67. Stand Back

I've had a lot of time to think about Immy over the years, and not just about taking her for a drive and parking in a lonely spot, something she allowed only once that I remember. Thank God the girl protected us both by refusing my advances when they went too far for her sensibilities.

About twenty years ago my mother told me she was proud she and Dad were able to send my brothers and I to Catholic schools when we were kids. In a familiar manner of loving derision I said nothing but began to pick my nose, which always got her laughing.

“Well, it’s true,” she said. “And certainly as a Brother you can tell me at least one thing your Catholic education did for you.”

With a twinkle in my eye, I said, "Well it limited me to dating girls who wouldn’t put out.”

“You think I didn’t know that?” she said.

Immy was a strong young lady who knew what she wanted from life and it didn't include getting pregnant by some numbskull who would be forced by the society of his time to forfeit plans for an education and instead get a factory job to pay the rent on a cold water flat.

Immy was smart and she knew it, and had been encouraged from an early age to go beyond her mother's horizon ... by her mother, among others.

My Mom continued to send newspaper clippings to me each time Immy was featured in our local newspaper, which was often, due to her mother's new hobby as a PR agent. Mom must have thought I would fondly remember Immy as I might boyhood friends George or Frank. Why she did not sense my hurt is beyond me. Mom was not a mean person.

Anyway, according to the articles Immy became an attorney in Washington and rose to high levels in the government, eventually taking political clients with her into a law partnership that became very successful. She married twice and mothered twin daughters whose weddings were featured in the society news for days on end. Not once did I entertain a fantasy about being her successful husband. Neither the first nor the second.