April 1956
The fog rolls through San Francisco as she walks down the street and tries not to think. She's wearing her nurse's uniform even though she's taken the day off from work. Helen gave her a funny look when she saw her, but mercifully didn't ask any questions. Margaret's not sure if she could have explained why it brings her so much comfort— it's something left of the army in her, this longing to be the same as everyone else. She hasn't been a major for three years now. The thought of all that time passing makes her feel exhausted and old.
She didn't sleep well the night before. Between the thought of Helen sleeping in the next room; twelve hypothetical disastrous outcomes of her meeting with the divorce lawyers in the morning; a nightmare involving Frank Burns' chin; and the realization that in just a few months, she might be done with Donald Penobscot and his snotty mother-in-law forever, she spent most of the night feeling like there was static crackling in her veins. It's a miracle she's upright at all. Then again, she spent three years operating in Korea, so maybe it shouldn't surprise her.
She thinks of the way Helen made her drink some tea before leaving the apartment— two days and she's starting to think of it as the apartment, as though there's only one in the world— and how she had hugged her in the kitchen and said "Go get 'em, Major."
Margaret had closed her eyes and breathed Helen in: citrus shampoo, mint tea, laundry detergent. Her chest hurt when she pulled away.
This line of thought is getting dangerous. She needs to think of something else, pay attention to the street signs. Instead of referring her to the address on the business card she's clutching, her mind helpfully reminds her what Donald's face looked like when she left their house for good.
Suddenly she wants a drink. She's about to turn around and retreat to Helen's apartment, or the welcoming arms of the nearest bar, but Helen's apartment hasn't had any liquor in it for three years, and a bar wouldn't have Helen. Besides, drinking at 10 in the morning has never been her style. It hits her that while she's been fantasizing, her feet have taken her to Taylor Street and walked her right past the building.
As she stands in front of the door, her nerves from the night before return in full splendor. Going inside will make it real. There will be no going back. The thought makes her hesitate— but it passes, and she's just angry again.
You were a major in the United States Army. You have seen more blood and gore on your shoes than most people could ever see in their nightmares. You've been shelled in a cave with only a Bostonian trust-fund brat for company. You are the only child of Howitzer Al Houlihan, and by God, you are going to see a lawyer.
Margaret storms through the door and stomps up the stairs.
At the top of the landing, a dark-haired man in a slightly wrinkled gray suit is trying to unlock a glass case, inside which is a board reading HUNNICUTT AND PIERCE ATTORNEYS AT LAW. At first, each word appears to be painted in gold on its own wooden tile, sort of like a church signboard. As she gets closer, she realizes the only movable words are PIERCE and HUNNICUTT.
"Just one second, I'll be right with you," the man says. He struggles with the key for another few seconds before it finally gives with a loud click and a triumphant "Aha!" Margaret watches him in baffled silence as he reaches into the case and rearranges the tiles so that the sign now reads PIERCE AND HUNNICUTT. As he lowers the glass front, he turns to look her up and down.
"Huh. You know, pardon my saying so, but you don't really look like the kind of man to be accused of being a communist. I mean, I really think that the nurse's outfit would be a McCarthyist's first priority." He waggles his eyebrows and grins.
She sputters,"Excuse me?"
The man steps towards her. "Aren't you here for the free legal consultation? Friday—" he checks his watch. "At ten?"
She doesn't know whether to hit him for being impudent or to laugh hysterically, so she settles for saying, "It's— it's Thursday."
He smacks himself on the forehead. "Ah, that's right. Then you must be Margaret Houlihan. I'm Hawkeye Pierce, at your service, also known as Kid Flash, quickest litigator in the West. If you'll come inside, my sidekick's out of the office at the moment, but he should be back shortly and then we'll get started."
The office is larger than it seemed from the outside. He leads her through the main room, which smelled strongly of coffee and furniture polish— as far as she can tell, it contains only a long table, a few chairs, a few bookshelves, and some plants in brightly colored pots.
"You'll have to excuse my earlier mistake; most people don't know that you actually don't need to know the days of the week to pass the California bar exam. I can, however, recite the names of all the U.S. presidents forwards, backwards, inside out, and diagonally." Something about the way he talks sounds familiar, but she can't place it. "Please, sit. Actually, don't sit on that one, I think the leg is wobbly. I'll get another one." He sweeps back out before she even has a chance to process what he said, leaving her standing in the middle of the floor.
