Chapter 3: Extended Family

Wednesday morning after breakfast, Marilyn headed downtown to change the name on her driver’s license. He dressed in jeans -- and no shirt -- and took Elements of Circuit Design into the back yard to read while he tanned. The course next year was Intermediate Circuit Design, but the author thought he was presenting only the elements.

This was heavy slogging without any lecturer or discussion section, but it might be the course next year which bore most directly on what he wanted to do the rest of his life -- daytime hours of the rest of his life, at least.

Molly came out damn near naked. He politely turned his back so she could suntan in privacy. She walked around him, so he was facing her again.

“Andy. Come on and drive us to the beach.”

“I’m reading, and the beach isn’t all that far. Head east. You can’t miss it. Remember whether you go north or south after you get to the lake. But, still, people know where Hamilton Street is. If you get lost coming back, ask. And, before you go out, why don’t you put on some clothes?”

“‘Some clothes’! You’re not wearing anything on top.”

“Neither are you. Anyway, I’m a guy, and I’m in my own back yard. Really, you’re working on your tan. Why not do it here?”

“Because I want to go to the Lake. Anyway. I am wearing something on top.” Something, he’d grant. Damn little, but something. “I can see your nipples, and you can’t see mine.” Well, she not only had her nipples covered, although he could see their shape through the tight cloth, she had her areolae covered, too. She definitely didn’t have her breasts covered.

“Is that what you’re going to tell Dad tonight? ‘I went to the beach to show my body to the boys there, but I kept my nipples covered, so it was okay.’ Is that what you’re planning to tell him?”

“This is what girls wear in California.”

“Girls, I can believe. When you were six, that much cloth could have covered you decently.”

“Well, he may be my father, but you aren’t. So take me and April to the beach.” And Dad was going to ignore his contribution if he found out what she’d done? Andy was supposed to have sense, and the hormones instigating this particular folly weren’t his.

“Well, I’m busy reading, or was until I was so rudely interrupted. I told you which direction you could walk in to get to the beach. You want to go there, then walk.”

“You’re selfish.”

“I may be selfish, but you’re something worse. You’re a Californian. You want to parade your body, but you can’t make the effort to walk a few blocks to do it.”

When Marilyn returned from downtown, Molly bitched to her. Marilyn, who’d just made a trip on public transit a hundred times as long as the one Molly wanted a ride for, didn’t tell him to drive. April was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt at lunch. That wasn’t beach gear, and he suspected that she’d changed from a costume as lewd as Molly’s. When the two of them wanted something from him, April was almost always the one to ask him. This exception might mean that they hadn’t wanted Andy to see her until he’d agreed to drive them. Molly, if dressed -- or undressed -- provocatively, had, after all, graduated from high school. The Moppet wasn’t yet in 10th grade.

Molly was still in her bikini for lunch, and still in a snit. After lunch, Marilyn took her for a walk around the block. Molly put on socks and sneakers to protect her feet from the sidewalk but wore nothing to protect her from the voyeurs but the bikini. He put on a shirt for the house AC and watched TV with April. Marilyn and Molly returned and joined them.

Marilyn’s family were coming to dinner, and after Mrs. Bryant asked him to put the extra leaves in the dining-room table, everybody went upstairs to change. Marilyn, who had been dressed for business downtown, changed nothing but her shoes. He dressed from his underpants out. He figured that the same sort of clothes he’d worn for visiting her old house should get her approval this time. He paused in dressing, though, when Marilyn spoke.

“Well, I’ll be sitting down, at least. I stood in line an hour in these heels this morning, and my feet felt it.”

“Poor feet,” he said. He knelt by her chair to rub them. If her feet were tired, her calves must be, too. She stopped him when his hand was halfway between her knees and her panties.

“That was lovely, but let’s delay the rest until tonight. Besides, you have to finish dressing.” She straightened her clothes and put on her makeup while he finished dressing. They went downstairs together.

Dad had gone all out. He served wine, which he usually didn’t with ham. When the bottle was passed, Andy took a half glass and poured April a mostly-full one. April knew better than to touch the bottle herself.

“Marilyn tells me, Andy, that you aced all your courses again this last quarter,” Mr. Grant said. Well, sure, but Marilyn always made too much of his grades.

“Yes. But this quarter was all courses in my major except partial differential equations. I needed those grades.”

