My father sipped his coffee thoughtfully while skimming an estimate for a job he planned to bid after the first of the year. I mentally counted to three, just as I had when gathering my nerve to request roller skating lessons as a teenage girl. Howard’s engagement ring did not grace my finger, but remained safely in its velvet enclosure hidden amongst the clutter that still occupied my bedroom. The initial excitement had subsided and I had begun to return to my senses. Though I had not considered unequivocally refusing Howard’s proposal, the complexity of planning a marriage during the final countdown to graduation seemed staggering and impractical.

“Howard proposed to me last night.” I finally stated.

The paperwork that had distracted my father’s attention slid across the table to a neutral location for later perusal. He was obviously surprised, but happy. To him, this meant I would return to Northern California next year. With my father’s approval, that was granted without question or reservation, I could have descended into thoughtless bliss and run out to the bridal shop to purchase a gown from my former employer. That would be fun, I mused, allowing myself another moment of reverie. I was the only woman I knew who had more potential opportunities to don a bridal gown than a bridesmaid’s tacky shower curtain.

I could not say that I did not want to marry Howard, I simply felt that we had not known each other well enough over a sufficient period of time to determine if marriage would be right for us. I liked Howard, and even thought I may have loved him on a level separate and distinct from the absurd infatuation that preoccupied my high school years. I did not want to turn down Howard’s proposal, nor did I want to accept it. I wished he would simply wait another year and ask me again once the rest of my life had become more settled.

My father had already begun to nominate potential sites for the wedding reception as my thoughts focused on how to explain my uncertainty to Howard Millbank without hurting his feelings or prematurely terminating our relationship.

Howard took me to Lake Tahoe for a couple of days after Christmas, an excursion that I identified as the ideal time to share my concerns with him. We had established a firm basis for honest communication over the last few months, so I planned to be tactful but also expected his understanding. Music from cassette tapes filled the car as we drove up the freeway and into the mountains. The noise left little opportunity for conversation beyond simple utterances. Growing more nervous, the bad news churned in my stomach and mind. The more I silently rehearsed the gentle phrases I planned to recite to Howard, the more trite they seemed.

Finally Howard turned off the stereo, a move my fingers had been twitching to make. We entered the town of Lake Tahoe, a picturesque assortment of lodges and boutiques blanketed with fresh fluffy snow on the California side, and a glittering but tasteful array of gambling casinos across the Nevada state line.

“We could just get married here,” Howard began with a boyish grin.

I looked at him, trying to determine if he was serious, then snickered to defuse the comment. Wedding chapels dotted the Nevada strip, most quaint little chalets decorated with pretty boughs of evergreen and holly for the winter season.

“What do you say, Kate?”

Howard was absolutely serious. My mouth opened in protest, but I had become so tense that I could not speak. Not only did Howard want to get married; he wanted to marry me immediately, something I had to refuse.

“Oh, stop fooling around,” I finally managed to tease.

After a moment of silence, he corrected: “I’m not fooling around.”

We checked into the hotel and I told Howard that we had to talk.

“Okay, Kate, we don’t have to get married now. I know you probably want a formal wedding. I wasn’t really expecting to elope on this trip. But we could…if you wanted to,” he ventured.

Howard Millbank did not take the news well. As I feared, he interpreted postponing our engagement as rejection. “I’m not saying ‘no’,” I insisted, “I don’t even want to say ‘maybe’. I just don’t think we know each other well enough to commit to marriage.” Why did the simplicity of this reasoning elude Howard?

Howard was impulsive and romantic. He was ready for matrimony. Meeting me again as an adult came to him as a sign from Heaven. A girl who caught his attention as a schoolboy, I must have been reintroduced to his life for some great cosmic reason. Personally, I do not necessarily believe in fate. From my perspective, a series of decisions, that are hopefully well informed when enacted, create the path of an individual’s existence. However, human beings often make choices based on emotion and passion rather than common sense and evaluation of facts. These decisions can look like mistakes in retrospect, or they might be the luckiest breaks in a person’s life.

