Love, Carry My Bags

by Everett, C. R.

“I don’t know.”

  We hugged in a long, loud silence.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Can you love the dark, brooding, self-indulgent side of your partner, as well as the cheery, supportive side? If you can, you’re blessed with the soul-satisfying power of unconditional love.”

  —Holiday Mathis

  “TWA is interviewing on campus. You should go,” Glenn urged.

  “Why would I want to interview with Trans World Airlines? I’m set with the internship. Meeting Planners International will feed me.”

  “So you could get a real job and not go to school the rest of your life. You can graduate,” he answered.

  “Yeah, I know, but I’m all set up. I already told them I’d do it.”

  “Well, change your plans. It won’t hurt to go and interview.” Glenn pressed me.

  “But I don’t even want the job. I have a plan,” I said, sensing that my plan may well be weak and directionless.

  I walked in the graduation ceremony that December, but didn’t collect my degrees. It was just a show since, at the last minute, I declared a third major, enabling me to stay safely under the shelter of school.

  Glenn didn’t walk with me. More suited to his temperament, Glenn switched majors from a design degree in Aerospace Engineering to a practical-use engineering degree. Instead of designing what could possibly be, he’d make what was already designed, really work. An Aircraft Maintenance Engineering degree was where the Goodyears met the tarmac, where he could get his hands dirty and still attain his goal of being an engineer. Because of this change, and more than one failed course, I walked first.

  * * *

  “So, you’re a Parks graduate,” the interviewer said.

  “Well, I could graduate this semester, right now, but I got this internship with the stipulation that I’m a student, so I delayed graduation. Took a few more classes.”

  “I see.” He scribbled on his notepad. I fidgeted with my fingers under the table across from him.

  “I graduated Parks myself a couple years back. Good school. We like to recruit from here,” he went on.

  “What’d you major in?” I asked, feeling obligated to speak.

  “Aviation Admin.”

  “Me too. Travel too. I decided to do a double major,” I said for good measure, an attempt at putting my best foot forward. I sat there wearing a navy-blue skirt and white blouse. My interview suit. I looked like a stewardess.

  “Okay, well, thank you for your time,” he said, ending the interview.

  “So, how’d it go?” Glenn asked eagerly as soon as I found him in the student lounge.

  “Fine. He did most of the talking.”

  “What’s the job?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t talk much. Basically if you graduated Parks and breathed, you were good.”

  “That’s it?” Glenn asked.

  “That’s it. He said he’d be in touch.”

  “If he’s not back with you in a week, call him.”

  But after a week, two weeks, Christmas, and New Year’s had passed, I dismissed the non-interview. I hadn’t even sent a follow-up thank-you note. I was well into learning the meeting planner ropes, frazzled with the throes of pulling large events together. Is the convention center ready? Who booked electrical? Where’s the crane? Are those union workers? Did they get their break? Registration fees paid? Carpet for booth 627 hasn’t showed up. Is there a phone drop in booth 492? Why isn’t the escalator working? And, the trade show president needs status in ten minutes!

  “You can get us free tickets, right?” Glenn asked as I finished typing and editing his tenth term paper. His homework was our homework.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t asked.” I was afraid to ask such a bold thing.

  “You should. They should give you free tickets. You work there.”

  “Does Schnucks give its employees free groceries?” I asked.

  “No.” Glenn answered. “What’s your point?”

  He asked his question, perturbed, like it was a serious question, which I found hard to take seriously. “If Schnucks doesn’t give out free groceries, why should I get free tickets?”

  “That’s different,” he snipped. “Fine. You don’t want free tickets? Don’t ask. You’re cutting yourself short.”

  Cutting myself short wasn’t what I called it. I called it being a good employee, not an annoying one.

  * * *

  Home late from a party, Glenn called. “Hello, Camryn? Are you still awake?”

  “No.” I had fallen asleep on my couch, waiting for him.

  “Why don’t you come over? I’m home now—and lonely,” Glenn said, slurring. “What are you wearing? Something sexy?” He sounded several beers’ worth of obnoxious.