“Is it easier to get an A in Electrical Engineering?” asked Pete. Well, it wouldn’t be easy for Pete.

“It’s easier for Andy,” Marilyn said. “The major is considered one of the more difficult ones at the university. PDE is the top undergraduate course in math. Our chapter maintains guides on what courses are easiest to pass. Andy has only taken one of those, drawing.” That was a surprise.

“You didn’t tell me that was on the list of hammock courses.”

“Well,” she said, “you didn’t ask me. I suggested that you take chorus, but you had your reasons.”

“Yeah.” Then he explained to the others, “Engineers have to draw, even though they do it differently. I thought free-hand drawing might give me an edge. Who knows whether it did.” It would be embarrassing to think it had helped his grade. Drafting was the engineering course in which he’d received a B.

“You seem,” Marilyn’s mom said, “to see everything as means to an end.” Well, not everything. How could he explain this?

“Well, ma’am, everything can’t be a means. You have to have ends. But, yes, I see course work as a means to an end. If you want to learn something because you’re curious about it, then you can read a book. If you’re going to need to know all -- a limited, but real, all -- about it, then you take a course. Then your teacher tests you. He’s supposed to be able to discern whether you know it or not. And, of course, if you’re going to sell your ability in the field, the buyer wants to see that certification of your knowledge from the teacher. I can’t see taking a course for fun.”

Marilyn saw the exception to that generalization immediately. “Well, you enjoyed swimming. You might have enjoyed chorus, too.”

“That’s a point. Some things aren’t learned well from books. You need your muscles as well was your mind. I couldn’t have learned driving from a book -- or dancing.”

“Book learning isn’t everything,” said Pete. Which was just what his sister and Andy had already said, trivialized into a generality.

“No, it isn’t,” he said.

“I’m not going to college for book learning.” There was something pathetic in Pete’s attempt to portray his future as superior to two other people’s present and three others’ past.

“Then,” his dad said, “I’ll be wasting a hell of a lot of money for tuition.”

“Do you have a major in mind?” Pete really needed help here, and Marilyn’s blood brother, even if he was nasty to her, probably deserved a little help. Andy threw him a life jacket.

“I’m going to college to meet girls. You did.” Pete threw it back.

“To be pedantic, I met Marilyn before college.” Andy hadn’t been looking for a girl. He hadn’t found a girl. He’d found Marilyn. “I met plenty of girls at college, notably Marilyn’s sorority sisters. Those meetings, however, were, in your mother’s distinction, means rather than ends.”

“Well, I’m not going to waste my time in classrooms and libraries the way you did.” Pete had just announced, to his dad’s annoyance, that he intended to waste his time in classrooms.

“Since the grounds available to you for judging whether I wasted my classroom time were my grades, I think your judgment needs reconsideration.” Andy thought he sounded like he was bragging, but Pete was really getting under his skin.

“And, Molly,” Marilyn’s mom said, “you’re going to college, too.” He might not like the woman, and she certainly didn’t like him, but she knew when the subject needed to be changed.

“Yes, ma’am. Fresno State. I’ll major in business, maybe accounting.” Molly wasn’t bad at mental arithmetic, and she had a number sense.

“You don’t want to waste all your time in classes, like your brother did.” Pete threw another life jacket away. When you’re that deep in a hole, stop digging. Pete had refilled his glass twice, but this wasn’t vodka; it was wine. He couldn’t be drunk on three glasses of wine.

“Well, I prefer to be compared to Marilyn.” Molly really liked Marilyn. “She’s not done with college, but by the time she leaves, she’ll have a profession and a husband -- a husband who has his own profession.” Molly must have forgiven him for the fight that morning. “Really, if you’re not preparing for a profession as well as meeting girls, then you’d better look for a girl who is willing to support you.”

“No way! I’m going to be the breadwinner in my family.” Pete managed to make even that expression of -- far future -- responsibility sound argumentative.

His father waded in: “Then, Pete, you’re in the horns of a dilemma. There are jobs which will support a wife and family, if not at the level you’re used to being supported, without a college degree. You, however, are not prepared for any of them. A gas-station attendant or waiter won’t put as much money in your wallet as you’re used to spending, much less add anything to your attractiveness to women who are looking to be supported. Either you get an education from your college time, or you won’t have any attraction for those women you hope to attract.”

