Chapter 2: We Five

Andy Trainor lay in bed the last morning of his honeymoon waiting for Marilyn to finish in the bathroom. When she came out, she began to dress immediately.

“Come back to bed,” he said. Getting dressed so early wasn’t his idea of how to spend a honeymoon, especially the last morning of the honeymoon. They would have three sets of ears in the house with them that night.

“Let’s have breakfast,” she said. That was really low on his priority list. “Let’s have breakfast and come back.” That sounded much better.

For someone who had wanted breakfast so much, Marilyn ate very little. He fueled himself up for his expected exertions. Back in the room, she came into his arms for a hug. The kiss, however, was brief.

“Let me brush,” she said. He heard the toilet flush, too. He replaced her in the bathroom to brush his own teeth. He’d shaved that morning and decided no more whiskers had grown yet.

He kissed her before unbuttoning anything. Then, every article of her clothing bared some skin which needed to be kissed. Shortly, she started removing his clothes as well. She could step out of her heels, but he had to take off his own shoes and socks. Her final article of clothing was her panties. He knelt down and kissed her breasts while sliding them off. Then he kissed her mons and each thigh. There he could smell how sexy she was.

When he rose, he picked her up to lay her on the bed. Stripping off his underpants, he lay down beside her. They had a long kiss. Every corner of her mouth tasted sweet, and her tongue followed his when he drew it back. He sucked gently on it while he stroked her breast. He drew his fingers from the base almost to the tip, but he tried to avoid the nipple before going back for another trip.

When he left her mouth, he repeated the pattern with his lips. He kissed a line down her neck to her breast, but he skipped the nipple -- already bright red -- to cross over to her other breast. He stroked her thighs, and, when they spread, he stroked across her outer labia. When he finally parted them, he found her moist.

“Oh, my love,” he said. He stroked some of that moisture up her groove. He managed to suck her nipple just as he touched the clitoris.

“Yesss,” she said. “Oh, Andy.” She pulled his head against her breast, and he went on sucking. She was responding rapidly to his strokes, but he couldn’t raise his head to watch her. She clutched him more tightly to her breast as she writhed against him. When she let go, he raised his head to watch her expression ease to a blissful smile.

“You,” she said when he began stroking again. He moved between her legs, and she spread them wider. She parted her labia with one hand, and he placed himself there.

“Oh, darling,” he said. She was so warm, so juicy.

“Married,” she said as he slowly sank himself into that warm, wet, welcoming clasp.

“Married,” he agreed when she had fully surrounded him. He kissed her hairline before beginning his strokes. She smoothed her hands down his back. When she was holding his butt, she kissed the air towards him. “Darling,” he said.

He could hold back. He’d ejaculated the night before, and regularly every night in the previous week. She was incredibly sensual to see lying under him. She was even more sensual to feel sliding all around him as he pumped slowly in and out. Still, as aroused as he was feeling, it wasn’t urgent yet. He moved slowly, watching her expression change from loving to an inward pondering, from that to worried. When the worry started to look like pain, she rose up to meet him when he moved down.

The expression turned to agony, and her hands clamped on his butt cheeks and pulled as she threw herself up against his loins. Then she was writhing under him and clasping around him.

“Darling,” he said as he drove through that sweet, rhythmic clasp. “Love,” he said as he drove in again. “Oh!” he gasped as he drove in a third time and erupted.

He recovered slowly, with a bit of his weight on his elbows, but most on her softness. When he moved aside, she rolled to face him instead of backing into him for the spoon.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she said. Her eyes kept saying it while their mouths were silent. He hoped his did, too. After a little, she pulled the covers over them, and after a little longer, she got up. When he heard the shower running, he joined her. She let him watch her repair her makeup before she got dressed. He checked out, and they ate lunch.

