A Love Story with a Little Heartbreak

by Thomas John Dunker

CHAPTER TWELVE

  Connie and Carl left Club S just after midnight. The party was still going strong, but they were never the ones to close a place down. Besides, Connie was tired and, as much fun as the evening had been, she was ready to call it a night. They were also mindful of the drive ahead of them. It wasn’t a terribly long drive to Ruby and Henry’s, but it wasn’t just down the street either. It was about twenty miles north on State Road 55, which ran up the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago, and then almost ten more going east on county road 151, in the middle of a brutally cold winter night. All she wanted to do at this point was climb into a warm bed with Carl and snuggle into a deep sleep.

  Carl had had one Manhattan on the rocks at Club S. That was the only cocktail he ever ordered, and he never had more than one when he was out. Connie ordered one too, but rejected it as soon as she took the first sip. Alcohol generally wasn’t her thing; it didn’t sit well with her. She just never could get the hang of it and pretty much accepted the reality that she just didn’t like the taste of liquor.

  Even rum and Coke didn’t sit well with her that night, which was the drink of choice among her girlfriends. Just before midnight at Club S, she took a sip from Londa Gardner’s drink, a rum and Coke that was mostly rum, and handed it back. It tasted worse than she had remembered, and this made her think that her pregnancy might be accentuating this distaste.

  That’s right—Connie was indeed pregnant, almost three months into it. Two weeks ago her doctor had said it might be a little premature to tell anyone until she got a little closer to three months, warning her that miscarriages happen a lot more often than people realize. She heeded his cautionary counsel, although the excitement of the possibility of a newborn was barely containable. She so badly wanted to tell Carl—and Mama too. She hadn’t told anyone yet and was waiting for the right moment—maybe tomorrow over breakfast at Mama and Henry’s would be the right moment. She smiled to herself at the idea and folded her hands over her tummy, feeling warm and wonderful over the idea that she and Carl were going to have a baby.

  In the first fifteen miles of the drive out of Fond du Lac, Connie and Carl filled each other in on all the news they had picked up about their friends: the new jobs and the moves that came with them, the new businesses, the engagements and weddings that would be coming up, and the babies on the way. Carl was so excited when he learned that their friends, Stewart and Londa, were expecting their first child in the summer. Stew was his oldest friend and, like Carl, had gotten married the first year after the war. He was clearly happy for them.

  Carl had expressed his hope to Connie that they would have children too and, a few times, he’d said he hoped it would be soon. From the start, they both had talked about their hopes and dreams for a family, and now their first was on the way. Connie bit down on her lower lip. She wanted to tell him so badly right then about her pregnancy, but she was determined to wait till the morning, which she felt would be the perfect time and place to make her announcement.

  A couple of miles before the turnoff, their conversation had given way to silence. Connie was tired, perhaps because she was carrying. The blackness of all the whiteness that surrounded them in the darkness outside was overwhelming, and everything was lost in the darkness except for what the headlights picked up in their forward-looking vectors of light. Connie closed her eyes in contentment, with an inner happiness that she felt to the very core of her being. For an instant she recalled her distaste for Londa’s rum and Coke earlier that night, having taken barely a sip, and then drifted back to another memory, one from college, when she and Virginia Stranski had shared a bottle of whiskey at a fraternity party their freshman year at the University of Wisconsin—that’s right, an entire bottle.

  Connie and Virginia were chatting with a guy in his frat room when he handed a bottle of Jack Daniels to Virginia and told her to open it. Then he stepped out of the room for some reason. Connie and Virginia looked at each other and shrugged and smiled over getting the same idea of taking a slug right out of the bottle of Jack Daniels—why not, they agreed, it might liven the party up a little.

  The first swallow burned their throats, but they laughed, hysterically in wheezes, gasping for air and fighting the sudden flush of tears pouring out of their eyes. One more surely would be better, a thought that had occurred to both of them simultaneously, as they began laughing over the agreeability of that thought. The next swallow wasn’t so bad and, given the view out the window—a view that screamed winter, a view of ice-covered Lake Mendota through the bare trees on that moonlit night—the bottled heat warmed them up a bit, so they told themselves. They passed the bottle back and forth, not recalling at a later date if they had emptied it or not, although they were told a day later that there was indeed an empty Jack Daniels bottle not far from their feet, where they sat, leaning against each other, side by side, with their backs propped against a bed, like two rag dolls, out cold.

  It was just one event at a wild party at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house on Langdon Street that fall. The Badgers had upset the Michigan State football team that afternoon, or one of the Big Ten teams—Connie couldn’t recall exactly which one—so the campus was loud and boisterous that night with happy alums and victory-crazed students. But it was the liquor that made the weekend particularly memorable for Connie and Virginia—or should I say not memorable? How they made it back to their rooms at Chadbourne Hall that night would forever remain a mystery, but they sure were sick in the very early hours of the morning and throughout the next day. As a consequence of that regrettable adventure into a bottle of Jack in some Fiji’s room, they both lost interest in liquor.

  Carl was quiet, his eyes focused on the road. He knew it was about two more miles before the turnoff to Chilton. He was lost in thought and peering steadily forward into the limited blackness in front of him, the one defined only by his headlights. He was thinking of the limitless opportunities the future held for the two of them. He was content, and his happiness had been evident to everyone at Club S. It showed in his face. It showed in how he carried himself, just a little taller on his already tall frame. And it showed in his tone of voice. Carl personified optimism, and every one of his friends shared his excitement for the future. It was difficult for him to say goodnight to their friends; they all loved each other in that special way that defines true friendships.

  He now felt so complete and so confident in his life, and the difference, he knew, was that he had a wonderful woman in his life, one who loved him every minute, unconditionally. It was a love like no other in his life, and Connie was like no other woman he had ever known. He was surprised that his eyes watered just then, just for a moment, being so overwhelmed with his love for her. He turned to look at her, her head tilted, resting against her side window while she stared into the blackness, lost in her own thoughts.

  ∞