Chapter 5: Rules of Engagement

Back at the apartment after announcing their engagement at church, they had a long kiss. When Bill wanted to go further, though, she refused.

“Nope. I’ve got to cook. Lunch will be late enough. And you’ve got to go back in the bedroom while I change. I’m not cooking in my best Sunday dress.” Instead of obeying -- or even arguing -- he stopped in his tracks.

“Look,” he said after a minute. “You’re going to be moving in, right?” What did that have to do with anything? And he was pushing her again.

“Not right away.”

“Fine. But some stuff. It’s ridiculous for your stuff to be out here all the time. My mistress, fine.” Was that what she was? “My wife, absurd. So why don’t you start the kitchen work while I shift closets? Don’t put anything on the fire but get stuff out. I’ll be only five minutes.” This seemed reasonable. Bill was always more believable when he was being practical than when he was leering lustfully.

When she had gone as far as she could in the kitchen without danger of getting something on her dress, he was almost done with his move. She noticed that he hadn’t touched the makeup bag.

“Okay?” she asked.

“Fine. There are still a lot of hangers on my side of the closet. Take any you need. I didn’t sort them out, yet.” She figured he meant to take empty hangers, though that wasn’t what he’d said. She dressed in her school clothes, not counting underwear, and put his robe on top of everything. She hung up her dress and -- when she’d considered the alternatives -- her slip.

“I figured since it’s got splatters on it already...” He didn’t seem to be paying attention, let alone making objections. She went to work. Bill watched the final preparations and set the table when she asked him to. He got out water glasses and cups for the place settings. Water glasses were fine, but did they need coffee on their day of rest?

Lunch went over as well as breakfast had. The coffee cups remained empty, Bill not forcing the issue. He had his coat and tie off, but he got a little sauce on his shirt sleeve. That didn’t seem to bother him.

They cleared and he washed. She left his robe hanging in the bedroom closet and was sitting on the sofa when he returned to the living room.

“Want Television?” he asked. Why bother? What was good on Sunday afternoons, anyway? When she shook her head, he sat down beside her. They had a kiss, and he seemed as content with mild caresses as she was. There was a lunch to settle.

“What sort of wedding do you want?” he asked, “a fancy one?”

“Let me think.” She had three roommates, and if she made one of them maid of honor, she’d make two enemies. On the other hand, who from back home would even want to come to her wedding? Well, that wasn’t the issue, really. A real fancy wedding would be nice, sort of. On the other hand, her life was academic, and she would be faced with some choices over the next few years where the best option for her future might mean a few thousand dollars a year less salary right then. And she’d cut down her options already; the Chicago area had plenty of colleges, but not nearly as many as the rest of the country did. (On the other hand, her dissertation conferences would be easier to arrange if she would be living in Evanston.) “Well, do you have scads of money salted away?” She really didn’t know much about Bill. He might have a trust fund or have won the lottery.

“Not really. Not at all, in fact. I got a nice raise back in July when I was promoted, and I didn’t take a vacation then, either, which saved some. I only bought some suits. I felt quite flush. The ring, on the other hand, sank all that, and I’ll still owe on the ring for years. Why?”

“Look, the next couple of years decide my future. I’m going to be writing a dissertation while teaching at some junior college or something. They won’t get anything out of the dissertation, so they won’t give me any slack to work on it. And putting enough work in on my dissertation will be critical to my future. So will performing at least adequately as a teacher.” She was running on and on. He didn’t know that, and he sure wouldn’t be able to see the relevance.

“So, I may have to make decisions between maximizing earnings in, say, ‘74 and making the best impression on my peers. And that means, really, maximizing earnings over the rest of my life.” Now, she was clearly stating the dilemma.

“So, I’d feel much more comfortable saying that I could make decisions for the next three years without looking at how much I’d earn than I would spending a lot of money now,” She concluded.

“That means the honeymoon, too?” he asked.

“I suppose so. Is that okay with you?”

“That’s fine with me. I was planning on spending the honeymoon in bed, and a bed in Acapulco doesn’t sound any better than a bed in Evanston ... really.”

