work eight fucking hours on the fucking open hearth with nothing in his fucking stomach.
They went to a greasy spoon and had eggs and home fries and coffee. He dropped Tommy off at the walk bridge over the railroad tracks and drove back to the Navy Yard.
(Two)
The San Mateo Club San Mateo, California 27 August 1941
The building that housed the San Mateo Club had been built, in 1895, as the country residence of Andrew Foster, Sr. It so remained until 1939, when Andrew Foster, Jr., seventy, on the death of his wife, moved into the penthouse atop the Andrew Foster Hotel in San Francisco and put the estate on the market.
It had been quickly snapped up by the board of directors of the San Mateo club. Not only was the price right and the house large enough for the membership then rather crowded into the "old clubhouse," but the money was there. A very nice price had been offered for the "old club" by developers who wanted to turn its greens and fairways into a housing development.