Chapter 77

I had been getting regular phone calls from Mama, regarding her dissatisfaction with the lack of progress I was making in resolving my estrangement from Brenda. Strangely, I had received no complaints at all from Brenda herself. We had completed the transfer of her funds back into a trading account that I would once again be managing for her. When I had turned the money over to her, some months earlier, there was just a little bit less than twenty seven million dollars. When her funds were wired back to my bank for me to trade for her, all that remained was slightly more than sixteen million dollars.

Her investment advisors in California had given her account disclosure paperwork and monthly performance reports. She gave me this information when she ordered that her California brokerage account be closed. A full third of the losses she had sustained in her account balance had been due to all the advisory fees and trading commissions she had been charged by her so called investment team.

Brenda told me that Emily still had whatever remained of her money invested with these people. The advisors had been recommended by Emily's father. Apparently, he had used the same people for many years. There was little surprise to me that Emily's parents had found it necessary to borrow over half a million dollars from her.

With this team of investment advisors working for you, any fortune could be whittled down to size in no time. Of the seventeen mutual funds Brenda's advisors had purchased on her behalf, some of these they had bought and sold more than once, not a single one had been a "no load" fund or one with reduced front end commisions charged. She had managed to make a profit with only one of those investments. It would have been difficult for Brenda to have fared as poorly if she had been picking stocks at random to invest in.

On the bright side, she now had a lot of accumulated investment losses I could use to offset whatever gains I might be able to manage during the remainder of the tax year.

Brenda was still nominally staying at Mama's house, but she was spending the bulk of her time over in Bolling, at the business, or else visiting with Shirley and Joyce over at our house. Joyce told me that Brenda was doing all of their cooking at work again, and had prepared most of their dinners at home as well.

Each night, when I called to speak with Joyce, I somehow always ended up talking with Shirley and Brenda first. They had some system they'd set up. Dale and Cindy also spoke with Joyce on a daily basis. Cindy spoke with her from the office, and Dale from our Birmingham house.

I really tried not to listen when the women were talking to each other. It was too unsettling for me, trying to interpret those small snippets of conversations when I was only hearing one side. I figured Joyce would get around to telling me whatever she wanted me to know eventually.

I knew they were all plotting, but they always had done that anyway. It was too late to try to change something that was so ingrained into their normal living habits.

By the time I got around to informing Larry that I was appointing him to run the Quick Snacks company, he had already heard the news from several members of his family. Our negotiations went more quickly than I had anticipated them doing.

We were having a long business lunch together when I first started talking to him about it. All of his initial questions to me concerned defining what his chain of command would be, both up and down the line from him. All the rest involved him wanting me to clarify and define where his authority was going to be limited. I outlined, in very broad terms, how I saw the job, and what role he would play in guiding the company's growth.

It was obvious that, as we talked, Larry was searching for the "catch" in what I was telling him. He was certain that I had set up some kind of secret limitation on his authority. I had to tell him, repeatedly, that the only limitation on his authority was with his needing to satisfy both my father and myself.

When the last question had been answered for the final time, Larry and I sat across from each other at the booth we were in. We were both silent for a minute, possibly even longer than a minute. It sure seemed longer. I finally broke the silence.

"I guess the only thing left for us to talk about is your compensation. What do you think a job like this should be worth?"

In my mind, all I was hoping for was that Larry would make an effort to be reasonable in his initial salary demands. I hoped, at the end of our negotiations, that he'd think that a hundred thousand a year would be a reasonable starting salary. I also expected that he'd want to negotiate an upgrade from his company leased pick up truck, into something more in keeping with a high level executive's outside image.

"Gene, Phil, and I, we all agreed that the three of us would each take eighty thousand a year."

"I can see that much for both you and Gene, but why should I pay Phil that for the job he's still doing?" I knew what he was going to say, I was just stalling for time to let my brain adjust itself to what I now thought of as the "Macklinson reality".