“Warmer though.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You find this apartment too cool, don’t you?”

“The apartment is warm enough. It’s not warm enough for the costume you want me to wear.”

“That’s unfair. I don’t want you to wear any costume.” But he got her point. She raised her hand to show him the ring. “Okay.” He did want her to wear the ring, if nothing else. He picked her up and sat her in his lap. “Got to surround this girl with body heat to keep her from freezing to death.” And he did his best to, if not surround her, get his hands everywhere at some time or other. Aside from occasionally moving her head to meet his lips with hers instead of with the ear he was aiming at, she cooperated. After a while, he quieted and cuddled her.

“Y’know,” he said, “space heaters are cheap. We’re getting all sorts of new furniture for the bedroom. We could get a space heater, too.”

“All sorts?”

“Double bed. Dresser for you. We need a new night stand, too, for your side. If you don’t have a clock, or you want to keep it in the dorm for a while, we’ll get you another clock. We could get you one that matched mine, which wasn’t all that expensive, but maybe you’d want to distinguish the alarms.” That reminded her.

“Look, I don’t want to sound like I’m rejecting you...”

“You don’t want an alarm clock? You wouldn’t have to set it, even. But how do you make class?”

“And breakfast. Let me finish.” He could be as bad as Mama. “This is about waking up. I wake up more slowly than you do. When I’m awake and have figured out that I’m in Bill’s bed quite willingly, then I can enjoy your petting. If the first impression I get is a man’s hand on my breast or close to my delta, I’m likely to scream.” He laughed.

“Okay.” Whether he’d move slowly in the morning or it was okay that she screamed wasn’t clear. “Problem is, that I wake up a little slowly myself. And the first realization this morning was that the sweet body beside me was Carolyn’s. I’m not sure I can remember to go slow.” Well, she couldn’t criticize waking up slowly, and -- really -- the more frequently it happened, the easier it would be. She didn’t wake up in the residence hall, or even here, thinking she was back home. She woke up here thinking she was in the residence hall.

He moved the hair from the side of her neck and nuzzled her there. They were silent for a while. His hands and lips were a little arousing, but mostly comfortable. Then he set her back down beside him.

“Look, after the wedding, you’ll be living here. We’ll look for a larger place.” Nice for him to make those sorts of decisions, although there was nothing she could really argue with. “The question is between now and then. I’ll get you some keys tomorrow. Stupid not to have planned ahead. You’ll have study space when I’m gone -- when I’m here, too, though it’ll be kind of cramped.” She had study space already, and -- if her bedroom was even more cramped -- she had the main room when her roommates weren’t using it, or when they were studying themselves. On the other hand, she could see what he was getting at. He wanted her moved in. He paused so long she wondered whether he thought she should say something, then he asked a question. “Do you have a driver’s license?”

“Arkansas,”

“Well, the Illinois license can wait until we’re married. You’d have to change your name, anyway. When I get keys to the front door and to the apartment, I’ll get my car keys duplicated, too. Mornings, you can drive me to the EL stop and go on to campus.” The picture he painted was quite domestic. She could see why it appealed to him; it had the same appeal to her. “Monday, you can’t get in. We’ll go out to eat. Tell me where to pick you up. Wednesday, we’ll be pushed to get to the church. We should eat out then, it will be faster.” She couldn’t see why. If he was to be in the house, she could have a dinner on the table when he got home. “Otherwise, you decide when to cook. We’ll go out to eat unless you’re feeling domestic. If you want take-out, however, warn me beforehand. Fair?”

“I’ll give you plenty of warning when I want take-out.” Those would only be crunch times. And, really, he was trying to be fair, he was trying to be generous by allowing her to choose when to cook and when to go out. He was, however, making her feel stifled with his decisions. And she did have a meal plan all paid for. And she did have studying to do. Afternoons, especially afternoons she spent cooking, as well, wouldn’t be enough time.

“Do you have another meal planned for tonight, or do you want to go out? I figure we stay dressed until dinner, and then come home and get comfortable.”

“No.” Let’s keep this simple enough for Bill to understand.

