Chapter 69: Connections

Monday, December 26, 1983

America doesn’t celebrate Boxing Day, of course. Nor does France.

We still called it the Boxing Day Outing, though.

Mom, Dad, Angie, and I, along with Camille, Francis, and Jasmine, and Tony, Jean, and Paige, all met at Olive Garden for lunch. It wasn’t as good as the usual Italian place, in my opinion, but it was definitely ‘good enough.’

The conversation was lively. No one knew Tony and Jean that well (except for Paige, of course, and Angie, somewhat), so a lot of it was everyone getting to know them and them getting to know everyone else.

Tony was a lawyer (I’d known that), and a good one, though not at Lewis Mayrink’s level. Perhaps at Kyle’s level? They had very different specialties, though. Tony worked mostly on insurance law. I’d also known that Jean was a stay-at-home mother, but not that she’d been an accountant nor that she was planning to return to work once Paige started college.

Both of them were ‘sharp as a tack,’ as we often put it, and had good senses of humor. That is, they laughed at a couple of Monty Python references I tossed out there. I figured they had to be smart simply by judging from Ted and Paige.

Reinforcing last night’s conversation, I could also tell that they truly welcomed Angie into their lives. There was nothing I could see that said anything otherwise. They liked our summer travel plans, they liked the idea of us all sharing a house, and so forth.

Oh, it could have all been an act, but I think they knew enough of Paige to know that a girl had always been a possibility, and Angie was unquestionably ‘a catch.’ Of course, so was Paige, but that just made them an even match.

We spent over two hours at the restaurant. It was nice to have a long, leisurely meal with this group. It was entirely possible that we’d be getting together at weddings and other big family moments in the future. Obviously, Camille and Francis had the least connection to Tony and Jean, but they’d all be part of the extended family, at least if things went as they seemed to be going.

We all wanted to go do something, instead of sit and watch a movie. The original plan had been to go to the mini-golf place, but it was still bitterly cold outside. Even I wouldn’t have enjoyed an hour outside!

Instead, it turned out that Tony had heard from a client about a new indoor mini-golf place way out near Westchase Mall. Everyone agreed that sounded good, so we took off for it.

Since we were traveling by family, instead of in our usual configuration, I couldn’t tell Angie that I’d been to that mall (which hadn’t really been all that much of a mall) many times, or that I’d been to the mini-golf place, too (with both Dave Mayrink and Dave Winton, though never on the same trip). I’d never gone back there in this go-round though. There was nothing to draw me out there.

It turned out to be just as I remembered it — a big, dark high-ceilinged industrial building with mini-golf, a snack bar, and arcade games, with lots of neon and black lights. The mini-golf course itself was in great shape, since it was nearly new, and we had a blast competing against each other. The groups reshuffled several times along the way, of course. Ten people is a lot for mini-golf!

By the time we were done, everyone decided they’d had enough and it was time to go home. We all said goodbye and split up.

“I really liked that!” Mom said.

“It’s a great group of people,” Dad said. “Not that I wouldn’t have expected that, but it’s still nice to see it work out that way.”

Again, I could hardly mention that Mom and Dad had talked to my ex-wife’s parents for perhaps two hours, total, in their entire lives. They’d already spent far more time with Camille and Francis and even Tony and Jean, and none of us had even proposed yet!

It wasn’t like Grandmother and the Professor were close to Grandma, either. They never had been.

Perhaps this time we’d just gotten lucky, but it was a very nice piece of luck indeed.

Angie said, “I’m glad we could do this. It’s nice to get everyone together.”

“Most teenagers would probably be terrified,” Mom said, chuckling.

“But they’re hardly most teenagers,” Dad said.

“True enough!” Mom said. “The headaches we get are totally different from the ones most parents get!”

I chuckled. “We do try to keep those down.”

“And you do a good job!” Mom said. “Except for all of those trips to the hospital!”

“I only accept blame for one of them,” I said. “The first one, with the bike.”

“Not the truck?” Angie said.

“Nah. Laura gets the blame for that. I just decided to save her rather than watch her get hit.”

“All’s well that ends well!” Mom said.

We got home in time for a light (very light) dinner. After dinner, I gave Michael a call at his home in Houston.

