Suburban Renewal

by Pamela Morsi

  The old woman grew pale and her ever-smiling mouth drew into one straight unpleasant line. She moved to rise to her feet. Sam offered a hand to help her. She slapped his hand away.

  “Samuel Braydon, I hope that you are writhing in shame,” she said. “I did not raise you to take advantage of the affections of a sweet young woman!”

  Her words were whispered, obviously not meant for me, but I heard them just the same.

  “No, ma’am,” Sam replied, his expression notably more solemn.

  Gram came over and seated herself next to me on the couch.

  “You poor thing,” she said. “Are you feeling sick? I thought you looked pale.”

  She patted my hand comfortingly.

  “Won’t this be wonderful,” she said. “A baby in the house is always such a blessing.”

  Gram cast all the blame for my out-of-wedlock pregnancy on Sam. At my parents’ house, they did the same, eventually. My mother’s first reaction was an irate scream.

  “How could you do this to me!”

  It wasn’t posed as a question and I wasn’t prepared to answer it.

  “I can’t believe it! I just can’t believe it. Doc, do something!”

  She looked at Dad as if she actually expected him to fix it. My father just looked sad.

  “Sam and I have decided to get married,” I told them.

  My father nodded, Mom looked, if possible, even more distressed.

  “You can’t actually mean to marry him,” she said. “It’s bad enough that he got you into this mess. It would be stupid to compound the mistake by tying yourself to this…this low-class bad seed.”

  Mom made no attempt to hide her contempt for Sam. On the contrary, she said these awful things to his face. He should have gotten mad and told her to “go to hell,” but Sam didn’t behave like that. He stood, eyes downcast, taking all the venomous anger my mother could dish out. And I knew from long experience that when provoked, Edna Maynard could really dish it out. Like a mama lion protecting her cub, I furiously defended him.

  “Sam is not low-class and he’s not a bad seed,” I declared. “He is a kind, generous, caring guy. Any woman would be proud to call him her husband and to give birth to his baby. And I…I love him.”

  “Of course you love him,” Mom said with disgust. “Teenage girls always fall in love with the wrong guys. It’s part and parcel of rebellion. But I will not allow you to ruin your life by getting married and having a baby.”

  “I don’t know how you will stop us,” I said. “I won’t drive to Topeka to get an abortion.”

  “Of course you won’t,” Mom said. “You’ll go to that home for unwed mothers in Tulsa. We’ll tell people you’re doing a semester overseas. You’ll give the baby up to a nice childless couple and come home to get on with your life as if nothing happened.”

  Honestly, that didn’t sound like such a bad idea to me. It was, in fact, what I really wanted. To go away secretly, have the baby quietly and give it away. It was the best solution.

  If we’d been in a calm, rational discussion, if I hadn’t talked to Sam first, if Mom hadn’t used that determined “you’ll do what I say or else” tone with me, my life might have been totally different.

  As it was, I turned away from my mother and took my dad’s hands in mine.

  “Sam and I are getting married, Daddy,” I told him. “I want you to give me away. Will you do that for me?”

  “Of course I will, pumpkin,” he said.

  “George!”

  “It’s her life, Edna,” he said. “If Sam suits her, then he suits the rest of us.”

  I rarely heard my father be firm with Mom. But he was that night. He was firm and resolute and supportive. And Sam and I got married.

  Sam

  1978

  The first year of my marriage was no easier than we deserved. Mrs. Maynard, once convinced that she couldn’t stop us, took over the plans for the wedding. It was small, only close friends and family, held in the huge First Methodist Church. Corrie wore a pale blue suit with a matching hat. The outfit kind of reminded me of an Easter egg. But she looked real pretty, like always.

  I asked her brother, Mike, to be my best man. Well, I admit, Mrs. Maynard suggested him as the best choice. I guess she didn’t want to see any of the guys I hung out with standing up with us. That was okay with me. I couldn’t have picked out any of my buddies as particularly special. Corrie was, and always had been, my best friend. And since she was standing on the other side of me, well, it really didn’t matter.

