Chapter 3: Declaration of Independence

Andy Trainor was barely back in Evanston from the University of Illinois when he decided that Dad was running his life too much. It was time for him to declare his independence, and church was a good occasion to do so.

“Y’know,” he said on their way to church. “I didn’t attend in Champaign.”

“I know. You told me, once.” Dad was probably trying to evade the question.

“Well, I didn’t. Don’t you think attending up here reeks of hypocrisy? It’s not Andy attending; it’s Jim Trainor dragging his son along with him.”

“That’s an awfully harsh way of expressing it. I haven’t dragged you since you were eight. Do you remember me picking you up, carrying you into Sunday School, and setting you in a chair?” He did, and it made him blush even yet.

“Well, I’m not eight anymore.”

“My point exactly. Now, obviously, you’ve decided to come today. And, after all, this church is a good deal of your connection to the community.” By now, they’d parked, but Dad made no move to get out of the car. “You’re still going to work for Mr. Schmidt, and you met him here.”

“The work isn’t my idea.”

“And didn’t you meet Marilyn at MYF?” That was a point for Dad. Rebelling was all very well, but what if Marilyn expected to see him in church?

She did see him, and he saw her, but they didn’t speak. Was that worth getting up in the morning and putting on a suit? Actually, it was, but there were better ways of seeing her. When he got his job schedule Monday, he had Saturday off this week. As a summer worker at the hardware store, he replaced guys on vacation. Which meant he worked whatever hours the guy he was replacing had.

Tuesday, he called up Marilyn, and they set a date for Saturday night. He worried that Dad would insist on church attendance as a condition of borrowing the car, but he didn’t. He got to Marilyn’s house a little early.

“Is Marilyn here?” he asked. Silly question, but he had to say something.

“One more minute.” That was Marilyn calling from some other part of the house.

“Come in,” said a man who had to be Marilyn’s father. “I think we should establish some guidelines.” Well, he’d gone through this before. It was a little silly for a girl who’d spent most of last year at the U of I campus a couple hundred miles to the south. Still, he’d answer the questions. It was easier to do so, and he felt better about the standard paternal rules than about the grilling Marilyn’s sorority sisters had put him through.

“You want guidelines, I’ll give you some.” Marilyn shouted from upstairs. “One: I am fucking-well an adult. Two: I choose my own friends.” She was right there in the room with them, but still shouting. “Three: I decide my own rules. Four: I decide my own hours. Five: Butt out!”

“Come on, Andy,” she said and swept out the door. He caught up with her before she reached the car -- his legs were a lot longer. When she settled in the passenger side, he walked around and got in. He drove off towards the movie. He understood intellectually that she wasn’t mad at him, but an angry Marilyn was still a worry. At her request, he stopped where she could put on her lipstick.

“You know, your father loves you,” he began. “It worries me to see you so mad at somebody who loves you. Will that happen to me?”

“Well, if you still love me fifteen years from now, love that Marilyn. He treats me like I was five.” She was exaggerating.

“Sixteen, maybe. Look, I’ve got Kleenex in the back. Want some?”

“S’okay. I’ve got some here.” And, when she’d used it, he adjusted the mirror back where he needed it and turned off the dome light. He drove to the theater. When he first put his arm around her shoulder, it was so tense he was afraid she’d shake him off. Slowly, though, as she got involved in the movie, she relaxed.

Afterwards, he was tempted to suggest the back seat. Her time with him was a declaration of independence from her father -- how independent did she want to be? Still, he was afraid of pushing her. She’d said no to him before, and she might be readier to say no to him in this mood. He wanted her, on whatever terms were available, and he was always afraid that she would decide no terms were available if he pushed too far. Still, in the front seat and fully dressed, she responded passionately to his kiss.

“Marilyn,” he said. She was special, and her responses were special. He could feel the softness and shapeliness of her breast through blouse and bra. She did not push him away, and -- when he left her mouth to kiss all over her sweet face -- she pulled him back into a deep kiss.