“No to which? Do you want to have sex now? Or do you want to abstain after dinner?”

“No, I don’t have another meal planned, and I don’t want to go out to eat. I want to go back to the residence hall soon.” After all, she not only had a meal paid for, she had a ring to show the rest of the women at the meal.

“Well ... I can’t keep you if you want to go. Do we still have a date Monday night? I can’t give you the keys earlier.” She’d been right. He could take no for an answer. If you hit him alongside the head with a two-by-four, you’d get his attention.

“Sure, we have a date Monday.” Actually, he hadn’t asked her for one, but let’s take this one small step at a time. “You want me to come here that night?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then let’s make the date for after dinner.” She did have that meal plan. “Seven thirty, or is that too early?” It had been his time for the Wednesday appointment after all.

His hands had absolutely stopped caressing her. He had an arm around her shoulder, but that felt awkward -- as if he wanted to take it away but was afraid to make that definite a gesture. This was clearly the end of this cuddle. She got up. What should she pack to go back? Well, she was wearing her school clothes. Her traveling clothes and her Sunday dress could stay here. She wasn’t moving out. She was establishing a boundary. The dirty underwear should go back. She’d take her brush and makeup. Everything else, except for what she was wearing, could stay. The fancy gloves? Well, would she wear them before her wedding? And, after the wedding, everything would be here. She took the pile of clean underwear from her small suitcase.

“Is there a place I can keep these here?”

“Oh, yes. Here...” She followed him into the bedroom. “This drawer okay?” He pointed to the third one down.

“Sure.” He pulled the bedspread up over the unmade bed. He pulled out the drawer he’d indicated and dumped the contents on the bed. He picked up the liner paper, which had fallen out. He put it back in the drawer, and put the drawer back in the dresser -- maybe half way in.

“All yours. We really have to get more space for you. I can rearrange a little, but we need another dresser.”

She put the underwear in the drawer and closed it. She got her coat on and picked up her suitcase. It felt as light as it had going home.

“Want to drive me back?” She asked. She was, after all, a long way from the residence hall.

“Sure.” He got on his coat and took her suitcase. He looked surprised at its weight. He led her to the car and opened her door. He put the suitcase in back and got in. “7:30, your dorm? Right?”

“Right.” And, since he was being reasonable, she kissed him goodnight in the car. There was a different guy on the desk than the previous night, but the refrain was the same.

“If you’re checked out, you’ll have to check in again.” She did, and then went up to her room. Mary, Heather, and Diane were all crowded around the only window in the common room.

“What’s up?”

“Look what Diane got for Christmas,” Heather said. She looked out the window. “See the blue Volks?” She more-or-less could.

“I drove it down from Milwaukee,” Diane said. “I’ll give you a ride later.” They talked about the car and Diane’s ‘really sweet’ parents for another minute while Carolyn removed her mittens in her coat pockets. “And that’s the news from Milwaukee, Carolyn,” Diane said. “What happened in Arkansas?”

“Arkansas? Nothing ever happens in Arkansas.” She faked a yawn and covered it with her left hand.

“That doesn’t look like nothing,” said Mary. All three crowded around to examine her ring.

“Well, it didn’t happen in Arkansas, either. It happened right here in Evanston.”

“Do we know the guy?”

“Name’s Bill He’s a member of my church.”

“Older guy I saw trying to lick your tonsils one night?” asked Heather. She hadn’t seen Heather in the room, but that behavior sounded a lot like Bill. She hadn’t had any other man’s tongue in her mouth for a long time.

“I haven’t had any tonsils for the last decade, but yes, Bill is older than I am.” They kept asking questions, many of which hadn’t been decided yet. “Guys, look. He asked me to marry him. He didn’t ask me to marry him on a specific day with a specific ceremony.”

“And you didn’t have it all planned out first?” Mary asked.

“Nope. I had nothing planned out. I’d just got done telling Mama over Christmas that he was not a marriage type romance.”

“Fooled her.”

“Fooled me.”

