June 1956
Margaret is ready to throw things when BJ opens the door. He looks tired and his shirt is untucked, and on another day she might feel bad enough not to have a meltdown in his office on a Friday evening. But now that The Snot has decided that her money was really his, she feels no guilt over her anger.
"Goddammit," he mumbles, and then seems to remember that she can hear him. "Uh, sorry, not you, Margaret, um— HAWK!" he yells over this shoulder. "Did you remember that Margaret was coming today?"
From the office: "YES!"
"Then why didn't you remind me?"
"I did remind you! Yesterday! And it was on the wall calendar!"
"Daddy, don't yell." Margaret hadn't even noticed the little girl sitting at the end of the long table in the main room, surrounded by crayons and scrap paper. "You're disturbing my focus."
BJ sighs through his nose and smiles a little. "Sorry, Erin. We'll keep it down." He turns back to Margaret. "Sorry to you too. We're going to court tomorrow, but there have been some… complications with the husband. Anyway, things are sort of a mess right now. Would you mind terribly if you had to wait for a few minutes out here?" She forces herself to calm down, reminds herself that Donald won't siphon more of her life savings away if she has to wait for five minutes. Besides, it would look bad to start screaming and destroying furniture in front of a kid.
"No, that's alright. I'm sure Erin will keep me company."
Erin looks up for the first time, straight at Margaret. She's a carbon copy of her father: same blue eyes, same dirty-blond hair, same set of her jaw. "Would you like to have a seat?" Margaret takes the one next to her. Erin's smile is the same as her father's, too.
"We'll just be a few minutes," BJ calls over his shoulder as he walks towards the office.
She hears Hawkeye say, "Beej, I can't find that trial brief."
"Have you tried looking in your underwear drawer?"
"That line was staler than Army bread the first time you said it, and it's been at least fifty-ni—" The door clicks shut.
Erin sets her crayon down and extends her hand. Margaret wonders if this is also something learned from BJ. "My name is Erin Hunnicutt. How do you do?"
Amused, Margaret shakes her tiny, warm hand. "I'm Margaret. It's nice to meet you."
"I'm five."
"You're very grown-up for five."
She appears to be pleased by this. "That's 'cause I'm a people person."
"Really?"
Erin goes back to coloring with great focus. "Uh-huh. Hawk told me."
"What are you working on?"
"That's me." She points to a figure in a red dress, then to another in purple. "That's Angela Wu. We're best friends. And that—" she points to something that looks vaguely like a gigantic letter Y. Whatever it is, it dwarfs both girls, although that could be due to the fact that kindergarteners rarely make scale drawings. "That's our slingshot."
"It's awfully big."
"Well, we're going to put Bruce in it. Angela said— well, her brother said we could maybe even send him to New Jersey if we had a reallyreallyreally big rubber band."
"Who's Bruce?"
Erin launches into a long explanation detailing the evils of Bruce Wentworth: ink-spiller, hair-puller, marble thief. Her hands wave around to illustrate her points; it reminds Margaret of Hawkeye somehow. At last, Erin runs out of breath and decides to wrap her story up: "So we need to send him far away." She goes back to coloring in her comically large slingshot.
"You and your friend?"
"Angela. And she's my best friend. That's different from regular."
"Yes, it is."
"You have a best friend?"
"Of course." Erin must sense a story, because she puts down her crayons again and turns to Margaret.
"What's she like?"
*******
I know what I'm worth, she told herself as she approached the big white house. So what if he was a ranking officer? That blowhard Perry deserved it for saying it in front of all those other nurses when he knew that she was still trying to find her place among them. She had earned her spot on her own merit, without her father's help. And anyway, nothing would be hurt except his dignity when he spit cognac and pickle juice all over his dress uniform.
She snickered to herself as she crept around to the back window and hauled herself up so that all her weight was resting on her arms. She felt around for the bottle of cognac, but just as her fingers wrapped around something cool and smooth, someone spoke behind her.
"Houlihan?"
Margaret yanked her arm back so fast that she lost her balance and hit the ground with a thud. There was Helen Whitfield, uniform still pressed at five in the evening, all sharp angles in the fading light.
