ANOTHER SUNNY DAY (31 page)

They reached the dryness of the back porch where they paused for a moment to drain off before entering the kitchen.

“Haven’t you heard?  I’m the fifth generation and my father is the senior partner.  He’s still pissed I didn’t go to Penn State on a football scholarship. I don’t have a choice but to become a lawyer and join his firm.”

Frank considered Ted’s plight for a moment. He always thought Ted was an interesting study in 1960s’ materialism.  Locked into his parents’ view of his future to join the family law practice, Ted also had what was one the prettiest girlfriends back home in Pittsburg.  Country club-raised, Elaine was, unfortunately, only sixteen.  But she had the blessings of both sets of parents who were determined to co-mingle their families.  So Ted was forced to miss college social life by driving home almost every weekend and all holidays.

Next to cross the growing mud lake was Ben Martin and Fred Thomas.  They bolted up the steps and stopped next to Frank and Ted who was still trying to staunch the flow of blood from his nose.

Fred studied Ted and chuckled.  “Now your nose looks sort of like mine.”  Fred knew he wasn’t a pretty boy, but it hadn’t affected his self-confidence.  Back home in Aurora, he had had the distinction of being both smart and popular.

“Not funny,” Ted muttered.  “I’m going to go to Pill Hill and get this looked at.”  Pill Hill being the on-campus infirmary, it was the place to go for free medical help.

“You’ll probably catch a terminal disease in there,” Frank quipped.  “Last quarter Pill Hill was under investigation by the health department.”

Kevin Nash and his girlfriend Donna sloshed up onto the porch as the rain had grown even heavier.  “Christ Ted, what the hell happened to you face?”  Kevin wrinkled his nose and stepped back as if Ted’s sudden ugliness was contagious.

“Kevin, why don’t you re-break Ted’s nose and get it straightened up?” Frank suggested.

“Kevin?” scoffed Ted.

“Why not?  He’s studying to be a chiropractor.  What difference does it make?  How different could it be?  Adjust a back, a shoulder . . . a nose?”  It made perfect sense to Frank.

“I wouldn’t do that no matter how polluted I was,” insisted Ted.  “Anyone raiding the house refrigerator has seen what Kevin does to his lab partners.”

“You’re just jealous because I get to cut things up,” answered Kevin. “And besides, I flunked out of cat anatomy, so I have to retake it this year.  Plus I get to tear apart a rat next quarter.”

Frank moved his hands to sweep across the sky as if reading a newspaper headline. “Dr. Kevin Nash leads the way in the development of a rat chiropractor program at Kent State.  Rats with back problems all over the world are rejoicing.  Members of The Weathermen rush to protest this new breakthrough discovery.”

Everyone laughed except Ted who was still pinching his nose to stop the blood.  The comment was even funnier because The Weathermen were a small group of leftist college student radicals that had gained a foothold on the Kent Campus known for their daily protests about any and everything, but particularly the Vietnam War.

“I’ll drive you there,” Donna volunteered.  “I’ve got to go anyway.  I’ve got a volleyball game tonight.”  She turned to Kevin.  “You
coming?”

Kevin shook his head.  “Nah, I’m staying in tonight.”

Donna didn’t try to hide her look of disappointment.  She was majoring in physical education and was a good match for Kevin except that Kevin had fallen two years behind in his classes.  This and other evidences of what she perceived was his lack of initiative had, over the two years of their on-again/off-again relationship been the source of several of Donna’s attempts to break up.  She felt that Kevin never treated her like he loved her except when he was lonely.  And he was so moody.  His emotions spiked up or plummeted, depending on how things went at the house or at home or the weather or the way his hair looked or a hundred other variables.  But whenever they broke up, he had always managed to talk her into coming back to him.

Don was one of the last out of the coach house along with Sam Douglas and Susie Parks, Barry Smith and his girlfriend, Carolyn, and Mike Anderson.  Their trip across the thirty yards from coach house was less hurried as the downpour had slowed to a drizzle.

“It’s good to have you playing ball again with us, Sam,” Don said.

“I figured Mom was out at one of her afternoon teas, so the coast was clear.”

Everyone still remembered Sam’s run-in with the house mother, Mabel Brown two years earlier.

The third floor, at the time, had been used as one large dorm room.  It wasn’t heated and the practice had been to use electric blankets.  When the electric blankets had become worn, electric sparks could be seen flashing in the dark of night whenever the bed’s occupant would roll over.  That one quarter saw more sparks coming from Sam’s bed than a small town Fourth of July fireworks show.

None of the brothers really minded that Susie had sneaked in and slept in that third floor dorm room with Sam . . . and twenty five other men.  It was only for one cold winter quarter when she had lost her lease for making too much noise.  But when Mom found out, all hell broke loose.

There was a long list of behaviors that violated the house, college and fraternity rules.  Alcohol and girls sleeping over were the most frequently challenged, but seldom broken.  And while Mom never shared the information, she had never quite forgiven Sam for the position he had put her in.

“Yeah Mom is really big on the answers to her questions being truthful more than the acts themselves,” Frank said and everyone nodded in agreement.

Sam knew he should have owned up to it as soon as she found out.  The consequences were that he was now sharing a trailer in a lot across from the campus with Susie.  He was missed at the house, but their trailer had become the location of some wild parties and as a hang-out spot between classes.

