Chapter 33: Flashbacks

“Any chance we’ll get to meet your parents sometime, Peter?” asked Shirley Boscow. She, Frank, and Helen were seated at Lauren’s kitchen table, with Peter and Lauren squeezed in as well. She looked at her future son-in-law questioningly.

“Uh, I kind of doubt it,” he replied with a shrug. “They don’t get out much anymore.” Shirley looked at him curiously, obviously expecting more, so he continued, “I mean, Dad, he was always the one who did the driving, and ever since the stroke, he can’t drive.”

“Your mother doesn’t drive?” asked Frank.

“Well, she does, but not like this. That’s a three-hour drive, and she never drove like that even when she was younger. Dad always drove. I doubt if my mother has driven more than ten miles from her house in her lifetime!”

“Well, maybe someday you could bring them back here. They could always stay with us if they wanted.”

Peter was beginning to become uncomfortable with the line of questioning, and he looked at his fiancé in confusion. Lauren hadn’t figured it out either and she interjected, “What’s the big deal? Why the push to meet Peter’s folks?”

“Well, it’s just that it’s important to us, your father and me, that we get to meet and know the family.” It was Shirley’s turn to look uncomfortable, and she looked across the table at Frank. Helen also looked over, curious about the entire conversation.

Frank shrugged his shoulders and explained. “It’s no big deal, but back when you and Gary got engaged...” He glanced at Peter as he said this but continued; Peter knew he wasn’t the first to marry Lauren. “ ... we decided that no matter what, we would make friends with our future in-laws.”

Helen’s eyes opened wide at this. Both she and Rich had enjoyed the company of their in-laws and had never known that they had been ‘targeted’ for ‘friendship’.

“Oh God! I know that sounds terrible,” said Shirley, reaching out for her friend’s hand. “It’s not like what it sounds - we love you, both you and Rich, God bless his soul!”

“Yeah, yeah! It’s just, well, you heard us say that our parents didn’t get along, that night when these two announced their engagement?” Helen nodded. “It’s true, we’re not making it up! They hated each other’s guts!”

“I thought you were just exaggerating,” replied Lauren.

Frank snorted in disgust. “I wish! Your mom’s parents hated my guts!”

“But why?” asked Peter. The idea of anybody hating the genial Frank Boscow was ludicrous.

Frank looked a little sheepish as he started. “Well, they never really cottoned to me back when I started dating Shirley. I mean, I was a couple of years older than her and from the wrong side of the tracks and all. But they let it go, figuring I would graduate and go away or whatever. I am absolutely sure they were hoping for another casualty when I went to Viet Nam.” The fact that Shirley’s dad was almost certain that Frank had been banging away with his underage daughter hadn’t helped, Frank thought to himself. He was equally certain that his parents considered Shirley a man-hungry slut for screwing when she was only a teenager.

“Frank!” cried a horrified wife, who then shut up, half in agreement.

Frank ignored the outburst. “Then, when I got back and showed up at the graduation, it really hit the fan!” Shirley giggled at this and motioned for her husband to continue. “Well, you heard her say how she ran down the aisle at graduation and I proposed to her right there and her mother fainted - that really is what happened. She fainted, and he was simply furious that I had ruined everything.”

Shirley nodded in agreement, and Peter exclaimed, “You can’t be serious?” He looked at Lauren, who kept quiet, and at Helen, who simply watched the others curiously. “Really?”

“As far as Shirley’s parents were concerned, my family was nothing but white trash...”

“Which they were,” commented his wife with a laugh.

“ ... and as far as my parents were concerned, her family was a bunch of rich assholes.”

“Which they also were!” agreed Shirley.

“When Shirley refused to break it off with me, they threw her out of the household and almost cut her out of the will. You know, your mother gave up a college education to marry me.”

Shirley reached out and took her husband’s hand. “I wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” commented Lauren.

Shirley answered. “Just how many times can you count where both sets of grandparents ever showed up at something? I’ll bet you can count them on both hands and have a bunch of fingers left over.”

Lauren’s face screwed up at this, as she considered it. They really hadn’t ever been together, even though the two sets both lived within a half hour of their children. “Uh, my wedding, I guess...” She shrugged in ignorance.

“That was actually the last time; they all died before Christy got married. There was our wedding, and all three christenings, and all three graduations of you girls, and that is about it.”

“No, you’re missing one. Remember when Brenda was in the school play and invited them both down and didn’t know to invite them on different nights? We ended up sitting between them like referees!” laughed Frank.

Helen commented, “I guess I never really caught on. I mean, I know they were never around. I only met them a few times anyway.”

“Were your parents like that?” asked Peter. This all seemed rather bizarre to him.

“Oh, no, not at all. It was just that Rich and I never lived anywhere near either set. My folks lived in Boca Raton and his lived in San Diego. Anyway, Rich and I were the youngest in our families, and all our parents died before Gary and Lauren even met.”

Shirley looked over at her counterpart. “So, when the kids announced they were getting married, Frank and I decided that no matter what, we would try and get to know you and Rich, to be friends, simply so that we wouldn’t put the kids through what we went through.”

Helen nodded in understanding. “It sounded pretty dismal.” Shirley and Frank both nodded agreement.

Shirley reached out and patted her friend’s hand again. “And that’s why we really wanted to get to know you, way back when. We wanted to be friends, and it turned out we became great friends!”

