Chapter 32: Meet The Parents, Part 1

We spent a week hanging around the house drinking and smoking dope and sleeping late and telling war stories to Jack and Swayzack. I had the film to the Instamatic developed and I got three sets of prints, one for each of us. Then it was Friday, and it was time to head south. I could have lived without this trip, but I was going to have to introduce Marilyn to my family at some point. Family was one of those critical things that she simply could not understand being apart from. Even before, when Hamilton hadn’t been so crazy and I had spent time with my family, it was nothing for me to go weeks without talking to them. Now it was months. This would be my first visit since I had come to RPI in August of 1973, almost a year ago.

It took me a day to drive south, and I got to Lutherville around dinner time on Friday. My plan was to hang out for a day and maybe go see some of my old friends, and then be there when Marilyn drove down on Sunday. We would stay for a few days, or until I snapped, and then head off to the beach. At some point we would make a return trip, and then I would drive north with Marilyn following. I was still nervous about her driving from Utica to Lutherville. Before I had left for the trip, I sent her detailed instructions and a marked map showing how to get to my folks, but Marilyn can’t find her way out of a paper bag with a neon map and GPS. It’s a genetic thing; Buckmans marry women who can’t navigate. Mom can’t navigate and Parker’s wife Janine can’t make it out of the driveway without GPS!

My homecoming to the tender embrace of my warm and loving family was strained, to say the least. Suzie was ecstatic, as was Daisy. Dad was quite happy, also, and he and I spent several hours swapping lies about my road trip, along with a trip or two he took at my age. I pulled out the photos from the trip and showed them to my family. Mom was cold and distant, as if my estrangement was totally my fault, but she was also dutifully happy to see the prodigal son return. Hamilton was openly hostile.

Saturday, I made a few phone calls and got together for the afternoon with Ray Shorn and Randy Bronson. We decided to get together later that evening after dinner.

I should have stayed away from dinner. The first thing that went wrong was that Mom made meatloaf, and I hate meatloaf. I ate some and just pushed some around on my plate. Mom noticed and said, “I thought you liked meatloaf.”

“Sorry, Mom, not really.” Maybe if it’s made with brown gravy it’s alright, but Mom’s recipe called for it to be made with tomato sauce.

“But you loved meatloaf when your grandmother made it!” she wailed.

I buried my face in my hands and then gave her a sheepish look. “I hated her meatloaf, too. I was just being nice to your mother.” Dad groaned at this, and Suzie giggled. Mom simply gave an outraged, ‘Hmmphh!’

The really bad part was when the others started asking about the girl who was coming to visit. Who was she? What was her name? Where was she from? Etc., etc., etc. Hamilton got really pissy at that point. I didn’t live there anymore, and I shouldn’t be bringing anybody around. The others ignored him, but he said it once too often for my taste.

I set my fork down and pushed my chair back, and then took a deep breath. I was sitting next to Suzie, on the opposite side of the table, so I was able to look straight across the table at my brother. “Hamilton, I am going to say this only once, but I want you to listen very, very carefully. If you do or say anything to Marilyn, I will beat you to within an inch of your life. If you touch her, I will simply kill you. I have had it with your crap. Your life is hanging by a thread.”

To say there was an uproar was an understatement. Hamilton loudly protested his innocence and Mom demanded I behave myself. Dad ended up yelling at everyone to shut up, and then he said to me, “Adult or not, I expect you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”

“Dad, I love you and Mom and Suzie, but Hamilton needs things explained to him. I really want to be clear on this. This girl is more important to me than anything or anybody else. If you want to meet her, you need to keep him under control. This is not a threat, but a promise. If he gets out of line, I will never come back to this house while he’s alive.”

“Sounds good to me!” said Hamilton with a smirk.

Before I could even come across the table at him, Dad swung a vicious backhand at him and knocked him to the floor. Mom stared in disbelief as Hamilton, crying, climbed to his feet. “Hamilton, you stay away from her and leave her alone. Do you understand?”

Hamilton didn’t reply, but he ran off to his room crying. I got up and left the table also and went off to see my friends. I drank more than I should have that night, but I lucked out and the cops weren’t around when I drove home. I was sleeping in Suzie’s old room, now the spare bedroom, and I put my bag in front of the door in case Hamilton decided to attack me in the middle of the night.