Hawkeye Pierce's office is clearly lived-in. His desk is covered in enough papers to drown a small army; what little space isn't buried is filled by a bright red vase filled with pens and pencils, and a framed photograph of five people on a beach: two men, two women, and a child. There's also a tray of business cards reading PIERCE AND HUNNICUTT… Margaret takes one just to give her hands something to do. Scanning the room, she sees at least three dirty coffee mugs strewn around a dented percolator.
Yet the office appears to be occupied by two people. Two framed diplomas hang on the wall: one from Berkeley Law, and one from Columbia. Two hats hang on the coat-stand by the door. It's possible that even the lone desk is in fact supporting paper for two.
He returns with an identical chair, and they sit, only Hawkeye lounges with one ankle crossed over his knee, and Margaret sits ramrod straight on the edge of her chair.
"May I ask you how you heard about us?"
"Another surgical nurse I work with recommended you— Sheila Anderson?"
He smiles dreamily. "Ah, Sheila." He looks like he's about to make an objectifying comment, but instead he sighs, "What a lady. That was a great case. Did I ever laugh when I saw her ex-husband's face after he got convicted." Margaret decides she isn't going to encourage him by asking him to elaborate.
"I'm sure. May I ask you why the signboard?"
"Oh, that." Hawkeye— which is an objectively stupid name for a grown man— waves a hand dismissively, like this is all very normal. "A little housewarming gift from my in-laws. I told them we wanted fine china, or a silver tea set, but you know how in-laws are. They always think they know best." He looks at her expectantly, maybe waiting for a laugh, or another question, or an explosion of irritation. On another day, she thinks she might have indulged him; today, she's too exhausted to do anything but give him a flat look.
Instead of asking her what's the matter with you, can't you take a joke, he sighs. Maybe he's used to this kind of behavior from women about to turn their lives upside-down."Well, my partner and I couldn't decide whose name should be first— he's very competitive, you know— so in the name of peace, love, and equality, we got a signboard so we could flip the names around. On odd days of the month, his name goes first, which means that he gets seven extra days by the end of the year. But I'm only doing it for the money, so I don't really mind. My real speciality is criminal defense, but these days it's mostly just legal advising, pro bono stuff. Really, I do that stuff out of love for my fellow man, and I do this out of love for a fellow who happens to be a man but is commonly mistaken for Bigfoot.”
Margaret decides that maybe this strange, skinny man is part of a dream, because there's no way someone so weird could have made it through law school. But then again, she spent most of her adult life being outranked by idiots and nutcases in the army. "I see," she lies. "So, uh, how did you get started in the divorce busi—"
The door creaks behind her and she turns to see who it is: a tall, blond man in a navy-blue suit, carrying a precarious stack of clean mugs in one hand and dragging a chair behind him with the other. He's handsome, she supposes, if you like that sort of thing, and incidentally bears no resemblance to Bigfoot.
Hawkeye lights up. "Ah, the sasquatch of the hour! Now we can get started."
The blond man does not appear to be fazed by Hawkeye calling him a sasquatch in front of a new client. "I'm coming, keep your pants on." He walks around to where Hawkeye is sitting and gingerly deposits the stack of mugs (six? seven? how did he fit them all in his hands?) on the table behind him.
Margaret frowns. "Don't people normally have just one lawyer?"
"Yeah, but he feels left out if we don't let him do something. You know how kids are," says Hawkeye.
"Give me a quarter and I'll go away," says the blond man, without missing a beat. He reaches across the desk to shake Margaret's hand and gives her a hundred-watt smile. "BJ Hunnicutt. Nice to meet you, Ms. Houlihan. Would you like some coffee?" He has a nice smile, and he seems like the most normal part of the last two days so far, so she says yes to the coffee and tells him to call her Margaret.
"Have you been in San Francisco long?" he asks as he pours her drink.
"About three years, since the war was over." A pause.Neither of them seems to be rushing to fill it. She wracks her brain for something to ask them. "Sheila tells me you two met in the army?"
BJ nods. “Yep. We actually got a start in divorce law during the war. First it was one guy in our platoon with a Dear John letter— we played poker with him, figured we could help him out. Then he recommended us to another guy, a lieutenant whose wife wanted a divorce. After we kept him from having to send his whole salary back for alimony, word got around pretty quick.”
“And unfortunately, the war kept us in business,” Hawkeye adds, slouching back in his chair. He seems angrier about this than she would have expected for someone with a thriving practice.
"It's the only thing we could ever thank our draft board for," says BJ, smiling and sipping his coffee. He says it like a joke, but Margaret knows it really isn't. "So tell me a little about your financial situation."
