Chapter 2: The Kiss

Carolyn Nolan loved her family; really, she did. Some days, true, they drove her up the wall. But if, this summer, she was anxious to get back to Northwestern, it had little to do with feeling stifled at home. It hadn’t all that much to do with her classes at Northwestern, although those were becoming more and more fascinating. What she wanted to get back to was her evolving relationship with Bill Pierce. The man could be infuriatingly opinionated, but he also turned her on. He’d invited her for a dinner date when she had been on her way home. The delay hadn’t been thoughtless, although it had turned out to be inconvenient. Thoughtfully, he’d waited for her exams to be over. A thoughtful Bill Pierce was, if difficult to believe, a real gem. And he seemed interested in her; he’d always seemed interested in her.

She got back a week early hoping to see him in church. Maybe he’d ask her out before classes began, she’d have lots of time -- though probably he wouldn’t. Bill was older and a businessman.

“Welcome back,” he said after service. She wasn’t in the choir, yet, and they went out the same door. “Did you have a nice summer?”

“Restful after exams. And you?” Let’s talk. Better yet, why don’t you take me to lunch so we can have a really long talk? But he wasn’t telepathic.

“Pleasant, if a little hot. Can’t say that Chicago climate doesn’t give you variety, sometimes it’s too hot, sometimes too cold, and sometimes too wet.”

“And your luck on the baby front?” Bill was notoriously fond of kids, the younger the better. He walked babies in the back of the church when they got restless and their parents wanted a little break.

“The Bells are awfully possessive, but I have hopes for the Robinsons.”

“Poor Bill. You should start a family of your own.” Whoa girl! It sounds like you’re volunteering. While she liked Bill, that was a step -- several steps -- too far.

“A bachelor has no children to speak of.” Not that she believed that of him. “Besides, one’s own would grow up.”

“Somehow, I can’t picture you with a claim on kids without your holding them in your arms. Secret sins, I can believe; a secret family, I can’t.”

“You, on the other hand,” he said, “look too innocent to have any secret sins.” She didn’t want to look innocent to him. She’d worn her tightest jeans and a blouse which showed a little cleavage on their first date. Talking in church meant he’d almost always seen her in church clothes.

“I’m not innocent at all.”

“Well, if you tell me, you still won’t have any secret sins.” She gave that the laugh it deserved. Sometimes, Bill was a wit; sometimes, he got only half-way. She walked away slowly enough for him to catch up and ask her for a date. He didn’t. He didn’t even offer to drive her home.

Their talk the next week was as friendly, and as fruitless. She went back in the choir. That cut her interactions with Bill down to the once-a-month coffee hours, but maybe he would be more interested if she looked harder to get.

She’d fought enough with Bill, and she knew his politics. She figured that wearing her McGovern button to church would be simple provocation. Many of the other students wore theirs, but she noticed that the older members seemed to think that political buttons weren’t appropriate church costume.

Gladys Hagopian invited her for Thanksgiving dinner for the second straight year. Gladys was a fellow member of the choir, and she and Dan were great people. They were the age of her parents, but not at all so stuffy. When she got there, she found that there was another guest.

“Bill?” She asked. The day was looking even better

“Hey, this wasn’t my idea,” he replied. That cast a little gloom over the day, after all. Gladys intervened.

“It wasn’t the idea of either of you. Guests don’t get to veto other guests. Now, be nice and sit down.” And they were seated side by side. Keith Hagopian was seated on their side of the table, which put their chairs quite close. Barbara, who was quite pregnant, and her husband made up the other side.

Dan, who was a professor and knew what was important, asked what her grades had been the last semester. Bill complimented her on them. She went off on her paper, which had been more important than the exams.

“Professor Kindle was quite nice about my paper on Chicago as a transportation hub. I called it, ‘From the Chicago River to O’Hare.”

“And how long is that?” Bill asked. Well the time wasn’t the important part, although the title might have suggested that. And he sounded interested.

“More than a century. Chicago was first settled and grew because of the river and its mouth. Then railroads came here because it was a big city -- other reasons, of course, but the railroads went from city to city -- the bigger the city the better. Then, because it was an even-bigger city and because it was already a transportation hub for railroads, O’Hare became a major airline and air-freight hub. Sorry!” This was a Thanksgiving party, not a seminar -- and a family Thanksgiving party to which she was a non-family guest.

“I know what it means to have written a paper on a fascinating subject which doesn’t fascinate quite everybody,” said Dan. “Damn frustrating.”

