Pat and Marianne

"Pat! Pat!"

An older woman got out and the limo continued on its way. I knew immediately that this was Marianne. Older, greyer, slightly thicker, even with the recent pictures on Facebook, I knew her face.

She stood on the sidewalk, smiling. "If I was a younger woman I would run and jump into your arms, but I don't think my hips would survive."

"That's OK. I am no longer a young man and I would probably drop you. Then you would certainly have bad hips."

She wore a pair of loose fitting jeans and a white blouse. Her hair was short, brown streaked with grey. She wasn't the thin woman of my younger days, but the years had been good to her. Her blouse hid the promise of ample breasts and the jeans gently accentuated her hips and waist.

Marianne started walking toward me and when she was about five yards away she ran and threw herself at me. I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight. She was squeezing me for all she was worth. Her breasts pressed against my chest. I put my hand up and petted her hair. We must have stood there holding each other for several minutes. She took a deep breath and eased the hug.

Looking into my eyes she said, "Wow!"

Of all the scenarios I had played through my mind, I did not expect this.

Tears were flowing down her cheeks, "Would you mind terribly if I were to give you a kiss?"

I smiled, "Would I mind terribly if a beautiful, long-lost friend kissed me? Gee, that's a difficult question."

Marianne laughed and leaned forward. She placed her soft lips on mine. I didn't dare do anything to break the spell. She kissed me for probably thirty seconds, just lip to lip.

She backed away and opened her eyes, "Shall we walk?"

She took my hand and I returned to my childhood when I held hands with her walking to and from school. I noticed she was a little shorter than the last time I saw her. We walked in silence for several dozen yards.

I decided to speak first. "The years have been good to you my friend. You look great."

"Thanks, but the years have been hard. I'm like an old car. What you see here is a chassis with a lot of body work. The years have been good to you, though. You still have a lot of red in your hair, maybe not as bright, but you're still a ginger. You're in great shape."

"Looks are deceptive and it's a long story, but thanks."

As we approached the hotel the valet stepped forward, "Mrs. Huddleston, Captain Sullivan. Ma'am, your bags have been sent to your room. Here is your key card."

Marianne took the card, "Thank you, Rich. Captain Sullivan and I have a lot of catching up to do. Could you arrange to have some refreshments sent out to the patio?"

"Yes, ma'am. What would you like?"

"How about some lemonade and a cheese platter?'

"I'll have it sent right out."

As we walked through the hotel lobby, Marianne addressed each of the staff people she saw by name.

I said, "I'm impressed. You either come here a lot or you are really good with names."

Marianne laughed, "A little of both. I have been coming back here for years. When David was posted in embassies around the world, I made it a point to learn about all the staff. I became really good with names, but I make it a point to get to know as many people as I can."

"Those are essential people skills. I made it a point to know every one of my sailors. I think it is easy if you actually care about people."

"We think the same way."

She led me to the patio and motioned to a table. She sat across from me rather than next to me. "I want to be able to see you. I have a lot of things I have to say to you. I learned a long time ago, that it is important to look at someone when you are having a conversation."

"The consummate diplomat."

A waitress brought our refreshments.

Marianne smiled at her, "Thank you Audra."

"You are welcome ma'am. It is good to have you back with us."

Marianne took a sip of lemonade, "This is so good. Hits the spot," She took a deep breath, "Pat..."

"Yes, my dear."

"What I have to say is going to be really hard for me. If you will be my friend and just let me say it, I will be forever grateful."

I patted her hand, "I'm all ears."

Marianne took another deep breath. "I need to take you back to the days after I left you in front of Mary McCormick's house at the end of that long ago summer. I can still see you in my mind's eye by your old Rambler. Mrs. McCormick drove me halfway home and my mom picked me up at a truck stop. During the two hours Mom asked me lots of questions about my time with my grandmother in Germany and my time visiting you. It was a pretty innocuous conversation. When I got home I went out with a few high school friends for the evening. That night when I came home my mother had my tiny bikini and my birth control pills sitting on the kitchen table. She laid all kinds of Catholic guilt on me. She demanded to know how I got the pills and I told her about how Oma got them for me. Then she wanted to know how much sex I had had. How much sex I had had with you. I refused to answer and she wouldn't let me leave the house. My mother had always been a prude, but now she was at her prudiest. Is that word? I don't care.

