Chapter 5: The weirdest culture of all

Andy and Marilyn needed to be at the station at noon. That meant that they had one more hour than they usually had before church when they awoke that morning. His face shaved, his bladder empty, and his teeth brushed, he felt it only reasonable to use that time to store up memories for their future period of deprivation. Marilyn seemed amenable.

After a long period of her writhing beside him, their kissing and making out, and then her writhing again, he entered her. He loved her and desired her, but the feeling was less desperate than it had been the night before. He stroked slowly through her warmth, supporting his weight on elbows and knees. He loved her, loved the sight of her beneath him, loved the feeling of her around him. Only at the very end, with her hips rising from the bed to meet his thrusts, did ferocity grip him. He drove into her forcefully, and more forcefully each successive time. When she clutched around him, he drove into her violently and poured his love and desire into her.

He slept beside her after that, and she probably slept, too. Then they shared a lovely, if short, shower. He watched her prepare another fancy breakfast. It was delicious to eat, and the preparation was lovely to watch. Although the train station was much closer, they left more time than they ever did for church -- after taking into effect the hour difference. Well, missing the train had worse penalties than missing the introit.

The trip up in the train was a social time. He didn’t mind her sorority when he and Marilyn dealt with it together, and these women seemed to accept that he and Marilyn were a couple. Her parents met her, and Dad met him. After taking the luggage to her family’s car, he went off to Dad’s.

“And how did the quarter go?” Dad asked when they were in traffic.

“Up to now, the grades have been fine. I still have a paper and a project out, and -- of course -- the finals haven’t been graded yet. Still, they felt okay while I took them.”

“Your social life seems to be going well, too. You’re happy about that?”

“Quite happy.” He would rather have Marilyn’s promise to marry him. Really, though, she had promised to think about it.

“And the estimable Miss Grant? Do you think she is happy with your association as well?”

“That’s none of your fucking business.”

“I’m biting my tongue to avoid the obvious retort. If you want to avoid it in the future, choose another adjective.” That was really like the old man. He didn’t say, ‘No. It’s your fucking business.’ On the other hand, he let you know that he could have.

“I’ve heard you use it,” he pointed out.

“But not where it invites a retort like that. I’m saying think before you speak. I’m not saying always avoid swear words.”

“All right. It’s none of your damn business.”

“And, you know, I didn’t ask any intrusive questions.” If, of course, you let Dad decide what was intrusive. “I merely expressed a friendly interest in your happiness.”

“Well, as I told you, I am quite happy. As to whether I’m able to keep her happy, that’s none of your damn business.”

“Fair enough. Have you thought of your Christmas present for her?”

“Thought about? Yes. Decided? no.”

“Well, probably it is wiser to shop up here for someone who lives on campus. You’ve shipped off your presents to California?”

“Yeah. I’m a responsible adult, you know.”

“That’s three separate issues. Are you responsible? Often. Are you an adult? Not yet. Do I know? Really, do you need to ask? I remember the Andy whose diapers I used to change. I accept my children’s limitations. My children might try accepting mine.”

“But yours are so many,” he pointed out.

“Many as they may be, only a few affect you directly, and -- really -- most of our quarrels are about only one. I still think of you as my son, when you want me to think of you as an entirely independent agent.”

“Well, accepting that limitation of yours, means accepting a limitation, a handcuff, of my own. Why can’t I be an independent agent?”

“Ah. When I limit you objectively, then you have a fair complaint. I’ll try to deal with it fairly. What I ask you to accept is my point of view. Parenthood is tragic. Either the nestlings fly away, or they don’t. If they do, our identity as a parent is destroyed. If they don’t, we’ve failed as parents.”

“You don’t seem all that eager to allow me to fly away -- objectively, as you say.”

“Well, really Andy, you’re the sort of kid who needs a college education. It’s not some weakness of yours; it’s talent or ability. I’m not insisting that you stay under my control so I can pay your tuition. I’m paying your tuition because that’s my responsibility. A year and a half more, and you’ll fly away.”

“I’m counting the days.”

“And, “ Dad continued, “I’ll celebrate. I may cry in private, but I’ll celebrate quite honestly. You know, two of us will graduate.

“Anyway, you’ve told me that the course work looks like good grades up ‘til finals. There’s nothing in your courses these days I could understand besides the grades. You tell me that your relationship with Miss Grant is none of my damn business. Has your life in the last quarter had any other aspects at all?”

“Weather, but you’ve seen much the same. A little less, due to the continental effect.”

“Which is?” Dad asked.

