Chapter 7: Married State - F

Monday, she came to his apartment early to wait for the delivery of the bed. She could imagine all sorts of trouble, but she met nobody in the building. It was a six-flat, and everybody seemed to be gone. She spent her time snooping. After all, this would be her home in 12 days, and he had told her to make herself at home.

Eric wasn’t Bluebeard. The most incriminating thing she found was a small stash of dirty magazines. They had been addressed to him, though. So they weren’t dirty enough to be barred from the mail. He had a box of Trojans in his nightstand. There were 11 and the box had originally held 12. He did have two pairs of jeans, as he had said. They were neatly folded. All his clothes seemed to be neatly kept -- either folded or hung on hangers. He had his shirts laundered rather than washing them himself. They didn’t seem to be starched. His shorts were a fair number of tighty-whities and one pair of boxers. He had another pair of boxers hanging on a hook in the closet. He had two pairs of white athletic socks and an incredible number of pairs of identical black socks. He had one set of pajamas folded at the bottom of his underwear drawer.

The food, which she should have investigated first, included hamburger meat, TV dinners, orange juice, and loads of commercially-frozen vegetables in the freezer. Milk, eggs, butter, bread, lettuce, and condiments were in the ‘fridge. He had cans of soup and of such meals as spaghetti and chili. He had an adequate supply of spices in cans, but most of the cans seemed full. It looked as if he had bought ground cloves or ginger because he wanted to use them once, and then never used them again. He had a half-full box of corn flakes. She wondered whether that or the eggs were his usual breakfast.

She put the hamburger in the frying pan and heated it over a low fire. She scraped enough off each side as it cooked to make a decent, if loose, hamburger for lunch. She ate it with lettuce and Italian salad dressing.

When the delivery men rang the bell, she let them in. They took the old bed and set up the new one. After she had tipped them, she started to make the bed. Eric’s old sheets didn’t fit. Of course! All he had were sheets for twin beds.

Well, by this time, the hamburger was all thawed and mostly cooked. She went out and found a grocery store. She bought boxed spaghetti, an onion, a green pepper, some garlic, and a can of stewed tomatoes. She went back to the apartment and made some real spaghetti. She had the water hot for boiling the spaghetti, but turned off, and she was stirring the sauce when he came home. She turned off the fire under the sauce when she heard the door open.

“Well,” he said.

“Take your coat off first.” He did and followed it with his suit coat. He was still cold to hug and kiss, but she didn’t let that stop her. His tongue, at least, was warm. Most of him was by the time they came up for air.

“I gather,” he said, “that you didn’t want to go out for dinner.”

“You said to make myself at home.”

“I meant for your convenience, but that smells delicious. Did the bed come all right?”

“Yeah, but the sheets didn’t.”

“Damn! I should have thought of that.”

“So should I.”

“Why? You didn’t know what I had.” Well, that was kind of him to say. But if a guy has only a twin bed, you at least ask if he had sheets for a double.

“Is there a place to buy them before it closes?” she asked. She didn’t know the shopping in Evanston. She knew the restaurants, if not their location very well, but nothing else.

“Yeah. Can you leave the dinner?”

“Easily. Let’s go.”

There was a Sears with a large parking lot. They bought several sets of sheets, a pillow, and a blanket. Back in the apartment, she finished the meal while he made the bed. He didn’t seem to have a colander, or even know what one was. He tipped the pot over the sink with both hands in potholders while she held the lid mostly on. Only a few strands escaped. He did have several pairs of tongs, and she fished most of the spaghetti out with one of those pairs. Then they repeated the process.

Despite the clumsiness of the preparation, he pronounced the meal delicious. It was better than his cans, for sure, but he was used to restaurants.

They cleared, rinsed off the dishes, and stacked the dishwasher in unison. They were, in a special way, a couple. They kissed for a long time standing up. When he sat down in a kitchen chair, he drew her into his lap. That was another way to kiss, and, when he got her to turn around, she could sit with her legs straddling one of his while he kissed her neck and ear and held her boobs.

