The Shaw Corporation sponsored bowling leagues, softball teams, theater groups, concerts and other cultural activities in Shoreville and during the week Charlie could be seen at most company-sponsored events. He bowled with his old high school buddies and played softball with company employees in the warm summer evenings. But, on weekends, Charlie Mullins was nowhere to be seen.
A lot of people in Shoreville thought it was the divorce. When Charlie came back from his tour in the Army, he resumed dating and then married his high-school sweetheart, Mary Jo Mannix. Like most marriages in Shoreville, it was what was expected: local boy returns, resumes romance with his old sweetheart, marries her. They eventually have kids, join the Little League, PTA, and so it goes.
However, Mary Jo had ambitions which she one day concluded she would not satisfy in her marriage to Charlie. She wanted to live in a high-mortgage neighborhood in Wilmington, not in Shoreville. Charlie was perfectly content to stay where he was comfortable and did not like the idea of living in some expensive digs around a bunch of people he did not know and really did not care about.
Early on in the marriage Mary Jo tried to get Charlie’s career on what she thought was the “right track”. She would tell Charlie that he was far too complacent and that he should be more concerned about his future at Shaw. She suggested that they consider selling their house and moving to a “better neighborhood”. She would point across the river to Wilmington and say, “There is where we have to live, Charlie. You’ll be around people who can help your career. We can get involved in community affairs and mix with the ‘right people’.”
Charlie endured her entreaties with patience but told her clearly, “Mary Jo, those people live the company day in and day out. I don’t want to live that way. I’m perfectly content right here in Shoreville where we are around friends. I don’t want to be going out for drinks, dinner, and theater with someone just because they can get me promoted.”
But Mary Jo was relentless and in the second year of their marriage she left Charlie to marry a lawyer in Wilmington. She crossed the Delaware to conquer her space with the “right people”. There were no children and Charlie was left with the mortgage.
Charlie was both surprised and not surprised. He was surprised and hurt that Mary Jo would have treated him that way and subjected him to public humiliation but he was not surprised that she left. Her ambition was just too great. Charlie always suspected that she would be vulnerable to some smooth character who would promise the world to Mary Jo. Her ambition would cloud her reason, and she would fall. She had no patience with Charlie’s calm approach to life. He was sure that she was in for a lot of disappointment in life but could not convince her. When Mary Jo got pregnant by her second husband, he left her high and dry. The last Charlie had heard of Mary Jo, she had moved somewhere “out west”.
Charlie endured the initial outpourings of sympathy from those in Shoreville who were indignant at Mary Jo’s behavior. He tolerated the avalanche of “serves-her-right” comments that surfaced when the word got out that Mary Jo had been left by her second husband. He was no longer angry at Mary Jo. In fact, he felt sorry for her. But he just shrugged his shoulders and smiled when others blasted away at her.
Then, stoically, he put up with all the attempts to get him married again. He took to leaving town on weekends to escape the numerous dinner invitations to meet the lone female guest that had been invited for his sake.
What began as weekend escapes soon turned into weekend forays as Charlie reaped the advantages of a social life outside Shoreville. He looked up some of his old friends from La Salle College in Philly. Sometimes he would head down to the casinos in Atlantic City, or spend a quiet weekend in Cape May. In all the places he went, he could relax and be away from people that he saw all week, at work, at the grocery store, at company-sponsored events, at church and so on. His professional life was public knowledge as was everyone else’s in Shoreville, but unlike his neighbors, his private life was absolutely private. He intended to keep it that way.
Charlie Mullins liked beautiful women. He liked intelligent women. And he certainly liked the creature comforts that money bought. But most of all Charlie Mullins liked power. And power to Charlie Mullins meant being in charge of your own life. His very private social life was a form of power in tiny Shoreville.
He once commented to a friend, “You know, the first loss of power comes when you lose your privacy. When you join the Army, what’s the first thing they do to keep you under control? They take away your privacy. They put you in a barracks with 40 other guys. You have open closets and only a footlocker which an officer will open every week. Prisoners have no privacy so they have no power. Look at college students – put ‘em in a dorm, no privacy. Makes it easier to handle them. The same thing happens in companies. Take those office partitions for example. They never go all the way to the ceiling. No private office, no power. No private conversations, no power. Got it? Take my word for it, the first step in acquiring power is to make sure you have privacy.” Charlie never abandoned that view.
Consistent with his view regarding privacy and power, Charlie tried to make sure that folks in Shoreville knew nothing of his ambitions, personal views, and personal life. Even as a child he had always been known as a bit of a “loner”. He was a quiet, observant kid who took in everything around him. But if you asked anyone what Charlie Mullins thought, they would probably begin their answer by saying, “Well, I don’t really know, but I would guess that…..”
As to his “lost weekends”, a lot of people in Shoreville were quick to attribute them to grief, anger, and embarrassment over the divorce. More than one resident had been known to comment, “Poor Charlie Mullins, ever since that bitch left him he’s just disappeared. Guy’s got no social life at all. He shows up alone at company functions and goes home alone when they’re over. Damned shame is what it is!”
Charlie paid more attention to what was said about him than the residents of Shoreville suspected. Although many accepted Charlie’s strange-for-Shoreville lifestyle and chalked it off to idiosyncrasy and hurt feelings, some were intrigued by any form of behavior that deviated from the Shoreville norm and took to watching Charlie and commenting about him.
This latter group concerned him. They were busybodies who would eventually try to invade his privacy if only to certify that he was “normal” by Shoreville’s standards. Charlie didn’t want people prying into his life.
He showed up at company-sponsored functions so he could hear from friends and associates what was being said about him.
III
Every year the Shaw Corporation sponsored an Easter Party at a local national park in Shoreville. The park was a former World War II military installation along the shores of the Delaware River. It had been converted to a national park after the war. There were picnic tables in abundance and lots of room for the kids to run. The party was for the community of Shoreville, not just Shaw employees. There were Easter egg hunts and games for the kids. Everyone in Shoreville who worked for Shaw and a great many of those who didn’t, always showed up for the event. That and the Christmas party were the two big social events that the company sponsored that everyone truly enjoyed.
Even though he had no children and both parties were always scheduled for a Saturday, Charlie never missed the events. He liked to watch the kids play and he could talk to the adults in a relaxed atmosphere.
One of the first persons he saw at the Easter Party was Ben Hopkins, a marketing manager at Shaw. Hopkins came striding straight toward Charlie, “Chaarlie! How ya been, buddy?”
“Fine Ben, how ‘bout yourself?”
“Doin’ all right Charlie, all right. Haven’t seen you around in a while Charlie.”
“C’mon Ben, you saw me in the cafeteria in Wilmington just yesterday.”
“Oh yeah, the marketing meeting. No, but what I mean Charlie is I haven’t