Chapter 3: Why Me?_2

Carolyn Pierce stopped for a minute on her way through the dining room. She looked at the large picture of her that Bill had hung there. It showed her smiling in her then-new doctoral robes holding her then-new twins. “If only you’d known,” she told the picture. Then she went on to her home office. She was a parent, an economist, and a teacher of economics. She’d spent years doing basic research and presenting papers in regional economics -- mostly in the summers. She still had done grunt-level research the summer of ‘79 and she’d do more the next summer, but she had enough reputation to do survey papers, and that was what she was working on this October. She could do those in her own house with only occasional excursions to the UIC library and even fewer to the library at Northwestern.

Johnny and Paul were big kindergarten boys -- as they would gladly tell you themselves -- and Mrs. Jackson was a wonder. She could work at home without dealing with the boys every other second. Life wasn’t exactly easy -- UIC might be happy that their economics courses were taught by a practicing economist, but they didn’t count the hours spent doing economics in the work-week they expected from a teacher. Still, life was a lot less impossible than it had been the first four years. She looked at her first draft of the intro to her next paper.

Boundaries are as important in Chicago as in any other city. In Chicago, sprawled across the flat plain, they are less available than in many other cities. One boundary, inescapable and virtually uncrossable, is Lake Michigan.

She’d polish that later, but the influence of the lake on the placement of Chicago residences, retailers, and civic institutions would be her theme. She wouldn’t present that paper at a conference, except in the unlikely event of Northwestern or the U of C sponsoring a conference and announcing it fairly soon. It would, however, almost certainly be published. Her plans were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Mama?” It was Johnny. Another knock. “Mama!” She went to the door.

“What do you want, my second-favorite son?”

“Why do you like Paul better than me?” So much for the emergency which made it necessary to interrupt Mama in her work.

“Because he isn’t bothering me right now,” she said. And, when he did, he would be the second-favorite. Johnny giggled. Sometime, he’d get tired of that joke. Sometime, he might even take the hint. Neither possibility looked like a probability for the near future. Gladys kept telling her that she’d miss the involvement in their lives when they grew a little older; she couldn’t wait.

“Mama, Mrs. Jackson didn’t leave me a snack.”

“That’s because it’s almost time for dinner. See my watch?” She showed it to him. “See, the little hand is practically at six and the big hand is at 50. Daddy will be home any minute now, and we’ll eat in forty minutes. You just have to wait ‘til then.”

“I’m hungry.” Johnny was always hungry – well, except when there were vegetables on his plate.

“Then you’ll eat a big dinner.” Someday, the guys will figure out that when Mrs. Jackson said ‘no,’ it was because Mama had told her to.

“Why are you going out tonight?” If Johnny couldn’t cadge a snack, he would make her feel guilty.

“I’m going to the Priscilla Circle meeting. It’s a church group for mamas, and your Mama goes every month. We talk about how to be better mamas.” It also gave her a little breathing room. The department at UIC had a huge gender imbalance; she had three males in her family; Mrs. Jackson went home every night. She needed a hen party. Then, God bless him, Bill came in the door. Johnny promptly forgot Mama and sandwiches. Bill had turned Paul upside down, and Johnny ran to tickle both.

She retreated into her office. She couldn’t concentrate over the noise the two -- or three -- little boys made. She could get a little done, though, and she didn’t really want to witness the violence. At 6:20 she emerged to get the food Mrs. Jackson had left to the kitchen table. She could hear Bill getting the boys into the downstairs bathroom.

Bill, whatever his many faults as a husband, even as a human being, was a hands-on parent. They split the kids for dinner if they both were home, but he’d take the kids and have them in their beds at the agreed-upon time. (She and Bill had agreed. The boys thought their bedtime should be later than they could possibly have held their eyes open.)

When dinner was over and it was time for her to go, she gave each of her men a kiss. Johnny and Paul accompanied their loud kisses with tight hugs around her neck. Bill’s kiss was quieter, but he slipped his tongue between her lips for a second. He squeezed one bottom cheek instead of hugging her. How much the boys saw, she didn’t know. Well, if they grew up with the idea that Daddy liked to stroke Mama, they would be less shocked when they discovered where babies came from.