"Lieutenant Whitfield, I—" She floundered for something that would explain why she had been breaking into an officer's kitchen window, and why she was now sitting on her ass in the dirt with a bottle of very expensive cognac in one hand and an unscrewed jar of pickles at her feet.
"Save it, kiddo." Margaret shut up. She had been at Fort Benning for two weeks, but she knew plenty about Helen Whitfield: she was tough as nails, smarter than most of the officers, a legendary partier, cool as ice— and of course, she owned a shiny black motorbike. Yet here she was, looking down at Margaret in her dusty uniform and calling her kiddo, and extending a hand down to her. "Is that Major Perry's cognac?"
Margaret took Helen's hand and stood. There was no point in lying, so she nodded as she nervously dusted off her uniform. "He was a real son of a bitch to you this morning, I hear." Her accent softened the curse somehow. Margaret nodded again.
"Are you going to put me on report?"
Helen smiled. "I wasn't planning on it, no." She turned to go— then stopped and looked back at Margaret. Considering.
"Yes?" She tried to sound as cool as Helen, but her voice cracked.
"Nothing against gherkin juice as a form of revenge, of course. But I think tabasco sauce might add a little additional kick to the major's drink, don't you?"Helen's eyes sparkled. She looked like she was about to start laughing. Margaret wanted to laugh with her.
She dusted her uniform off again. "Theoretically, I'm sure it would. But experimentally, I don't know where I would get any."
Helen really grinned then."Well, today's your lucky day! I happen to know a girl who recently received a bottle of the stuff from a patient."
"Really? What's her name?"
She stuck her hand out. "Whitfield. But you can call me Helen. And for the record, that jackass Perry was wrong about you."
*******
Erin laughs delightedly. "Did he spit pickle juice?"
"Yes!" She lowers her voice confidentially and Erin leans in. "All over the beautiful white tablecloth. Helen and I spied through the window."
"Did you do a lot of pranks like that?"
"When I was younger, yes, but only when my friends and I played jokes on each other. Or when people were very mean."
"Like Bruce?"
"Yes, like Bruce, although we never thought of the slingshot. I haven't done anything like that in… a long time."
"How long?" She has to think about the answer.
"Three years. I caught a mouse and put it in someone's pajama pants. It was alright, though, because Doctor Winchester and I were friends."
"Winchester?" They both startle at the sound of BJ's voice. He's come back into the room without either of them noticing.
"That's right. He was a surgeon at the 4077; we worked together for two years."
His brows furrow as he leans against the doorframe. "That name sounds familiar. Winchester…"
Hawkeye comes into the room, frowning. "Wait a minute, was this guy Winchester named Chaaahles? And was he also balding and a jackass?"
That makes her laugh. "Oh, that's him alright."
Hawkeye and BJ grin at the same time. Hawkeye turns to smack BJ on the arm and says,"He's the guy that patched you up!"
"I remember him now! Of course, I was so drugged up on pain meds that all I really remember of him was the accent and how he wouldn't shut up about Boston."
"Pain medication?"
"Yeah, look." BJ rolls up his already untucked shirt to expose the scar of an old gunshot wound on his abdomen, white and shiny against tanned skin. It's been a few years, but she recognizes Charles' handiwork.
BJ explains how he was shot in a trench by another man in their platoon— a trigger-happy moron who got a little too excited. She's only half-listening; she's picturing BJ, rumpled and tan and kind, shelling pistachios and putting them into her hand to eat, shot in a hospital bed. She pictures Hawkeye, equally rumpled and cracking dirty jokes, with blood on his clothes. Hawkeye, who hates fault-based divorce and the US Army, in fatigues. She feels a little sick thinking about it.
"…and then this one didn't want to leave me alone!" BJ jerks his thumb at Hawkeye as he talks. "He snuck in and sat by my bed until I could walk again. For a couple of days, he even pretended to be part of the MASH so that he could sneak in and visit me every day, at least until our CO found out. Our lieutenant tried to send him back to the unit, but he wouldn't leave, he just hid. They had MPs out looking for him at one point."
