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Dear Mrs. McIntyre,
We've never met before, but I'm the queer homewrecker your husband may have mentioned in passing. If that doesn't sound familiar to you then I suppose Trapper has reaped what he sowed and good luck to him.
For my part I really hope you have context for this.
I thought it would be for the best if I wrote to you first. I wanted to make sure we're all on the same page.
I'm Hawkeye and I think in Korea sometime in 1950 I fell in love with your husband.
I say I think because I've always held those feelings at arm's length. He’s a special person. Not in my wildest dreams have I thought for a moment those feelings could have ever been returned.
For one thing, you and the girls are his world. Full stop. I'm not going to fight you for him. I'd lose and get a black eye in the process.
My pal B.J. had told me I tend to romanticize marriage to a strange extent given that I myself have never married and my flighty nature, but I've been in love before. I've been left behind. Maybe I just think there's some magic to it. Maybe I think it's a promise that isn't as easily broken as my heart. Maybe I’m just a romantic.
Whatever the reason, despite what you may have heard of me (a womanizer, a queer, a man committed to not committing) I have the deepest respect for it. Maybe reverence is a better way to put it.
So all this lead up and here's the thing Mrs. McIntyre, I would love to love your husband, but I think it will be impossible if you and I don't love each other too. I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but I think this is the way that I need to do it, if it can happen at all.
Trapper has hinted you might be amicable to being seduced.
But firstly, I want to make sure that that's actually true. I haven't known Trapper to be hyperbolic, but people can change.
Second, I don't want you to feel any pressure. If you find me a hideous brute, don't accept me for Trapper's sake.
Third, if it goes well then let's have fun with it. If we don't end up as lovers I hope we end up as friends.
There is one more thing I need to explain, which I'd rather not speak of, but I think it's best I put it here before you make any decisions.
In Korea.
In Korea. In Korea. I don't even know how to write it down. I'll give the broad strokes of it. I was in a mental hospital for two weeks not long before fighting ceased. I was put there for my own safety, as well as the safety of others. I do not pose a danger to either now.
I have nightmares. I occasionally sleepwalk. Being in the company of small children can be hard for me. I'm working on this, and I have regular sessions with a therapist.
Maybe that's it and I've blown it. This is stuff Trapper doesn't even know yet, but the moment I start writing to him, the moment I open his letters it'll be hard for me to stop.
If you want me to throw them in the garbage Mrs. McIntyre, I'll do that. I'll send my apologies to him, and I'll say it's all me and not mention your name at all.
If all we had is Korea, then that’s what we had.
I don't want to hurt him. I don't want to hurt you. I certainly don't want to be hurt.
Your friend,
𝒟𝓇. 𝐵𝑒𝓃𝒿𝒶𝓂𝒾𝓃 𝐹𝓇𝒶𝓃𝓀𝓁𝒾𝓃 𝐻𝒶𝓌𝓀𝑒𝓎𝑒 𝒫𝒾𝑒𝓇𝒸𝑒
Dear Dr. Pierce,
As you so kindly introduced yourself I’ll do the same. I’m the cheating floozy who was doing a fine job at wrecking her own marriage before you came along. You can only be an improvement.
And yes, John has told me about you.
I’m Louise, and you may call me that. Considering the circumstances I feel it’s only appropriate. I’ll call you Ben, unless you really hate it. I have a sensitivity about college nicknames. I know sometimes they aren’t always wanted, or have the best story behind them. Please correct me if you find Ben intolerable.
So.
Dear Ben,
I’m not sure when I fell in love with my husband. It wasn’t while we were dating. It wasn’t when he proposed. I think it was when Kathy was born. He held her in his arms for the first time. His beaming smile, the joy and utter adoration for her in his eyes.
Please don’t misunderstand me though, although the love came later, it came on strong. I do love my husband, Ben, and sometimes that has been painful, for both of us, especially as, since the day he proposed, I was under the impression that he had never loved me back. That I was a duty. That I was settled on. That I was convenient.
We had been dating for two months. John wasn’t quarterback, but he was the star of his football team for Dartmouth. He was handsome, charming, and planning to become a doctor.
Marriage material as my mother liked to remind me. That’s why I was in New Hampshire working as a waitress. I was a Boston girl with a painfully (I felt at the time) working accent. I tried to fake ‘sounding classy.’ It was ridiculous, I had no talent for it and did it until my roommate quietly told me I was making a fool of myself.
