Chapter 35: Meet the Parents, Part 2

Chapter 35: Meet the Parents, Part 2

And so our vacation went. We stayed until the following Friday. One day I drove us up to Rehoboth and showed her around that small town. Another day we drove down to Assateague and went to the National Park. One night we drove down there very late and parked in a deserted spot, went skinny-dipping, and made love in the dunes. Most days we worked on our tans and practiced various things in the Kama Sutra book. We used those two boxes of rubbers I had bought and ended up buying a third!

Friday, we needed to leave. For one thing, Marilyn’s period hit her and put an end to our Kama Sutra practice sessions. For another, we had to go back home. After checking out, we drove back to Towson and over to the bar where Tusker and Tessa worked. I picked up my car keys and gave them a big box of saltwater taffy. We also talked about all our plans for the future, and I really pushed Tusker on the idea of going back to school, at least part-time, and taking some business classes. I got their address and gave them one of my cards, with the frat phone number penciled in.

Tessa had giggled, “You and your business cards!” I had gotten some new cards printed up freshman year, with a Troy PO Box number, and no phone listing. Freshman year I didn’t have a phone I could accept calls on, and in the frat we had several. We had a pay phone down in the foyer, and there were private lines among the brothers. Usually, one guy would front the account and handle billing, and we would run party lines to two or three nearby rooms. I handled this one year. In those days, phone calls were expensive, especially long distance, and you would have to go through the itemized phone bills and sort each long-distance call to a user and bill them. Major pain in the balls!

From there, Marilyn followed me to the storage unit I had been renting since I moved out of my apartment. We crammed everything but the furniture into our two cars, and I paid for another year’s rent on the unit. I had already rented a storage unit in Troy. The plan was that I would move all my stuff north in one or two trips, so that I was effectively living entirely in New York. For all intents and purposes, I was no longer a Maryland resident. I had already registered as a voter in New York. I wondered if my father was still claiming me as a dependent. I hoped he didn’t get in trouble if he was.

It had been a long day. We drove a few hours more, until we got about halfway through New Jersey, before pulling off the road and getting a room for the night. Marilyn was embarrassed by her monthly visitor and apologized to me that we couldn’t make love. I just smiled and told her it wasn’t important and let her snuggle in my arms until she fell asleep. It was a very pleasant and comfortable feeling. I had always enjoyed sleeping with Marilyn, even if it was simply snuggling up against her spoon fashion. I wanted to keep doing it.

Saturday, we drove the rest of the way to Troy, and then dumped my stuff at the storage unit. Suddenly both our cars rose off the springs! Then we drove over to the frat and moved into Bradley’s and my room on the third floor. He wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another day or so, so we could spend the night together without worrying about him. It was a chaste night. Sunday, Marilyn gave me a good-bye kiss and headed home.

Sunday almost all of the other brothers showed up, including Joe. It was the start of Work Week, an annual bacchanalia dedicated to patching up the house. This was under the control of one of the two paid positions in the house, the House Manager. The other paid position was the Kitchen Steward. Pay was set as equal to room and board, so no cash exchanged hands. I already described the Kitchen Steward job, which I had previously had. House Manager was not my thing. It called for somebody with very practical hands-on skills in repairing an antebellum Federal style monstrosity. Something was always falling apart in the place, it was generally a death trap if a fire occurred, and the furnace and water heater were always in need of repair. It was a thankless position.

Work Week was the week before classes started, and attendance was mandatory. During the day, the House Manager broke us into teams to do various repairs and maintenance - lawn work, fixing the fence, painting all the trim, patching and painting drywall, and anything else he could dream of. At night, we applied these same techniques to our own rooms. Joe and I painted everything and stripped and varnished our desks and bunk beds. It isn’t totally work, though. Every night was a drunken bash around the swimming pool. Marty, Ricky, and I told the others about our adventures on the road, and we all swapped lies about our girlfriends over the summer. Okay, they weren’t lies in my case, but I really didn’t go into too much detail; Marilyn would not be amused.