They made out for a long time before he drove her home. Still, he didn’t suggest inaugurating the bed, and it was a double bed, specially bought for holding the two of them.

“Look,” he said in the car, “dates Wednesday and Friday nights?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s skip this 6:00 bit. I’ll come right after work. I’ll aim for 5:30, but don’t put on your coat ‘til I ring the bell.”

And that’s what they did. They had short kisses when he came in, and longer ones after he brought her home. He took her to movies as well as to dinner. What he didn’t do was take her to bed.

“Rehearsal Friday night?” Rev. Lawrence asked as they left the service Sunday.

“Um, sure. Claire? Can you make it?” Claire had been hanging around with them after the service. Eric had offered her a ride home.

“Yeah. Do you want me to tell Joan?”

“Could you? I quite forgot about the rehearsal.”

“That’s all right,” Rev. Lawrence said. “It’s your first wedding. It’s not my first, not even my hundredth. And you,” he poked Eric on the chest, “host the rehearsal dinner. Is 7:00 a good time?”

“Okay. We’ll call you if there is a problem.” Well, with the two of them and Claire, they had three of the ten who would be in the wedding party.

“If Mom, Dad, and Rachel can’t come,” Eric said as they walked to the car, “it will be Friday night, not seven p.m., which is the problem.” The weather had turned clear and warm. That is to say that it got above freezing in the afternoons. Chicago side streets were being plowed, and Evanston seemed to get better service.

“Well,” he continued after they had dropped Claire off, “we won’t have a date Friday night.” Actually, they had a very public one.

“Or we’ll have a different kind of date.”

“Are Monday and Wednesday all right?”

“Sure.”

Her roots were beginning to show again. She’d done her hair at home the last several times, but for her wedding, she thought a beauty parlor was more appropriate. She made the appointment for Thursday afternoon.

By Wednesday, the roads were mostly dry. They didn’t go to a movie, and in the restaurant, Eric handed her a thick envelope.

“What is this?”

“Put it in your purse. We’ll talk later.” As they were walking to the car, Eric asked, “You still have your car keys?”

“Yeah.”

“Feel confident about driving tonight?” Well, she would have preferred to get familiar with a new car in the daylight -- in the summer if it came to that. She, however, didn’t make any glaring errors or cause an accident. Eric asked her to drive to the apartment.

“Look, why don’t you take the car now? I have papers in the glove compartment saying that you have my permission to drive the car in case you are stopped. The envelope I gave you is some cash. You spent a little for groceries already. This is money for what you think the household needs. Some of it is in singles, ‘cause you don’t want to go in and buy a head of lettuce with a 20. The tank is nearly full, but you might need gas, too. I’ll ride the El to work the next two days, and Bill or Dad will get me to the rehearsal -- to the wedding, too.” Eric had asked Prof. Pierce’s husband to be his best man.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I do. Come into the apartment whenever you like. I’ve been using a woman, Millie, to clean half-days on Fridays. She knows about you, and she’s been given severance pay, but she’ll be in Friday. If you go there Friday, don’t be surprised to see her. I cleaned out two drawers and a shelf of the medicine cabinet for you. Half the closet, too. Now, how about a kiss?” So she kissed him. The steering wheel did make it awkward. Then she drove home. When she opened the envelope, it contained five $20 bills and ten singles.

She used the car to partially move in before and after the hairdressing appointment on Thursday. Friday, whatever the cleaning woman had been told about her, she stayed away. Instead, she went shopping and -- mostly -- stayed home. That night, though, she drove to the rehearsal in Eric’s car rather than ride with Mom and Dad.

The rehearsal went smoothly. They’d pared it down far enough that nothing much could go wrong. She met Eric’s parents and sister. Rachel was a single mom. Her kid, a 12-year-old, was staying the night with friends. The Stewart family had come in from Moline and was spending the night in a motel.

