Chapter 3

I had decided that it shouldn't be so important to me that Joyce and Mama were pushing Brenda at me again. It came down to having to decide what represented the greater risk to me.

If our having Brenda living with us ended up ruining my relationship with Joyce, that was going to be terrible. If, instead, I ended up getting much more upset and angry with Mama and Joyce, for their pushing me to do this with Brenda, it would probably cause me to have another one of my withdrawals. To me, that was more terrible than having relationship problems with Joyce.

What finally decided me was the uncertainty about whether adding Brenda to our relationship would have to end up being either a poor or harmful decision. There were certainly positive things that would come to us, if we did have Brenda cooking, helping with the twins, and spending time in bed with Joyce and me.

I already knew I was allowing myself to get too upset about being pushed. I was very afraid of what the consequences might be for that. The primary goal was to remove the cause of my being upset. They'd stop pushing if I let them have what they wanted. Who could say they were wrong? I felt like they all loved me. If they were mistaken, it wouldn't be because they wanted me hurt.

Given all of these conflicting fears and hopes, I decided I'd embrace their idea. In the back of my mind, I started hoping that Brenda would think about what she was being offered, then decide not to participate. There were very good reasons for my rationalizing my decision to go along with this. For one thing, the more I convinced myself that it wasn't that poor of an option, the less pushed into it I would feel.

Joyce came back home at around five o'clock. She had driven herself over to Bolling, going there to see her parents. She wasn't on good terms with her mom and dad. Her being pregnant hadn't improved the relationship with them either.

"I told them we were getting married Friday morning. I called the courthouse, and we have an appointment with Judge Grayson at eleven o'clock. You still plan on marrying me, don't you?"

"Friday, that's good. We'll go over early. Did you tell Mama that we've decided on Friday yet?"

"She said any day was good with her. Mama wants to invite Brenda and her mom too."

"That's fine. It will give us a chance to talk to Brenda, to find out whether she's interested in going off to Lawrence with us."

"Really? Do you mean that, Kenny?"

"I'm tired of fighting with you and Mama about it. I still think this is more Mama's idea than yours, Joyce. My biggest fear is that it will end up causing problems for you and me. Unfortunately, fighting against it was already causing problems that were potentially far greater for us. I want you to remember something, Joyce, in my mind, once I decided that you were the one I loved the most, you were always going to be enough for me."

"Kenny, this way is better for us. Brenda and I are good friends. I'm not as jealous of her. Even though she's the prettiest of all the other girls, with her, I feel like I'm still the one that would be best for you."

"You are. Even without this, you'd still be the best one. You're the only one who ever made me better than I was. That's what Mama kept telling me, and I knew it was true. You're my best possible partner."

"Guess what else I found out today?"

"From your parents?"

"No, from my orthodontist."

"Your braces are coming off before Christmas?"

"Not quite, but he is going to be changing bands again. My teeth have moved down enough to put on regular braces now. He's going to take off these old ones right before our big wedding, and then he'll put on the new ones, right before we go back to school after the first of the year. I'll be able to smile in our wedding pictures."

"That's good. I'll be able to find out if you can suck as good without the braces and all those rubber bands."

"Why did you decide to change your mind about Brenda, Kenny?"

"Because I knew if I didn't, something bad was sure to happen. If I did, something bad might still happen, but maybe it won't. I don't know what's going to happen with Brenda back in the picture, but I'm pretty sure that Mama wasn't going to let up with her pressure, not until I either gave her what she wanted, or I went into another one of my withdrawals. I still don't understand why putting Brenda together with me is so important to her."

I told Joyce what I had done over at Georgia's house, and what I had learned. She told me that she'd never heard Mama mention either man's name.

"Kenny, can I call Brenda, and invite her over for tonight? We can invite her to the wedding too, and you can decide if you want to ask her about coming with us or not. At the very least, it would prove to her that you weren't mad at her."

"You can call her. Now that I've decided, there isn't any reason not to spend time with her. I don't want to come out and ask her yet though. I still want us to get married first. Right now, Mama is happy that we're getting married. I don't want anything to happen to make her think I need to marry Brenda instead."

I got just the reaction from Joyce that I had expected. If we were going to have Mama meddling in our lives, with her getting Joyce to assist her, I wanted Joyce to know that Mama was capable of deciding things like that. Things which would hurt her.

Irene made us a nice chicken and rice dish, garnished with garbanzo beans, with a nice fresh salad. Brenda had accepted Joyce's invitation, arriving at our house a little before six. She spent the first five minutes talking to Joyce, about the babies and the wedding. After Joyce invited her and her mom to our wedding, Brenda said she'd skip school to be there.

"Kenny, you haven't told me anything about my money. I'm wondering if you've done anything to invest it yet?"

"You should be getting statements of trades, Brenda. I told Frank to send them to you. The brokerage sends out a monthly statement recapping all account activity. One comes here, one goes to Frank's office, and you are supposed to receive the third one."

"I haven't gotten anything, Kenny. Have I made any money?"

I stood up, and Joyce and Brenda did too. The three of us went into my office. I had a separate file for all of the trades and accounting for Brenda's account. We'd been trading her money for about three weeks. The monthly statement had been sent after about four days of trading. It didn't show much activity, just two closed trades and three more that were still open. I had a pad where I kept loose track of trades for her account. Every trade was listed, showing entering and ending prices, number of contracts, and gross profit or loss for the trade. So far, Brenda was up a little less than one and a half per cent on her account. In monetary terms, it came to just under forty four thousand dollars. I knew that trading expenses would bring the total down to around forty two thousand.