Barry was running the phone system on the third floor of the main house that year. I used my knowledge of running twisted pair phone cable and rearranged telephones for both Joe and myself. By mid-week I got my first letter from Marilyn, a syrupy love letter that made several references to the fun we had in Ocean City. She used strawberry scented stationery with little hearts all over it, the sort of thing a fourteen-year-old girl uses in junior high.

Back when I rubbed that lamp, I still had those letters from college from her, stuffed in the back of a file cabinet. Some things you don’t throw out.

I called her at her home after I read her letter a few times. We talked for about half an hour, until Bradley came in and I hung up. No way did I need him hearing me talking to her. We discussed when we could see each other again. She couldn’t say anything openly, since she was talking on the kitchen telephone, but when I asked her if she had gone to Planned Parenthood, she said, “First thing I did Monday morning.” That made me smile. We decided to wait a few weeks until after school started before trying a visit. I was to travel to Utica to meet the Lefleur family. The plan was to do this in about three weeks.

That didn’t work out. Three weeks out I caught the flu, along with about half the house and RPI. I could barely make my way down the stairs to the bathroom, let alone a hundred miles across the state. By the time I recovered enough the next weekend, Marilyn had a cold. We put things off another weekend.

Scholastically, I was taking all senior level math courses by now, with a grad level Information Theory course tossed in for good measure. The grad courses weren’t going to be a problem. What I was worried about was my doctoral dissertation. It was already pretty definite that Professor Rhineburg was going to be my thesis adviser, and we made the relationship formal. He taught my class on Information Theory, and it looked like that was going to be my area of specialty.

The nice thing about RPI for grad studies is that they don’t pin you into neat little boxes. They specialize in interdisciplinary studies. Many students do degrees mixing engineering and a science, or two different scientific disciplines. If somebody could think up a way to mix chemical engineering and French literature and find a way to sell it to the academic committee, they’d be allowed to get a degree in it. I was thinking of mixing two different fields of Set Theory together, Information Theory and Topology, both of which I had always found fascinating.

This time around I kept my vices under much better control. Last time I had spent a lot of time smoking dope with Andy Kowalchuk, and not spending any time on schoolwork. I cut that shit way back, not out of any moral difficulty with it, but simply because it was too distracting. I remembered back when I went to grad school the first time. Suddenly I was going to workdays and school nights, and I was commuting to grad school. Later, when I got married and had kids, it really hit me, just how much time I had wasted goofing off. By putting even a little effort into time management, and not being stoned 24/7, I actually was able to go to class and learn a thing or two. I went from a C average to straight As.

Eventually both Marilyn and I were healthy, and it was my turn to visit her. I let Marilyn give me directions to her house (which were wrong, in any case; like I said, she can’t find her way out of a paper bag), but I already knew perfectly well how to get there. Friday afternoon I packed my trusty B4 and tossed it into the Galaxie and headed out for a road trip.

It wasn’t really all that ridiculously far. I ran down 787 to 90, and then over to the Thruway. From there you go straight west to Exit 31, which dumps you off in North Utica. Cross over the river into Utica and get on 5S going west and stay on it after it turns into 69. The Lefleurs had a farm about halfway between Utica and the Oriskany battlefield, but they didn’t run a farm. Instead, they had about fifty acres that they used to run Lefleur Homes, a mobile home dealership.

It took me about two hours to get there, since the speed limit was now at 55. I pulled into the parking lot about four or so. I parked next to the Lefleur’s farmhouse and out in front of the double-wide trailer they used for an office and got out and stretched. It really felt like going back in time! I had spent gargantuan amounts of time here professionally before. I swore to myself that would not be repeated!

I was standing there a few feet from my car, just looking around and taking it all in, when suddenly I hear, “Carling! Carling!” I looked around and smiled to see a little brunette whirlwind come running across the parking lot. Marilyn was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers and was calling my name as she ran towards me. I grinned and she didn’t even slow down, she just jumped into my arms and wrapped herself around me. “I’ve missed you; I’ve missed you!” she said repeatedly, in between kissing me.