"She said I was turning into a whore just like my sister Liesl. She said Liesl was selling herself all over Washington, DC. Liesl was going to Georgetown and I guess my mother found out that she also was no longer a virgin. Then she started telling my little sisters how I was going to hell for giving myself to you. Brigitta was crying. Greta was too young to know what she was talking about. She swore that no one would ever see Oma again because she had no morals. Then she was raving about how her mother was a harlot. We were a family of harlots.

"Then she started demanding that I go see the priest. Then she demanded that I become a nun. Looking back on it, she went completely off her rocker, but at the time, I was scared to death.

"Every day she would grill me about you. She would call me a whore and a harlot. One of your letters arrived and she opened it and read it in front of me. Then she burned it in the sink. That absolutely killed me and she knew it. I didn't know my mother had such a mean streak in her. You didn't mention our love making, but you implied it. That was all it took to set her off again. She did not have anything nice to say about you. If it wasn't for my father, I don't think she would have allowed me to go back to college.

"I was so torn. I was torn between my love for you and trying to control the guilt that my mother had mentally beat into me. Unfortunately, guilt won. I didn't go on a date that entire academic year. I think I wrote back to you twice. They weren't very satisfactory. How could I possibly explain what my mother was doing to me?"

I nodded. Marianne placed a slice of cheese and cracker into her mouth.

She continued, "Even then I was scared. I thought somehow my mother would know I wrote to you. When I left you in front of Mary's house, I began planning my life with you. I was a dreamer, but I thought my dream of being married to you would really come true. I immediately began planning when I could see you again. I thought that I could invite you to my house for Christmas."

"Your house was always amazing with all the German decorations."

She nodded. "I knew that you loved our traditions, but after I became a slut in my mother's mind, I knew that she would never allow you near our house. I became very depressed. My dream of seeing you again was shattered. By the start of classes in January I was just about suicidal. Not just about, I was suicidal. I made a really lousy attempt to end my life. My roommate, Beth, found me and I was rushed to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. Beth forced me to go to the clinic and I started seeing a therapist. That probably saved my life. My academic advisor got me a translating internship at the US Embassy in Bonn for the summer. I didn't even go home. I took a bus from here to JFK and flew to Germany.

"That's when I met David. He was forty, suave, sophisticated, and handsome. He swept me off my feet. By the end of the summer he had proposed to me and I accepted. I later learned that he had been married before. That should have been a clue. Little did I know at the time that he only wanted a trophy wife. I was the trophy. I was so naïve. David flew to Cornell to see me during the school year. Again, suave and sophisticated. The other girls were awestruck. They told me how lucky I was. The next summer I had the same internship and a month after graduation we were married back at my parents' church. My mother was so relieved that I had found a respectable man and not some sex-crazed, low-life Irishman. Her words not mine."

Marianne reached for my hand. "Pat, getting married to David was the worst decision of my life."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. I was a stupid girl. We were posted to Brussels and NATO headquarters. I was his trophy wife. Almost immediately I had a set of David rules I had to live by. I had to watch my weight. I had to be on the pill, no children until he was ready. I had to wear exactly what he told me to wear. I was constantly told that I had to be like Caesar's wife -- above suspicion in everything. I had to report to him everything I did. I wasn't allowed to make a single decision.

"David was also demanding sexually. It was never something where we would mutually have pleasure. It was always about him. I felt like one of his staff members. My job was to be arm candy and his personal sex worker. I had some truly humiliating experiences with him. He treated me as less than human. He enjoyed inflicting pain. He was a sadist, getting pleasure from my pain; a lot of pain. When we were alone, there were always disparaging comments. I contemplated a divorce, but that was difficult being overseas. Plus, the Catholic girl in me told me I had to honor my vows. I think my mother's voice was still the loudest in my head.

