What Were They Thinking?
14 Reawakening
JUST BEFORE LABOR DAY, I was offered another promotion. I declined. Dave moved to another company and my new regional manager and the vice president were not willing to make any accommodations. They wanted me to move to Chicago. The answer was simply ‘no.’ My daughter was entering high school and I would not pull her away from her friends, her master, or her home.
I realized quickly that refusing a promotion under the new management was tantamount to writing a suicide note. They had others they wanted to move up and I was in the way. I resigned.
For the first time in seven years, I was unemployed.
After Dave left the company, we began seeing each other occasionally. Just dinner between friends. I found I was more comfortable with him than any man I’d ever been around.
“Janet, I would never breach the trust between a manager and employee so I’ve never mentioned how much of a personal… uh… respect I have for you. I like you. My travel and drive in my job has never let me really develop a relationship with anyone. This new job still requires some travel, but for the first time, I can really choose my own base,” Dave said. “I was wondering… Would you be okay with me settling in this area? I don’t have any great expectations but I find I’d like to be closer to where you are. Maybe we could see each other more frequently.”
“Dave? Do you mean you’d like to be dating me?”
“Yes. I do. I mean that’s what I mean. Janet, we’ve been in a reporting chain and then friends for seven years. I’d like to be more than just friends. I’m not rushing or anything but I’d like to be where we have the potential to develop into something more. If you’re interested. No pressure or anything.”
“Dave, I haven’t had a boyfriend since college. My daughter is fourteen years old and has told me that she plans to go out with her classmates in some kind of dating group. I don’t even remember how this is done,” I said as we stood beside our cars in the parking lot. We’d just been meeting for dinner. It wasn’t really a date. At least at the beginning. Now I found my heart racing. “I… uh… isn’t it customary for a boy to kiss his girlfriend after a date?”
Dave looked up at me and smiled. Yes, up. He’s two inches shorter than my six feet. It wasn’t awkward. Our lips met. Our arms wrapped around each other. We held the kiss for longer than was strictly necessary for a good night kiss, but it didn’t become passionate. I had a long way to go before I was ready for real passion, but when I got in the car to go home that night, I had a boyfriend.
“Hello, Janet. It’s Marilyn Frost. I was wondering if we could get together for coffee one day this week. Or lunch? I know we haven’t been particularly close even though our children have been friends in school but they’ve signed this dating agreement and, frankly, I want to meet the parents of all the kids who signed it.”
At the end of the first week of school, Whitney had proudly shown me a handwritten agreement and said there were fourteen kids in her school who had signed it and were going to be going out together. When pressed, she said, “Like football games and school dances.”
“Whitney, you’ve been friends with most of these kids ever since we moved here. I know you enjoy their company. But are you ready to be dating? Really?”
“Not like that, Mom. But we can all go out together and have fun and the agreement says no one puts any pressure on anyone else. I’m not ready for that kind of pressure. I have too much to do with my martial arts and basketball. Mom, I haven’t even had my first period yet. But Brenda and Liz, Brian and Doug, and all the others wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me when we’re together.”
My daughter’s confidence had soared over the summer. She looked me straight in the eye and I could tell that before long I’d be looking up at her. I tried to maintain some small amount of parental authority.
“You still need to let me know whenever you are going to be with your friends and where you’ll be going,” I said firmly.
It was a relief when Marilyn called me the next week to ask about going to lunch. I’d just accepted a new position as financial manager for Brookside Publishing, a company that was expanding its market from trade catalogs to non-fiction books focused on the real estate and building industry. It wasn’t a national powerhouse like the bookstore chain I’d just left, but they allowed me a complete inspection of their financial reports before I accepted the position.
“Marilyn, I’d love to meet with you. This week is a little tight since I just started my new job, but could we meet for lunch at Muffeletta on Tuesday next week?”
“That works well. Do you mind if one or two other mothers meet with us?”
I envied mothers who had husbands with good jobs and were able to devote all their time to being mothers and wives. It just wasn’t the way it was for me. It wasn’t that way for the three women who met with me on Tuesday, either.
Marilyn Frost worked at the Times in the circulation department. She’d spent the first six or seven years of her married life as a housewife but, like so many of our generation, found that farm life was not enough to either support the family or keep the interest of the wife. Evelyn Gordon was a preacher’s wife and didn’t work outside the home. On the other hand, I learned an incredible amount about life in the fishbowl and how involved she was in her husband’s work. It seemed the churches they served assumed they were paying for both husband and wife in the name of the man.
