Chapter 5: Parental approval withheld

Marilyn’s parents and Andy’s Dad met the train. Andy was carrying her suitcase, her book bag, and his own suitcase. His dad took Andy’s suitcase and walked with them until Andy put her stuff in the trunk. Then they took their goodbyes. Andy had his suitcase back when they walked away.

“Really, dear, did he have to come to the car with you?” Mom asked.

“Well, you noticed, didn’t you, that he carried my luggage to the car. If you wanted him to leave me, Dad could have taken my suitcase. I noticed that his dad took his.”

“You’re capable of handling your own belongings. If your case was too heavy, you packed too much. Why did you bring those books, for example?”

“I could carry it. I don’t carry things when Andy is around. He’s a gentleman. Those books carry over from the previous quarter to the next one. I’m going to read a little ahead. I suppose I could have brought just one. Last summer, Andy read ahead in partial differential equations. He had a preview of almost the entire fall quarter by the time he went back.”

“I don’t like all this discussion of Andy,” Dad said.

“Tell Mom. She brought him up. She criticized him for being a gentleman. As for me, I’ll shut up about my life if you want. I’m sure you have more important things to discuss than the life of a young college girl. If I do discuss my life, it’s likely to include discussion of a person who is very important in my life.”

“Of course, we want to know about your life at school, dear,” Mom said. “How was Zeta this quarter?”

“I thought I wrote.” She damned-well knew she’d written. Mom was just trying to avoid that challenge. “We pledged sixteen; they all got through and are now actives. Natalie was pledge chair, and I was vice president. Consequently, I had a lot more to do with the pledges than I’d have preferred.”

“Vice president your junior year,” said Dad. “That’s impressive.”

“Sorry, Dad! The vice president is always a junior. That means I’ll run the first meeting next August. Anyway, I have a new Grand Little Sister, Joyce. Beverly really likes her. So do I.”

“Well,” Mom said, “vice president is impressive, always a junior or not.” Well, yes. The chapter had chosen her from among a dozen juniors. That was impressive if your standards ran to ‘best among a dozen.’

Sunday, again, she and Andy sat together in church. Dad looked sour on the way home, but he didn’t really say anything.

Monday, she went to the Loop to finish her Christmas shopping. She’d not had time between Hell Week and finals. Well, she’d had time for Andy, but not time for both. Andy was a real pain to shop for. After a tie clasp, the natural choice was cuff links, but he didn’t own a shirt with French cuffs, at least he didn’t have one in Champaign. He already had a slide rule, and a quite fancy one. He’d mentioned, too, that they were becoming obsolescent. If shopping for the man who had everything was a chore, shopping for the man who didn’t want anything was worse. Probably she should feel honored that the man who wanted (almost) nothing wanted her so vehemently. She could write him a promise to sleep beside him during her period, and he’d be immensely grateful. That wasn’t the sort of present that she wanted him opening in front of his dad, though. She finally settled on a fancy mechanical pencil and ballpoint pen set.

She shopped Wednesday, too. If she had bought too few presents, she’d wrapped none. Thursday evening, she confiscated all the wrapping paper in the house. She took it and her presents up to her room. She wrapped Andy’s present first and set it on her pillow. Sunday, they exchanged presents before sitting together. She took his home with her and put it under the tree. Monday, she came down for breakfast with her parents. Then she went up to her room. She made the bed and lay down on it with only her shoes off. She had an Andy problem.

She loved the guy, true. He was, despite his weirdnesses, or perhaps because of them, lovable. He loved her and was willing to agree to almost anything if she’d marry him. He wasn’t lying about that, either. When something came up, he wasn’t willing to give up, he was obstinate. But, in ten years, would he still love her enough to give everything up? If they’d made a bunch of compromises, then she would expect him to keep to the compromises. At that point, Mom opened the door.

“Marilyn, why are you sulking up here?”

“Why didn’t you knock and wait for the response. It’s Christmas. What if I were wrapping your present?”

“You have all the family presents under the tree. You never give more than one apiece. Why don’t you answer my question? What’s wrong? Why are you sulking?”

“I wasn’t sulking,” she told Mom. “I was thinking. We have that unabridged dictionary; why don’t you look up ‘think’ in it? Might teach you something.”

“What were you thinking about with your door closed? Is it anything I can help with?”

“It’s something I wanted to think about in privacy. That’s another word you could look up. That’s the reason people close doors, to get privacy.”

“Don’t be snippy with me, young lady.” That was Mom’s mantra.

“I was considering whether to go to the library. I think I will.” She did, got a volume from the encyclopedia, and sat with it open in front of her. She should have had the article on marriage, but she didn’t think about that until she sat down. She hoped she wasn’t taking a volume that some high-school student needed for a class project, but there didn’t seem to be many other people in the library at this time.

