“I can’t believe I’m sitting here with you,” said Bob, the candlelight illuminating his freshly shaven chin.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” said Karen, even though it was only partly true. She was also thinking about her freshman-year boyfriend, Peter Hopper, or Hop, as his football friends called him. He was a nice enough guy, but after their first couple of dates, he no longer put any effort into their relationship. He didn’t take her anywhere, even though he often found time to fill his car with guys needing a 2 a.m. Meat Lovers pie at the Pizza and Sub Palace. He never asked her what she was doing on the weekend, instead expecting her to meet him at a party, where they would drink cheap beer from the keg for a couple of hours, and then go back to his room for a make-out session. Even if they happened to arrive at the party at the same time, he never paid for her to get in. Two lousy dollars is all it would have cost him to get his girlfriend into the party—and be assured of that make-out session—but he never came through. He would walk in ahead of Karen, pay his two dollars, and then head directly to the beer table while she, hopeful that he’d pay for her this time, dug her wallet out of the back pocket of her jeans. When she grew tired of being treated like a weekend roommate and broke up with him, he’d been mystified.
Too soon after Peter came Roger Gordon. Karen knew it was too soon, but she was so affection starved from her relationship with Peter that she plowed ahead. Plus, Roger was charming. They met in an art history class and seemed from the start to have a lot in common: love of art, love of the outdoors, good study habits, pizza a must at least once a week, coffee with cream and sugar. What Karen realized later was that Roger had a lot in common with every girl he met, simply because he thought nothing of making up his life as he went along. Every word, every move was carefully crafted to ensnare Karen’s affections. He was incredibly attentive, always wanting to hold her hand or drape his arm around her shoulder. She was taken in.
One night after a party, they went back to his room, where they had made out on several occasions. Roger turned on his bedside lamp, and popping out of the darkness was a girl in her underwear sitting on his bed. “This is Ginger,” said Roger as he peeled off his coat. “She lives down the hall and wants to join us tonight.” Wishing she’d had two beers instead of three so she could fully process what he was saying, Karen stood still, wondering if she’d heard him wrong, wondering if she’d misconstrued his words. Taking her lack of protest as a green light, Roger moved to unbutton Karen’s shirt, jolting her and then prompting her to slap his face. She dashed out of his room, out of his dorm, and changed her daily schedule for the next three weeks so she would not run into him on campus.
Karen looked into Bob’s blue-gray eyes. He had touched her several times already that evening, but his touches while not fraternal were not sexual. He placed his hand, ever so lightly, on her lower back when they walked through the door of the restaurant. He touched her shoulder after she sat in the chair he had pulled out from under the table for her. Was it guardianship? Is that what it was? Karen tucked her hair behind her ears, showing Bob her new hoop earrings threaded through holes in the very center of her earlobes. On Karen’s thirteenth birthday, her mother, Shelley, drew the ink dots herself at the ear-piercing station at the mall near their house. Shelley, who still wore clip-on earrings, had seen some off-center piercings, which she thought looked cheap.
Bob ordered a bottle of sparking water after their waiter described the evening’s specials. Classy, thought Karen, who decided ordering a ginger ale would appear juvenile. When their dinners arrived, Bob suggested they share their entrées, and Karen willingly agreed. Peter hadn’t been willing to share a single French fry. She watched as Bob transferred half of his beef tenderloin to her plate and put half of her chicken piccata onto his. He worked slowly and methodically, dribbling some béarnaise sauce over Karen’s piece of meat, creating a photo-ready turf-and-turf selection worthy of a gourmet magazine.
As they ate their first bites, her mind jumped ahead several years to when they were out of college and living in an apartment. They would both have jobs and work long hours. During the week, their dinners would be simple: soups and salads, oven-roasted chickens from a deli down the street, grilled hamburgers during the summer. On Fridays, Bob would finish work early and stop at the market to buy fresh ingredients for their dinner that night. When Karen arrived home, Bob would take the soft leather briefcase out of her hand and shoo her into the bedroom to change into casual clothing. When she emerged in jeans, he would hand her a glass of white wine. And then they would sit on the couch and tell each other about their respective days as whatever delicacy he prepared simmered happily on the stove.
“What are you thinking?” He put his fork down and looked at her.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I do. I want to know everything about you.”
“All tonight?”
Bob looked at his watch. “I want it all in the next fifteen minutes.”
They talked easily after that, sharing childhood memories and wondering again where they could have met before. They talked about their families and were surprised to learn they both had two brothers. Bob’s brothers were older and out of the house. They both moved to the West Coast after college, where they worked day and night, if you asked his mother, on computer technology. They were fully engaged in their lives there and rarely came home, citing work obligations as an excuse to miss another Christmas holiday. Because Jonathan and Mark had never treated Bob as anything but a kid, he felt he had a name-only relationship with them and consequently didn’t miss them much.