The Circle gathered slowly. Aside from two of the pregnant women, they all had kids at home. They gossiped companionably. She suspected that not many would be disappointed if they ended a meeting with no business at all. Just before the quarter hour, though, Peggy got up.

“Look. The executive committee thinks we’re too big. They don’t run our show, but they have a point. We run from third graders to unborns. None of the other circles have that great an age range; none of the others have as many members. I think we have several issues. Do we split? If so where? We need one new name, I don’t hear anybody who has problems with Priscilla, but we might need two new names. Then we need at least one new chairman.”

The overarching UMW held meetings which were formally structured with motions and seconds and votes and officers. Peggy had no more use for that than she had when she was the organizer-chairwoman.

“You know,” Barbara put in, “they’re right. And, if we do split, we should split so the older group is larger. The younger group has obvious growing space.”

“I don’t know,” said Debbie. “What if I have questions about breast feeding.” Carolyn had become the resource for that.

“Well,” she said, “we’re talking about meeting separately, maybe on different nights. We aren’t talking about some brick wall. You have my number; you see me in church. If there are a couple of women with questions, I can come to the new group’s meeting. We can even set up another time for only those who have questions about that. But I think Barbara and Gladys are right. We sure can’t go on adding expectant women without dropping somebody, and we oldest ones are the obvious ones to drop.”

“If it comes to a name,” Linda said, “I have a suggestion. Now you guys have been great about Lucy, really great. But there are books on baby care. When I came to you, I didn’t know shit about being pregnant. I hadn’t even seen a gynecologist since Cincinnati. Well, you were wonderful, and I think the new group’s name should reflect that.

“Now, when Mary was first pregnant,” she continued, “she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. All we’re told is that John The Baptist gave his first kick when Mary walked through the door. I think, though, that Mary went to Elizabeth to ask her what pregnancy was like.”

Maybe. The conversation went over to other issues. Finally, Peggy called it quits.

“We haven’t really decided anything, and I didn’t expect to decide anything this meeting. The first Tuesday in December we’ll meet in the church again. One thing about how many we are is that we don’t have all that many homes this group can comfortably meet in. We’ll decide who is in the Priscilla Circle and who is in the Elizabeth Circle unless somebody wants another name. Then the Elizabeth Circle will schedule its January meeting. There it will elect its chair. I’m going to unilaterally declare that the old organizer rules apply to the smaller Priscilla Circle. If there is any nomination for a chair for the new Priscilla Circle, then we’ll hold an election the next month and I won’t be a candidate. Otherwise the election will be July of ‘80.” Peggy, though, was the obvious choice for chairman. If you wanted to be chairman, you wanted to run things. And the group didn’t want anyone running things. So, they wanted a chairman who didn’t want to be chairman.

They trickled out. When she got home, she kissed her sleeping boys. She loved them all the time, but perhaps most when they were sleeping like angels. The only time they bore any resemblance to angels was when they were in bed.

“Do I get a kiss, too?” Bill asked.

“You, on the other hand, look most demonic when you’re in bed.” She gave him his kiss, though. His was on the mouth, and their tongues got involved. This time the feel he copped was far less subtle than the one after dinner had been. Well, the boys couldn’t see, even if they had been awake. “You’re wrinkling my skirt.”

“Then take it off. Better yet, let me.” She retreated to their room. Despite Bill’s posturing, they were an old married couple. He let her alone while she did her night-time ritual. He was in bed waiting for her when she got done. He was lying on his back, and the bulge in the sheet meant that he was already partially erect. She locked the door and hung her nightie over the headboard before getting under the sheet.

“You’re way ahead of me,” she said. She relaxed back, and he turned so that his head was over hers for the kiss. Warned, Mr. Foreplay proceeded to arouse her slowly and thoroughly. She was on the edge before her entered her. His strokes carried her over, and he followed soon afterwards. He lay on her for a little while, and then returned to his own side of the bed. He pulled the light blanket over them before they cuddled.