The last couple to arrive, Barry and Carolyn, was sort of the accidental couple of the fraternity.  She was considerably taller than Barry and inch-for-inch more serious. If there was a negative point of view, Carolyn had it and could bring any party to a screeching halt.  Barry, on the other hand, was the life of the party and would grab his guitar and lead a sing along or parody of a popular tune that he made up as he went along.  From week to week no one knew if they were still together or not, and with Barry sharing a room with Kevin, few guys hung out there if they didn’t have to.  Since neither of them had anything positive to say about the females in their lives, it was pretty painful to listen to them bitch and moan.

Frank stomped the excess water off his shoes.  “We’re going to be late to our registration.”  That reminder sent most of the brothers charging into the house through the kitchen door while Sam and Susie headed toward Sam’s VW bus.

“Come on Ted,” Donna said.

“Can you drop me off on campus?” Carolyn asked.  “I don’t want to wait for Barry.”

Donna agreed and they all ran through the increased downpour to Donna’s Dodge Dart.

*   *   *

The traffic on Main Street heading east toward the campus was unusually heavy as hundreds of students were still moving into both the on-campus and off-campus housing.  Donna kept adjusting the mirrors as they left the house.  Kevin had borrowed her car that morning, and he had reset them all to fit him.  The drive that should have taken fifteen minutes took closer to thirty minutes.  The criminal justice and law enforcement majors standing at each intersection, stopping every car and giving directions wasn’t that helpful if you already knew where you were going.

“So how are things with Kevin?  Carolyn asked as she glanced over at Donna.  The two girls seemed to have forgotten Ted was in the back seat.

“Fine.  Why do you ask?”

“No reason really.”

Donna slowly crept along the street.

“I was surprised to hear Kevin has to do his cat anatomy class over again,” Carolyn continued.  “Didn’t he have a tough time with it last spring?”

“No shit, he did.  And to make it worse, the head of the biology department is teaching it this quarter.”

“Weren’t you ready to break up with him last spring?  Over his grades or his classes?”

Donna thought for a minute and readjusted the mirror on the windshield.  “I wish he would get out of my blind spot.”  Donna hit the brakes and then resumed speed as the car on her right passed.  “Ready?  I did break it off.  We didn’t see each other over the summer except once.”

“Why did you go back?”

“Kevin has a way of whining and hanging around and it just . . . well, wore me down I guess.  Why do you ask?  Do you want to take him off my hands?” she smiled and glanced over half seeking a reaction.

“Hey, I’m back here.  I probably shouldn’t be hearing this,” Ted spoke from the back seat.

The girls continued as if they hadn’t heard him.

“God knows I have enough trouble with Barry,” Carolyn complained.

“Every time I go through this, and it happens too often, I'm torn between wanting him back and kicking him in the balls.  How are you and Barry doing now that you’re back from summer break?” Donna asked.

Carolyn turned toward Donna as if to reinforce the seriousness of what she was going to say.  “I don't get how people wake up one day and all their feelings for someone are suddenly gone.”

“With Barry?”

“Still back here,” Ted called more loudly.

Donna gave him a dismissive wave, then said to Carolyn.  “Yes, I do.  Do you ever have that awkward realization that you have nothing in common with the person you sometimes love and sometimes hate?”

“Fuck!” Carolyn yelled and pounded her fist on her knee.

“What happened?”

“I think that you and I are in the same spot but for different reasons.  I can’t get a serious minute out of Barry.  When we’re talking and his guitar is there, he picks it up and starts singing…”

“…and badly too”, Donna offers.

“
Very
badly.  He just doesn’t take life or us . . . or me seriously.  How do you deal with Kevin putting off his classes and taking five years to graduate?  What are you going to do when they draft him because he hasn’t earned his degree after all this time?”

“He’ll start his 6
th
year in January.  I think he has become a professional student.”  Donna shrugged.  “I don’t know about him, but I’m graduating in the spring, and then I’m moving on . . . with or without him.”

“This Vietnam thing worries me.  Three years of investing myself with Barry, and I may have nothing to show for it,” Carolyn lamented as she stared out the window at the students and parents carrying boxes and suitcases and pulling luggage carts into the dorms.

“Look, just drop me off here,” Ted interrupted, almost frantic to escape the car and the conversation.  “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“Sit tight.  We’re almost there.”

Donna’s Dart finally pulled onto the campus and headed to Pill Hill.  Ted gratefully fled into the infirmary, and Donna continued the two blocks to Prentice Hall.

Prentice Hall was one of many women’s dorms on campus.  It wasn’t one of the older dorms, nor was it new, and there were only two girls to a room.  The baby boomers had put a definite crimp on the campus facility planning process.  The only closer women’s dorm to where
most of Donna’s physical education classes were held used to be a men’s dorm.  It was nearly forty years older and lacked a lot of the creature comforts like enough showers needed for that many girls to wash their hair on a Friday or Saturday night, the peak days of female fix-up.  To compensate for the lack of full showers, the University took the time and expense to install hand sprayers on top of the old urinals in the bathrooms on every floor.  Donna had spent her first two years in that dorm, but this year she had been able to get into the much preferred Prentice Hall.

“This is where I stop,” Donna said as she looked solemnly at Carolyn.  “I don’t have the answers . . . wish I did.  Barry’s a decent guy, but then I used to think that about Kevin, too.  Listen, you got my number if you need to talk.”

Carolyn leaned over and hugged Donna tightly. “I’ll tell you this much, the next time I follow my heart, I’m taking my brain with me.”  Her eyes welled with tears as she reached over and opened the door to leave.

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