They got back to Evanston soon after noon. He stopped in the driveway, got the luggage out of the trunk, and carried it up to the porch. After giving the family double tap on the doorbell, he unlocked the door. Then he picked up Marilyn to carry her inside. She was less surprised than she had been in the hotel, and merely put an arm around his neck.

He left her to talk to the girls and Dad while he carried the luggage up to their room. That looked different; the bed had been replaced by a double. It looked, indeed, like Dad’s.

“What the!” he said. Well, he’d probably been loud enough for Dad to hear, but he’d go downstairs for the explanation.

“Since there’s only one of me and there’s two of you,” Dad said, “I figured that the double bed belonged in there.” That was logical. “It’s a new mattress, and there are new sheets.” Which was, he supposed, nice. On the other hand, they hadn’t been the first to sleep on the mattress in the apartment. Nor were they the first in the hotel room, though that one had felt newer.

“You’re very kind,” Marilyn said. Which meant that Dad had done the right thing.

“Selfish, Dad said. “The more comfortable you are, the likelier you are to visit.”

Marilyn soon left to see her parents. He looked at her, but she didn’t want him along. When she was gone, he put the car in the garage. When he got back in the house, the girls were talking about how nice Marilyn was. He let them tell him, although he’d known it before they had.

“Now, April,” Dad said, “if Andy hadn’t thought her a wonderful woman, you would never have had the chance to form your opinion.”

“Boys! All he saw was the body.” He couldn’t win, not with those two. He gave the card back to Dad.

“A credit card!” Molly said, “what do I have to do to get a credit card?”

“I already told Andy that I would trust him with a card, although I wouldn’t trust either of you. You’re honest, but the size of your purses is the only thing keeping you from buying everything in sight.”

“Well,” Molly said. “I’ll admit that Andy leaves his fingerprints on every penny that he ever touches. He pinches them so hard. But I’ll bet that he’d buy anything that Marilyn wanted.”

“Probably so,” he admitted. “Right now, she’d want me to unpack.” He went upstairs and unpacked his things. While he was at it, he cleared out one side of the closet and consolidated his dresser drawers to leave three of the five for Marilyn. She would have more clothes, and more kinds of clothes.

“It’s Marilyn!” April yelled from downstairs. As he was going down the stairs, he realized that he’d heard the doorbell. The girls were laughing, at Dad -- not at him, as he got to the foot of the stairs.

“Before I forget, Andy,” Marilyn said, “Mom invited you and me to dinner Monday. I said a tentative yes. Are you free?” She handed him her key ring and a house key. She still had the apartment keys on the ring, and Dad hadn’t given her a garage key. Well, he’d leave the apartment keys on until she said otherwise. He put the house key on the ring. Now, it was her home, too.

“As a bird,” he said. “I don’t have anything to do except with the people here.”

“Well,” Dad said, “you need to get some formalities taken care of.” Sure. Sometimes, Dad micro-managed his life as though he had no adult sense. Then he remembered that he hadn’t got the car keys duplicated yet. It wasn’t all that important. He mostly drove, and he’d given her the keys when she drove. But the symbolism was important.

“Yes, but Marilyn is one of the people here. I thought we’d go down to the bank Monday to get her name on the account,” he told Dad. He asked Marilyn, “Is it okay to wait until we’re back to do that on the Champaign account?” They were a family, and the accounts were family money.

“Quite all right.”

“If they’re having you over,” Dad said, “I think we ought to invite your family. How does Wednesday sound? I know you can’t speak for your family, Marilyn, but does anyone here have any conflicts?”

“You might want to invite just my parents,” Marilyn said. Omitting Pete was a good idea.

“And not Pete?” Molly asked. Marilyn’s idea just looked better. Had the girl no taste?

“Listen, my new sister,” said Marilyn. “I don’t mind if your dad invites him. That’s his choice. But you be careful. I know that guy. Don’t get in any back seats with him.”

“Marilyn!”

“I’m not saying to stay out of back seats with boys in general. That would be not only hypocritical, but ... You’re a high-school graduate?”