New Hampshire was a hard time and filled with college boys who had no intentions of marrying the likes of me, although they were happy enough to make promises.
John was a regular and noticed my wavering accent. It turned out despite growing up in Boston he had been born in Alabama and when he was younger. His mother was obsessed with ‘not sounding like a hick.’ She had similar struggles and was stern with her children when any bit of the southern accent slipped in. John still gets a little embarrassed if you catch him with any drawl
I think it’s charming myself. Have you noticed it? It’s hard to catch if you’re not listening.
I only mention it because it’s why I started dating him. He would shut up his friends for making fun of me and my atrocious fake accent, even after I had stopped.
John is a kind person like that, but he isn’t always nice.
We were dating for two months. He was traveling to Maine for a football game and I came along to cheer him on.
Things hadn’t been going great. I could feel him losing interest in me. I was determined for the weekend to go well.
Of course the week leading up to it I had been sick as a dog, which didn’t help in my seduction efforts. Running out of the room and coming back smelling of vomit wasn’t going to win me the life my mother wanted for me.
So on the train I was determined not to show it, which meant I was stilted and distant. He quickly grew frustrated with me and wandered off, looking for his buddies, or at least that’s what he said.
Meanwhile I was feeling sicker and sicker. The motion of the train wasn’t helping. Eventually, I was in front of the ladies bathroom waiting and waiting and waiting. The door was locked. No one was coming out. It was pure Hell. In my desperation I grabbed the conductor, who banged on the door. The moaning had started. He got out his key and opened the door.
There was John and another woman wrapped around each other. Her blouse was unbuttoned and skirt hiked up and there was no hiding exactly what they were up to.
“He trapped me! He trapped me!” She screamed in panic, drawing a crowd.
No better time to be sick. I pushed past the two of them and started vomiting as John was being chewed out by the conductor and the girl was swearing up and down he grabbed her and pulled her into the toilet to ravish her. He probably did, but knowing John he sweet talked her into it first.
John’s buddies had gathered and started defending him. That she had thrown herself at him while snickeringly asking: “Did you Trap ‘er John?”
I was still vomiting. Absolutely humiliated in front of the entire Dartmouth College starting lineup.
“Oh no,” I heard John say, focused on me, ignoring all the other voices calling for his attention. “Again?” He ever so gently pulled my hair out of my face. “Hey, can you make some room here?” He asked, shoving the woman out of the toilet, closing the door, and locking it again, this time bracing it properly.
“We’re breaking up!” I cried.
“That’s fair,” he said, rubbing my back. “How’s the nausea, Honey?”
I remember thinking, under my humiliation and fury, that one day, he would be a very good doctor.
When we arrived, any return train was cancelled due to a blizzard. I was stuck. I didn’t have the money to get my own room, and there was no vacancy anywhere anyway. John insisted we share as planned. That he would sleep on the floor.
I remember saying something like: “Or find some other bed to sleep in.”
I expected him to make a joke of it, but he just looked tired and a little grim and didn’t answer.
Somehow, he convinced me. The man could sell ice to a polar bear.
Despite having a game the next day, true to his word, he slept on the ground. I wanted to call my best friend, or even my Mother despite knowing exactly what she would say, but I couldn’t with him in the room. By then I felt a lot better. I slept well.
Until morning when I was throwing up again.
You’re a doctor. A good one from what John used to write about you. I’m sure you’ve already guessed.
John had.
“Hey, Lou, I know you’re mad at me—” I cut him off. It was the first time he had tried to talk to me since convincing me to share the room.
“I’m furious,” I told him.
“I know you’re furious at me,” he continued doggedly. “But I think we need to talk.”
I didn’t want to talk. “There’s nothing to say.”
“How are you feeling now?”
After I had thrown up, I told him I was feeling better. I guessed maybe it was left over motion sickness from the train, or I wasn’t over the flu.
“I don’t think it was motion sickness, Hon. You’ve been getting sick an awful lot. Primarily in the mornings.”
My mind went completely blank.
“It isn’t that,” I told him immediately.
“Okay, it isn’t that,” he agreed automatically. Paused for a few seconds and continued on. “But if it is that, I won’t leave you in the lurch. I want you to know that.”
“We were careful. It can’t be that.”
