First Encounter
"Life is short," Mark said to me after he heard that I was getting married.
"Life is like a pair of shorts," I said to Mark after he married Ellen.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
"I don't know. But four years ago you told me that Life is short,' and here we are, still alive."
"Oh, I get it."
Glad he did, because I didn't.
Kelly and I were married in a beautiful church and had a lovely reception in the historic home of Thomas Jefferson's Postmaster General, Gideon Granger (1767-1822). Soon thereafter, the party shifted to a hotel1 on the sandy north shore of Canandaigua Lake, "The Chosen Place" to the Haudenosaunee, the Native American People of the Long House.
Mark and Ellen eloped.
They avoided the hassle and anxiety of planning a wedding and the expense of paying for it. They avoided the inevitable conflicts between family and future in-laws and the excitement of calling the whole thing off once or twice. They avoided writing all those "Thank You" notes for the wedding gifts.
Ah yes, wedding gifts. Come to think of it, writing "Thank You" notes would not be so bad. Mark's parents agreed to host a summer party at their cottage on Three Mile Bay near Watertown to celebrate the marriage of Mark and Ellen. I was all for going, but Kelly was not. She said that Mark was a psycho-loony-tune and wanted nothing to do with him. But Mark's brother, Terry and his wife, Debbie, pleaded with us to go. Debbie also considered Mark to be mentally unstable and had no use for Ellen, a self-professed professional photographer. Ellen shot heaps of garbage being unloaded into landfills and called it "cunningly artistic." To Debbie, an honors graduate in Art History, Ellen was a charlatan. They said that they desperately needed our company through what was certain to be a stressful and dysfunctional weekend.
So for our friends Terry and Debbie, we had to go. Kelly picked me up at work Friday afternoon, and with our 20-month-old son Lance strapped into his car seat, we drove directly to Terry and Debbie's apartment to share the long ride to Watertown. Terry and Debbie were married the year before in a beautiful church and held their reception at an historic hotel in Johnstown, New York. One of the more entertaining episodes was my stepping in to break up a nasty fight (yes, a blow was struck for feminism) between a young bridesmaid and a man a couple of years her senior. I thought I was doing quite the good deed until Terry tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Uh, Ken, they're married." I raised my hands with an apology and backed away slowly.
We arrived after dark at the cottage of Terry's parents. His father hauled out a huge side of roast beef from the refrigerator and began carving sandwiches for us. Kelly bounced Lance on her knee, and he was sufficiently cute and playful to everyone's amusement. Mark and Ellen sat together quietly until Ellen whispered something to Mark and then went to the guest bedroom. Mark soon followed her, but a few minutes later stomped back into the living room.
"You're all disgusting!" he shouted as his eyes bulged and face reddened.
Terrified, Kelly grabbed Lance. Terry suppressed a laugh, though his parents appeared stunned and embarrassed. Debbie did not even look up from the magazine that she had been leafing through since first sitting down. Chomping into my second roast beef sandwich, I felt the horseradish squeezing out from the roll, dripping down my chin.
"I said disgusting!" Mark repeated and started yelling at us about how poorly we were treating Ellen. We greeted her like she's an outsider. We didn't respond to anything she said. We showed no concern for her, "no one except for maybe Debbie," he said. According to Mark, Debbie was the only one of us who paid any attention to Ellen. Head still down, Debbie flipped through a few more pages of her magazine.
Satisfied that his point was made, Mark turned his back to us and marched into the bedroom to join his new wife, leaving the rest of us to contend with the awkwardness of the situation. This is where having a young child comes in handy. Kelly said that it was time to put Lance to bed, and Terry, Debbie and I all offered to help. We went to the neighbor's cottage, generously left vacant and available to us for the weekend.
The accommodations were much better than the lean-to the four of us bunked in the first time Kelly and I visited the cottage a few summers ago. We were there to attend an anniversary party for Terry's parents given by his sister Karen. She lived in a trailer home 20 miles away with her husband and son. We set out an hour before the scheduled starting time of the party, but were an hour late because we became hopelessly lost driving along endless back roads of farm land.
