Chapter 32: Family / Time

Saturday, September 18, 1982

We both slept late, rousing about nine. Mom didn’t seem in the least bothered at breakfast. If anything, she seemed happy, maybe glowing...

Okay. Enough of that train of thought. La la la, indeed!

In any case, she gave both of us warm, indulgent smiles, asked how we slept, and that was it. No question she knew where we’d slept, and no question she wasn’t worried about what might have happened.

After breakfast, I worked on homework and studying until it was time to head over to Jane’s office. Since this was an ‘official’ visit, Mom was driving. As usual, Angie and I held hands in the back. Mom looked happy, and ... I think ... wasn’t glowing...

Bad train of thought! Bad! Bad!

Angie went first today, so I hung out and read a couple of the not too dated magazines they had. I should’ve brought a book, and I’m not sure why I still forgot to, after all this time. Habit, probably.

After a while, Angie came out. I got up, and we touched hands as we passed, Mom and Jane both smiling at us. Jane and I headed back to her office, where I settled in my usual chair.

“Angie says everything is going well. Is she right?” Jane said, smiling.

“She’s right, as far as I’m concerned. School is going well, Debate is going, um ... almost too well ... my relationship with Jasmine is solid, and I’m doing fine with others, though it’s been ... sedate ... recently. Drama will be busy.”

“What’s up there?”

“We do a play in the fall as well as the spring musical. We’re doing ‘Harvey’. I’m playing Wilson, the big orderly.”

“Seems to fit you. No interest playing the eccentric who perceives things others don’t?”

I chuckled. “Nope. The guy who’ll be playing Elwood is much better for the part than I am. Plus ... all those lines! I can’t manage. Charles isn’t doing much in competition.”

“Good point there. I’m sure it’s hard balancing everything.”

“It can be.”

“Anything else new?”

“There’s only one real update on the relationship front, and that’s that Jessica and I officially broke up, and she’ll start dating other people.”

“Not unexpected, I would think.”

I shrugged and smiled. “The head cheerleader needs a date for Homecoming, and preferably one who’s not already dating someone else. Almost no matter how things had developed, September was a hard stop date.”

“Any regrets?”

“Um ... I was going to say I don’t do regrets, but of course I do. If I didn’t, this whole second-chance life would be hugely different. So ... not really. I regret, maybe, that I didn’t try even harder to keep from breaking her heart as much as I did. That might be good for her, though. She’s never had her heart broken this way, and she needs to see that it’s not a disaster to love and lose.”

She nodded, looking thoughtful. “You’re still close?”

“I hope we’re always close. We certainly will be as long as we’re trying to resolve things with her ... well, the word I want is ‘stalker’, but I think that’s not current yet.”

“I can see what it would mean, but, yes, I can’t recall it being used that way.”

“It will be,” I said.

“Still weird when you do that. A good sort of weird, though. So, beyond that ... no girl of the week? Or girls of the week, sometimes?”

I shrugged. “I’m supposed to be getting together with Paige sometime soon, but there’s nothing set yet. I got together with Sue not long ago, and I’m not sure if there’ll be more there or not. Of the girls from last year, Lexi’s still looking for someone, but we aren’t planning anything. Sheila’s with Amit and Megan’s with Calvin. Mikayla and I will do something ... sometime ... I think. No specific plans. I imagine there are some others yet to happen.”

“Of course.”

“Jasmine reminded me that Paige was waiting impatiently,” I said, grinning.

“Of course she did,” Jane said, giving the obligatory eye-roll. “Anything else?”

“The football team is doing well.”

“Jessica must be happy.” She paused, spotting something in my eyes. “That bothers you. The team, I mean, not Jessica. Of course you’d want her to be happy.”

“Bothers is the wrong word. I had wondered if Angie had mentioned it. It’s almost more of a topic for one of our joint meetings, but ... well, briefly, I’m almost certain they weren’t this good this year my first go-round. Some of it is Cal and Andy, who we influenced in several ways. I’m suspicious that we’re seeing another big ripple just starting to head out there.”

“Big?”

“We’re drawing more college recruiters to games. Cal and Andy will almost certainly wind up playing in college. Maybe they did before, but they weren’t stars. I’d have likely noticed that — I paid more attention to football once I was in college. Some of the other kids might get football scholarships who didn’t before. That’ll displace other kids. It might well make the difference between who gets to be a millionaire and play on Sundays.”

“Something you never could’ve predicted, and can’t control now.”

I nodded. “I’m happy about it, but it’s ... daunting. Again.”

“I can see that. You said Debate was going almost too well?”

“That’s not ... hrm. Well, it is somewhat the same thing. I think Janet and Lizzie are better this time, probably because we’re all so close and work so hard and so well together. Cammie is on the team instead of ... somewhere, likely somewhere terrible. Megan was there, but not this Megan. I doubt Bree would be there are all. Gene is ... honestly, Gene is a lot better than he was. Probably Angie’s doing, in no small part. We have all of the Drama crossovers in Extemp. On and on ... lots of little differences that all add up.”