The rehearsal dinner was in the back room of yet another Evanston restaurant. There had to be tons of those. There were more, of course, in Chicago, but there weren’t anywhere near as many in Belmont-Cragin and Portage Park as there seemed to be in Evanston. Everybody ordered off the menu, but Eric paid. On Eric’s recommendation she had the veal scaloppini.

She, rather than his family, drove Eric home. They had a long kiss in the car, but Eric didn’t invite her up. She drove home.

The car was a complication Saturday. She drove Mom to the church, and Dad drove the family car. The church, which was never full on a Sunday, was a lot emptier for their wedding. Dad walked her down the right-hand aisle. (Aldersgate didn’t have a central aisle.) Everything went fine. Mom burst into tears.

At the reception, there were a half-dozen college-age women who weren’t church regulars. Gwen was among them, and the others were friends of Joan, Claire, or both. Some of the older women of the church made and served punch. Prof. Pierce’s husband wasn’t in the line, and soon after it broke up, he came in with another man carrying take-out food. He went back out and came in with a cake. The food they served was Thai. She and Eric and their families sat at what was as close to a head table as the room could provide. People, except for their table, got their own food and their own glasses of punch -- buffet style. Everybody was nice, and they started circulating soon.

“I was getting the food with Bill while you were being kissed,” the other man who had got the food said. “Am I entitled to a kiss now?” She supposed so and gave him a peck on the lips. “It’s none of my business, but how old are you?”

“19.” It might be none of his business, but, of the many questions which weren’t any of his business, this was the least embarrassing.

“Wow! You must be quite a prodigy.”

“Hardly.” She had all but flunked out of her freshman year.

“Didn’t you tell me that you were a student of Carolyn’s?”

“Some of us, Dan, talk to undergraduates.” Prof. Pierce had come over during the conversation.

“I talk to undergraduates.”

“Lecture at them is more like it.” Dan went away, and Prof. Pierce asked her, “Are you happy?”

“I think so. More dazed, though. I wanted to thank you for my grade.”

“You earned it. That was your grade on the final. That was what you knew.”

“That and another C in Phys. Ed. were my highest grades. I’m not going back.”

“Well, I can understand not wanting to go back into that cesspool, but did you get a D?”

“Yeah. Two of them. I flunked American History flat out.”

“Well, you should know that you can go on from a D at Circle, but most schools won’t transfer credit when the grade is D. What were they in?”

“English and Geology.”

“And do you need more natural science?”

“No.”

“Well, you need English. At Circle, maybe at Champaign-Urbana, I don’t know the reciprocity between the campuses, you have your natural science distribution. Anywhere else, you probably don’t. As I said, every school has its own rules. Most, however, won’t transfer a D. Anyway, you have a new life now. You kept your books?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if you go somewhere else, you won’t have the grades, except for Economics and Phys. Ed. You will, on the other hand, have the knowledge you picked up. Read those books again. If you can’t transfer that grade, I would go look at another natural science. I don’t know which ones -- nobody knows until you look at specific schools -- you can get in a single quarter. English, as I said, is a necessity. But you can read those books and walk into the next school knowing as much as the guys who passed the courses with high marks. They’ll have forgotten most of it.”

“I feel such an idiot.”

“Don’t. And don’t feel anything about being a student today. This is your day, Mrs. Stewart, enjoy it.” Mr. Pierce walked up carrying two glasses of punch and handed one to the professor.

“Well, I was out getting the food when you were passing out kisses. Do I get one?” he asked.

“No,” said Prof. Pierce, “you definitely don’t.”

“Dan got one.” He looked at her. “Don’t I get one? She’s just jealous.”

“Well, if she is, you don’t get one. I owe her.” Mr. Pierce walked away shaking his head.

Not much later, Eric came up and raised his eyebrows.

“You want to go?” she asked.

“If you want to.”

“Let me thank Claire and Joan and get my purse.” They made their way slowly to the door and outside. Nobody threw rice. He drove them home -- to what was suddenly their home.