Chapter 12: Sunday. Susan and Conception

The next morning, Sophie wanted a long tutoring session, so Mike and Susan drove her over to my house. Sophie went right into my study, and started reading. Mike and Susan gestured me toward the living room for a private discussion. Aurora followed us.

“Peter,” said Mike. “There’s something I’m realizing we haven’t talked about yet. Something important.”

“About the girls?” I asked.

“Actually, it’s about me,” said Susan. “Remember how I said I wasn’t on birth control? Mike and I have been trying for so many years, we’ve basically given up hope of having another child. Dad, so far, you’ve mostly been coming in my mouth or my ass. But twice now, you’ve come inside my pussy. I’m only 36. There is a real chance I could get pregnant.”

“Assuming the reason we’ve never conceived again is my biology, not hers,” said Mike.

“So ... what would you like to do about that?” I asked. “You could go on the pill? Or I just never come inside your pussy?”

“Actually, there’s another choice, but you need to agree,” said Mike. “You could try to get her pregnant.”

The room was silent for a minute.

“Aren’t there ... genetic risks?” I asked.

“I studied it,” replied Susan. “There are risks, but it’s not as scary as you think. There are also risks when a mother is over 40, and risks when a father is over 60, but those are risks that our society usually thinks are acceptable.”

“That’s true,” said Aurora. “I’ve studied it too. You have an increased chance of recessive gene disorders, but the chances are actually pretty low, and usually take more than one generation to appear. There are also risks with first cousins having kids, but that’s been accepted across many cultures for a long time. Darwin and Einstein married their first cousins. Hollywood has a lot of actors whose parents were cousins.”

“I’m not asking you whether you think it’s risky or not, Dad.” Susan looked at me tenderly. “There is excellent genetic screening nowadays. The risks are manageable. I’m asking how you would feel about it.”

“And ... you’re on board with this idea?” I asked Mike.

“I am, Peter. I’ve passed on my DNA twice already. I don’t need to be the genetic father. A child between you and Susan would be Susan’s DNA. I would love and cherish that child every bit as much as any member of our family.”

I sat and looked at each of them, thinking for a minute. Susan took my hands in hers.

“What it comes down to, Dad, is how you feel about it. Do you like the idea of getting me pregnant?”

I looked at her. “Yes, Susan. I love the idea of getting you pregnant. But there’s a lot more than that. We’re talking about another 18 years of child-raising. Changing diapers, breast pumps, daycare, a huge amount of work. Do you remember how stressful those first few years were, with your daughters?”

“Actually, I’ve forgotten most of it,” said Susan smiling. “If any parent could remember it perfectly, there would be no second children. It takes a couple years before it fades enough to start sounding like a good idea again.”

I laughed. “So ... I just release my sperm in your maybe-fertile womb? And we all hope it works?”

“Yes, Dad. I’ll be hoping for it. If it’s OK with you. And with you too, Aurora. This affects you too.”

“I’m in favor,” said Aurora. “I never got to have kids myself, and I’ve loved being the cool aunt to your girls. If you need some more years of free childcare to raise another kid, I would shower them with love and attention.”

I looked at Aurora, then around at everyone. “Well, then. It’s OK with me.”

“Thank you!” gasped Susan, launching into my arms for a big hug and kiss.

“We don’t know if it will happen,” said Mike, “but if it does, it will be a blessing in our lives.”

“Do you want to start trying to get pregnant right now?” I said smiling, putting my hand between Susan’s legs.

“Dad! Sophie needs you today. Go be with her.”

“Of course, darling.” They got up and left.

Sophie and Sex Without Touch.

Sophie and I ended up spending most of the day in my study, taking a break for lunch, and another break for snacks. We looked at scans of the pages of The Book, decoding the characters, looking up each word, doing deep-dives on etymology across several languages. When we ran into a major 17th-century subject she knew nothing about, like the spread of the printing press for secular works, or the Savafid Empire, we would look for good YouTube videos to watch about it.

At one point, we revisited the subject of the authorship of The Book.

“Grampa, why do you say we don’t know who wrote the book? There’s a name right there at the beginning.”

“That’s Maurice Héroet. One thing we know for sure is that Maurice didn’t write it. He was in the publishing industry in Lyon, Kingdom of France. The book’s use of language and narrative, and what we know of Maurice, do not line up at all. Almost certainly, Maurice found or acquired the manuscript somehow, and decided to publish it with the idea that it would sell. As for the actual author, the only way to figure out who he was is to read between the lines, to infer details from how he wrote, what allusions he employs. To do that requires a familiarity with many contemporary works, to compare them to how he writes. That’s why this is usually a subject for a graduate degree in the humanities.”

“So ... you did that, right? You read a lot of the other books, so you can tell how this guy was different?”

“I have, and my best guess is that he was not royalty, not an academic or within any patronage system, which is unusual. Also, although the language indicates he spent many years in France, he was almost certainly not French. I get the impression of a Germanic origin for some of his frames and tropes, and he certainly traveled widely across Europe, absorbing many influences during the post-Enlightenment era. He had been to England, and parts of what would become Italy, but he wrote mainly in neoclassical Latin, with some framing material in early modern French.”

“So he wasn’t rich? Didn’t poor people back then just have to be peasants, or like, shopkeepers?”

“He’s an interesting character. He may have seen himself as a kind of traveling wizard, what the French would call magiste or sorcier. You can tell from the prose that he had a rather lofty idea of himself, and yet, he never names himself. That’s presuming that the book which Maurice Héroet published didn’t go through a lot of edits. That’s a standard feature of history and philology, pretty much everything is tainted or unreliable. It’s real detective work to figure out what’s real.”

“So that’s why you just call him The Author?”

“Yes.”

In the late afternoon, we took another break to go to the TV room and watch a movie together. This gave Sophie and me an excuse to cuddle and kiss each other, which led to the subject of sex coming up again.

“Grampa,” she said between kisses, “You kiss really differently than Em.”

“I noticed you together at the sex party,” I said. “Did you want to talk about that?”

“You said it’s OK, right? Because we’re close in age, as long as we talk about it a lot, and she’s OK with it, it’s really consensual, right?”

“Yes, it’s OK,” I said. “You’re 16 and 14. There are some people who would have a problem with it, because you’re both girls, but those are just homophobes. And some people might have a problem because it’s technically incest. But almost nobody would think that Emma is somehow abusing you, just because she’s two years older.”