“Sometimes it’s that Louise!” He had been trying to be calm and logical, but he was fraying at the edges. He ran his hand through his curls, pulled at his mustache (He had a mustache back then, it was awful, perhaps I’ll send you pictures).
I demanded to know what he was trying to say to me.
(I assumed he was about to suggest something a pre-med student could offer.)
He stepped closer. Took my hands in his and gazed down at me. He’s tall. One of the reasons I liked dating him. Even in heels he was still taller than me. I didn’t feel like a giant. He has always made me feel delicate, in the best and worst ways.
“I won’t leave you high and dry,” he said. For such a smooth talker he wasn’t very smooth now.
I told him to speak plainly.
“If it’s a baby, I’ll marry you!”
I burst into tears.
I screamed, I sobbed. He held me in his arms, rocked me back and forth.
Apologised, promised he would take care of me.
It felt like my life had ended.
Looking back, I was lucky. John didn’t have to point out the obvious. He didn’t have to offer me anything. He could have let me break up with him, find out the truth for myself, and leave me to my problem. If I came back later he could have said it was someone else’s. I could have ended up an unwed mother.
Instead, once the rabbit confirmed it, I was going to marry a star football player, who would become a talented surgeon. Young, handsome, successful in whatever he put his mind to.
When I eventually brought John home, it was like my Mother’s last mission in life had finally been completed. She had never been more proud of me, bagging John McIntyre. Isn’t that terrible? The best thing in my life I ever did for her was get knocked up and married to a decent man.
A more than decent man.
Part of me resented that I couldn’t even resent him.
I’m telling you this story for context. You romanticize marriage, but I don’t. Maybe it’s different for men, or maybe it’s just different for you. For me it was a necessity, even if John hadn’t come along, it always would have been.
Where John and I began wasn’t a place of love. He was decent and I was desperate.
I don’t know much about war, Ben. Just what I’ve read in the papers, just what I see on John’s face and the little bit he has said. I don’t know a thing about it, but from the outside it seems like a desperate situation.
I do not mean to compare you to a pregnant girl staring at her ruined future, but John is easy to lean on.
I guess I’m asking if you’re desperate.
And if you’re hoping I’ll be decent.
You have given me a lot of power at very little risk to myself. Is this what it’s like to be a man? I apologize again for the comparison.
The thing is, I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m not particularly decent. The same night he made his honorable proposal I slept with someone else. I continued to cheat until he came back from Korea. That’s almost twelve years. I was worried Becky wasn’t his (She is, she grew into his crooked smile and her eyes are the exact shade of dark hazel).
I’m not going to allow you into my life and the lives of my girls if I don’t want you there, Ben. Not for John. Not out of pity. Not out of decency.
I want you.
You do have your facts mixed up. You said John hinted that I was amicable to being seduced. That’s wrong, actually what I said was that I’d like to seduce you. I would like to see what it would be like to share a man with my husband, a man that I already feel real interest toward.
You're right, my husband isn’t particularly hyperbolic. Despite his happy demeanor he’s a realist. You should see the first letter he wrote me about the 4077th. About the people there. About his tent-mate Major Burns. He doesn’t like to share his own misery, but it was thick in that first letter to me.
“Garbage Lou. It’s all garbage,” he wrote.
But that misery was gone by the second letter. A week later and he’s telling me about Hawkeye Pierce who is funny and brave. Fast talking, quick-witted, charming, and wild. A man that the army can’t tame.
Before he came home from Korea, John and I didn’t talk to each other about ourselves to one another. I would write to him about the girls, and he would write to me about you. I’m sure some of it was sanitized. I know he left out all the hanky-panky, but any censorship couldn’t hide your brightness.
I was a little jealous. Not for your friendship with my husband, but for the person you were. How brave and outspoken you were. Saying what you felt. Fighting when you saw something was wrong. Not making yourself small to make room for others with too much space to begin with. John admired you. I grew to admire you too. I liked his stories about you.
So I was surprised when he came home he didn’t talk about you at all. He didn’t talk about Korea. I wondered if something happened in those last few days. If you two had fought.
Then your first letter came.