“Badly named. Oceans are huge heat sinks. They change temperature much less rapidly than land. So, land next to oceans has less violent swings with the seasons than land in the middle of continents. It should be called the shore-line effect.”

“Except that oceans are the majority surface of earth.”

“Good point. I think it got named because the first scientists studying weather were in England and France. Russia seemed odd to them.”

“The first person to study weather scientifically may have been in Philadelphia -- Benjamin Franklin.”

“Hmm. Didn’t know that. That old man really got around, didn’t he? I knew, of course, about the capacitor and the other electrical developments.”

“Jefferson,” Dad said. “wrote the Declaration of Independence because the other delegates were afraid of assigning it to Franklin. They thought he might insert a pun that they wouldn’t catch.”

“Well, I did have one subject this quarter that would interest you. My very last distribution course was Anthropology. We learned a little about some weird cultures. Apparently, Anthropologists don’t study the weirdest culture of all.”

“I need to keep my eyes on the road. Proceed as though I’d waved my eyebrows at you.”

“Our own.” Okay. He’d decided that, since Marilyn couldn’t be weird, he was. But now he was talking to Dad, who was definitely weird. He, and his society, had rules far crazier than any the course had covered.

Sunday, he got to see Marilyn again. They sat together in church, and their hips, at least, touched. Afterwards, though, they parted. Monday, he went downtown and bought Marilyn a chain like the ones he’d seen girls wearing. He didn’t think that was too intimate a gift. He bought Dad a biography of Tamerlane. He’d checked the library in the house, and Dad didn’t have one.

When he brought his gift over to Marilyn’s house, she gave him a wrapped package, which he put under the tree back at the house. He had a lot of packages for him there. Dad had three. She called the next day to invite him to dinner on Monday. He told Mrs. Bryant he wouldn’t be there Monday night, and then he thought he should tell Dad, too.

“Are you taking Miss Grant out? Should I be sure to get home by a certain time, so you have use of the car?”

“As a matter of fact, I’m eating at her house.”

“And would you like to reciprocate?” Dad had picked up Marilyn’s habit of rhetorical questions. “Really, you can’t invite her here for dinner -- according to the Emily -Post sort of etiquette -- but I can. If you’d like that, you may convey my invitation for Wednesday.” He did, and she accepted.

“She’s had the roast beef,” Dad said. “What would your choice for the menu be? Mrs. Bryant has a good many other dishes she does quite well. The chicken breasts?”

“I think the baked ham is her second best meal.”

“That’s what we’ll have, then.” He told Mrs. Bryant the next day.

“Do you want Miss Grant’s gift first or last?” Dad asked after breakfast on Christmas day. Did he think that anything else was more important? No. He was asking whether Andy wanted to work up to a climax or start from the top.

“Last.”

“You’re the only child of mine who ate sandwiches crust first.” Dad handed him a magazine subscription. Truly he was grateful for the subscriptions, and he loved reading the magazines, but they couldn’t be considered a surprise. Dad opened a package every once in a while. Andy went through everything from Dad, the inevitable tie, Molly’s gift, Mom’s, and April’s, before he opened Marilyn’s. It was a pen-and-pencil set. Immediately, he decided to use them in taking notes.

The next day, she was wearing the chain he’d given her. He was glad he’d thought to put her gift in his shirt pocket although he never wrote in church.

Dinner at Marilyn’s house Monday started off without grace, although they were church members. The beginning conversation was rather stiff. He tried to make nice.

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

“You remembered.” Well, yes, he had. But, apparently, she wanted to be known as a Zate. The conversation continued on that subject.

“I’ve got a great line,” Marilyn said. “I’ve known Little Sisters who got into feuds with their Big Sisters, girls who couldn’t stand their Grand Big Sister at all. But Natalie, Beverly, and I are the best of friends. Joyce looks like a fine addition.”

“Nice girl,” he said. “Another education major, but she’s thinking of the primary grades.” He didn’t want to dominate the conversation, but he thought he should contribute something -- something in agreement with Marilyn, although it was his honest opinion.

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

“Lots of them.” He didn’t know them all, knew fewer than half the pledges, in fact. “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.”

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

“I get the same impression, house dates excepted.” She had, indeed, told him that, but his pleasure was her father’s displeasure. “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.”

“Well, we’d known Colin.” He made that sound like an accusation. Actually, though, he’d tried to present his bona-fides.

“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, 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.”

“The question,” her brother said, “is if you’re balling her.” Make that her brat brother. He could take anything, but that was an attack on Marilyn.

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

“Yeah.”

“If I made 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.”