Chapter 9: Relationships

September 13, 1981

Angie and I very much enjoyed sleeping late. We woke somewhere around 10am, puttered around getting ready, and made it to breakfast/brunch/whatever around 11. As usual, nothing was said about sleeping arrangements. I had no idea what Dad knew, or didn’t. I was pretty sure Mom knew we were still behaving.

Cammie hugged me right away at study group. “That was amazing! I am so thrilled!”

“You should be. You can coast the rest of the year!”

She swatted me. “No way! We need to keep on keepin’ on.”

“That we do. And I still need an Extemp qual.”

“Which you will get, I’m certain of it. But you’re already on the trip either way. So, no coasting, because we’re gonna rock State!”

I laughed. “And here Angie was talking last night about how we don’t have big egos on the team.”

“What? Me? Ego? I just want to rule the world. Nothing wrong with that!’

I gave her another hug. “Nope. Nothing wrong.”

We headed downstairs. Mike led the questions. “So, it seems like you debaters had a good weekend?”

I shrugged. “It was OK.”

Cammie winked. “Yeah. Fine.”

As I figured would happen, Angie jumped in. “Yeah, right! And you better spill it. I’m not doing it this time.”

My eyes flicked to Gene. Angie waved her hand in a pretend ‘whap!’.

“Fine, Sis. OK, so, it was better than all right. We had almost a third of the Extempers in quarterfinals and semifinals, and three of us finished in the top four. Including Ms. Cammie, here, who placed second and qualified for State.”

Cammie bowed and blew air kisses. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

There was a wave of laughter. I continued. “We had more than a quarter of the LD’ers and CX’ers in quarters. Kenzie Greene placed second in LD, and Lizzie and Janet placed second in CX.” I paused a beat. “And Cammie and I placed first.”

“Wow!” “Woo-hoo!” “Damn!” “That’s really cool!”

“So, what next?” Mike asked.

“Next tournament is in early October, then we travel up to the Dallas area in mid-October.”

Cammie nudged me. “We need to get this guy qualified in Extemp. And we need the rest of the team to get qualified, too! We picked up six qualifiers this weekend.”

“One dual-qualifier.” I nudged Cammie.

“Well, yeah.” She blushed just a bit as she replied.

“At least our weekend wasn’t as bad as the one before,” Cal said.

“What happened? I missed it.”

“We beat Spring Woods 24-20. Not bad.”

“He got a lot of tackles,” a proud Andy chimed in.

“Hey, not my fault their line isn’t that good,” Cal chuckled.

We plowed through a lot of studying. I was still tired, even after sleeping late, but that helped. By the inexorable high school clock, this week would be end-of-six-weeks exams, and therefore annoying, at least in World Geography and Chemistry.

Towards the end of study group, Angie got up. “I want to propose that we add Sue Brown. Gene and I, Steve, and Cammie all know her through Debate and I think all of us will vouch for her fitting in.”

Sarah smirked a bit. “And you’re asking this instead of Steve because...?”

“It’s just about academics. Yeah, Steve is taking her to Homecoming but, right now, who knows? No one’s playing the romance card. She’s just a good student. Which means she might invite someone else, eventually. But we seem to have a couple-sized hole with Marcus and Debbie apparently out.”

Mike nodded. “Makes sense. We’ll start the clock running. I think that means we consider this at the October 13^th meeting, given the new rules.”

September 14, 1981

We spent the first part of Debate reviewing the weekend. What went right (a lot of things!), what went wrong, what we should work on. Who should practice together. Things like that.

Janet and Lizzie vowed eternal revenge on Cammie and me. I’m pretty sure it was playful. They had an ‘enemies list’ of teams they particularly enjoyed stomping. Mostly teams who were sexist or bigoted or whatever. There’s a surprising amount of that. Or maybe not so surprising. People can be pretty lousy to each other sometimes, especially when the competitive juices start flowing.

As soon as we stopped the weekend roundup, I went over to Sue. “How’d it go?” She’d complained that she hadn’t gotten to talk to her parents, what with the tournament.

She smiled. “Parental permission obtained. They want to meet you, of course. On the night of the dance is fine.”

“I figured they would. I’ve got permission, too — not that I expected an issue. My parents will want to meet you as well. What would you like me to wear?”

She smiled. “You wear a suit for Debate, right?”

I nodded. “Just got it this summer, so it’ll even fit for a while.”

