Chapter 8: Behind the Scenes

I suppose that Hayden and I agreed too quickly to Brian having a Halloween party and inviting all the signers of the agreement to spend the night. What I saw was Jennifer and Courtney coming for the night—accompanied by Anna.

What was relatively simple for the kids to think up and plan was significantly more complicated for the parents. To a kid, all you need to do is invite your friends over and make some food. Hayden and I had to talk to every parent of every teen in the group. Again.

It was getting easier. After we organized the calling list, I had Brian type it up on his new computer and print out copies for every member of the group and every parent. Not everyone was equally enthusiastic. Paul and Amanda Lenox volunteered to help in any way they could. They were used to having Brenda’s massive parties each spring and apparently, they had often extended into a girls’ sleepover. Rex and Maria Davis, Rose’s parents, were a big help as well. We were seeing more of them as the kids got older.

On the other hand, Jim and Jill Swift, Doug’s parents, were as aloof as ever and suggested we just write down Doreen as the contact. Lily Cortales continued to distrust her daughter and by extension all the other kids in the group. Jack Raymond, Denise’s father, was torn. Even on the emergency contact list he wanted it specified that if someone else picked up his daughter, they would keep her for the night and not risk coming into their neighborhood. I didn’t think the neighborhood was that bad, but Jack was worried. And, although Candace’s mother, Alice, was accepting, her father, Fred, was even a little belligerent about taking his little girl away. It seemed he had a bit of a drinking problem. We kept his name on the list of contacts given to the adults but struck it from the list for the kids.

The Fishers were an interesting couple. Carl had been one of Brian’s best friends for several years. He was a big, ungainly, sandy-haired boy who was truly just getting his feet under him. I knew his older brother, Bill, was friends with Jessica and that he’d done his share of bodyguarding Brian over the years. The younger brother, Rich, was already as tall as his brothers. He seemed like a quiet boy but I really only saw him peripherally. Z and Cora, their parents, were busy. They just shrugged when I spoke to them about the party and the agreement.

“Boys will do what they will do,” Z said. “I’ve told them all about condoms and how to use them. One of them knocks a girl up, he’ll have to support her. They won’t live here. You can put our names and numbers down but don’t expect any kids to call us in an emergency. They’ll never grow up if we sit around ready to catch them every time they trip.” That was that.

I had to take Evelyn Gordon with me to talk to the Harrises. Ken and Claudia were nice people but hard for me to read. They had every concern that I felt good parents should have. How would the party be chaperoned? What would be the sleeping arrangements? Who was paying for things? Yes, they knew about the agreement but did we really think fourteen and fifteen-year-olds could control themselves when faced with the reality of their hormones? Ken, especially, didn’t want to think of his little girl spending the night with boys in the room. He was a construction worker and knew what boys were like. He’d already had a talk with ‘that Doug boy’ and warned him about proper behavior. Claudia ended up convincing her husband that they should give it a try and Ken agreed after telling us he would be up and ready to come get Rhiannon at a moment’s notice.

Maybe the surprise of the group was a pair of the most unusual parents I’d ever met. I had seen Irene and Lech Nowicki at school events but had never had the opportunity to get to know them. Evelyn had told me that Hannah spent a lot of time with Liz over the summer and they seemed to have a good time. Her parents were two of the loudest and most jovial people I’d ever met. And they were almost as old as my own parents.

“Liz is our last,” Irene laughed. “Unless Lech gets randy at the wrong time of month again.”

“That was an accident,” Lech said, looking like the fact that he had a fourteen-year-old daughter was a complete surprise to him. “She came along six years late. I thought we were past all that!”

“Well, one more time for old time’s sake,” Irene sighed. “I don’t think it’s going to happen again. Twelve is quite enough, thank you.”

“But you have to look at this party ... the whole dating agreement ... from our perspective,” Lech said. “There is not much our little Liz could do that we haven’t seen with one or more before her. We’ve done our best to scare the hell out of her, so now we’ll see if it takes.”

