“Fine, then don’t come,” I said. As I kissed away her funds, I remembered why I hadn’t sought her help for college tuition.
“Your mom’s impossible!” Glenn said as we left. “If she even tries to tell me how we’re going to live in our own home, she’ll be sorry.”
He was my next thing to hate about the wedding plans, a contributing stressor. Glenn wasn’t allowed to loathe my mother’s ways, only I was. I wished he’d diffuse the situation rather than fuel it, but my wish lurked beneath the surface.
“She won’t,” I said trying to calm him down, hoping I was correct.
“She better not.”
Ten minutes passed. “Now what are we going to do?” Glenn said, his mind still on the reception.
“We’ll have a cash bar,” I offered.
“How’s that going to look?”
“Fine,” I said, getting upset that the reception booze was such an important point. “Some people don’t have any bar. Some people have a church reception. At least we’re going to have a dinner, and music.”
“I don’t care what some people have. I care what we’re going to have and I want an open bar. I want to do this right.”
“We can’t afford an open bar.” I thought about all the money we could have saved if we had moved in together months before.
“Your parents should give you what you want for your wedding,” he said, ignoring my affordability comment.
“Within reason,” I added. “Father’s giving what he thinks reasonable and Mother’s . . . Mother.”
“This is within reason. Nothing Ronin and Deidre didn’t have. They had a nice wedding.” Ronin and Deidre had a perfect wedding, a storybook wedding with seven attendants each, fresh flowers, horse-drawn carriage, limousines, six-course sit-down dinner, four-foot ice sculpture, band and orchestra, a wedding to die for, but now they were in the middle of divorce proceedings.
“And we’ll have a nice wedding too . . . with a cash bar,” I said, wondering why the subject commanded such a lengthy conversation, my stomach, in knots.
* * *
After we returned from selecting reception dinner entrées, Glenn stamped, stuffed, and licked envelopes while I addressed our wedding invitations in my best pseudo-calligraphy scrawl.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Glenn said, “to the mailbox. We’ll mail these, and then celebrate. It’s almost over.” He raised a bottle of wine.
We lightened our load, dropping invitations, handfuls at a time, into the mailbox. Glenn said, “We should have eloped.”
“I thought about it.” A look of surprise overtook Glenn’s face; he meant it as a joke. “I wanted to make my wedding dress too, but didn’t have time, or a sewing machine, or a place to lay it all out.”
“You could have if you wanted to bad enough.”
I wondered how.
At 2:17 a.m. I woke in a fog, shaken and disturbed, Glenn, sound asleep beside me. Instant replay turned the dream over in my mind, more of a nightmare, really: Reese, Glenn, and I casually discussing the matter over a cup of coffee. Both sets of eyes on me, they said in unison, “Well?” I had to make the decision. I had to choose. Which one? In my hazy recollection, the moments seemed to pass uncomfortably as I squirmed.
I told myself it wasn’t real and shook it off, clarifying my thoughts, fluffing my pillow, then dozed again. Reese had been off the table for over five years, the trail, ice cold. There was no decision to make—I felt the engagement ring on my finger—I already had.
* * *
“Roberta, is Glenn the kind of guy people are going to ask ‘Why’s she marrying him?’” I asked, making sure I was doing the right thing.
Roberta thought for a moment. “No. I’d tell you if he was. Everyone has their faults. No one is going to be perfect; everyone has stuff to deal with,” she said. “He’s a nice guy. Nice butt too.”
I laughed, erasing the slight doubt that had crept into my mind, chalking it up to pre-wedding jitters. Normal. Happens to everybody. I looked forward to seeing Glenn that afternoon and had every afternoon. If I didn’t look forward to it, that’s when I should worry.
* * *
I wasn’t sick to my stomach on our wedding day, but I was out of my mind, viewing the surreal ceremony from beside myself. Was it I, propelling her legs down the aisle? Was it I who just said ‘I do’? It seemed as if I floated in and out of myself until the service was over and I signed on the dotted line.