  Mike had come home from Kansas City where he was in pharmacy school. He was a tall, athletic, really nice-looking guy and a sharp dresser. So it seemed appropriate to ask him to help me come up with something to wear. My choices were a brown corduroy sports jacket or my high school suit, which was now way too tight across the shoulders.

  “I’ve got some money,” I told him. “I can buy a new suit. I just hate to spend my savings, knowing we’ve got hospital bills ahead of us.”

  He came down to see me, carrying an old suit of his. It was in perfect shape and the most expensive thing I’d ever had on my back. He claimed it didn’t fit him anymore. It didn’t fit me, either. But Gram got her pincushion out of the sewing box and by the morning that I slipped that plain, fifty-dollar gold band on Corrie’s finger, I had the nicest, best-fitting suit I ever owned.

  But the truth is, I have trouble thinking of that date, the wedding date, November 5, 1977, as the beginning of our marriage.

  It wasn’t just that I didn’t get to have sex on my wedding night. I’m sure there are plenty of guys who share that bad luck. But I hardly saw Corrie before the ceremony or after. When the guests went home, Mrs. Maynard told me to go home, too. Corrie was sick. That was probably true. Corrie was sick a lot. That was why we hadn’t bothered with a honeymoon. But she couldn’t have been sick every minute!

  The next day Corrie had to get back to school. Edna Maynard was adamant that her daughter finish the semester. So after one hasty, supervised kiss in the driveway of her parents’ house, Corrie went back to Stillwater and I went back to Gram.

  I was lonely, immediately lonely. It was really weird. I’d been single always and had never felt alone. Now I was barely married and she was sixty miles away and I felt this sad emptiness without her.

  Since Gram believed that long distance was only used in emergencies, I stopped down to the phone booth on the park end of Main Street every day after work and called my wife. I knew she was scared and having doubts. I was scared, too, but I had no doubt about what I wanted. I wanted Corrie and our baby. I was determined to make it happen.

  I had a lot of free time. A full-time job only takes forty hours a week. Now a married man with a child on the way, I quit wasting my nights in beer joints and honky-tonks. I was thinking about all that free time and about how hard I needed to work to keep Corrie and the baby with me. Those two thoughts sort of melded into the idea of making more of what I was doing. I started taking extra jobs after work; lots of independents couldn’t really afford to pay time and a half for a well-service company on nights and weekends. So I picked up little jobs charging day rates. It wasn’t that I loved oil wells so much, it’s just that’s what I knew how to do.

  You might have thought that my boss, Cy Walker, wouldn’t want the competition. But back then, there was more work than anyone wanted and he was glad to share some of it with me after I clocked out.

  I gave my phone number to everybody I knew and told them that if they had an engine down, or they needed somebody after regular hours, I was available, even in the middle of the night. I jokingly began to call myself the Midnight Mechanic. I even had some cards printed up with that name. It was funny, but people remembered it. I got calls during the ten o’clock news or at three in the morning. I was young and strong and pretty much sleepless those days, anyway, so I never missed a call.

  With the extra money, I surprised Corrie at Christmas with the keys to a two-bedroom furnished duplex only
four blocks from her mother’s house. I figured out pretty quick that Mrs. Maynard had decided that Corrie and I should be kept apart until the baby was born. Then once her grandchild was legitimate, a nice clean divorce would be the fix-up for Corrie’s life. I was determined not to let that happen.

  When Corrie came home for Thanksgiving, there was a question about whether or not I was even going to be invited for dinner. Fortunately, Corrie insisted. But every time I brought up any discussion about the future, Mrs. Maynard would change the subject. I finally just asked her straight out.

  “Where is Corrie going to live after she comes home from college?”

  Mrs. Maynard, always dressed up like she was going to church, and so smug in her superiority, managed to look down at me even across the table.