“She’s a good girl, Marilyn,” Irene said. “But she has a wild gene in her. I’ll consider us successful if she graduates from high school before she’s pregnant. Maybe this agreement thing will slow things down a little. We can only hope. So, what can we do to help with your little party?”

The other surprise was meeting Regina and Malcolm Evars, Sugar’s parents.

“A night with the house to ourselves?” Regina exclaimed. “Baby, get your rest, we’re going to have a party, too. Just you and me.” Her husband, just as rotund as Regina was, actually giggled.

Well, ultimately there was only one other set of parents I needed to meet and I was looking forward to it.

“Isn’t Hayden with you?”

“I took the afternoon off work to drive down here but he couldn’t get time off. I used to think we never had time when he was farming but having a regular work shift means everything has to be arranged around his work schedule.”

Anna led me into her lovely home and I met Bill and Crystal Price for the first time.

“If anyone understands how difficult it is to work around an immovable schedule, it’s us,” Crystal said as she took my hand. “Since we opened the restaurant, we haven’t had a moment to call our own. We are just so thankful that we have Anna ... not only for our daughter but as our friend.”

“There have been a few nights when we sat in the kitchen here and polished off a bottle or two of wine while we cried about how hard life is,” Bill said. “We’re covering operating expenses and the restaurant shows a profit on paper but we’ve lived off an inheritance for seven years and we have to start paying ourselves sometime soon.”

“That must be incredibly hard.”

“The hardest has been what it’s done to our relationship with Courtney,” Crystal said. “It’s almost like shared custody. Anna has been as much a mother to her as I have. I love my daughter, Marilyn, but I don’t think I’m a very good mother.”

Bill poured wine and I had a fleeting thought about the hundred-mile drive I’d have to make back to Mishawaka later in the night. Just before I accepted my first glass.

“Anna, we trust you. Will it really be okay to let the girls be with this group on an overnight?” Bill asked.

“They’ve already been on one overnight with two of the other girls and Brian,” Anna said. “They survived. And I think they came home better for it.”

“What’s the story, though? I’d just come to accept the fact that our daughters were lesbians and would never date boys.”

“It’s obvious to me just from the first meeting that the girls are very close to each other,” I said. “When I saw the five of them together, though, I saw something that ... I don’t know them well ... But it looked like they were open to much more than I’d ever think fifteen-year-olds would be. I think they are still exploring what it means to have a relationship and as long as they were exploring it with each other and with my son, it seemed like they weren’t limiting themselves to that.”

“We all want our children to be mature and willing to have new experiences. It’s just a lot to take in. I feel like I missed so much of Courtney growing up and now I look at her and see a young woman instead of a little girl. It seems that when she’s home, she has her head buried in some computer she building,” Crystal said as Bill poured us all more wine. “You’ll be there, too, won’t you, Anna?”

“We certainly hope so,” I said. “I mean Hayden and me. I think it will take at least the three of us to chaperone this party. I’m considering whether to ask Evelyn Gordon to join us.”

“If I’m invited, of course I will be there. I was sort of hoping I would be,” Anna smiled at me.

We continued past dinner time and finally ordered Chinese carry-out. I called home and Hayden told me that he and Brian had eaten and Brian was studying. He made up a story to tell Brian about me being called to my cousin’s house in Louisville for a bridal shower and wouldn’t be home tonight. I’ve never actually heard of a bridal shower being held on a Tuesday night but hopefully my son had too many irons of his own in the fire to notice.

The girls were at Bill and Crystal’s house and after checking in with them, it was determined that no one would drive tonight. Bill opened another bottle of wine.

“Are you okay with this, Marilyn?” Anna asked as we stood on opposite sides of her bed. “I mean, I had to give Bill and Crystal the guest room. I could strip the girls’ bed and make it up if you’d rather not be in here.” She was blushing and by the heat in my face, I could tell I was, too.