M*A*S*H: Let's All Go to the Movies - Gentleman Doctors 1959 [PG13] H/B,E,Peg/OMC
Title: "Let's All Go to the Movies"
Rating: PG
Summary: The war is long over, B.J. and Hawkeye are an old married couple, and South Pacific is playing at the drive-in. One problem: Erin's been invited to a popular girl's kissing party and she's mad her dads won't let her go.
Characters: BJ/Hawk, Erin, Peg/OMC
Part of the Gentleman Doctors series
Timeline: Spring, 1959
"Let's All Go to the Movies"
"Beej!"
Footfalls thumped through the little Queen Anne-style Victorian.
"Hawk?" B.J. hipped the refrigerator closed and tossed the paper bags in the closet.
"It's here, it's here!" Hawkeye called from the hall.
"Christmas?" B.J. said.
"No!"
"Apple picking time? Godot?"
"My movie!" Hawkeye burst into the kitchen, all smiles, brandishing a newspaper.
"I wasn't aware your script had sold, Mr. DeMille." B.J. hitched onto the counter by the open window and peeled his orange. The citrus smell wafted into the kitchen with the warm, ocean breeze.
Hawkeye waved the paper at his boyf-- husb-- his B.J. "South Pacific! The crowning glory of musical theater, the one that goes 'Once you have found her, ne-ver let her go-o-o-o." His voice climbed to a delicate falsetto on the last o's. "We're seeing it this weekend. Clear your calendar, this is an event not to be missed by God or man."
B.J. licked his fingers. "Hope it's an event not to be missed by nine year old little girls."
"Huh?"
"Did you forget we've got Erin next week?"
Hawkeye studiously snipped the quarter page advert for the movie. "So?"
"It's a war picture, isn't it?"
Hawkeye nudged Erin's drawings and photos of the two of them around the fridge until he could wedge in his little black and white movie poster.
"It's a war musical. It's Rogers and Hammerstein, the guys who brought us Erin dancing in her tutu with the feather duster pretending to be a fairy godmother. I saw the play three times, trust me, there's nary an on-screen bullet to be seen."
B.J. picked the white stuff off his orange. "I just don't want her to get too many ideas about the Army."
"It's the Navy." Hawkeye waltzed about the kitchen, his newspaper his partner, singing a song about cables.
"Hawk."
Hawkeye stole an orange slice and leaned against B.J's hip while he pontificated with it. "I have an idea, okay? This'll be great. It's playing at the drive-in. We'll put her in her jammies, she'll fall asleep before intermission."
"She loves the drive in," B.J. said thoughtfully.
"So do I. She'll fall asleep, we'll have the whole front seat and all that cover of night." Hawkeye gazed up at B.J. while his tongue worked over the orange slice.
B.J.'s gaze seemed to leave orbit. "I think this can work."
~*~
When B.J. parked the Studebaker in the driveway in front of Peg's, Erin was sitting on the front steps and Peg looked fed up.
Erin gave B.J. a short "No, thank you" to his offer of supper at the diner on the way home. She was stingy with her hug and instead stamped across the driveway and slammed the passenger door shut.
"She's angry." Peg passed him her pink polka dot suitcase.
"I noticed," B.J. said, surprised.
"Her friend Jamie is having her birthday party this weekend and I told her she can't go," Peg said.
Erin rolled down the window. "She's not my friend!"
"Erin!" Peg said. "The neighborhood can hear you."
"Then why do you want to go to a birthday party for some girl you don't even like?" B.J. asked. Peg shot him a look he couldn't interpret. It seemed the sensible question.
"It's a social status invitation," Peg said. "Jamie only sent the invitations to six girls and six boys, and she made sure everyone at the school knew who were the chosen few."
"Sounds like a real winner, this girl," B.J. said.
"Oh, she's been nothing but a breath of fresh air since I first heard her name in September," Peg said.
"Mom, please." Erin hung out of the car window. "Everyone's mad at me, Jamie had to invite Sherry the Cherry to take my place."
"Erin Elizabeth, in the car!" Peg said.
"What'd I say?" Erin said.
"Isn't she a little young for kissing parties?" B.J. whispered.
Peg flipped her hair out of her eyes. "Of course she is, she's nine. Is she going? No, she's not, what do you take me for? This Jamie Miles is a year older and -- " Peg whispered, " -- her mother drinks."
B.J. put his hands up in surrender.