"MPs! And they didn't find you? Where did you go?"
Hawkeye scoffs. "Aw, it wasn't hard or anything. I went to the nurses' tent, the showers, the kitchen… for a little while the cook gave me work, and the Moronic Powers thought I was just some idiot who got put on KP for talking back or something."
"He peeled potatoes for six hours."
"What's a few potato peels here and there? Those idiots were going to send me back; I couldn't leave you there. I thought you were going to die!"
"I know. But I didn't." They exchange a long look. Margaret has a feeling that they've had this conversation (argument? is it even that?) so many times that they no longer need to speak the words.
Hawkeye looks away first. "Besides, if I'd left it to the alleged cook, the only edible part of the meal would've been the plastic tray."
"You shouldn't have bothered. The paper napkins came highly recommended by the waitress. Best food I'd eaten in weeks."
"And to think, if you hadn't gotten shot by a total idiot, you never would've got to add them to the Michelin Guide."
Maybe it's the phrasing, but suddenly a memory surfaces: a night shift in post-op, and a man with a shock of black hair, almost asleep in a chair, keeping watch over someone sleeping next to him. A nightmare that wasn't really a nightmare. Two men awake, telling jokes.
"Hawkeye?"
"Uh-huh?"
"Were you a corporal?"
Hawkeye straightens up and frowns. "Yeah. How did you know that?"
"I— I remember you. I was on duty one night when you were at his side. Your uniform was very dirty, and you were very tired, but you didn't want to move until I dragged you into bed."
"Into bed? That's funny, I think I'd remember being in bed with you."
"You were extremely sleep-deprived, you had the cognitive function of a small fungus. Come to think of it, you still do."
"You're mean," says BJ with mock disapproval as Hawkeye splutters, but he takes her arm and leads her into the office. "Are you sure you don't want to give up nursing and be a lawyer?"
They inform her that Donald is settled in Fort Dix, but is, unfortunately, still a jackass. Yes, they have spoken to his lawyers, and yes, they are going to get her money back. No, they will not have to impersonate anyone to do so; yes, they will get it back completely legally. Somehow Hawkeye gets off on a tangent about the various evils of fault-based divorce. As he paces the office, ranting about scumbag men and the charade of the Californian justice system, BJ flings himself down into a chair and opens a cardboard box of madeleines, looking completely unperturbed. Margaret is only half-watching the show. The rest of her is wondering what Donald is up to, whether he thinks about her or pushes her memory away.
"Maybe I should have seen it coming."
*******
They met in April and were married in August. Nine months later, he was on a plane to San Francisco, and Margaret was right where (it seemed) she had always been. Ankle-deep in bloody sponges and paperwork, patching up boys who weren't old enough to drink. Breathing the smell of iron and harsh soap. Feet swollen from standing. Heart shut down.
And then Radar had handed her the telegram from Helen, and her whole body had lit up with this thought: it's a miracle. There could be no other explanation for Helen's reassignment to the 4077 only three weeks after Donald had left for the States, in those days when the war seemed like it would continue until the Yalu ran with blood. Here at last was someone who understood her. Here was someone who would not pity her when she said we've been married nine months, who would nod and squeeze her shoulder and then whip her at gin.
Once they got past the pleasantries and the settling in, it was like no time had passed at all. They ate together, cracked jokes at Charles' expense, spent hours finding new ways to make OR more efficient. Helen talked Margaret out of a screaming phone call to San Francisco; Margaret dragged Helen back to her tent when she got drunk in the Officer's Club and tried to whistle the piccolo part of "Stars and Stripes Forever." Sometimes they stayed up until two in the morning telling stories of their lives apart. By some silent agreement, they rarely spoke of Helen's drinking over the last few years, or of Margaret's affair with Frank. They had said all they needed to in their letters; what did past pain matter when you had been reunited with a friend?
Still, those first few weeks in June, Margaret watched Helen like a hawk to make sure she wasn't overdoing the alcohol. She found nothing amiss. By the time Independence Day rolled around, she'd let her guard down.