They kept talking, and she got updates on what Christmas had been like for Mary and Heather. They went down to dinner together. There, if the excitement and congratulations were more muted -- there were women in the residence hall whose names she didn’t know -- they continued. Upstairs again, she got her belongings ready for the resumption of classes and her mind ready for the next day’s classes. The last thing she did was to get herself up to speed for Tuesday’s regional-economics seminar.

In her three classes Monday, the engagement was a minor sensation. It was minor because they were there to learn something rather than to socialize. Monday afternoon, warned by her experiences before the vacation, she studied the assignments for Wednesday. She went down to Dinner early and set her alarm before she went back to reviewing the regional economics. She might go into that class as newly-engaged, although it would be old news to more than half her classmates -- they shared one or more of her other classes -- but she wasn’t going to go in as a ditzy female who let that distract her from studying.

The alarm rang at 7:10. She made her preparations. Those included resetting the alarm, although she didn’t pull it out; she could just see herself falling into bed late Tuesday night with the alarm set for 7:10 p.m. She’d never wake up in time for her first class, let alone breakfast. She figured she could get away with wearing the same clothes to class Monday and Tuesday; she usually did. She had new underwear at the apartment. If she were to wash the clothes here and keep clean clothes there, she’d need more underwear. She packed her makeup and the jelly for her diaphragm into her book bag with the books and notes for the seminar. She was dithering by the time the desk paged her. Bill was three minutes early. Leaving the usual note on her pillow, she took her book bag down with her.

They greeted each other verbally, Bill walked her to the car and opened the door. When he got in, she leaned over for a kiss. She broke it soon, though.

“We’re going to a better place for that, aren’t we? Watch out; I just applied lipstick.”

“You did taste different.” He started the car.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t a bad taste, only a different one.” Upstairs, he opened the door to his apartment, then he handed her a ring of three keys. “They all work. This is the apartment; that’s the downstairs door; the car key is obvious.” He took her coat and hung it and his in the closet. He hung up his suit coat, too. They had a long kiss. “I shouldn’t have given you the keys yet.” They were in her jeans pocket. When he hugged her, they dug into her leg -- his too, probably.

“You shouldn’t have put them on such a big ring,” she told him.

“Well, I wanted to keep them together, and that ring was right there where they duplicate keys. You can do with them what you want.”

“I can’t just move in here.” She had classes, for one thing. They didn’t have space, for another.

“Yeah, but after the marriage, you’ll have to. We need more stuff. What? I gave you another drawer below the one you used, but we really need another dresser. Women have a different style, don’t they? I cleaned out a shelf in the medicine cabinet. You’ve already said double bed. Night stand. Study desk. We can’t get more closets ‘til we move. What else?”

“Book case.”

“I can clean out some space in that one.” He pointed to a half-full, totally inadequate, piece of heavy furniture.

“Bill, do I leave the books I need to study for my courses in the residence hall?”

“No! Even before the wedding, I want to think of your studying here.” He could think of her studying anywhere he wanted. When he was at work, she’d choose her own location. The question was whether he could let her study when he was home.

“Well, if you dumped all of your books,” something which that selection suggested would be no great sacrifice, “that wouldn’t hold my currently-needed books, much less my residue.” And she wasn’t going to discard her residue. She hadn’t sold a textbook in years, and -- though this detail could wait on a larger apartment -- if this would be her home, it would house the books from her childhood.

“So, what do we do?” he asked. Good question. She sat down on the sofa, and he sat down next to her.

“Suggestion. They sell light bookcases in the campus bookstore. I already own two. I buy another.” [After all, she had more books than fit in the ones she owned.] “I put it here. I move a bookcase worth of books here. Then I move that bookcase here. Then I move another load of books here. That goes on until I’m moved in.” That would barely fit. The study desk would have to be small.

“I think of your moving in clothes. You think of your moving in books.” Well, her life was books. “There’s so much I haven’t thought of. But you speak of your moving the books and bookcases. At that end sure -- unless there is a way of getting me permission to go into your room. But not on this end. When it’s getting them up here, when it’s getting them from the door into the car, then that’s our task. What else haven’t I thought of?” Well, apparently this was going to be a planning party instead of a petting party. Probably a good idea.

