Chapter 85: Burnout

June 15, 1992, Chicago, Illinois

Dave had hired two programmers, and to the delight of Doctor Bauer, both had come from IIT. Jeannette Orozco, whom I’d met in Doctor Driesson’s class, and Kanye Frye, who I hadn’t met before I’d had the brief ‘veto’ interview that I usually conducted. I greeted both of them before turning them over to Chris Gibson to fill out their withholding forms and get their IDs, because I needed Kimmy at the leadership meeting.

It was a busy day, though Elyse and I left the office about an hour earlier than usual to meet her Aunt Jennie, Kent, Colin, and Chelsea.

“I believe you added one since the last time we were here!” Jennie said with a grin when I invited them into the house late on Monday afternoon.

“We did! Ashley is over there with Birgit, Stephie, and Amber, our friend Penny’s daughter. Your kids are growing up fast!”

“Chelsea is almost eight now, and Colin is eleven!”

“Come sit in the sunroom. The boys are just getting cleaned up after playing outside.”

True to what I said, about five minutes later Jesse, Matthew, Michael, Albert, and Nicholas came into the room with Abbie. I saw Chelsea tug on her mom’s blouse.

“Matthew is SO cute!” she said.

I chuckled and looked at Jennie who rolled her eyes. Chelsea moved over to where the boys were. Jennie leaned close to me.

“She’s looked at his picture almost every day for the past year! I think she has a crush on him!”

“Going for the younger guys? Just like her mom?”

She made a face, but Kent was using the bathroom so I felt safe teasing her since he wouldn’t hear my comment.

“Shush!” she said with a grin.

“Matthew! Hi!” Chelsea exclaimed.

“Hi!” he said.

“I’m Chelsea? Remember?”

“You visited last year!”

“Yes. You’re cute!” she said.

What happened next had me stunned. Chelsea hugged him and kissed him on the lips.

“I want to marry you!” she exclaimed.

With a look of sheer terror, Matthew wriggled free from her hug and ran from the room as if being chased by a lioness. And maybe that was an apt description.

“Crush you say?” I chuckled. “Wow!”

“Chelsea, he’s your cousin,” Jennie said. “I don’t think you can marry him!”

I laughed because one of the things Gwen had mentioned when we were sorting out all of our arrangements for the kids was that Illinois allowed first cousins to marry. And Matthew and Chelsea were more removed than that, given that Jennie was Elyses’s Aunt, making Chelsea HER first cousin, and Matthew’s first cousin, once removed.

“Illinois would allow it for sure,” I said softly. “I don’t know about Ohio.”

“I don’t even know where that came from!”

“A girl determined to get her man!” I laughed. “Elyse, we better go see if he’s OK, or if he’s packing his bags to run away to join the NASCAR circuit!”

I went out and looked around and didn’t see Matthew so I went upstairs and found him in his room. He wasn’t packing, but he had turned on his SEGA and was putting in a game.

“Foo, are you OK?” I asked.

“Girls are yucky!” he protested. “I don’t want to get married!”

“I think you might change your mind about girls when you get older, but nobody says you have to marry Chelsea or even get married if you don’t want to.”

“She kissed me! On the lips! An adult kiss!”

I nodded, “She did. But you know Jesse has done that with Francesca, Kristin, and Amber. And you’ve seen Birgit and Stephie kiss Nicholas. None of them are getting married!”

“But I don’t like girls like Jesse does! He wants to kiss and hug and stuff and girls are icky!”

“Then you just ask Chelsea to not hug or kiss you. I think she’ll listen. You should still be nice to her. But no kissing unless YOU want to. OK?”

“Will you tell her?” he asked.

“Yes. Why don’t you come back downstairs with your mom and me?”

I took his hand and we went back to the sunroom where Chelsea was sitting with her mom and dad. We walked over to them.

“Chelsea, Matthew wasn’t happy that you kissed and hugged him without asking if it was OK. You guys can play together, but in this house we make sure we have permission to kiss and hug.”

“OK,” she said.

“Chelsea?” Jennie prompted.

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” Chelsea said, sounding sincere. “Could we be friends? Would you show me your toys?”

He looked at me and I nodded.

“OK,” he agreed reluctantly. “But no hugging or kissing!”

They left the room and I assumed he was going to show her his SEGA, since most of the toys were on shelves on one side of the sunroom.

“That was supremely weird,” Elyse said, laughing now that the kids were out of the room.

“There’s never a dull moment here,” Michelle laughed.

