Chapter 53: Married Life

So, the rest of our honeymoon went pretty much like our first honeymoon, as well as all the other little ‘practice honeymoons’ we had taken up to that point. To be specific, we goofed off and screwed our brains out! We hit the beach in Bermuda, did a few tourist type things, ate too much, drank too much - all the things young honeymooners are supposed to do.

On most cruises, for instance to the Caribbean, every night you sail to a different island, so there is no way to see the night life on land. You miss the boat, and you are screwed. On a trip to Bermuda, however, it’s different. Bermuda is all alone in the middle of the ocean, with nothing else around for about 600 miles or so. Once they park the boat, you just use it as a very expensive and very small hotel room. If you want to hit the nightclubs, feel free. The boat will still be at the dock at 0300. Thursday, we sailed home, we had another formal night on Friday (I wore a suit, not the mess dress), and Saturday we docked.

The fun and games all came to a halt on Saturday. New York and the entire east coast were getting hit with intermittent thunderstorms from the moment we docked. It takes just as long to leave the boat as it does to get on. It was back to hurry up and wait, as we went through debarkation, customs, luggage retrieval, and getting a shuttle bus back to JFK. Then we had a three hour wait to fly to Fayetteville, and the plane had to circle the field for an hour while a storm swept through. Then the airline managed to lose our hanging bag, so we had to wait about an hour for them to realize this and start the paperwork to find it.

I didn’t know how much money it was going to take, but I swore then and there to make enough money to be able to afford limousines and chartered jets!

It was late by the time we got into the Impala and drove to our apartment, which Marilyn had never been to before. Shortly after going through the first full round of the cycle, I had gotten myself a two-bedroom apartment in a nice garden apartment area frequented by company grade officers. I could have afforded a house, but second lieutenants couldn’t afford houses, and I didn’t want to stand out. Second lieutenants can, barely, afford two-bedroom apartments. If anybody asked, I would say that Marilyn’s family had money.

That was technically true. Big Bob was by most standards quite well off. On the other hand, Big Bob also had thirteen kids and never met a dollar he couldn’t spend. His company was notoriously cash poor and survived on accounting miracles. Ultimately, he would sell it to most of his kids, spend the money, mortgage his remaining assets to the hilt, spend that money, and then die broke. I had to admire him - he managed to take it with him! He left nothing but about $150,000 in life insurance to the kids, split thirteen ways.

As I started to park, I immediately stopped and put it into Reverse, and pulled back out on the road. “What’s wrong?” asked Marilyn.

“We need some groceries,” I told her. “I’ve been gone two weeks and I threw everything out before I left.” We found an all-night Stop-N-Rob and grabbed some milk, eggs, bread, and such, and then went home. I dutifully carried her across the threshold, and then went back and unloaded the car. By the time I was back inside, Marilyn was asleep on the couch. I helped her to bed, put away the groceries, and then went to bed myself.

Sunday, we got back to normal. We slept late, stayed home, washed our laundry, and played house. Using the excuse that all her clothing was in the laundry I had Marilyn wear one of my dress shirts and a pair of stilettos. I kept interrupting her work efforts with a different sort of work. That worked until mid-afternoon, at which point she had enough clean clothes that we could go out. I walked her around the apartment complex, and then we went out for dinner.

Monday it was time to get things back to normal. We got up, and I dressed in fatigues and jump boots, and I got Marilyn alive, so that by 0830 we were out of the apartment and on the way to the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles. Marilyn needed a new license, in her new name. She had her New York license and her birth certificate and our marriage license, but still needed to take the tests. After lunch we drove over to the base, and we went about getting her an ID card, so that she could go to the PX, or Post Exchange, sort of a shopping center on the base. It was a long day, but nowhere near as bad as Saturday coming home. Technically, I was no longer on leave, but Captain Harris was, by prior agreement, turning a blind eye to my absence for a couple of days. If your commander cooperated, you could often get someone to sign you in and out with a telephone call so that the thirty days annual leave we accumulated could stretch to cover six weeks, or even more if there was a legal holiday or two in the right place. I had used up my leave during the year, going back and forth to Utica to take care of the wedding, and now I was just over the line.