  “I don’t think so. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You’re no fun. You wouldn’t even go to the party with me. At least you could come over now.” Glenn was a hard person to say no to. He pressed all my emotional insecurity buttons. I wanted him to think I was fun. I didn’t want to disappoint him or have him unhappy with me. “Please. Do you love me?” he begged. I felt unsettled about it, but he didn’t talk about loving each other often. He knew when to throw a crumb my way.

  “Okay. See you in a few,” I relented.

  At two o’clock in the morning, I drove over to spend the night. Glenn rarely stayed at my place. In fact, less times than I had rings on my fingers, which was none. With the key I had recently gotten back—again—I let myself in, thinking he’d be in bed; maybe we’d have a quickie and go to sleep. He was naked on the couch, more drunk than usual for a frat party night. Why did I come over? He didn’t drink excessively, often. There wasn’t an alcohol abuse problem or anything like that, but occasionally when he did drink too much, it was unpleasant for me. I always excused it as being a rare-enough occurrence that it shouldn’t bother me. Or should it? I shouldn’t be such a prude. After all, plenty of good and nice people drank alcohol. As long as it wasn’t a problem. I convinced myself Glenn’s inebriation now and then was part of who he was. And shouldn’t I be unconditionally loving? Especially if I didn’t want to lose him?

  “Take your shirt off. I have the camera,” Glenn directed.

  “Noooo,” I whined, disappointed. Where was the greeting? Where was the snuggling? Where was the genuine ‘I love and missed you’? Where was the ‘Tell me about your day’? And the small talk?

  “C’mon. Let me see titties.” Reluctantly, I took off my shirt, unfastened my bra tossing it on the floor and posed, pretending I was okay with it. Glenn rarely detected my hesitation and discomfort. Or if he did, he chose to ignore it. “Come over here,” he said with drunken, sultry eyes. I did, and he proceeded to remove my jeans and rub at my crotch. “How about a ride?” Glenn said, motioning for me to mount him on the couch. I did that too and was silent. Glenn went on, “Talk dirty to me.” Tears started welling in my eyes.

  “I . . . I can’t.” Streams ran down my face.

  “C’mon. Yes you can.” Glenn was beginning to get mad. “I just wanna have a little fun,” he said, slightly softening his demeanor.

  I tried to accommodate. “Touch my boobs,” I said, my speech, stilted. “I want you to ram your coc—” I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. I couldn’t talk dirty and I didn’t want to. It felt so forced, so not me, so wrong. I cried uncontrollable tears and got up. I wanted to run out and go home, but couldn’t, undressed as I was.

  “Why are you crying?” Glenn was pissed. “Come back here,” he ordered. He was aroused and wanted release. He made me finish. We went to bed with tension between us and silent tears on my pillow.

  My mind tossed and turned, thinking of my fight or flight instincts that had kicked in an hour before. I had wanted to flee, but Glenn wouldn’t let me. I should have fought, just like I should have fought that time in 1st grade when the class bully, Tyrone, who lived in a neighborhood nowhere near mine, came up to me at recess and demanded that I show him my pussy five times or
else he’d beat me up. Those were his exact words. “Show me your pussy five times, or I beat you up.” I was afraid of his bussed-in butt—every day, sitting behind me in class, pawing my straight blonde locks at will, just because my hair looked and felt so much different from his. I should have told him to fuck off and walked the other way. I didn’t even know the word ‘fuck’ at age six. I was scared, literally backed into a corner, a red brick corner of the school building. Wearing my yellow lace dress, I pulled down my panties, frightened and nervous. Up and down. He grabbed at my underwear. Panties up, panties down. Panties up, panties down . . . five times. Other kids looked on, curious. No one told anyone. No one stood up for me. I never wore a dress to school again.

  I was the one-out-of-every-three schoolgirls who suffered sexual harassment or abuse, although categorizing the incident had been a gray area for me. Was it molestation or was it regular mean-kid behavior? I never told a soul what happened that day. In time, I understood that Tyrone, as a first grader, most likely learned his atrocious behavior from home; he probably didn’t know what he did was wrong.

