A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [3]
“It’s a duty thing,” the Marine snapped.
“With me, too,” Gross said. “God would never forgive me if I just upped and ignored His perfect works of beauty.”
“I haven’t seen my sweetheart in over three years,” Dan said, becoming serious. “So pick a filly and let’s get your money home.”
With Gross on the way to wonderland on the arm of a happy/sad lady with two kids, Dan O’Connell returned to MATS at Wright-Patterson Field. He had been bumped by an officer.
In a race down the train platform he got aboard a train to Pittsburgh with no time to spare for the overnight ride to New York. Dan was up before daylight, a hundred dreams all fusing. How does one play out his homecoming scene?
Siobhan Logan rushed into Dan’s arms while her brother, Father Sean Logan, remained a step behind. Sean smiled widely as they embraced. He had seen them as teenagers, young adults, same pose, only this time she screamed for joy.
Dan’s testy hip and knee made itself felt when he dropped his sea bag to encurl her and spin her about.
“Oh, Dan, your leg, I’m sorry.”
“I’m still big enough to hold up a drunk in either hand. Siobhan! Siobhan! Oh, you are so beautiful.”
Dan spotted Father Sean advancing timidly. He wore a Roman collar. Ordained and everything.
“Father Sean.”
“Just Sean.”
The two men were the closest of pals, and they went their separate ways—Sean to the seminary and Dan to the Brooklyn Police Academy. Both had prayed that Dan would get home. Dan didn’t embrace men. A tough handshake, a couple of slaps on the shoulder.
“I’ll take that sea bag,” Father Sean said.
“I can deal with the weight.”
“Oh, it’s not the weight, it’s your general awkwardness. See now, with your limp we’d have to attach the bag to your waist and have you drag it, or you could put it back on your shoulder and when you fall down I can pray over you and Siobhan will pass the plate.”
“All right, all right—if you’ve no respect for a wounded veteran! Anyhow, I sent the big trunk home by Railway Express.”
“I hope it finds its way to you someday,” Father Sean said.
* * *
The Promenade along Brooklyn Heights rarely had enough benches and parking spaces these days. Dan was not the only lad from Brooklyn coming home.
“They’re talking about putting a bridge over the Narrows,” Siobhan said quickly and shakily, “to Staten Island.”
“They’ll never get a bridge over there.”
This kiss was fiercely mellow or, as Dan would say in the Marines, “The price of poker has just gone up.”
Siobhan straightened up and gulped a monster sigh. “We’re all but married in name.”
“Of course.”
“Then you are behaving stupidly.”
“What did I do?”
“It’s not what you did. It’s what you do! If we are virtually married, I want to do what married people do, now, today,” she said.
“I’ve thought about it so much,” Dan said, “that I want it to be utterly perfect, utterly. I want us to be joined by God first.”
“That will take God two weeks. God may be patient, but I can’t wait that long. I’ve got a key to a girlfriend’s flat. Either we go there now, or I’m going to undress right here, right now.”
Home! The grand illusion.
Everything you remembered had to be perfect to balance the imperfections. A cop from Flatbush. Now, that was a big man in Marine eyes. The only man who really came from a perfect place was his closest and eternal buddy, Justin Quinn.
Home! Dan had forgot that his mother’s voice ranged between a squeal and shrill. Gooseflesh popped out on his skin when she argued, like someone had run chalk over a “singing” blackboard.
Home! Dan remembered those midnight-to-eight walking beats. It could be noon before he could get to the paperwork. The nights brought gunplay and gore. One of his backup partners had been massively wounded. A tot murdered in its crib, the mother’s throat slashed, and a deranged boyfriend opting to shoot it out. (“That was a bad one. Take a couple days off, Dan.”)
Home! Until he saw her again, he had clear forgotten about the wart on the end of his aunt’s chin.
Or how small and crushing the streets