Chapter 15: Common Ground

Saturday, August 24, 1985

The six of us were up and fed, drinking coffee and reading the paper, by the time Candice and Sherry emerged from the basement around eleven. They both had big smiles on their faces.

“We love the apartment!” Sherry said. “It’s so quiet! And homey, too!”

“They must have put in a lot of insulation,” Candice said. “Not even the usual creaks of a house. We didn’t hear you walking on the floor or the stairs or anything.”

“They did,” Cammie said. “The house is intended to be separately rented apartments, and people want that and will pay extra to get it. Even close friends don’t want to feel like they’re on top of each other.”

“Though you’re literally on top of everyone,” Jas said.

Everyone laughed at that.

“We are superior, yes,” Mel said, grinning.

“Head in the clouds,” Paige pretended to mutter, getting more laughter.

Sherry grinned at all of this.

She put words to what I’d been thinking, saying, “This is ... different. I really like it! UH was just ... honestly, it was just cold. If I’d lived closer, or tried, it would have been different, probably. I mean, I knew it was probably just for one year. But, you know ... drive in, walk to class, see some people, walk back to my car, drive off. No hanging out, no lunches, no talking over coffee. None of that. I had far more friends in high school. There’s no one at UH who will have me thinking, ‘Gee, maybe I should catch up with her.’”

Candice hugged her, and said, “I’m sorry...”

“Nah,” Sherry said, hugging Candice right back. “You didn’t ‘put me through that.’ I chose it! This is better for both of us. UH wasn’t going to be ‘cool’ even if we both went there and got an apartment close to campus or something. This? This is cool!”

“Well, good, then,” Candice said, giggling.

I had the feeling this was a long-standing discussion we were perhaps just slightly intruding upon. Nothing too private, but it sounded like something they talked about regularly.

We talked just a bit more, but it was pretty much time to meet the parents. They were going to meet us at the MSC and it would take us some time to walk there.

Along the way, we pointed out Hullabaloo Cafe. Both of them had followed our advice and would have the same limited meal plan we had. They also both had a reasonable amount of spending money. I was pretty sure they would both enjoy the cafe, and — even as close to the house as it was, in truth — it was a nice change from heading home to get lunch.

Sherry again said she was going to have to work up to walking the campus and Candice agreed. Cammie suggested they might want to talk to their parents about bikes, and both quickly agreed. Some bike shop might be getting a couple of extra sales this afternoon, I guessed.

That was, probably, another change. I doubted Candice had biked to Duschene. Maybe? Sandy had let loose the reins a bit, but I don’t think Candice had really had much freedom since things went wrong. Nor would she have wanted it, at least for most of that time.

That was something to watch. She had Sherry watching closely, though, and the six of us provided plenty of extra eyes as well.

We wound up waiting for a few minutes before the parents arrived.

Anne, Natalie, and their parents arrived first. Most of us had only very briefly seen the Evanses before. They knew us, but mostly only by reputation. Natalie and the Brenners were brand-new to all of us, though Cammie and Angie (but not Mel or Paige) had spoken to Natalie on the phone a few times.

Anne had a big hug for me, and whispered her thanks for helping. And, implicitly, for not helping ‘too much.’

Natalie had a big hug for me, too, and whispered her thanks for my helping Anne when she joined Debate. I said I’d always been very happy about Anne joining our merry band of troublemakers. Natalie giggled at that and said Anne was much more of a troublemaker now than she’d been before.

That was almost certainly true. Of course, we all had that in common. Many of us were highly involved in causing ‘good trouble’ across the state, and some of us (myself definitely included) on a national level as well.

The Matthews and Doyles joined us a few minutes later. Once they were there, and everyone had met everyone else, we headed to the cafeteria. If they’d wanted it to be a preview of dining-plan cafeteria food, it wasn’t, and we made sure they knew it. The regular cafeterias offered decent food (and plenty of it). This was a step up: food they could sell for a reasonable price. It wasn’t Luby’s, but it was distinctly better than the dining plan provided.

It was a nice place to eat and a good place to talk. The house really wasn’t, not for eight parents, ten college students, and two younger kids. Also — and this can matter — the house was our place, not their place. This was neutral ground, neither ours nor theirs.

Unsurprisingly, there was no twenty-person table. We wound up sitting in a parents’ group and a students’ group, with Cindy and Danny stuck with the parents. That seemed like the best fit for everyone. It did mean few of us would really get to know the Evans and the Brenners, but there was plenty of time to change that.

And, really, the Evans and the Brenners could use some time talking to the Doyles and the Matthews.