“Yeah.”

“Years too late. I’m saying watch out for this particular guy. I’ve heard him talk about girls, and he’s only out to score.” So Pete ran his mouth in one more inappropriate place.

“He did tell me,” he said, “that the game was getting sex from a woman without marrying her. According to him, I’d lost. I told him that was like telling Babe Ruth he’d lost because he hadn’t scored a touchdown. I’d won the World Series in the game I was playing.”

“The whole family,” Dad said. “Pete will sit next to Molly, and I’ll get a set of handcuffs for him.” Everybody laughed.

Dad called to issue the invitation. He conveyed Marilyn’s and his acceptance during the call.

With the girls in mid visit, they would eat at Manfredo’s after church the next day. That sort of made a restaurant this night inappropriate. Dad ordered pizza.

Marilyn’s choice of topping was tiny shrimp after Dad had gone around. If she hadn’t been there, he would have probably merely asked whether anyone had changed their mind. Marilyn and he were a family, but Dad clearly regarded the 5 Trainors as a family, too. And pizzas were as important a ritual for the Trainor family as Manfredo’s was.

After dinner, they watched TV for a while. Actually, it was more fun watching Marilyn watch TV. Watching her climb the stair ahead of him was even more fun. She’d worn her heels for the whole day. It was the first time she’d seen his room, and she looked around. The bed dominated the room, now. It was a serious piece of furniture, while the chair and bookcases were a teen’s.

While the bed frame was from Dad’s room, the mattress was new, as Dad had said, and firm. He could see that Marilyn was conscious of possibly being overheard when they were lying on it. Neither of them said a word. When she reached for him after her second orgasm, he didn’t evade. They couldn’t afford the speech for him to ask her to wait. He kissed her silently when he was fully enclosed.

He said, “Oh, darling,” when she writhed under him and around him, however. He’d forgotten about the others, forgotten about the house, forgotten about the rest of the world.

“Do you think they heard us?” she whispered as he was resting on her.

“No.” He thought of the times April or Molly had played her radio too loud. There had been a marked difference when they opened their doors. He wished, for once, that he had his own radio in his room. Still, suddenly playing a radio would publish that he didn’t want to be overheard. Anybody would guess what he didn’t want overheard. “I love you,” he whispered when she was tucked into his arm. He hugged her, and she hugged his arm.

After church the next day, they were rather a center of attention. That delayed their leaving. In the car, Dad assured them that he’d made a later reservation than usual. They rode with Molly in front and him behind her. Marilyn sat between him and April. The dinner at Manfredo’s was quite enjoyable.

“What brought on that problem at the last minute?” April asked on the way back. “At the wedding, I mean. I thought you loved Andy.” So, it hadn’t been merely his anxiety which made the wait seem so long.

“I do,” Marilyn said, “and I did then. I was just being silly.”

“It wasn’t silly at all,” Dad said. Well, Marilyn was definitely not silly. Still, Dad didn’t have to say that about her hesitation in marrying him. “Marriage is a leap into the dark, a lifetime commitment. She wasn’t ready for marriage, and she realized that at the last moment. But most marriages occur when the couple isn’t ready for marriage. Indeed, you can’t really be ready for marriage before it happens, no more than a new-born infant is ready for birth. It’s almost traditional for brides to panic at the last minute. It’s traditional for someone to calm them down if that happens.”

“Your father talked me though it.”

“I dealt with the expressed problem, and that got her attention off the underlying problem, which was that it is a leap into the dark.”

“What was the problem?” he asked. This concerned him, and everybody else in the car knew more than he did. “The expressed problem, that is.”

“Well,” Marilyn said. “I decided that, however much I loved you, it wasn’t as much as you loved me. You’d given me an image of love, and I wasn’t living up to it.”

“I do love you.”

“And I love you, too. I’m just worried that it’s not so much.”