I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter to me how they had decided to divide their combined pay up among themselves. I realized it shouldn't matter to either me or the company, not as long as the total amount we expended in payroll came out to be something that was reasonable in our overall total budget. Factoring in the total payroll we would be expending on these three men, what Larry was asking me for was a reasonable expenditure for us to be making.

"That's the way we decided to do it. We all agreed on it."

"Is it going to go like that every time I decide that one of you deserves a raise or should be given a bonus?"

"We never talked about bonus money. With us now working at two different companies, how do you think we should work that?"

"Remember that money we gave Phil when he came up with the idea about outsourcing some of our baking needs? What happened to that money?"

"We split it up. We each took two, and then we divided the rest up with the boys."

"Who paid the taxes on it?"

"We declare all our income, same as anyone else does."

"All right, eighty for each of you then. How you split up anything else is your own business. Are you going to want to change company cars?"

"Not until the new Jimmy's come out. I was thinking about getting one of them crew cabs this time."

"Suit yourself. Are you going to need anything else?"

"We were wondering about the company bass boat. Me and Phil, we both think we need something bigger now."

"A bass boat? The company has a boat?"

"It's on the books. We always have had one. We've got our eye on a real beauty this time though. With trade and all, they'll need eighteen thousand dollars difference for it."

"Who uses this boat?"

"We all do."

"Macklinson people you mean?"

"Us, and some of our friends too. Sometimes, we take out some of our customers, but only if we like them as people too."

"Patty knows about this, and she doesn't have any problem with it as far as it being a legitimate business expense?"

"Never did ask her nothing about it."

"Does she even know the company has a boat?"

"Of course. She's fished from it, the same as the rest of us. Patty likes to fish some."

"Eighteen thousand? How old is the one you have now?"

"Maybe twelve or thirteen years since we went and bought it. Still runs good, but a bigger boat would be better."

"How much are they giving you in trade for the old one?"

"Can't rightly say. Jenkins told me he'd do the deal for a difference of eighteen, and that's all he told me. I'd guess it wasn't much, because the new boat wouldn't run more than twenty one, not tricked out like it is. Maybe two thousand for that old boat, twenty five hundred tops."

"Would two boats be better than one?"

"Phil is the one you'd need to ask that question. We keep the one we have now in his back yard. I don't see why it wouldn't be better though. The old one is still a pretty nice boat. You want me to ask Jenkins what the new one would be with no trade in?"

"If you do, and it seems reasonable to not trade the other one in, keep the old one on Macklinson's books and put the new one on the Quick Snacks books. Check with Patty to see what we need to do to make it a legitimate business deduction."

After Larry and I left the restaurant, I replayed our luncheon conversation in my mind. From start to finish it had been unique to all my previous experiences dealing with the senior Macklinson men. I had expected at least some wrangling from Larry, maybe even a glitch that would be serious enough to close off any further negotiations with him. I hadn't gotten anything like that at all. I attributed it to the fact that Larry really wanted his chance to lead. Perhaps he thought he had something he wanted to prove to all of us. I hoped that was it.

At home that night, while I was on the phone, talking with Brenda, she let drop the news that she and Emily were back to calling each other on the phone. She mentioned that Emily was thinking about flying out for a week or so, with the children, and she wanted to know if she needed to get a place to stay, or if she'd be welcome to stay at our house while she was there.

"What did Joyce say?"

"She said I needed to ask you about it."

"Did you happen to mention to Emily that Shirley is living here now in her old rooms?" Brenda laughed and said she had. "Emily is always welcome to stay here with her family, whenever she chooses to visit. She never has to ask. The same goes for you, Brenda." Brenda didn't say anything else to me for awhile, and then Joyce's voice came suddenly on the line.

"I hope you didn't tell her Emily couldn't stay here?" From her tone, she must have thought I had done that.

"No, I told her we were still Emily's family, and she didn't have to ask permission to come stay with us."