Terry was speeding in search of any route to lead us back to civilization when we stumbled upon a small town, its entire population packed into the church for a hoe-down. Terry pulled over and rolled down the window to ask directions. An elderly man chewing on straw approached the car.
"We're looking for Fargeville Road" Terry said.
"Fargeville Road?" the man responded. "Fargeville Road? Heck, you're in Fargeville!"
Several other men drew near the car. Terry waved and sped off, taking the more expedient of the only two options we had, either turn around or keep going fast. Yet, somehow we righted ourselves and found Karen's trailer home. The party was very nice. It was considered quite an accomplishment for Karen to be able to plan and execute such an event. Unfortunately, the momentum did not last. Within two years she was back in the booby hatch, committed by her husband with the support of her parents. Hence, Karen would not be at the wedding celebration for Mark and Ellen.
With Lance tucked in bed and sleeping, Terry, Debbie, Kelly and I sat in the living room of the neighbor's cottage drinking cans of warm Pabst Blue Ribbon from the case we found on the kitchen table. What's the quickest way to chill beer during the middle of summer in Watertown? Put it outside where it's 30 degrees at night.
Kelly insisted that we lock the doors and windows because she believed that Mark planned to kill us all in our sleep. We teased her, trying to make light of a tense situation. Mark was angry and volatile to be sure, though Ellen appeared to be the one instigating. Mark would never try anything unless Ellen put him up to it, and how dangerous could someone be who took pictures of trash? Come to think of it, who could be more dangerous than someone who channeled her creative impulses into documenting parts of the waste stream?
"What's this?" Debbie asked, reaching between the large lounge chair she sat in and the table next to it. When Debbie lifted the object into view, Kelly shrieked, causing Debbie to toss it in horror on the floor in front of us. It was an ax.
"He planted the murder weapon!" Kelly screamed.
This woke up Lance, though his crying helped us to calm down. We put him back to sleep, and Kelly remained in bed with him, urging me not to stay up too late drinking. Debbie went to bed as well. Terry and I said that we would "secure the perimeter." We walked once around the neighbor's cottage and then sat on the dock, freezing while drinking more beer.
Saturday morning I woke up with a Grade-B hangover. I was not nauseous, like I would be with a Grade-A hangover, hunched over a porcelain edifice, making false promises to false deities. But I was not quite ready to function, either. Nevertheless, I had to make a good show of it and did not want to let on to anyone that: oh, yeah, I was irresponsible and drank too much last night.
With my head pounding, I needed a remedy. Kelly was up and about already, carrying her purse so I couldn't rummage through it in search of aspirin. The medicine cabinet in the neighbor's cottage was empty. I showered quickly, dressed and went to Terry's parents' cottage, searching their bathroom for a pain reliever, to no avail.
Preparations for the party, a barbeque scheduled to begin at about noon were moving ahead. I would have to figure out a way to look useful without suffering greatly. When I stepped into the kitchen, I saw my remedy. Terry's father was stocking the bar on a folding table, and an impressive array it was. Although drinking more alcohol would not be my favorite way of combating a hangover, I was having trouble finding quick-fix alternatives. Of course, drinking at ten o'clock in the morning would be frowned upon, but orange juice disguising the vodka? Perfect. When no one was watching I mixed myself a screwdriver and took a gulp. This was my first taste of hard liquor in more than five years, when I decided against drinking any alcohol except beer, wine, and the occasional after-dinner liquor.
I stepped outside into the harsh sun and saw Kelly walking up the path to the cottage with Lance toddling beneath her. He reached out with his hands to me indicating, like he often did, that he wanted a sip from my glass. This presented a problem. Do I blow myself in, or do I poison my son? Fess up to my wife, or give the poor kid a snooker of booze? It seemed like the classic dilemma faced by the princess in "The Tiger or the Lady?", and I needed to make a decision without hesitating.
I handed my glass to Lance. Drink up kid. Life is short.
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