I just laughed. It was a good thing I was in shape and working out, because Marilyn was completely off the ground, her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. My hands were under her butt and holding her up as I kissed her back. “I guess you did miss me!” I told her.

“I did, I did, I did!” Marilyn replied, kissing me even more.

I started slowly walking towards the house, still carrying her. “You know, this isn’t the easiest way to carry a person.”

“If you loved me, you’d carry me!”

I snorted at that. “If that’s the case, we’re making a small adjustment!” I moved to drop her, and Marilyn squealed and lowered her feet to the ground. I simply bent forward and grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her up and over my shoulder like a sack of cement.

Marilyn squawked! “Put me down!”

“Hey, I love you, so I have to carry you.” I gave her a loud smack on the bottom and continued towards the house, with her squirming and fighting me all the way to the door. I looked the house over as I approached. Marilyn’s mother was watching us through the kitchen window, and one of her brothers was looking at us through the glass in the door.

“Put me down!” she demanded. I simply shifted her around a touch, freed up a hand, and opened the door to the house. Her brother laughed and scampered away, and I carried Marilyn inside. I dumped her unceremoniously inside the door.

I leaned down and gave her a quick kiss. “That will teach you to challenge me on something.”

“Very funny!”

Her little brother came romping up, and I recognized him as Michael, who must have been about five or six at the time. He held his hands up to me and said, “Pick me up.” Marilyn looked quite amused at this, so I picked him up. I lifted him up to eye level, and then higher, over my head.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Put me down!” I put him down, and he repeated, “Pick me up!” I picked him back up.

“He’s your problem now,” commented his sister. Marilyn left me in the living room with her brother and went off to the kitchen.

“Put me down!” “Pick me up!” “Put me down!” Michael was having a grand old time, with me using him as a set of free weights.

After a few more lifts, I flipped him upside down and carried him into the kitchen, holding him up by his feet. “Look what I caught! I think he’s kind of small. Should I throw him back?” I held him out towards his mother.

“Put me down! Put me down!”

“I don’t want him!” she said, snorting and smiling.

I turned towards Marilyn. “Here, you take one leg and let’s make a wish!”

Marilyn laughed and grabbed one of Michael’s legs, as he kept yelling for me to let him go. Eventually the noise level got too loud, and Mrs. Lefleur told us to put him down. I slowly dropped him to the floor and let him loose. Michael scampered away, but only after asking me to pick him up again. Mrs. Lefleur shooed him out of the kitchen, and then turned to face us.

“Mom, I’d like you to meet Carl Buckman.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Lefleur.” I held my hand out and she gave it a solid shake.

Harriet Lefleur did everything solidly because she was a very solid woman. A large woman. A hefty woman. She was also a short woman. Marilyn was only 5’4” tall, but she was at least an inch taller than her mother. Harriet wasn’t quite as wide as she was tall but seemed to be approaching that size. She was a good person, and a nice person, but a very unattractive person. When I first met her, I thought it was because the stress of having ten kids had taken a toll on her body, but then I saw the wedding pictures, back when she was nineteen. That was when I realized she hadn’t just been hit by the ugly stick; somebody had smacked her with the entire damned tree! She was from some tiny village north of Plattsburgh up by the Canadian border, and all I could think of her husband, also from the same small village, was that there must have been some mighty slim pickings on the frontier!

It was then that Big Bob Lefleur came in, through a side door to the kitchen. Big Bob’s nickname was tongue in cheek and given to him by his kids, like calling a bald guy ‘Curley’ or a tall guy ‘Shorty’. Big Bob was anything but big. He was only about 5’9’, maybe, and slim. He was one of the most incredibly depressing people ever put on the planet, with a perpetual hangdog look, permanently slumped shoulders, and an ever-present sense of foreboding. We used to say that when things were bad, he would be worried they would stay bad, and when things were good, he would be worried they were about to go bad. He would ultimately be diagnosed both as depressed and bipolar, a hell of a combination.

On the other hand, Big Bob really got his nickname because he thought big thoughts! He was an absolute dynamo in his business. He came up with a dozen ideas a day; eleven would be totally off the wall and useless, but the twelfth? That twelfth idea might actually make you some money!