There was a bit of a silence, then. But Marilyn’s dad had approached an interesting general point. That point gave an advantage to the newly-formed family he might not have seen. Andy tried to expand on it. “Y’know, every household in our society produces and consumes. We don’t, except for a few farmers back in the hills, produce much of what we consume. We produce one thing and mostly consume other things.”

“That’s not quite true.” Dad saw the fallacy in his generalization. “You produce a great deal of what you consume. Marilyn cooked breakfast this morning; she’ll cook almost all your meals for the next nine months. The conversation tonight is something the people here both produced and consumed. I, at least, enjoyed most of it. When it doesn’t enter into commerce, the economists ignore it -- rightly so, usually -- but it does exist.”

“Very well, Dad. But a household must consume a great deal -- of vital necessities -- that it cannot produce. The general run of man enjoys consumption and endures producing for the pleasure of consuming. Marilyn and I see our future as being among the privileged class that enjoys producing what we will produce, as well. That makes us among the fortunate. It’s not so much that we’ll be a two-income family. It’s that we’ll be a four-enjoyment family, or -- at least -- three. I’ll enjoy engineering, Marilyn will enjoy teaching, and then we’ll bring our paychecks home to enjoy what they buy.”

“Well,” said Marilyn’s dad, “if you make it, more power to you. I can’t quite see enjoying engineering, myself -- or, really, teaching.”

“Well, Dad,” Marilyn said, “teaching day to day may be a grind, but you get a good deal of satisfaction when your students learn.”

“That’s an interesting distinction,” Dad said, “some things are pleasant to do, and other things are pleasant to have done. They give satisfaction. Somehow, I can’t think of many things which are both.” And Bob couldn’t think, off the top of his head, of anything which gave both. Dad was always better at puncturing his balloons than he was at puncturing Dad’s.

The evening, despite Pete, was a decided success. Marilyn stood beside him seeing the Grant family out -- the entire Grant family since the 9th of July. They left the girls and Dad downstairs watching TV and went up to their room. Marilyn was both extremely sexy and extremely loving. He drifted off with his arm securely around her.

The next morning Dad said, “I keep saying that you don’t have to do this, but I’m glad you do,” about the pancakes Marilyn cooked for breakfast.

“Well, Mr. Trainor, remember your distinction last night. You get pleasure from eating them; I get satisfaction from cooking them. And, too, I could hardly eat them if I didn’t serve you as well.”

“You’re being ambiguous,” Dad said. “There are three people here, including yourself. If you’re not talking to yourself, you’re talking to ‘Mr. Trainor.’ Now, ‘Jim’ would be specific.”

“Somehow, I don’t think of Andy as being ‘Mr. Trainor.’” He wasn’t ‘Mr. Trainor’; he was her Andy. “He’s called me ‘Mrs. Trainor’ occasionally.” Well, of course.

“A much greater accomplishment of the last quarter than his GPA. Why shouldn’t he glory in it?” Dad got it.

“But I’m Mrs. Trainor because I’m his wife. He was Mr. Trainor before the marriage. I think of him as Andy. He knows to whom I’m talking when I use your name.”

Dad had lost, and he should see that. Marilyn was sweet, but she had a will of iron.

The combination of pancakes for breakfast and that Marilyn had cooked the meal got the girls downstairs at his first call. Again, they cleaned up after breakfast without a murmur. Mom would have been green with envy. Afterwards, April and Marilyn went out together. Molly dialed through the TV channels before turning the set off.

“You know,” he said, “there aren’t different shows here than there are in California. Especially in July, why do you bother watching when you’re around Dad.”

“Well, when you two go up he glares if we follow before another show has come and gone.”

“Really?”

“I’m not going to eavesdrop, you know. Embarrassing you might be fun, but I couldn’t without embarrassing her.” Molly was definitely in Marilyn’s fan club.

“Maybe embarrass her more.”

“That’s not what she says.” He must have looked surprised. “She says that she can talk about sex with me because we’re sisters. I can’t talk about sex with you because -- since you’re my brother -- I shouldn’t think of you having sex at all.”

“Well, you probably shouldn’t.”

“I dunno. I think of her as this great person, and she’s perfectly happy being married to you. No offense, Andy, but I don’t think you’re all that super.”

“No offense taken. I don’t think I am either. One thing, of course, I love her desperately. Now, if you’re over Pete...”

“I’m not over him. I just wanted him as a temporary boy to talk to. We didn’t have a date or anything. Not that I’d have accepted if he’d asked. Did you see that I seated myself last night?”