Sunday turned out to be a pretty good day. Dad made his regular big breakfast on Sunday morning, a tradition I continued when I had my own household. We might have had cereal the other six days of the week, but Sundays were for bacon and eggs and sausage and pancakes and French toast and waffles and every other thing guaranteed to clog your arteries and raise your blood pressure. We had pancakes and bacon that morning, and everybody had two stacks. Even Hamilton seemed civil, or maybe he was quiet because he had a split lip from the other night.

After breakfast I was asked if I wanted to go to church. It was communion Sunday, which in the Lutheran church only comes around about once a month. I wasn’t feeling all that religious, but I also knew it would settle my mother down, so I pulled a sports coat and decent slacks out of my bag and went. It wasn’t optional for my siblings.

In church we went to our regular pew and sat in our regular formation. Like most parents, Mom and Dad learned very early on to separate their kids at important functions. We sat Ham, Mom, Suzie, Dad, and me, an arrangement that left us kids with easy reach of a parental smack. It also allowed us to return the favor. Dad had about a fifty-fifty chance at falling asleep and snoring during the sermon, and he did so today. When he started sawing lumber I glanced past him at Suzie, who was grinning, and held my hand up with three fingers extended. I gave her a three second countdown, pulling a finger in each second, and when I got to zero, we both elbowed him from opposite sides. He woke up with a snort and a rumble and we just looked innocent while the people around us chuckled in their pews.

Marilyn called me around 3:30. I had given her my parents’ number and told her to stop at the first Maryland exit on the Harrisburg Expressway and call. She would be at the house about half an hour later, so I went out on the front lawn and played fetch with Daisy. It was closer to forty minutes before a candy apple red ‘71 Dodge Challenger came slowly tooling down Ridgefield. Oh my God, but I had forgotten about that car! Marilyn never thought twice about her car, and her father never realized the folly of giving the thing to a teenager, but I always remembered it as an absolute wet dream of a vehicle! It was simply gorgeous, and people stared at it as it went past! I waved my arms and flagged her down, and she pulled up in front of the house.

I was all smiles when she got out of her car. “Oh, baby, is that your car?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah. Why?” She gave me a confused look as she got closer.

“That’s gorgeous! You are going to have to let me drive that around!” I held my arms open, and she scampered up to me.

“I think you’re only interested in me for my car!”

“Let me change your mind!” I bent my head down and kissed her and put a lot of effort into it. I only stopped when the pawing at our legs got too bothersome.

Marilyn looked down and found Daisy standing on her hind legs and trying to climb up. “And who are you?” she asked, kneeling down. Daisy immediately tried to lick her to death.

I had to laugh when Daisy bowled Marilyn onto her ass. I grabbed her collar so that she could sit upright. “That’s Daisy.”

Marilyn let Daisy lick her a little more before she climbed to her feet. “I think Daisy likes me.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but Daisy likes everybody. If you were Godzilla, she’d lick your face.”

“That’s awful!” she said, laughing.

“I like you, too. Can I lick your face, too?” I stuck my tongue out and barked and gave her a goofy dog impression, which set Daisy going again. Eventually, I managed to lick Marilyn’s cheek and she threatened to have me neutered, which did the trick in making me behave.

Marilyn glanced at the picture window on the house, and then turned bright red. “I think we’re being watched!”

I looked over and saw Suzie grinning at us. “That’s my kid sister, Suzie. Come on, let’s get your bag and take you inside. I feel like I’m throwing meat to hungry lions.” Marilyn popped her trunk and I stared at the profusion of suitcases and bags, all haphazardly arranged. I looked up at her. “You leave anything behind?”

She bristled. “I had to pack for two weeks!”

“They have these new businesses called Laundromats,” I replied.

“I’m not going to spend my vacation in a Laundromat!”

I shrugged. “I know one way you could have saved some space.”

“Oh?”

“You could have left your underwear at home. I wouldn’t have minded.”

Marilyn blushed and blurted out a loud and protesting sound, and smacked me on the arm, and then said, “You wish!” She pointed out a suitcase for me to bring in, and I snagged it and closed the trunk. She followed me to the front door, with Daisy trailing behind. By the time we got there, the door was open, and my mother was there to greet us.