Finally, afraid she would demand to be taken home if he didn’t, he pulled back to drive her home. He backed into the driveway again to get her closer to the door. She waited for him to come around, help her out, and escort her to her porch. Standing on a step that put their heads on a level, he shared one more kiss with her. If less passionate than the ones they’d had in privacy, it was just as sweet. He waited until he was shielded by the open car door to adjust his pants.

Even though the tank was more than half full, he bought gas on his way back. Dad would have enough to complain about, and he wasn’t going to provide him any more. Marilyn’s argument with her family was a continuing worry. He was on her side, would have been even if he hadn’t been the subject of the fight. But he’d been in enough fights with Dad to know that Marilyn’s fight would end sometime. And he didn’t want to be what she gave up in the compromise. Well, he had been perfectly willing to answer Mr. Grant’s questions tonight. Maybe he could answer them tomorrow in a way that didn’t offend Marilyn.

Dad made no comment that he was ready for church after having said that he wouldn’t go. They sat together, and Marilyn, whatever her arguments the previous night, sat with her parents. He and Dad got through the line before the Grants, and he stayed behind to see them. Dad walked down the steps but waited on the sidewalk.

“Mr. Grant. I’m Andy Trainor,” he said when Marilyn and her parents had gone through the line. Mr. Grant sort of acknowledged that he knew who he was.

“There were really two questions,” he began. He’d planned this out so he stayed on Marilyn’s side while satisfying her father. “Is Marilyn an adult capable of judging her associates and free to decide upon her friends? And am I a serial killer stalking your daughter for my next victim? Well, the first question being decided in the affirmative, I don’t at all mind setting your mind at ease with respect to the second. After all, I’m only one of several men Marilyn dated at U of I. I’m likely to be the only one of them you’ll ever meet.”

“Well,” Mr. Grant asked, “then who are you?”

“I’m Andy Trainor, a member of this church. Once upon a time, I was a member of the MYF chapter that Marilyn led. I’m an Electrical Engineering student at the U of I. What more do you want to know?”

“What fraternity do you belong to?”

“I don’t belong to any. I live in a dorm, and never tried to pledge.”

“Don’t you think,” Marilyn’s father asked, “you’re missing out on part of college life?” What in hell did that have to do with his respectability as a date for Marilyn? Even the sorority girls hadn’t pushed that hard, and they were -- after all -- the people who had just made that decision.

“Well, what I want out of college is to be trained for the career I’ve chosen. I don’t see how being paddled will prepare me for that career.” He was working to keep it light, but it was work.

“Do you think that becoming an engineer is really being educated?” Now her dad was on another attack. It was, however, an argument he’d had before.

“A college education, most certainly. That is the advantage of passing a college course. You know that you’ve absorbed all that the powers that be consider part of that section of knowledge.” When you read a book, though, you might have learned a great deal, but you never knew that you’d learned the required details.

“But that ‘section of knowledge’ isn’t something that everybody has to know.”

“That’s certainly true. It is, however, something that somebody has to know. We don’t all have to know brain surgery, but it’s damn convenient to have some brain surgeons around.”

“Now take History,” he continued. That was a particular which he’d thought out before. “I passed the general American History course. I could take another course in the history of the Civil War. But, if I did that, I’d have to learn all about the War in the east. I happen to be interested in the War in the west -- it was mostly east of the Mississippi, but contemporaries considered anything west of the Alleghenies as west.” He was riding his hobby horse, now. It wasn’t what he needed to say to this man this day.

“Anyway ... Anyway, I can read books to learn lots and lots about what interests me. Since I don’t want to teach History, I don’t need to learn the other stuff. Marilyn is different. She can’t go into the classroom and tell her students, ‘Short stories bore me; we’re only going to study poetry.’ But, if somebody just wants to read, he can read only poetry, or only novels, or only detective stories. Well...”