  I woke before Glenn the next morning, quietly slipped out, and went home.

  * * *

  The light flashed on the answering machine Glenn had gotten me at Christmastime, four months before. It was long-forgotten TWA. Too excited to harbor grudges against Glenn, I shared the news with him first.

  “I knew you could do it!” he said.

  “TWA wants to pay me twenty-three thousand dollars a year to schedule flights,” I said to Father and Jo who had come to visit.

  “Mmmm,” Father said, acknowledging I’d mentioned a figure, but not giving away whether he thought it was a respectable sum. It was a lot more than I had been making, and that was the primary factor influencing my decision.

  “Will you stay in town?” Jo asked, bringing up a possibility Glenn and I had not discussed.

  “The job is in St. Louis, isn’t it?” Glenn asked, sounding worried. In a nanosecond, I wondered if Glenn would ask me to marry him if it looked like I’d move away or if that would be our end.

  “Yes. The job’s here,” I said, thankful we bypassed that particular decision gate. The next gate would be Glenn’s graduation. Either we’d stay together or he’d find a job somewhere else and leave me, but until then, calm winds prevailed. I no longer asked his intentions, afraid I might rush an answer I didn’t want to hear. I hoped his remaining time in school was on my side.

  “Good. You won’t have to go,” Glenn said. He may as well have declared his undying love, because that is what I heard. At that moment, I was happy.

  The next moment, I was not.

  “About the Greek formal,” Glenn said, changing the subject. “I’d really like to take you, but I think my date has to be Greek too. You’d have to be in a sorority. Frat rules.”

  What sort of stupid society is that? The question must have registered on my face because Glenn quickly said, “I’d take you if I could. Really. But I’ve got to be there—can’t let my brothers down.”

  “Mmm hmm. You’re going stag then, since I’m not allowed to go?” I asked.

  “I was thinking of taking Casey.”

  I felt jealous poison rise in my gut. Casey was put behind me only when her name didn’t come up. The hairs on my arms stood on end.

  Glenn said, “Only because she’s Greek.” He spread his arms in an open-palmed shrug. He was hard not to believe.

  “Okay,” I said, sulking. Father and Jo looked on, saying nothing.

  * * *

  The following Monday, I accepted the TWA position which was contingent upon receiving my diploma. I petitioned for graduation with a double major, leaving the third degree in process. Two was enough to secure gainful employment.

  “That’s great!” Glenn said, cheering me on and congratulating me on joining the workforce. I took him out for a dinner of chicken wings and beer to celebrate our good fortune. And it was our good fortune. We wouldn’t have been eating a celebratory platter of chicken wings had Glenn not insisted I interview.

  He smiled at me, mist in his eyes, and asked in a sultry and serious tone, “How many kids do you want?”

  “What?” I choked on my chicken.

  “I was just wondering.”

  “No more than two,” I said, trying to hide my frightened excitement. His interest caused an unexpected physical distraction. My body, parts almost aching, wanted us to start practicing right then and there. My mind really wanted to say that I wasn’t sure I wanted children, but I knew zero was not the right answer.

  “I want three,” Glenn said.

  “Three?”

  “Three times the fun.” Glenn picked up his glass for a toast. Three times the work, I thought, yet still giddy over the conversation. If he wanted three, I could do three. We cheers’d, clinking our glasses together.

  The waitress set down another pitcher, its full head of foam sloshing over the side.

  “That be it?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. I had only intended to buy one.

  “Here’s your check.” She left an overturned bill on the table.

  “I have some good news,” Glenn whispered while refilling my glass. “It’s not a Greek-only formal. You can go!” He said this as if the entrance requirements to Harvard University had been relaxed and I’d gained admission. Nevertheless, I was happy again.

  * * *

  Less than a month after I started my new job, Glenn took me car shopping. His idea. “Okay, I’ll just look,” I said, not ready to buy.