  “In her condition, Corrie needs to be close to her mother,” she stated.

  I knew she meant that as an explanation of why Corrie would never live with me. Right then I took it as a challenge to find a place that we could afford, so near to the Maynard’s house that nobody could complain.

  I managed to do it.

  The duplex was shabby and run-down. But I cleaned it up until it shone like a new penny. Gram took charge of the kitchen, getting all her friends from the Baptist Ladies’ Auxiliary to each donate one pan. She embroidered dish towels with Sam and Corrie on them and hung them from the back of the chairs of the three-piece dinette. And she bought a secondhand high chair that she had me sand and stain to match the furniture.

  When Corrie saw the place, she started crying. At first I thought it was bad crying, but then I realized it was happy crying.

  “I love you, Corrie,” I told her. “I will always take care of you. I will always provide for you.”

  I meant those words when I said them. She must have believed me. Because she moved in with me. I guess I’d say our marriage started that day. December 25. That’s when we finally had a commitment.

  Corrie encouraged me to continue doing the Midnight Mechanic work on the side, though now I really wanted to stay home with her. I wanted to spend my time talking to her. And I worried about leaving her alone at night. She wouldn’t hear of it.

  “Mom’s four blocks away and I’m perfectly capable of using a phone,” she assured me. “Besides, the only time a poor newlywed wife like me gets any rest is when her man isn’t home!”

  She was teasing, of course. But I let her get away with it.

  As it happened, when she went into labor she didn’t have to call her mom, I was neither at work nor on call.

  It was a sunny spring Saturday. We were working together in our driveway. Corrie had given me the idea of putting Midnight Mechanic and our new phone number on the sides of my truck. We didn’t want to spend the money for a sign painter, but we didn’t want a really homemade job. So we cut a stencil on butcher paper, taped it to the door and we were dabbing the paint on. Suddenly Corrie doubled over in pain.

  “What happened? Did you get a stitch in your side?”

  “It’s the baby,” she answered.

  “The baby!” I hollered. “It’s not time for the baby. Is it the baby? Let’s get to the hospital. Come on, get in the truck, get in the truck.”

  Corrie refused. “No, no, I don’t want to go yet,” she told me. “Let’s finish painting this door.”

  “Finish painting the door?” I said. “While you’re in labor?”

  “Firstborns take forever,” she assured me. “That’s what everybody I’ve talked to says—labor averages ten to fourteen hours. I don’t want to go to the hospital until it’s closer.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she said. “Let’s paint the door.”

  We painted the driver’s-side door. Then she insisted that we paint the passenger-side door. I was so nervous I thought I might throw up, but Corrie took her time. She didn’t get ahead of herself. When we were finished, I ran in and grabbed her suitcase and started up the truck.

  When she didn’t come out immediately, I went back inside to find her coming out of the shower.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t get examined if I’m dirty,” she told me.

  She called the doctor and assured him that she was fine. He agreed to meet us at the hospital.

  “Aren’t you going to call your mom?” I asked her.

  Corrie shook her head. “I don’t want them pacing the floor all day at the hospital,” she said. “We’ll call them when we know we’re close.”

  I had to help her get dressed.

  “These pains are coming really close together,” I said.

  Corrie waved away my concern. “It takes forever to have a baby, everybody says so.”

  She had me drive through the Sonic to get her a soda pop with extra ice.

  “They won’t let you have anything to drink in the labor room,” she explained.

  By the time we got to the hospital she was in a lot of pain. We parked the car in the lot and walked in through the front door. Took the elevator to the maternity floor. Corrie was leaning on me pretty heavily. We made our way to the nurses’ station.

  “My wife’s in labor,” I told them.

  The nurse looked up, gave us both a quick, unconcerned once-over.

  “How close together are the pains?”

  “They’re pretty much constant, I think,” I told her.

  The woman’s brow furrowed a bit.

  “Let’s get her into the labor room and examine her,” she said.

