Chapter 11

He was stunned. The "Wow!" that left his mouth was unintentional.

"That's what makes all this so surreal," she sighed. "But I thought that was all over and done with. And now ... it's happening again."

"I never knew," he said, again automatically.

"Of course not," she said. "That's not the kind of thing you toss into a casual conversation. At least not outside the home where it's going on."

"You mean others knew it was happening?"

"Yes," she said. "My mother caught Sydney and me just like I caught Mallory and Randy." She blinked several times. "It's like history is repeating itself."

"What happened?" he asked.

Now she looked directly at him. "Why do you want to know?" There was something in her eyes that looked like wariness.

"What do you mean, why do I want to know?" he asked, incredulously.

"Does the idea turn you on?" she asked, her voice hard.

"What? No. Of course not. What do you mean?"

"Well, you obviously got turned on by the idea of having sex with Samantha. And from what I understand you did that while letting Randy and Mallory have sex ten feet away from you. You sound a lot like Brad. He was a satyr. He never could get enough sex and wasn't satisfied with only me."

"I'm not Brad," said Bob, stiffly. "You know that."

"I don't know what I know," she said.

"I just want to understand," said Bob. "I know this sounds lame, but I don't understand how any of this happened. I mean I never intended for any of it to happen, didn't plan it. Not any of it. Not Mallory, and certainly not Sam. I know you don't believe that, but it's true."

"So you just lost control," said Lucy.

"Yes!" he said. "I know I shouldn't have, but I did. Things happened so fast I didn't have time to think about them. That's the only explanation I have."

She sat back again.

"Why couldn't you have just lost control with me?"

"Because I couldn't bear the thought of losing you," he said. "I was afraid you wouldn't want that, and that it would drive you away."

"Is that true? Really?"

"Of course it is," he said, again automatically. "That isn't the same thing as groping your niece because she'd being cocky. If Mal had blown up about it that would have been fine. In fact, I expected her to get pissed off. But then she didn't, and everything got all Twilight Zone on me." He sighed. "But I could never take the chance that you'd turn away from me because I couldn't control an urge."

It was that automatic, immediate response that caused her to believe him. It was his heartfelt, pleading tone that caused her anger to thaw.

"As much as we talked, we didn't communicate very effectively, did we," she sighed. It wasn't a question.

"I guess not," he said, softly in response.

She suddenly stood, and began pacing again. The change in her demeanor was startling.

"Well, maybe we should improve on our communication," she said.

He sat, thinking about the changes that had taken place in only the last half hour. He had started out expecting her to yell at him and then call the police. That expectation had only been partially fulfilled. She'd yelled. But then things had turned sideways. Now, suddenly, it was a whole different situation.

She continued to pace, but then started talking. The revelation she exposed stunned him.

"As I said, I had two brothers, both older than me," she started. "I was the youngest of the three of us. When we were little, we compared parts. Actually, the boys made me get naked out behind the barn. We were raised on a farm. Did I ever tell you that?"

"I knew it," said Bob, "but you never talked about it much."

"You'll understand why in a little bit," she said. "At first, they made me do things. Touch them. Let them touch me. Kiss them. Stuff like that. It wasn't serious and other than the fact that my big brothers always ordered me around, I didn't actually mind. And I didn't mind when they wanted to play doctor or explore things sexually. They didn't hurt me or anything. In fact, sometimes it felt really good. But I knew, because they always did this in secret, and told me not to tell, that we were doing something wrong.

"Eventually that waned for a few years. And then I hit puberty and filled out, and they took notice of me again. I don't want you to think that's all they were ever interested in, because it isn't. We did all the normal things every family does. But girls always feel insecure when those kinds of changes occur in their bodies, and I did too. And the fact that my brothers insisted I was pretty, even sexy, made me feel really good.

"I still knew that what we were doing was wrong, but I kept playing with them. It wasn't 'play' back then, but that's what I told myself when I got older. Anyway, puberty had changed how I felt about it, because they learned how to make me feel really good. Anyway, we just kept doing things until one night Alvin - he was the oldest - wanted to put something in me other than his finger or tongue."

Bob saw the blush flow upwards from the skin her shirt exposed, until it suffused her cheeks. She continued to pace, and never looked directly at him, so he just sat there, enthralled by her story.

"After that, of course, Sydney had to try it."

She stopped, both physically and verbally. She stood as if frozen. Bob couldn't read in her face what was going on inside her, but her sudden catatonic-like state worried him.

"They raped you?" he whispered.

Her frozen stance vanished and she finally looked at him.

"Not at all," she said. "I loved it. I was scared at first, but only until I felt what it was really like. After that I let them do anything they wanted to."

"Wow," he whispered again.

"I was thirteen, but they made me feel like I was years older. I wasn't allowed to date yet, and boys at school ignored me. This was our fantastic secret, something we all loved to do. I knew it was wrong, but I didn't care."

"How long did it go on?" asked Bob.

"Until they both left for college," she said.

"But I thought you said you got caught."

"We did. My mother caught me on top of Sydney in my bedroom one night. I was fifteen at the time. It had gone on so long that we got careless."

Bob blinked.

"And they let you keep doing it?"

"My parents didn't react to it like any of us thought they would," she said.

"Wow," said Bob for a third time.