  “Why don’t you get a Corvette?” Glenn asked with little-boy excitement in his eyes.

  “I don’t want a Corvette.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want a Corvette? Everyone wants a Corvette.”

  “Hello, I need a commuter car,” I said, my tone slapping him upside the head.

  “Well, what do you want?”

  “A Honda.”

  “Honda’s are pieces of shit,” Glenn said, tossing the unopened brochure back at me.

  “They are not!” I said, infuriated that he flat out rejected my preference.

  “My uncle had one of those about ten years ago and it fell apart.”

  Glenn took me to the Chevy dealership and test drove all the cars I didn’t like.

  “Do you like this one?” he asked after every model.

  “No.” The answer was no each time.

  “You’re too picky,” he said, disgusted. “You need a new car. What if you break down on the highway?”

  I wondered why breaking down on the highway hadn’t been a concern before I had the means to pay for a new car. The next week, I auto shopped alone, falling in love with a little Integra I was sure was sporty enough for Glenn’s love too. When I brought the brochure by his place, he said, “Honda product. It’s no good.”

  “I have the Consumer Reports right here! It’s top rated!”

  “They suck,” he said, ignoring the careful research I had done.

  “They do not suck,” I said, boiling mad at his obstinance. “Read the magazine!”

  I threw the book at him, leaving him in my wake as I stormed down the apartment stairs, crying, intending to leave.

  But I had left my keys behind.

  Frustrated, I took off in the warm dark, slapping bloodthirsty mosquitoes that buzzed in my ears as I walked past unfortunate frogs, smashed, mid-snack, in the street. I turned west by the cornfield, then ran into Glenn who had come after me from the other direction.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know it meant that much to you.”

  I sniffed away the hurt, heartened by the thought that he cared about what mattered to me.

  “We’ll go see it tomorrow,” he said, further cheering me up.

  Glenn test drove the car, liking it almost as much as I loved it.

  “How much for the car?” Glenn asked, speaking for me.

  “Fourteen thousand,” the salesman replied.

  “Thirteen-five, spoiler a
nd floor mats,” Glenn shot back.

  “I’ll have to check with my manager,” the salesman said in a voice that indicated we were miles apart, then stepped out of the office.

  “He’ll come back offering something in between and we’ll tell him no deal and leave,” Glenn said, dictating our strategy.

  “But I want the car. It’s a good deal the way it is.”

  “I know, but you never let them know that. You have to play hardball. Send ‘em back five or six times. Get mad.” Glenn’s voice grew louder and more animated. “That’s what my dad always did and he always got great deals. Squeeze ‘em till it hurts.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked, perplexed by his adamancy.

  “So you’re strong in case you need to handle things for the kids,” Glenn said, his words breezing by.

  Kids?

  The salesman returned. “Sold.”

  “What?” we said in unison, Glenn surprised, me relieved.

  I signed all the paperwork, shaking, as if I was signing my life away.

  “You drive it home,” I said. “I’m too nervous to drive.”

  Glenn laughed at me. He already had a couple car acquisitions under his belt.

  “Shut up. I’ve never done this before.” I punched him in the arm just hard enough for him to feel.

  “I’m disappointed. No haggling. I didn’t get to fight. They gave in too easy.”

  “Why would you want to fight?” I asked.

  “It’s fun,” Glenn said, smiling.

  I chose to not go there, understanding that I didn’t understand.

  * * *

  The cost of commuting to TWA each day taught me that between a new car payment and fuel to feed it, my impressive salary was pressed. Father had driven home, like an unyielding weathered nail, the importance of starting a 401K savings plan immediately. Maximize company matching. Ten percent, off the top, straight from the paycheck. I’d never miss it.

  “Learn from my mistakes,” he said, wishing he’d had more dollars to stretch.

  I never missed it.

  To relieve the pressure, I joined Tim’s carpool. Usually Tim drove, just the two of us, but Fredrick rode along on Thursdays. He worked at the factory across the street.