Chapter 5

Mom calmed down and I told her I wouldn’t try to have sex with Uncle Bob anymore and she hugged me and said, “Thank you.” Then she said something that shocked me to the core. “I do not want him making any grandbabies until you’re out of college.”

This casual reference to her assumption that Uncle Bob would, indeed impregnate me at some point in the future kind of turned my world upside down. I hadn’t thought seriously about this pregnancy thing until that moment. Sure, I heard the “Don’t get pregnant” speech multiple times, but I had not thought it would even be possible for me to become with child. First, I wasn’t having sex with anybody and second, Uncle Bob wasn’t going to be in me unless he was wearing a raincoat. The most recent episode had been an accident, and good planning prevents accidents. I guess I had assumed that somebody would do all that good planning. Now, the option of actually having Uncle Bob’s baby, even if that was five years distant, seemed very real. Basically, my mother had just given me permission to let Uncle Bob breed me when I got out of college.

Obviously, my perceptions about all this would change in those five years, most likely change radically. It was quite possible I wouldn’t want Uncle Bob’s baby-maker within ten feet of my fertile womb. But I couldn’t see that far into the future. Ask a sixteen-year-old if driving is anything like they thought it would be when they were thirteen and they’ll probably say “Not at all!”

Anyway, I backed off and let Mom and Uncle Bob make love while I went and laid out on the beach or cooked, or actually read my book. Mom said she was sorry half a dozen times, but it didn’t help.

I knew, at that point, that the first time Uncle Bob got all the way in me, raincoat or not, I wouldn’t make him stop and my mother would be nowhere within gunfire range.

We finished the week and went home. Everything there was mundane. Daddy came home and asked how everything had gone. Mom said “Fine,” in that half dead voice people use when they are replying by habit. I said I had missed him and hugged him. He pushed me away (after I rubbed up against him) and said, “And when did you grow up so much? I wasn’t gone that long.”

“Your little, baby girl is very close to becoming a woman, Daddy,” I said. “You may now officially start having sleepless nights as I begin to go on dates.”

He laughed and said, “My baby girl is a good girl and I do not need to lose any sleep over her at all.”

“Ha!” barked my mother.

We both looked at her and she blushed.

“I used to be that age,” she said. “I know what can happen.”

“Well, get her on the pill, then,” he said, unaware that I already was, and that they had finally kicked in, at least according to big pharma.

“I’ll feel better if she is,” said Mom, giving me a look that said “Don’t you say a word!”

“All right then. I’ll unpack and get cleaned up. What’s for supper?”

“You’re taking us out,” said Mom.

“I am? Okay. Where?”

“I’m going to turn to the restaurant pages in the yellow pages and put my finger down,” she said. (You can still get a yellow pages book in most towns with a population over 50,000)

“Ooooo, mystery,” he said.

The reason my mother was acting the way she was, was because she planned, later that night, to tell her husband she was going to let another man make her pregnant.

Actually, Daddy took it pretty well. He knew he had fucked up by getting snipped without talking to his wife, first. He knew she wanted more children. He just did not believe, at that point in their marriage, that they could afford for her to keep popping babies out. So, he did the pragmatic thing. The problem was it was a permanent solution to a temporary problem. There were a whole bunch of ways they could have used to avoid any swollen bellies. He just didn’t think that way. She had always been fertile and welcoming of his sperm since they got married. He told me when he was 75, that every time he was making love to her he imagined his sperm getting her pregnant.

Ay way, the other very important thing was that he and Uncle Bob were as close as brothers. Uncle Bob already had sexual permission with her when Dad was on a trip. He did that out of pragmatism, too. He knew how they felt about each other and he knew how much temptation would be there. Rather than make them cheat on him he did another pragmatic thing and took the guilt out of the equation. The only odd part was that he knew, somewhere in his brain, that all those times Uncle Bob was sleeping with Mom while he was gone, no condoms were being used and that, theoretically, Uncle Bob could get her very, very pregnant. I guess he just believed that would never happen, like a teenage girl believes the spurting penis inside her just can’t make her pregnant.

And then that’s when things got weird. Well, weird at first, anyway. Uncle Bob came over during the next ten days Mom was allegedly fertile. Daddy, however, wasn’t gone on a trip this time, and when Mom and Uncle Bob were in the bedroom, he didn’t know what to do. Chad was oblivious to what was happening in the master bedroom, and even if he had noticed, that kind of thing had been going on since he had memories. He was eighteen and the only things he wanted to do were play video games, hang out with his friends, and eat. The last thing on his agenda was spending time with Dad.

I felt sorry for him. I knew what it was like to be jealous of my mother, as Uncle Bob’s ass rose and fell between her thighs and she made all those happy noises.

“I’ll hang out with you, Daddy,” I said to him one night. It was a night when Chad was at a sleepover at his friend Tucker’s house, though I didn’t actually think about that when I said that.

“Thanks, Bunny,” he said, and held his arms open.

And during that hug the strangest thing happened. I heard him do a long sniff and he said, “Your hair smells so good.”

“I washed it last night,” I said.

“Your mother’s hair always smells good. Why is it that women’s hair smells so good?”

“Shampoo?” I said.

The hug was still going on and it wasn’t awkward at all. I felt my breasts crushed, but our loins weren’t touching and it had no trace of sexuality to the embrace. He was my daddy and I was his daughter and we loved each other like a daddy and daughter are supposed to.

“Bunny?” he said.

“Hmmm?”

“Has Bob ever made a pass at you?”

“Your antiquated term set aside, no, he hasn’t,” I said.

Why did I lie? I don’t know. It was just instinct. I had teased him about how I was growing up and him having to worry about me going out and being bad. He had said he wouldn’t worry because I was a good girl. If he found out what Uncle Bob and I had been doing then I would no longer be able to hold that status in his eyes. So maybe my answer was to keep him in fantasy land a little longer. He hadn’t lost mom – far from it – but she was in his bedroom with another man who was trying like the dickens to fertilize an egg in her womb. Yes, he had known about them since he met them, but still, that has to be hard on a man’s ego.

“Why did you ask me that?” I asked. I don’t know why I asked him that question, either.

“When I said you were a good girl the other day your mother indicated otherwise,” he said.