They suddenly become serious professionals as they discuss retainers and hourly fees. When Margaret admits that she doesn't know when she'll be able to pay them, BJ just nods. They ask her what she wants to keep, and she doesn't really know so she says the first thing that pops into her head: "I've been jumping around all my life and I'm tired. I want to get my own place somewhere with my own money, and I don't want to leave the city unless I have to." As soon as she says it, she knows that it's true.
As Hawkeye and BJ discuss out-of-court settlements and the new family court set-up, they finish each other's ideas, tack on new clauses, toss off jokes at breakneck speed, throw in some terrible puns (BJ), roll their eyes (Hawkeye: "Please ignore him, he's suffering from delusions of humor."), and come back together in time for the end of the sentence. The effect is slightly disorienting. She feels almost like an outsider in a conversation that's supposed to be directed at her.
"Do you have any questions so far?"
"No, I think I'm fine so far." Margaret is not fine. She feels like she's about to throw up. Am I really here, in this office, having these thoughts? Is this a nightmare? Am I really throwing away certain stability for a possible happiness? Who's to say that I'll really be better off like this? She glances down at the card she's still clutching in her hand and frowns.“Your cards are different,” she blurts. “I mean, the one that Sheila— Sheila Anderson— gave me says Hunnicutt and Pierce, but this one says Pierce and Hunnicutt.” She fumbles in her handbag, trying to squish the rising panic by giving her hands something to do. When she finds the card, she passes it over to BJ. Hawkeye immediately leans into his side in order to read it, although it's only his own phone number and office address and he must know them by heart.
“Ha,” says BJ, with a pleased little smile. “I knew she liked me better.”
Hawkeye draws back and sputters. “Wh— That’s an unfounded opinion!”
“She gave my card to a client! That shows that she had mine on hand before yours!” It was as though they had forgotten she was there.
“Oh, really? How do you know she doesn't keep mine tucked under her pillow, and she gave yours away to someone else?”
“Are you two finished?” They stop and turn back to her. BJ at least has the grace to look sheepish about his appalling lack of manners.
“Oh, yeah,” says Hawkeye, as though his squabble with BJ never happened. “Well, we each have our own set. Mine has my name first, and an educated woman like yourself can guess the rest.”
Maybe she's just tired and cranky, but something in her bristles at this. Hawkeye Pierce is not the first man to treat her education as a punchline, only the most recent. Maybe he meant it as a joke, and maybe she's overreacting out of habit. But her father always said it's always better to show people early who you are and what you expect. Then they can't say you never warned them.
“Don’t make fun of me,” she snaps. “There are about a hundred other people with your qualifications in the city of San Francisco. If you’re going to be a sexist pig, I’m sure I can find one of them to take my case.”
Hawkeye blinks at her. And then, to her surprise, he backs down almost immediately. "Alright, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that, really. I was just… joking around, you know. I take it back."He looks contrite enough that she relents a little.
She sniffs. "You're not as funny as you think you are."
BJ smiles and Hawkeye sighs. "You hecklers are really relentless. Look, I really am sorry. I've got a chronic condition. It's called foot-in-mouth syndrome."
Margaret smirks in spite of herself. "I'm familiar."
That seems to be all the encouragement he needs to keep talking, because he leans forward and says: "So tell us. Where did it begin?" It isn't the sort of question she'd expected a divorce attorney, even a potentially insane one, to ask. It strikes her as unprofessional somehow, no legal jargon or carefully worded dancing around the issue.
*******
Margaret was prepared to admit that maybe the beagle had been a mistake.
Donald had been gone for three weeks on business at Fort Dix (again). They'd fought before he left (again). This time it was about why Margaret didn't want to stop being a nurse in order to carry on the Penobscot line. She had tried to tell him that it wasn't that she didn't like children or that she was incapable of doing so; she had taken care of more than a few who passed through the 4077 during the war and liked them very much. It was just that she didn't want to give up a career 15 years in the making in order to have a baby that she was going to be raising by herself. Donald didn't like that answer, of course.
Well. The house was empty. She was lonely. Maybe the fight with Donald had made her aware of her loneliness, the way it lived inside her. She was beginning to wonder if Donald was right that a child would be good for her. Either way, she didn't feel like going home, so she had gone for a walk after work, head spinning with thoughts of babies; bassinets; how to make someone stay with you forever; whether Donald was the kind of person who would do homework with his kid; whether it was worth giving up her life, what she had always thought of as her real life, for the possibility of future love; whether any love was worth that kind of change; and did babies really make women less lonely or would a child inherit whatever loneliness was inside her?
And then she'd remembered Helen saying something about that Sheila Anderson's dog having puppies that were ready to adopt, and didn't Sheila live just another two blocks away? Her brain had promptly shut down any further thoughts of Donald, and had only come back to itself when she found herself staring down into a cloth-lined basket, absently scratching the mother behind her ears as the puppies vied for her attention. One with a star-shaped splash of white on its muzzle tried to lick her hand.