"I hope she doesn't tell Emily what you said, Kenny. I don't think she'll still come if she heard that you had said that."

"Why would hearing that upset her? I wasn't as if I said anything mean or talked bad about her. I never told her she had to leave. When they left, it was all their own idea."

"Kenny, Emily already feels bad enough. Telling her she's still family is going to just make her feel even worse than she does."

"I give up then, Joyce. It seems as if it makes no difference what I say to any of you. Somehow, it always gets turned around so that I'm the one in the wrong for saying it."

"When she needed for you to treat her nice before, you yelled at her. She already is feeling bad, so you being so nice to her will make her feel even worse about what's happened."

"I haven't heard what's happened, Joyce, so I don't really know what she's feeling bad about. How about you do this? Tell her she can come, but tell her she better stay out of my way while she's visiting. Is that better?"

"No, telling her that will make her feel worse too. You should just tell Brenda to tell her she can stay with us while she's here."

"You go ahead and tell Brenda whatever you want her to tell Emily. The same thing goes for when you talk to Emily yourself. Leave me out of things like this. The one thing I will want is time to visit with the kids while they're out here. Other than that, what Emily does while she's out here visiting Brenda doesn't really concern me."

"Brenda has already told her that you won't take her back."

"Brenda or Emily?"

"Brenda told Emily that you wouldn't take Brenda back."

"Either way, Brenda or Emily. Not right away, that's for sure."

"Dr. Fellows called me today. She wants me to come see her sometime, by myself. Do you know why she wants that?"

"She said something about maybe needing to explain some of my changes to you. She doesn't think you really understand why I have to do some things differently than I did before I got sick."

"Did she have this same talk with Dale, when she was out there with you before?"

"No, but it isn't anything for you to be worried about, Joyce. When I was there the last time, she seemed to feel I was doing better than I had been before. She also seemed happy that we were getting along better. She probably just needs to explain some things to you to make it easier for us to keep getting along better."

"Suppose she decides that I'm bad for you to be married to now?"

"How could you be bad for me? That doesn't even make sense. She's only going to tell you some things that will make things better for the two of us. She knows how to explain these things so they start to make some sense. I've learned a lot from just talking with her. She knows about all this stuff we've been going through, Joyce. The more I listen to her, the easier it is for me to start making sense of what's been happening with us."

"Are you going to sleep with Brenda while Emily's here visiting?"

"I haven't even thought about that. Are you?"

"Emily wouldn't like it if I did."

"I don't have to sleep with her. Maybe we should ask Brenda to ask Emily what she'd like to have happen while she's here. Is Brenda going to sleep with Emily? That's the real question."

"I can answer that one if you really want to know. I've been hearing Brenda's side of their phone conversations all week."

"No, that's all right. It makes no difference to me anyway."

"Brenda told Emily about sleeping with you. She told her you were better than ever."

"Only right that Emily should find that out. It wasn't necessarily supposed to be a secret anyway."

"We've all discussed that among ourselves. Don't let your head get too swelled up. Brenda's opinion isn't unanimous, not by any means. I can't honestly say that you are better in bed than you ever were."

"You'd be able to say that if I had been trying to impress you, like I was with Brenda, back when she was visiting me down here. You don't give me enough credit for all the lengths I've been willing to go in order to make some of your dreams become reality. I labored long into the night to get that rave review from Brenda. If they gave out merit badges for diligence, persistence, dedication and devotion to duty, I'd be an eagle scout by now. Who else, besides you, doesn't think I'm better now?"

"I was just teasing, Kenny. Brenda was also supposed to ask you if you would start trading Emily's money again too. It was Brenda's idea at first, but after Brenda brought it up, Emily said it would be okay for her to ask you about it. I think you should do it."