“‘Not quite everybody’” Keith said, “means his entire family. And they’re the ones who got frustrated.”

“After all, it’s better than the minutiae of pushing pills.” Dan was ignoring his son. But he’d been too patronizing towards Bill.

“Minutiae, maybe, but Bill can make his work fascinating.”

“Maybe, just maybe, the fascinating part was less the speech than the speaker. Just maybe.” Gladys was getting too close to the truth. She felt her face warm.

Then, thankfully, the conversation turned to other things. Keith got to report his school progress. It seemed to Carolyn that he was -- despite his father’s academic prowess -- participating in a rite of passage into middle-class adulthood rather than in a search for facts and truth. Then Barbara reported her more basic experiences. Even Bill was interested. Of course, he would be; the result would be a baby.

“Don’t worry, Bill,” said Dan. “You’re invited to next Thanksgiving, too.” Presumably he’d get to hold Barbara’s baby then.

“Bill’s a baby freak, Brian.” Barbara’s husband was the only one not in on the joke. “You can trust him not to hurt them, but you might keep your eye on the door next year just in case.”

“Now, Barbara, I always give a kid back when asked.” Bill was chuckling. He didn’t mind the teasing.

“By an armed mob of parents,” Barbara finished for him. Then, “Really, Bill, isn’t Carolyn too old for you?” She’d been thinking of Barbara as her own age, which left her puzzled. Then she saw where this was going.

“Too young?” Bill was a little slower. “She is hardly jail bait. She’s a grad student, older than you are if she didn’t skip a grade or a year in college.”

“Too old,” Keith explained.

“Like twenty years too old,” Barbara said. Bill caught on.

“Now, Keith. You’ve clearly been enjoying the stuffing.” Bill was understating it. Keith had disposed of more than half the generous amount of stuffing that his mother had made. “That doesn’t mean that I expect you to skip the pie. You like more than one kind of food, and I like more than one kind of person.” Great, she and Alice were pie and stuffing. The question was who was the stuffing and who was the pie.

“Speaking of age, Brian, aren’t you ashamed of yourself for knocking up an immature girl.” Dan was skillfully diverting the discussion. And he was spanking the guiltier of his kids.

“But I didn’t. Barbara is an adult when she’s in Cincinnati, able to give informed consent. She may revert to childhood in Evanston, but I knocked her up in Cincinnati.”

“‘Revert to childhood’?” Barbara retorted. “You’ll pay for that, mister.” After this, though, the conversation got less confrontational. The meal was truly a feast, enjoyable even aside from the company. But Gladys crowned her gifts that night.

“You’ll take Carolyn home, won’t you?” she asked Bill. Bless the woman! And he accepted; what else could he do? The ride was mostly in silence, though. She couldn’t think of anything, and then she asked the second question in her mind. She obviously couldn’t ask why he no longer invited her on dates.

“Which am I, the stuffing or the pie?” That totally lost him.

“Huh?” He was a sexy, handsome, guy. He had been polite since she got back in town. He wasn’t, however, the sharpest pencil in the box.

“You said that Keith could like both stuffing and pie, and you could like both Alice and me. So, which am I?” He paused for a moment.

“You’re definitely the pie,” he said. “A big, beautiful, pie in the window of the bakery. And the bakery is closed -- locked up. I can drool outside the window, but I can’t get the pie.” By this time, he had parked.

“Why do you think the bakery is locked?” Whoa, gal! He may hear you offering more than you intend. Well, how much did she intend to offer? He wasn’t going to be her date to the senior prom; if he wanted to lead her to bed, she would see how that road went. On the other hand, she wasn’t jumping into bed just yet.

“Because I was an ass, but...” He’d taken her wrong, and not about interpreting the offer too generously. He turned off the engine. This conversation was nowhere near a stopping point.

“No! What makes you think it’s locked up?”

“Look, we have a bit of unfinished business,” he started on another tangent. “You were telling me about my greatest faults when we got distracted. Maybe, if you finished that list, we could go on.”

“One evening of blowing off steam wasn’t the end of the world. I don’t want to go over ancient history. You’ve been a perfect gentleman since.”

“If you don’t want to go over ancient history, would you be willing to go out for dinner this Sunday. It seems ridiculous to think of dinner right now, but we’ll be hungry again by then.” He could be funny.

