For as a "Stater" herself and adjacent dorm resident by that time, she happened to know that her brother had experimented halfheartedly with changing not only his name and academic major (from General A & S to Pre-Law, then to Business Administration after all, and finally back to General), but his sexual orientation as well. "Hey, Norm," she telephoned him one football weekend after happening to catch sight of her brother and his College of Forestry roommate holding hands in a booth in the Corner Room Restaurant on College Avenue after the Syracuse game, "are you gay these days or what?" Unalarmed by her question, he guessed he maybe was: "Not a word to Mom and Dad, okay?" More surprised and amused than dismayed, "Not to worry!" Marsha assured him, and added, "Better gay than nothing."
But that "stage" lasted no longer than one academic term, whereafter "Phil Norman"'s briefly Significant Other found a roommate/lover more to his liking, and Philip himself became involved with a Poli Sci ex-lesbian as tentative about her sexuality as was he re his. In this same period — between spring break of his junior year and graduation time for the class of '75—ever-cheery Madeline Blank succumbed to metastasized uterine cancer, and her comparatively impassive but now-devastated husband to an evidently self-inflicted deer-rifle shot to the head not long after, in the same state park where the family had often picnicked in Philip's and Marsha's childhood. With a competence that he'd scarcely been aware of possessing, Phil made the arrangements for his dad's cremation and (per deceased's written request, in a terse note found on his body) the discreet dispersal of his ashes along the county roads to which he'd dedicated his working life.
Postponing his baccalaureate for one term, the young man then oversaw the settlement of Michael Blank's uncomplicated estate. Their father and mother having both been only children, Philip and Marsha were the sole surviving family members and equal heirs to their father's modest bank accounts, life insurance benefits, and property. The six-year-old station wagon went to Marsha, as Phil had his own car already; the proceeds from the family house (the sale of which Phil arranged through a local realtor who lived on their block), added to the rest of their inheritance, provided brother and sister with ample funds to rent small but comfortable and convenient apartments near the campus, to purchase whatever supplementary furnishings they needed after dividing their parents' belongings, and to support them comfortably through the remainder of their undergraduate studies and graduate school as well, if they elected to "go on."
Much shaken and saddened, though less than griefstricken, by the loss of their parents, and feeling as much at home in the college town where they'd lived since birth as they'd felt in the house itself, they went on with their not-unhappy lives. Marsha's senior-year high school boyfriend, who'd done his first two college years in upstate New York, transferred to his hometown campus to complete his degree in Electrical Engineering as she completed hers in Education, and eventually moved in with his reignited old flame. Like Mike Blank and Maddy Norman (and Billy Marshall and Elsa Bauer), the couple married not long after their commencement and found employment in the area. Philip — who shortly after graduation re-changed his last name from Norman back to Blank and took a job in the university's public information office — reverted as well from an ambiguous bisexuality to less and less sexuality of any sort: To their mutual old acquaintances, "Nor-man nor woman," Billy Marshall joked, "equals Blank."
And blank his life might be said to have been, by many people's standards and sometimes his own, over the century's ensuing decades: a competent if undistinguished career in various of the university's administrative offices; one more sort-of-relationship, with a female office-neighbor several years his senior, whose rebound from an acrimonious divorce presently impelled her far from the region where her ex-husband chose to remain, and ended the affair — Phil's final experience of other-than-solitary sex, and on the whole an enjoyable one, for him at least. Occasionally he lunched with old acquaintances or administrative colleagues; most Sundays he dined with his sister and brother-in-law and their three children, whose uncle he was pleased to be despite his natural aloofness. Sometimes with them, more often alone, he attended varsity athletic events and university-sponsored concerts or theater productions. For exercise he walked the campus or the town's so-familiar neighborhoods; in the long Allegheny winters he sometimes worked out in the college gym. Most evenings he was content to dine alone in his apartment (later, his condominium in a new development north of town), read news-magazine articles for an hour or so, and then watch television or some video recommended by Marsha. If asked, he would not have characterized his life as unhappy, while acknowledging it to be far from full; but no one asked, and he himself, from his thirties on, gave ever less thought to such questions. His sister took vacation trips with her family, as did Billy and Elsa Marshall — to Florida, Maine, California, Hawaii, Europe. Philip's job sometimes took him to the university's branch campuses in sundry Pennsylvania counties and, less often, to meetings and conferences in Cleveland or Indianapolis, Ann Arbor or East Lansing; his vacations, however, he preferred to spend at home.
"Doing what?" Marsha's husband asked her once. His wife rolled her eyes, shook her head: "The Sunday Times crossword puzzle, maybe? Filling in the blanks, as Billy Marshall used to say."
In his late fifties, to Marsha's surprise and somewhat to his own, Philip elected to take early retirement. With his university pension, the dividends from sundry annuities, and his considerable savings, he would scarcely notice the reduction in his annual income. "Lucky fellow!" most of his child-raising, tuition-paying acquaintances agreed. "But what are you going to do with yourself?" his sister made bold to ask him.
A quarter-century earlier, Philip might have responded, "Do with whom?" But over the decades he had lost interest in that question. "Whatever I damn please, I suppose," was his mild reply.
For an academic year or two thereafter (time's main measure in small towns with large universities, even among the non-academic), he experimented, dutifully if less than enthusiastically, with various activities recommended for new retirees by the appropriate campus office: joined an alumni tour group for a week's visit to London; tried to interest himself in such hobbies (he'd never had a hobby) as contract bridge and Elderhosteling; volunteered briefly (the retirement-office people were big on volunteering) in a Head Start program designed to help black inner-city youngsters overcome their academic disadvantages, but directed locally, faute de pis, at their poor white Appalachian counterparts. But London overwhelmed and the game of bridge intimidated him; "at his age" he took no pleasure in learning complicated things from scratch and going places with groups of strangers. And while he pitied the young hillbilly left-behinds, he had no knack for motivating them to attempt what they themselves evinced little interest in. By the end of his first retirement year he looked forward to none of those activities. Midway through his second he dropped them all and settled into a routine of reading front to back the Centre Daily and New York Times through breakfast and beyond, then going for an extended walk if weather permitted or pottering about the condo if it didn't; perhaps lunching in town (sometimes with ex-colleagues), doing afternoon errands, or strolling the vast campus a bit. At five, back at the condo, he took a glass of red wine on his small screened porch or before the gas fireplace, then sipped another while preparing and eating his simple dinner. And finally — unless there was some interesting public lecture or other university event on the calendar — he settled down among his parents' furniture in his tidy living room to entertain himself with magazine or library book, television or desktop computer.