"I expected to be sent to a convent, or for the boys to be sent away somewhere else, but instead, our parents decided that the best thing to do was regulate our activities."

"What?" he gasped.

"My mother had a long talk with me. I think my dad talked to the boys too. I think they knew that once you become sexually active, you're going to find a way to keep being sexually active, and they decided that keeping it in the family was preferable to all of us going out and having casual sex with outsiders."

"This is incredible," said Bob.

"You're telling me?"

"Wait," said Bob. "A little bit ago you said you thought this was all behind you. Normally that means you tried to forget something negative."

"Just because we did that doesn't mean we thought it was normal," she said. "The whole world loudly proclaims that incest is horrible. We knew that. And our parents made it clear that they wished we hadn't done that. Their acceptance of things, and I use that phrase because I can't think of any other way to say it, was very conditional. My mother put me on the pill and the boys had to start using condoms. We had to ask for permission if we wanted to have sex and if it was too close to my fertile times that permission was denied. They never approved. It was more that the idea of us having sex with strangers was worse than the idea of letting us satiate our normal lust together."

"Oh," said Bob.

"Of course I didn't know how completely radical that was back then. We knew it was taboo, but so is walking around in your underwear ... unless you're at home. So it was easy to think that maybe lots of other people did the same thing, but didn't admit to it in public. Even so, I always felt guilty about what we were doing. But I also loved it. I was allowed to date, but had a nine o'clock curfew. But that didn't matter because I was crazy in love with my brothers. I loved both of them. It wasn't until I got to college and saw so much of the rest of the world that I realized how much I had missed out on, and that both my parents and I were using my brothers as a crutch, of sorts. Of course they got girlfriends and got married. So that's what I wanted to do too. I wanted to be normal, like everybody else. Part of that was trying to pretend that I'd had a normal childhood, too."

"And you met Brad," said Bob.

"That was the problem," she said. "I met both of you. I liked both of you too. You were brothers, and despite trying to forget the past, I was attracted to brothers. It's crazy. Maybe I was warped by what happened to me."

"I don't think you're warped." His voice was firm, confident. Then he frowned. "Do you think I'm warped?"

"The politically correct answer is yes," she said. Then she frowned too. "But I'm having a hard time with that. I know I should be disgusted with what you did, but I did the same thing, basically. I remember how I felt about them. I'm not disgusted. What I am, I think, is jealous."

"You want to hear something weird?"

"Go ahead," she sighed.

"I think the reason Sam wanted to..." He faltered, but then went on. "The reason she wanted to do things with me was because she was jealous about me doing them with Mal."

"I have no trouble believing that," said Lucy. "Those two have always done things together and wanted the same things."

Neither of them said anything for a while. Lucy sat back down. Eventually Bob spoke.

"It's a crazy world."

Lucy was quiet for a little longer, and then asked a question.

"Do you think there's some kind of genetic component to all this?"

"You mean Mal and Randy?"

"Yes."

"I don't see how it could be genetic. I don't think they planned on doing anything together. It was supposed to be me and Mal, and him and Sam. In fact, when I asked Mal if she and Randy had gone all the way she laughed and said he was only for practice."

"So what changed it?"

"I told you. Sam got jealous. I think it surprised her as much as it surprised me."

"So she fell out of love with Randy?"

"I don't think that's it," he said. "She still says she's going to marry him. I've thought about this a lot. I think that what confused her is that she's been trying to be the woman of the house, and that usually includes a sexual component. She said something like that at one point."

"Hmmm," was all the response he got.

"It was crazy," he said. "Things happened so quickly that I think events developed in ways nobody intended. None of us."

"Sex is like that," said Lucy. "Lust and passion make you do strange things."

The hint of a smile touched her lips for the first time that night.

"Actually, the lack of sex is what makes you do strange things," she suggested.

"I'd like to be able to blame it on that," said Bob.

"I thought it was wrong for so long that it always hung over me. But we did it so long that it just felt normal after a while."

"Can I ask a question? It's kind of personal."

"Why not? Things have been pretty personal already."

"Did you ever get pregnant?"

The inference was clear. If she had gotten pregnant, she hadn't kept the child. One way or another.

"No," she said. "I have no idea why not. As much as we did it, it was a miracle of some kind, I guess, but it never happened. Not before we got caught. After that great pains were taken to ensure that didn't happen."

"Can I ask another question?"

"Go ahead."

"After your parents found out ... how often did they... ?"

She stared at him for a few heartbeats.

"There is a bit of the pervert in you after all, isn't there."

"Was there ever any question?" he asked, frankly.

"If you're asking if I'm branding you as a pervert, then I'd have to brand myself as one too," she said. She seemed to think about it for a while and then answered his question.

"The schedule our parents set up was once a week for each of the boys and they had to ask Dad for a condom each time. Of course once a week wasn't enough for either of them, and they both always wanted to do it bareback, so both of them managed to sneak in an extra time that wasn't on the schedule, and I wasn't about to stop them. And while I felt a lot of guilt, I never felt like there was anything wrong with me. I felt completely normal. It wasn't until I got out into the world that I began to wonder if we had been normal, or abnormal or whatever. I decided to believe that, for us, what had happened was normal. It wasn't some kind of lifelong addiction. That was clear. I've seen my brothers hundreds of times since then and neither one of them has ever tried to get me to do that again, not even after the divorce."