“That man isn’t educated, reading only detective stories.” Since he’d mentioned his own interest in Civil-War history and not his interest in SF, this was quite beside the point. Well, if he wanted that, he could swallow another example which might not be so satisfactory to him.

“And, is a man in the 20th century really educated who doesn’t know the theory of special relativity?”

“Come on, Andy,” Marilyn said suddenly. She grabbed his arm and pulled him down the stairs. “You’re walking me home.” More accurately, she was hauling him away, but he was willing to go where this woman wanted him to go.

“Walk briskly and don’t talk,” she whispered. “Okay,” she said a little later, “you can slow down a little.”

“Well,” he told her, “you know how I feel. And starting on fraternities before going on to the purity of a liberal education!” Either was an argument, if a faulty one. Both together sounded silly.

“He was trying to find something wrong with you,” she said. “If you’d been a member of some rival frat, he’d have dug into you for that. Really, Mom always talks about her sorority life. Dad doesn’t harp on his frat background when he isn’t pawing the ground.”

“I tried to be friendly.”

“And so you did.” She took his hand in hers. He looked at the street. On the square grid, there were a dozen ways to walk from the church to her house. He noticed that they weren’t on any of them. They had, in fact, walked north while her house was south. At the next corner, they turned west -- which with some blocks going south would get her home. Well, he enjoyed walking with her; he didn’t care if they weren’t taking the most direct route.

Meandering or not, their route finally got to her front porch. While she was standing on it, he stopped with their heads level. Even if this hadn’t been a date, maybe he could get a good-bye kiss.

“No,” she whispered. “Come up here and lift me -- high.” When he obeyed, she clung to his neck with her arms and his waist with her legs. The fit-for-church dress rode halfway up her thighs in this position. He didn’t spend any time looking, though, since she immediately gave him a long, wet kiss. his hands were on her butt under her skirt.

“I love you,” she said when she finally slid sown his length. This was the first time she’d said it before he did. His suit coat hid his erection, the first use that he’d ever noticed for that article of clothing.

“I love you, too, but I don’t understand you.” He understood enough to suspect that the arousing kiss -- as arousing as anything they’d ever concealed in the grove of trees near her sorority house -- was less her expression of interest in him than her expression of independence from her family.

“I didn’t know when you’d get back,” Dad said when he’d walked home. “I ordered pizza.” They usually went to a restaurant after church, but pizza was fine with him. Dad was already in a plaid shirt, and he went upstairs to change. He came down in his (white for church underwear) t-shirt. They ate sitting across from each other in the kitchen. Dad had got out plates, but neither used silverware -- pizza was hand-food.

“You’re the logician of the family,” Dad said when he’d finished. Andy was still nibbling his last piece. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d think that walking your girl home from church requires attending church.” He thought about that for an instant.

“Easter Parade,” he said. That should remind Dad of one of his betes noires. The people in the New York Easter Parade had once worn their finery to church and then paraded after service. These days, they merely rendezvoused at the church and paraded without attending any service on the most holy day of the Christian year.

“Point. Will that particular girl accept that?” Which was a point to Dad. But, really, there was no reason to believe that Marilyn would welcome his walking her home even if he attended services. She had a ride, after all, in her family car. And she always wore heels, which couldn’t make walking fun.

“Maybe not, but I don’t think I’ll attend or try to walk her home.”

“When your sisters are here?”

“Okay.” When the girls were here, they’d do what they could together, and sitting together in church was certainly one of those things.

“How about communion?” Dad was still bargaining. “After all, that’s only one more Sunday before the girls come. You’ve already agreed to the first Sunday in August.”

“I’ll try.” Not that Dad wouldn’t make sure that he was awake. But the old man hadn’t used any of the support he was already giving him as a bargaining chip. He should get something. The truth was that Andy cared more for the independence of refusing than he disliked the services. And Marilyn would probably be there.

