“What do you mean okay? Say it!”
I shrugged my shoulders and mumbled, “Loveya.”
She gave me a playful shove. “You’re hopeless. Goodnight.”
“See you tomorrow?” I asked.
“Yes, I suppose.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No, I’m not mad at you, you dope.”
“Okay, see you tomorrow.”
I walked to my car parked in the street. Nancy was still standing on the porch as I got in the car. I saw her waving her arms frantically. I quickly got out of the car again.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“I love you, Mackenzie Peck!”
I really wanted to say the words she longed to hear. I looked up and down the street. No one was around. I took a deep breath and held it. I was going to shout out so the the whole neighborhood could hear. I wanted the whole world to know I loved Nancy Marshall of Maplewood, New Jersey. And I wasn’t ashamed to say it. “Me too!”
Chapter Seven
Death should be reserved for soggy Winter days. Everything in Winter is cold and colorless anyway. Dreary, lifeless, rock-hard landscape. Windows closed, curtain drawn days. Winter is perfect for death.
Death should never occur during the Summer. Never on warm, sun-caressed, stroll-on-the-beach days. Death should especially never occur on the Garden State Parkway.
But that’s exactly what happened.
It was late August. Nancy and I were driving north near exit 120 when I heard and felt the muffled clong of metal against metal. The engine gave one last burst of kinetic energy and fell silent. I let the car coast to the shoulder of the Parkway. Nancy and I looked at each other. She wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I know the car was old, but I wasn’t ready to part with it yet, especially since Nancy and I had worked so hard to improve its appearance.
I opened the hood and Nancy stood at my side as I looked over the six-cylinder smudge pot. The engine seemed ridiculously small for such a large compartment. There were no fluids leaking, no billowing steam, I had no idea what was wrong.
“Can you fix it?” Nancy asked.
I pulled out the oil dipstick, which was about the extent of my mechanical ability, and could see the engine had plenty of oil. I came to the only feasible conclusion: 106,000 miles was all one could expect from a car held together by spit, twine, and glue.
“It’s dead,” I said, glumly.
I left the hood open as a distress signal while Nancy and I sat on the grassy slope along side the Parkway. It was a fitting end to a less than perfect day. The day had started with great promise, blue sky, bright sun, a cashed paycheck. But the promise was broken early. We had gone to Seaside Heights to spend a day on the beach. While I had protected Nancy with plenty of sunscreen lotion, I decided to do the manly thing and get a tan the natural way. In hardly any time at all I had a pinkish glow on my shoulders that felt like a dragon had breathed on me. Then for lunch we had walked up to the boardwalk for a sausage sandwich and I got a splinter in the fleshiest part of my foot. Later, while sitting on the beach in my tee shirt, a low flying sea gull christened the top of my head. And when I waded into the ocean to wash it off, some fat little kamikaze on his inflatible mat bowled me over.
We decided that for once we would try to beat the homeward bound traffic, so we started packing up at four thirty. That’s when I closed the folding chair on my finger.
Finally, the topper was the internal parts of my engine fusing themselves into a solid block of metal.
So there we sat, with grass stains on our shorts, looking at the traffic thicken into a slow parade, looking at the people looking at us.
Nancy put her arm around me and I grimaced.
“Ooh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot about your sunburn. Does it hurt much?”
“Only when I breath,” I said.
We killed time by talking about marriage, more specifically, the wedding. Nancy wanted a big wedding, in a big white dress, in a big church. She went into great detail on exactly what color and style dresses she wanted for the maid of honor and six bridesmaids. She wanted to get married in December. Her birthday was in December, the 10th, and of course Christmas was in December. It had always been her special month, and us getting married in December would make it all that more special for her. I agreed with everything Nancy wanted. Her happiness was my only concern.
Naturally, we couldn’t get married in the coming December. It was too soon in coming to make plans, plus, we didn’t have a whole lot of money saved. But December of the following year would be okay. We didn’t have a calender with us, but we figured on getting married in December of 1973, sometime between her birthday and Christmas.
“There’s only one thing left to do,” Nancy said.
“What’s that?”
“The proposal.”
“What proposal?”
“You have to ask me to marry you.”
“I do? Why?”
“Because it’s tradition, Mackenzie. The man always asks the girl to marry him.”
“Is that in the Marriage Book of Rules?”
“Don’t get wise. I’m serious. You have to propose.”
“Oh, okay. Now?”
“I don’t care when you do it. Although, I think you could pick a more romantic spot than sitting here on the side of the road next to a broken down car.”
“Okay. How about next week?”
“Jeez, Mackenzie, you could use a lesson in spontaneity. I’m not asking for a candle lit dinner in some fancy restaurant with a trio of violinists. Just…just surprise me, that’s all.”
I conjured up a plan. Next Monday would be Labor Day; a holiday for both of us. We could go back to the shore on Sunday. We’ll stay at a motel. We’ll go to dinner, someplace quiet and romantic. She’ll expect me to propose there, but instead I’ll keep making jokes like, ‘Nancy, will you…pass the salt?’ or, ‘Nancy, I have something important to ask you. Can you lend me ten bucks?’ Yeah, that’ll be funny. Then after dinner we’ll go to one of the piers that jut out into Barnegat Bay, and as the sun sets I’ll tell Nancy how much I love her and ask her to marry me. Then we’ll go back to the motel and have sex all night. Then on Monday morning we’ll have breakfast, then more sex, then go to the beach. What a great plan!
We were hot and hungry by the time the tow truck dropped us off at the service area. And it was long past dark by the time Bill and Susan picked us up and drove us home. Along the way we all discussed going to the shore for Labor Day weekend. As much as I would enjoy the company of Bill and Susan on the beach, I feared their presence would put a crimp in my plans. But I suppose something could be worked out.
On Tuesday morning Nancy drove me to a used car lot in Springfield. I really wanted to wait a few months before buying another car, but there was no getting around it. I could’ve borrowed my dad’s car for maybe a week, but I decided against asking him when I saw him sitting in his chair looking over a paint chart. The twenty five dollars I got for junking the ‘61 Chevy barely covered the towing charges, so I had nothing to use as a down payment except money from my savings.
There were at least a hundred cars on this car lot, most of which were out of my price range. Nancy was very excited that I had asked her to help pick out a car. I had no preference as to the make of car I wanted, I just knew I didn’t want anything too flashy.
We walked hand in hand under the flapping plastic pennants,