Donald will have a fit, said a little voice in the back of her head. You know he's scared of dogs. He'll burst a vein if you bring one home. You'd better turn around and go right home if you want him to love you and stay with you forever. The puppy with the white muzzle braced its forepaws on the rim of the basket and shoved its nose into her fingertips to be petted.
Margaret told the little voice to shut up and suck a combat boot.
“Helen said you might stop by.”
“She did?”
Sheila gave her a little smile, the one that made everyone on their floor fall in love with her, and leaned against the doorframe. Her hair glinted brass in the evening light. “Uh-huh. I think her exact words were, ‘I asked and Margaret said she doesn’t want a dog at the moment, which means you should expect her any day now.’ Something along those lines.”
Margaret snorted. “She’s such a know-it-all.”
Sheila laughed softly. “Maybe she knows you better than you think she does." Margaret turned— she can see it, you're giving it all away— but Sheila only smiled and changed the subject. She wondered if Sheila knew what Helen was to her. If she cared. If things would be easier if she had met Sheila all those years ago, all dark eyes and dry wit and responsible motherhood.
"Any ideas for a name?"
She spoke before thinking: "I'll call him Oliver."
"Any reason?"
"My first boyfriend. I had the biggest crush on him in seventh grade. We went steady— for about three weeks, when I found out that he really liked Beth Benning instead. He ended up being a real rat, but I always liked the name." Sheila laughs again.
"As good a name as any."
*******
"And then..." BJ prompts.
"Donald came back a week later, and of course he wasn't happy about the dog. Barking, urinating in the house, chewing the shoes that he left out which I told him to put away… But we didn't really get into it, because he said the army was talking about reassigning him to Fort Dix permanently, which of course was more pressing." BJ nods. "We fought, but I said I'd come with him in the end. I wasn't happy, but... "
"You wanted to make it work," Hawkeye prompts. Margaret can't tell if he's really sympathetic or if he's just trying to construct an argument.
"Yes. Everything was fine, for a while." At least between you and Donald, her traitorous brain supplies. Maybe she should get a lobotomy.
"He was happy I wanted to come with him, and I was happy that he wanted me to come. I felt… wanted, I suppose. And I hadn't… I mean, not since just after we moved to San Francisco…" She trails off. She remembers it and wishes she didn't: fog lifting and sun shining, getting out of the Packard and looking at their little blue house, suitcase by her feet and Donald by her side, head and chest full of dreams that could come true at any moment. Thinking, I could be happy here.
It hadn't lasted, but the memory is still good.
"Well. Anyway. Two days ago, he came home and started making a fuss about Oliver. It escalated pretty quickly." A strange kind of laugh forces its way out of her mouth. "I asked him why this was suddenly a problem, after he'd been home nearly two weeks without so much as a word about the dog, and he said that he'd just gotten his assignment to Fort Dix and that there was no way we were going to be able to take a three-month old beagle with us across the country. He stood there, looking like he was about to burst an artery, and I stood there looking at him, and all of a sudden-- I mean, I didn't even know I was going to say it-- I just said, 'Donald, I want a divorce.' And that was it. I knew it was true as soon as it hit the air."
Hawkeye frowns and leans forward. "What do you mean, that was it?"
"That was it," she repeats. "That's what broke my marriage. It was all my fault because I went and got a stupid dog, and I couldn't bear to leave him behind because he made me happy." Mortifyingly, her voice falters on the last word. She swallows hard and reminds herself that crying in front of lawyers, even potentially insane and/or sexist divorce attorneys, is conduct absolutely unbefitting of a former major in the U.S. Army and a current head nurse.
BJ gives her his handkerchief. Margaret is deeply grateful to whatever higher power might exist that neither of them moves to offer her any physical comfort, because then she really would cry, and getting snot on their shirts would just be unprofessional.
At last, BJ murmurs,"So you'd been fighting for a long time."
She nods. "Since he was reassigned to San Francisco while I was still in Korea, during the war."
"He left for the States without you?" Hawkeye sounds genuinely indignant on her behalf. She thinks it must be exhausting to care so much about everyone who comes through this office.
"Well—" she starts to defend him out of habit, then realizes the absurdity of excusing her rat husband's many failings to a pair of divorce attorneys. "Well, yes. Before that, he'd been in Tokyo, and then at least I could go and see him on leave. But for the last year of the war, I was on my own there. At least until I met Helen— we worked together for a few months, until…" She falters. "Until she got sent home. Anyway, she's the friend I'm staying with now." Hawkeye looks at her, hard, but doesn't say anything. There's no way that he can know the rest of the story, or that she's leaving anything out. She feels that maybe he does anyway.