He was an incredibly complex guy. He had grown up much like my father, in a Depression era farmhouse without electricity or water, but unlike my dad, had dropped out of school at sixteen to get a job. He had never graduated high school, but still managed to build the largest trailer dealership in New York. Harriet wasn’t much different, but she had at least gotten through high school. They married when they were nineteen, and started having kids at twenty, and never stopped. They were also the purest form of white trash I had ever seen! Christmas lights were up all year long. Have you ever wondered who buys those singing fish on plaques you see on late night television commercials? They didn’t buy just one! They bought them for family and friends! Forget about going to Vegas or Europe or Florida for a vacation - send them to Dollywood!

Lest anyone think I didn’t like them, that really wasn’t the case. We had absolutely nothing in common save their daughter. However, they had many fine qualities. They were scrupulously honest and treated their customers far better than the industry average. While I had my differences in how they raised their kids, I had to admit they did a fantastic job - thirteen children all married off and gainfully employed, with no drug or alcohol problems and nobody ever in jail. They were deeply involved in their church and donated heavily to it.

They could also be mean spirited at times, treating family worse than their employees. They had absolutely zero interests outside of the Catholic Church and the family. They certainly considered me to be a burden inflicted on them by God, despite my ace record in sales and management for them, and somehow got the idea I was a drunk and couldn’t hold a job. Again, very complex people, and I spent far more time with them than my own family. I worked for them fourteen years before Marilyn and I bought a piece of the pie, along with some of her siblings.

I liked them, but I wasn’t planning on a repeat of my previous history with them. Once was quite sufficient.

Big Bob came in and saw me, and Marilyn introduced me to her father. I shook his hand and he mumbled something to me, and then he kissed Harriet. Then he grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and headed out of the room, not saying anything to either Marilyn or me. I glanced at Marilyn curiously, but she just smiled. That was a good greeting, as I recalled.

Marilyn sat down on a bar stool at the kitchen island, so I sat down next to her. It was surprisingly quiet in the house, although I suppose that is a relative term when there are ten kids around. Michael kept running through, and Harriet kept shooing him out. A little girl, Ruth, about two or so, wandered through and Marilyn had to change her diaper, but as soon as that was done, she wandered away again. The newest addition, maybe a month or two old, was Peter, and he was sleeping and rocking in a little baby chair gizmo on the end of the counter. Otherwise, that was it. None of Marilyn’s other brothers were around.

Harriet wasn’t making dinner, since it was Friday. This was always pizza night, for decades! It was a good thing, too, since I was not looking forward to dining there otherwise. Marilyn was without question the worst cook in the world, but she came by it honestly. Her mother was the second worst cook in the world. I always found it significant that every single one of the kids found a spouse (even the girls) who was a massively better cook than what they grew up with. Partly this was because of Big Bob, whose taste buds must have been surgically removed as a child. Salt and pepper were exotic foreign spices. Worse, all meats had to be cooked thoroughly. Forget rare, even well done wasn’t well done enough! If it was at all moist and flavorful, that simply meant it needed to be cooked some more, to make sure it was thoroughly cooked. I planned to take Marilyn to dinner on Saturday night, and make sure I departed on Sunday before supper.

The quiet was short lived. By about five-thirty teenage boys started filing into the kitchen, to be surprised by the new face sitting there. Part of Marilyn’s problem was that after she came along, there were seven boys, all of whom she was expected to help take care of, since she was a girl. By now she was treated as the second mother, only without the respect that their real mother got. Most of the boys treated her like furniture. Then again, in a lot of ways, it was way better than my family, even on the last go-around. Like I said, I generally preferred her family’s company to mine. Two boys were given some cash and sent out to pick up the pizzas. Here’s the list of family members:

Marilyn, my beloved, just turned nineteen over the summer. Yes, she was actually older than I was, by a few months. I never let her forget this, that she was an older woman. It made my birthdays so much easier.