“Good! I know you’re not partial to white shirts but given homecoming colors, that, and a red tie, and I’ll get you a boutonniere.”

“I’ll get you a corsage. White or red?”

“Red, please. I’ll wear a white top and a red skirt.”

“Sounds good to me.”

She smiled. “I’m glad we’re going.”

“Me, too.”

September 15, 1981

Still no Debbie and no Marcus. Per Angie’s girl-talk grapevine, Marcus and Theresa Beckett seemed to actually be an item. That was a surprise all around. I could see it from what little I knew of the situation. From a girl who controlled everything via the ‘Lysistrata’ method to a girl who was, according to both common school rumors and the grapevine, ‘easy’. It surprised the grapevine that he’d given her the time of day outside the bedroom. For myself, I figured Marcus wasn’t a bad guy and didn’t want her only for her body. That didn’t mean I was hoping he’d come back, though. The weeks of silence were the bigger issue.

The grapevine wasn’t producing much information on Debbie. She wasn’t dating, apparently. She also wasn’t talking to any of us. Again, the silent treatment wasn’t the way to my heart.

We discussed how to remove people from the group but stalemated. Either Debbie or Marcus could, in theory, hurt us as a group, and could play havoc with Andy’s and Cammie’s lives. I was pretty sure we’d stick together, and that Rita would vehemently deny any wrongdoing on our parts. Unless either of them was nefarious enough to have taken pictures or made recordings, we were mostly in the clear. In these long-before-cell-phone days, pictures or recordings seemed unlikely.

But why would we go looking for trouble unless it came looking for us? I didn’t see any real motive for either of them to go down that path — unless we triggered it.

Angie and I left study group early and got home around 6:00pm. She and Mom had planned a special meal. Cheeseburgers, homemade fries, milkshakes. Somehow this all came together just before 7pm — I figured advanced prep might have been involved on the fries at least — and we gathered around the table. Angie lit a big candle in the middle of the table. Dad gave the usual blessing, then turned things over to Angie.

“Hey, Daddy! We’re gathered here to remember you. I hope you’re happy wherever you are, and that everyone with you loves your jokes. I love you very much and you’ll always be special to me. Thank you for giving me everything you gave me.”

Mom took it next. “Hi, Frank. I didn’t know you nearly as well, but you were always nice to me and I liked that. Warm, and friendly, and a delightful host.”

Then it was my turn. “Hi, Uncle Frank. I wish I’d known you better. I know you better now than I ever did, thanks to the wonderful person you gave us the pleasure of knowing.” Angie blushed, smiling.

Finally, Dad spoke. “Hello, dear brother. You were always the funniest of us, the most full of warmth and humor and ready wit. I hope you are looking down from above with a big smile on your face. We’re blessed to have Angie in our lives.”

Angie took over again. “We made one of Frank’s favorite meals, so dig in!”

We filled the next hour with stories of Frank. Most were from Angie and Dad, but Mom got in one or two, and even I had some memories.

I think everyone had something in their eyes off and on, but we meant it to be joyous, not sad. And it was.

September 17, 1981

Around 7pm a voice floated out of Angie’s room. “Hey! Come look what I found!”

I headed for her room, followed by Dad, then Mom. “What is it, Honey?” Dad said.

Angie held up an envelope. It looked a bit old and battered. Wide-eyed, she said, “It’s full of money!”

Dad looked in and rifled it with his thumb. “Wow! A lot of money!”

“My goodness!” Mom said. “Where was it?”

“Back in the back of the desk, behind this drawer. I pulled it out. It’s full of Daddy Frank’s tax records. I don’t know if we need those or not. I thought at first it’d just fallen back there, but I think he was keeping it there.”

Dad nodded. “People do that. What a shame if we had just donated the desk, though! Well, lucky for the recipient, I suppose.”

Angie bit her lip. I was giving her some actress points for this. “What do you think we should do?”

Dad smiled. “I’m certain Frank would’ve wanted you to have it. You should decide what you want to do with it.”

“Me? Wow! Thanks!”

“You don’t need to thank me. Thank Frank! Just ... well. It’s similar to what we said a week ago. I’m sure this would make him happy. He’d have a great joke about it, too.”

“He would,” Mom said. “Something about dying to help you out, but many times better. I’m happy he’ll get to help you out again, Honey.”

“Me too, Mom!” Angie said, smiling.

“You should count it, Honey.”

“I will, Mom! And I’ll think about what to do with it.”