Because of your honesty with me, I will be honest with you. John came back and it was hard falling back into the life we had before. The one we pretended was good and happy. As I told you, I had grown to love John, but I was never sure he loved me back, and my loving him didn’t stop me from seeking out other men out of loneliness, or boredom, or even resentment sometimes. More than knowing he was cheating on me, I perversely hoped he was cheating on me. I don’t know why. Did I want proof he was the same Trapper John all this time? Did I want to assuage my own guilt? I don’t know. It didn’t actually comfort me, in fact, it made me jealous, the idea of him with other women, going behind my back. Did he have other pregnant girls out there that he couldn't do the decent thing for?
So when your first letter came, the way his eyes lit up, I was sure it was a letter from his lover. The woman of his dreams he met in Korea. The little nurse who was smart and clever and never had to wait tables. The one he truly loved, and I was the one obstacle to their happiness. This is the woman who would make John’s decency run out. He would leave me as soon as she was back stateside.
He held that letter, grinning at it, running his fingers over your open looping handwriting. It was the first crooked smile I had seen on his lips since coming back.
Then he looked … devastated. He put it in his pocket.
I didn’t believe his story about a letter from a war buddy. I was sure it was my proof.
He was out for interviews the next day, the girls were in school. I told myself I was just going to clean his office since it was getting more use with his return.
It took me ages to find it. Still unopened. It was pressed in a book like he was preserving a flower. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Only reason I found it was that I found it strange he had one of the girl’s books on his shelf full of medical journals.
Do you have any siblings? I was the youngest of four sisters. When you’re the nosy little sister (of three beauty queens who didn’t need to leave the state to find a husband), you get very good at opening unopened mail.
I wonder if you remember what you wrote?
It was intimate, reading the letter of the man my husband spun his life in Korea around. You called him names for leaving while you were gone on R&R. Then you got serious. How happy you were for him. Waxing poetic about the life he would return to. The view, the clothes, the food (you talked about food a lot). Then talking about me and the girls as John’s true happiness. In retrospect, it isn’t a surprise about your romanticizing marriage, it was all in that letter.
There was also grief. How important his friendship was. How much you would miss him, but reassuring him that his replacement was a good guy. Your B.J. I think?
You ended with some jokes about files baked in cakes.
I read it twice.
It felt like there was broken glass in my stomach, Ben. It wasn’t the old jealousy, I didn’t suspect his feelings for you, or yours for him. I didn’t think you were a woman using his friend’s name to get a letter through. It was the way you talked about me. It was your certainty of John’s happy ending. It was the way you thought he loved me.
And maybe that would be it, but you wrote him two more times.
There were other letters by the way, that smelled like perfume. Those ones didn’t end up in that book in the office. Those ones I would find torn up in the trash.
Before reading your letter, I probably would have carefully tried to tape them together again and read what they said. I’m glad I didn’t do that.
The next letter you sent was obviously from you. In big letters on the side of the envelope was written: B.F. Pierce ALIVE!
John looked at it in confusion. Stared at it all morning.
When I ‘cleaned the office’ that afternoon I found it with the first letter. Both of them were open. He had to know you were okay.
That second letter you told the story of being declared dead. How your mail had been stopped. How they sent your father the telegram. That they wouldn’t even pay you, but you went to work on wounded anyway. You briefly spoke of John’s replacement. How he tried to cheer you up with a wake. You made some jokes, ribbing John about missing your funeral.
Then saying he had much better things to do anyway. Time with me and the girls.
Our time with John up until that point had been breakfast and sometimes dinner. He’d be out the rest of the day, looking for jobs, although sometimes he came back smelling of liquor or perfume or both. He drank a lot. He still drinks too much sometimes. The only reason I don’t is because my mother drank and I hated how it felt when she criticized me as a little girl. I worry that maybe I’d do that to Kathy. All my worries for her becoming barbs that would stick in her heart well into adulthood.
The ending of the letter was heartbreaking. You said: “I was wondering why you hadn’t written. I was starting to think I’d done something wrong. This has been a mess, but at least I understand now. So don’t worry, I’m alive. It would be great to have confirmation you are as well actually. Sometimes I have nightmares. Radar coming into O.R., and I know what he’s gonna say. He’s going to tell us Henry’s dead, but instead he says your name. John McIntyre’s plane went down over the Sea of Japan. There were no survivors. And I look up to where you had been standing beside me and I realize you’re not there.”
It’s a little later. I had to find the letter to quote you and I’ve realized how long it’s gotten. Bear with me a little longer.
I’m sorry about Col. Blake. I’m sorry for bringing him up to you now.