“I’m not signing,” Glenn joked, then scribbled his name on the marriage license and kissed the bride all over again. I had been looking forward to changing my name to Camryn Conroy, a missus, finally belonging to someone.
Pictures were nearly unbearable in the summer heat. Oily sweat ran down my face, smearing my makeup, ruining the pictures. We looked embattled within the first hour of marriage. My dress clung to me in every sweaty place. I wanted nothing more than to get it off. In our hotel room after the reception, Glenn wanted nothing more than to get it on, consummating our marriage with a four-minute quickie before meeting our guests at the bar for a post-reception reception.
On Monday, it was back to work. No money for a honeymoon. But the next weekend we went camping along the Mississippi. While we catfished, Glenn said, “I really liked Jason’s toast at our wedding . . . touching.”
Glenn’s best man had led everyone in raising their glasses to Glenn having found someone he could trust, someone loyal.
“What did Roberta say?” I asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“I don’t either,” I said, laughing at the absurdity of not remembering our own wedding. “It was kind of a blur.” I remembered the out-of-body-observer sensation, glad it was over.
On the drive home, we held hands. I could never imagine not holding hands in the car ever again, euphoric that I had Glenn’s hand to hold.
* * *
“I got a job!” Glenn, more hyper than usual, gave me the good news. “Let’s go celebrate.” He had landed a maintenance position at XB Aerospace, a small jet-leasing company. We celebrated at the 94th Aero Squadron, the same place where Glenn incubated his job pursuit and hatched his career. During happy hour the Friday before Halloween, we discovered that Tim had a friend who had a friend who knew someone at XB Aero. That’s all it took. Glenn just needed a name, explained that he was a recent Parks grad and invited the maintenance supervisor for drinks. Interview over, job landed. The whole process amazed me, no resume submission, no GPA review, just chatting up a stranger and securing employment.
“Don’t worry,” Glenn said, easing my fears about spending ten times our normal celebratory gyro dinner at the corner deli, a weird tradition we made our own. “They’re paying thirty-three thousand! My first paycheck’s in three weeks; we have this dinner covered.” I thought about stretching our already thin budget until that first paycheck came in, which curtailed my enthusiasm. Digging ourselves in deeper brought me no joy. I’d have rather postponed the celebration until paycheck in hand.
When Glenn’s check did come, Glenn called me at work. “I got my first paycheck. Let’s go celebrate. Paqueños.”
“We already celebrated,” I said, thinking how nice it would feel to put the check in the bank and have a little breathing room. Pay for the first go around.
“That was three weeks ago. How often do we get to celebrate a first paycheck?”
“We can’t afford Paqueños.”
“What do you mean? I’m bringing home over four hundred dollars and you’re saying we can’t go out to dinner?”
“We still have to pay for the last dinner.”
“But we had the money to cover it. We already paid for it.”
“No we didn’t. We charged it, remember? We were waiting for your first paycheck”
“But you wrote a check for that bill yesterday. We did have the money.”
“No, we didn’t. The bill was due tomorrow, so I had to get it in the mail. We have to deposit your check today, so it won’t bounce.”
>
“Now you’re writing rubber checks?” Glenn said, getting angry.
“It’s not rubber unless we don’t get to the bank on time,” I explained. “I had no choice.”
“You’re telling me that our budget is so tight that we can’t spend a little extra on a nice dinner out?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.” My ears were red-hot with frustration, that he had been so oblivious as to our finances, even though I brought it up almost daily. Rent due—have to use the last of our savings. Student loans due soon—sure hope a job comes along quick. You spent twenty dollars on beer and another twenty on a bottle of whiskey—I’ll put off those new shoes I needed. No, I’m not reducing my 401K contribution to ease things up—we can adjust our standard of living. And . . . When you get a job—we’ll have to pay back the savings; we need a cushion. One time Glenn said, when he offered to take me shopping, “Why don’t you want to buy some new clothes?” It’s not that I didn’t want to. He’d already spent the extra money, so I couldn’t, and then he says since I never spend money on new clothes, he might as well.