My efforts to make smart choices about my career led me on a painstaking wild goose chase that I never blamed on fate. Clearly telegraphing each move, I always attempted to better myself for the future. I might call my problems with Dr. Butler bad luck, but I decided to work for him possibly without gathering enough information. I might credit the demise of my betrothal to Neil to the will of a Supreme Being who saw that we were not appropriately suited to each other. However, fault more solidly rests on the shoulders of his intrusive, over-protective parents and on Neil himself, who welcomed engagement without comprehending the seriousness of that promise. And I was responsible for my own involvement in that charade when I should have questioned his seeming disinterest in planning for our actual marriage. I certainly did not ascribe the culmination of those events and the death of Victoria Perez to preordained circumstances; circumstances that directed me home to stave off depression and into the local market to fry onion rings for my father. Meeting Howard Millbank again was a coincidence. What we did with our reunion should be a cognizant decision rather than a foolish flight of fancy. Experience had made me cynical and cautious. Unwilling to dive into another ambiguous engagement, I certainly could not deceive Howard by accepting his proposal without being fully committed to our potential joining as husband and wife.

“What about all of those weeks of phone calls, Kate? Didn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Of course it did. It’s a great beginning. I really enjoyed all of the conversations we shared,” I responded, trying to maintain control of my demeanor as Howard expressed his anger and hurt feelings. I like to think that my cool responses originated from maturity and sophistication, possibly from the few courses in behavioral psychology that dotted my academic transcripts. However, I was simply too exhausted from emotional ordeals to throw a fit over this situation; a situation that did not exactly seem believable.

Instead of trying to explain the power an adolescent crush still held over me, a story that could only be concocted by a mental patient, I preferred appealing to Howard’s rational sensibilities. My reasons for declaring marriage impractical read like a laundry list of excuses given by a woman who wanted to reject her suitor without breaking his heart. I had to finish my studies. I did not know where my job search would take me. As a graduate student lacking time and money, I could not afford to plan a wedding. I had just broken up with someone earlier that year. Too much pre-existing stress already consumed my resources. My life was simply too unstable to commit to marriage. All of these explanations seemed perfectly sensible to me. I was too overwhelmed by my own problems and uncertainties to make a life altering pledge.

But Howard had anticipated and prepared a rebuttal for each point of contention. We would not marry until I had graduated, nor would I have to be excessively involved in the wedding plans until then. Since she did not have a daughter, Howard’s mother looked forward to an active role coordinating her oldest son’s wedding. Howard and his family would happily share the expenses for the ceremony and reception with my father, if he preferred. We would keep the wedding small and unpretentious to conserve finances. As a grocery manager and schoolteacher, Howard’s employment potential was truly flexible. He could work wherever I found opportunity as a consumer researcher or professor. I was never meant to marry that scoundrel, Neil Fitch, anyway. The Universe itself had arranged Howard’s and my reunion in the produce department of the Cambridge Hills supermarket. Why be stressed? We were about to live ‘happily ever after’.

A kind and loving person, Howard was absolutely sincere about every solution he provided. He would follow me wherever I found work, take care of wedding details, provide emotional support while I completed my dissertation, and be waiting at the alter to be my husband. Only a fool would turn down such a wonderful, selfless man. He embodied everything that Neil Fitch was not, yet I was ready to prance down the aisle into his clutches. In reality, Howard was even more wonderful than I imagined as a young girl fantasizing about my wedding day. Yet, I continued to insist that I could not promise to become Katherine Millbank. I feared, years later as a spinster, resting on my professorship laurels, I would regret not running into a Tahoe wedding parlor to marry Howard. Regardless of fate, if Howard terminated our relationship based on my logical need to know him better, our marriage was simply not meant to be.

For a moment of brooding silence I waited for Howard to speak. He finally looked at me, eyes weary from disappointment. “Is it me, Kate?” he began; though I did not know exactly what he mean by that vagary. “Is it because I’m just a grocery boy?” Humiliation and self-loathing laced Howard’s words, more an accusation directed toward his own perceived shortcomings than toward me, his supposed beloved.