"Just, please," Peg said, "find something to distract her. She always comes home in love with a new inappropriate author whenever Hawkeye gets involved in her education. I'd really love that next week. See if you can get her suspended, maybe that'll damage her popularity."
B.J. kissed her cheek. "I'll see what I can do. By the way, what does Curtis the Tortoise think of his step-daughter going to co-ed parties?"
Peg's lips went straight and thin. "He thinks she's developmentally advanced and wishes to study her."
~*~
Erin had always been quick witted, responsive. Verbal. Remember how excited we were when she started to talk? B.J. thought at no one in particular. Back when a few syllables printed on a piece of paper that traveled 30,000 miles was enough to make him feel like his feet were on the clouds.
He did some amazing work in Korea, he once electrocuted a guy back to life. He was pretty sure he could install a mute switch in his kid if he had the tools handy.
The entire car ride, Erin begged, she reasoned, she wailed, she attempted to appeal to his good sense. Wasn't it rude to go back on your R.S.V.P.? What if she made an important social connection at the party that helped her get into college one day. She wasn't going to kiss anybody, it wasn't that kind of party, ew Daddy, really!
She almost had him at 'Daddy,' but B.J. held out until he guided the Studebaker into the narrow driveway terraced beside their yellow Victorian.
"Erin --!" he called, but she was gone, all legs and loose blonde hair, a book in her hand, heading for her "tree house," which was really more of a platform he and Hawkeye nailed into the sycamore years ago. Torn between worry and irritation, B.J. gathered her schoolbag and suitcase and carried them into the house. Hawkeye was home already, bent over some papers in the den. He looked up in surprise when B.J. came in alone.
"What'd you do to the kid?"
"Ruined her life, at least until next week or next month." B.J. set her bags on the hall bench. "She's sulking in her tree. Did you finish with Mrs. Laslow already?"
Hawkeye closed the file and set down his pen, shaking his head. "I just closed her up, only had her on the table for an hour. There was nothing we could do."
Concerned, B.J. came around to sit on the edge of Hawkeye's desk. "I'm sorry, honey. She was a nice old lady."
Hawkeye watched his own fingers turn his fountain pen over and over. "She had a good life."
"Can't change rule number one," B.J. quoted.
Hawkeye smiled ruefully. "That's what the man told me." He sat up and crossed his arms across B.J.'s thighs. "So, listen. Is the kid in trouble?"
"Not yet, why?"
"Because." Hawkeye tapped a rhythm on B.J.'s thigh: some en-CHAN-ted eve-en-ing. "I don't want to be grounded tonight."
B.J. laughed. "We have a date, don't we?"
"My favorite show, my favorite gal, and my best guy." Hawkeye kissed him.
Erin gagged dramatically in the hallway.
B.J. leaned his forehead against Hawkeye's shoulder. "Is it child abuse to leave her in the wilderness for a week with a pup tent and a can of soup?"
~*~
Hawkeye was nearly giddy. Popcorn was procured, Erin situated in the backseat with blankets and her teddy, beverages in bottles -- a grownup sort of treat for a nine-year-old -- were passed around. B.J. 'flavored' two of them with the contents of his hip flask.
The overture was gorgeous. Brilliant, Technicolor pans across tropical islands, lagoons, and jungle nooks flashed on the screen. The first scene came up. The Army huts were made of grass and bamboo, not canvass or sheet metal. A platoon of mostly naked, exquisitely sculpted Charles Atlas men danced and sang about the dearth of women on the island.
"Is that what Korea looked like?" Erin asked from the back seat.
"Only after an oil tanker of gin," Hawkeye muttered.
"No, this is another part of the world, honey," B.J. said. "South Asia, where it's hot. We were north."
"This is Grandpop Hayden's war," Hawkeye said, "before you were born."
In the back seat, Erin lost a measure of interest after that. She thought this movie was going to show her what Daddy and Hawkeye did in the war. Wasn't that blonde lady a nurse like Aunt Margaret?
"Didn't you say you went to the beach sometimes?" Erin said.
"Erin, shush," B.J. said.
"I don't understand!"
"How can you understand if you're not paying attention?" came the inexorable reply.
