Dot’s letter begins in a jubilant mood. “Boy! Oh, Boy! Three super letters from you and a super letter from your mom today. That’s the way I like to start off a Monday morning – meet the postman on my way to work and spend my first hour of work reading what I collected from the postman. It makes me feel like singing, and if I didn’t have a hard enough time finding customers already, I think I’d break out in song for sure.”
Isn’t it cool that she could collect letters from the postman so early in the morning and again when she came home for lunch? Back in the day when the mail brought more than ads and pleas for money, wouldn’t it have been fun to get two deliveries a day?
She begins to answer these “precious documents” in the order they were written. From the April 17th letter, she sees that Dart has a little celebrity crush on the newest starlet named Lauren Bacall. “Say, what is it that Lauren Bacall has that I couldn’t find plenty of use for? That’s one woman who seems to have made a hit with every kind of man.”
She assumes Dart got sunburned the day he wrote this letter. She hopes it was more evenly distributed than the burn he got last July in Greenwich. As she recalls, it was mostly his wrists where they extended beyond is sleeves that got bright red then. “The color does become you, though. So much more so for you, when it comes from without, than on me when it comes from within.” (I think she means blushing.)
She scolds him gently for telling his parents that it was she who sent the Easter flowers and not Dart. She knows it took away half their pleasure from the gift. “So be it. It’s done now. But hereafter, do me a little favor. To put it bluntly, keep your mouth shut, or in this case, your pen still, PLEASE!”
For his letter from the 19th, she says she hopes he gets his fill of gun shooting while he’s out there, because that’s the last thing she ever wants to see. Guns scare her! Seriously, Dot – the type of guns Dart is shooting “out there” are hardly the kind he could bring home as a souvenir! He’d need a flat bed railroad car to move one from place to place.
As for Ernie Pyle, she’s sure that Dart’s writing style is every bit as good as his was. “It’s not ability you’re lacking, Dart. It’s experience. But don’t think you have to go through all that he went through to be like him. I wouldn’t like that at all.”
She’s impressed that he’s up to 160 pounds. She loves him just the way he was when she saw him last, but every pound he gains gives her more to love.
“Oh-oh! Here comes the April 20th letter, or ‘Why Dot Should NOT Join the WAVEs!’ There’s little point in discussing it further, since she’s prohibited from joining anyway, but she appreciates that he cares enough to give her his honest opinion. “Thank you, my Darling, for caring enough to speak you piece (sic) and for guiding me in the right way.” She values his opinion so much that with every decision she faces, she finds herself asking “Which way would Dart decide?” She’s confident things worked out the way they’re supposed to, as they usually do in life, but she still hopes to do something useful someday.
As for kissing and making up, there’s no need – unless it’s for the “sheer joy of kissing.” He did not hurt her feelings. In fact, his carefully worded letter made her prouder and more in love with him that she was before. She wants to be a better woman for him because she knows he deserves the best. Once again she cautions him to stop building her up in his mind, lest the reality of her crushes his illusions when he gets home.
She wraps up quickly by telling him how proud she is of his grades and filling him in on a movie she and Nancy saw last night called “The Keys to the Kingdom,” with a young actor named Gregory Peck.
“I’m going to bed, but not before kissing your picture and praying that soon there’ll be no more ‘ifs’ to contend with.”
