Chapter 14

Dana’s turn:

I’m over at Tina’s house, sipping coffee with the mommy mob after our NASA foray.

“We have a pretty good idea of how everybody else did,” Susan said. “How’d it go with Terri? I mean, she HIRED Jerry.”

I looked at Tina’s face for a reading. After all, Terri’s HER daughter. No, check that. Terri’s EVERYBODY’S daughter. Nobody in the community treats Terri as anything less. Same goes with the other – it used to be ‘girls’, but since Derek showed up – ‘kids’.

Well, age-wise, she’s more like MY younger sister. Still, I remember that first day when we flew into the airport south of Houston. Poor Jerry fought the traffic out of Houston to come see Terri. I’ve BEEN in Houston traffic, and if that doesn’t say ‘love’, nothing does.

“Terri,” I said. “Good Lord. ‘Patience’ doesn’t quite mean the same thing to pTerri as it does to the rest of us.”

That got me a round of nods. Tina’s cellphone went off. She picked it up. “Hey, Mizz Donna!” Pause. “We’re over at my house today. Fresh pot of hot water for your herbal tea.” Pause. “Okay. Dana’s here. We’re getting ready to hear some scoop on Terri in Texas.” Pause. “Okay. I’ll sit on ‘er until you get here. Bye!”

She turned to the rest of us. “Donna’s just getting off the main road. Dana, hold on...”

Mizz Donna walked in, little Elise on her hip. Donna’s like Cindy, kind of small, and Elise clings to her, that is, until she sees Kathy and JW, then it’s “Dow, Momma” so she can join the other two. Little Stoney’s off with his parents, visiting his grandparents. I think they’ll probably end up in Norway soon.

I started again. “Terri’s got her own timing about things. We decided that she and Jerry should have a table to themselves and we watched pretty closely, but they sat in a booth a little bit away from us so they could have a little privacy.”

I had everybody’s attention, so I continued, “Thankfully, at the restaurant, she sat across the table from Jerry, and they just talked quietly. I think she actually managed to eat 3 or 4 bites of her dinner. I didn’t try to hear their conversation, but I did hear her say “BSEE” once, so I think I know what she was talking about.”

“They didn’t ... No physical contact?” Mizz Donna asked.

I smiled just thinking about it. “Well, she did haul him in for a kiss when he met us in the parking lot. They sort of touched fingers at the restaurant, then she kissed him bye when he left. Both days.”

“Awww,” Susan said.

“Anyhow,” I continued, “Nikki looked at them and said, “Girls, you know we just witnessed an act of domestic pTerri-ism, don’t you?”

Much laughter, of course.

“Then Cindy and Nikki exchanged a long look at each other, and then they both turned to me. Nikki said, ‘Dana, you’re closer to her age. You need to sleep in her bed tonight, and reinforce the idea that she MUST maintain separation from Jerry, just to keep his butt out of jail.’”

“Cindy agreed with Nikki, and nearly shocked me when she said, ‘Dana, I know exactly how she feels, and I nearly shocked the hell out of Dan the first time I jumped into his bed -- I wasn’t quite 14. We ALL know how dangerous that is, right?’ Nikki said, ‘I was barely 15, Dana -- kinda like you, I guess. My thinking is that we have to get her to concentrate on finishing her BSEE, and thinking of some way to get her Mom to sign over full custody to Alan. Then it simply becomes an issue of waiting on the calendar.’”

Mizz Donna sort of gasped. “That little THING! I thought she was fourteen and I was in Vegas when she started sleeping with Dan.”

“Oops,” I gasped. “I thought you knew, Mizz Donna. I’m sorry...”

“Oh, don’t give it a second thought, baby. It wasn’t like I was paying attention anyway. And it was Dan. She’s married to ‘im.” Mizz Donna’s eyes twinkled. “Thirteen, though ... Poor Dan...”

“Never knew what hit ‘im, right, Dana?” Tina snickered.

Going back to my narrative, “That’s what I said. ‘Cindy, Nikki. I’m sitting here looking at Jerry. The poor guy never had a chance, did he?’”

“Cindy told us, ‘Poor guy, indeed. She’s gonna kill him -- he’ll probably have a heart attack.’”

“Nikki said, ‘Yup, we’d better go ahead and set up his funeral fund, and it’ll have to be a big one, because the undertaker will charge extra to get the smile off his face!’”

“Cindy said, ‘Really, none of the guys had a chance. Do they ever? But when the pTerridactyl focuses on a target, the game is over. And now that I think of it, pterodactyls were carnivores, which makes it worse.’ And we all started laughing, which made us the target of a lot of eyes at the restaurant. After dinner, Jerry had to leave, which led to a tearful parting in the parking lot, and another parting kiss between the lovers.”

“Lovers,” Tina said. “My twelve year old stepdaughter has a ‘lover’.”