“Love you,” he said.

“Love you.”

“The coven didn’t persuade you that I’m unnecessary?”

“No, but I’ve been thinking of buying a vibrator ... Actually, the circle is thinking of splitting apart.”

“Huh! And I thought you all got along.”

“Problem isn’t the getting along, it’s the ‘all.’ There are too many of us with small kids.”

“Never too many small kids.” Bill’s credo.

“Don’t be greedy! You have two of your own.” And, to be fair, Bill didn’t neglect his own at all.

“Not so small anymore. They’re big boys, now. Just ask them.”

“Maybe they are too old to see Daddy groping Mama.”

“You want to lock them in their room?” Bill was implying that he would grope her anyway. The only alternative they had was to bar the twins from their company.

“I had another solution in mind.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Wasn’t what you said half an hour ago.”

“Okay, you’re a sexy wench when I can get you alone. You just want to be Little Miss Priss as a parent.” She wasn’t sure that ‘Little Miss Priss’ would be a parent at all. Well, Bill was an opinionated SOB, but he was warm. She snuggled back against the warmth and went to sleep.

The paper progressed. The kids took to reporting their day at kindergarten at dinner. It was their day -- singular. They were in the same class and reported the same events. That didn’t keep them from each making the report. Should they try to get them in separate rooms for first grade? How did you do this? The Circle might have some idea of dealing with the school administration, but none of the mamas with older kids had twins.

Teaching went, if not smoothly, along the accustomed track. She no longer revised her lesson plans each year. Except for the class in Regional Economics she taught Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings, she had undergraduates, and she gave the undergraduate classes honest attention when she was in front of them and forgot them until she graded their papers. Then, one Monday morning, that wasn’t enough.

“Prof. Pierce, could I speak with you?” She looked at the student who’d asked that. The girl looked jittery. That was strange because Carolyn was quite aware of the students who were failing or almost failing the course, and this wasn’t one of them. She’d remember her name in a moment. “Privately?” That sounded worse.

“Now?” She did have an hour before the next class.

“Please!” That sounded worse.

“Well, my office should be private this next hour. Let’s go there.” She started towards her office, trying to remember the girl’s name without consulting her roll. She had it. “Candace, isn’t it?”

“On the roll. I’m usually called Candy.” Her friends called her ‘Candy.’ Well, Carolyn wasn’t planning to be a friend. She hoped that this didn’t disappoint Candy -- but she didn’t hope very hard. Well, they were in the hall and alone. What was this about?

“What did you want to talk about?” When she didn’t get a response, she turned to the girl.

“I think I was raped,” she whispered.

“Shit!” Well, now she could understand the need for a little privacy. But Carolyn thought, ‘Why me?’ She wasn’t a counselor, much less an administrator. She was an economist. Why couldn’t this Candy go to the proper authorities? Anyway, when she got to her office, David Kasper, the instructor who shared the space, was there working on his grades.

“David, could we have the office for the next hour? Could you do that in the library?”

“Well, I need to do something else in the library.” He started to put the grades away and get out his research folder. “Anything for you, Carolyn,” he said in his mildly-flirtatious way. He was in the closet, or thought he was, and he regarded an older married woman with two kids as safe.

“Tell me about it,” she said when David had shut the door behind him, and Candy still hadn’t said anything.

“Well, it was a date. Jerry Lambert, you know him?” Double shit! The guy was on the basketball team.

“I know of him.”

“He took me to a dance Saturday night. It was a University dance. We went back to his room after. We made out, drank some. We were making out on his bed. I told him to stop, but he didn’t listen.” Yeah, she could picture it. Hell! she could remember it. She’d been is in somewhat similar situations once or twice.

“And you had sex with him?” Let’s be clear about this. The girl ‘thought’ she had been raped.

“Yeah. At least he had sex with me, in me.”

“Had he stopped when you asked him on previous dates?” How was this one different? Was this a couple who had been having sex and the girl changed her mind? Girls were entitled to change their minds, but...