“No, there isn’t!” I grinned.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to introduce you before the ruckus!” Elyse said.

“We took care of it,” Jennie said. “Steve, where’s the rest of the gang?”

“Kara is closing out the chemistry lab for the summer. She has to do inventory to see what they need to order before the Fall. She should be home any time now. Jessica is on shift until 10:00pm tonight. Bethany is at work and will be home around 5:30pm. And Jennifer and Josie will be home around 5:45pm.”

“It’s still a circus here,” Kent laughed. “And I guess my daughter just added to it!”

“Talk to me in ten years,” I chuckled. “He’ll be fifteen and THEN we can worry about it! I suspect her crush will fade and she’ll find a guy in High School back in Cincinnati long before Matthew is old enough to be interested in returning her affections.”

“Are Jesse and Francesca still an item?” Jennie asked.

“It’s cooled a bit, but yes. The kids are trying to figure out relationships. I’m not exactly the best model for one-on-one relationships.”

“There’s an understatement,” Michelle giggled.

“Are you guys still at St. Andrew’s?” I asked, ignoring her.

“Yes. Father Buschmiller left back in ‘84 right after the 40th anniversary of his ordination. He was moved, as usual for priests, and he’s now associate pastor at St. Cecilia’s in Oakley.”

“I hate that they move priests,” Michelle said. “We had a great one back home in Lansing, then they rotated him out and the new one isn’t nearly as good.”

“I think I’ll leave you faithful Catholics to talk and go start on dinner,” I said with a grin.

I went to the kitchen to start preparing dinner. Kara and Bethany stopped in for hugs and kisses before going to spend time with Kent, Jennie, and the kids. Kara came into the kitchen just before I was ready to call everyone to the table.

“Michelle and Jennie seem to be hitting it off really well,” Kara said.

“Did they tell you what happened with Matthew and Chelsea?”

Kara laughed, “Yes. Elyse told us. Nothing around here is ever normal is it?”

“And we wouldn’t have it any other way!”

June 17, 1992, Chicago, Illinois

“What time are you heading out?” I asked Kent on Wednesday morning after breakfast.

“Around 10:00am. That gets us back to Cincinnati before 6:00pm. Thanks for your hospitality.”

“Any time! I just wish you didn’t have to stay in the hotel.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Kent said. “You fed us all our meals and let us come and go as we pleased. The kids really enjoyed going up the Sears Tower, and your boys had fun. Matthew kept his distance from Chelsea, though.”

“Do you blame the poor kid?”

“No!” he laughed.

“I’m going to say goodbye. I have a full day at work today. Come visit us again.”

“We will!”

We went to the sunroom where Jessica, Kara, Jennie, Abbie and the kids were. I said goodbye to Jennie and her kids, then kissed my kids and wives goodbye.

“I’ll be in once Aunt Jennie leaves,” Elyse said. “And I’ll make sure the goodbyes between the cousins don’t create another uproar!”

I chuckled. “It’ll be interesting to see how that develops. See you at the office?”

“Yes!”

I kissed her, then went to kiss Jessica, Kara, and the kids and headed to the office.

When I arrived I went straight to Kimmy’s office to get a status update on the new building. Everything was moving along as expected and there was nothing I needed to approve so I went to my office and answered e-mail, returned phone calls, and reviewed reports. I longed for the day I could have my sister do this part of the job, but that was still years in the future.

“Ready for lunch?” Jeri asked at 11:45am.

“Yes,” I said. “Anything to get me away from all this paperwork!”

We left the office and headed to the diner where Crystal had worked during the school year and sat at one of the booths in her old area. A completely disinterested girl, who I guessed to be sixteen or seventeen, took our order.

“I’ve been thinking about how involved I am in the Foundation stuff, and I have to say that it’s really starting to eat at me. Especially girls like Lisa and another one I met at the hockey game, Gracie.”

“I thought you were used to getting hit on and liked having a wide range of options!” Jeri countered.

“I did. And, to a point, I do. But it’s the WAY it’s happening and why it’s happening. I don’t have a lot of respect for Noel and Valerie Spurgeon, given what I’ve seen in Samantha. And you know what I think about your mother.”

“What happened with Gracie and Lisa?”

