Standing there with one foot in the leg of my cutoff jeans, staring at Marne up on the staircase, I was both frightened and befuddled.
Scrambling to get the shorts pulled on, I ended up with both feet in one leg and stumbled backward onto the pull-out couch.
I grabbed for a sheet to cover myself and heard Marne chuckle.
"Hello, slacker," she said. "How's school? I know you're not killing yourself studying up there."
Still trying to untangle the sheet, I managed to grunt, "It's OK; still getting used to it."
"Quit fooling with that sheet," she said. "I have two brothers; I've seen guys in their underwear. Hell, I've seen you in your underwear."
For that, I had no response, although I wondered when the latter had occurred.
-------------------------------------
It was not as if Marne hated me, at least I don't think so. Rather, she believed I was an incredible underachiever, not taking advantage of my gifts, natural and otherwise.
Although she is two years older than I, we are in one way alike.
We both come from working class families and both became the first in our clans to attend college.
Just about everyone in Marne's and Bobby's families are involved in skilled trades. Their dad is a master mason and their brother, John, is an apprentice mason.
Bobby had just entered his apprenticeship as a steamfitter. Various cousins and uncles are welders, boilermakers and carpenters.
The girls all work after high school and ultimately become housekeepers. They have the toughest jobs of all, those moms, because the extended families are gigantic. Eight kids was pretty common. That Bobby only had one sister and one brother was not. Their grandmother, known to all as Bubba, always said she was cheated out of grandchildren because her next-door neighbors, bobby's parents, stopped at three children. Bubba had 14 children. Bobby's paternal grandparents had 11 kids.
From an early age, my parents expected me to attend college. They said I would not end up in the family business, engaging in back-breaking physical labor for modest financial rewards.
It was just the opposite for Marne. She yearned for college. By the time she was in sixth grade, Marne was talking about the Ivy League.
She studied endlessly, all in preparation for a college education upon which her family frowned.
"Get a job," Bubba said. "Save money so when you get married you can help your husband buy a house for cash."
A child of the Great Depression, Bubba did not trust banks and warned against mortgages.
"What's a mortgage?" she asked each and every child and grandchild. "You buy a house on a mortgage and spend your life paying the bank five times the amount for it."
Bubba could neither read nor write, but she could count -- and mortgages didn't add up.
Her parents were not much different.
They looked upon a college education as a waste of money.
"We'll spend all that money on college and then you'll get married and have kids and quit your big, fancy career," her father preached.
Her mom, who worked in a sewing factory until three weeks before Marne's birth, just nodded her head in agreement.
Marne was vigilant, though. Study was a full-time job, the library a second home.
In her junior year in high school, she began to apply for scholarships; big ones, little ones, any for which she could remotely qualify.
And then Marne hit the jackpot.
After posting a nearly perfect score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test -- she was perfect in math -- Marne was named a Merit Scholar. The colleges and universities began to line up.
It appeared her Ivy League dreams would come true, but Bubba put the kibosh to that plan.
"The whole way across the country, forget it," she said. "This is where I put my foot down. Don't make me call the priest."
In the end, the parish priest negotiated a settlement of sorts.
The son of Polish immigrants, Father Joe spoke Bubba's language, literally and psychologically.
"There is a Catholic college just two states away," Father Joe told her. "Gonzaga is where I went to college, and I turned out OK."
"Will they make her go to Mass on Sundays?" Bubba asked.
"No, they won't," he responded. "But once she is there, Marne will want to go to Mass. It is a blessed place and a wonderful school. I went there to study engineering and ended up a priest. What does that tell you?"
"Ohhhh," Bubba said, obviously weakening. "Maybe she'll come out a sister. Two of my sisters are nuns, Sister Mary Agnes and Sister Jon Mary."
"Only God knows," Father Joe said, and then sealed the deal. "You know, when my parents came here, everyone called the Poles dumb hunkies. My parents made sure I went to school, helped to build our own St. Stanislas School brick by brick. It is important for our children to become educated. Being a wife and a mother is a blessed vocation, but education can only help."
So off, on scholarship, Marne went to Gonzaga.
Four years alter, Bubba made the trip to Washington for Marne's graduation. Sitting in the audience that day, she told anyone who would listen: "That's my granddaughter, graduating with honors. With God's help, I sent her here. We're not a bunch of dumb hunkies, you know."
It sort of scalded Marne that I followed her to Gonzaga -- because I liked the basketball team, not the educational opportunities.
She always felt I was just sliding through life with no plan.
