From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [70]
She helped the boy to struggle into the one-piece suit some of whose buttons he could not reach, cocked the cap right on his head, and tied the issue tie that was too big for him. Making of him suddenly what he would inevitably become, a fresh young second lieutenant complete with gold bars and Regimental insignia on his shoulders and US and crossed rifles on his collar tabs and all the painful illusions that went with them. God help you, she thought, God truly help you, and the woman you marry in order to reproduce a replica of yourself. The second generation of an Army line, begun by a farm boy from Nebraska who wanted more than farming and whose father knew a Senator.
Karen put her arms around her son. “My boy.”
“Hey,” he said, distastefully. “Dont do that. Leave me alone.” He shrugged out from under the arms and looked at her accusingly.
“You’ve mussed your cap,” Karen said and set it straight.
Junior looked at her again and then inspected himself in the mirror and finally nodded. He picked up his allowance money off the dresser and slipped it in his pocket.
“I may go to the show,” he informed her. “Dad said it was all right. Its Andy Hardy. Dad said it was good and I would like it. And for gosh sake,” he said, “dont wait up for me, like I was a kid.”
He gave her another look to make sure she understood and then he left, wearing his responsibility heavily.
“Watch out for cars,” Karen called, and then bit her lip because she said it.
When the backdoor slammed she went back to the bedroom and sat down quickly on the bed and put her face in her hands, waiting for the nausea to leave, afraid she was going to cry. Crying was the last ditch where she always made her stand. She looked down at her hands and saw that they were shaking. After a while she made herself get up and go to open the closet door, sick with the humiliation of this unjust degradation of herself and Warden whom she could hardly face.
“I think you’d better go,” she said, pulling back the door. “It was the boy. He’s gone now and . . .” She stopped, amazed, the words trailing off forgotten.
Warden sat crosslegged on the pile of his uniform in the cramped space, the skirts of several dresses draped over his head like a crazy turban, and his big square shoulders were shaking helplessly with laughter.
“Whats the matter?” she said. “What are you laughing at? What are you laughing at, you fool?”
Warden shook his head and a dress fell down over his face. He blew his breath weakly, floating it aside, and looked at her, his body still shaking with the laughing and his eyebrows hooked up high.
“Stop it,” Karen said. “Stop it, stop it,” her voice going off up high. “It isnt funny. Theres nothing funny about it. It would have been twenty years for you, you fool. What are you laughing at?”
“I use to be a traveling salesman,” Warden gasped.
Staring unbelievingly at the obvious sincerity of his laughter, she sat down on the bed. “A what?” she said.
“A traveling salesman,” he laughed, still sitting there. “For two years I was a traveling salesman, and this heres the first time I ever had to hide in anybody’s closet.”
Karen stared at the laughing face and hooked quivering brows and pointed ears that were like a satyr’s. The Traveling Salesman, and The Farmer’s Daughter. The Classic Love Story, the Romeo and Juliet, of the American continent. The symbol of the Great American Brand of Humor, and of all the shameful sniggerings and wishful-thinking winks of all the poolroom eunuchs. And suddenly she began to laugh. If the whim had struck this madman he would just as soon have marched right out of the closet naked up behind the boy and hollered boo. In her mind she saw a picture of him doing it and it sent her far off into laughter.
She sat there on the bed, the sense of shame at nearly