“You must be Marilyn. It’s so nice to meet you,” she said cheerfully. Or at least mostly cheerfully. Mom knew Marilyn was important to me, but she didn’t know her yet. She had yet to realize how totally unsuitable Marilyn was for me. Things became frostier after that, at least on the first time through.

I waited until we came inside before doing the introductions. I set the bag down and said, “Marilyn, I’d like you to meet my mother. Mom, this is Marilyn Lefleur.” They shook hands, and then I pointed past Mom to where my father stood in the kitchen doorway. “And that would be my father. Dad, Marilyn.” Finally, I nodded towards where Suzie was grinning over at the side. “And that would be my sister, Suzie!”

“Hi! Come on in! So, you’re Carling’s girlfriend! We have got so much to talk about!” squealed Suzie excitedly. I just snorted at that, although my parents and Marilyn laughed.

“Carl’s brother Hamilton must be downstairs.” Mom went to the stairwell and yelled down, “Hamilton, our guest has arrived.”

A moment later Ham climbed up the stairs, not looking all that welcoming, but he mumbled hello and went back down to his room. I noticed Dad was standing quite close to Ham when he came up the stairs, and I kept an eye on the little asshole, too. He wasn’t so little anymore, either. He had hit his growth spurt in the year I was away, and was now as tall as Dad, if not taller. (At 5’11” I ended up the runt of the family. Hamilton was 6’2”, Dad was 6’1”, and both Mom and Suzie were 5’10”, a well above average height for a woman.)

Dad offered to make mixed drinks for everyone, which Mom, Marilyn, and I accepted. Suzie also accepted one, which both my parents found amusing, and Suzie was sent off for a Coke. Drinks were bourbon and bitter lemon, a sort of southern 7&7, which was okay with me, although it took Marilyn a few sips to get used to. It’s much tarter than what she normally drank. Meanwhile Suzie was peppering Marilyn with questions about college and how we met.

“Well, we met at a party,” answered Marilyn, “and we just hit it off.”

I laughed loudly at that, and all eyes turned to me. “Tell them the truth,” I said. Everybody started gabbling about what I meant, and I amplified my question. “Tell them the truth. We met when I fought a duel to defend your honor!”

My mother looked horrified, Suzie looked fascinated, and Dad looked curious. “WHAT?” sputtered out of everyone’s lips, all except Marilyn who blushed sheepishly.

“It wasn’t like that!” she protested.

“Tell me what wasn’t like that? I fought a duel, right?”

“It wasn’t that kind of duel!”

“And I defended your honor!”

“You defended me from having to dance with your drunken frat brother!” she replied. “And it wasn’t like you fought all that hard, anyway!”

“What was the duel?” asked Dad.

“You tell them. It’s too silly for me to explain,” commented Marilyn.

I shrugged. “We did flaming shots at two paces.” Mom just looked confused. “We poured booze into a couple of shot glasses and set it on fire before drinking it down. He burned his fingers and I drank both shots and won!” Mom gave me a very disapproving look, Dad just laughed and rolled his eyes, and Suzie wanted me to demonstrate it, which I refused.

“When I tell the story, it sounds much more adventurous and romantic than when I tell it the other way,” I told Marilyn.

“What other way?” she asked.

“That this girl came to a drunken frat party in a car called the Meat Wagon, immediately headed to the bar, and picked up the bartender!” This time Marilyn joined in with the howls of protest and punched me twice in the arm. Mom was very disapproving of this interpretation, and Dad simply groaned and headed to the kitchen to make another round of drinks. Suzie, on the other hand, wanted to know about me being a bartender. Teenagers! Suzie had just turned thirteen and found this dating stuff fascinating.

Dinner that night was a baked ham with all the fixings. Suzie moved across the table to sit next to Hamilton, which he did not take gracefully, but it only took one word of warning from Dad to calm him down. Marilyn missed the byplay, and she and I sat opposite them. Most of the questions were about Marilyn and her family. Every once in a while, one of the answers would have my parents glancing in my direction. Marilyn Lefleur was out of their comprehension. We had absolutely nothing in common.

“Well, we do have a few differences, I suppose. I mean, it’s pretty obvious she’s a Yankee, but if that was a problem, we’d have to get rid of Suzie, too,” I said.

Suzie grinned. “Yeah, you’re a Yankee, too! Where were you born?”

“Plattsburgh. Why?”

“Where’s that?” my sister asked.

“It’s way up by the Canadian border on Lake Champlain.”