The trouble started at the end of July, on a night when the heat stuck to their clothes and sank into their skin. They put on their best dresses in Helen's room, ostensibly because Margaret's was too damn hot, but really it was that getting ready to go out was more fun with someone else. She'd been trying to do the back of her dress by herself, and called to Helen, "Did I get all the hooks?"
Helen came out of the bathroom and huffed a no but she didn't sound exasperated, only fond, and she batted Margaret's hand away from her own back and brushed her hair over her shoulder so it wouldn't get in the way, and said let me help, I can do it if you lean forward a little. There was nothing that she could do but bend as Helen had asked. She felt Helen's fingers on her skin; she was aware of all her vertebrae but couldn't feel herself breathing at all.
She thought it was maybe just one of those moments when her mind slipped away from her, a brief lapse in control. But near midnight, after stumbling back to the hotel with no men, drunk and choking on their own laughter, it happened again. Helen had turned around and said help me get out of this damn corset, and Margaret had pretended to curtsy but ended up tripping over her own feet, which sent them back into fits of laughter.
Her fingers were heavy as she tried to undo the little hooks on Helen's dress. You've overdone it again, Major, she told herself, but her hands seemed to be working just fine without instructions. So she watched the back of Helen's neck as she worked, and found herself wanting to lean forward, to press her cheek against Helen's shoulder and wrap her arms around her waist and say come to bed. She wanted to kiss the nape of Helen's neck and unfasten the clasp of her necklace like a man would, or for Helen to do the same. It would be easier if she was my man. Or if I was her man. The thought scared her so badly that her hands stopped working.
Helen spoke and she jolted. "All done?"
"Yes." She'd turned away as Helen shrugged the green dress off. The next day, she told herself it was just the alcohol, and that was a good enough explanation until they got back home to three buses of wounded men. They were both completely sober, 13 hours later, as she watched Helen take her mask off at the end of the session. She looked as wrung-out as Margaret felt, and Margaret found herself wishing that Helen could carry her home and back to bed, or the reverse. Either sounded nice.
Then she tried to tell herself she was just touch-starved, that she was just missing Donald. But then Helen began to invade her dreams, and there was no point in lying to herself anymore. All that was left to do was wait for the feeling to pass.
In retrospect, it should have been a sign when she wasn’t surprised at Helen's appearance in her dreams— only afraid. Maybe she had always known. Her friendship with Helen had always looked different from what other girls had: a little more intense and affectionate than might have been appropriate, like they had their own special language that nobody else could speak. They had always been each other's closest, even in Fort Benning, when Helen was beautiful and sharp and could have had anyone as a friend; even in Korea, when Margaret was working overtime to keep the unit running and didn't have time for love.
When Helen went home, she'd thought that maybe the feelings would fade, and it would all be over. The world would be gray again, but things would be easier. And yet the dreams kept coming.
One night, she fell asleep in the mess tent over coffee, during a break from operating in the middle of the night, and dreamed she was being court-martialled. Lieutenant Whitfield and I are just friends. Nothing more, sir. Yes, we spent a lot of time together while she was at the 4077. Nurses come in and out every few months, but she and I go back a long way… yessir, since we finished nursing school. She's my best friend. Yes, it's true that we hadn't seen each other in a few years before now… In the dream, she was starting to sweat. But being head nurse, well... not too many people are eager to make friends with the same person who yells at them in OR for not having alphabetized all the new medicines within half an hour. A friend, a real friend, is rare.
The general smelled strongly of cigar smoke and booze. The stars on his helmet formed Ursa Minor. He brandished a picture of her old bedroom— the one she always dreamed about. Well, what do you make of this? She leaned in: there, lying on the bed in the light streaming in from the bay window, was Helen. Chestnut hair spread across the pillow, covers tucked up to her chin. Sound asleep. Come on, Major. What do you have to say for yourself?
When Father Mulcahy woke her, she screamed. He apologized for waking her, and asked what was wrong. She'd told him it was a nightmare. It was March; the war had lasted nearly three years. He knew better than to ask. As she walked back to OR, she could feel sweat freezing on the back of her neck.