Matthew - eighteen, just out of high school and driving a truck for Lefleur. He was a pretty good guy, cranky as hell at times, but a good friend. He and Marilyn basically bracketed me in age.

Mark - Seventeen, senior at Notre Dame. Very smart, he ended up going into sales for Lefleur. He had arrogance by the bucket load! He made me look humble. He rose to be Number Two in the firm, and when Big Bob didn’t name him boss in the mid-Nineties, he took his marbles and went home. He quit and bought a dealership sixty miles away and went into business for himself. There was a huge amount of bad blood over that! Good businessman, and a good person, but not on Marilyn’s or my list of good friends.

Luke - Fifteen, sophomore at Notre Dame. Ended up running the contracting business at Lefleur. Not the most personable fellow. Actually, kind of a rude prick. Half the company wanted nothing to do with him, including me. He had on a cast on his left arm, from playing football. All of the boys were jocks, and over the years there were enough casts and bandages to pay for an orthopedic wing at the local hospital. That always made me think that while they were jocks, they weren’t good jocks.

John - Thirteen, freshman at Notre Dame. Very personable and very smart. John ended up running the show at Lefleur after we all bought it. He was a dream to work for. He handled setup and service. We became good friends.

Gabriel - Eleven, junior high at St. Peter’s. Also, very personable and smart. He ended up running sales at Lefleur. I spent half my time reporting to him and the other half reporting to John, but it really wasn’t confusing. Also, a good friend. He went to college at Siena for business.

Rafael - Ten, elementary at St. Peter’s. Extremely volatile. Worked in sales and accounting for the company, but I can’t say he was any great shakes at either. Half the time I wondered how he managed to survive, but a rising tide raises all boats, so to speak. Most of his positions amounted to where he could do the least damage. Very prickly, and not a friend. He went to college at St. John Fisher for history.

Michael - Six, just started St. Peter’s. Very friendly and a natural born salesman. By sixteen he was working for Lefleur in sales and rose to Number Two in sales. He died in his mid-forties from cancer. A hell of a nice guy!

Ruth - Two. There was a four-year span between the oldest eight and the youngest five, and Ruth was the first of the ‘second family.’ There was actually some resentment among these kids, and most of them wanted nothing to do with the company. Ruth was quite unfortunate in that she looked a lot like her mother (ugly and morbidly obese) and had the IQ and personality of a rock. Literally! We employed her in positions where she could do the least damage, and then monitored her closely to fix what she still managed to fuck up. She was our flower girl.

Peter - newborn. Peter wanted nothing to do with the company and went to college to become a physical therapist. Nice guy, married a tiny little redhead who was smoking hot, and they had four kids. He was the ring bearer at our wedding.

Still to come, in future years:

Paul - Worked for many years as our dispatcher, but then transitioned to sales, where he proved to be an absolute genius! Nice guy, he married one of our salesladies.

Sarah - Grew up to become a schoolteacher. When Harriet and Big Bob passed away, she became one of the executors, and was an incredibly meddlesome troublemaker at it. She made very few friends in the ‘first family.’

Miriam - Also became a physical therapist. She was also a meddlesome troublemaker when Harriet died. Harriet developed liver cancer, and Sarah, Miriam, and Ruth would argue over the treatment. Harriet ended up listening to the last one around, so she ended up changing her treatment and doctors several times, to the point where nothing could save her. Then the three of them repeated the process when Big Bob got melanoma two years later.

An incredibly diverse crew, to be sure. One thing to notice is that all the names came from the Bible. The boys started off with the four gospels, followed by the three named angels, and then they moved on to the saints. All the girls were named after saints or important Biblical figures. Even Marilyn! Within the house she was known as Mary, and when I asked her why, she explained that her father had named her Mary Lynette, after the Virgin Mary, and his baby sister Lynette. Unfortunately, the nurse was hard of hearing and changed it to Marilyn. Nobody noticed until she enrolled at UCA, where the nuns demanded they use the names on their birth certificates.