9:30pm

Angie snuggled up, giving me a quick smooch. “We did it!”

“You did it! That was some great acting!”

“Now just imagine if Frank hid something somewhere else. We have to look at everything.”

“If he did, that would be great, unless it makes Mom and Dad doubt us.”

“Where did we find twenty thousand dollars to stash in a desk?”

“True enough. I can’t see them guessing that. Good job with the envelope.”

“It’s from the desk. It was empty, smooshed under the files with tax records. Perfect.”

“Sis?”

“Yeah?”

“We need to watch out for one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Being too smart for our own good.” She blinked at that. “Case in point: Rita.”

“Oh! I see what you mean. We thought we’d pulled the wool over her eyes until she proved us wrong.”

“Dad and Mom want to believe us. They will, if we let them. I can claim personal experience there. I wanted to believe my kids, and did as much as I could. But they were normal teenagers and screwed up, fairly often, and made it so I couldn’t believe them. We’re much more experienced, but we still make mistakes. And, if we screw up and take our cleverness too much for granted, we’re in trouble.”

“Yeah. I’m...” She bit her lower lip, pausing. “I sure wouldn’t want to have to try to explain where we got twenty thousand dollars.”

“Me neither. I’d have to blame it on betting. Nothing else works. They’d be disappointed I did that. And baffled. But I can’t think of anything better.”

She sighed. “If we do find anything else legit, we probably report it. But I kinda hope it’s nothing big. And then we have to manage this in a way that they’ll believe us.”

“They want to. We should be able to.”

“We should.”

She leaned in and kissed me. “Tired. I think we should sleep.”

“We should.”

“Goodnight, Steve.”

“Goodnight, Ang.”

She hopped up, hit the lights, then climbed back into bed. “I like it here. It’s comfy.”

“Comfier with you here.”

“Sappy romantic. But I love that. And love you.”

“And I love you.”

September 18, 1981

We actually got to go to a game, and it wasn’t bad. We headed over to Northbrook and watched Memorial win a 28-24 squeaker. Cal continued to be one of the bright spots on defense. Andy played in a few series and didn’t look bad. Nor particularly good. But I knew he was still gimpy and mostly out there to get a look at varsity-level competition and act as a decoy.

September 19, 1981

We arrived at Dr. Stanton’s at 3pm. Mom was still driving us, despite our new (used) cars, since she wanted a chance to talk to Dr. Stanton, too. Or to fake us out with the possibility that she might.

I returned to going first this time.

“So, how’ve you been, Steve?”

“Mostly good, thanks.”

“Mostly? Anything bad?”

“No, sorry, I didn’t mean to sound that way. It’s just been exam week, and it’s hard to be enthusiastic about that. I think I did very well on all of them, though.”

“Let’s back up a bit. You and Angie had dinner with Candice on the 29^th, correct?”

“I’m sure you know that’s correct. Candice’s parents won’t have you that far out of the loop, nor would Candice.”

She laughed. “Yes, but I try to keep up appearances. Anyway, what was your impression?”

I bit my lip. “She’s good. Really, pretty good. If I had to go just by that dinner, I’d say she’s mostly ‘recovered’.”

“But you don’t think that.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, sighing. “I don’t, because I don’t think you recover from it, you manage it. Believing she’d recovered, instead of having to manage it, would be a serious mistake.”

“You win a gold star. Not that I doubted you.”

“We expressed our regrets that circumstances won’t let us get back together. From what she said, I think right now her heart wants to throw caution to the wind and try to get back together, and her brain is firmly opposed. Since I’m opposed, her heart is frozen out.”

“I ... think that’s about right.” She jotted down a few notes.

“This is one case where Angie’s usual gripe about me — that I’m a bit too analytical and not so emotional or impulsive — is a big advantage. I’d never try it or let her push it. I’m about 99% sure it’d blow up badly, allowing 1% for a minor miracle. And I won’t risk everything on a 1% chance.”

“Anything else interesting happen?”

I laughed. “Well, if you know the second interesting thing, you know it from Candice and not her parents, I think.”

“Oh?”

“She invited Mel. After a bit of somewhat awkward discussion, Mel brought Cammie. It took Candice roughly five seconds to pick up on their being girlfriends.”

She laughed. “And how did that go?”

“Just fine. Candice knows at least one similar couple at her new school. I imagine several, and that’s not feverish teenage-boy Catholic-girls-school fantasies.”