Sometimes she fantasized about calling Donald in the middle of the night just to tell him she'd met somebody else. A woman, she'd say triumphantly. But reality always kicked in: if Donald ever found out, it would be the end of their marriage, and Margaret's career, and probably Helen's too. Being married— being normal— meant she couldn't ruin her life by trying to do something stupid like kiss Helen and end up losing one of the best friends she'd ever had. She didn't have to think too much about what the strange magnetic moments meant, because it was never going to go anywhere if she was with someone else. Each time the feeling (which she refused to call love) surfaced, she pushed it back down again; each time, the feeling passed. Margaret Houlihan might have been overbearing and quick-tempered and sometimes too distant, but she was no cheater.
So she stayed with Donald, and tried as hard as she could to make it love even when they were only corresponding through letters and occasional phone calls, and she let Helen get closer and closer. She reminded herself often that one night (she never let herself think farther ahead than that) of perfect happiness wasn't worth an entire future of stability. She went home and got letters from Maryland in Helen's looping handwriting once a week. She tried to forget about it and failed to do so miserably.
You're damn lucky to have a best friend. Be happy with what you have, she told herself. She's still telling herself that.
*******
"What do you mean?" There is, of course, no way to tell them the whole story, even if her suspicions about their relationship are right.
"Just the stupid goddamn war. That's what started everything," she says. It isn't really a lie.
"Oh, sure, blame the government," says Hawkeye.
BJ shrugs. "Can't be worse than blaming The Snot."
"The Snot is the government."
"Well, technically—"
Margaret huffs. "Are you two finished?"
"Sorry, Margaret. Keep telling the story; we won't make fun anymore. Scout's honor." BJ solemnly raises one hand and holds out the box of madeleines with the other. She thinks it's supposed to be a peace offering. She warily accepts and finds that the madeleines are surprisingly not just edible, but very good.
"Come on, we promise to be good. We're listening." Hawkeye leans forwards in his chair to prop his chin up on his hands.
"That's how we met. On leave, in a crowded bar on the Ginza. I was alone, wondering how to get myself out of an affair— with a married man! Me! Can you believe that? Sometimes I don't. Anyway, the whole thing was starting to sour… and there was Donald. He listened when I spoke to him, addressed me by my rank when I told him I was a nurse. Ten times the man Frank Burns was— that's the guy I was with at the time. Donald was a lieutenant colonel, a West Point man, he had a chin, and strong legs, and muscles like you wouldn't believe; he was everything a man was supposed to be…" In retrospect, maybe that was what she'd liked about him: he was just about as far away from a woman as you could get. "He asked me about myself. Where I was from, my work, my family. We were engaged three days later."
BJ raises his eyebrows. "That's it?" She can tell he wants to say more, but Hawkeye beats him to it.
"Margaret, no offense, but I've met turtles that are higher off the ground than your standards."
She snorts. "Tell me about it. But I was over the moon." She smiles a little at the memory of herself, drunk and laughing over the phone to Potter, ring sparkling on her finger. "I thought, at last, somebody wants me! Here's the love I've been waiting for! It was like nothing I'd ever felt before."
Now Hawkeye snorts."Let me guess. It was spring."
"How did you know?"
"That's how these things go. The weather gets nicer, and life seems like it should get nicer too. So you walk around with stars and pollen in your eyes, and get married in the summer— let me guess again, July?"
"August."
He shrugs. "Eh, close enough for jazz."
"There was a push on. I had to rush to OR in my wedding gown."
"Jesus."
"It wasn't so bad. I was happy. Besides, the sex was good."
BJ chokes on his madeleine and Hawkeye bursts into wild, whooping laughter. "I'm sorry—" he breaks off to wheeze. "I just didn't expect you to say that."
She grins back at him. "Well, it's true."
He waggles his eyebrows. "Strong legs, huh? How about his third le—"
BJ has by now recovered and hisses, "Will you two please keep it down! We have a five-year-old in the next room!"
Margaret laughs. "The door's closed."