Surprisingly, I actually got him. He was heading back to Austin tomorrow morning. We chatted for a bit. It was clear that he was really busy, but he was more guarded than he’d been before. I suspected the whole thing was still building up. He was probably trying to decide whether to embark on the whole adventure.

Everything still seemed good, but I suspected the only way this was going to work would be to set up a confrontation at some point. January was much too soon. February looked too soon. March? As before, I’d need to stay in touch and read between the lines.

Nerve-wracking, but still positive.

My second call (with Angie on her extension) was to Lizzie and Janet. It took two attempts, but we got them on the phone. They were staying at Lizzie’s parents’ house for the holidays.

We caught up with them, talking about their school year (straight A’s, except for a B in Spanish for Janet, which she explained by ‘Español totalamente sucks!”

Angie asked what the Spanish was for ‘sucks.’ That just got a growl. Also a snigger, from Lizzie, which triggered a second growl.

We very tentatively made plans to see them over the summer. Janet was forging ahead on the house-buying plan. It was a total stretch, but she had a notion that she could borrow enough from their parents and use their housing allowances to make it work. More power to them, if they could!

Angie stayed on the line a bit after I left. I knew that it was to talk about Ted. I also knew that trying to horn in on girl talk was never a good idea for a guy.

After the parents had gone to bed, Angie and I kicked the idea around a bit that the hospital trips weren’t random. Perhaps the universe ‘knew’ I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to be around and wanted me back where I belonged. I certainly could have died from any of the incidents that’d put me in the hospital, after all.

The flaw in that theory was, of course, that Angie hadn’t been to the hospital, nor even seriously endangered, since she’d arrived. Laura had, of course, but just the once — and hers was, in the end, her own fault. Unless the universe had it out for me, or for boys, it seemed likely that it was just my own luck.

Well, that, or predestination. That’s always a potential culprit in everything.

Tuesday, December 27, 1983

The day dawned very cold, but clear and with good weather. Angie and I had packed the night before, and we left around eight so that we’d have plenty of time for the long drive. The hope was that we could arrive in New Orleans while it was still daylight. That was doable, but we’d have to be efficient with stops. We’d have enough time for a good lunch, but not a lot more.

Dad was off to work before we left, of course. We both hugged Mom, and got hugs and kisses on the cheek from her, before getting in the car and picking up first Jas, then Paige.

Morning rush-hour traffic was starting to clear by the time we were on the freeway heading east. There was still more than I’d like, but we’d timed it to miss the worst of the traffic. It still took us a while to get clear of Houston proper and into the suburbs.

We discussed, but vetoed, any significant deviations on the way to New Orleans. For instance, neither Angie nor Paige had ever been to the San Jacinto monument (commemorating Texas’s victory over Mexico in its war of independence). Jas had only been to it long ago, and I’d only visited it very long ago indeed.

We could see it off in the distance from the car — a tall, slender tower with a star on the top. It’d be nice to visit, either perhaps on the way back or on another trip. For all of us, it would be much more about the architecture than the battle.

That was, in truth, one of the few scenic things along the way. The trip wasn’t that different from the train trips to New Orleans: lots of petrochemical plants and small to medium-sized cities, interspersed with farms and forests. Once we’d crossed the bridge that took us into Louisiana, little changed other than the road conditions, which weren’t quite as good.

We didn’t stop until we got to Lafayette, where we found a nice Cajun restaurant and settled in for a reasonably authentic Louisiana lunch. It was fortunate that all of us liked spicy food, because that could have been a sticking point! I’d have had trouble cooking for some of the people I’d known in my first life. Heck, Mom and Dad had been tricky not that long ago, and I still had to tone some things down.

I filled the gas tank, and we got on the road around one-thirty. With only one brief bathroom stop in Baton Rouge, we made it to New Orleans around four-thirty, going straight to our favorite hotel. It was nice to have a favorite hotel in New Orleans! That made the planning much easier.

We’d discussed it several times and, in the end, agreed that rooms near each other, but without connecting doors, was best. We’d be in each other’s hair constantly once we started college, of course, but we would have our own spaces in the house as well. And we’d be in each other’s hair on the road trip, almost certainly. In this case, we were two couples vacationing together and had no need for a private door to go back and forth.

Once we’d put our luggage away, we discussed dinner. No one was overly hungry, given the large lunch we’d had, so we decided to walk to a sandwich shop just up the street a bit that advertised muffalettas and po-boys.