Now she could consider her problem in more privacy than she’d ever get at home. Andy claimed that his weird life-style wasn’t his preference, but only the absence of contrary preferences. Would that make him less likely to rebel against following all her choices? It seemed plausible. After all, he made a distinction between eating off plates and sweeping the floor. It simply hadn’t occurred to him to sweep the floor. And, for all that he’d spent his teen years with a housekeeper at his beck and call, he seemed perfectly willing to do any work that he saw needed to be done. The problem was how little work he saw as needing to be done.

Maybe that was a plus, though. If having to eat warm food off plates instead of eating out of a can from the refrigerator tired him of Marilyn, he wouldn’t be tempted to run off with any other woman who expected to eat warm food off plates. At least, that wouldn’t be the reason. If she were condemning herself to a lifetime of trying to find a gift he would enjoy, at least he would never ask why she hadn’t given him what he really wanted. For that matter, when they were married and in their own house, she could always give him an extra sex act. He’d be glad to keep it secret, and she could give him an article of clothing that they could tell the rest of the world about.

Maybe that was what she should do in January. If she slept with him during her period, she could say “Merry Christmas.” That would please him much more than the pen and pencil set, but the set would look good to his family. But that was not the issue on the table.

She loved him, and he loved her – apparently, he loved her much more. Their love would be a fine basis for a marriage, if a rather strange basis for a rather strange marriage. The problem was that Andy wasn’t looking for a marriage. She, to be honest with herself, was. As long as he loved her, as long as he was willing to conform to her desires to keep her in his life, that would be a delightful marriage. And that wasn’t merely because she could get her way. She’d give as much to the marriage as she took from it. If her love cooled, and she couldn’t imagine it doing so, she would still keep her bargain. In the ceremony, it said, “until death do you part,” and she believed in that.

There were reasons to leave a marriage. Abuse, cheating, though she was less adamant about cheating. She’d heard Sunday-School lectures on the difference between a contract and a covenant. Marriage was a covenant, and his breaking it didn’t excuse your breaking it. On the other hand, how much covenant was left if he was always breaking it. Abuse, though, meant being driven out rather than leaving.

But little of that was relevant to her situation. Andy wouldn’t abuse her. Sure, he could hurt her thoughtlessly, although the only time had been a minor hurt and entirely her fault. She wasn’t going to spend the next fifty years in a house with someone, much less someone that big and with that tendency to forget his surroundings, without his stepping on her toes occasionally. But she was going to hurt herself, too. As long as he didn’t intend it, that could be easily forgiven. And Andy would never intend it.

Andy wasn’t the type to cheat, either. Many of her sorority sisters looked much sexier than she did, and she hadn’t caught his eyes wandering. And they hadn’t caught his eyes wandering either; they’d have told her, teased her about it. He’d already admitted to having used centerfolds to get his sex relief. That wasn’t all that different from going to prostitutes, although much cheaper. Still, that frightened her less than a real affair, and she didn’t picture him doing that, either.

She wasn’t afraid of his splitting his attention between her and another woman. She was afraid of his losing all his love for her. He was so intense that it was hard to see that intensity lasting for decades. She could picture normal boy-girl love mellowing into the fondness and cooperation she saw in her parents and in other couples in their circle. What would Andy’s intensity mellow into? What could it? Was she facing him getting totally focused on somebody else in five years? Somehow, she doubted it. Getting totally focused on something else was more probable. Andy wasn’t all that different from the guys who spent their time chasing UFO sightings all around the country. Well, he was scientifically trained, which might let that out.

Still, “I can’t marry him; he loves me too intensely,” sounded damned weird even to her. Time was a problem. Either she married him in June of ‘78, or she didn’t marry him. If she didn’t marry him, anyone else she married would love her less single-mindedly, less obsessively. But in eighteen months, somewhat less, probably, she and he were both going to be looking at job prospects. It would be perfectly reasonable for an engaged couple to limit their consideration to prospects which would bring them to the same place. It wouldn’t be reasonable for two friends to limit them in the same way.

If she told Andy where she was going, he might very well decide to follow her. Probably he could do that easily. If he kept getting the grades he was getting, she thought he would be in great demand. Still, he wouldn’t do that unless she dropped a hint. And dropping a hint would be a promise; however much she told him that she wasn’t making any promises, she would know that. Following him would be making a promise, too, and that would probably be easier. She hadn’t any illusions about how desirable her transcript would make her, but there would be English-teacher openings practically everywhere. But all that was ridiculous. It wouldn’t solve her problem; it would only delay the decision.

One practical thing she needed to do before deciding was to talk to Brittany. Andy kept ignoring his romance with Brittany when recounting the past. She doubted that he was concealing anything dark and passionate. Still, his report as to his past feelings, however honestly it reflected his present memory, might contain a good deal of slippage. Whether he’d been obsessed with her for three years or for two-and-a-half wasn’t the issue. Whether his memory of the obsession represented the facts was. He said he would never change. That was impossible to ascertain, except by waiting to see. But, if he had changed and said he hadn’t, the statement was less likely.