“If it would make you happier, Marilyn,” Dad said, “I suspect that much of what Andy calls love is really selfishness. He wants to have you in his life.” Well the comment might make her happier, but it damn-well didn’t make him happier, especially since Dad was probably right. He’d lived most of his life without Marilyn, but now he didn’t understand how he’d done it.

“But I want her to be happy, too,” he said. “All right, that’s a requirement for the other. I couldn’t have her long if I make her unhappy. But it’s a separate desire. I want to see Marilyn happy. I want to make her happy.”

“Well, you can’t,” Dad said. “One person can make another unhappy. One person can’t make another happy, although they can provide the circumstances that tend to increase happiness in that person.” Well, that was good enough. He didn’t want to make her happy, really; he wanted her to be happy.

“Well, I’ll try that, then.”

“And if your wife is wise, she’ll let you know what those circumstances are.” He hoped she would. He should remember to ask her.

Mr. Schmidt’s hardware store was closed on Sundays, but Andy -- the entire workforce -- had known which competitors weren’t. He walked to one of those competitors and had his car keys duplicated. He got the garage key duplicated, too, though he wasn’t sure Marilyn could handle that door. She couldn’t reach high enough to open it without standing on something; that was for sure.

That night, they waited until after the news to go upstairs like the others did. Marilyn lay in his arms with the pillow ready to muffle any of her cries. When his hand stroked down from her breasts, she raised her right leg. Once he had stroked her until she writhed, he couldn’t resist doing it again and again. The feeling of holding her while she arched against him was so sexy. When he did enter her, they kept the same position. She moved as soon as he started to enter, and he couldn’t keep still.

He kept whispering, “I love you,” as they moved against each other until he couldn’t hold back any longer. At his last spasms, she contracted around him, milking out the final drops. When lying like this, he didn’t have to move off, and she didn’t have to move into the spoon.

“Well, darling,” Marilyn said sometime later, “you’ve learned one way to make me happy, anyway.”

“I love you, you know,” he whispered against her head. “This makes us both happy.”

Monday, the alarm went off at his regular time. He remembered what Dad had said and that the girls were in the house. He put on his pajamas as well as the robe. Marilyn got up, too. After he’d made the bed, they joined Dad for cereal. He could tell that Dad was happy for her company.

The girls being in the house, he let Marilyn shower alone. He had his shower and dressed before either Molly or April stirred. This was their regular pattern, but he wondered what they had been doing the previous night. Not listening, he hoped. Well, if they’d been listening to radios, he hadn’t heard the music. That meant that it was fairly unlikely that they’d heard him and Marilyn.

When the girls came down for breakfast, Marilyn sat with them, and he had more toast.

“Can you drive us downtown, Andy,” April asked. When they both wanted something, April was the one to ask him. They knew his usual answer to The Moppet was yes, but not this time. Californians were going to lose their legs to evolution, just like the whales had.

“Evanston or Chicago? You take the EL to Chicago.” The girls had taken the EL. They knew how to navigate it.

“Evanston.”

“Let’s walk. It’s not far, and I want you to know the way back. I think Marilyn and I will be back for lunch.”

“We’ll eat in town, Mrs. Bryant,” Molly said.

“Did Marilyn tell you?” he asked Mrs. Bryant. “We’re having three guests Wednesday. Eight in all. Her family.”

If he’d been alone with Marilyn, they’d have wandered the streets north and west, but they knew the town. He went west to Asbury and then turned north. That soon got them to a shop which interested Molly. They were going to stick together. He and Marilyn went on to the bank.

The bank preferred to start a new account for the two of them instead of putting her name on the old account. Well, that was really better. They gave him the passbook, but that wasn’t really right. The budget had been mostly hers; handling the money should probably be, too. He handed it over on their way out.

“Which of us should keep this?” he asked. “You’re in charge of chores. Handling the money might not be quite the same thing, but it makes sense for you to assign that as well.”

“You should keep it. Andy, it’s your money.”