“No. I was busy with Marilyn, and when I turned to April, Mr. Grant had seated her.”

“Yeah. He wasn’t used to it, but he caught on. Pete didn’t catch on.”

“Well, it isn’t as if you had any problem.”

“It isn’t as if I had any problem. I can seat myself, and I can fix my own breakfast. It’s just nice to have someone trying to be nice to me.”

“Well, what I was about to say was that he was too interested in Pete to care deeply for someone else. So, while we both agree that Marilyn could do better, she could also do worse.”

“Oh sure. Y’know, there are a lot of Petes out there. You’re not a girl, and you don’t...”

“Lots of them are the bullies I knew, knew only too well.”

“Yeah, some. On the other hand, some guys that bully other guys are perfect gentlemen around girls...

“You are a real prude sometimes, you know.” She’d really changed the subject.

“Your bikini?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m a boy. I know what boys think when they see most of you. They really see it all. Their imaginations can fill in the damn-small blanks.”

“So? Can’t your imagination fill in the blanks when a girl is fully dressed? Hell, I saw the look on your face that morning when Marilyn was taking a shower, and there were walls and a floor in between.” He was busted.

“Well, we’re married.”

“I just want to be special. You’re special to Marilyn. Hell, you’re special to your teachers. I have some assets, and I don’t like having to hide them.”

“You’re special to me, to Dad, to Mom, to The Moppet. I think you’re special to Marilyn, too.”

“Yeah. But I’d be special to the family if I were a 300 pound drooling idiot. ‘My kid’ isn’t good enough. I want to be ‘Molly the special’ because of me!”

“So, do you have somebody back there you’re special to?”

“Is that your business?”

“Not really. But, if you do, would he like you displaying your breasts and butt on Illinois beaches?”

“Well, don’t you like everybody seeing how pretty Marilyn is?”

“Not that way. There are parts I want to keep all to myself.”

“You’re greedy. Or is it selfish?”

“Maybe it’s both. Sounds like they’re back.” And Marilyn and April were back. Marilyn’s discussions with the girls seemed to reach conclusions. This discussion with Molly -- like most of his discussions with Molly -- hadn’t seemed to.

Sunday, they took the girls to the airport after church. He was genuinely sorry to see them go, although that would free him and Marilyn up slightly. Now, there would be only one pair of ears in the house at night -- well they had ears, but he didn’t mind Marilyn hearing him make love to her.

“I love them dearly,” Dad said on the way back from the airport. “I wish the visits were longer, but I always find myself tired afterwards.”

“I could drive,” Andy said. “And, you know, next summer will be Molly’s choice. She might want to visit longer, too.”

“Her mother, your mother, would hate that.” Dad still took care that Mom not be annoyed. She seemed to want to annoy him.

“She doesn’t seem to worry about what you think.”

“Well, a divorce is a little like a marriage that way. Your promises are unconditional. I promised to not try to use you guys to get at her...

“Y’know, Marilyn,” he continued. “You might not think I’m much good at the marriage business. Mark Twain had a story about two steam-boat pilots. One had sailed the river for years without ever hitting a sandbank or a snag. The other...”

“Had hit every snag and hung up on every sandbank in the Mississippi,” Marilyn continued for him. “American literature is one of the things I studied.”

“Yes. I’m used to talking with Andy. He knows all sorts of things I’ll never understand, but lots of what I know he either doesn’t...”

“Or,” Andy said, “I know it because you repeat the same stories.”

“Well, I could hardly repeat different stories, now could I? Anyway, I’m like the second pilot. I may not know how to keep a marriage going, but I know some of the things which can put a marriage under strain. I opposed your marrying this year.”

“Yes, Marilyn said. “Andy told me of your offer, a quite generous offer. Yet, when we turned it down, you gave us the shorter honeymoon. We’re quite grateful for your generosity.”

“Well, I wasn’t opposed to the marriage, merely to the timing. If you have a hard time this coming year, and you are almost guaranteed to have a hard time economically if in no other way, then I expect your love to carry you through. I never doubted that. The problem is that when love carries you through the hard times, the hard times erode the love. I didn’t want that to happen to you.”

“Well,” she said, “love can be eroded, but it can also build up. I’d hate to think that even Andy’s love is a bank account that we’ll be drawing down for the next fifty years.”