All Characters In This Story Are 18+ Years Old
Friday Evening 12/21/1962
Forty-one-year-old Judith Barnes put her just-refilled Tom Collins down on its coaster on the end table by her chair with more force than she meant. Cubes rattled and a few errant drops splashed over the edge onto the nearby December issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Exasperated by her ringing telephone, she exclaimed, "Darn it! That's the second time tonight someone's called in the middle of my shows!"
Petulantly, she kicked her feet down, stood from her pimento-color velvet wing-back BarcaLounger and strode across the living room to the offending instrument on the antique cherry escritoire by the pecan library wall bookcase. Picking up on the fourth ring, she heard her neighbor's voice say, "Judith? It's Bobbie..."
"It's a bit late to call, Bobbie," Judith replied with a bit of an edge. Then, suddenly remembering her eighteen-year-old son, Barney, had gone to collect his pay for shoveling Bobbie's walks, she worried, "Has something happened? Everything okay?"
"Yes, I know it's late," answered Roberta Maxon, unperturbed. "Nothing's the matter, but I wanted to apologize for keeping Barney longer than I had expected..."
Relieved by the news and anxious to get back to Martin Milner on 'Route 66', Judith interrupted, "Well, he's a big boy. He knows where he lives and how to get home. It's not even a school night, so there's nothing to apologize for."
Roberta agreed, "Yes, he is a big boy. But I thought, with the storm and all, that you might be worried. I just wanted you to know everything is okay." She pulled the receiver from her ear and looked at Barney, who, but for his socks, stood naked by the television staring at her aghast. Flashing him a broad grin and the universal 'OK' sign, she returned quickly to Mrs. Barnes, adding, "Uh-hunh, yes, after I paid him for clearing my walks, I thought, 'Well, maybe he can fix my damper. You know, up in my chimney?..."
Not picking up the double-entendre, Judith injected, "He knows how to do that pretty good. I asked him to do mine earlier, when the blizzard warning was first on the radio."
More than doubtful that Judith had ever screwed her son as she had just done, Roberta chuckled silently while pleasantly riposting, "Oh? He did that for you, too? Well, then you know, however we may try, that's sometimes a messy job..."
"It wasn't too bad with me," Judith went on. "He just poked a tool up in there, banged away a few times and that was it. A little soot came down, but no harm done."
Roberta rolled her eyes and bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud as Judith blithely advanced her private joke. Recovering, she said, "Yes, anyway, I want to do his clothes in my Maytag. You certainly don't need any of my 'soot' in your machine!"
"Oh, well that's very kind of you," Judith answered. "Barney is bigger than Mr. Maxon and probably couldn't wear his clothes except maybe a robe, but in any case, I'm sure you must have a blanket he can wrap up in while you do the laundry. Even though we are just next door, I wouldn't want him outside in only his parka and rubber boots!" She giggled at the image her ludicrous notion created.
Roberta laughed aloud, too. "No... That's hilarious, but you're right. I can't send him home in Phil's clothes."
"Thanks, Bobbie," Judith said, growing more impatient with the conversation. "I do feel much better knowing you're taking good care of Barney. But for heaven's sake, don't feed him! He's always hungry, but he can jolly well eat at home!" Almost as if an afterthought, she concluded, "I'm going to go to bed soon, so ask him not to be noisy when he's coming inside."
Even as the line was disconnecting at the other end, Roberta replied flatly, "Yes, I'll tell him, Judith. Thank you so much. Good night, dear."
Returning to her recliner, Judith found she had lost the thread of the 'Route 66' episode. She didn't feel like 'Sing Along With Mitch', so she switched her Philco's channel knob to ABC for 'I'm Dickens, He's Fenster.' As she sat back down in her chair and picked up her cocktail, Fred Flintstone, pounding on his own front door and screaming, "Wiiilllma!", morphed into an ad for Winston cigarettes.
Judith set her highball down more carefully than before and closed her eyes. Weirdly, the cartoon scene had called to her mind how Ralph, her philandering ex-husband, similarly beat on their front door, and yelled for the whole neighborhood to hear, on June 3, 1956. It was an ignominious end to her thirty-fifth birthday.