BJ leans forward; he doesn't appear to have noticed anything. "When this, ah, Donald—" he pronounces the name with faint distaste. She likes him immensely. "—when he went back to the States, was that his choice?"
"Yes. Because he's a disgusting slimeball."
"Can't argue with that. Were you sending all your money back to him at the time?" She nods.
They look at each other.
"Precedent for abandonment?" says Hawkeye.
"Could be. But they stayed together after, and that's condoning."
"Damn. Margaret, did your slimeball husband have an affair?"
"No. He wouldn't."
Hawkeye raises his eyebrows. "How do you know?"
"Because I'm a better shot than him." That shuts him up pretty quickly. Margaret spends the next fifteen minutes shooting down the ideas of using imprisonment for a felony, extreme cruelty, and drug addiction as grounds for divorce.
When they've exhausted all their original ideas, they sit for a few seconds in silence before BJ suddenly sits up. "Margaret? When is Penobsnot—" She gives him a look. "Uh, I mean, Penob-scot supposed to leave for Purgatory?"
She snorts at that. "He leaves for New Jersey in two months."
"Hmm." He leans back in his chair and Hawkeye sits up.
"What, what?"
"I don't know. We might be able to do something with that." He chews a toothpick meditatively. (Margaret doesn't know where he got the toothpick from.)
She's about to make her excuses about having somewhere else to be, but instead what comes out is: "Can I ask you a question?"
"You just technically did," says Hawkeye smugly.
She rolls her eyes. "Alright, another question. Why together?"
BJ grins and shrugs. “Why fix it if it ain’t broke?”
Hawkeye claps BJ’s shoulder as he rises to refill his coffee. “See, we dissolve enough unions every day that we figured it would have been a little ridiculous to dissolve ours. I mean, BJ’s already been divorced once; a second time would make people start talking.”
BJ gives him a look that Margaret can’t quite read, somewhere between amused affection and exasperation. “What he means is that we work well together, better than we would alone. It wouldn't be any fun with someone else. Besides, he makes good coffee.”
Hawkeye smiles at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, and touches his shoulder again as he sits down, just as someone knocks at the door of the front office. He jumps up to answer it.
"Beej, it's Adam!" he yells from the front room. "The, uh, the coleslaw guy!"
BJ leaps up, scattering bits of paper all over the floor. "Damn, that's my cue. Listen, we'll draw up the papers and have them sent over to you, alright? Here, I'll show you out." He ushers her through the main room, past where Hawkeye is murmuring something to a man with unfortunately ugly facial hair. He does not appear to be hiding any coleslaw under his trench coat, but he tips his hat at her as she leaves, which counts for something.
She's almost out the door when BJ says, "Margaret?"
She turns around. He looks very serious when he says, "I think you already know this, but it's going to be alright."
Margaret doesn't trust herself to speak: either she'll start crying, or hysterically laughing, or propose a spring wedding just because he's there and she wishes Donald could have been more like this man who she's known for an hour and a half. So she nods, and BJ smiles back at her before closing the door. She thinks he understands what she means.
*******
It's starting to rain outside. She's just kicked her shoes off and is scratching Oliver behind the ears when the phone rings. It's Helen. "Margaret?" She sounds slightly breathless, as though she's shoved a few people out of the way to get to the phone.
"Helen? What's the matter?"
"Just calling to hear your dulcet tones, darling. How'd your meeting go?" She promises herself not to analyze this sentence. Act normal.
"Well, I don't know if I want them to represent me in court... I think one of them might be crazy and the other one is handsome but has no objection to insanity, which means he condones it. So I'm still going to see that guy Hallan tomorrow."
"You don't mind crazy."
"I never said that."
"Well, do you or don't you?" Margaret can hear her smirking.
"Oh, stuff it, Whitfield. It's been a long day."
"Oh yeah? You know, we— hang on." There's a beat before Helen sighs. "Listen, Dr. Cianciolo needs the phone. But you have to promise to tell me all about it when I get home." She says home like Margaret belongs there, like it could be a real life.
Margaret feels something rise up in her like a tidal wave, it grows and grows and it's about to burst out of her mouth; it's spilling out of her and now it's in the air; the words are close enough that she could reach out and touch them. If she leans out. Maybe she could.
"Alright. I lo—" She almost says it. But she's not that stupid. She stops. Clears her throat. Tries again. "I'm looking forward to it."