Karen had twin brothers who were seven years younger. Because there were two of them, they demanded more attention than Karen did from their parents. When Kevin and Kyle were born, Karen’s pampered life changed dramatically. Within twenty-four hours of returning from the hospital, Shelley began treating Karen as an assistant instead of a child. There were no more mother-daughter tuna sandwich lunches at the kitchen table. No more chocolate chip cookie baking sessions. No more bedtime stories. Her father had volunteered to read to her for a while, but only on nights when sports weren’t on the television. He, Phil, was an ardent hockey fan and, like the rest of the men and boys in the country, closely monitored Wayne Gretzky’s dazzling career on the ice.
During her pregnancy, Shelley had taught Karen how to sew. But the partly finished corduroy jumper they were working on sat folded and, eventually, dust-covered on Karen’s bureau after the twins were born. Her mother’s calm and patient sewing instructions were overthrown by a steady stream of orders: Karen, run and get me another diaper. Karen, hold your brother while I cook dinner. Karen, watch the boys while I take a shower. At seven, Karen’s childhood was effectively over. And while Karen at first felt very grown up in her new role, she soon resented it and all the responsibility it entailed. She routinely begged her friends to invite her over after school so she could get out of whatever job her mother had planned and have some fun for a while. At her friends’ houses she could play board games and run around outside like everyone else her age. By the time her mother fully comprehended the kind of pressure she had exerted upon her daughter, the boys were seven and still could do very little for themselves, and Karen, at fourteen, could have lived in her own apartment. When the boys finally did get it together (when Shelley learned to let them make mistakes and do things on their own), Shelley tried to spend more time with her daughter. She took Karen shopping and out to lunch, which Karen appreciated. After all, her mother was guilty of little more than being overwhelmed, and Karen accepted her mother’s apologies. But she didn’t turn to her for affection or advice or sympathy like she had before her brothers were born. And her father, who had started his own insurance agency when the boys were four, worked long hours and was tired when he got home. Karen solved her own problems.
Bob told Karen his experience of being the youngest was very different from that of her brothers. His parents’ time was spent on the older b
oys. One of them was struggling in school; the other had acne. One of them was getting his license; the other smashed up the car. One of them had a raunchy girlfriend; the other was grounded for a month. Bob spent a good deal of his childhood playing alone with toys in his room. Occasionally he had friends over, but because his brothers often teased them, most of Bob’s friends wanted to play elsewhere. Bob didn’t feel particularly neglected; he liked being alone. But one night he overheard his parents talking when they thought Bob, who was at the kitchen table eating his nightly snack of Oreos and milk, was already in bed. They were lamenting about how much longer Bob would be in the house. His brothers were off to college, and if it weren’t for that unplanned night of passion after the O’Hearns’ cocktail party, they would have the house—and their lives—to themselves. Devastated, Bob packed a small duffel bag and walked into the living room to announce his imminent departure. His mother, Janet, smothered him with kisses and hugs and told him she hadn’t meant what she said, that she loved him dearly. But Bob never forgot that night.
“Wow.” Bob sat back in his chair, the front two legs an inch off the floor. “What happened to our light, first-date conversation?”
“I hear Gretzky just scored his six hundredth goal.” Karen used both hands to push her hair away from her center part.
“He did indeed.”
“My dad tells me he’s the best player the game has ever seen.”
“Your dad’s probably right.”
Karen nodded. Bob sipped his water. “That’s enough,” he said. “Let’s get back to the good stuff.”
After dinner Bob paid the check, refusing Karen’s polite offer of splitting the cost, then drove slowly back to campus. The dark serpentine road again gave Karen the sensation of being in another country. The two of them were traveling hundreds of miles from one city to another on a secret middle-of-the-night mission. They had been entrusted with documents that would guarantee the national security of their homeland; their failure would mean international disaster on an unprecedented level. No one knew where they were or what they were doing; they were alone. Looking over at Bob, Karen pushed the fantasy out of her head. He reached over and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand.
Unlike the narrow winding roads to Sterling, the campus was lit up like a small city. Instead of taking Karen directly to her dorm, Bob decided to loop around and see what was happening on campus, a means to prolong the date. As they drove past the various buildings, they commented on the people they could see through windows lit from the inside. In Franklin Hall, a mid-campus dorm, people were dancing in the downstairs common room, their surrealistic body shadows filling the floor-to-ceiling windows. A small group was outside the party, standing on and around the steps, and Bob knew what they were up to before he could see the glowing orange ember they passed amongst themselves. He hadn’t smoked pot since high school, when he smoked with enough regularity to buy it instead of merely hope for it at a party. When one of those buys had almost turned into a bust, Bob quit altogether. Now there’s a reason, he thought, why he and Karen hadn’t met. While she was doing wholesome things like going out for pizza and ice cream, he was going into the woods to get high.