"Brenda said she thinks Emily's money is down to less than half of what I turned over to her. If that's true, she sure has gone through quite a bit of money in a very short time. Most of it was lost with her so called investment advisors, but she loaned a lot out to her parents too. I wouldn't want to start trading her money again and then have her start asking me every couple of weeks to give her some of the money so she can loan more of it to her folks. It might just be better to let her keep the money she has left, and start up a new trust account for her and the kids. I could trade with that money instead."

"I think she'd see it as more of a positive sign if you let her bring whatever she has left back for you to invest for her. You can always add to it if you want to. She doesn't even have to know that you did. She would see you agreeing to invest her money again the same way that Brenda does, as some kind of proof that you still care about her. You know Brenda thinks that way. I happen to know that Emily does too. Whenever we used to get a new trading account summary, she was always looking over my shoulder as soon as I got around to opening it. Having you taking care of her that way meant a lot to her, to all of us."

"We're flying home on Thursday night, and I'll be leaving for the clinic, from there, on Monday morning. Mama wants me to spend time Friday over at her house. She still wants to bend my ear some more about Brenda. It will be late Thursday when we get in, so we'll probably end up going straight to Mama's and spending the night there. I'll be over at the house, either late on Friday, or else early Saturday morning, depending on how bad it gets when Mama and I get to discussing what I'm doing about Brenda and the children."

"Brenda is going to be sleeping there too, and Mama already has her sleeping in your old room. Dwightee and April are in my old bedroom. I don't think Mama is expecting you to bring Cindy and Dale over with you. Maybe you should drop them off here before going over to Mama's?" Joyce was laughing. I'm sure she thought I had been trapped by Mama's cleverness.

We got into Bolling at nine forty on Thursday night. Hans was there to meet us, and Brenda was there with him. It took me about half an hour to get everything straightened out with the aircraft maintenance and flight service people before we were able to leave for Ridgeline. Of course, even though it was almost eleven o'clock when we finally got to Mama's house, she and my Dad were still awake and right there to greet us.

Mama didn't seem that surprised that Cindy and Dale were with me. I figured Joyce must have warned her about it. We spent an hour in the library together, talking about business, and getting caught up with this and that. We all headed upstairs at midnight, and I turned to the left and headed to my room with the two girls. Brenda went into the middle bedroom where Joyce had said the children would be staying.

Twenty minutes after the three of us went to bed, Brenda came into the bedroom and crawled into the crowded bed with us. Dale and Cindy both started giggling. We hadn't been doing anything, being tired from the long day we'd all had. I figured that Brenda would try to get me interested by beginning to touch me, or else finding a way to rub her body against mine.

I hadn't expected what she did do. As soon as she claimed a spot in the bed she began flirting with Cindy. I don't believe any of us were expecting that to happen. I know my interest and curiosity were immediately aroused, just as soon as I started to realize what it was she was up to. At first, I didn't believe Brenda would meet with any success. Cindy's day had been every bit as long and tiring as mine had been.

It didn't take long for me to have to adjust both my opinion, and the hardening dick growing in my briefs. By then, Brenda had a serious lip lock on Cindy's neck, and I could see the outline of some hand movements beneath the sheets. By the time a low moan of excitement escaped Cindy's lips, I felt a tiny hand reach across my hip and slither down to the bulge between my legs. Dale too had been paying close attention to what was happening in our crowded bed.

When Brenda's head disappeared beneath the sheet, we all knew what the near term outcome was going to be. I was betting that Brenda was going to somehow pull the old fakeroo on Cindy and find some way to reverse their positions so that it was Cindy who ended up being the one going down on her.

I was eagerly waiting to see how she would manage it. I was still expecting it, even after it became quite obvious to all of us that Brenda's face was between Cindy's wide spread legs, and the main course of the flesh banquet had already commenced.

From the pleasant smells wafting past my quivering nose, I'd have guessed the main course was some species of a delicate and flavorful piscean variety. Either Brenda's oral technique was much improved, or else Cindy was just in a particularly receptive mood.

