I nodded and smiled. “She is. You should invite her up here this summer, while I’m in training. She’d love it.”
“That’s a great idea!” she replied, beaming. “I’ll ask her the next time I write.” Looking at her parents, she explained, “We write back and forth all the time.”
“You know, we should give her a call now. You should call and ask for her. Hamilton doesn’t know your voice, and he won’t hang up on you or break the telephone.”
“Okay, good idea.”
We stood. As I passed her parents, I said, “Hamilton’s my brother. He usually intercepts all calls and hangs up on me. One time he even broke the phone when I called my father.” Big Bob and Harriet just stared at each other with open mouths. We went over to the kitchen phone and Marilyn called Suzie, and then handed me the phone. She confirmed my box with presents had arrived at Dad’s office, and she asked if their box had arrived. I said it had. I put Marilyn on with Suzie, and then took it back. I talked to my Dad for a couple of minutes, and then to my mother even more briefly. I hung up with a sense of considerable relief.
“What was that bit about the horse?” asked Marilyn.
I laughed at that. “That’s a long time family joke. Years ago, when she was little, Suzie decided she wanted a horse and asked for one for Christmas. Well, you’ve seen the house. No way could we have a horse! So my parents just mumbled that they would think about it and bought her a calendar for Christmas with horses on it. Well, she asked again for her birthday the next summer, and she got something else horse related. Cowgirl Barbie and a toy pony, I think. Anyway, ever since then, we’ve been getting her something horsey ever since. This year she got a key ring with a Mustang convertible on it, along with the words that it was the only kind of Mustang her parents would ever buy for her!”
We both laughed at that. “What about your parents?” she asked.
Marilyn’s parents were both watching us. All I could do was shrug. “Dad said he was sorry we were apart like this. Dad always says he’s sorry. Mom blamed me for destroying the family.”
“You! They drove you out!” exclaimed Marilyn.
I just grinned back at her. “Don’t sweat it. She also blames you for leading me astray.”
“What!”
I just started laughing. “After all these years, she finally got it right!” Marilyn started punching me at that, so I just wrapped my arms around her in self defense and kept laughing. Her parents weren’t as amused, but they didn’t say much. After a few minutes I said, “Your birthday’s in June, right?”
“The 11th.”
“Suzie’s is the 14th, Flag Day. Invite her up that week. Have a joint party or something. Dad can stick her on a plane and you can pick her up. Does Utica have an airport? Maybe fly her into Albany or Syracuse.”
“That would be so much fun! I’ll write her and ask.”
I looked over at her parents. “Suzie’s the normal one in the family. You’ll love her. She wants to become a nurse. That’s about as normal as you can get.” I looked at Marilyn and smiled. “With my family, she should probably become a psychiatric nurse!”
“She’d never run out of patients, that’s for sure.”
I kissed Marilyn on the cheek, and hugged her to me. Afterwards I said, “I think I need to be getting back to Kegs.” I turned to Big Bob and Harriet. “Probably the one thing I most envy about your daughter is her family. You have a really nice family, much nicer than mine. I envy her. I just wanted you to know that.” I wandered off to the library and packed my bags and grabbed my coat and hat. Marilyn promised to meet me at the frat house the next day. I kissed her thoroughly and left.
I spent a quiet night at the house, and Marilyn showed up a little after lunch the next day. I have no idea what line of bullshit she handed her parents to get them to sign off on her going somewhere with me. I just don’t think they wanted to know. Our flight out was at six in the morning from Albany, so we needed to get up by four or so. Marilyn had two gigantic suitcases, along with a carry-on bag. I had a hanging bag for some dress clothes and my B4. We moved a couple of nice dresses from her bags into my hanging bag, and then got out some clothes to travel in. I teased her that the travel time counted as vacation and she needed to wear a miniskirt and no panties, but Marilyn was having no part of that idea! She selected jeans, a cotton blouse, and sneakers.
The alarm clock was abysmally loud the next morning, and we would have probably destroyed it if it was within reach, but I had placed it on the desk across the room. We stumbled alive and cleaned up. I had her leave yesterday’s clothes on my bed, as opposed to taking them with us. Finally dressed, we packed our toilet kits and grabbed our bags and made our way down to the Galaxie. The weather was a bit crappy, but not bad enough to ground the plane, and the Galaxie was heavier than her car, so it would handle better on the wet and slushy roads.
This was in the good old days, when airplane travel was still sort of enjoyable and exciting. If you showed up only an hour ahead of time, that was perfectly fine, and nobody got strip searched and run through body scanners. You didn’t even need identification on domestic flights. They ran television ads about just grabbing your honey and taking her away for a quick flight to the Bahamas on a lark. Thirty years later you needed a passport and a public body cavity search to even get in the security checkpoint lineup. Nobody flew on a lark anymore.
The Albany airport is a real airport (as compared to some of the grass strips I’ve flown in and out of) but not a very big airport. Several of the majors flew in and out, but mostly feeding to hubs like New York or Chicago. At five in the morning there was a decent amount of room to park in the lot near the terminal. After getting out of the car, I peeled off my parka and pulled on a windbreaker. Marilyn stared, since it was freezing cold. “Where we’re going, we won’t need a parka,” I explained.
She nodded and peeled off her own winter coat and tossed it in the back with mine. “Where are we going, anyway?”
I still hadn’t told her. I grinned and said, “Somewhere we won’t need parkas!” She flipped me the bird at that and I laughed.
It was too damn chilly to stand there and chat. I grabbed my bags and both of hers, and then moving like a Sherpa, hustled through the parking lot and across the drive-through area and into the terminal. I looked around and found the Alleghany Airlines desk, and led the way. I wanted to keep Marilyn in suspense as long as possible, so I only handed over our tickets to New York. Marilyn missed the ID tags placed on our luggage. After getting our boarding passes I led her to the escalator up to the second floor, where we walked to our gate. Along the way we stopped at the only place in the airport open for food at that hour, a coffee and pastry stand, and got some Danishes.
“You have to tell me where we’re going! I know we’re not going to New York!”
“And how do you know that?” I asked.
“No beaches,” she said primly.
I just smiled. “And maybe I just lied to you. Maybe we’re going to the City and spending the week living on room service and going to Broadway shows.”
“I don’t believe you.” She looked daggers at me, but I just let it wash over me.
“You’ll find out soon enough.” After a bit, our plane, a 727, started boarding and first class passengers were called. “That’s us,” I announced, and stood up.
“First class?” she asked gawking.
“Don’t we deserve to be first class?”
“I mean the tickets, you jerk!”
“Check your boarding pass.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet, and then grabbed her carryon bag. “Come on, get going.”