This letter is even shorter than yesterday’s. The final was today and tonight Dart is taking his first liberty in over two weeks. He’s given up his pass for the upcoming weekend because a classmate needed it more than Dart. The other guy’s wife and baby just arrived from Cleveland a week ago, and the little family needs time together.
He won’t offer a prediction of the exam. He knows he missed 18 questions out of the first 155, but there were 145 more questions. The results will come tomorrow and the whole class dreads to learn what they’ll be.
His family answered Dart’s telegram assuring him that everyone was okay. His worries were useless (as worries so often are.)
He tells Dot he’ll be the most disappointed sailor in the Navy if he doesn’t get that leave. They should know for sure in less than a week. I can sense his loneliness, despair and tension in every line.
Dot has missed two days of writing due to some mysterious ailment. She tells Dart that her mother has just written all about her illness in a letter to him, so she’ll not repeat the news.
She wonders if Dart left Treasure Island before Bob Hope came to do his show there last week. She listened to the broadcast and paid close attention as she tried to pick out Dart’s laugh from among the thousands of men who were in the audience. She’s sure he must have missed the show because she knows if he’d been there she would have heard his laughter.
How disappointed she is that her illness has caused her to miss out on a good, long visit with Cynthia, including a luncheon with several girls Dot used to go to school with. She hopes she’ll still catch a quick visit before C. leaves on Monday.
She again asks for his suggestions about what to put into a gift box for him. It seems that cookies would be a good choice for a 20-year old boy, far from home.
As we might expect, the topic turns to Dart’s leave. She claims the suspense is killing her. If she could be sure he’d get a nice long visit home, she could stand being away from him for a few more days, but not knowing is driving her nuts.
She pauses the letter when her mother brings lunch upstairs for Dot to eat in bed. When she resumes writing, it is well past dinner. This was apparently the first time she’d been up for a meal in a few days, and her mother made it worth the effort – steak, potatoes, carrots, string beans, apple pie ala mode and real coffee. “Needless to say, I went very light on what I did have, but it sure tasted like a ‘pre-war’ dinner.” Her folks must have spent a week’s rations on that spread!
Guessing that he’ll get this letter around October 30, she wonders if he recalls what was happening a year ago that day. That was their double date in Cleveland when they saw “Phantom of the Opera” and Dart tried to teach her to shift gears. “Best of all, it was the first time you ever kissed me. I don’t know if I’m still in a daze from that kiss or from the ones I’ve had since. Anyway, I’m still in a daze when I think of you, which is about 59 1/2 minutes out of every hour.”
Sometimes when she’s dreaming of Dart, she wonders if he has any inkling how much she loves him. Then she realizes he couldn’t possibly, because even she can’t quite belief it.
There’s nothing left for them at this point but to hope and pray for that leave to come through. “It doesn’t do any harm to have faith,” she says. Ever the optimist, our Dot.