"It looks like you've made about forty thousand dollars so far, Brenda. We got a nice bounce when crop reports came in so bearish for the market. When they predict surpluses, it's very easy to make money. Shortages can be a lot trickier for us. I try to be conservative in my trading, but I also like to make about one per cent a month on each trading account."

"Forty thousand dollars? This, plus all my other money is still there?"

"Yes, that's how it works. If you lost forty thousand, your balance would be two million nine hundred and sixty instead of three million forty thousand. The goal is to make money overall though. You can't expect to do well every week. Some weeks you lose money. You just hope that most weeks you make a lot more than on the weeks where you lose. For your account, I'm hoping to make about three hundred thousand a year. After taxes, that should still give you about fifteen thousand a month you can spend if you want to."

"I can take money out of my account?"

"Sure. All you have to do is tell me what you want, and I'll have it transferred to your checking account. You need to make sure you don't spend everything you earn though. You need to pay taxes, and you have to leave some extra in, to cover possible downturns and inflation."

"Inflation?"

"Yes. The purchasing power of your money. If money inflates by four per cent this year, your money is going to buy about one hundred twenty thousand dollars less in goods next year. You always want to keep your capital's value equal to or greater than before inflation."

"If it keeps getting worth less and less every year, won't it get to where it isn't worth anything?"

"It might, but there will always be something that is worth having. If you have three million this year, and three million one hundred twenty thousand next year, your net purchasing power is about the same, if the dollar is four per cent inflated for the year. There are economists who figure this stuff out for us. We just need to stay ahead of the curve. It was harder a few years ago, when inflation was in double digits."

"Could I just take a thousand dollars out then? I don't want my money to shrink down to where it's worth less to me."

"It's all your money Brenda, so you can take as much as you want. I was just explaining how rich people stay rich, because you said that was your goal."

"It is, but I'm going to need money to live on too. I'm moving out, as soon as I graduate. I can't stand having my mother pestering me all the time, trying to get me to give her some of my money."

"Joyce told me that Mama was thinking about letting your mom have the money she told her she'd give her. The money she promised, if you and Richard both did what Uncle Bunny set up for you to do. I think she wants to do it because I decided to give you the money from Uncle Bunny first."

"My mom will have it all spent, just like Richard's spending all of his."

"I'm sure Mama's thought about that. Maybe she thinks that's okay."

I could see Joyce practically biting her tongue because she was so anxious for me to follow up on what Brenda said about moving out after her graduation.

"Did you need to go to the bathroom, Joyce? You look like you're fidgeting around over there." I smiled over at her when I said it. That's also when I had a different idea, and this one made a little more sense to me than the one that Mama and Joyce were both pushing. "Brenda, if you want to, you could live here. Joyce and I will be leaving to go up to Lawrence in a few months anyway. We've got loads of room in this big house, so having you here wouldn't be a problem. You could keep Joyce company, and maybe give her a hand, after the babies come."

"You want me to come live with you guys?" From the way Brenda said this, I started understanding that it wasn't only Mama and Joyce who were in on this plan of theirs. Brenda wasn't a very good actress. I decided that didn't have to matter to me either, not unless I allowed it to.

"Well, that wasn't what I was saying. We're going to be leaving soon, and it would be better if there were someone living here, and taking care of the house for us. We'll be coming back here some weekends, probably most of them, so we'd need to keep two houses going anyway. It would make things easier if there was someone here, bringing in the mail and available, in case we needed to check on something here. It wouldn't be living with us so much as sharing the same house while we're here."

I saw Brenda and Joyce exchanging puzzled looks. Both of them knew this wasn't working out the way it was supposed to. I felt better about crossing all of them up like this. If they were going to conspire like this, they deserved to end up unsure of what they were actually getting. This was especially true for Mama.

"You'd rent me a room?"

"No. We wouldn't rent it to you. You'd be a guest. Joyce didn't pay us rent, and neither did Jane or Grace. It would be more like that, except you'd still be living here when we were gone."

"Can I talk to you alone for a minute, Kenny?" Joyce seemed nervous.

"Honey, that's not polite. We don't want Brenda to start thinking we've got secrets, do we? Go ahead and speak in front of her." I was really starting to enjoy myself. It's funny, when the shoe's on the other foot, and it's you that is controlling things, it doesn't seem as serious to you. I sat there, a smile on my face, waiting for Joyce to decide how she wanted to proceed. I really expected her to go phone Mama first, to find out what she was supposed to do next.

"Brenda and I talked about it, and we want to have things go back to how they used to be, except without Emily and Shirley being involved." She tortured the admission out of herself. I could tell she hated to have to say the words to me.

"Tell me what you mean by saying back to how they used to be. What does that mean to you, Joyce?"

"The three of us being together. Living together, and doing sex things together. We would all be part of a group, like you said before." I looked over at Brenda. She was leaning forward in her chair, watching Joyce and me.

"Is that what you want too, Brenda?" I saw her looking at Joyce before she spoke. She started out haltingly, trying to choose words that would correctly express her position.

"You're going to marry Joyce. I wanted to marry you, instead of her. You made your decision, and I don't think you're going to change your mind. The problem is, I still love you. Your mother and Joyce both explained to me about why you should be with Joyce, and be married to her. Your mother told me a lot about what my mother and your uncle did for so many years. I didn't know he was doing all those things to help take care of her, or that my father's whole business was just your uncle's way of getting some money to us so we could live well. I saw that myself when I worked at your company, how easy it was for you to let him make more money from you. I don't want to sneak around like my mother had to. I don't want to be with, or marry, someone else while I'm still in love with you. What Joyce promised me, was that I could be with you, love you, as long as I didn't ever try to take you away from her."