Chapter 13: The Lesson

The next few weeks into summer holidays and beyond are very languorous. The days become ever more hot and the wind ever more evasive, causing everyone in both my parents’ and Mel’s parents’ households to become sluggish, and any productive work to come to a virtual standstill.

For the first time in years, Red has opted to stay home for almost the entire summer--only going away to take a week long course in advanced psychology or something of the sort. We all, including my parents, know the reason why, but none of us speak of it to each other. If anyone talks about it, it’s with their mate, and their mate exclusively. Mel and I do--talk about it, that is.

‘How do you feel about Rowena and your brother?’ I asked her--not for the first time.

‘He’s too young,’ she groaned. ‘Ro’s ages older than him.’

‘You’re not that much older than him. WE’RE not that much older than him.’

Mel looked at me through one eye, squinting.

‘What are you suggesting? I go commit incest with my younger brother while I’m pregnant just so I can replace our English teacher? And maybe you want to join me?’

‘Ha ha,’ I reply dryly. ‘That’s not it at all and you know it.’

She sighed, rolling onto her back. ‘I do, my love. I was just being sarcastic. I’m sorry. I’m only yours anyway, and that’s something you know.’

I kissed her. ‘I do. I was just trying to point out that if Red is too young for Ro--’

‘Maybe we were too,’ Mel finished for me softly. She shook her head, brow furrowing. ‘I guess I’m just afraid of what Rowena knows and Red doesn’t. About us, us all. She’s really making him happy and I’m so glad to see him so social and enthusiastic ... but if he finds out, is disgusted, and tells our parents... ‘ She took a deep breath and didn’t go on.

‘Don’t worry about it, darling. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Besides ... I don’t think they’ve gotten so intimate yet.’

‘You think Red’s still a virgin?’ Mel turned to prop herself up on her side, gazing at me curiously. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘Hard to say. I just don’t think he knows the greatest physical pleasure on earth yet; I don’t think he knows the wonder and passion of being inside a woman’s body so snugly, HIS woman, feeling right and whole.’

Mel flushed listening to me talk.

‘Indeed,’ she said softly.

We were silent for a few moments, thoughtfully, never awkwardly.

‘I wonder, will she be a dominant to him, too?’ Mel mused aloud. ‘Are the D’Mitri children born to submit to their lovers? Maybe it’s some sort of conquest to her ... dominate both siblings.’

‘Don’t be silly. I don’t think she has such an ulterior motive as that!’ I exclaimed. ‘But I wonder about her dominating him too. Can you just imagine? Red the genius, sophisticated gentleman being blindfolded, being paddled and spanked and bossed around, a sex slave to our English teacher?’

Mel laughed. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I can’t imagine.’

We spent our days for those weeks doing not much of anything but enjoying each other. It was our half-month at my mum and dad’s, and so we moved back in there. Our days were filled with lovemaking, cooking, video games, and older television shows. We spent nearly every evening watching Bonanza, Star Trek, or the Waltons.

One night we were lying together trying to sleep.

‘Mel?’ I knew the answer before I even asked. ‘Are you asleep?’

‘Yes,’ she groaned contradictorily, burying her face in my chest. ‘What is it?’

‘I was thinking about a house.’

That woke her up pretty quickly.

‘A house? What do you mean?’

‘I was wondering what we should do about it. Should we get our own? Buy one? Rent? Or get an apartment?’

‘Our parents will support us as long as we need.’

‘I love and appreciate them, but I don’t want to need it anymore,’ I explained. ‘I want our own place for our child.’

Mel was quiet. ‘Let’s start looking,’ she said finally. ‘Down all avenues. We have plenty of free time this summer to look. We should plan our wedding, too.’

We hadn’t spoken often about our wedding at all until recently.

‘Yes, we should,’ I agreed. ‘You don’t want to get married before you give birth, do you?’

‘What, don’t want to get hitched to a beached whale?’ Mel quipped, but then her voice grew softer. ‘I’m kidding. I love being pregnant, even though baby makes my body somewhat foreign to me. But yes ... in an ideal world, I would. I would have wanted to get married before bringing our child into the world.’

We were silent again.

I turned to her.

‘Do you regret it, my love? That we made love without a second thought for anything but our joining, and now we’re having a child?’

Laboriously, Mel turned to face me too. I could just see the glint of moonlight through the curtain off her pupils and barely heard her voice over the fan in our window.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I never regretted it and I never will. I love you, and I love our child too ... and all those after it.’

I pretended to be shocked.

‘“ALL THOSE AFTER IT?!”’ I repeated. ‘We’re going to have more? How do you think we’ll survive the first one?’

Mel giggled and kissed me.

‘I’m glad you agree that we should have a big family,’ she smiled, bopping my nose with her index finger.

I looked right at her. ‘What are we going to call it?’

Mel’s face squinched up. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘What do you think, for a girl?’

‘Gisselle, maybe. You?’

‘Eunice,’ Mel said softly.

I looked at her again, surprised. ‘After my mum? Really?’

‘She’s lovely,’ Mel said. ‘She’s my second mother.’

‘Won’t your actual mum be jealous?’

‘Oh, all right then. Better be safe and name it Gisselle if it’s a girl. A boy?’

‘Cecil.’

‘Cecil? That’s quaint.’

‘So maybe it’s gone out of style, but it’s a great name. And you?’

‘Julian.’

‘And you’re calling ME quaint! Let’s just call him Sebastian and be done with it.’

‘We’ve played too many medieval videogames,’ Mel groaned.

‘Do you hope for a girl?’ I asked, reaching out to place my hands firmly on Mel’s bulging middle. Five-and-a-half months in.

‘No, I hope for a baby. Just a baby all our own, a child we created out of love.’

I smiled. ‘My poetess. You’re beautiful, my love.’ And I leant in to kiss her.

Mel grew bigger and bigger in her seventh month, gradually swelling in belly and breast as if she were some lovely ripening fruit--a peach, maybe, nearly ready to pluck and savour.

We’d gone to look at several houses already. Some were obviously much too over-priced, and others were just too run down. However, there was one we’d found.

It was modest place about half an hour out of the city. It had a semi-covered old-fashioned porch with a screen door, a lovely big kitchen, a fireplace in the cosy living room, a full bath with a stand-alone bathtub and a skylight, and a fair amount of bedrooms upstairs for us, our child, and “all those after.”