"I don't care. Can we get back to Donald— the person? Not his organs?"
She sighs. "Yeah. Well, the sex stayed good, but eventually the honeymoon period wore off." Hawkeye hums thoughtfully and crunches another madeleine. "I think the war sped the whole process up. One day, I came back from R and R early because we'd had a fight. It was a silly thing to waste my leave, but I was so angry. I wanted to get back to work. Then we got wounded… I was closing for Colonel Potter when I realized the magical feeling was gone. That it had never really been magic or extraordinary at all. I had felt it before, or something like it, I'd felt it in every relationship that didn't last. Then the patient was finished, and I moved on to the next one, and I didn't think about it anymore. We had work to do."
Hawkeye shifts like he's going to say something— but he just looks at her. Like he knows something she doesn't, or something she's trying to hide. Or like he recognizes her.
"What?"
"What what?"
"What's that look for?"
He narrows his eyes. She wonders wildly if he's about to make a dig at her naive ideas of marriage, and if so what her response will be, or if he's about to accuse her of being a lesbian, and if so then whether or not she should punch him. But all he says is: "Not to sound like my grandmother, but have you been eating properly since you got divorced? You look like you should eat another madeleine or three." For some reason, she starts to laugh.
Hawkeye watches her with a confused little smile, like he wants to laugh with her but doesn't know why. "What's so funny? And how come you don't laugh like that when I make actual jokes?"
She means to say your face, your voice, the way I just poured my heart out to you and you gave me a biscuit."I guess it's funny that I'm telling you this after having known you for two months already."
BJ gives her a gigantic, cheesy grin."Well, we're friends now. Friends share things."
"Are we?"
"Aren't we? I mean, I hope you don't talk about your ex-husband's family jewels with just anyone. I'd like to think we're special." Margaret tries not to smile or laugh, she really does; she doesn't want to give him the satisfaction. But then BJ waggles his eyebrows at her, and that plus the powerful relief of knowing she isn't alone is too much. She whoops to rival Hawkeye, and pretty soon they're all laughing.
When they've all calmed down, she sighs, "Sometimes I think it was all a bad dream."
"Your marriage? I hope not. Otherwise we're going to starve, and we've got a child to support," says Hawkeye, sniffing a crumb on his finger.
"You know what I mean. It was as though it wasn't real, not really. Like… Everything that was happening to me, around me— it was like a dream. Someone else's story, which I just happened to be in. So when I got married, I didn't know what would happen when I woke up. I thought about the war ending all the time— going home, eating real food, showering with hot water every day… That was real life. It was waiting for me. But when I got married, I felt like I got married in the dream."
"Or nightmare," says Hawkeye.
"Or nightmare," she repeats. "I didn't get married in the real world, as a real person. I got married in a nightmare, as a head nurse, in the middle of a MASH compound, with blood on my wedding dress. I was someone else, a dream-person. How could that have been real?
They're both quiet.
"I didn't think about what would happen when I woke up and my life started again. My husband left for America, and even that didn't feel quite real. My best friend got sent home two weeks early in the last six months of the war—" she cuts herself off. "Two stupid weeks. That's it. That's when everything really began to go downhill."
A strangled little laugh claws its way out of her throat. "You know sometimes I was actually grateful for the war? Those last few months, when we were bugging out once a week and the wounded just kept pouring in… I was so busy with work that I just didn't have the time to worry about my marriage, or how I'd changed. Oh, we wrote once a week— if I had the time— but it was never the same. I couldn't be. Not when he had never seen the front, the men, all the blood. Not after that." But I wrote to Helen at least once a week and I was always more honest with her than anyone else, because I knew she didn't expect me to come home after the war like nothing had changed, like I hadn't changed, and cook bacon on Saturday mornings and get dressed up for church on Sunday and forget the blood on my dress. She only wanted me to talk to her and not lie. She had blood on her dress too.
"Yeah," says BJ quietly. "I know the feeling." He doesn't sound sad, just matter-of-fact.
They are saved from having to talk about it by a clatter at the door. Erin comes in and headbutts Hawkeye's shoulder like a cat. "Hawk, when are we going home? I'm bored of sitting," she whines. We. Like they're all going home together.