The screen went all funny colors. Was the projector broken? Weird. Jamie Miles went to the movies every weekend and she said everyone she was friends with had to see Attack of the 50 Foot Woman or there was just no hope for her reputation. It was about a woman who threw off the yoke that her husband put on her (Jamie didn't say why) and then killed him and became a free independent woman like the Negroes were trying to be. Jamie's mother had done the same thing with Jamie's father and now they lived with Jamie's grandmother and it was a very nice situation, all three generations of women in her family living together.
Erin didn't tell Jamie that her dad lived with Hawkeye. She didn't really know how to explain it, even if she wanted to.
Up front, Hawkeye set his spiked soda on the dashboard. "Maybe this picture is too grown up for her."
B.J. glanced in the rearview mirror. Erin was flopped across the back seat, bare feet dangling out the window, nightgown flapping in the breeze.
"Erin, sit up." B.J. set down the popcorn and turned around over the bench seat. "You're showing everyone your underpants."
"I'm hot."
Hawkeye, eyes on the screen, laughed. "So you're airing out?"
Erin shrieked into her teddy. "Don't! Tease me!"
"Hey!" B.J. twisted around in the seat.
Erin flipped over face down on the seat.
"Erin, I'm sorry --" Hawkeye looked stricken.
"This movie is boring!" Erin said into her teddy.
"I've had it, kiddo!" B.J. snapped. "Cool your jets or you're going to get a spanking."
They fell silent, except for the tinny singing from the speaker wedged into the doors, and Erin's muffled breathing. B.J. and Hawkeye shared a guilty look for separate yet equal reasons.
"I'm sorry," Hawkeye said again, looking over the seat at Erin. "It was a stupid joke."
Erin didn't lift her head from beneath her teddy. She was embarrassed, B.J. realized. Tonight, she was supposed to go to a party with her friends and be crowned Miss Popular, but instead she got stuck in a car with her parents who treated her like a little kid.
B.J. handed Hawkeye his popcorn and the car keys and slid out of the car.
"Should I . . .?" Hawkeye said.
"No," B.J. whispered. "You enjoy your movie."
B.J. went around the Erin's side and opened her door. He found her flip-flops on the floor and put them on the ground so she could step into them. She looked up at him, blinking in a shaft of light that fell across her face.
"C'mon," he said. "Let's go for a walk."
He took her back through the rows of parked cars, to the edge of the lot near the bathrooms and the little playground. He stopped at the fence and turned. Erin flinched.
"Are you cold?" B.J. said.
"No," she said. "You said you were gonna spank me."
B.J. sat down so his gaze was even with hers. "Has Mom or I ever spanked you?"
"Yes."
B.J. thought a moment. "Were you two?"
"Yes." Erin fixed him with a crossed-arm sulk. Behind them, the night breeze rattled the swings on their chains.
"Well, you were too little then to understand why it was bad to stick your spoon in the electrical socket. You're still here, and none of your Holly Hobby flatware is permanently fused to your hand, so I guess you learned your lesson."
Erin didn't smile even a little.
B.J. pushed on. "I think you're old enough for a conversation now, at least I hope so."
Erin scowled. "Yes."
"Is the problem that you don't like the movie?" B.J. asked. "Or are you still mad about the party?"
Erin shrugged. "I think this movie is more boring than church."
"Have to go to church, Erin," B.J. said by rote.
B.J. took hold of her little fingers and pried her folded arms apart. "There're a lot of things you have to do, aren't there? Have to go to Mom's house, have to come here?"
"Yeah."
"Then I'll tell you this: you don't have to like the movie. But this is Hawkeye's favorite, and right now, up on that screen, they're singing his favorite song. He used to sing this to me in the war." B.J. colored a little. "Um, because Hawkeye likes to be funny. He brought us here because when you love something, you want to share it with the people you love."
Erin's eyes grew wide. "We should go back!"
"You think?" he said.
"Yeah. So he's not lonely." She tugged on his hand.
Lonely. Interesting word.
"Do you want to sit up front with us?" B.J. said.
Erin appeared to debate this. "If you want."
"I think that can be arranged." Was she okay? Was she still angry? Was he a good dad now? B.J. wished daughters came with meters over their heads that measured their general happiness and sanity levels.
"Wait," Erin said.
B.J. looked down. Her pigtails were all askew because she'd fixed them herself. "What now?"
"I have to go -- " She pointed to the latrines. Bathrooms. Whatever.
B.J. watched the movie without sound. On the screen, the couple moved about in a sepia-tinted European-style garden with about as much chemistry as a drowned bottle rocket. What did Hawkeye see in this dull, inaccurate, old fashioned thing? Calamity Jane had been a lot more fun for all of them.
