We held hands on the walk down the hallway and in the elevator. I kept glancing at Marilyn, and she caught me at it. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“What are you looking at?”
“You. You’re beautiful.”
She colored at that, and turned her head away, but I could see her reflection in the polished surface of the elevator door, and she was smiling.
As we were walking across the lobby towards one of the restaurants, I saw a man behind the registration counter start waving an arm and calling out, “Mister Buckman! Mister Buckman!”
I walked over to the counter. “Can I help you?”
“Mister Buckman, there have been a number of messages for you.” I glanced at Marilyn curiously, and she gave me a mystified look back. The phone in our room hadn’t rung. The clerk at the counter continued. “I think the problem was that these all came in before you registered. We took the messages down, but I stepped away from the desk when you came in, and, well, I do apologize.” He handed me a small sheaf of pink notes. I glanced through them.
“It’s all right. Nothing critical. Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome, sir. Enjoy your evening.”
I took Marilyn by the arm and led her towards the restaurant. We were seated quickly. Once we were seated, Marilyn asked, “So, what were the messages?”
I simply handed them to her. They were in time order. The first four were from my mother, starting at a time well before I could have ever possibly have arrived, all demanding insistently that I call her immediately. The fifth and final note was from my father, telling me to ignore my mother’s notes, not to call the house, and call him at his office tomorrow, along with his direct line phone number. I stuffed them in my pocket when she handed them back.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
I sighed. “It means my mother has gone off the deep end, but my father has managed to calm her down. It means I’m never going home again.” I shrugged with a fatalistic look. There are some things you can’t fix. My brother was one, and my relationship with my mother was another.
“How bad is it?”
I gave her another shrug. “Well, I suspect that is what Dad will tell me tomorrow. I can make a guess or two. For one thing, Hamilton is still alive and kicking, although just how good that is is a debatable question.” Marilyn gave me a dirty look at that. “When last he was seen on the floor of the kitchen, with the broken doors draped over him, my brother was moving and moaning, so he wasn’t dead. Likewise, since the state troopers haven’t broken down the door to our suite and hauled us in, nobody has called this in to the cops. They’ve had more than enough time to have gotten some troopers on my ass by now.”
A waiter came by and took our drink orders. I went with a gin and tonic and Marilyn went with a whiskey sour. The main formal restaurant of the Hilton didn’t have silly drinks with umbrellas; they were probably reserved for the other restaurants. I waited until he had left us with our menus before continuing. “Seriously, though, before you ever showed up, I had a talk with Dad and warned him that if Hamilton got out of line, I’d never be coming back. I’ve been independent of them for almost three years now, and I’m legally an adult. There is very little they can do to me to make me do things their way, and Dad at least knows it.”
“I just don’t understand them. Do they think it’s your fault that your brother is a jerk?” she asked.
I had to think about that for a bit. “Actually, I think that is part of it, at least for my mother. We are not a Norman Rockwell type of family.”
“Oh?”
“Well, my parents are really good people, but they are really lousy parents. They play favorites, for one thing. My Dad’s favorite is Suzie. She’s actually the normal one around our house.”
“She’s such a sweetheart!” said Marilyn, smiling.
I grinned at her. “Yes, she really is. She would love to get to know you better, too. She needs an older sister type to help her along. She is getting to that age where she is asking questions a brother shouldn’t be answering.” Marilyn giggled at that. “Hamilton is my mother’s favorite, probably because he does what she tells him to do.”
“You’ve lost me there.”
I made a wry face as I tried to formulate an answer. “Think about your own family for a moment. Now, you’ve told me your oldest brother Matthew is just out of high school and he works for your father’s company, right?”
“Yes, he’s a truck driver.”
“And that’s the job your parents want him to do?”
It was Marilyn’s turn to shrug. “I guess so. He likes it, I know that.”
“What if he wanted to go to college or get a job somewhere else? Would they like that?” I asked.
“Uh, I guess so. I mean, they like that he works for them, like the other boys do, but if he wanted to go to college, they wouldn’t stop him. Why?”
“From the time I was born, my parents have had my future mapped out in perfect detail. Where I would go to school. What I would study. Where I would go to college. The girls I would date. The jobs I would have. Where I would live. I figured this all out back when I was about twelve or so and told them I wasn’t going to live their dream. Usually that resulted in a spanking, but by the time I hit thirteen I told them it had to stop. My father understood and agreed with me, but my mother fought it tooth and nail.”
“How so?” Marilyn asked. She had a curious look on her face.
“Okay, let me give you an example. Back when I was fourteen it was already obvious that I was really good in math. I was still in junior high, but I was already taking math classes over at the high school, and talking about starting college early…”
“Hey, I have to ask, are you really a genius? I heard a couple of the guys at Kegs saying that.”
I looked Marilyn in the eye. “Yes, I am, but don’t be all that impressed. Hamilton is even smarter than me, and he’s a total dork.” Marilyn laughed at that, and I continued my story. “So, anyway, it’s time for the school science fair, and I’m doing this project with a Towson State chemistry professor as my advisor…”
Marilyn interrupted again. “Wait a minute — you had a college professor as your adviser on a junior high project?”
“Yep. So one day my mother has to take me over there and she meets him, and he says I’d be a great chemist. Well, that night at dinner, Mom announces that I’m going to become a chemist, not a mathematician. I told her no, I wasn’t, I was going to school for math. Well, you’d have thought I was denying the existence of Christ the way she carried on! You see, it wasn’t in her plan for me to be a mathematician, but a scientist or engineer was quite acceptable. She demanded that Dad punish me for my behavior, and then went crying up to her room when he told her it was my life.”
Marilyn shook her head in disbelief. After a bit she asked, “So how’d the science fair go?”
I just grinned. “How do you think it went?”
“You won.”
“And I got two papers out of it!” That required another explanation, which took us through ordering our dinners and a second round of drinks. Marilyn is easy to talk to. No, she’s not my intellectual equal, but we weren’t discussing non-Euclidean geometry. That’s not to say she’s stupid, because she isn’t; she has an above average intelligence. However she’s more of an Everyman, with average interests and an average outlook on life and the world. She’s generally a cheery person, certainly more so than my inherent nature. She’s a glass-half-full person, and I’m a glass-half-empty type. If you want to know what the average American is thinking, for right or for wrong, go ask Marilyn.
We spent the rest of our dinner discussing my crazy family. By Marilyn’s lights, my various accomplishments were something to be proud of in a child, but because they defied my mother’s preconceived plans, they were meaningless. I explained how Hamilton went along with her plans, and therefore was a better child.