"Our second posting was back at the State Department in Washington and HE decided that we would have two children. Soon I was pregnant. My son Patrick Robert was born and almost a year later I delivered my daughter Maria Theresa."

My face must have had a surprised look.

"Yes, Pat. I named my son after my father and my best friend. I named Maria after Oma. Patrick was born in 1992. By then you were a hero. David didn't know about you until many years later. He was really pissed when he found out about you and that I had named our son after you. I had to call him Patrick, because I found calling him Pat was too emotional for me."

"I was never a hero."

"In my eyes, you were a hero. You still are a hero."

Marianne wiped her eyes and took a drink of lemonade. "After Maria was born, David made me go to a plastic surgeon and have my tummy tucked and my boobs fixed. No pregnancy related 'deformities,'" she used air quotes, "were allowed on David's trophy wife. He made me visit the plastic surgeon many times. I feel like a fake. This is certainly not the natural body of a sixty year old woman.

"Now I had a new job -- mother. But God forbid that I let that get in the way of my arm candy and sex worker duties. I raised my children and I took great joy in them, but my marriage was loveless. When David became the ambassador to Berlin, I became very close to the staff. They let me know that David was sleeping around with at least two different women. I used that to extract demands from him. If something like that were to get out, it would ruin his career. He wouldn't be able to hold a security clearance. Two things I demanded were a greater role in diplomacy and that he give money to Cornell. We have endowed several scholarships here. One is over at the Johnson School of Business. One I am very proud of."

"Business School?"

"Yes. It is the Captain Patrick D. Sullivan Leadership Scholarship. That young man that parked your car, Rich Esposito, was this year's recipient."

I was thunderstruck.

Marianne continued, "Maybe tomorrow I'll take you over there. I had them put up a large plaque detailing your exploits and outstanding leadership qualities. It has the names of all the recipients over the years. Pat, when I said you are my hero, I meant it."

"How many years has this scholarship been going?"

"Let's see, you retired ten years ago?"

I nodded.

"Then it's been going nine years. I was hoping that you would become an admiral."

I laughed, "Sorry. I pissed off too many people over the years."

"Well, when David found out that I endowed that scholarship he was pissed off to no end. He was retired by then and we were living in Florida. God, I hate Florida, so damned hot. I had made him sign over control of our finances to me."

"How did you do that?"

"I showed him a manuscript that I had written about our time in the diplomatic corps and it laid out all his infidelities. I had pictures to back it up that I had various staff members take for me over the years."

"So a little blackmail?"

"I like to call it truth telling."

"Very well."

"When David died last summer, I had him cremated and his ashes interred in the local cemetery. No funeral. No nothing. My daughter was very angry about that. The State Department wanted to send representatives and an honor guard. I said 'no' to all of that. I wasn't even going to have an obituary, but the people at State published one."

Marianne reached for my hand again, "Pat?"

"Yes, Marianne."

"Will you forgive me for my very poor decisions so many years ago?"

I felt so sorry for this woman, my childhood friend. I nodded. "I forgive you."

She smiled and wiped her face. Tears were freely flowing.

She took a sip of her drink, "So, tell me about Pat and Terri. That was your wife's name right?"

"Yes. I was just reflecting on this over the past couple of days. Now I see that I have had the opposite experience in life than you have had. I was very blessed to find Terri. I met her during flight school. She was going to Pensacola Junior College. She ended up graduating from the University of Florida with a business degree which helped her land a number of jobs over the years in all the places we lived. We got married when I came back from my first deployment. We have two great kids, Aria and Dan."

"I love that name Aria. So beautiful."

"That was Terri. I was actually in the Indian Ocean on our way to the Persian Gulf for the First Gulf War when she was born."

"That's got to be hard. How much did you miss of your children's lives?"

"A lot. I got to be there when Daniel was born, but I missed a lot of birthdays, ball games, parties, and even a graduation. I was at sea for three Christmases. Terri handled all of that. She pretty much raised the kids. Even when I was on shore duty, I wasn't home much. I was assigned to the aggressor squadron at Top Gun and I was constantly gone. When I was at Test Pilot School then VX-23, not home much."