The older boys were quite mystified when I showed up. I don’t think one of them thought of their older sister as a person in her own right, deserving of a life and love of her own. I was the first guy she had ever brought home. Most of the boys found me a curiosity but got over it quickly. Matthew saw me as a guy his age and we talked together fine. From Luke on down the boys were quite a bit younger, and they basically ignored me.

Little Michael didn’t ignore me, however. I was the new friend who picked him up and played with him. After listening to me talk to his parents he popped up and asked, “How come you talk funny?”

Marilyn and his mother gasped and told him he was being rude, but I just laughed at him. “That’s because I’m a southerner and y’all are just a bunch of Yankees,” I told him. I wasn’t overly surprised by this. I had always had a strong southern accent, and simply hadn’t realized it until I went north to school. On my first trip through I had lost it almost totally within my first year, but I would still pick it right back up whenever I traveled south. This time I hadn’t lost it, and I didn’t think I would. For one thing, every time I went to boot camp or other training, I would be in the heart of Dixie!

“What’s a Yankee?” asked the little boy.

“A really lousy baseball player,” That earned me grief from Michael’s older brothers, most of whom were Yankees fans. “Just remember, buster, that where I come from, y’all are the ones that talk funny!”

Marilyn gave me a raspberry for that.

Mark, on the other hand, thought of me as a challenge. He was very smart, and more than a little brazen and egotistical. He would always try to push his luck with Marilyn and me, knowing that Marilyn would never go up against him and that she would keep me in line. Tonight, was no different. After he and Matthew brought back the pizza and wings, he decided he needed to sit at the bar, so he took Marilyn’s barstool. No big deal, since she wasn’t sitting on it at the time, and the rule is, ‘you snooze, you lose.’ However, he ended up yanking it out from underneath her as she started to sit on it, and she fell on the floor. Everybody stared at Marilyn, although nobody offered to help her up, and he looked at me with a smirk.

Bouncing him off the wall would not get me in anybody’s good graces, especially Marilyn’s, so I simply stood up and helped her to her feet. As I did, I heard him snicker behind me. I took a deep breath, and Marilyn grabbed my arm. “Don’t!” she said quietly.

I took another deep breath and nodded to her. I turned to face Mark and saw all the family watching us. I slid my own barstool over to Marilyn and allowed her to use it, and then looked Mark in the face. “Mark, do you have a girlfriend?” I knew he did, since he married her a year after Marilyn and I got married.

“Yeah, why?” he said with a touch of bravado.

“Just curious. Suppose somebody you had never met came into her kitchen and knocked her to the floor in front of you. What would you do?” I reached into one of the pizza boxes and pulled out a slice of pepperoni pizza, but I never took my eyes off him. Marilyn put her hand on my arm, but otherwise kept quiet.

Suddenly Mark’s eyes widened. He decided that maybe the new guy wasn’t somebody to test quite so boldly. He grabbed a slice of pizza and headed out to the living room. I took his abandoned bar stool and sat down next to Marilyn. I looked at her and gave her an innocent smile. “Can I get a beer?”

She smiled back and said, “You just behave yourself!” She got up and grabbed me a cold one from the fridge. I just smiled back, and nobody, including her parents, said anything about Mark and me.

Harriet instead asked, “What are you studying, Carl?”

“I’m going to school for mathematics, ma’am,” I answered.

“What do you do then?” asked Big Bob. “Become a math teacher?” He wasn’t asking in a rude fashion, but simply because he had no idea what college graduates did when they left college. The only thing he could imagine a scientist doing was working in some kind of school teaching science.

It struck me as a touch odd, so I looked over at Marilyn. “You never told them?”

“It never came up,” she answered, with a shrug.

I looked back at her parents. “I’m sorry. I thought Marilyn had already told you. I’m going to be a soldier. I’m on a military scholarship.”

“A soldier?” squawked both her parents, loudly. I should have expected it. The Lefleur family was the biggest bunch of draft dodgers ever collected in a single place. There must be a gene for public service, and if so, the Lefleur family is completely lacking in this trait. The entire concept of joining the Army, and not just being drafted, but actually volunteering, was utterly alien to them. This led to a certain degree of friction between our two families, but it was just one of many reasons we were different.