Chapter Ten
[Christmas Eve]
Eric pushed the passenger's seat back as far as it would go. His crutches lay in the back seat of Tami's sedan, and his cast was stretched out before him, a scrawl of black and blue and red signatures.
Tami had temporarily taken off her engagement ring so Eric could approach her mother to ask her blessing.
When they arrived, Eric hobbled with the Hayes family to an afternoon Christmas Eve service at the Methodist church Tami's family attended. They had ham for dinner after church. The TV was two rooms away from the kitchen. Eric excused himself twice to go to the bathroom, just so he could check the score. After dinner, Tami tugged Shelley off to the living room, and he lingered in the kitchen where Ms. Hayes was washing dishes.
"Can I help?" he asked.
"Lord, no, Eric," she said. "You're on crutches. Go watch your game. Kick Shelley off the TV if you have to."
He took a deep breath. "Ma'am," he said, standing on one leg, leaning half forward on his crutches, "I love your daughter."
"I figured that out."
"And…uh…I want to marry her. And I'd like your blessing, ma'am."
She switched off the water, dried her hands, and turned to look at him. "Did you get my daughter pregnant?"
"No, ma'am! We…we don't plan to have kids until we both have our degrees and we've worked a few years."
Ms. Hayes leaned back against the sink and crossed her arms over her chest. "How old are you, Eric?"
"Nineteen, ma'am. I'll be twenty in spring. My dad held me back from kindergarten." Mr. Taylor had thought his size and age would give him an advantage in football.
"And how exactly do you plan to provide for my daughter, at the age of nineteen, with a part-time job at the bookstore? Because she's not going to end up like me, working two or three jobs, supporting her husband, only to have him…" She shook her head.
"Well…I also tutor. After I finish my freshman year, I'm going to take a one year leave of absence from college." That would also give him time to recover from his injury, so he'd still be able to play for three years when he returned to college, assuming he could make the team. "That year, I'll work full-time at the bookstore, do some tutoring on top of that, yard work, whatever I can do to make money. We're going to split a two-bedroom apartment with our friends Angie and Grady."
"Tami's scholarship only covers housing if she stays in the MWU dorms."
"I know, ma'am. But we'll get an affordable apartment, and we'll be sharing the rent. If we live cheaply, I should be able to pay all of our bills and maybe save up some money for tuition when I go back to school."
"Won't your father help you with tuition?"
"I don't know," he admitted. He hadn't asked. He knew his father had saved for his college education, but when Eric got the scholarship, Mr. Taylor had given some of that money to John Paul. He'd also been upset that Eric took the UH scholarship instead of the UT one, and he probably wasn't going to be pleased with his plan to marry while still in school. He wasn't counting on any financial help from his father. "If he does, that'll just be a boon."
Mrs. Hayes slapped a dish towel down on the counter. "But Tami is staying in school?"
"Yes ma'am. She's going to quit her waitressing job and load up on classes for the next three semesters, go to summer school too, so she can graduate early. Then she'll work full-time, probably as a guidance counselor, while I finish my degree."
"You'll have three years left on your degree."
"Yes, ma'am."
"It sounds to me like your plan is to have her support you. Put you through college."
Eric's leg was itching like mad beneath the cast. He shifted his weight. "Well, after I put her through, ma'am. She'll get her degree first."
"I like you, Eric. I do. But I've had too many friends who have gotten their putting-hubby-through degrees only to get traded in on a newer model."
"I'm not buying a car, ma'am. I'm marrying the girl I love. My best friend. The woman I want to spend the rest of my life with."
Ms. Hayes smiled slightly. She uncrossed her arms. "What do your parents have to say about this?"
"I came to you first."
"Before Tami?"
"Well…no…not before Tami."
Ms. Hayes reached behind herself and opened the dishwasher while still looking at Eric. "She said yes?"
Eric nodded.
"Then there's not much I can do. She's got a strong will, that one, once she decides she wants something. And I guess she wants you." She began loading the dishwasher.
"Then…then we have your blessing?"
"I don't know what my blessing's worth, Eric." She put some silverware in the baskets. "I failed at my own marriage." She turned around. "But you have my hope."
[*]
Two days after Christmas, Eric and Tami drove on to Odessa. Betty Taylor noticed the engagement ring the moment Tami stepped through the door of the Taylor's house in Odessa. Mrs. Taylor squealed and hugged her. "Look, James, do you see? They're engaged!"
Mr. Taylor looked at the ring, looked at his son's cast, and then looked back at the ring. "Interesting timing," he said.
"Oh, James! Congratulate them."
He didn't.
Over dinner in the Taylor's formal dining room, Eric told his parents that they had decided on a late May wedding.
"Why don't you wait until you finish college?" Mr. Taylor asked.
"You and Mom didn't wait," Eric said.
"It was a different time," Mr. Taylor insisted.
"We want to live together to save money," Tami told him. "You wouldn't want us to do that if we weren't married, would you?" She'd have him there, she thought.
Mr. Taylor glanced at her. "You can wait to live together until you have your college degrees."
Eric put his fork down on his plate. "You and Mom didn't."
"We were married," Mr. Taylor said.
"Exactly my point," Eric replied.