The surprise to me was Doris Trane. I’d not met her before, even though I knew her son Lionel had been hanging out with the group of friends who signed the dating agreement ever since they started junior high. Whitney mentioned him often in her ravings about basketball. Doris was even taller than me! And she was also a single mom, though it was sadly because her husband had been killed while evacuating embassy personnel soon before the fall of Saigon.
“I thought it would be good to have mothers of both boys and girls meet to get our different perspectives,” Marilyn said. “Personally, I’ve been curious to get to know all the parents in the group. But in talking to a few others, we also thought we’d try to back each other up.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“My daughter is one of the least developed in the group,” Evelyn answered. “But she’s also very talkative to her parents. I think she’s only two months younger than your daughter, Janet. Anyway, she was talking about how all the kids went to the dance after the football game but that some didn’t really know how they were getting home until others volunteered rides with their parents. We thought we might be able to coordinate things like transportation if all the kids were going out together.”
“Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Whitney said there was only one person on the agreement who had a driver’s license and a couple who had older siblings that helped,” I said.
“One of those is my son Lamar,” Doris said. “It’s one of the reasons I wanted to be included in meeting other mothers. Some people might not feel comfortable about having a black man drive their daughter home from a dance.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t think it is any different than, say, Carl’s brother Bill driving them home. But I can see where some might be prejudiced or something.”
“With the kids in high school, there are going to be more after school events, as well,” Doris continued. “Lionel and Lamar have told me that your daughter is likely to be on the JV basketball team this year.”
“I’m not sure yet how that came about. It seems that some of the coaches at the basketball camp Whitney went to this summer got together to put pressure on some schools who had female athletes without a program for them to participate in. I was informed by Principal Darnell that after a great deal of discussion—which I interpreted to mean arguing—the school board had agreed that this year a female student would be allowed to try out for a sport on equal footing with males if parents signed a waiver of liability and permission form. It was a little frightening but I signed.”
“That just means one more activity that our kids will be participating in that we could cooperate on.”
“Hayden and I talked to a couple of other parents as well and decided to create what we’ve called a safety net,” Marilyn said. That got my attention. “I work in a newspaper office. There is a lot of news that doesn’t make the papers, either in Mishawaka or South Bend. In large cities, it is often ignored because there is too much that is more important going on. Kids are getting hold of some bad things. Alcohol. Drugs. Marijuana. Cigarettes. It’s all easier to get and it’s easy to be sucked into a situation where a child feels he or she can’t escape. It might even be true if one of your daughters decides to go out with a boy who isn’t a signer of the agreement. They are supposed to agree to the rules, but there was already one incident at a dance. We’d like all the kids to have a list of ‘Any time, any circumstances’ phone numbers they can call for help.”
“Whitney can always call me.”
“Of course. But there is always the odd time when you might not be reachable or of one of the other kids being caught in a circumstance they are too embarrassed to talk to their parents about. It’s a reality, not something I’m judging,” Marilyn said. “I’d like to know that if Brian was out and his driver was drunk or that Brian had had a few beers at a party and was feeling pressured to do something more potent, that he could call any one of us for rescue. I want to believe that he’d always feel he could call on Hayden and me, but you know that a teen won’t always feel he can face his parents after doing something foolish. If he called you, would you be willing to pick him up and either bring him home or give him a safe place for the night? With no questions asked?”
“Wow! I want to immediately say yes but I’m seeing the implication. Whitney might call any one of you with the same request. Transportation. Safety. No questions. You know, they have to understand that doesn’t mean a free pass. They’ll still have to face the music sometime, but at least they could do it after they’ve calmed down, sobered up, or slept,” I said. “Yes. I want to be part of the safety net and I want Whitney to have that net. Yes.”
The test of our trust came at Halloween. The Frosts offered to host an all-night party for the members of the dating group. Oh, hell, no.
It was one thing for us all to consent to the group going out together or even in couples in some carefully defined circumstances, but a sleepover? That just seemed like too much opportunity with too little supervision.
“Mother,” Whitney said in her most adult and confident voice. “Do you honestly think I would have sex with a boy in a room full of twelve girls and four boys?”
“Of course not. But these things aren’t always… a matter of choice.”
“Do you think Lionel or Doug or Carl or Brian would let any of the others assault or even pressure a girl to do something not in the agreement?”