After church that warm summer day, Ralph had driven Judith and their kids to the Ford dealer in Norwalk where he surprised her with a brand new peach-and-cream two-tone Ford Fairlane. Expecting they would all take a lovely family drive together, she happily slid behind the wheel while Rebecca and Barney piled into the sedan's back seat. Ralph, however, did not get in the car. Instead, he said through the open driver's side window, "Love to, honey, but I just have to go in to the office and work up a big report for the board meeting tomorrow. Sorry!"
When Ralph not only missed dinner and her cake, but had not returned by eleven o'clock, Judith was confident that he was, in fact, fucking his floozy-de-jour. More hurt than ever before, she had angrily resolved, "Never again!" Throwing both the front and back doors' security bolts, she locked him out of the house, then cried herself to sleep. At two a.m., when the ruckus woke her, she screamed at him through the closed door, "Go to a goddamned hotel! I'm getting a lawyer!"
The divorce had been quick, but hardly painless. Their son, Barney, at age twelve, was less impacted, particularly since Ralph promised him that he would still make it to every Little League game and root him on. Their sixteen-year-old daughter, Rebecca, was not so sanguine. She withdrew and became sullen.
By the start of Becky's junior year in high school, she was openly rebellious toward her mother and teachers alike. "It seemed a miracle that she graduated, let alone got into NYU," Judith thought, as she stretched out on her chair and rolled her head. Then, brightening, she mused, "But she really blossomed and straightened up there. Living on her own gave her new responsibility. And it was so great, last August, when Mr. Maxon hired her as his personal assistant!"
Of course, the judge put Ralph on the hook for everything: Judith got the house, a very generous alimony and both kids with support plus their college tuitions secured. She also got the new car while he was awarded their older Dodge Coronet. He bounced right back, though, with a prompt promotion and a 1957 Chrysler Saratoga as a bonus. "Yeah, and he got to fool around like a playboy," Judith said to herself. Picking up her Collins, she toasted the television set out loud, "And I'm glad he's gone. Good riddance!"
With her drink drained, Judith considered building another. She had had one before dinner and now had nursed this second one for better than an hour. She guessed she could allow herself a third, if she made it light. Walking to the kitchen for the gin, mix and ice, she thought about the very first Tom Collins she ever had. And that had not been her only first that day.
It was the Fourth of July, 1939. Judith Sneed had turned eighteen a month before and in four days she would marry nineteen-year-old Ralph Barnes. The four girlfriends who would be her bridesmaids had taken her to New Haven to see the fireworks there. Someone, somehow, somewhere had acquired a quart of Tanqueray gin, another of Canada Dry Collins Mixer, and some Dixie Cups. One of the girls said, if the gin and mix were poured over ice, the result was a cocktail her dad called a 'Tom Collins', which she had tried once.
The bridal party ran out of ice before they ran out of gin, but they drank the bottle between them anyway. When Judith got home, she was a little bit snockered. She had just taken off, then hung up, her sailor-styled cotton playsuit and was standing staring vacantly into her open closet when she heard a discreet cough behind her. Reflexively crossing her right arm over her soft wireless rayon bra and dropping her left hand to cover her private area, which was already well hidden by her satin tap pants, she whipped her head to look over her shoulder.
Judith's twenty-one-year-old brother, Hank, stood motionless in her bedroom's open doorframe. She cried, "Gaaak! Hank! What are you... How long have you... Get out of here! I'm undressing!"
The waning gibbous moon was like a spotlight on Judith through the second-floor bedroom's dormer window. In the shadows, Hank had enjoyed his sister's disrobing and was not the least embarrassed for her, or by the erection he had. Having just seen 'Only Angels Have Wings', he stepped rapidly behind her, put his hands on her upper arms and, giving his best Cary Grant impression, said softly, "Judy..."
Judith had protested, "Stop it! I mean it. You're a brat, now get out of here!" Funnily enough, even twenty-three years later, she was not sure that she had meant it then when she said it. She shivered in front of the liquor cupboard as she again felt Hank's strong hands and light touch. He had not stopped, nor did he get out.