“Not since the ninth. Is it okay if we don’t officially transfer car title? I think there’s a charge for that.” And that wasn’t in the budget. But it shouldn’t look like the family car was his car. Damn! Symbols conflicted with practicalities, and he was the worst person in the world to judge between them.

“Andy, it’s perfectly all right.”

“I’ve given you the keys, right?” That was a little dishonest, but he didn’t want her to know that he’d forgotten that until Dad handed over the house key. He looked at his key ring. “Nope! They’re here. Sorry about that.” He took the keys off his ring and handed them to her. Instead, she gave him her key ring.

“Take your apartment keys off, too, will you? I’m bad about that.” Her fingernails were too long, and -- truth to tell -- her patience was too short.

“The one which isn’t a car key is to the garage,” he said. “You can use it, but maybe you want to ask me or dad to get the garage open if it’s closed. Anyway, if there’s anything else I’ve forgotten, let me know.”

“Well, it is an awfully long time since I was kissed.” He kissed her, noting that just because he enjoyed something didn’t mean that she didn’t.

They walked back hand in hand for lunch with Mrs. Bryant.

“Are you tired of the baked ham, Mrs. Trainor?” Mrs. Bryant asked.

“Marilyn, please. The baked ham was six months ago, and it was delicious.”

“I thought I’d do that, then. Your parents have had the roast beef, Ms. Marilyn, and the ham will serve any number.” Mrs. Bryant had a woman to consult. She had done an excellent job of running the household, but he didn’t think Dad met her standards for an employer. ‘Use your judgment’ wasn’t the sort of direction she wanted.

“Andy,” Mrs. Bryant said. “could you get a shopping list for me?”

“Sure, but you should really ask Marilyn for my services. She assigns chores in this marriage.” They had agreed to that, but Marilyn obviously thought he’d been wrong to say it. Well, it wasn’t as if he expected to be busy this summer. “Anything else you want to add?” he asked Marilyn. Mrs. Bryant was sure to keep a more complete pantry than he had, but Marilyn had some extreme requirements.

“Well, maybe. Mrs. Bryant, do you have eggs and bacon?”

“Bacon. If you want many eggs, Andy should add them to the list.” So he did. He got the stuff and saved the receipt for Dad. When he’d handed the bag over to Mrs. Bryant, Marilyn caught his eye and headed upstairs. He followed. In their room, she shut the door.

“Mrs. Bryant tells me that she won’t open the door if it’s closed.” Which meant that they had privacy. They both took off their own sneakers and lay on the bed. They kissed. He stroked breast and butt with her cooperation, indeed her approval. When he passed his hand between her legs, though, she moved it back to her breast. Well, that established the limit. Actually, while she was marvelously soft there, the jeans weren’t. He unbuttoned her blouse to kiss further down her neck.

The family taps on the doorbell announced that the girls had returned. Marilyn restored her clothes and makeup, and he washed his face before going down. On an hours-long shopping trip the girls had managed to buy one charm for Molly’s charm bracelet.

“In a tenth of the time you took,” he told them, “I filled a large grocery bag and carried it home.”

“Andy,” Marilyn said, “they weren’t buying. They were shopping.” Hadn’t that been his point? He didn’t overvalue buying things, but that was the reason for shopping. “Males!” Well, if she were disgusted with him, she was disgusted with any possible rival, too.

As they were going to dinner at her family’s, they went upstairs to dress for it. That meant some undressing first, and he took a little advantage of her state. She cooperated enthusiastically, but they didn’t take it very far. Once that would have been frustrating as hell. In those days, however, he slept alone. Now, they weren’t stopping, they were taking a break until bedtime.

“What will you wear?” she asked suddenly. Wasn’t that her area of expertise? They were visiting her family. For that matter, clothing was her kingdom.

“White shirt? Khakis?” He didn’t think this would be a suit occasion; this was now a family event. “Church shoes?”