“No, but Whitney…”
“Mother. Do you think any of those boys or girls could do anything to me that I didn’t want? And let me remind you that we have already established that I don’t want to have sex with a boy in a room full of twelve girls and four boys.”
“It’s not…” I started to drag out a time-worn cliché from sometime back in the last century. It’s not proper. My generation, growing up in the sixties, had already established our lack of regard for what was proper.
“I can’t believe I let her talk me into it!” I cried to Dave. Most of our dates still revolved around going out to dinner but more often than not, Dave picked me up and drove me home afterward. That last few minutes we spent before he opened the car door were more often silent and increasingly passionate. I knew Dave wanted to kiss me and I’d slid over next to him so I’d be available, but I was still worked up over conceding to Whitney that she could go to the overnight party.
“Jan, she’ll be all right. If anything, all the girls there will be safer because she’s with them.” Dave was one of the very few people who knew about Whitney’s martial arts training. Master Cho did not believe in competitions and recognition. He did not use belts or declare degrees of competency. He’d once said that he was the only person he trusted to hit his disciple and did not want her power known to all. “Maybe we should plan our own Halloween date to take your mind off it. You know the Frosts would call immediately if anything went wrong.”
I relaxed into his arms and welcomed the delayed kiss. There had been a time when I’d enjoyed making out—getting turned on. That had been a long time ago. Derek had beaten the pleasure of sex out of me. But Dave’s soft kisses and gentle hands were beginning to penetrate the barriers my mind had thrown together.
“I’ll need to stay near a phone,” I whispered against his ear. “Why don’t I cook dinner here?”
I dropped Whitney off at the all-night party with a tear in my eye. I tried to convince myself it was the same as a sleepover at Brenda’s house, but the blazing lights and party decorations were a glaring reminder that my little girl was growing up.
Dave and I had a quiet dinner and even a nice glass of wine. Or two. We watched a movie on TV while we cuddled together on the sofa. I’d just lifted my lips to his when the phone rang. We banged our teeth together as I jumped to answer it, noting the time was a quarter past ten.
“Hi, Mom!”
“Whitney, do you need me to come and get you?”
“No! Why would you need to do that? I just wanted to let you know that the big party is over and everyone who is not a signer of the agreement has left. Hayden and Marilyn and Anna are just super nice. Did you know they’re taking us all out on a hayride? Anyway, I knew you’d be worried and I just wanted to let you know everything’s fine.”
“You’re sure you don’t want… to come back home for the night. I could pick you up after the hayride.”
“Mo-ther! I’m with my friends. Everything is fine. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I curled up on Dave and cried. It was irrational. I was relieved. I was still worried. I didn’t know what to think or do. When Dave gently kissed me, I responded with more passion than I planned, but I just wanted to lose myself in him—in his lips, his arms, his hands. Oh, God! Yes! My breasts hadn’t been touched by a man in eight years and then it was a cruel mauling. I welcomed his embrace, his caresses, and his growing intimacy.
I am not a top-heavy woman. When I met Doris Trane, I frankly admired her breasts. She was tall and thin like me but had far more feminine curves. What I discovered was that my breasts were still as sensitive as they’d been in college, despite their small size. I was soon lost in a world of sensations. I knew where this was heading. My bedroom was a dozen steps away. I could feel Dave’s cock hard beneath me as his hand slipped inside my blouse and I felt his fingers touching my skin, sliding beneath my bra, and pressing against my nipples.
“Dave. Darling. I want… I don’t have any condoms.”
“Oh, my God! I didn’t even think that I might need one. Tonight.” He kissed me again, his hand still not leaving my tender breast. “We… I didn’t mean to rush you, Jan. I want… I think I’m in love with you. But I want us to both know when the time is right. I want to hold you like this all night, but… Maybe I should go so we can both cool down a little.”
“Kiss me again first. Let me enjoy the sensations of your hands on my breasts. But… don’t go any further. Please? I couldn’t resist if you did.” Was that a rejection or an invitation? I didn’t want to lead him on or make him frustrated, but we’d only seriously been dating for two months. Did that make it too soon? What were the rules?
Dave began lightening up on our kisses and pulled his hand from beneath my bra. I was seriously thinking of joining the rest of my generation and burning the damned thing. I wasn’t very well put together when I kissed him again at the door and watched him drive away.
But that night, for the first time I could remember since my divorce, I went to bed naked and masturbated. Twice.
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