Well, she’d finished her planned final-decision consideration with a good reason to postpone the decision. She put away the encyclopedia volume. She looked through the new fiction section. She selected the most lurid cover to take out. Mom was so easy to shock, and so determined to not express shock. For that matter, Marilyn might actually read it. It would be as close as she could get to sex until she returned to campus. But, if she couldn’t sleep with Andy while they were in Evanston, she could see him. And Mom had actually suggested it.

“Mom, remember how you said I should cook dinner and invite Andy to eat it with the family?” Mom didn’t agree, but she didn’t deny it either. “Well, there wasn’t time in August. Why don’t I invite him over this week? I could fix the meal, and you wouldn’t have to do anything more than supervise.”

“Well, there isn’t time this week, either. Christmas is Saturday.”

“How about Monday, then?”

“All right. Do you want to cook your Beef Stroganoff?”

“It’s my best dish.” She called that evening to invite him. He accepted. He called back Thursday evening to invite her to his house to eat with him and his dad on Wednesday after.

Christmas, Andy’s gift was a gold chain necklace. Girls were wearing that. Mom was quick to call it “costume jewelry.”

“Yeah! Would you have preferred a diamond ring?”

“Marilyn! Has he proposed to you?” Wouldn’t you like to know? She eluded the question.

“Well, you know you don’t want him to. So, don’t complain about what he did give. I think it’s quite pretty.” And it was.

“Are you sleeping with that guy?” asked Pete.

“Unlike some people I might name, his personality doesn’t put one to sleep.”

“Stop that! Both of you,” Dad said. That was terribly unfair, while Pete’s question had been both dirty and terribly intrusive, her answer had merely deflected it.

She wore the chain to church on Sunday. It was really intended for somewhat less formal wear. Girls wore them with jeans and blouses, but not with tees. She thanked him for the gift, and he thanked her for his.

On Monday, he wore khakis, white shirt, and tie. Dad was wearing the suit he’d worn in the office; Pete was in jeans and a sweatshirt. Everyone tried to be on their best behavior, but you could see the strain. Andy lavished praise on her cooking. Mom brought up Zeta.

“Marilyn’s told me,” Andy said. “You were in the same sorority, but in a different chapter. Dickinson, wasn’t it?”

“You remembered.” It was the first appreciative thing Mom had said to Andy. The conversation went on, and she mentioned Joyce again.

“Nice girl,” said Andy. “Another education major, but she’s thinking of the primary grades.” He hadn’t learned this from her!

“You know the girls in Marilyn’s house?” Dad asked.

“Lots of them. I pick Marilyn up, and there are other women there. Football games and dances, Marilyn sometimes introduces me to some of her sisters. I certainly know her line.” Andy was downplaying it, but Dad didn’t have to know how deeply he and she were involved.

“I get the impression that you are the only one she dates.”

“I get the same impression,” Andy said, “house dates excepted. I know parents would prefer their daughters to keep window shopping, but -- sooner or later -- they make their selection. After all, Marilyn was going steady when I met her, back in high school.” And Dad hadn’t objected so strongly back then.

“Well, we’d known Colin.” How well had they really known Colin? Not even Mom had heard about the attempt at date rape.

“Well, yes. But that’s a product of going off to college. If she’d accepted my first invitation for a date, I’d have picked her up right here. You’d have called me in and asked me all sorts of questions and laid down all sorts of rules. Probably, I’d have been your guest loads of times. But you know me better than you know any of the guys she dances with on house dates. You can find out about my Dad by asking at church. Mr. Schmidt was my employer for the past three summers. You’re not interested in most of that, but you can ask him what he thinks of me. That’s as much as you knew about the other boy -- probably more.”

“Really, Dad,” she said, “if this is the first time Andy is eating dinner with us, it’s because it’s the first time he was invited.”

“And I’m open to questions,” Andy said.

“The question,” Pete said, “is if you’re balling her.”

“Pete, you’re a high-school senior, no?” Andy asked.

“Yeah.”

“If I had a suggestion about my sister’s sex life in his hearing, much less at the dinner table, my Dad would turn me over his knee. And I’m three years older than you are. If you want me to think of you as an adult, talk about relativity.”

“Relativity?” Pete, asked. He must have heard the term, but it didn’t sound like it had stuck if he had.

“I could talk about relativity when I was a high-school senior, and I didn’t think I was an adult. Anyway, it’s something adults talk about. They also talk about the recent elections. Schoolboys snigger.” Andy paused and turned to Dad. “I’m sorry, sir. I spoke out of turn. I didn’t have the right to discipline your little boy.”

“Well, Pete was out of turn.” Although she could see that the question he raised was one that interested Dad. Still, he was adult enough to not raise it with Andy. Pete was boiling about being called a little boy. Dad wasn’t going to give him any sympathy for that.

The conversation got better after that, which was the only direction it could go. Andy kissed her goodbye very chastely on the porch.