“Cool! I was born in Gettysburg, so I’m a Yankee, too!” That was true. Dad had briefly had a job in Gettysburg before he got on with Harry T. Campbell’s. I had gone to first grade there.

“That’s right, I almost forgot that,” I said. “And I don’t think Marilyn told you she was Catholic, but I suppose the nine brothers and sisters gave you a hint.”

Dad chuckled at that; religion never bothered him. It did bother my mother, who was quite a bigoted anti-Catholic. She was very pleased when I didn’t have to convert, and once gave Marilyn a lovely Celtic cross (the type with two cross pieces) that she got as a gift, with the explanation that she couldn’t wear it, since it was a Catholic cross. Suzie, however, thought this was all quite hilarious. Her best friend in life was Louise Sellisman, the next-door neighbor, who was also Catholic. They were BFFs before the phrase was invented. They were each other’s maids of honor and a godmother to a kid. Mom’s lips pursed when I said Marilyn was Catholic, but she didn’t say anything.

“Still, it could have been worse. At least she’s a Republican,” I finished.

“Carling! I am not! I’m a Democrat and you know it!” protested Marilyn.

At that comment Mom’s eyes lit up with a look of laughter, and Suzie and even Hamilton broke into laughter. It was my father’s turn to see red! More than a few times in life we heard him railing on about “Those people!” and what they were doing to the country. I even heard some of his coworkers kidding him about it once.

I just kept as straight a face as I could. Marilyn turned her head to face me. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I will get you back for this!”

“I’m just welcoming you to the bosom of my family,” I answered, right before breaking down into helpless laughter. The rest of dinner was spent explaining how we were different.

At the end of dinner, Mom offered up some cherry pie for dessert. “How about giving Marilyn and me a chance to work off dinner first?” I said. “Care to take a walk?”

“Sure.”

We put some shoes on, and I called for Daisy to join us. I figured a nice walk around the block would give us a chance to digest our meal, and I could show her the nice summer in Maryland.

We held hands as we walked. Marilyn said, “Your family is very nice.”

“They’re okay.” I shrugged my shoulders good-naturedly. “It’s not like you get to choose.”

“Does your mother like me? I can’t really tell.”

That got a laugh out of me. “No, but don’t worry about it. No girl alive would be satisfactory for my mother. She doesn’t get a vote.”

Marilyn gave me a worried look. “She doesn’t like me?”

“Of course, she likes you. You’re a wonderful person. Don’t worry about it. The Queen of Sheba wouldn’t be good enough for me. Ignore her, like Suzie and I do. I can’t wait until Suzie starts dating and my parents have to worry about that! They’ll have some real fun there!” I responded.

Marilyn giggled. “I think you’re right. She’s so sweet. Pretty, too. I think your father is really going to have problems when she starts dating.”

“Like you won’t believe!” Thank God I was away from home by then because Dad really didn’t handle his baby dating all that well. “She’ll be alright. She’s the normal one of the family. She’s got him wrapped around her little finger. When we were growing up, if Hamilton and I even looked funny at each other, Dad would start swinging. Suzie, on the other hand, could bring home a severed head in one hand and a bloody axe in the other, and he’d say ‘Isn’t that special! Let’s put that up on the refrigerator!’ It’s disgusting how she can manipulate him!” I laughed as I said this, but God knows it was true.

Marilyn laughed, too. “What about Hamilton? He seems a little, I don’t know, odd. He doesn’t say anything to me and seems sort of cold.”

I sighed at that. We were about as far around the block as we could go before heading back, at a small bridge over a creek that eventually fed into Loch Raven. I stopped and leaned back against the railing on the bridge. “Hamilton has some problems, but they aren’t about you, not really. They’re about me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know as I really do, either. I can’t explain why, but Hamilton hates me with every fiber of his being. It’s not that he doesn’t like you; it’s that you like me and therefore must be hated in return. I know this is going to sound strange, but don’t take it personally. If you were Jesus Christ back from the dead and decided to be my friend, he’d still hate you.”

Marilyn looked really shocked at that. “That’s crazy!”

“And that’s my point. I don’t know all that much about this sort of thing, but he might actually be crazy. Just stay away from him. He’s nuts, but he’s also scared of me. You’ll be fine.” Somehow, I didn’t think my words of encouragement were all that encouraging.