"Two can live more cheaply than one, James," Mrs. Taylor insisted.
"You know, I've already promised a good portion of your college fund to John Paul," Mr. Taylor told Eric. "I was relying on you to be sensible and maintain your scholarship. I'm not going to backpedal on my promise."
"Yes, sir. I understand," Eric said.
"I can give you a total of $8,000 for tuition," Mr. Taylor told him, "but what's UH? $4,000 a year in tuition and fees? That still leaves you two years to cover. I don't think this is the time to be getting married."
"They love each other, James," Mrs. Taylor said. "They might as well. And we'll be happy to pay for the wedding."
"We will?" Mr. Taylor asked.
"Of course we will," Eric's mom insisted. "Tami's mother can't possibly afford to."
"Shouldn't they pay for their own wedding?" Mr. Taylor asked. "Like we did?"
Betty Taylor put a hand on her husband's back. "You know how hard it is starting out, James. They'll have bills…and Eric's tuition!"
"Well, Eric wouldn't have any tuition if he'd taken my advice and signed with the Longhorns. They'd have let him keep his scholarship even if he got injured. And maybe he wouldn't have gotten injured. Maybe they don't have quite so many kittens in Austin." Eric bit his bottom lip. "Maybe he'd be on his way to the NFL." Mr. Taylor looked steadily across the table at Eric. "How do you intend to provide for her?"
Eric met his father's eyes and told him their plan.
"Hmmmm…It's not a bad plan, actually," Mr. Taylor mused. "It's fiscally conservative, prioritizes your educations...but, son, why don't you try to finish early like Tami? You already have those eight AP credits from history."
"Because I still want to work some in the spring and summer. And I'm going to try out for the team. So I'll be busy in the fall."
"You're going to try to walk-on?"
"Yes, sir."
"You realize," Mr. Taylor said, "that after an injury like that, your chances of making it to the NFL are almost nill?"
"I…I just want play, Dad. I just…love to play. I told you I'm going to be a teacher."
"Not the most lucrative career."
"It's stable, James," Betty Taylor said. "There are benefits. And it's meaningful."
"You're getting married in our church, I suppose?" Mr. Taylor asked. "You'll have to get special permission from the bishop to enter a mixed marriage."
"Mixed marriage?" Tami asked.
"That's….uh…that's just what it's called," Eric stuttered. "When a Catholic marries a non-Catholic."
The term seemed a little insulting to Tami.
"And of course Tami will have to commit to raising the children Catholic," Mr. Taylor said as though he honestly expected no dispute from anyone.
[*]
"I'm not getting married in the Catholic church," Tami told Eric when his father went to make a phone call in his home office and Mrs. Taylor retreated from the dining room to the kitchen to prepare dessert.
"It's not a big deal, Tami, the permission thing. It's easy to get."
"I can't promise to raise the kids Catholic! I don't even know what I want to be. If I want to go to church at all."
She hadn't been to church on her own since she'd gone away to college, except for the required chapel at MWU; even then she had a friend sign her in half the time. She knew Eric wasn't going to church much either, unless he was home in Odessa or his parents were visiting in Houston or he had big game coming up.
"Oh," he said.
"Do you want to raise the kids Catholic?"
"Um…no?"
"Is that a question?"
"No…whatever you want, Tami. I just want to marry you and live with you and go to bed with you every night."
"So…can we get married in my mom's church, then? In Nort Dillon? They won't make us get permission. They won't make us promise to raise the kids Methodist."
"A'ight," he said. "Whatever you want."
When Eric's parents rejoined them, peach cobbler and ice cream on the placemats before them all, Tami said, "We've decided to get married in my family's church, in North Dillon. It's Methodist."
Mr. Taylor let out a long, put-upon sigh and Mrs. Taylor said, "I'd really hoped you'd get married in the church where you grew up, Eric. It's a very beautiful ceremony, Tami. You'd love it if you saw it."
"I appreciate that, Mrs. Taylor, I do, but we've decided this is what's best for us. It's not an easy commitment for me to make, to promise to raise the children in a particular denomination."
Mr. Taylor looked at Eric. "I can't say I'm not disappointed by your decision to reject the tradition I spent years trying to raise you up in."
"I'm not rejecting it, Dad."
"That's not what's happening here," Tami insisted. "He's not becoming Methodist. We're just getting married in the church where I grew up, which is as important to my mother as I'm sure it is to you two. I'm doing it out of respect for my mother." That should soften him up a little, Tami thought.
"I appreciate that you respect your mother," Mr. Taylor said. "But what about the children?"
"We'll figure something out," Tami told him. "We're not having kids tomorrow."
Mr. Taylor laced his fingers together and rested his chin on his hands. "It's not the kind of thing you should talk about after the fact."
"We'll talk about it beforehand," Tami assured him. "We will. We don't have to decide today."
Mr. Taylor pushed back his chair and disappeared out of the dining room.
He returned a moment later, with a checkbook and a pen in his hands. He set the book on the kitchen table and began scrawling violently. He wrote: "Tami Hayes" in the TO line, "$6,000.00" in the money line, and then signed the bottom. He ripped it out and handed it to her.
"That's a check," he said, "for the wedding. I figured I should give it to you, since you're clearly making all the decisions."