“And it’s too well because...?”

“Other schools are starting to hate us, and with cause. Tournaments are starting to enforce maximum entry rules aimed at us. Some of that’s ... reasonably fair. It’s not that our best team is head and shoulders better than someone else’s A team — though I think they might be — it’s that our fourth and fifth best teams are better than most schools’ B or C teams. They’re going to have to stop us from taking half of the slots in quarterfinals in CX, or a quarter in Extemp. It’s too much.”

“You’ll manage?”

“We’ll manage. We’re going to split up and go to two different tournaments. There’s always the option of teams who’ve qualified taking breaks, too. Last year we took some breaks, but splitting up will be new. We’ll see what happens.”

She nodded. “Interesting challenges. No one tells you that being too good can be a problem.”

“Yeah.”

“So ... that’s relationships, school, and some ... unique issues.” She grinned a bit. “What next?”

“This is unique, coming from a sixteen-year-old, but ... I need to talk about my ex-wife a bit.”

That must have hit her just right. It took her a few minutes to stop laughing, and even then, little busts of chortling popped up for a few more.

“Oh, my. Yes ... that’s unique. Thank God that’s unique!”

“I’m going to just dump out a lot of stuff, first. Some you’ve heard, some you haven’t. Then we can go through it. This is not a one-session topic. Not even close.”

She nodded. I launched into the whole story. Our meeting: something of a weird coincidence of timing. Our courtship: relatively whirlwind, taking well under a year from first meeting to engagement and living together. Her quitting her job with no replacement in sight, then insisting we not change our lifestyle, putting us in debt — something she blamed me for, ever afterwards.

Then our rocky engagement, with repeated near break-ups. Our wedding, and the first major ‘I’m leaving you and flying back as soon as the ship docks’ fight less than a day into our honeymoon cruise. That one was over whether politely suggesting sex — on our honeymoon! — was appropriate. It was over by the next morning, but a sign of things to come.

Fights off and on, usually over little things. I’d seen a pattern after years that I could describe more clearly now: whether it was because holidays depressed her, or because the stakes were higher, fights picked up around and on holidays, birthdays, things like that. We made it through each one, and some of the bigger ones felt, at the time, like maybe we’d turned a corner. We never did, though.

Moving, infertility, adoption, job changes, layoffs, so forth and so on, with random fights a constant the whole way. Not every day, nor every week, nor even every month, but on average at least one major ‘I’m going to get my own apartment and move out’ fight per month. Of course, I’d learned that she wasn’t going to do it, which made the last one the biggest blindside of all, perhaps.

By the end I was more emotionally wrung out than I expected to be, and Jane was shaking her head in wonder, or sympathy, or perhaps frustration at what a bonehead I’d been. Or all of that.

“That ... that’s a lot. I’m not a marriage counselor, but of course I’ve had some training, and ... you can’t see a marriage counselor for obvious reasons. I’ll do what I can. It’s ... amazing ... thinking of you carrying the scars from that.”

“I think ... being a kid again ... those memories shifting into a strange future-past ... has softened it. I’ve got all the hormones and a lot of the newness that comes from being sixteen. I really don’t think I’ve got a fear of commitment just because I was burned before. If I hadn’t gotten this second chance, though, it’d be me and a dog or a cat, at least until retirement age when single men become hot commodities.”

She chuckled at that. “They do. I’ve seen it. And, no, I don’t think you have a fear of commitment. If anything, you’re eagerly seeking it. Almost too eagerly, but not quite. On the other hand, and not meaning anything about how things ended, but ... having had some normal breakups and then ... while it’s unorthodox, the open relationship, too ... those have helped you.”

“I thought about that a lot, and it hit me that it means almost nothing to choose someone when you think they’re the best you could ever have. That was me and my ex-wife. I was past college, with no significant relationships along the way. One dating partner, one dance. Through graduate school, with no dating — though we’ve agreed that’s not true, but that’s how I felt — no dances, nothing. On my own, overweight, introverted, nearly a virgin. Here comes a women who’s smart and funny and interesting and seems to really like me. Of course I thought she was the best I could ever have. Of course I clung to it even when she hurt me again and again and again. Being alone would’ve been better, I think, but that’s now, not then.”

“That’s quite a point, and ... yes. And now you know the sky is pretty much the limit. You’ve turned down the girl that, I daresay, virtually every straight boy who’s even vaguely age-appropriate would give anything to date. And far too many who aren’t even close to age-appropriate.”

“Even before Jessica, between Candice, Nancy, and Jasmine, I was there. I knew I would make a real, positive choice, because there are other fish in the sea. I didn’t break up with Jasmine because ... well, for one thing, there was no reason we should’ve been fighting at all, but for another, I loved her, flaws and all. Maybe I could do better, maybe I couldn’t, but it’s not ‘Jasmine or no one.’”

“The girl out in my lobby is proof of that, even if you haven’t taken it to that level.”

I smiled, nodding. “And we still haven’t.”

“I’m certain you would both lead with that, if you had.”