“Maybe I need to go find a job after all!” I said. That simply got me a raspberry in response. “I’m going to need some serious motivation when he’s done.”
My wife grinned at me. “Just what did you have in mind?”
“I’m not sure yet, but it will probably involve handcuffs and Crisco.”
“On who?”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me!” I chimed. I got another raspberry.
Charlie kept sucking down the formula like he was on a starvation diet, and in no time at all it was inside him. I held the empty bottle up and waved it at Marilyn. “He’s a piglet!”
Marilyn nodded and came over. I thought she was going to take him, but she just took the bottle and handed me a burp bib. “Your mother is really asking for it!” I told my son. I put the bib over my right shoulder and laid him down and started patting him on the back. After a couple of minutes I got several very loud ‘URP’s from the north end, and then got an equally loud ‘PFFFFTTTT’ from the south end.
“Okay, that does it for fatherly duty today.” I stood up and carried him over to where Marilyn was sitting on the couch, reading a magazine. “Mommy can go back to work now!”
Marilyn just looked at our son and said, “Daddy’s a wimp! Some hero!” She took him off to be changed.
By the end of the week we had met with somebody from the moving company and started making plans. We would move in two weeks. Next week we would pack our stuff that we would travel with, and then the moving company would come in and pack everything else into a van. We would load our travel stuff into our cars and head north and the moving company would take everything into temporary storage.
Both John Steiner and Missy Talmadge had found us a real estate broker (the same one, in fact, which I thought boded well) and had found us a few apartments. They had overnighted some info to us, and after we got to Timonium, we would get a hotel room and the next day find an apartment. Once that was settled, we would let the moving company know where to bring our stuff. It was a monumental pain in the ass, but nothing money couldn’t handle.
The drive north was a pain as well. It was about an eight hour drive, pretty much straight up I-95 and then around the Baltimore Beltway, but we needed to stop every hour or so. We were driving separately and Marilyn had Charlie and needed to feed him occasionally and change his diapers, and I needed to get out and stretch my leg and move it around. It seemed like it took forever to get there. It was probably closer to eleven hours by the time we got off the road in Timonium and found a motel. We were so tired we simply collapsed on the bed and fell asleep in our clothes.
Chapter 62: Back Home
At the time, Timonium wasn’t the world’s greatest choice for awe inspiring hotel rooms. In fact, the only place I could think of was the local Holiday Inn. Certainly no suites were available, so we crammed into a single room with a king sized bed and set up the port-a-crib in the corner. Saturday we decompressed a little, unpacked our bags, and then loaded all of us up in the rusty old Impala and went out car shopping.
First on the list was a new car for me. It’s not that I was any more important than Marilyn, because I’m not. What I am, however, is much more decisive. I knew what I wanted (roughly) and hated shopping for a car. We went to the local Caddy dealership and then the local Lincoln dealership. I was looking for a full size sedan, four doors, big trunk, big engine, screw the mileage, nothing too trashy (no pimp-mobile!), in a silver or gray. No black Mafia staff car. I found a nice Town Car at the Lincoln dealership on York Road and had them do a quick trade appraisal on the Impala. Then I dickered them out of the tax and tags and wrote them a check for the balance. I would pick it up the following week after the check cleared.
Buying a car for Marilyn was a much more traumatic event. She simply couldn’t make up her mind, and we drove up and down York Road to every dealership between Baltimore and York. She was always like this. On my first go-around, I refused to shop with her. I would turn her loose and just show up to give a perfunctory test drive and write a deposit check. I remember one time where she wanted me to pick the car. I spent two weeks looking them over, even going so far as to bring her back cars for ‘overnights’ and she hated them all. Finally I told her she had three days to pick a car or I would buy one for her, whether she liked it or not! “You can’t do that!” I was informed!
“Just watch me, honey! Three days!” She picked out her first minivan after that, inside of three days, too.
This time was no different. We made no progress at all that day with her, and none on Monday either. Threats weren’t working either. Oh well, I would give her another few days before I issued any ultimatums. What she needed was a station wagon, something she could drive Charlie around in, preferably big and roomy and safe. I was thinking of an Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser or a Buick Estate Wagon, but I just didn’t care. I’d get her whatever she wanted. What she wanted was something as small as her Toyota, with the cargo capacity of a C-130, and it had to be ‘cute!’ I had a feeling we were going to end up in a brawl over it anyway, since I wasn’t being ‘helpful’ about it. Jesus Christ, I was paying for it, wasn’t I!? How much more helpful could I get?
I got a reprieve from car shopping on Tuesday. We were meeting with the brain trust for lunch at a steakhouse on York Road. Charlie was turning out to be a fairly good kid for taking out (Alison had been colicky as hell!) and behaved as long as we kept pouring formula into the bottomless pit he called a stomach. He wasn’t on baby food, not yet anyway, and I dreaded what that would do to his diapers when it happened.
We weren’t the first ones there. Once we got inside, I saw Missy Talmadge at a table in the center of the room. As soon as she saw me she had a big smile on her face and stood and waved. I told the hostess we had found our table, and led the way inside. As soon as she saw little Charlie, her face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Oh my God, he’s adorable!”
“Missy, I want you to meet my wife, Marilyn, and this is our son Charlie. Marilyn, this is Missy Talmadge, my broker from way back when,” I said introducing them. Missy was the same as when I first met her, small and slim, blonde (now with some frosting to set it off, and a shorter hairdo as well), and perky. She was in her mid 30s.
Missy came around the table and gave me a hug, and then shook Marilyn’s hand. “It is so good to finally meet you! Carl has told me about you so often. Your son is so cute!” She bent down and let Charlie grab her finger.
Once Missy had come around the table, I noticed there was a reason for all the family bonding. She was a good four months pregnant! “Congratulations! What’s this, your second?” I asked.
“Third!”
“Well, you look fantastic. When are you due?”
“Probably in February. A winter baby,” she answered.
“Well, I guess we know what you did on your summer vacation,” I teased.
Missy laughed and swatted at me. “You’re awful. Is he like this at home?” she asked Marilyn.
“Usually he’s much worse.”
Missy cut off any further remarks when she looked back towards the entrance and waved again. I turned around and saw three men come towards us. Two of the men I knew. There was John Steiner, probably in his late 50s, and Jake Eisenstein, who was in his early 50s. The third man was about Marilyn’s and my age, mid 20s. All of the men shook our hands, and John kissed Missy on the cheek.
I introduced Marilyn to the others, but when I got to the young man I was stumped. He responded, “Sorry about that. I’m Jake Eisenstein Junior. I work with Dad.”