Tuesday afternoon, Marilyn’s oldest brother Matthew showed up out of the blue, driving a panel truck with all of her remaining clothes and possessions, and some giant bags and boxes holding wedding presents. She had called her family Sunday morning, and we had been expecting them to ship her stuff FedEx or UPS. Before she left home, she had packed everything still there into boxes ready for shipping. Instead, they simply loaded everything into a truck and sent their truck driver son on a trip south. We unloaded the truck and Matthew spent the night with us, in the second bedroom, and then took off again Wednesday morning.

Wednesday it was back to the battery for me. Marilyn was nervous about this, since we only had the Impala, and this would leave her stuck at the apartment. I told her we would get a car for her. I showed her in the Paraglide a variety of listings for used cars, as well as the weekend swap meet in a parking lot off base. I promised to pick up some cash during the week, and we would go car shopping on Saturday.

I was trying to be careful with my money, careful in the sense that I didn’t want anybody to know I had any. It was why I lived in an apartment and drove an old Impala. Second lieutenants with a new wife can’t afford a house or new car. A captain, with a wife who worked, might be able to do those things, but not a lieutenant. It was bad enough being known as ‘Doc’ Buckman; tossing money into the mix would not be helpful. Fortunately, Marilyn had no idea that I was worth not quite three million bucks. Whenever I spent money on her I would always cover it up by saying that I had been saving my jump pay. Since she never knew what a lieutenant was actually paid, she never twigged to the fact that lieutenants can’t afford to fly first class or sail on the promenade deck.

After Matthew went back home, Marilyn and I sorted through our wedding presents. We had a disagreement of sorts over this, since she just wanted to rip and tear like a four-year-old, while I wanted to figure out who sent what. When she asked why, I told her it was so we could send out thank you cards. I might as well have been speaking in tongues for that, since the Lefleurs never sent out thank you cards. “At our house, if you didn’t send out a thank you card, you never got another gift from that person,” I explained.

“Even from your family on birthdays or Christmas?”

“We weren’t that silly. Still, if you got something from your aunts or uncles or whatever, you had to.”

Marilyn simply rolled her eyes at that and allowed me to make a list. At the minimum, we would send cards to my family.

The results were interesting. There was some cash, which we split in half and pocketed, and some checks, which we put aside to deposit in the bank. I was using the credit union on base, and I resolved to take Marilyn over and get her listed on the account. Only my Army paycheck went into that account; she didn’t have access to, or even knowledge of, my brokerage accounts.

We had a large pile of other gifts, too. We got two toasters and three blenders, both of which I already owned, and a pair of fondue sets. I told Marilyn I would put a note on both the battery and battalion bulletin boards and unload them that way. Suzie gave us a very nice set of serving bowls, and my aunts and their families gave us some nice flatware and some extra Corelleware. Finally, after we went through everything, we couldn’t find anything from my parents. We looked all over the apartment, to see if we had left it in the spare bedroom, or if Matthew had put it down somewhere we couldn’t find. There wasn’t anything to be seen. Mystified, Marilyn called her parents, and they checked with Matthew, to make sure we hadn’t left it in the van, or upstairs in her old bedroom.

Finally, I just shrugged. “Maybe my folks forgot it at home. They’ll probably mail it this week. I’ll check with Suzie tomorrow.”

That was a very strange phone call. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered, so I called Suzie on an outside line from the base the next day. Suzie told me that they hadn’t packed any presents other than hers, and that she hadn’t seen anything around, and that she would check with our parents when they got home from work. I called her later that night, getting hung up on by Ham in the process, and then calling back ten minutes later and getting Suzie. I could hear my brother on the line, so I told him to get off the phone, and then Suzie started yelling at him, and there was a click as he hung up.

Suzie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s really weird, Carl,” she told me. “Nobody will tell me anything about the present.”

‘What do you mean?” I lowered my voice, too. Marilyn was watching television in the living room, and I was on the phone in the bedroom.