The first meeting between the Boscows and the Grahams had gone, as Lauren had mentioned to Gary later that afternoon, “So good it was scary!” When Shirley and Frank had invited him to bring his parents over the week before, he had simply shrugged and called them. The visit had gone quite smoothly, and the Grahams had a chance to meet the entire family; Brenda was home from college for the weekend and Christy bounced in and out briefly before heading out with friends. Gary didn’t think it was any big deal, though Lauren was more nervous.

The Grahams, if not precisely ‘rich’, were certainly more comfortable than Lauren’s family, and definitely moved in different circles. Gary’s father was a corporate executive and his mother worked as some sort of hospital administrator, both had obviously been to college, and they lived in an upscale neighborhood in a very nice house. Frank, on the other hand, was a mechanic down at the mill and Shirley worked the lunch shift at a local McDonald’s, neither had been to college, and their home was smaller and in an older section of town. They were the types of people who had almost nothing whatsoever in common.

What Lauren had failed to see were the many things which were common with both sets of parents. Both were politically moderate but socially liberal. Both women only worked part-time, and neither had started working until their children (or child, in Helen’s case) had started school; it was much more important that they be home when their children got home. For the men’s parts, both were proud of being able to provide a better life for their family than they had grown up with, and both had an innate and easy ability to be able to talk to practically anybody.

This was augmented by Rich’s quiet inspection of the Boscow home when they were invited over. Frank insisted on showing him all around, and it was obvious to Rich that his host took considerable pride in his house. Though small, it was immaculately maintained and in a state of perfect repair. Frank’s basement workshop had quite a few toolboxes and tool sets in perfect order, perhaps not an uncommon sight in a mechanic’s shop, and he obviously understood what he was doing with them.

Rich, on the other hand, was inept around the house, and joked about it with Frank, describing a couple of doors that were out of true and didn’t latch properly. Frank described what had to be done, which Rich didn’t quite understand, and Frank laughed and offered to come over and fix things up. They had joked about the possibility for several minutes, during which time Rich mentioned a few other nagging problems, such as a bad outlet and a pair of leaky faucets, and the deal was settled. The following Saturday Frank would pack up his tools and bring Shirley over to the Graham home; he and Rich would putter around the house while their wives gossiped and traded recipes and made a nice supper.

The next Saturday afternoon found the two women lounging in the back yard of the Graham house in lawn chairs, a cooler of beer and wine coolers in easy reach, sunning themselves as their husbands scurried around doing odds and ends. Both were dressed comfortably, in shorts, t-shirts, and sneakers, and were lazing back, sunglasses on, in the warm afternoon sun.

Rich wandered through and stopped to grab a couple of beers from the cooler.

“So, you’re the gofer?” teased Helen.

Rich popped the top on one of the beer cans and drank a healthy swallow. “I’ve been promoted,” he replied. “Now I’m the Beer Retrieval Technician!” Both women laughed heartily at this. He smiled over at Shirley. Hooking a thumb over his shoulder, back towards the house where Frank was waiting inside, he commented, “You know, he’s a pretty handy fellow with tools.”

Shirley laughed. “Why do you think I married him?”

After Rich had gone back, Helen grinned lewdly at her future in-law. “So, is Frank really handy with his tools?” She arched her eyebrows suggestively.

Shirley laughed again, and repeated, “Why do you think I married him?”

Both women laughed at this. Another reason they got along so well was it was obvious that they both adored their husbands and had an easy and earthy comfort with their sexuality. They both enjoyed the physical aspect of their marriage as much now as when they had been first married and liked to sample those pleasures frequently. Helen, in fact, asked Shirley, after her husband went back to work carrying the beers, how she kept their love lives fresh and interesting. She was always looking for some interesting ideas, she commented.

“Well, nothing special, I guess,” replied Shirley, her eyes wide with surprise. She cocked her head to the side to consider the question. “I mean, I’ve always tried to make the time for him.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Well, what with the both of us working and the girls growing up, it always seemed as if there just wasn’t enough time for just the two of us.” Helen nodded in understanding. She had often felt the same way with only one child; she had no idea how Shirley coped with three! “So, back when the girls were little, I just said enough was enough. I was going to make sure that we had time for ourselves, every day, no matter what!”

Lauren grinned up at her mother in the kitchen. Shirley grinned back, simply from the sight of the grin. Lauren was only seven, and was missing all four of her front teeth, leaving a giant gap that was only just starting to fill in. “You’re dressed up nice, Mommy! Are you going out?” asked the little girl.

Shirley shook her head. “No, I just want to look nice for your Daddy when he gets home.”

“You always look nice!”

Shirley smiled and leaned over, to kiss her eldest on the forehead. “Thank you, sweetie.”

“How come you want to look so nice for Daddy?” Lauren couldn’t quite figure it out. Mornings and during the day, she knew her mother always wore jeans and t-shirts and stuff, but later on, before her father came home, she would always change into something nicer, like a dress.

“Well, your Daddy is such a good guy and a great Daddy that I just want everything around here to be nice when he gets home. He takes care of us so well; I just want to make sure we take care of him!” explained Shirley.

Just then the back-screen door clanged open, and Frank Boscow came wandering in. He smiled at his pretty young wife, but before he could get a word out, Lauren had run over to him. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”

Frank laughed and picked up the squealing child, lifting her above his head before setting her back down. “Hi there, Goose!” ‘Silly Goose’ was Lauren’s nickname all through her early years.