"You always wanted to be an astronaut."

"That's why I went to Pax River and became a test pilot. All astronauts are test pilots. I applied. Even got an interview and went through the whole process, but never made the cut. That was in the post-Challenger years and NASA had some really stringent standards. I tried to check all the boxes, but being an astronaut never got checked."

"When the Columbia burned up I was actually relieved that you weren't an astronaut."

"That was rough. I knew Rick Husband and Willie McCool," I took a deep breath. That memory hit home and it probably showed on my face. "They were good guys. The best."

I drained my lemonade and looked at my watch, "It's 5:45. Should we get ready for dinner? The young lady at the front desk said that a jacket and tie was appropriate."

Marianne smiled, "Normally, but I think I can get us in with what we're wearing."

I needed a moment or two to think, "That sounds good. Let me use the restroom and then we can go over to the restaurant."

"Good idea. I need to freshen up after my trip."

In the restroom I found a chair. Probably for when there was an attendant. I sat down and started mulling over what I had learned. Yes, Marianne had made some poor life choices, but she obviously thought the world of me. Holy shit! She named her son Patrick! How did I not know that? A scholarship! She may have made some poor decisions back in her twenties, but she had made some smart ones in the years since. Everything was changing. How could I stay angry? Could we regain the spark from forty years ago? Sixty year old bodies don't always generate electricity. Although, life isn't always about sex. How much do we have in common still? I guess I had a lot to find out. I didn't have much time to think things through. I was going to be flying the worst possible way -- by the seat of my pants.

I emptied my bladder, washed my hands, and returned to the lobby. I couldn't see Marianne, so I took a seat in an overstuffed chair. She came out of the ladies' room, spotted me, and came over. I checked her out more closely.

As she approached I said, "When I last saw you, you had just come from Oma's house in Germany. You told me how fabulous your grandmother looked. How you both went topless on the beach. At the time I wondered what you would look like when you were Oma's age. Now I know."

"What's the verdict?"

"Stunning. Simply stunning."

"Maybe all that body work was worth it."

_ _ _ _ _

Of course when we entered the restaurant everyone knew Marianne, but everyone knew me too. We were seated at a table in the corner looking out on the campus and this time Marianne sat in the chair next to me.

When the hostess had left us, I asked, "So exactly how many people did you tell that I was coming?"

"All of them."

"All of them?"

"Even at an Ivy League school, money talks. I've been very generous and very engaged here. When you said you would come to my lecture I sent one email that said Captain Pat Sullivan -- thee Captain Pat Sullivan was coming to campus. That's all I had to do. The President of the University Foundation called me minutes later and asked me what the school should do for you and I told them everything."

"Marianne, I'm not that important."

"Says the distinguished Navy Captain who has earned the Bronze Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, two Meritorious Service Medals, seven individual Air Medals, thirty-two strike Air Medals plus the combat 'V'."

"How do you know all that and why do you have that memorized?"

"Freedom of Information Act requests, plus I know some people in the Pentagon. Don't give me this shit that you aren't important. You had an amazing naval career. Some people memorize baseball statistics or song lyrics. I memorize the awards that my best friend from childhood earned."

"Marianne. First, I am very flattered, but compared to what others have done, it's nothing. I wasn't wounded. I wasn't captured. OK, I had to eject out of an aircraft twice, but that's because the damn thing broke on me. There's nothing heroic about that."

"Yes, but how much courage did it take to climb back into the cockpit after those ejections? From what I have heard, those are pretty traumatic events. Patrick Sullivan don't you dare tell me that going flying again after ejecting did not take a lot of guts."

"No. You're right."

"And don't tell me that climbing into an untested airplane didn't take a lot of courage."

"OK. You win," I sighed and took her hand, "Marianne, you are correct. Those things were hard to do and I did them. But they are behind me and I prefer not to think about them."

She squeezed my hand. "Did you ever tell Terri about them?"

I shook my head and looked down. "Not very much. She had enough to worry about."

Marianne reached over and touched my chin, raising my face, "Why not very much?"