Usually, Brenda was a ho hum cunnilinguist, based on all my own, personal observations, and on the second hand anecdotal reports I'd received about her oral skills over the years. You certainly couldn't have said that about her then, not based on what I was seeing and hearing taking place.

In a matter of moments, Dale and I had been inspired to commence our own wet and juicy oral activity above the sheets. Unlike what Brenda was doing, ours was a mutual exchange of tongue and tissue. She turned around and pushed her wet pussy against my face and then slurped the head of my dick between her own lips.

I'm ashamed to admit that Dale and I were finished with our activities long before Brenda was through with her own tenacious assault on Cindy's tasty little honey pot. In point of fact, I had dropped off into an exhausted slumber while those two were still engaged in bringing each other further pleasures. At some point Cindy changed positions so that she was able to give as well as receive oral stimulation.

In the back of my thoughts as I drifted off, was the expectation to be awakened sometime during the night with Brenda trying to entice me into slaking her burning lust. It didn't happen. In the morning, the four of us showered, two at a time. I was with Cindy, and Brenda and Dale followed right behind us.

I don't know what those two got up to after Cindy and I had dressed and gone downstairs looking for something to eat, but neither of them made an appearance downstairs for another hour and a half after we first came down. When they did finally show up, they both looked like guilty children who'd gotten caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

I assumed that this was just one more attempt on Brenda's part to show me how anxious she was to be accepted by all of us again. I thought she might have had some help deciding on this particular strategy. Call me suspicious, but I could definitely see Joyce being the mastermind behind this method of Brenda trying to mend some fences. What I couldn't see was why Brenda being more attentive to the sexual needs of all the other wives was supposed to sway me into making a favorable ruling on the request she was making for reconciliation and forgiveness. I could definitely see how this might have advantages for Joyce though. Brenda's beauty had great appeal, and not just with me. Cindy and Dale weren't immune, and Emily certainly wasn't immune. Like me, Joyce was using Brenda as a lure. Unlike me, Joyce was aiming her at the other wives, not just Emily.

In the end, I decided that no harm would come from it, and I believed that Brenda had received far more attention from all the other wives in the past than she had ever reciprocated. This would help to balance the scales. What I wasn't aware of was that Brenda was in the process of clearing the way for another agenda, one I wasn't even aware existed. Had I known that, I'd have suspected Mama of having had a hand in the plotting.

I should have gotten my first inkling of what all of them were planning when Brenda informed me that Mama had been building her a house of her own. Apparently, this had been in the works for some months, supposedly so that Brenda would have a comfortable place to stay whenever she came back to Kansas for a visit. The construction on the house had just been completed. She wanted me to go look the new house over with her.

Brenda was hoping the house would be ready to occupy very soon. She wanted her and the children to be all moved in by the time Emily was scheduled to come back to Kansas for her visit.

Instead of having to listen to Mama castigating me for my foot dragging with Brenda, which I had expected to take up most of the day, I found myself out in a car with Brenda, Dwightee and April. She wanted me to help her make decisions on where the children should sleep. I knew it was a ploy, but I hadn't been looking forward to spending the day arguing with Mama about Brenda either. I went along with it, as did Mama.

Fortunately, I was going to be spared the additional trips that would be necessary for picking out furniture, appliances, bedding and all the small house wares and kitchen type household appliances she would need. Thank God for small favors. Actually, it might have been fun to find out what Brenda's taste in furniture was.

After I first expressed my own serious misgivings about my aptitude for providing ideas for furnishing a home to her, I described things that I liked in all the different houses we'd been in together. She told me what she had liked too. I was more into earthtones and understated elegence while Brenda tended more towards colorful and glitzy. We both decided to confine ourselves to looking to others with more experience for all the decorating ideas. Brenda told me she was going to do the actual buying of her furnishings with Georgia and my mother, sometime during the following week.