“Much sooner than then. Thanks, I’d like to go out with you.” And she hadn’t begged for this date either -- hinted, maybe, but not begged. And his density, not his reluctance, had made the hint necessary.

He walked her in, but he didn’t kiss her although she gave him every opportunity.

After church Sunday, they ate at a nice, but not fancy, restaurant. He drew her out, asking about her courses. Maybe she was too responsive -- maybe just too particular in her reports.

“Look,” Bill said, “I like to watch you when you talk. I like the sound of your voice. But you’ve taken more prep than I have in economics, and then you take this course what? three times a week?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a compliment that you think I can absorb a ten-minute summary of a quarter’s course. But I’m not quite that smart.” Clever, sometimes he could be damn clever.

“I’m sorry” she said.

“Don’t be. But also, don’t blame me if I don’t get everything.”

“That’s fair,” she conceded. “Look, the details vary -- they vary infinitely. But one problem keeps coming up in all those details. You sell a medicine for blood pressure, right? So do some of your competitors.” He was nodding in agreement.

“Dr. Smith prescribes your drug for one patient. The patient improves dramatically. Dr. Smith is sold on your drug and keeps prescribing it. Dr. Jones prescribes your drug to one patient, and the patient doesn’t improve at all. Dr. Jones goes over to your competitor’s drug.

“Now, you can’t deal with that, even if you know it, in figuring out your sales strategy. The detail is too small. Similarly, economics can’t explain actual consumer choices. Johnny choked on this brand of cereal once; Johnny’s mama never buys it again. Fred scores for the first time while the Pepsi commercial is on. Fred drinks Pepsi ‘cause he finds it much sexier than Coke. And on, and on, and on. We have to simplify.

“But what simplification actually holds the data? And what is a result of actions versus what is a result of accident?” Damn it, she was getting all abstract again! “Look, what was the greatest and longest-lasting drop in GNP since the Great Depression?”

“You’re going to tell me that it was the last one.” His economics education had been by ideologues. Since he knew she wasn’t one of the neo-classicists, he figured she was preaching an opposing ideology.

“Nope! it ran from 1944 to 1947. GI Joe went from freezing in a foxhole on Omaha beach eating C Rations to marrying Rosie the Riveter and living in a Levittown bungalow eating meat loaf. It was much cheaper; his standard of living as measured by GNP went way down. Nobody complained.

“Anyway, that drop in GNP was clearly due to the end of the war. Indeed, if you analyze GNP into separate factors, every factor except defense spending soared over that period. But what of slighter changes? Does dropping GNP -- GDP today -- mean that the government is mismanaging the economy, or is it due to extrinsic causes?” Or, for that matter, did it really represent an improvement?

“Why did they rename GNP?” Probably he was being more sensible about the subjects to discuss than she was. This could be explained over a meal.

“They didn’t quite. They still measure both. It’s just that Gross Domestic Production is a better measure of the economic health of the country. You take GNP, add income payments to the rest of the world, and subtract income receipts from the rest of the world. It isn’t that different for the USA; there are huge differences in some countries where the industries are owned by foreign investors. Look, why not keep that fact in mind, and I’ll wait for them to assign me a class before I give another lecture.”

“That’s fair.” And his response was fair, too -- more than fair, really.

They talked about people they both knew for the rest of the meal. His near-decade of membership gave Bill a wider picture, and his interest in babies over that time meant he was acquainted with more than half the kids there now. On the other hand, the choir gave her a window into the functioning of the church he didn’t get. Three members of the official board were in the choir, and -- among friends as they were in the choir -- didn’t hesitate to discuss issues in front of the others.

He drove her home, invited her out on Wednesday on the way, and walked her to the door. This time, when she turned towards him, he kissed her good night. It was as thrilling as the first one had been. She could feel him firm against her stomach. Well, it was a mutual desire. He finally broke the kiss. When she went through the door, the entertainment room was full of couples doing more than she had done. Maybe they would go inside next time. Her after-church cigarette had been delayed, but it tasted better for that, and for the memories which went with it.

Preparing for Wednesday, she thought out a brief -- comprehensible to laymen -- description of each of the courses she was taking this semester. She might not use them, but they would be better than getting bogged down in her frustration like she tended to do when she winged it. She wore her tightest jeans again and a blouse that revealed her cleavage.

They went to another Chinese restaurant. She used one of her prepared descriptions, but mostly they talked about his work. Again, he parked when they got back to the residence hall. He kissed her at the inner door, but she broke away.