“Lisa has offered to sleep with me on multiple occasions. She’s engaged! You know my rule in that regard. And before you say anything about my wives, I don’t care about comparisons. I won’t mess around with another guy’s girl. Period. She also came right out and said she knew I ‘cheated’, which means she has no clue about my relationships. I’m not sure she’s going to take ‘no’ for an answer. Gracie propositioned me at both games. And she was blatant about it. She’s underage, which makes it WAY too risky to even contemplate, if I was even interested, which I am decidedly not. Lisa seemed to think it was the way to seal the business deal. I don’t know what Gracie’s angle was, and I really don’t care.”

“So turn them down and make it clear you aren’t interested.”

“I did. But it’s not them, per se, but the entire environment. I’ve changed too much and the conclusions I’ve reached based on the impressions I’ve had so far are that I do not want to be around the people who created the environment that resulted in all these cold, callous, unloving, uncaring people. I think it’s going to be soul-deadening.”

“It is pretty bad. But I really do need your help.”

“I don’t know that I can do it,” I sighed. “And I have to take into account all the work I’m going to need to do to help Samantha turn into a normal, loving person. She’s really a mess. A lot like I was growing up.”

“And me,” Jeri said.

“You seemed to have snapped out of it fairly easily.”

“College helped. I actually made a few friends outside my mom’s social circles, but I could never really do much with them because my mom was so controlling.”

“Samantha is the opposite,” I said. “Her dad pretty much lets her do whatever she wants. It seems ‘love’, and I use the term loosely, in his household consists of buying everything Samantha wants and catering to her every whim. And that’s caused friction with me, because I’ve said ‘no’ to her.”

“Are you going to resign?”

“No. I accepted your invitation so I’ll stay on the Board, but I’m going to skip any events except Board meetings in June and July, and possibly August. I’m too busy. I’ll make sure I give your mother reasonable excuses for not attending. I already have a good one for this month - I’ll be in Iron Mountain next week. The Spurgeons leave for Monaco on Saturday, so they won’t be there, either. I’m sure that happens quite a bit during the summer.”

We ordered our food and the young waitress brought our drinks.

“It does. I’m sorry. Will you at least admit the business contacts are good?”

“Yes, of course,” I said with a smile. “The deal with Alec Glass is excellent, and I like him and his wife. It’s his daughter I can do without. And having access to what is a significantly better broker in Noel Spurgeon’s firm is very nice. I do have to say I’m more than a little shocked that he would so cavalierly allow his daughter to bed a married man.”

“I don’t think he’s ever said ‘no’ to her in her life. About anything. If she told him she was going to be your mistress, I’m sure he said something along the lines of ‘if that makes you happy, baby doll, go for it!’.”

“That’s nuts!” I said. “It’s one thing for a dad to tolerate his daughter sleeping with her steady boyfriend. It’s a very different thing to tolerate her being a married man’s mistress!”

“And what would you tell Birgit?”

“I’d strongly advise her not to do it and I’d encourage her to follow the same rule I do about people involved with others.”

“But you’d let her do it,” Jeri said with a smile.

“There’s a serious difference between accepting her choices and giving my blessing for them. I bet you anything that Noel Spurgeon gave his blessing just like you said. It’s similar to the point I make about the difference between acquiescence and consent.”

“True.”

“How did you manage to escape falling into that manipulative trap when you were a teenager?”

“My mom didn’t grant my every whim. She was a total control freak. The opposite of Samantha.”

“What about Lisa?” I asked.

“Alec set her up with her own money when she turned sixteen. He won’t say it to anyone, but I’m pretty sure he regrets doing that. But the thing is, by that time she had figured out that she could get anything she wanted from any guy by having sex with him. She more or less auctioned off her virginity when she was fifteen.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask, but what did she get for it?”

“A month on the French Riviera.”

“And Alec allowed that?”

“She had cover. The guy had a daughter a few years younger than Lisa. I don’t think Alec knows even now.”

“Does John?”

“I’d guess he knew she had experience, but not how much.”

“And she cheats on him now? Does Alec know about THAT?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Remind me to stay away from her,” I said.

“In all those girls, you never had a girl who was cheating?”

“One blatant one,” I said. “There were, early on, girls who had boyfriends but they knew, so I guess that’s not cheating. But I made my rule even tougher over the years.”

“Would you ever violate it?” Jeri asked.

“I can’t imagine any set of circumstances which would lead me to do that, so no, never.”

“There isn’t that one girl who would cause you to stray?”

I chuckled, “There is that one girl, and everyone involved knows who it is! But no, not even her.”

“Do you mind me asking?”

“Kathy Jaeger,” I said with a grin.

“Not Penny?”

I laughed, “Penny would like to think so, but it’s no contest.”

“Did you and Kathy ever... ?”