"Hey," said a voice behind him.
B.J. turned. A handsome man in a Panama hat, slightly overdressed for the movies, was holding up a cigarette.
"Do you have a light?" the petite homosexual said.
"Sorry." B.J. smiled politely. "Don't smoke."
The man smiled back. B.J. turned to the screen, still aware of the other man's presence.
"I think I've got a lighter back in my car," the man said. He raised his eyebrows.
"I'm here with someone," B.J. said, not looking away from the couple pitching woo in paradise.
"Lucky him," the man said, and he was gone with the night.
That never happened before Hawkeye, before Korea. Was it just how things were these days? Was it the city? Or was it him?
Erin reappeared, promising she'd washed her hands, and hustled B.J. back to keep poor sad Hawkeye company. Not for the first time, B.J. was touched by the depth of sympathy little kids could come up with; he was certain he was never that smart at nine.
In the car, Erin climbed across the front seat to claim the middle. Hawkeye subtly moved the spiked sodas out of her purview. But before settling in, she half crawled in Hawkeye's lap and hugged him around the neck.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"I'm sorry too," he said.
And then, because she'd been raised by three people who gave her constant care and affection, added, "Love you."
B.J. watched Hawkeye's eyes shimmer in the movie lights. Hawkeye glanced over her hug to B.J., who shrugged as if to say, 'I don't know where this alien child came from.'
Hawkeye gave Erin the popcorn bag to prop on her knees. "Something tells me this picture isn't exactly Howdy Doody, if you know what I mean. How about you sit with me and maybe we can figure it out together?"
Erin snuggled in, head under Hawkeye's chin, feet in B.J.'s lap, and he never did find out who Cable was because his two favorite people talked through the whole thing. Even an hour and a half later, when Erin started scribbling on the empty popcorn bag with Hawk's prescription pen, B.J. had long lost the plot.
It wasn't the best movie he ever saw, but it was a hell of a date night.
~*~
Hawkeye carried Erin up to bed, letting her flip-flops fall where they may (the hallway). B.J. put her teddy in her little pink doll cradle, where she'd look for it tomorrow. Exhausted, Hawkeye began stripping in the hall before B.J. had even gotten the lights on in their bedroom.
"So what did you think?" Hawkeye said.
B.J. hung his shirt on the back of the desk chair. "It was . . . quite an epic. Really, y'know. Great music."
Hawkeye kicked his trousers in the general direction of the hamper. "I thought it was terrible."
B.J. stared at him. "You what? You said -- "
Hawkeye wiggled out of his shirt without unbuttoning it. "I don't know what I saw in that play. Emil? What a wet potato. And that nurse? Can you imagine a girl like that on Margaret's team?"
B.J. shook his head. "I can't believe we sat through it and you didn't like it."
"You didn't either?"
"What did you think I was telling Erin when I took her to the bathroom?"
"I don't know, I thought you spanked her."
"I sat her down and told her that this was your favorite movie, and she felt sorry for you sitting all alone in the car like a hobo."
"Hobos have Studebakers?" Hawkeye slid his nude body between the sheets.
B.J. climbed in beside him. "You really didn't like it?"
Hawkeye slid his hand under the hem of B.J.'s t-shirt and rubbed his chest. "I don't think I can appreciate any war picture anymore, even if they're breaking into song over it -- especially if there's songs. We sang to keep our sanity. Those guys . . . they were like an all-male tropical USO show. I can't imagine that stupid nurse being any use in a twenty hour surgery-a-thon."
B.J. held onto Hawkeye's arm for leverage, leaned up, and kissed him. They were quiet for a moment, thinking, remembering.
"Also," Hawkeye said, "did you notice how homoerotic all those shirtless dancing sailors were?"
B.J. burst out laughing.
~*~
Erin asked for the LP for her birthday.
Peg started calling them at midnight to inform B.J. that if she was woken to their daughter jumping on her bed singing "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Outa My Hair," he was going to hear about it. Their little girl fancied herself quite the star, but at least her rehearsals for the church passion play cut down on the time she spent with Jamie Miles.
He told her to lay off, he was losing sleep to Rogers and Hammerstein too. At least a miniature fan could be threatened into silence; what could he do about a full grown one waking him from the shower with a skull-shattering falsetto? Someone was gonna let him go, tell you what.
~*~