Mom and Dad had let go of Angie and me slowly, over years, with careful, well thought-out relaxation of the rules. Camille and Francis had done so, too. Tony and Jean had come close, though some of that was Paige forcing the issue. Meanwhile, the Rileys had come to it late, while it had been rather explosive for the Clarkes.

Still, the six of us had been ‘on our own’ for a year, and (for the most part) had been treated as adults for longer than that.

The Doyles were the only ones with a similar experience, but Sherry had only been perhaps halfway on her own for the last year. Candice, on the other hand, had never been treated like an adult. Ironically, the freedom she’d had as a freshman was much more than she’d had since then.

Oh, she and Sherry had been free to have sex, go to the mall, and do many other things. But those were all granted, not inherent. There had always been a clear rule: Sandy and Erwin could take those privileges away at any time. Mom and Dad could have, too, but it was obvious it would have taken enormous misbehavior. For Sandy and Erwin, the threshold for misbehavior was far lower.

Much of that had been necessary. There was no question about that. Candice had, truly, done nothing wrong, but she had presented a danger to herself, and that justified a lot of caution.

It hit me that it probably was important that Sherry and Candice were moving in with us and not living in an apartment by themselves somewhere. The dorms — places designed to present a college-student-appropriate amount of ‘in loco parentis’ — might have worked, if not for their relationship. Well, that, and Candice would have gotten constant subtle pressure to date guys and could never explain why that wasn’t an option, even if she hadn’t had a girlfriend.

We understood, and we were also good role models for (as my kids would have put it) ‘adulting.’

Training wheels, perhaps, but very subtle ones. I wasn’t sure any of the parents had consciously picked up on this. In my experience, many parents truly don’t understand the real issues kids face when they go off to college. For one thing, it varies quite a bit by generation. For another, many parents are simply not equipped to understand that their ‘young adult’ is, simultaneously, both ‘ready’ and ‘not ready.’

That’s why many universities are so adamant about dorms. Being around older positive role models and having supervision that lets the little stuff go but helps to keep you from wrecking your life — and isn’t personally invested in you, nor aware of what you did when you were younger — is a big deal.

We didn’t need that. Candice and Sherry really couldn’t have it because of their other issues.

I hoped our kids wouldn’t need it, either, but that was a question for at least twenty years from now (or, at least, I hoped it was that far away). Angie and I were uniquely positioned to be good parents, I thought, and we would help Jas and Paige learn.

That, and all four of us had learned parenting from some very good parents ourselves.

I hoped we would get to know the Evans and the Brenners better over time. They were obviously good people. Anne was wonderful and I imagined Natalie must be, too. They’d stood by their daughters in going to the prom together. More importantly, they’d stood by their daughters working to make sure everyone else who wanted to could go to their proms together, too.

When we parted, Anne, Natalie, and their parents were off to shop. The rest of us weren’t sure what to do next.

Candice and Sherry made their case for bikes, and their parents agreed. We all wound up meeting at a bike shop a couple of hours later. Angie drove her car, I drove mine, and the parents drove both of theirs.

We needed them all. Eight bikes (one of which required reminding Cammie of her upcoming commissions), locks, and other paraphernalia later, we headed back to the house. Two bikes fit comfortably in my trunk, two in Angie’s, and we each had one in our back seats. The parents had Candice’s and Sherry’s.

We would need a bike rack, I thought. We had no obvious place to store eight bikes and none of us wanted them out in the driveway. Behind the fence just made sense.

I wasn’t sure how often we would use them. My plan was to use one for classes for which I would leave the house, go to class, then return, with none of the others attending that class. Walking is much better for talking, but bikes are efficient and relaxing. They also work somewhat different muscles, which is a plus.

Biking could also be really good exercise. I could see us riding, individually or as a group, over to West Campus (the area out past the BFE lot and baseball stadium, home to many College of Agriculture buildings) just to do it. There was little traffic on the campus roads over there, as a rule, and it would be relaxing and enjoyable. We could employ our Walkmen (we still agreed that was the proper collective noun, even if no one else did) and just enjoy things.

Who knew? It seemed like a good idea, and it would, very likely, be great for Candice and Sherry, especially until they met some new friends. We would have some, but not a lot, of overlap with Sherry and much less still with Candice.

On the other hand, Anne, Natalie, and Candice might have a number of classes together. They didn’t know each other at all, but that was, most likely, a good thing. Anne and Natalie would be completely unaware of Candice’s crisis. It would need mentioning, since they would inevitably hear about Candice spending a semester at Memorial, but that was it. Different people, different ages, but the same grade, hailing from the same part of town, and all gay. It gave Candice a couple of sympathetic potential friends right off the bat, even before figuring in GSS.