But I took offense to the comment, though I did evaluate Devin McGee’s career as a landscaper several years before and decided it did not gel with my plans to become a university professor. Since then I had grown, made regrettable mistakes, and became considerably less self-assured in my own professional outlook. “If you think I don’t want to marry you because you are a produce manager, then you do not know me well enough to marry me either,” I declared, presenting convincing evidence to support my own position on the nuptial question.

“I’m sorry, Kate, I didn’t mean that. I know you are not so shallow. I just thought you might prefer to marry someone more -- I don’t know -- academic or accomplished,” he stammered somewhat ashamed that he allowed the morose words to escape his lips.

While I accepted Howard’s apology, his comment revealed a side of his personality that had only surfaced occasionally, and I did not fully understand the extent of Howard’s personal dissatisfaction. He did spend many telephone hours describing his adventures as a competitive swimmer and some of the anguish he felt over his truncated athletic career; however, I did not realize the extent to which these issues remained unresolved. Howard harbored a deleterious amount of resentment toward himself and his friend, with whom the inauspicious accident had occurred. Howard Millbank was as lost and confused about his professional prospects as I was, only his looked considerably less impressive to the unwitting observer than a doctoral diploma. I would be able to call myself “Doctor” soon, Howard simply wore the plastic nametag of a supermarket assistant manager.

Without other goals to occupy his imagination and preserve his interest in his own potential, Howard imagined a future as a married man, and undoubtedly a father. We shared common interests, a precious friendship, and healthy physical attraction. It looked like the perfect match. Planning for married life, Howard could distract himself from his failures and misjudgments, beginning a new chapter as my husband. This option appealed to me as well, and probably had appealed to me for years with more than one partner. It was undoubtedly the reason for my over-involvement with almost every steady boyfriend since high school. First, I sought the love and devotion I believed was absent from my adolescent relationship with my parents. Later, I wished to escape my insecurities and take refuge in the warmth of a permanent relationship with another human being, hoping to make wiser choices as wife and mother than I made as a rebellious wayward student.

As much as I liked, and may have actually loved, Howard Millbank; our potential wedlock contained a detrimental element. Making one’s childhood dreams come true can be considered a laudable goal or a turn of good fortune. Skating as an adult after longing to participate in the sport as a youngster qualified as healthy fulfillment of childhood ambitions. However, receiving an engagement ring from a man who was the primary character in all-night teenage wedding planning sessions was not normal. Howard was not my high school sweetheart; he had not even been my friend. Reuniting with Quentin Aspland years after graduation probably would not have given me the creeps. We had been genuine friends, sharing sincere feelings and experiencing parts of our adolescence together. Howard amounted to little more than a demented infatuation that prevented me from fully exploring sentimental attachments to other young men. Now I had to become acquainted with him as a unique person, separating the adult man from the juvenile fantasy. That would require time, more time than Howard had allotted.

After hours of arguing, debating and releasing our emotions; Howard finally conceded.

“Keep the ring, Kate. Wear it if you want. Let it remind you of how much I love you. Whenever you’re ready, let me know.”

This was the verdict I needed. I just wanted to be his long-distance girlfriend for a while, visiting during spring break and over the summer. Howard could be a part of my life, but not its central focus, not until I overcame the barrier of graduation. We needed to support each other and grow together as we resolved our individual problems. Howard and I were too engrossed in our own personal psychoses to unite in levelheaded matrimony. We probably both needed counseling, something neither of us realized or was willing to admit. My therapy came on the ice and Howard’s during public swimming hours at the Cambridge Hills High School pool, where his athletic dreams were originally conceived.

I wore Howard’s ring whenever we were together, otherwise, it rested in its plush little treasure chest. I did not wear it at all upon returning to Carolina Tech, but occasionally removed it from the box if I felt lonesome or discouraged, in the absolute privacy of my bedroom. Silly me, I even threaded the thing on a gold chain and tucked it into my sweatshirt when I needed a good skate at the Martinsville Community Arena.

Chapter 45 posted 1/28/02
The content of this site is copyright by K. J. N., 1999 - 2002
www.skatejournal.com