Hawkeye doesn't acknowledge the we, just breezes right past it. "Soon, I promise, but we have to finish our work before we go." But Margaret looks over at BJ, and finds him watching Hawkeye and Erin. Frowning a little. Brows drawn together. As soon as he realizes Margaret's looking, the expression vanishes and his face is once again politely neutral, like he didn't want her to notice, and he turns back to his papers. She knows then beyond doubt that her suspicions are right— they are like her— and instead of fear or anger or anxiety, she feels relief.
Erin, who has not noticed the momentous realization happening across the desk, groans loudly. "How much longer is soon?"
"More than a minute and less than an hour, sweetheart," BJ says without turning his head.
"Rrrrrrgghhhh." She thunks her head against Hawkeye's shoulder again gently. "Why can't you have a better job?"
"Define better."
"One where you work less."
BJ sighs. "Nothing comes easy in life, honey. Even Santa comes with a clause." He snickers to himself at that. Hawkeye makes a face and throws a pencil at him. "Work first. Then we'll go home and do something fun."
Erin pouts and appeals to Hawkeye. "But Hawk—"
"It's pronounced derriere. You want something to do, you can write to Gramps."
She smiles, all anger forgotten. "Okay." Before he can tell her no, she snatches a pen off the desk and runs back into the main room.
Margaret turns back to Hawkeye, feigning confusion. "Gramps?"
Hawkeye smiles faintly."My father. He lives in Maine. We—" he pauses. Looks her right in the eye. When he speaks again, he's choosing his words carefully. "We spent last summer there. They got along like a house on fire." We. Him and Erin and BJ. A unit.
This is a test. Margaret is not going to fail it. "Just the three of you?"she says, wanting to be sure.
"Yes," says Hawkeye. She can't read his face. BJ is watching her too, now, out of the corner of his eye. His shoulders are set in a hard line.
She nods. "It's good she has all that love. Three parents, an extra set of grandparents." She seems to have said the right thing, because they both relax immediately.
"Just my dad, actually. But four parents."
"Oh." She turns to BJ. "Your ex-wife remarried?"
"No. Peg's set up in Sausalito with… a friend." Something in the way he says friend, still very careful, clicks.
"The other woman in the picture?"
They both look at her blankly. "Huh?"
"On your desk. The one where you're all on the beach."
"Oh, yeah." BJ hands her the frame and leans over the desk to point people out. "That's Peg. The one sitting on her right is Yvette."
"What does she do?"
"Yvette? She runs a bakery in Sausalito. Hence the gigantic box of madeleines."
"And our elevated cholesterol levels," says Hawkeye. "She thinks I'm too skinny."
Margaret studies the photo. Erin is sitting on a blanket and eating a sandwich, explaining something to BJ, looking very serious propped up on his elbow beside her. Hawkeye is sitting up next to BJ and also watching her, looking like he's trying not to smile. Behind Erin stands a small woman— Peg— one hand propped on her hip and the other holding her hat in place, head thrown back in laughter. She is gorgeous. The woman with dark hair and sleeves rolled up past her elbows sits by her feet, looking up and smiling, and seems to think the same.
She hands the frame back. "You have a beautiful family." If they notice the wistfulness in her voice, they don't mention it.
BJ smiles at her as he takes the picture and gently replaces it on the desk. "We like to think so."
"Does Erin stay one week with you two and one with them?"
"Pretty much." Hawkeye suddenly snickers.
"What's so funny? Are you laughing at me?"
"No, no. It's nothing. Well, it's sort of funny you only asked us now about our personal lives. Most people ask right away. They want to know all about our wives and kids, whether we got into divorce law because we got robbed in court, what we go home to in the evening. That kind of thing."
"Well. We're friends now."
BJ raises his eyebrows, but he looks pleased. "Are we?"
"Aren't we?" Hawkeye grins at her.
"What about you?" he says, very casually. Too casually.
"What about me?" This is about to get very bad.