The house Mama had built was about the size of one of the group homes, with six bedrooms and eight bathrooms. the kitchen was absolutely huge. Brenda told me that she had already purchased everything she would need for cooking, including the ovens and twin microwaves. She told me she had helped design the layout for the kitchen.

While we were looking through the new house, Brenda tried to start several conversations about Emily. Each time, she would say something to begin the conversation, before immediately switching back to something else about the new house.

Whatever she wanted to tell me, she kept on losing her nerve. I almost tried to help her tell me what she wanted to, but, because it was about Emily, I decided not to say anything to her. I knew she'd find a way to let me know whatever it was she wanted to discuss, but couldn't quite manage yet.

By Monday morning, all my previous plans for the week had been altered. Dale had decided she wanted to spend the week with Joyce and the children, in Ridgeline. Cindy was going to fly back to Birmingham with me before I flew out for a short week at the clinic. Brenda was going to spend the week at Georgia's house, and Shirley was going to spend the week with me, at the clinic. The younger children were being left at home with Phil and both his wives.

Not a single one of these decisions had been initiated by me. In fact, I hadn't been consulted about any of it. I didn't really see anything there that I could reasonably object to, or even find some fault with. I did notice that Joyce wasn't bringing up Dr. Fellows request for her to come visit anymore. On balance, I found myself happy to have Shirley coming with me. I looked forward to having her provide me with some company as well as female companionship while I was at the clinic.

I had another one of those super profitable and productive weeks trading all the grains, most of the metals, and some of the currency contracts. Silver was particularly volatile all during that week.

It sometimes seemed to me, during these great trading opportunities, that things were lining up in my favor, and then they seemed to stay lined up that way for several trading days in a row, allowing me to fully exploit them. This was one of those almost magical times for me. As a consequence of all these favorable trading situations, I spent quite a bit more of my time and energy trading than I normally would have done if the markets hadn't been so favorable.

My talks with Dr. Fellows, though less extensive, were as productive as they had been the time before. I managed to clear up some of the earlier uncertainties I'd been troubled by. We focused most of our attention on my concerns over the direction things seemed to be moving with Brenda and me.

I felt like I had been placed in a defensive posture with her, mostly because of the constant pressure I was getting from Joyce and Mama. This wasn't so noticeable from Brenda herself. When Brenda and I were alone together, I didn't sense any great urgency for me to decide on anything coming from her. When Mama or Joyce was with us though, Brenda seemed more anxious about changing the status of our relationship. Other than during those times, she seemed rather relaxed about how things were between us.

My preferred posture would have been to take everything slowly. I thought I needed to allow myself time to deal with some of my underlying resentments about what had happened in the recent past. Doing that would also help me to begin thinking about the wisdom of having a possible future that would again include Brenda.

The doctor told me she saw nothing troubling with my preferred approach to the situation. What she did encourage me to do was to try to negotiate a reasonable timetable with Mama and Joyce for this reconciliation to take place. She stressed that it needed to be something I was comfortable with. She even ventured a guess that they both might have been more anxious and concerned about the "if" of reconciliation rather than with the "when" of it. The doctor seemed to take it for granted that a reconciliation was inevitable. This bothered me, and I tried to explain my position.

"There might never be a time for any true reconciliation with Brenda or Emily. At least not one where the two of them will be asked to rejoin our family. I can easily see them both being closer to all of us, and them having a much more active role in our lives, but I'm still not sure there will ever be a time when we can go back to being what we once were. This is more because of Emily, because of the negative impact she has always had on my ability to get along with Brenda. I'm not blaming any of Brenda's actions on Emily, but her being so close to Brenda will complicate the process of reconciling. There are a lot of changes that would have to take place. These changes would be necessary for there to be any possibility for the three of us to be getting back together. On her own, Brenda only presents certain kinds of potential problem situations for me. When Emily is there and a part of our family as well, the possibilities for problems with Brenda have always been dramatically increased. There is a built in conflict between Emily and me, because, in Emily's mind, Brenda is the real prize that she and I have always competed for."