“If I’m going to be living in both places, I’ll need some things in both places. It’s silly to move my brush back and forth.”

“I bought you a toothbrush on the same thought. It’s on your shelf in the medicine cabinet. Can you use my toothpaste?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking that?” Not that she had asked. Brushed teeth were to the advantage of the person being kissed, after all.

“Not what I meant,” he replied. “Can you stand the taste?”

“Sure.”

“Look, come the wedding, it will be one purse. Before then, do you need help?”

“I don’t think so.” She thought is offer was generous, though.

“Well, ask if you do. For that matter, you might find yourself grocery shopping without me. Give me some warning, and I’ll get the cash.

“Since we’re on money,” he continued. “I bank downtown, Amalgamated. Makes a lot of sense; I’m downtown five days a week during business hours. Shall we continue that? We’ll have to get your signature, but I figure that we can do that after the wedding. After all, Carolyn Nolan won’t be on the account then. Carolyn Pierce will.” So much for consulting her. Plenty of women kept their maiden names. Still, probably she shouldn’t; this was going to be a rocky enough marriage already. And he might be making decisions for them, but he was saying a joint account when she had said that she wouldn’t be earning much money.

“How do you picture our budget?” she asked.

“After we’re married? Before then, as I said, we’ll be dealing entirely with unexpected events. A furniture budget doesn’t make much sense when we have to get loads of new furniture over a couple of months. A little more in June, too, probably.

“Anyway,” he continued, “what I heard you say was that we should limit our outgo to my income. Then you aren’t forced to take a job that limits your future. Some time, we should sit down and figure it out. One thing is that I don’t know what your expenses will be.” And, really, if she went teaching, neither did she -- probably wouldn’t know until she got there. Would they expect a woman teacher to have new outfits every day of the week? Well, her teaching clothes could come out of her teaching income.

“Something like that,” she said. “But that limitation won’t last forever. In a few years, I’ll have my doctorate, and the best-paying jobs will be the best for my future.” And the best paying jobs in the Chicago metro would be the best for her future in the Chicago metro.

“The limitation will last much longer than the budget will, I’ll bet.” She wouldn’t take that bet. “Right now, I have more questions than I can count. And, whatever we do, there will be something we don’t foresee. I pay a third of my health insurance, and that will be more. On the other hand, income tax will be less. I’ll check on both those when I’ve told my boss about the wedding. Have you decided on a date?”

“Didn’t we say semester break?”

“I think so, but that isn’t a date.” Of course. It was a period of time, and a period which Bill probably didn’t know. She wasn’t sure about the dates, either. Semester break loomed larger in her consciousness than February did.

“You know,” she observed, “our communication problems aren’t all due to just us.” He responded by quirking his brow. “Semester break is a set time to me, to Northwestern students -- probably faculty, too. It doesn’t mean a thing to your boss or coworkers. I bet everybody you gave that card to except me knew what ‘ethical drugs’ meant. Two countries separated only by a common language.” He looked real confused. “Somebody’s description of the US and England. I think it was Winston Churchill. Anyway, that’s us. Sometimes, it’s you and me, but sometimes it’s your world and mine.” Was this an insight?

“Maybe.” Not an insight he was sharing with her. “All sorts of people have all sorts of different language problems. Come here.” He helped her into his lap and cuddled her. He started kissing her neck and caressing her legs through her jeans. “Y’know, what you said, I read some language poohbah. He wrote that ‘finalize’ was businessmen being fancy when they meant ‘finish.’” That sounded reasonable.

“And it isn’t?”

“Nope. When you finalize a contract, you put it in the terms that are going to be signed. Both sides, hopefully, know what the contract requires.” He might know what ‘finalize’ meant; he didn’t know what ‘hopefully’ meant. “When you finish a contract, then you complete it, fulfill it, perform it. Two entirely different stages. Sure, both are some sort of end point, but they are different end points. Language purists, who never negotiated a contract, or fulfilled one, either, don’t have a use for the distinction. So, they make fun of those of us who do.” At last! Something they agreed on.