“Only in the loosest definition for the term,” I said. “I grabbed pTerri, and led her to our room. When we got there, I sat down on the bed with her, and said, ‘pTerri, we need to talk a little.’ You know how she does those eyes of hers, huh?”

General agreement. Looking into Terri’s eyes, you’re almost afraid of what you’ll see.

“I told her ‘I know you’d go home with Jerry right now, if there were any way to do it without getting caught and him going to jail. And I remember feeling exactly the same way, and so do Cindy and Nikki. But you’re a smart girl, and you know the dangers, right?’”

“She nodded, so I kept on. ‘If I understand this correctly, you need to finish your BSEE and get a release from your Mom, is that right?’”

“She nodded, so I continued, ‘Look, when you’re working on a robotics project, you block things out in steps, don’t you?’”

“She nodded again, so I said, ‘So why don’t we make something like “The Jerry Project“, where you block out the steps you need to make all those things happen? Then you can work out each of the steps, and when they’re done, you’ll have what you want. Does that make sense?’”

“Dana,” she said, “not much of anything makes sense right now, except that I just want to grab Jerry, hang on tight, and not let go for the next several years.”

“Yup, little sister, I know just how you feel. But you have to keep two very important things in mind. The first is that you have to concentrate on keeping Jerry out of jail, and while I doubt that there will be anything bad arising from your actions tonight, it was dangerous for you to kiss him in public, the way you did.”

“She nodded, and I said, ‘The second thing is that you must now “be a lady”, because you want Jerry to be intensely proud of you at all times. Men like Jerry are rare, because they don’t desire ‘just a female’ -- they want a LADY! And you have examples all around you, especially including Tina, capisce?’”

“She did those big blue eyes at me. Seriously, Tina! How do you get immune to that move? Anyhow she said ‘I guess so. But Dana, when it’s just me and Jerry, do I still have to be a lady? Can’t I be just myself?’”

“Terri, when it’s just you and Jerry, all the rules get thrown out, I promise!”

“Good! Because right now, I don’t know whether to feel like a little girl or something else. Can I sleep with you tonight?”

“Sure, darlin’. Go take your shower, then I’ll take mine. You can be my little sister tonight, I guess.”

Tina smiled. “Dana, thank you for your side of the story. Terri pretty much told me the same thing, her version. Said her parking lot kiss was a bit energetic.”

“The guy’s gonna have heart failure,” I said.

“Domestic pTerri-ist,” Susan snickered.

“Thirteen,” Mizz Donna repeated. “Between me makin’ a pass at ‘im and then my daughter, it’s a wonder Dan didn’t flee the state.”

Cindy’s turn:

Back in the hotel suite in Texas, Nikki and I had a pretty long conversation about Terri before retiring for the night. The NASA thing, like I said, just perfect.

The next morning we got up, and after an early breakfast, we drove back over to the airport, returned the rental van, and loaded Songbird for the return trip. And as you might imagine, we talked about Jerry all the way back to Auburn. After landing at the 3Sigma airfield, we went back to our houses, and Nikki met me over at Tina’s house.

Terri was back over at the hangar, but Alan was home, and I said, “Guys, we need to talk about Terri a little.”

Alan got a worried look on his face, and Nikki said, “Poor Jerry has been pTerri-ized”, which made them both laugh. Alan looked a little bit strained, though.

Then I reported, “Alan, Tina, she literally jumped on him, wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, and kissed him into next week. And if you’d been there, I don’t think all five of us could have stopped her.”

I said, “Folks, I’m pretty sure Jerry nearly had a heart attack -- he never had a chance. Seriously, folks, if I were you, I’d be thinking about getting some birth control pills for that girl. She’s like a bomb, about ready to explode, and I remember being just like her, when I wasn’t much older than she is.”

Alan’s face screwed up like I’d never seen it before. Changed colors, even. “Cindy, she’s TWELVE!”

“I know,” I said. “And I knew pregnant girls in middle school. Dan and I talked about that when we were just getting friendly.” I sighed. “Of course none of them was a pTerridactyl, and none of the sperm donors was close to the man Jerry seems to be. But in the heat of the moment...”

“I don’t think they would...” Tina started.

“And you’re my sister and I know how smart you are – both of you, really, and I agree with you both, but would you REALLY want this to be the first thing you were wrong about?”

Tina leaned into Alan. “Oh, Lord, baby, we’re parents of almost a teenaged girl. And we thought we were right about YOU being fixed.”

“I don’t even begin to know how to arrange such a thing,” Alan sighed.

“Yeah, and it sort of falls on you, baby,” Tina said. “You’re the custodial parent. I don’t have legal standing.”

“Let me ask around,” I said. “I know a couple of the girls at school who should know.”

I caught Alan’s raised eyebrow. “Oh, don’t give me a look like that, boy. Everybody we associate with ain’t the paragons of virtue we are.”

“Speaking of paragons, little sister,” Tina giggled. “What’d your mom say when she found out how old you REALLY were with Dan...”