Once Around the Carousel

Chapter Nineteen

College life suited Bob MacCalaster. The ultimate guy's guy, he loved living in the fraternity. In so many ways, it replicated his mother's boardinghouse (except for it being exactly the opposite). He even consistently surpassed the Gentlemen's C professors doled out to football players when they struggled or didn't bother showing up for class. In the fall, he played tight end and outside linebacker for Penn State's Nittany Lions; and during the winter and spring, along with some of the other players, he worked at Nittany Valley Ford – a job at which merely making an appearance drew high praise. Bob took the job more seriously than the other jocks they brought in. It provided him with pocket money, if not a sense of work ethic, allowing him to forgo asking his mother for support. And ever the dutiful son, Bob sent letters home twice a week, which Dahlia proudly read to her girls in the parlor at night.

Perrin Palmer caught Bob's eye freshman year, standing out as the brightest flower in a field full of them. She came from a good family in Connecticut, where her father worked at one of Hartford's insurance companies. Her grades were exemplary; she participated in her sorority's functions as though the nation's freedom depended on it; and on 12 Saturdays each fall, she gave her all cheering for the boys on the gridiron.

Bob was punching above his weight class, pursuing Perrin. While his status as a football player ran in his favor, the issue of his background, more precisely a lack thereof, blocked his path. Not one to be easily deterred, Bob marched forward in his quest. In his 20 years on Earth, he'd gotten virtually everything he sought. Life simply fell into Bob's lap, and he envisioned walking off with the belle of the ball as no different. Perrin would be his because that's what he wanted.

His courtship of Perrin began in earnest during the first weeks of their junior year. For a sorority girl to openly have a steady beau earlier would have fallen between poor taste and disgraceful. Before that time, however, Bob let it be known in clear and well-understood terms that any boy showing more than a polite, passing interest in Perrin could expect to deal with a very displeased Bob MacCalaster. A situation no sane man would willingly bring upon himself.

Even to Perrin, Bob's past remained murky. As everyone around campus did, she knew he'd grown up in Pittsburgh, the son of a widowed boardinghouse owner. But Bob, a football player through and through, clung to his jock persona, hiding within it when personal situations arose. Nevertheless, Perrin gleaned something more profound in him, seeing qualities she assumed others missed. She detected a devoted son where others saw a simple jock or a frat boy - more than once, noticing him skipping parties rather than put off writing letters home. And the way he doted on his mother at the two home games a year Dalia attended brought a tear to Perrin's eye. She witnessed a loyal son caring for his mother, his only family. To Perrin's judgment, that inherent sense of commitment would someday allow Bob to transition into the greatest husband a woman could imagine.

Late in the winter of his senior year, Bob came trampling into the fraternity house, laughing with a friend and kicking snow off his boots. Turning into the front commons room, he found Coach Higgins, the school Chaplin, and several of his Fraternity brothers sitting solemnly along with Perrin. As they saw him, their already muffled voices silenced. The group looked up with long, somber faces, and Bob began to joke, catching himself just before asking who died. This collection of people could only be waiting for him, and it could only be his mother.

The news that a streetcar had struck Dahlia down wafted through Bob like a fouled wind out of the rustbelt. His stomach turned over, and his knees buckled for a moment. Then he caught himself, the way he did after a brutal hit on the field, and he absorbed the brunt of the news without tears, acting the way he assumed a man should.

The following day, borrowing a car from the dealership, Bob drove home to bury his mother and settle her affairs. Perrin and several of his fraternity brothers tried to go with him, nearly insisting he bring someone for support. Bob rejected them out of hand, making the cold assurance that he would rather go alone and get it over with. Thus far, other than his mother's twice-yearly visits (at which he carefully allowed her to speak only with Coach Higgins and Mrs. Grawley, the fraternity mother who cooked and cleaned for the boys), he'd avoided mixing his past in Pittsburgh with his college life. In fact, throughout his time at Penn State, Bob evaded anything resembling intimate personal contact.