  We were directed into a small, windowless mauve room. All the clothes that I’d helped her get on at home, I had to help her get off now. She was suffering pretty tremendously.

  After one long, tough pain, she looked up at me, frightened.

  “I can’t even imagine how bad it’s going to be, if it hurts this much now,” she said.

  A nurse, different from the one at the desk, came in and we helped Corrie into the bed.

  “The doctor is coming in to examine her,” she told me. “This would probably be a good time for you to go down to the business office and fill out the admission forms.”

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Corrie.

  She barely responded, concentrating hard upon the pain she was in.

  I met Dr. Kotsopoulos at the door. We shook hands and I told him where I was headed. He told me not to worry.

  I got directions from the nurses’ station and was standing at the elevator door when the nurse from the room came hurrying down the hall calling out to me.

  “Mr. Braydon! Mr. Braydon.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The doctor wants you to get scrubbed and suited up,” she said.

  “I haven’t been to admissions yet,” I explained.

  “That can wait,” she said.

  Obviously not everything could.

  The nurse took me to wash up. I was dressed in a paperlike yellow gown as well as a blue paper shower cap and shoe covers.

  I heard Corrie before I saw her.

  “You can do it,” Dr. Kotsopoulos said. “Come on, Corrie.”

  “Where’s Sam?” she screamed.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” I assured her, hurrying to her side. I grabbed her hand. Her palm was sweaty but cold.

  “We’re crowning,” Dr. Kotsopoulos said. “Hold it, Corrie, don’t push yet. Don’t push.”

  “I gotta push!” she hollered back.

  “Don’t push!” he repeated.

  She looked up to me, her eyes pleading. “I gotta push.”

  “Corrie, you can do anything you have to do,” I told her. “If you have to not push, then I know that you won’t.”

  She groaned like some animal and squeezed my hand so hard, I thought it might break my fingers.

  “Okay,” the doctor said. “Next contraction you can push.”

  The man had hardly gotten the words out of his mouth when she was bearing down.

  “Here he comes,” the doctor said. “Here he comes. You’d better look this way, Dad, or
you’re going to miss it.”

  The nurse tapped me on the shoulder. The doctor meant me. I glanced down just in time to see a big whoosh of something pop out of Corrie’s body like soap in a shower.

  Dr. Kotsopoulos caught her and the minute he turned her over, she began to cry.

  “It’s a girl,” he said.

  “It’s a girl,” I repeated, not sure I even believed my eyes.

  “A girl,” Corrie repeated with a sigh. “My mom will be so happy. She wanted a girl.”

  When I called Mrs. Maynard a half an hour later, she was anything but happy.

  “You took Corrie to the hospital and let her have a baby without calling me!”

  “It all happened so fast,” I told her.

  “Sam Braydon, I will never forgive you for this!”

  I doubt seriously if she ever has.

  Corrie

  1979

  It was bitter cold that morning. I’d dressed Lauren in the little pink snowsuit that my mother got her for Christmas. It was padded and thick, and wearing it, she looked like a stuffed sausage, with just her little round face sticking out.

  Mom loved to see Lauren dressed in the clothes she bought. And it was cute, but the stores were about sixty degrees warmer than the sidewalk. So I had to get the snowsuit on and off of her every time we went in or out—which occurred about every twenty minutes. The routine was wearing thin. And worse, it was annoying Lauren. It could have been avoided if we were at one of the fancy shopping malls in Tulsa. With the new expressway opened they were less than an hour away. But for my mother, the February white sales were as much an annual tradition as any religious holiday. And tradition dictated that she celebrate in the meager downtown shops of Main Street, Lumkee.

  “Honey, look at these sheets,” she said. “They are thirty percent off and in plenty of colors. We can both buy a couple of sets.”

  Mom spent money with a carelessness that I was in no position to match.

  “I don’t need any sheets, Mom,” I told her.

  She looked at me skeptically. “Everybody needs sheets,” she insisted.