Upon graduation from high school, I enrolled in college to learn the ways of business, and in the process learned the ways of life; met, courted, and married a fully matriculated, brown-eyed design student named Keri.
THE CHRISTMAS BOX
WHENIRETURNED HOME from my mission, I went back to the University of Utah. Deciding that what the world really needed was another lawyer, I declared a communications major and immersed myself in school. Tuxedo Junction had no openings, so I applied at the University of Utah Chronicle as a part-time reporter and was hired. But after just a few stories, I decided that I didn’t like working for the paper and quit.
In truth my greatest interest wasn’t writing or school. It was Keri Disera. Just before leaving on my mission, my best friend had brought his girlfriend over to meet me. It wasn’t love at first sight. I don’t think either of us was very impressed. Keri was a varsity cheerleader, fresh faced and preppy, and I was a longhaired debater type whose wardrobe consisted mostly of surgeon blues or camouflage fatigues from the army-navy surplus.
My friend left that summer, six months before me, on a church mission. He asked me to take care of his girl. I did. A little too well, I guess. Keri and I started hanging out every day and soon became best friends. In addition to my job at Tuxedo Junction I had a night job as a watchman at the entrance of some condominiums. Keri worked at an ice cream parlor called Snelgroves. A couple nights a week, after she got off work, she would bring caramel-banana malts and her guitar and sit on the floor of the guard shack while I waved cars on through. Once a car stopped. “Do you have a girl in there?” an old man asked.
“Yes, sir.”
He gave me the thumbs-up and drove on.
Keri and I would play music, eat and talk about the meaning of life, her boyfriend and all the girls I was dating.
When summer ended and Keri left for school, I moped around for days in a stupor before I realized the truth: I was in love with my best friend’s girl. When I called Keri that weekend, I knew it was mutual, as she could not conceal her excitement to hear from me. A few weeks later I asked her out on a date and she accepted. I suppose it was our coming out. Word quickly got back to my friend, but he didn’t seem concerned. He knew I was planning on leaving on a church mission as well and he had six months to win her back before I returned.
He didn’t. When I returned home, Keri was still unattached. We had written nearly every week while I was in Taiwan, and though we were both keeping our options open, we were hopeful that something might reignite. Three months after my return, Keri and I began talking about marriage.
Keri’s father, Larry Disera, wasn’t too keen on the idea. Actually, he wasn’t too keen on me. Larry was a gruff Italian Catholic, short of stature, big of nose and tough as a miner. Before his retirement, he was a union negotiator for Kennecott Copper Mine. In retrospect I suppose his aversion to me was a blessing, as he became the model for Dr. Murrow, the stern father in The Locket and The Carousel.
When I told Keri that I thought it would be proper for me to ask her father for her hand in marriage, she emphatically replied, “No!”
“Why?”
She looked at me as if I was stupid. “He doesn’t want me to marry you. He doesn’t even like you.”
The evening we announced we were engaged, her father growled, “You better take care of her. I didn’t raise her for twenty-one years for you to keep her barefoot and pregnant.”
