BeyondFriday Night
Kathy liked Kenton in a suit. The golf clothes—and his Friday-night availability—required a little more investigation.
Kenton looked very handsome in a suit. Kathy remembers that distinctly. It is only fair to mention it before getting to the trousers.
They were fixed up by friends. Kathy and her girlfriend had been skiing in Wisconsin, traveling in Kathy’s car. On the way home, they stopped at the Rusty Scupper at O'Hare, where her friend’s husband was having a drink with Kenton. Then, rather abruptly, the girlfriend and her husband left together in his car. Kathy was left to drive herself home.
After a few cocktails, Kenton offered her an alternative: she could stay overnight at his house.
She declined. He was disappointed.
Still, there was another date. This time, the handsome man in the suit arrived wearing what Kathy calls “corduroyless corduroys.” Her review is brief: “Yuck.”
The date itself was no great shakes. Then the same trousers appeared again.
Eventually, Kathy detected a pattern more troubling than the clothes. All their dates were on Friday nights. Kenton had been playing golf, and the trousers were his golfing wardrobe. As Kathy saw it, she was a convenient date in the town where he already happened to be.
When he next said, “Okay, I'll pick you up on Friday,” she made an adjustment.
“Oh no, I have a babysitter for Saturday. I thought we were going out on Saturday.”
He said okay.
That settled her fear of being the other woman. Temporarily.
A visit to his townhouse raised further questions. It was plainly a bachelor’s pad, but he was remodeling the bathroom. Kathy approved of the work and asked an ordinary follow-up.
“Oh, okay, this looks great. What are you going to do in the bedroom?”
He had no clue.
Her next question was less about decorating.
“Who exactly is this interior decorator?”
Kenton confessed that he had been dating several women. Saturday, it turned out, had proved only that he was available on Saturday.
But on a cruise, the relationship became something quite different from a question of who else might be in his calendar. Kenton declared his love for Kathy, and the other women were out of the picture. It was the first time he had told her, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she replied.
Kathy describes his declaration as a confession of undying love. That might sound extravagant if she did not immediately supply the supporting evidence: “He hasn't stopped since.”
Their partnership would eventually extend well beyond dating. When they started a mortgage business, it was Kenton, Kathy, and one other employee. Kathy remembers that small operation as a time when they made a particularly good team. There was work to do, and the two of them did it.
Growth complicated the staffing arrangements. As the business expanded, Kenton fired Kathy on several occasions.
The first time, she ignored him.
In her assessment, he was reluctantly glad she stayed. “Who else was going to do the work?”
Eventually, she did leave—by quitting—and went into selling real estate. Being a couple and being colleagues had turned out to be separate qualifications.
They do not claim to approach things alike. Even when their explanations arrive at the same answer, Kathy says, getting there can require “a gazillion more questions.” She is firm on this point: “We do not think the same way.”
Kenton’s capacity for explanation supplied one of her enduring pleasures on a trip to Las Vegas with their daughter, Ashley. Their accommodation had a bedroom and a family room, each with a television remote. Ashley had the bedroom remote; Kenton had the family room remote.
Ashley kept changing the television channels.
Kenton, faced with a television apparently making its own programming decisions, began looking out the window. He developed what Kathy remembers as a “cosmic explanation” for the interference. The investigation was reaching well beyond the room while the explanation remained inside it, holding a remote.
Finally, Ashley burst out laughing.
Kenton was embarrassed. Kathy still laughs about it.
Television remains a shared pleasure, though not always an uninterrupted one. When the family watches together, Papa—a.k.a. Kenton—will say, “Pause.” Whatever he has to contribute can then inspire someone else to come up with a still more ridiculous statement. A pause is not necessarily a route back to the program.
On their own, Kathy and Kenton watch Law and Order on the big screen in their bedroom. They have watched all the episodes three times. They always know what is going to happen, and they watch together anyway.
Yet one of the stories Kathy keeps telling takes them right back to the beginning, when she was a travel agent with two free airline tickets to L.A.
She decided to ask Kenton along. He thought it was a very good idea: he could see his siblings, and the two of them could travel around. Here was an outing with several attractions and, apparently, an excellent price.
At the end of the trip, Kenton added up the receipts. The airfare had been free; the trip most definitely had not. By the time he finished his calculations, he discovered he had spent a fortune.
He gave Kathy his considered advice.
“Next time you have free airline tickets, call somebody else.”