“Maybe I’ll need to take over the bills!” Glenn was livid.
I was bewildered. How would Glenn handling the bills make the poor cash-flow problem go away?
“I don’t even want to celebrate tonight. You really know how to ruin it,” he said, then slammed down the phone.
I cried.
We had frozen pizza that night in our living room, which ordinarily would have been fun, eating around the coffee table, watching X-Files together. But that night, it was quite cold.
“Sometimes I don’t like you, but I still love you,” Glenn said, attempting to reconcile. “That’s what my mom always said.”
“Saying you love me isn’t enough.” I sighed, picking the olives from my cold pizza, unable to eat more than that.
Glenn didn’t mind if he wasn’t liked as long as he was still loved. That gave him room to be as big a shit as he wanted and still be safe.
“I love my mother,” I said, “but I don’t particularly like her and I sure don’t want to live with her. She drives me nuts! How great is living with someone you don’t like?” I had an are-you-crazy? tone in my voice.
But I already was living with my mother; I married her.
Glenn, silent longer than normal, mumbled while lowering his head, “Don’t ruin this for me. I always felt better when Mom said it.”
CHAPTER 20
“Having children was the best training for management.”
—C.W. Wessel, XB Aerospace Line Supervisor
“They want me to get a top secret clearance!” Glenn told me, bouncing off the walls. “I had one in the Navy, so reinstatement shouldn’t be hard.” He handed me a stack of forms. “Here, you need to fill these out.”
“What’s this?”
“Paperwork for my clearance.”
I thought, wasn’t it his clearance?
“It’s asking for everywhere you lived for the last ten years. I don’t know where all you’ve lived.” I wondered why a jet-leasing company required top secret clearances.
Glenn munched popcorn in front of the television, then absentmindedly answered, “Ask my mom.”
“Shouldn’t you be filling out these forms?”
Glenn pulled out the pathetic puppy eyes. “Please, you’re so much better at this sort of stuff.” Then he teased, “That’s why I married you.”
I set to work on the forms, asking him—every other blank—for the correct information. I had his social security number memorized, but not the birth date of his first wife.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked while digging out his military discharge papers.
The days of him fixing dinner were gone. When I asked him about it, he said, “You do the inside stuff and I do the outside stuff.” Never mind that our rent included lawn care and there was next to no outside stuff to do.
Several days later, the paperwork was done. “You need to sign this,” I said.
“Can’t you sign it for me? You sign everything else.”
“A security clearance is a little different. I’m not signing for you.”
“Where do I sign?” he asked, sounding put out.
“Where it says ‘signature,’ ” I answered, then could not resist adding, “I’m an engineer, duh.”
“You better watch out,” he said, playfully, then pushed my shoulder. In all seriousness he then said, “Where?”
I pointed to the line.
* * *
“Season opener is this weekend,” Glenn said, psyched.
“Season opener for what?”
“Races, duh, where have you been?”
I tried to forget about stock car racing season. There were times while we dated when Glenn had asked me to call in sick so I’d be free to go to the races with him. I felt guilt all through my body when I succumbed to the pressure.
I’d start praying for rain again on the weekends. It seemed as though marriage, to Glenn, meant doing everything together unless he wanted a night out with the guys.
“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” I said, sarcasm dripping from every word.
“What’s the matter? You always wanted to go before we got married.”
“No I didn’t. I just went to be nice.”
“So you don’t want to be nice anymore?”
Frustrated with the direction of the conversation, I said, “Of course I want to be nice. I just don’t want to go to the races every week.”
Glenn looked violated to the core. “But I do,” he said.
“Well, go then.”
“But you have to come with me,” he whined.