I hadn’t known he had died. John never said in his letters. He only mentioned Maj. Burns took command, but said he doubted he would last long. “He’ll screw it up, or Hawk will fix him,” he wrote.
Seeing that he opened the letters I was sure that he had written to you back. Reassured you that he had made it home. Maybe even lied to you about how happy we all were.
Then the last letter came. The one where you gave up. The handwriting was shaky. I wondered if you were drunk or if you were crying when you penned it.
You apologised for your previous letters. Told him you understood.
You said: “remembering the past. Remembering the good times. That isn’t real. Worst of all, it was never was real. Not in Korea. It was just a dreamy interlude between the nightmares. I saw someone from my past. Someone I loved a lot, and she loved me. She left because she’s married and we’re in Korea. It was just a dream.”
You crossed out: “there was no one since her.” At the time I wondered why.
“There’s no place like home and now you’re there! You’re home. You’re happy. The little dreams aren’t worth the nightmares, and maybe hurt just as much in the long run. I don’t know. I’m no one’s dream. Just a guy you killed time with while we tried to stop men getting killed. Anyway I get it. I get it. I won’t write you again. Be happy.”
This letter saved my marriage, Ben.
Because it made me so furious.
I had no inkling that you might be in LOVE with my husband, but it was clear that you loved him. His best friend. His comrade. The man that had stood at his side almost the entire time he was in Korea. The man he had written about with joy and humor and affection. The one that had got him through.
And he had abandoned you! He didn’t talk about Korea. He didn’t talk about you. He closed the paper, and turned off the radio at any news about it.
He was doing all that to live this beautiful happy life you were talking about. Except we weren’t happy! He had tossed aside the one person that made his life worth living to be with me and he wasn’t even happy!
And he didn’t even seem to like me! He was off with other women, or working, or drinking. Anything to avoid me. And here was this man he cared a great deal for, stranded in Korea who he wouldn’t even write a note saying he was alive.
After reading it I told him I cheated on him. I told him how much and how often. I told him how I knew he was cheating too. How I knew he resented me for tying him to this marriage.
I said a lot of things.
And he said a lot of things back.
Horrible hurtful things. A lot of things.
I think it was the first time we really talked to each other honestly.
The only reason he wasn’t out the door was Kathy and Becky.
I was sure this was the end of my marriage. It was a bitter twist of relief and grief. Relief that I had told him. Relief I finally knew what he was keeping from me, and grief because … I didn’t want to lose the little we did have.
This letter is already too long. The short story is we talked. We worked things out. I’ll tell you the long story some other time.
But you need to understand that I’m already a little in love with you Ben. You’re not the one that has to worry. I’m the one that’s terrified you won’t love me back.
My only consolation is that, for the first time, I love my husband fully and honestly, and I know he loves me fully and honestly. Even if it doesn’t work out, you gave me that. If all I can give you is gratitude, then you have it.
So, let me answer you with all of what I've told you in mind.
- My husband told his side of things, and I believe he was straightforward and truthful to the best of his knowledge.
- I also don’t want to pressure you into loving me. I’m probably doing a bad job with this letter. John said he told you about the seduction menu. Even so, please don’t force yourself. After twelve years misunderstanding John I don’t think I could take it with someone else.
- It would be an honor to be your friend, but I hope we get to fool around.
Regarding your hospital stay: thank you for telling me. I’m not afraid of you.
Regarding sleepwalking: have you ever been tied to a bed? You might enjoy it.
Regarding children: I don’t know if you would consider Kathy (12) and Becky (10) small enough to set off your phobia(?). I am not willing to sideline my daughters for the sake of a relationship with you. If you asked me to keep them in their rooms, or send them out the door every time you came, there would be no future. I don’t think that’s the kind of man you are though. If difficulties arise we’ll try to work through them.
You haven’t blown it. Your honesty and bravery are the first things I admired about you.
Open his letters Ben, he wants to hear from you. He’s going to drive me crazy until he does.
And keep writing to me too. Next time I’ll try not to send a novel.
I don’t want to hurt him, I don’t want to hurt you. I certainly don’t want to be hurt myself. But you and my husband are doctors, and I’m a mother of two energetic young girls. There will be scrapes and bruises. We just need to be generous with the bandages and kisses.
XOXO,
𝐿♡𝓊𝒾𝓈𝑒
💋
PS: What's your favorite dessert?