"Is there, you know…" he gestures vaguely. "Anyone?" Her blood goes cold, then hot, then cold again. Her heart hammers, her throat seizes, the rest of her internal organs try to make a break for it—
The phone rings.The lawyers both dive for the receiver at the same time and clonk heads. BJ smacks him out of the way and sends Hawkeye running into the other room for the extension. By the time Hawkeye races back in, she can still hear the blood rushing in her ears as she thanks a higher power that she doesn't really believe in for the safety of her secret.
"Shit," Hawkeye pants, like he's run a mile instead of the length of his office.
BJ checks his watch. "If we leave now, we can be home by… six-fifteen."
"You stay with Erin, I'll go talk to this guy," says Hawkeye, already shoving papers into a battered briefcase.
"You sure? 'Cause—"
"Yeah, yeah, you work out. No, I'll be fine, I can handle him."
Margaret tries to sound confident and in charge, which means she ends up snapping: "Would one of you two mind telling me what on earth is going on?"
"Oh, right. Well, you've probably already noticed, but we've got to go," says BJ as he tries to fit his left arm through the right sleeve of his jacket.
"That does not answer my question. Who was that? Why does it sound like you're conducting some kind of back-alley drug deal?"
"Oh, please, Margaret. Don't be dramatic," says Hawkeye airily. She feels better until he adds: "Nothing big, we're just orchestrating a little light drug possession charge. Run of the mill, just sort of normal-ish."
"What?" This is incredibly illegal. She wonders, not for the first time, if she has made a grave mistake by associating with them.
"Don't blow a vein, he deserves it!"
"Real scum of the earth type," BJ says grimly. "And I don't just say that about anyone. Really, this is probably too humane."
Margaret watches Hawkeye dash around the room, stacking coffee cups and emptying plates full of crumbs out the window. She feels a little lost, a little relieved. Mostly tired of herself. She listens to Erin asking for mushroomburgers (whatever those are— probably some Californian thing) and BJ patiently explaining that they have food at the house, and they need to get home soon. She wants to sleep. Or kick someone. But mostly herself.
Together, they head downstairs; Margaret feels like she's underwater. Outside, it's starting to rain. BJ drapes his jacket over Erin's head and hoists her onto his back. Hawkeye takes BJ's briefcase from him and adjusts the jacket so it's covering Erin's hair completely. Something about the three of them, standing under the awning and murmuring about the rain like any other family, makes her want to sit down in the road and scream her head off.
Hawkeye stoops down to kiss her cheek and tells her to call or drop in when she has time. "We'll talk soon," BJ adds with a smile, but she doesn't think she's imagining the look he shoots her: don't think you weaselled out of the question that easily. She watches them race down the street to their car and wonders if her life will ever look that easy.
It's four days before she has the nerve to see Hawkeye and BJ again. She goes on her lunch break, so that if things go badly she has an easy excuse to leave, and wears shoes conducive to running down their office stairs.
"Where's Erin?" she asks as Hawkeye ushers her in. (The sign outside says HUNNICUTT AND PIERCE.)
"At her friend Melanie's. They've gone swimming," says BJ from his perch on the long table, where he's carefully inspecting the innards of a pastrami sandwich.
"Any updates?"
"Sorry to disappoint, but no," says Hawkeye through a mouth of his own sandwich.
"That's alright." She tries to breathe slowly and evenly and not panic. The words are soaring up from her chest with an impossible velocity, moving too fast for her to really understand why she needs to say them; she can't stop to think about it if she wants to be brave. It's the thought of never saying it to anyone that scares her into opening her mouth.
"Do you remember when you asked where it all started? Before?" The words come out so fast that she thinks maybe Hawkeye didn't understand her. But he just says:
"Before when?"
"When we first met."
"Oh. Yeah, of course." Of course.
"It. It wasn't really the dog."
"I figured that."
"Right. That's your job." She chews her lip. Hesitates. "Well. It wasn't really the war either. I think— I think it might have been easier if that was all it was."
"Was there someone else?" says BJ gently, so gently. She takes a deep breath. There is no going back.
"Yes. Her name is Helen."