I felt trapped, like I’d be letting him down if I didn’t go, yet if I did, I’d be wishing I was somewhere else. He expected each of his interests to be my interests, often signing us up for things without checking with me first, assuming we were a package deal. This is what happened on our first anniversary, which we spent working a golf tournament, watching a bunch of old men whacking their balls.
I had worked registration, something I had plenty of experience with during my meeting-planner days. The humidity had taken its unforgiving toll on my hair and stuck my clothes into every crevice of my body, just like at our wedding, only this time I sweltered under a tent, rather than in the open sun. To make it up to me, Glenn took me to the Blarney Stone for dinner and then we ate our top tier of stale wedding cake, riverside, on the cobblestones.
The set sun made the August summer night comfortably bearable, even enjoyable. We watched a barge drift by.
“Dinner was great,” I said, remembering the food I considered a pleasurable, indulgent treat. “I love those sandwiches.”
“Me too.” Glenn looked up at the sky. “Remember that fourth of July?”
“Oh yes,” I said. It warmed me inside to think of how close we were that day, how happy I had felt, but then my thoughts wandered to the relationship chaos that had followed and the memory lost some of its warmth. “Can you believe that was six years ago?”
“Seems like yesterday,” Glenn said, still seeming to be wrapped in warm thought.
“Do you like this cake?” I asked after the third bite.
“No. It sucks.”
“Think the ducks would like it?” I tossed a piece into the river. It seemed to speed downriver faster than the barge. Glenn launched another piece with his plastic fork. I followed suit, making a game of it. A lavender rose made of frosting kerplunked into the water, making a splash. Glenn took aim at a duck with the remaining rose and then we finished catapulting the cake, forkful by forkful until it had all floated away.
* * *
“I got my clearance,” Glenn shouted when he walked in the door.
“Congratulations.” I greeted him with a kiss. I was excited too. Not only would he be working on a fun, challenging, and much sought-after project, but he would be getting a nice raise and we could move ahead with our house-buying plans.
We chos
e to build, a prospect I looked forward to, watching our home materialize from the ground up, picking out each detail just the way we wanted. The contractor said it would be ready in just three to four months.
I thought we could fit comfortably into a ninety-thousand-dollar house, both budget wise and logistically.
“It’s too small,” Glenn said. “I won’t be happy in it. I’ll be cramped. I hate being cramped.”
I wondered why, all of a sudden, a house twice the size of our rental was too small. “I like this one,” Glenn said, pointing to the hundred-and-twenty-five-thousand-dollar model, the model that would consume Glenn’s new raise and a little more—but we’d at least be home owners. I swallowed my reservations and agreed.
Glenn insisted we visit the building site daily. After the foundation was poured, Glenn took measurements, then made calculations in his head. “This looks smaller than the model. Damn! I told you if you didn’t watch them, they wouldn’t do it right. They’re going to have to rip it out.”
“Maybe you measured wrong,” I said, believing all was going according to plan, not worrying about it.
“I know how to measure,” he said, angry that I had even brought up the possibility.
I shrunk back, afraid to offer anything else, afraid the predator might again pounce.
“I knew I should have brought those guys beer,” Glenn said, chastising himself, “They work better when you bring ‘em stuff.”
I sat in wonder at the concept. Why did Glenn think they need perks to do a good job?
“Contractors, can’t trust ‘em.” Glenn fumed the whole way home, then immediately ripped the guy’s head off when he called to complain. They agreed to meet at the building site the next day.
The basement walls were up when we arrived, with a space framed out for a window. “See,” Glenn said with conviction to the contractor as they measured, “the walls measure thirty-four feet by twenty-six feet. With the second floor, that makes 1768 square feet of finished space. Now you have the walls up even after I called you last night to say there was a problem! We bought an 1872-square-foot house,” Glenn said, his angry, red face resembling second degree sunburn. “It’ll cost you even more now, to fix it. I’ll tell you what, Mr. Reynolds, every day this house is late, you will be paying our hotel room.”
Love, Carry My Bags Page 28