Bob pulled up in front of Karen’s dorm and stopped the car. Neither one of them moved. Finally, Bob opened his door, breaking the vacuum seal of their time alone in the car, letting the outside world in. Karen opened her door and pushed herself off the seat. Bob took her hand and slowly led her up the steps to the front door, where they stood facing each other. And, although Bob had thought about this moment, he was suddenly unsure how to proceed. He knew he wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t want to alarm her by kissing her too hard or too long. He didn’t want to give her a brief, dismissive kiss either. Then she might think the date had been a mistake, even though they both knew it hadn’t. He reached up and cupped her chin in his right hand, then slowly lowered his head. He looked at her just before placing his lips on hers and saw her eyes gently close. He kissed her three times before releasing his hand. He heard her inhale. “Thank you for coming out with me tonight.”
“I had an amazing time,” she said. “I like you, Bob Parsons.”
After promising to call her the next day, Bob descended the steps and got back into his car. He looked out the passenger side window and, finding her still standing on the landing, lifted his arm and waved before restarting the car and pulling away from the curb.
CHAPTER 3
SEPTEMBER 1989
By the beginning of the next school year, everything seemed to be as it should be in a relationship. Karen and Bob spent most of their time together, but they also spent time apart, with friends. They trusted each other without having to talk about it. When Bob went off campus one weekend for a marketing seminar at another college and Karen stayed behind, he knew she wasn’t kissing someone else at a fraternity party and she knew he wasn’t hitting on the female business students. If Karen declined his offer of an evening out, it really was because she had a lot of work to do or was simply overtired. Bob knew he would not run into her at a campus function later that night dancing with the captain of the rugby team. They appeared to have a completely honest relationship, one that friends described as extraordinary.
Bob’s housemates were more surprised than Karen’s dorm mates. Most college relationships, they told Bob whenever the topic surfaced, lasted weeks, maybe months. Hardly any lasted a year or more. And when they did, someone was cheating. There was good reason for that. All any guy had to do was take a quick look at what was available. There were a lot of pretty girls on campus, as well as a fair number of girls who had the reputation of being easy to bed. This is the time, the guys said, to experiment, to go a little wild before the responsibilities of the adult world faced them after graduation. And they didn’t consider themselves unfaithful to Karen for suggesting such things. They all liked Karen; everyone did. But if Bob spent his entire senior year dating the girl he was going to marry, he might regret it later.
Bob listened, half convinced by their propositions. This was the time to do whatever he pleased. He was technically beholden to no one. He could stay out all night. He could skip classes. He could drink excessively. He could be with a different girl every night for a couple of weeks before anyone would notice. This could be the most selfish time of his life. Some of the guys advocating this lifestyle lived like that; Bob, an early riser, even after a late night with too much beer, would see their conquests slink past the kitchen on their way out the back door in the morning, dressed in what they had been wearing the night before, hair askew, mascara smeared. Bob admitted to himself and to the guys that their philosophy was certainly intriguing, and that if he hadn’t met Karen, he might champion their cause. But his relationship with Karen, he told them, was unusual. It didn’t fit in with today’s standards of dating for convenience or temporary euphoria. It was out of another era, he said, when faithfulness was commonplace, when a person’s word actually meant something more than the air it took up when spoken. The guys dismissed his logic with a waved hand, which Bob routinely met with a shoulder shrug. They didn’t understand and wouldn’t understand until they met someone like Karen. Some of them would never understand because there were not many girls like Karen. Bob had known this the minute he saw her. His outlook on women and on relationships changed when he became involved with her. She didn’t force him to change or impose restrictive rules on him; he wanted to change. His seven housemates couldn’t say, specifically, what was different about him—except that he didn’t date more than one girl—and yet they knew he was not the same person he had been a year before. Even though some of the guys spent time with just one girl, they weren’t committed like Bob. He had an air of responsibility that left them nonplussed. He still occasionally drank too much beer or played touch football in the driving rain. But he also lived his life in a more measured way at a time when none of his friends wanted to measure anything except how often they got their own way.
Karen�
��s dorm mates wanted what she had, a good relationship. While they liked flirting and dating different guys, a lot of the guys turned out to be immature bozos. They, the boys—Karen and her friends never referred to them as men—were attentive at first, always. Some even paid for a date or two. But most had one thing on their minds. So the girls fooled around, but put off saying yes because they had learned, some more than once, that this was the turning point in the relationship. Any manners the guys had or pretended to have vanished after sex. Their wallets stayed in their back pockets except when they were buying something for themselves, and the inevitable knock on the dorm room door at two o’clock on a Saturday morning was not for meaningful conversation.
Being treated like a queen was every woman’s goal—and that included the feminists, who didn’t necessarily want to be revered by men, but they certainly wanted the respect and admiration of the men they would one day be supervising. No woman, no matter how independent, was unaware or unaffected by the presence of men. What Karen’s friends liked best about Bob, in addition to his good looks, trim body, and attentiveness to Karen, what they envied most, was his willingness to talk to her, that they had so much to talk about.
A Changing Marriage Page 3