“Well, I asked Dad, and he simply told me to talk to Mom. He was acting really strange, too. So, I went and asked Mom, and she got real hyper about it, and started yelling about you two and how you had lost the present, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was or anything, and I swear, there was nothing in the car!” she answered.

I began to feel sick to my stomach. “She wouldn’t even tell you what we had lost?”

“No, and she wouldn’t answer any other questions either. I was sent to my room for asking.”

“Suzie, I don’t think they gave us anything,” I whispered.

“I don’t either, and now Dad’s embarrassed and Mom’s angry you found out,” she admitted.

I was silent for a minute, long enough that I could hear Suzie going, “Carl? Carl?” on the other end. Was my mother that unhappy with me? Or was Hamilton working on her somehow? Or had he destroyed the present?

“I’m here, I’m here. I was just thinking. Suzie, here’s a job for you. Go to the store and buy something, maybe a really nice and big Crockpot. Then take it over to Louise’s and wrap it and mail it to us. We’ll tell Marilyn that they found it at home and must have forgotten to pack it.”

“This is so bizarre, Carl!” she told me. “I can’t believe they did this intentionally!”

“It is what it is, honey. You just take care of that and then send me a bill to my office. I’ll send you a check.” I waited for her to grab a pen and paper, and then gave her my office address.

We hung up and I went back into the living room and told Marilyn my mom found the present in the living room behind the couch, where it had been kicked, and they were mailing it out. It was years before I ever told her the truth.

The next day, I called my father at his office. “Dad, you got a minute?” I asked.

“Uh, yes. Welcome back. How was the cruise?”

“Just fine, thank you. Listen, I have to ask you, what’s going on with the wedding present. Suzie says Mom wouldn’t say what it was, but that we’ve lost it. What’s going on?”

“Uhh...” Dad hemmed and hawed for a moment. I could almost hear the gears turning as he tried to think of something.

I pushed a little more. It certainly wasn’t the value of the present that I cared about, but I needed to know what was happening. “Did Hamilton destroy it? Suzie says nothing was in the car but her present, and we got that. Did Mom forget it? Or wasn’t there a present at all?”

“Carl, maybe you should be asking your mother this question,” he replied, ducking the answer.

“No way, I’m asking you. Was there even a present? Or does your answer already mean there wasn’t one.”

“I don’t know, Carl. Your mother said she would handle it, but I don’t remember packing anything,” he answered, lamely.

“Okay, well, that answers that question, I suppose. Just curious, Dad, is it me she hates, or Marilyn?”

“Carl, it’s not like that!” he protested.

“Yeah, whatever you say, Dad, whatever you say. Good-bye, Dad. Give Mom my love. I’ll leave you all alone.”

I could hear him protesting as I hung up the phone. There was a time when I would have cried about it, but I just didn’t care anymore. I had had it with the drama. I’d let Suzie know what had happened and mail her my old house key.

Within a few days of my being back, Marilyn got a letter at the apartment from the Fort Bragg Officers Wives Group, asking her to join. Marilyn’s not a big joiner on that sort of thing, but I pushed her to go to a meeting and meet the others. I knew that she would enjoy it, and I also knew that it would be helpful to her. She was far from home, without any friends, and in a place she didn’t know or understand. I also knew, in a mercenary sort of way, that a wife can make or break you. Marilyn would never hurt me intentionally, but what she didn’t understand could hurt me unintentionally. I was right, too; she came back babbling happily about some of the other wives she met and talking about their next meeting. Also, a few of the wives would visit and give her an introduction to the Army and the post.

Marilyn adjusted to life in the cycle about as well as I expected her to. She didn’t like it, but Marilyn had never given me grief about my working hours before, and I didn’t expect her to now. The support cycle was the easiest, and we were still finishing that. Training cycle was next, and while she didn’t see as much of me, I was always home at night, and usually had my weekends free. The six weeks of ready cycle were very unhappy for her. The days were very long, and often there were overnight readiness exercises and drills.