Dad lent him a biography of Lee, and he took it out in the back yard to get a tan. Rather than Lee’s life, though, his thoughts concentrated on his own. After some disappointments his freshman year in high school, he’d only asked out the girls who wouldn’t have had dates otherwise. Especially after he got his driver’s license, he was a better choice than that. He’d gone from kissing them in the front seat of the car to kissing them in the back seat to -- in his junior year -- kissing them in the back seat while fondling their breasts.

He’d been helped a little by the fact that girls talked among themselves -- and, as far as he could figure out -- honestly. There were some things that good girls didn’t do, and nobody did them for Andy Trainor. There were some things everybody but dry sticks did, and being Andy’s date was bad enough without being a dry stick.

Marilyn was different. He was far from her only date possibility, not even her only date. Besides, while he hadn’t worried all that much about girls’ turning him down, he worried deeply about Marilyn’s abandoning him. And they’d broken the high-school sequence. He’d fondled her breasts before they’d got to the back seat, even before she’d ridden in his car. He wanted more from Marilyn, but his desire for keeping what he had was even stronger. Well, maybe he’d invite her into the back seat on their date Thursday. He turned so that his erection wasn’t visible from the house and tried to get interested in Lee.

His day off that next week was Friday, and he had a date with Marilyn for Thursday night. He thought a date the night before might be better than one the evening after. That way, he could stay up as late as he needed to. When he sat across from Dad for breakfast, the old man scowled at him.

“You forgot to shave,” he said.

“I have a date tonight. I’ll shave for that.”

“You have a job meeting the public today. You’ll shave for that.” Well, he never shaved or even showered for class before date nights. But he obeyed. He showered and shaved again before the date, though.

He dressed as he usually did for movie dates with Marilyn, a white shirt and khakis. It was his only use for khakis at school. Last week, Marilyn had gone back to jeans. Tonight, though, she came down in jeans and a sweatshirt. That looked a little casual to him, but maybe she felt it made her look more obviously a college student. He sure wasn’t going to complain.

When they parked after the movie, he kissed her deeply. When his hand reached her breast, he felt a new softness. His cock lurched in his trousers.

“Oh, Marilyn!” he said. She pulled his hand away. Then he realized she’d pulled it to the edge of her sweatshirt. He eased inside slowly enough that she could stop him if she felt he was trespassing. His hand glided over her skin to cup a soft, bare breast. “Oh Marilyn.” He was repeating himself, but she was a source of marvels. They went back to their kiss while he explored her smoothness, her softness, the firmness of her breasts, the responsiveness of her nipples.

He loved her, loved her generosity. He alternated deep kisses with light kisses over all of her that his mouth could reach. Meanwhile, his hand was never still. He would have stayed exploring that paradise until dawn if she hadn’t interrupted him.

“Um, Andy, could you get me home?”

“Sure.” He checked the time. It was after 1:00! “Oops! I think we took longer than I’d expected. You’ll be late. Sorry. I was enjoying myself too much.” Which was the understatement of the century. He had been glorying her soft flesh.

“Well, I was enjoying myself, too,” She said, but she seemed in an awful hurry to end the evening. They had a brief kiss at her front door.

“Good night, Marilyn,” he said. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.” But she hurried inside.

He crashed when he got home. He woke in time for breakfast but went back to bed when Mrs. Bryant came. She woke him for lunch. It tasted good, but she was no longer treating him to welcome-home feasts. He called Marilyn after lunch, but she was at the beach.

Sunday, he slept in. Since that meant he had to get his own breakfast of corn flakes, the advantage wasn’t great.

Wednesday, his grades came. He’d passed Phys Ed with a C, but he’d got an A in every other course. At dinner, Dad gave him an electric razor.

“Call it an early birthday present. It’s not timed right for a bonus for the excellent grades. It won’t get you as smooth as a blade will, but it feels much more pleasant when you shave more than once a day.”